To me it's surprising and unsettling to see how small the market share of Firefox has become.
Now Chrome has become dominant. I don’t know all the reasons, though I’m sure marketing is a big one. Firefox can’t compete with Google’s marketing budget, and as a user and a web dev, I haven’t found any other compelling reasons to make FF my primary browser. Their dev tools weren’t as nice as Chrome’s the last time I checked, and it seems like common (for tech folks) Chrome plugins make up the privacy differences.
We do need a healthy multi-browser ecosystem in order to prune web tech to follow a user-centric direction. I want FF to convert me. I just haven’t seen the substantial arguments yet.
It’s kind of telling that Microsoft didn’t either, so they switched Edge over to Chromium, a tool from one of their main competitors. It’s possible that this puts FF into the same position of being “the outsider” that it was in before. I hope that stress makes them do something radical to sway more users. If they do, it will likely be related to browsing privacy (especially if it’s a default) and will upset the status quo again.
That at least explains how Chrome gained dominance. Sites that don't fully support Firefox + the "outsider" effect you identified are contributing to FF's continued decline. Safari will probably keep going for years and years solely because of users who don't care or know how to change their default browser (and some people do actually like it more than other browsers).
Firefox was stable with a lot more tabs open than Chrome, because it didn't have a thread per tab. Chasing Chrome brought down the number of tabs you could comfortably have open in Firefox.
The reality is that most typical users care about their privacy a lot less than we might expect or want. That's probably not a great sign for society in general, but I think it's the truth.
Firefox doesn't sell you off to the highest bidder?
Mozilla also uses Google Analytics on their websites and keep testing the waters with putting ads right into the browser. Users are absolutely justified in not trusting Mozilla's claims about caring for privacy.
FF is no longer "very light & fast" (it may no longer be possible to attain that and actually support modern web browsing—Safari is the only mainstream browser that's even close, AFAIK) and does have ads. Their various interface redesigns have made it confusing as hell to my parents. Old-school popups are handled well enough by ~every browser and they just about all use tabs and have for over a decade. Meanwhile they've added... what? To differentiate them? Plugins. But now those are the same as Chrome's. Very good dev tools—but now those are available elsewhere, too.
They needed to go all-in on something radical years ago to have a long-term shot at relevance. Decentralized social networking or chat built-in to the browser. Aggressive built-in ad blocking & unique user-empowering controls. More, not fewer, non-HTTP Internet protocols built in. Something. And clearly not Pocket.
Now I don't think their market share's big enough for even something like that that to save them. In fact now it'd likely just kill them even faster.
I beg to differ. It's certainly faster and uses less resources than even Ungoogled Chromium on the same machine.
Firefox as a project seems directionless. New releases anger its users with unwanted feature. Its custodians wasted so much energy on silly projects that people are reluctant to donate.
Oh and of course the competition comes pre-installed on millions of devices. Operating systems even remind you when you're not using their bundled browser.
I don’t care to burn calories on being an “activist.” I just want to visit the sites I visit and get on with my life.
Sell me on Firefox.
I do this, and I do not remember the last time I actually had to 'move on' from a site because it did not work.
Anyone wants to start a list of sites that do not work with FF? I am genuinely curious which sites these are that do not work with FF.
Also backspace and shift+backspace still work for back and forward.
That's no longer the default. It was disabled because it confused regular users and could cause data loss if people think they're typing in a form and the Backspace instead navigates back.
But good news! You re-enable Backspace as a keyboard shortcut to navigate back by setting the about:config pref "browser.backspace_action" to 2.
- Enhanced Tracking Protection isolates third-party cookies and site data into separate containers based on both the origin and the site you're currently on. It also blocks trackers. https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-pr...
- Fingerprinting Protection, originally developed for use in Tor Browser, prevents Firefox from disclosing some data that uniquely identifies you. This feature needs to be manually activated. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...
- uBlock Origin works on Firefox on both desktop and Android. While Chrome will block an API used by uBlock Origin in 2023, Firefox will continue to support the API. (https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338) The current version of uBlock Origin does not support Safari.
Brave is a better choice than Chrome and Safari, in my opinion. But Firefox still has some advantages.
Whitelisted extensions are not extensions at all but optional browser features developed by third parties.
On Android, I would recommend Mull (a Firefox fork) over Firefox:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/
On Mull, you can install any compatible extension from https://addons.mozilla.org even if it's not whitelisted.* But a whitelisted extension is no less of an extension than a non-whitelisted one.
* Instructions (steps 1-3 not required): https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
And it doesn't tie your browsing history to your account with an advertising company.
At this point it's only idealism that keeps me there. Tiny things just don't work well. And it is so endlessly frustrating.
- I want the bookmark bar only to be shown in the new page tab. This does exist, but accidentally hitting _cmd+b_ resets it.
- The new-tab page is awful. It's trying to be clever when it really shouldn't be. So I have it all switched off.
- The container idea is nice, but so damn unusable in practice.
- I use Kagi as my search engine, but can't set the tokenised search URL so it works in private mode.
- The Settings are just so clunky. I wince every time I change something.
- When typing something in the omnibox, the suggestions are at the very bottom of the list. So far away, that I might as well not have them.
At least the dev tools are nice.