Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone’s trust, but I can’t remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?
I have a silly reason! I got a windows phone and loved it, so was happy to use Edge (when it was still its own thing and not effectively Chrome).
Edge’s PDF viewer was great, and in general things were speedy, got out the way, and best of all it synced bookmarks to my phone. :) I also liked the rewards system for using bing, and between microsoft and google, I regarded google as worse ethically. (Obviously… yeah not a solid argument)
I think I switched back to firefox and variants mainly because I started caring about my data, open-source, and also those advantages Edge had were eroding in real-time, with adverts, nagging, and Windows things creeping in - the rewards ended, the chrome thing, it started feeling like the IE days again.
One of my coworkers uses it still, and it pains me to see what new AI gimmick is being shoehorned in.
If I stopped for dumb reasons, I like to think I came back wiser for it. :)
Who is this “we” you talk of?
No, chrome came out and was that much better than every other browser at first.
Is it though?
It was. It was crazy fast and lightweight at the time.
It gained massive market share.
It became the default development target for websites.
Other browsers started getting left behind.
Each step syphons users from other browsers, compounding issues.
The dev tools in Chrome were a revelation. I think Firefox had something similar (Firebug?) but the Chrome tools seemed better.
When Chrome initially came out? Not even close. Firefox was a bloated piece of crap, Chrome was slim and didn’t have all the bullshit that every other browser had.
Obviously, things have changed a little…
I think OP is mostly focusing on why people switched off of FF. Present behaviour isn’t super relevant to the conversation.
Was
Operative word.
I never fully did, but I did end up using Chromium more than I wanted to:
- Some poorly written sites refuse to work with FF. My water company, for example. They eventually fixed it after I complained multiple times. Now they display a warning that it’s “Optimized for Chrome” but no longer flat out prevent FF from logging in (you know, to pay bills and such).
- FF Desktop still doesn’t support PWAs, and their recent update says they’re working on it, but they’re half-assing it (installed web apps will still have the menu bars, address, bar etc). I self-host a lot of web applications and want them to appear like native apps. Hence, Chromium.
- There was some recent ToS / Privacy Policy change, and everyone was knee-jerking “time to abandon Firefox” as if there’s anywhere else to go.
- A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster. That’s been a while, and I think when FF’s “Quantum” update (or whatever it was called) came out in like 2016 or 2017, it put it back on par.
A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster
Performance was huge.
I was willing to put up with a little jank from my browser because I wanted a diverse browser ecosystem, but Chrome felt much, much now performant. After I switched to Chrome, browsing felt noticably better.
A good while back, Chrome was superior. Faster yes, but also more polished and intuitive as browsers go.
Also, Google was “Do no Evil”, and Firefox was good, but not great.
Today, Firefox is still good, and Google is evil.
Times definitely have changed.
Also, Google was “Do no Evil”
At the time Google seemed awesome. Gmail was a game changer - a usable webapp that was better than maybe clients.
Firefox was good, but not great.
Firefox was the best of a bad bunch. It was so easy for devs to move to Chrome because the experience on every other browser was bad.
#2 for me. The PWAs for Firefox extension broke one too many times so I gave up.
Good news - Firefox is actively developing built-in PWA functionality right now. There’s a discussion thread I’ll link you to when I find it.
EDIT - here you go, this also has links to further discussions: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
There’s already a VERY early version in FF Nightly, but tbh it doesn’t yet really do anything you’d expect of a PWA.
Info on that: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
Probably
I didn’t though, because the alternative would either be very small browsers with no or very limited addon support, or FF forks. And until now, everything Mozilla added was either opt-in or very easy opt-out. So hopping wouldn’t change much for me, except that there’s no LibreWolf nightly, and I doubt that self-compiled addons work there consistently.
Changing to opt-out telemetry from opt-in is the one I remember people fussing over
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That was the final straw for me, I switched over to waterfox for nominally more privacy.
I stopped using it and went to chrome bc my adblock stopped working and i waited for a fix but it didn’t come. It worked fine on chrome.
I went back to firefox bc my adblock stopped working but it worked fine on firefox.
these two events are several years apart if that wasn’t clear
Don’t you mean Netscape Navigator?
Small suggestion: if you’re over 21 stop blindly doing what others do. Start questioning things and do what you think is best.
Firefox used to have a “we’re a browser that won’t sell user data” promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it’s just boilerplate, don’t take it seriously.
Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.
Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.
There was some uproar when they essentially de-committed to supporting MDN/developer tools in 2020
…we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team…
It was too noisy. My wife and I used to live in a small apartment. I’d leave my Linux box on all the time. Running Firefox, it’d periodically spin up the fan, which was loud enough to annoy my wife at night, and me during the day. Chrome didn’t spin up the fan. I switched and we stopped hearing my noisy computer.
This was a while ago. I can’t remember if it was Firefox or Mozilla at that point.
The thing is, I never have. Chrome is absolute hot garbage and spyware, all the Chromium forks are all flawed and bugged and still feed into Google’s dominance because of engine and stupid Manifest bullshit. Firefox, despite all the stupid things Mozilla did and still does just works the best and is not Chromium.
Can you elaborate on the manifest bullshit thing?
Google sells it as an updated extension framework to improve security, privacy, and performance of extensions… But it also nerfs adblockers ability to block all ads.
There are some forks from chrome that haven’t implemented the new manifest thing. So if you really need to, look for those.
Here, this should help. tl;dr: Google updated how Chrome security works and it broke apps like every adblocker at the time.
Understood, that’s something to be expected by Google, but complete shit.
However, adblockers still work these days - see Vivaldi, so they found a workaround?
There is no workaround as most browsers download extensions from Google’s extension repository and they don’t allow extensions that don’t follow their bullshit manifest. Ironically, only Opera has its own extensions repository/store that can do that. Others rely on their own built in adblockers.
It didn’t break adblockers “at the time”. It broke them intentionally. That was by design. Google is an advertising company dabbling in other areas. They don’t want a browser that can properly block their primary revenue.
It was intentional to block/break adblockers. Google is worlds largest advertiser…
New Chromium framework for browser extensions that severely limits their functionality. It neuters adlockers.
Honestly, as a “non-power” Firefox user, the only issues I’m experiencing is when Google purposely slows down or messes with me simply because I use Firefox (e.g., YouTube).
Dunno, Youtube works fine for me, watching without account. I don’t use anything else from Google, so can’t say if anything else is shit.
That was overblown drama. They didn’t change anything in practice. They clarified things by writing it down. You disable some defaults and have no issue. Even if you don’t, it’s not nearly as bad as other popular platforms.
I never stopped using Firefox.
If you want I can look for a comment I made quoting the relevant terms a while back. Or you can look for it yourself.
Simple forks still depend on upstream. I’d rather support Mozilla than not, given no better sustainable alternative. They do some good stuff like Firefox, Thunderbird, and mdn.
