Is Firefox OK?

Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining but still crucial to future of the web.

Read the whole story

 

[tjukken]

I played with Phoenix and Firebird before the final name change (and used Netscape before that). I used Firefox almost exclusively from the day it launched until the day that Mozilla abandoned XUL and almost every other feature that let users decide what they wanted to do with their browser and how they wanted it to look (version somewhere in the 50s?).

Mozilla didn't just shoot themselves in the foot; they pretty much cut their legs off at the knees. Users didn't abandon Firefox so much as Mozilla abandoned Firefox users first. Mozilla decided that what its users wanted didn't matter anymore, so we left.

Damned if they did, and damned if they didn't. Like you, I ditched FF when they ditched XUL, making all the addons I used obsolete. There ceased to be any compelling reason to use it. But, there is no doubt that XUL was a security nightmare. They ditched it for the right reasons, but it also took away everything that made Firefox unique. Not sure if it's even possible to for them to turn it around at this point. Still, I wish them the best.

 

[tjukken]

To be precise:

* XUL abandoned and with it thousands of powerful extensions (a ton of them have never been reimplemented)

On that specific point, see here.

There were good reasons, as that article points out. But people aren't rational like that. All they saw, was that almost 20.000 addons became obsolete. Firefox became more like Chrome. So why not use the original? I think that's a major reason why Firefox lost market share, and still is losing it. There are no compelling features that can attract new users. "It's not Chrome" isn't a good sales pitch.

 

[tjukken]

Mozilla wants to dumb their browser down to the lowest common denominator now. It was big with power users early on and they took all that away over time by removing features and XUL.

Further, Mozilla was once the go to browser on all non-windows platforms and due to their decision to push rust, have made it increasingly non portable.

Source?

 

[tjukken]

I think Mozilla learned a lesson with XUL and XPCOM. The cost of high levels of customization is reduced performance, decreased stability, and difficult to maintain and provide consistent support when the individual experience can be so radically altered. Perhaps they're still playing it too careful after finally making the hard decision to cut the legacy frameworks, trying to keep the pool of options one their smaller dev team can reasonably maintain, but it was still the right goal. Firefox would have died outright if the performance continued to lag or fell further behind on multi process, jit, raw render speed

But it's still dying.

 

[tjukken]

I have Firefox, Chrome and Edge on my windows system.

Firefox is my primary browser, with about 40 tabs open. I use Chrome / Edge for segrating my usage - for example my NAS is logged into from Chrome only generally (it works fine with Firefox, but it's just a preference of mine).

I also need the main browsers around to do some rare site testing.

System runs 24/7, never had a problem with FF being open all the time.

Isn't that the barest minimum that can be expected of any browser?

 

[tjukken]

A lot of people upset about XUL and XPCOM.

I don't think that's true. A lot of people are upset that Firefox gave up on customization and became actively hostile to it. Not because they gave up specific implementations of it. A lot of people are upset that FF started chasing the ideal of being a Chrome clone with its own rendering engine instead of listening to what users actually wanted. And increasingly a lot of people are upset that the company/corporation/foundation keep shrugging their shoulders and wondering why they're a rounding error in usage, then plowing ahead with advertising deals instead of taking a hard look at their interaction with users and saying "Damn, we fucked up and should change course."

I was specifically referring to everyone in the thread who complained they shouldn't have eliminated XUL. Whatever else you may not like about their customization choices, XUL undoubtedly was a factor in deprecating 1000s of actual customizations. It was a hard choice but not one that actually made it impossible to have lots of customization. In fact as I mentioned, every single add on I used, eventually was possible. Some were updated and some were replaced as APIs were added.

I am using Simple Tab Groups which is awesome. It's better than tab mix pro which I used to have. But for several versions, they didn't have the api to support it. People complained and they listened, and as a result we can reproduce that behavior (which ironically was once a part of Firefox but was cut because fewer than 1 percent used it).

I can't say you are wrong about them being hostile to customizations. But from my perspective they actually made a lot of effort to make sure Firefox was more customizable than initial webextensions permitted.

Eventually. The first version post-XUL was severely crippled in that regard. Lots of people took a look at that and moved on. Those aren't coming back just because they eventually did something right.

 

[tjukken]

I use Firefox on all my machines: work, personal, and mobile. It's perfectly performant for my needs. I also can't move back to a browser without the Multi-account Contianers, as that has easily saved me hours of effort every week.

More importantly, we need web to not become a monopoly.

Perhaps Opera could resurrect Presto.

 

[tjukken]

I'm using Brave and Firefox currently, mostly because I don't want a single browser engine monopoly scenario, particularly Chromium.

I know it's open source, I know it could always be forked if Google started messing with it, but Google has it's claws too close to the thing for me to be comfortable with.
It's kinda like Android you know... yes, we have AOSP, but you see the degree Google intrudes on the entire thing to a point it becomes almost impossible for a regular user or group of dedicated devs to clean it up from Google crap. They purposely make it hard for you to get rid of Google crap, plus all the other junk they sell rights to be pre/permanently installed there, because profit. And so you cannot trust a company that acts like that not to do the exact same thing with a browser engine they also so closely develop.

Now, I don't mind Firefox having the smallest share of the market, as long as they can keep going.
I fully understand how the mainstream will not, cannot for the sake of their lives care about privacy and security, cannot be bothered with convenience points being taken away for the sake of not having their personal and private data hoovered by tech giants, will always refuse to switch apps, platforms or whatever because of privacy violations, and will keep marching towards the zero privacy future. I am tired of knowing that. I have tried convincing people to switch from inherently insecure and privacy eroding platforms for ages now, I just don't have the energy for it anymore.

