Here is the bug report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=791429
No one seems to care, basically a soft "won't fix". I even thought about fixing it myself but after seeing that the solution wasn't obvious, I gave up.
I wanted to give Chrome a try anyways, so I did. And not only mouse zoom worked but pages also loaded faster. Time to completion was about the same but it took less time to actually see something. For the rest, I had no trouble finding extensions to match what I could do with Firefox. Clear win for Chrome.
Now, I am using Firefox at work and Chrome at home so I can follow. What I noticed was:
- Firefox performance more or less caught up with Chrome (or is it the other way around?)
- Chrome seems a bit more stable
- Generally, switching is super-easy, besides syncing (Firefox doesn't sync with Google and Chrome doesn't sync with Firefox sync, and I am not a fan of third party solutions)
- I've yet to re-test mouse zoom, but according to the bug report, it still isn't fixed.
Note that mouse zoom may seem trivial but it is not. Chrome and Firefox are practically the same, at least on the desktop, so small details like that are what make people switch.
And to be honest, I am pretty pissed off with Firefox. They have really good core devs. Servo is awesome, and even though I dislike the community (seen from the outside), I also find Rust to be just as awesome for its application. Direction however is seriously lacking.
The latest goof was the extension signing fiasco. Again, small thing, but enough to turn off some people. The most ironic part is that they fixed that using a telemetry-related backdoor. I don't really have a problem with that (otherwise I wouldn't use Chrome) but for a browser that advertise itself as privacy oriented, it is not good publicity.