Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

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The current pattern in software is, sadly:

1. Innovate

2. Dominate

3. Enshitify to cash in.

You can't skip step #2.

Right now, Firefox's market share is a rounding error compared to Chrome. Users are starting to switch away from Chrome because it's currently in step 3 (in spades). That trend will not continue if Firefox beats Chrome to the bottom of the pig-pen. Firefox's current focus on AI is concerning enough, but mirroring Chrome's shift to Manifest v3 (i.e. What killed full-blooded ad blocking in Chrome) would be outright suicide.

Mozilla needs to listen to their users. Most don't particularly want "let me run that through an AI for you" popups everywhere. Practically nobody running Firefox wants to be cut off from effective ad blocking.

Monetization is hard, for Mozilla in particular. It was always weird that most of their funding came from Google. Now that Google is yanking it, Mozilla needs to find alternative sources of filthy lucre. However, if they destroy their product's only competitive advantages, there will be nothing left to monetize. If Firefox remains a browser that can provide decent privacy and ad-blocking then Mozilla has a chance to find alternative revenue streams. If, instead, Mozilla throws those advantages away to make a quick buck, that's the last buck they'll ever make.

Indeed, Mozilla has a particular bad habit of not listening to customers.

It shows even in the UI design. Features like tab pinning and tab groups work in ways that are sub-optimal to how users want to use them. A pinned tab should not be tied to a specific URL. If you go their forums you see a lot complaints, and weird thing is all the nonsensical arguments that their reps advance as to how these features should work the way they currently are. I as a longtime Firefox user can immediately see what is wrong with these features as implemented, but the devs won't listen. I wonder if they use FF themselves.

Firefox is also the only app on my MacBook that consistently brings the system to a crawl. Almost every single time my machines slows down, the solution is to kill Firefox. It's got to the point I don't even need to use Activity Monitor, I just kill Firefox and and system recovers.

It's gotten to the point I'm seriously looking at alternatives, trying out Orion and Helium browsers.

I'm confused, because I desperately want pinned tabs to stay on their URL, but that's not what happens, and I end up with random URLs in these tabs because I click links. Is there a config flag I flipped without thinking?

It seems they have listened to users and allow pinned tabs to navigate to any url.

Initially this is how pinning worked, and along the way they changed it so that if you navigated to a different domain from the one you pinned, it opened in a new (unpinned) tab, which was jarring.

Now it seems they have reverted that change. So they seem to vacillate on the implementation.

Yeah, I don't get why I'd want to pin a tab and then change the url (which I do accidentally for a pinned tab every couple of weeks or so). When it's not the site I pinned, it's just...a tab?

Do you actually use the feature much?

From my experience I want to pin tabs because I simply want a set of tab available for use that remain visible when I scroll through a lot of tab headers to the right.

It's very annoying to be on a pinned tab, navigate to even just another server on the same root domain, and suddenly be pushed to another (un-pinned) tab. Even if navigate to a totally different url, I do no want to be pushed to another tab.

The enforcement of the url remaining the same should be done by myself, not the browser trying to second-guess me.

As far as I can tell, it's literally the only way I use pinned tabs (other than when I accidentally do navigate away on them due to the lack of enforcement). I have several pages I always want open (e.g. my email, a couple of messaging platforms, Spotify, the web portal for texting via my Android phone), and then I have some varying number of other tabs open that I use for anything else I'm currently using my browser for. I guess this is one of those things where everyone's preference is different, because to me, having a static set of pages I always want open is pretty much the ideal use case for a pinned tab. I can't really wrap my head around wanting to use them any other way; if they can navigate away, they're just like any other tab but harder to close, and I don't really have a use case for enforcing the minimum number of tabs to be larger than zero unless it's literally to force a specific page to always be open. I find it far more annoying to have to navigate a tab back to the state it was previously than to reopen a page from a tab I accidentally closed, so having an extra layer of protection on closing a tab isn't nearly as useful as if it also had that extra layer of protection on what the tab itself was showing.

edit: I don't see it as the browser second-guessing me as much as following what I'm already trying to do in the first place. I don't pin a tab if I don't actually want to keep that specific page open, and taking an action to preserve a state that I opted into isn't going around my specified intention, but following it.

Consider these thoughts:

1. Let's imagine I have pinned a dashboard url in my bank's website. After some time, I go back to it, it sees I've lost my session, redirects me to the login page, and bam, that login page open up in a random, un-pinned tab. How is that a good experience?? You might say I should pin the login url, but no, after login I always want to get to a specific dashboard page.

2. In my view, pinned tabs are not for specific urls; that is what the toolbar is for. Pinned tabs are, for me, simply a way to have the most important tabs you are working easily available. And that makes sense, because the set of tabs that are most important changes a lot from time to time. I frequently have hundreds, probably a thousand, tabs open. If I have to pin every single url I'd like to go back to, I'll quickly run out of room in no time.

So let's say depending on what I'm working in this month, suddenly I find myself using Github a lot, or Notion. Then it is far easier for me to open some of my pinned tab and just navigate to the new urls I want, rather that have to close each of them , then create new pinned tabs, and hope that if I click on something on the page that is minor, I will not be rudely pushed into another tab.

Summary: I think you are using pinned tabs for what the toolbar was designed for.

I'm not sure I understand how the toolbar can solve this problem. Unless I'm misunderstanding, I'd have to reopen the page every time when I click on the icons in the toolbar, in addition to not being able to interact with them in the same way as other tabs (e.g. using the keyboard to jump between them rather than needing to click). It's probable that the developer intent is closer to what you're describing, but I still maintain that what I'm looking for would be more useful for than the toolbar and that I don't personally have any use for what you're describing.

Maybe the difference here is that I don't ever have more than maybe a dozen tabs open total (including the half dozen pinned ones). To me, it seems more that you're using tabs for what browser history was designed for, and that you're using pinned tabs in a way that doesn't make sense unless you are using tabs in that way.

I guess we just have different use patterns, but at least you do see that problem with the scenario in point 1, don't you?

It took them AGES to finally implement tab groups and vertical tabs, two of the most requested features that pretty much all browsers browsers had at that point. They can barely hear Firefox users over the sound of google's millions filling up their bank.

Try Zen Browser - it's reskinned Firefox.

> Now that Google is yanking it

Can you elaborate? Are they winding down their their participation in search licensing deals?

Looks like I was a little out of date.

https://itsfoss.com/news/mozilla-lifeline-is-safe/

Google pays Mozilla, basically to make Google the default search engine for everything in Firefox. Previously, it looked like an antitrust case was going to force them to stop doing that, but it didn't turn out that way.

Mozilla is still getting most of their money from Google and they shouldn't need to kneecap themselves to pay the rent. Still, you can't help but wonder what might happen if Firefox starts eating too much of Chrome's market share. Mozilla should be trying to branch out, but in a user friendly way.

I definitely heard there was a risk of that happening, but you're right that it seems not to have materialized. I'm honestly not sure what remedy they landed on or if they are still deliberating but I think a fascinating option that follows precedent would be a pop-up browser picker in Android instead of rolling Chrome as default, as that has precedent in other antitrust cases and could potentially change the market share issue overnight.

Another interesting one would be truly spinning off Chrome, but paying a search licensing fee to them, too. Actually, that's fascinating to consider in this context, because I know that option (spinning off the browser into its own company) has been criticized on the grounds that it would be unrealistic to assume a browser can simply monetize itself. Ironic given the Mozilla criticism.

> Now that Google is yanking it, Mozilla needs to find alternative sources of filthy lucre

How do Mozilla's costs look?

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