I just want for options to still be there when the house of cards fall. It's like we're fine with criticizing other countries for eliminating citizen privacy via government, but we couldn't give two sh*ts about privacy when it's tech giants taking it away for profit.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the Firefox guy there... I don't have many hopes of Firefox recovering it's past position. And they tried several things that I thought could get more attention, but it just didn't.
Some stuff was boneheaded sure, but not all. Mozilla developed a whole lot of stuff people were asking for, particularly people worried with privacy, but it did not move the needle. I see lots of people complaining about all sorts of things regarding Firefox, but it has been this way like forever now... Firefox does something that people like, no one says anything, and no one switches because it's not enough for them to move. Firefox does something that is not great, but they have to try because they are running out of funds, everyone and their mom comes out of the woodwork to sh*t on them. In a hostile environment like that, how can it ever recover?

I just hope Mozilla is able to work out some sort of Signal-like deal to keep going... we cannot end up with one more thing that is completely owned by tech giants. Don't we have enough awareness that this is not a healthy environment for anyone?

I think you've answered your own question..

 

[tjukken]

I used Firefox since it was called Firebird, started with version 0.78, waay back in 1999. Used it until Mozilla fired Brendan Eich. I dropped them instantly and have never gone back. I used PaleMoon for years, until they broke Firefox add on compatibility, so now I use Waterfox. I have never, and will never, use Chrome in any version or form whatsoever; Google is absolutely evil, and consequently Chrome is banned from my systems.

Why do people care about this Eich character? He seems to just be another bigot that thinks other people's happiness infringes on his own. God forbid gay people be allowed to marry /s. I swear, these people would stone gays if they could get away with it. And that's the guy you're rooting for?

 

[tjukken]

Why do people care about this Eich character? He seems to just be another bigot that thinks other people's happiness infringes on his own. God forbid gay people be allowed to marry /s. I swear, these people would stone gays if they could get away with it. And that's the guy you're rooting for?

He'd been with the Firefox project for 16 years rising through the ranks, including many years as CTO and apparently nobody had seen any issue with his work performance or found him unsuitable for leadership positions before that. If there was anyone who knew the ins and outs of Firefox and could restore focus on the core project he was probably it.

Then he got appointed CEO, the Internet flipped over him and 7 million other Californians supporting a same-sex marriage ban so the board kicked him out. Or well he was asked to step down, but the way nobody had his back he chose to leave. Seriously, 41% of the registered voters in California voted with Eich. It was a political assassination.

I'll refrain from making too many allegations/accusations against Mozilla because I think they mainly felt they were in the middle of a shit storm and was looking for the easiest way out, but for a lot of people that was the final proof of what their priorities were. And that getting back to producing a good product was not one of them...

He was a stain on their reputation, so they removed him. That's sound business strategy. Nothing more.

 

[tjukken]

Have you not tried Palemoon? I use that on Linux and Windows. It's pretty much Firefox from 10 years ago as far as the GUI is concerned.

Also as far as the codebase is concerned.

Someone mentioned a single person was maintaining it for a while.

The information security professional in me is terrified of the thought of 10-year-old browser code with a single maintainer, in the best case.

The fact that the browser exists because a bunch of users had a tantrum over the removal of features that were holding back security improvements, so they forked to keep the insecure architecture in place, just makes it even worse.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Waterfox started life long ago as a 64-bit version of FF. In fact, the first 64-bit version, long, long ago (2011). It doesn't exist because somebody threw a a "tantrum". It keeps the old extension system because that's what the users, overwhelmingly, wanted. They tried a non-XUL version of Waterfox; nobody was interested (might as well use regular FF then).

Also, the attitude of "throwing a tantrum" when Mozilla heavily deprecated customization, and then blamed add-on users for not updating to XML, when basic XML at that point wasn't even half finished... No. Mozilla's attitude and behaviour when deprecating XUL and switching to XML was horrible. "XML isn't even half finished, but it's add-on developers fault for not updating to it, despite it not being possible for most to do so yet".

I will admit I was mistaken about why PaleMoon was created. I had never heard of it, an never seen it promoted, until the XUL deprecation. And when I started seeing it promoted, it was specifically because it supported XUL. I made assumptions that are apparently false.

I stand by the rest of what I said. I would amend it only to say PaleMoon is only popular because it kept an insecure architecture in place.

And yes, I'd call it a tantrum. It's "you can pry Windows XP from my cold dead fingers" all over again. The look of a lot of things has changed, some features are new, some you liked have gone away, and you can't muck around in system folders with no restrictions anymore. There are VERY good reasons to MOVE ON.

I have more sympathy for the extension devs. But some extensions really should not be possible, for good reasons.

That's just your opinion. A lot of Firefox users just didn't care about security, as Mozilla themselves discovered. They were willing to live with the danger, to keep all that functionality XUL provided.

 

[tjukken]

Why must every fucking argument invoke Godwin??

It's the law.

 

[tjukken]

I use Firefox and want to keep using it but the UI changes increasingly make it hard to love. Last year the tab bar was redesigned in a way that actually makes it hard (certainly on Linux) to identify where each tab begins and ends, especially when there are a lot of tabs. It's certainly not a good move from an accessibility perspective. Random UI changes don't suddenly make your browser more "modern".

Here, hopefully that helps.

https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-s ... on-ui.html

If this is what it takes to make a browser agreeable, I think there's a deeper problem with it..

 

[tjukken]

All that said I am still on FF. Primarily because of extensions some of which don't exist in Chrome and Safari. I also don't trust Google on privacy.

You don't have to get a chrome based browser from Google though. Vivaldi is a very nice privacy focused browser from a I team that has never given reason to distrust them.

That doesn't help web standards stay open and accessible.

Firefox dying doesn't help either, but Mozilla seems hellbent on making it happen.