It's disappointing to see Mozilla's leadership respond with sarcasm and denial when faced with the fact that 80% or more of their users are not happy with recent versions of Firefox.
28 karma · joined August 11, 2015
Many of us have been using software from Mozilla, and Netscape before them, for decades now. Generally we've been happy with the software. We were more than happy with earlier versions of Firefox, in fact. But lately we've seen changes made that have not benefited the users of Mozilla's software.
Your comment actually describes some of the problems we're talking about. Users and developers now have to jump through one hoop after another just to get a basic installation of Firefox working.
It wasn't always like that. We used to be able to download a sub-10 MB installer, run it, and have a usable installation of Firefox ready for use.
Now we have to choose from the "correct" stream, download a 40 MB or larger installer, run it, change numerous about:config options to allow us to install our own custom unsigned extensions and to disable unwanted functionality that Mozilla has added, manually remove unwanted toolbar buttons, install a number of third-party extensions that also fix additional problems introduced by Mozilla, and in the end we're still stuck with a user interface and a user experience that isn't very good.
Now if we're developing extensions, we'll have to also jump through more hoops thanks to this signing process. You say it "takes only seconds", but I've seen enough comments here from other developers saying they've been waiting months for reviews. That's not acceptable.
Firefox used to get better with each release. A new release of Firefox was something we'd look forward to. But lately, each new release of Firefox has brought us new problems to deal with, without bringing any notable improvements.
Repeatedly disappointed people will express their disappointment. Don't misinterpret it as "hatred". See it for what it is: disappointment!
They've seen Firefox's UI change for the worse in so many ways, even in the face of wide opposition.
They've seen unwanted bloat, like Hello and Pocket, forced upon them, again in the face of wide opposition.
They've seen their requests for bug fixes and performance improvements go unheeded, sometimes for years.
The easy use of extensions has been the only thing keeping many of these people using Firefox. They've been using many extensions to undo, as much as is possible, the unwanted changes that Mozilla has made.
I use Firefox Nightly, and was recently surprised when, after an update, some custom extensions I had written myself were not loading, and could not be easily enabled. When I found out it was due to this, and I had to start adjusting about:config settings, it was nearly the last straw for me.
I don't want to use another browser, but it's like Mozilla is doing everything in its power to make using Firefox a bad experience for me. I know I'm not alone. We've already seen Firefox' share of the browser market drop from well over 30% to a level of around 10% today, if it isn't actually lower than that.
It's truly sad to see what's happening to what was once such a great browser.
I know that some Mozilla supporters will justify that huge difference by saying, "but unhappy people will always complain and happy people won't say anything", but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Here we have Mozilla's own stats saying that a lot of their users are extremely unhappy with Firefox.
Clearly something is very wrong for the disapproval rating to be so high, and the satisfaction rating to be so low. In other situations, such a high disapproval rating would be met with extreme concern, immediate retrospection, and panic.
Even in the case of US presidents, where people don't have an immediate alternative like they do with web browsers, and where people's emotions run rampant, it's very rare to see an approval rating under 40%. The very worst approval ratings still are around 25%.
So something is seriously wrong for Mozilla's products to consistently have an approval rating of only 10%, or even 20% if we're being generous.