> Mobile browsing numbers are bleak: Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads.
This is true, and indeed very strange. I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. So Mozilla's problems aren't only technical, there's also a question of market awareness.
That said, there are also technical problems. Some bugs on the desktop linger on for years and are never fixed.
As described in the article, Mozilla spent a lot of energy into side projects that never went anywhere and were only loosely related to the browser.
This, I have been a long time FF on Android user, mostly due to the ability to run add-ons (ublock etc). Latest update complete botched it. Couple of hnags/restarts every day, jittery UI, unintuitive button placement (e.g. new tab)...
I want to use Firefox (or any decent browser not based on chrome), for several reasons, but this way it gets harder and harder to justify to myself.
What alternatives do we have for non-chromium browsers that have a healthy plugin ecosystem?
>What alternatives do we have for non-chromium browsers that have a healthy plugin ecosystem?
The obvious answer is: none. It always was Chrome or Firefox, everything else was so niche that 'healthy plugin ecosystem' is out of reach. And this very likely won't change for the better, pretty much everyone I know ditched Firefox in favor of chrome by now. We all want to love firefox, but at this point, staying invested seems like a waste of energy.
The situation is weird. I want to give them some money but there is absolutely no way to support firefox development.
A long time ago firefox(program) started asking for donations. I've donated 5$(I was a poor student in Poland[1]). After the donation, I found out that money will not be used for FF development (why firefox page did not mention that?). Long story short it was my last donation to them.
A lot of users struggle with this. Mozilla needs to diversify it's revenue stream, but the options available to them are only tangentially related to Firefox. Basically, (1) the VPN service they are spinning up and (2) Pocket. I opted to pay monthly fees for the full version of Pocket. But what I really want is to pay a monthly fee to support development of Firefox core + extensions.
It's way too early to tell, but it seems like in the long run of history, they could plausibly become most well-known for creating Rust, and mostly forgotten for everything else they've done. Based on adoption trends from huge organizations and projects, we might very well see Rust (or a "Rust++" type analog) powering a lot of key software in 20 or 30 years from now, and who knows, maybe even a lot longer than that. (Maybe a lot shorter, too, but I'm just thinking about hypotheticals.)
I know it's probably not practical to monetize an open source programming language, and they don't centrally manage it, but that seems to be their big differentiator and contribution to the software world as of 2020, as far as I can tell. They were pioneering back when they were driving a lot of the evolution of browsers and web APIs, and providing a way less awful alternative to IE, but by 2020 Google's basically upstaged them in all those areas, and I don't see that trend ever reversing at this point. But Rust might live on in a big or huge way, possibly even long past their solvency as an organization.
So I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say with this post, and I don't know how it could help them financially, but maybe leaning into Rust or other similar very ambitious attempts at fundamentally shifting the software ecosystem could let them remain if not successful, at least relevant and acclaimed. Maybe Servo could've been one of those, but it seems like vaporware at this point (besides the parts Firefox cannibalized, like Stylo).
The latest Android Firefox update also disabled several of the addons I was using, as apparently they are now incompatible until the addon developers do some extra work to fix whatever backward incompatibility Mozilla introduced with the latest version.
I've noticed the opposite. New FF flies for me on the websites I use, such as HN and Stack Overflow. What sites is it slow for you?
Note also that many of the redesigned plugins will be slower than their older, mature counterparts. Give the plugin authors some time to optimize their plugins, and try to cull the amount of plugins you currently use. I've using only Adblock Plus, Tree Style Tab, and Tridactyl.
It's faster to me once loaded. What sucks for me is that I switch between apps constantly. When I reopen firefox, it takes about 20 or 30 seconds for the app to load.
Sorry, I can't risk this account getting associated with my real name.
It's a Nokia 6.1. I've got a lot of apps running, so my guess is that memory exhaustion is causing the app to completely close when switching away. The whole app and previous page then needs to be reloaded when I reopen the app. I think it's the previous page reloading is causing the biggest part of the delay.
What's annoying is that even if I try to switch to another site, it still waits for the previous page to load. I'd like to easily cancel the reload so that I can go to a separate page quickly.
It still works fine on iOS, but that's probably because underneath every browser is Safari. People complain about Apple's draconian choices, but the end result is mostly good for consumers. If people don't like it, there's Android and Tizen.
If anything is being βreskinnedβ it is Webkit, the rendering engine, not Safari the browser. Webkit is by far superior choice on anything macOS/iOS related because of performance and energy use.
Try the very latest release (81). I wrote earlier[0] that FF79 was too slow to start, buggy on tab switches, and missing most recent sites on the new tab. That's all been fixed as of FF81 as far as I can see.
I also really like the new swipe-url-to-switch-tabs feature =D
The last update seems to have added yet another unnecessary click to access a pinned site (whatever it's called).
