Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox to push personalized ads, or the addition of anti-features and questionable design choices that force us to hunt for and modify poorly documented settings in about:config and make edits to userChrome.css

It isn't bots complaining about Firefox here, it's power users who are frustrated by what Firefox is turning into. Users who are seriously concerned about what Mozilla is prioritizing, and who are genuinely worried about what is at stake.

I hope people here never stop bitching about Firefox. Refusing to talk about Firefox's problems wont help make them go away. Keep discussing what you'd like to see in Firefox and what things you hope they'll focus on and prioritize. There are Firefox devs and mozilla employees around here. If we're lucky, a few of them might see and listen to some of what we say. It's the most tech savvy users who disable all the telemetry and data collection, so our feedback isn't really going to be seen any other way.

I disagree with Mozilla about many things, but I agree with this article - I use Firefox because it’s the only browser out there that isn’t Chrome or WebKit, and that’s worth enough to me that I’m willing to disagree with them on other issues.

- We "need" firefox or else everything's just chrome

- Forks of chrome don't count as different browsers because they all use the same engine

- Using the same engine makes you basically just chrome because you can't diverge from upstream

- You can't diverge from upstream because it moves too fast and you need to keep merging with it

- You need to keep merging with upstream because upstream is implementing new web platform features

- You need those web platform features because if you don't add them then websites will stop working in your fork

- Websites will stop working in your fork because web developers don't support older browser versions

- Web developers don't support older browser versions because... they don't care?

If web developers had a culture of supporting, say, 10 years of previous browser versions, then chromium would lose a lot of the power it has to drag the forks (and firefox) behind it. I don't really see this happening without some sort of major culture shift, though. Maybe if we had some versioned web standard that lagged behind the "real" ones so sites could say "StableWeb 2.0 Compatible!" or something.

https://blitz.is/wpt

The headline results are:

- Chrome 94.7% (1053647/1112582)

- Firefox 90.6% (1008073/1112582)

- Safari TP 88.7% ( 987377/1112582)

- Ladybird 84.2% ( 937019/1112582)

- Servo 74.4% ( 827216/1112582)

So Ladybird is catching up with the other pretty fast! Although it's worth noting that it still has a bunch of extra work to do with regard to performance.

(my engine Blitz whose website this is on scores 42.2% for specifically the `css` subset, compared to 50.3% for Servo and 72.3% Ladybird)

(the results above exclude the `encoding` suite, because that's 1 million test ~50% of the whole suite, that doesn't really measure rendering capability).

Firefox on my laptop has a propensity for eating lots of RAM, and constant CPU usage, even if nothing is going on. Task manager is useless. Profiler just shows "GC collecting".

Mobile firefox is OK, it simply feels like it's designed for a different person. For example even Chrome has "force reader mode" button.. Firefox does not. And don't even get me started on the "new tab" [age - it gives me 6 choices and all of them are "AI" ones which never show what I want. The only way to show a manually curated link list is "collections" and those do not get synced, and occasionally disappear for no reason.

https://ladybird.org/

Plus I genuinely like firefox its a great browser and I dont feel bad telling people that its good.

As long as the business world is going to continue centrallizing on the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare, any existing or future alternative browsers will either have to kowtow on the alter of compatibility or make the deliberate decision not to support "advanced features" that enable the next generation of proprietary webmail, social media, banking webpages, etc - tending towards a total revocation of privacy in exchange for KYC via a glut of metadata.

This will get even crappier as mechanisms used to filter out "suspicious" traffic (read: competing products) become standard. I imagine using Firefox in 2030 will be akin to using Tor in 2019 - web requests will be blocked, denied, or deemed "insecure".

Lynx revolution when?

I know much of this is subjective, but the chrome experience just feels better / faster. This is what precipitated the first breakup, and when I think about the situation now, it feels like this dynamic is probably long lasting. It does make me sad though. I'll come back to firefox later, perhaps when I get a laptop refresh and can be a little more cavalier with RAM.

Literally what is the issue?

Why do people hate firefox? It's the only mainstream browser with an rcfile?

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

This isn't really true, and hasn't been for some time. It's just the only other browser engine with meaningful production users. Servo and Ladybird are both making great strides.

And it was all the fault of a judge seeing an alleged Google search monopoly despite the fact that countless users were already using ChatGPT rather than Google.

With killing off one of the last remaining web rendering engines, the ruling would instead create a Blink/Webkit (Chrome/Safari) duopoly.

The only holdout would be Apple Safari, hanging in there only because it’s the enforced default on iPhones.

