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Comment by sergiomattei | Hacker News Reader

My God, this thread turned into a cesspool of whining, bitching and utter negativity to what seems like a great update.

How about we praise the positives as well? They listed a slew of performance improvements and a battery usage improvement on macOS.

Firefox team: keep it up.

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I agree. It's an outstanding achievement that Firefox remains competitive with Chrome - and even exceeds it - given the disparity of resources between Mozilla and Google. The Firefox community also tends to be more responsive on their bugtracker than the Chrome/Chromium team. (seriously, great work y'all)

(also, they've even caught up to Chrome in version numbers! joke)

I'm fairly certain Google just pays Mozilla money to avoid any claims about being a monopoly browser.

My understanding (with the caveat that I worked for Mozilla a decade ago) is that Google pays Mozilla and Apple money for browser search placement because it directly makes them money in ad revenue. Someone put the numbers into a spreadsheet and said "yeah, it works."

I think Firefox is a much better browser than Chrome. I mean once you tried container tabs with a different session and cookie store for each tab... It's just amazing.

Also no Google in my browser is a huge plus.

Agreed! A browser engine is a horrifically complicated piece of tech, and unfortunately nobody wants to pay a cent for their browser software. The fact that we have an “independent” browser at all is amazing! Sure, everybody has their pet peeves, but overall I think the Firefox project is great. I switched off chrome a few years back, and have been a happy user ever since.

I can proudly announce that I did pay cold hard cash for my browser software! $49.90 for a Netscape Navigator box back in 1996 :)

Thank you for voicing this perspective! I've switched to Firefox ~3-4 years ago and I've seen considerable progress (on multiple platforms). I'm really grateful that we - internet users - have a great alternative to corporate-backed browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari). Thanks Firefox team!

Massive regression on Firefox Mobile... they block 99% of extensions nowadays (only about 12 out of thousands are allowed).

You can install other extensions by using Firefox Nightly [1] which is quite stable actually.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

The Collections process is very cumbersome, and I've found that the Collections pages are a bit buggy - for instance, the adding-to-a-collection part uses a separate search bar that doesn't even find a large swath of store extensions for some reason.

It works, but is a decidedly poor experience.

On android, you can keep a copy of Firefox 68.1, ESR, ready to run. If you run in desktop mode, you can use all your favorite old plugins. Then use a Nightly version, for daily browsing, if you are worried about up to date security and features. (ESR= extended service release.)

That's what I do, but even this ESR isn't supported anymore.

Why do you need to create a collection? I was happy when all extensions was the only collection. And this has been in Nightly for about a year.. when is it coming to stable? (those questions aren't really questions, it just looks like Mozilla is trying to make extensions go away)

I agree. However, as an extension author, I was happy to hear that the work I put into making it compatible with Android didn't go to waste after all. Still better than nothing.

How about we avoid making sweeping overgeneralizations in an emotionally-manipulative way to try to guilt-trip others into making positive comments, and actually address the points that the other comments made?

This comment is rather anti-intellectual, and I'd much rather see the "cesspool of whining, bitching and utter negativity" that has actual thought put behind it than something empty and meaningless (actually, worse: something underhanded) like this.

I groan whenever I see a Firefox post on the front page.

-"X moved Y pixels making Firefox UNUSABLE! So now I use Brave."

-"Mozilla is run by a bunch of SJW idiots because they ran their CEO off. So now I run Brave." (I had to look into this, as I wasn't paying attention at the time. They picked a new CEO who cared so passionately about removing the right of gay people to get married he even donated his own money to the cause. That was a dumb hill to die on. Now he's an anti-masker who actually runs Brave.)

-"My precious browser workflow was completely dependent on the interaction of 156 distinct XUL extensions so now I use Brave."

-"something, something, Mr. Robot." (that, like everything, you can turn off)

-"Ads in the address bar!" (that, like everything, you can turn off)

-"They take money from Google!" (Hey, free money, since everyone either switches to DGG or were going to use Google anyway.)

There are real criticisms you can make of Firefox/Mozilla. But on the whole, for the general user, none of them are grounds for moving to a Chromium based browser out of spite.

If I could pin your comment on all threads related to Firefox, I would. All this whining is what will finally do Firefox in.

We really don't deserve Firefox. I'm really glad they are still kicking.

It is indeed sad.

Regarding standard discussion patters I see it often. I imagine sometimes a pinned comment that would outline those. Along with all the usual corrections and corrections to those corrections.

See, this is why deadhorse.com should exist and do the thing that I outlined here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bg8vc/what_websi...

They picked a new CEO who cared so passionately about removing the right of gay people to get married he even donated his own money to the cause. That was a dumb hill to die on. Now he's an anti-masker who actually runs Brave.

I disagree with some of his assumed views, as you never know until you actually speak with someone directly. Could be any number of motivations. I supported Biden not because I disagreed with a lot of what Trump did, but because I felt he was a toxic agent to the republic. Is that anti-Trump? Yes and no. And I may be the last person in existence that supports Eich's right to express them in any way he chooses. If that causes social backlash by a bunch of sensitive people that's fine, but I think there's a majority that get no press, who like me, never had it impact my view of Eich. I see no connection to the projects he has or does work on.

"Anti-masker" is broad as well. I don't think based on the science, that masks make sense for young children. I do support them for adults, indoors at least. Is that an anti-masker? It's called nuance. A concept lost in society today.

After ~19 years on Firefox I moved to Microsoft Edge and only Edge fulltime in August and love it. So I couldn't care less about FF vs Brave.

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