It used to be "click on the url bar -> click big site preview", now it's "click on the tab counter -> click the plus icon -> click to dismiss some overlay -> click small site icon".
Yes, the latest update is rather horrible. Regular things take way more taps than before, some useful capabilities are gone (like NOT asking to save passwords in incognito mode!). I hope they are listening to feedback. I stalwartly use it still, but miss the previous version very much.
On the parent issue, Firefox on mobile is great because of the same reason Firefox on Desktop is great. Power over your browser. Which is important since browser exploits are using Javascript to compromise phones.
Of course regular people don't know this and will probably never care. But it's the reason Firefox probably won't die. Because the people who know tech know its strength and will want to use it.
It's shameful for a CEO to get a 400% pay increase, regardless of any other circumstances. But it matters less to me because I'm sure Firefox will always attract enthusiasts who care about their online security.
> Of course regular people don't know this and will probably never care.
except if firefox wills it, they could have an advertising campaign to show regular people that firefox can block ads (the irony!), and is a much better browser experience when paired with all the plugins!
But of course, this threatens the tenuous relationship with google, their major source of revenue. Google keeps firefox alive on a shoestring budget to stop the anti-trust happenings that microsoft went through with Internet Explorer.
So the status quo fits just fine for these parties, and the web browser competition gets worse over time.
Some important features such as about:config access has been neutered in the latest firefox mobile. The ability to fully customize the browser is an important feature for the enthusiast folks you mentioned, so by removing access to about:config they effectively alienate their most important and vocal users.
I have to agree with you, and it makes me sad every day. The entire UX is down the drain for me. Even something that always worked like a charm - URL address bar completion - is now broken. I used to type a 'g' and boom it would suggest Github Participating Notifications as first in line. No longer.. now I consistently see other sites, some of which I only visited once. Now part of browsing is dilligent URL address bar data-entry.
Personally, I use Firefox on PC and would love to use it on my phone.
Literally the only reason I use Chrome instead is because of the flow ui tab switching. I just can't stand the Firefox mobile UI for tab switching. I with there was an extension or something to change it. It's a huge shame.
I have been dying to switch but tab management and switching is so jarring in FF vs Chrome (on Android).
Not only that, but scrolling is also buggy because it keeps accelerating. Insufferable while online shopping, because I like to scroll-stop-scroll-stop-scroll and FF just speeds up the scrolling if the stops are too short.
Still not as good. With chrome flow tab ui I can rapidly scroll through full width page previews, and I can initiate this by swiping from the top down. In Firefox the tab previews are so small as to be almost useless, and I have to press a button.
With chrome flow tab ui I can rapidly scroll through full width page previews, and I can initiate this by swiping from the top down. In Firefox the tab previews are so small as to be almost useless, and I have to press a button.
I don't know if the usage is high enough to make a dent, but Brave seems like a better alternative on mobile: all the quality of Chrome without the downsides.
To expand on the quality point: I used Firefox a long time past most of my laymen friends had switched to Chrome, despite it being painfully slower, and I spent years giving it trial periods on a regular basis. But the quality gap was just too reliable and persistent, with it always being slower, jankier, and less featureful (from a product perspective, I still can't believe how many years it took for them to get per-tab processes). When I've tried it recently on mobile, it's seemed quite a bit slower, and
Combined with a decline in confidence in their ability to be an effective organization that started with Eich's ouster and has only gotten worse over time, it's difficult for me to see why most users would choose mobile FF over Brave. The only advantage i can see is extensions, but it's my impression that most users don't much care to use them.
Firefox Focus also wipes itself frequently, which means that you can't be tracked across sites as easily. I look forward to updating to iOS 14 so I can set FFF as my default browser.
My typical workflow is: (1) search for something in FFF, (2) if it's something I want to stay alive so I can read later, I share it to FF, (3) if it's something that I need to be logged in for, I share it to Safari, where I'm logged into various sites.
It is annoying that I have to manually open FFF each time, instead of being able to use Siri to trigger a search or the systemwide search. Hopefully both of these search options will use my default browser in iOS 14.
In late 2018 we rebased desktop Brave from Electron to a chromium front end fork, so if you tried Brave earlier than then, I hope you'll give it another try. Thanks.
Wait that's not true is it? On iOS, Safari supports content blocker since like iOS 9, and on Android, not only you can get browser ad blocks, you can get OS-wide ad blocks through local VPN blockers.
Not only are problems on desktop that linger for years they change stuff on a whim on mobile and when the users complain about it on Twitter they tell you to shut up and are not very nice about it at all don't want to hear your opinion
This is true, and indeed very strange. I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. So Mozilla's problems aren't only technical, there's also a question of market awareness.
That said, there are also technical problems. Some bugs on the desktop linger on for years and are never fixed.
As described in the article, Mozilla spent a lot of energy into side projects that never went anywhere and were only loosely related to the browser.
This is all, obviously, a management problem.