This is one of the big reasons I'm against the EU trying to force Apple to open up the iPhone and allow other rendering engines. The market share of the iPhone is the only reason Google doesn't have 90+% marketshare, at which point no one will even bother testing in other browsers or worrying if features are Chrome-only. It will be Internet Explorer all over again.

I know some devs want this, because it will make their life easier, but you're assuming Google will keep doing what you want and like even after all the competition is gone. That's a bad bet.

You’d need to sell an annual subscription of 150$ to like 10 million people to get a browser that’s actually developed for users and not in some bizarre exploitive fashion.

I'm still sticking with Firefox, at least until Ladybird comes toe-to-toe in terms of features and functionality.

And then there are the web developers who make their site functional only on Chrome. They deserve a special place in Hell.

My current main browser across desktop and mobile is Brave. Pretty happy with it. Overall more efficient and with a better UI than FF. I've used FF for many years, but I feel it's simply not as good as competitors anymore.

Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises. It makes me wonder if it’s a bot campaign by Google — except, why would they bother?

Not bots. Am here. Not some google bot. People putting Firefox with chrome, Vivaldi and whatever Safari users in one bag is absolutely stupid.

Firefox users and community have invested heavily into Firefox unlike other browser users and the people who move from firefox for flimsy reasons like X. I will use firefox until it's available. But I don't want firefox to go on this road that they are on right now.

We've done install fests and what not as communities to get Firefox installed on computers. I've stuck through firefox even when they ditched development until quantum release. It literally has effected work cos Google meet didn't use to work reliably. So if u think I will shutup about mozilla making intentional stupid decisions... Sorry not going to.

First thing they should do is stop virtue signaling in their marketing stuff. Stick to technicals if they don't want to give a damn about community. That won't stop me. But I'll back off a lil.

Firefox is a product of community collaboration which has also stopped recently. People who don't know that part of Firefox development... Community leaders era and stuff might think we are overreacting. We are toning it down actually since we don't want people to go to chrome.

Their vision and the way it was built is why Firefox was loved even when it was technically bad. They are technically greater than or on par with chrome now. But they have lost the soul which is why there is criticism.

- Not a bot.

I left looking for low-friction answers to my need to organize tabs and content. I didn't love giving up control to some central organization to process my data, but I had promised myself I'd write one or two extensions to answer my needs "next week" for years.

After doing some research, most of what I wanted already exists. Sidebery, Tab Wrangler and the new Agents window (with some styling to eliminate the default tab list), together with my other old friends like uBlock Origin, Auto Tab Discard (suspend) and a number of container-related extensions, deliver the same functionality I found elsewhere, without taking control from me.

Plus, this is just me, but chromium-based browsers manage to get my m3 pro macbook with 36GB RAM hot pretty consistently with normal use. I noticed the moment I left Firefox. And I noticed the problem gone as soon as I went back to Firefox.

I have often criticized Mozilla, because I care that Firefox remains the best browser, not just an alternative worth keeping.

On Earth, nothing is perfect, and nothing satisfies everyone.

Yeah, you can feel uncomfortable or disappointed, but Firefox is still the best option we have.

We should hold the line for Firefox.

It is the so-called "modern" web browser itself

For certain users who care about certain things, the concept is fatally flawed

The problem of the so-called "modern" web browser concept is that every computing task ends up "inside the browser" and thus outside the user's control

"Ad blocking" is no exception

Many so-called "modern" browsers now contain their own "ad blockers"

These "ad blockers" are not under the user's control^1. By putting them "inside the browser" the browser vendor has the final control, not the user

These browser vendors are generally seeking to profit from advertising or marketing services

For any user that seeks to avoid internet marketing and advertising, this presents a problem: the user's and the vendor's interests conflict

This is why I could never take Javascript-based "ad blockers" that work "inside the browser" seriously as a long-term solution

I use them, in conjunction with other methods, but I am prepared for them to stop working at any time.^2 I have always relied on programs that are "outside the browser", not under the browser vendor's control

1. In theory, if the browser is "open source", large numbers of users should be able to modify the source code to stop the browser from automatically requesting unwanted ads, tracking and telemetry. In practice, for a variety of reasons, this does not happen. The browser vendors, including Mozilla, make no effort to remove those reasons

2. This includes UBO in Firefox. The question is not if but when

If LibreWolf would disappear, it would still be FF for me, with carefully selected and regularly reviewed privacy settings.

IMHO, that Firefox can only really stay free if it is supported by donations (i.e. people like us who use it). Anything else will lead to various things that either push people away or make less free - probably both.

Even switched the telemetry and reporting on to help them out.

Personally I have the same view to things like Github, Google, and many companies/products that offer public services (largely) for free for mass.

Granted they have their own monetization scheme behind it, I don't feel I am entitled to used them, I feel grateful regardless.

The only community they have any penetration in is the developer one (in its prime non-technical people would tell me they used Firefox since IE was insecure. Their techy friends would tell them to use it and the message carried some actual weight back then).

Today they are a large organization that needs to make money to sustain itself, while facing declining usage, and less favorable terms for search engine integrations.

And our community (developers) is the least likely to take kindly to the increasing monetization slop (promoted articles, pestering about pocket and their VPN offering, continually requiring accepting new ToS, reminders to use new features, etc).

I mostly use FF, because I think we'll lose something if it disappears (for example, DRM will become intolerable, web inspectors will become more opaque, and generally future web standards may be much more controlled by a small set of large orgs with their own interests).

But I use FF with less enthusiasm every passing day

I don't know how we solve this, other than to hold Google accountable, but that in turn hurts Firefox. At least in that case we'll hopefully have Ladybird as a truly independent browser.

To save FF, Mozilla needs to enter the DC swamp, hire PR and lobbists to buy politicians to pass a law to force Gov.gov and (if possible) Big Corp sites to support Firefox. Maybe they can ally with EFF or others who understand Google's (don't be evil, lol) deepstate roots.

Occasionally something doesn't work right and I use Chrome for that one thing.

It's nice to slightly reduce the totally overbearing presence of Google in my life.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face kind of thing.

Anyway, I’ll stick with FF for the adblocking but these Mozilla guys need to piss off with the constant popups for new features I don’t give a shit about (like a VPN). 1Password has been doing the same thing lately, too. Both my browser and my password manager fall into the category of software that should absolutely never bother or distract me from whatever I’m trying to do.

However, on my iPhone and iPad I've stuck with Safari. Because it's "good enough", I'm not a heavy phone user, and really any browser on iOS is just a reskin of Safari given they don't allow different web browser engines.

When I'm using windows or mac I use chrome. I've used chrome on x11 before. But somehow it never hooked me.

Isn't that sufficiently divorced from most of what makes Chrome unpalatable to people who appreciate Firefox as an alternative?

Why then aren't there more forks of Chromium? I would think with the progression of SOTA LLMs it should not be long now before everyone can simply ride their own custom flavor of Chromium.

Maybe it works if you are de-googling your life at the same time and consciously choose to use apps over websites whenever possible.

If ff needs to turn a profit to survive how can it not follow the directives of the market?

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

What is the appropriate non-convoluted feeling towards the company that's been killing this hope for many years?

  > the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox

Firefox is worse today than it was in ~2012.

That is all.

(Though, I do use FF on Windows).

Criticism is criticism.

Its daft to think something should be exempt from criticism because it is good or necessary.

Microsoft killed off all competition. Then the only improvements were Microsoft proprietary.

Web apps like twitter youtube discord that is left open for a few hours take up >2gb ram and is jittery. I have to shift+esc and close them to make them run smoothly again. Why hasn't stuff like this been fixed yet?

Why do I need to open about:profiles just to launch a new profile?

Once in a while someone talks about digital sovereignty, but much like climate change, nothing will be done (successfully) about it.

That's how it is, I've come to terms with it.

firefox is the only mainstream browser with an rcfile, that alone gives you incredible powers. I hope one day it also grows something like chrome's CDP. What is everyone so upset about?

I'm no designer, but I can't understand why someone would make a graphical choice like this. It absolutely detracts from the content, and in my case, will prevent me from reading it.

Firefox forks however are still the ones with light in their eyes. LibreWolf, Waterfox, Ironfox, keep those going.

Their ui was bad, they could not get ui locks up issue fixed for many years, and instead of focusing on core browser, they time and spend money on bullshit. Kick out technical people like Eich, pays useless Baker 6M while market where keeping crashing.

I'll still happily recurring donate money to Firefox, but not to Mozilla. Mozilla makes it impossible.

Firefox is a lost cause, overtaken by mentally ill sjws. That's the reason it can not compete with chrome even though firefox always had a soft spot in everyone's heart back in those times. They also failed to capture new generation.

Ladybird is the answer. A true diversity in the world of browsers; focused on making the best software instead of playing politics and paying 6M to useless CEO.

It is still not ready but that's fine.

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition

And this is a good thing why? It just makes web developer's lives harder and wastes engine developer's time building multiple engines when they could be contributing to a single foundation making that better.

The over thinkers on Hacker News

Can barely keep my eyes socketed from all this involuntary rolling that's overtaken them ...

I'm personally here for the non-bullshit stuff that isn't about getting clicks with hot ledes grounded on warmed over, barely modified well worn takes on well-understood stats so miss me with _that_ shit ...