The Future of Firefox?

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
John Liebson
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The Future of Firefox?

Post by John Liebson »

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LIMPET235
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by LIMPET235 »

Moving to Firefox General.
No support Q? asked.
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John Liebson
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by John Liebson »

LIMPET235 wrote:Moving to Firefox General.
No support Q? asked.


Not being serious, just having a bit of fun: Are you implying that I am supposed to know what I am doing?
unbob
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by unbob »

Given that FF market share has shrunk from 40% to 4% - I'd say FF future looks bleak.

"Across all devices, the browser has slid to less than 4 percent of the market," writes Ars Technica. "On mobile it's a measly half a percent..."
Benny Cemoli
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by Benny Cemoli »

There is very little future for Firefox at this point. Especially since Microsoft accepted the inevitable and deprecated their trident based Internet Explorer for the new chromium based MS Edge web browser. MS Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and a host of other web browsers all adopting the same Chromium web engine. Outside of Firefox I cannot even name one other web browser that doesn't use the Chromium web engine. Getting right back into that "monoculture" that Firefox originally fought against. Only a matter of time before we start seeing, "Website Best Viewed In Chromium Based Browsers" tags on websites. And the best part? Alphabet Inc. controls it all so can dictate standards & practices for the entire internet whether we like it or not. So much for the browser wars. Alphabet Inc. has won.

"However, Mozilla and Firefox acknowledge that for its long-term future it needs to diversify the ways it makes money."

And therein lies the problem. Mozilla is now focused more on how they will be making money than actually producing an internet web browser that people would want to actually use on a daily basis. Which is sad as Firefox was once a browser that people DID want to use. But no longer. The push to dumb down the browser interface, dumb down the preferences, replacing the extension system with a system that just doesn't work as well and most likely never will, the constant updates (eg. update to 97.0 and then inevitably have a 97.0.X update because developers screwed up Tik Tok, or Facebook, or Twitter or something just doesn't work. At least Chrome doesn't do that on each an every release they make, go figure), the back end spying through "experiments" and back end telemetry, the addition of features that nobody really wants or uses (eg. Pocket, DoH) that just slows the whole browser down and on and on. Nobody really wants to deal with it all so they leave for what they think are better pastures and use a different web browser. 4% user base. What in the world happened. Oh, that's right. Mozilla is more concerned with making money than a browser that people actually want to use. And it shows.

Apologies in advance for the rant. Just wanted to get it off my chest.
DN123ABC
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by DN123ABC »

I guess it is time to start leaning more heavily towards Chrome. Most vendors require that now anyways. It is too bad, Firefox was competitive for a while there. I blame it almost completely on the lack of listening to customers, and just hauling off and putting in things nobody wants, while ignoring the important things such as reliability, performance, and security.

Just before reading this post, I was wondering if they took out a bunch of the new features/functions, and just stuck to a basic browser with reliability, performance, and security as key goals, how they would do. Each new release would be better in these 3 aspects than the previous one. I don't see that happening the way they are running right now. It is even a worse situation for Thunderbird.

(This is my 10th try to post this here.)
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Snake4
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by Snake4 »

the Developers have themselves to blame IMO, they dont care about what the users want, been more than once that people have asked Mozilla to upgrade openh264 in firefox, the devs dont care if its years out of date, they wont do it. Video for me in Firefox is starting to become a nightmare, so im using Chrome more an more, i dunno how many Linux users nowadays use Chromium instead
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malliz
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by malliz »

Somebody still reads Slashdot :shock:
What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
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Snake4
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by Snake4 »

malliz wrote:Somebody still reads Slashdot :shock:
i stopped reading that years ago an OSnews.com
cecr
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by cecr »

I would say that FF does not have a future. It's a has-been, with poorer relative performance and market share than 20 years ago when the desktop version developed from Netscape Navigator and the only compitition was IE and Opera.

I've used FF for those 20 odd years and have just decided to abandon it on all my devices, Android and PC. I stopped updating FF 2 years ago when they screwed it up with the latest update. There was a big outcry at the time but the usual platitudes from Mozilla that the update was an improvement and it was the users that were out of step. I downgraded and chose not to update on any device.

For the last year or so I've been using Opera more and more and found it better than FF in every way. The only thing tying me to FF was tab queues and for reasons described in another thread, that doesn't work any more, consequently there's no incentive for me to stay with FF particularly because we all know things are not going to get better. The best thing that can happen is for mozilla to go bust and for someone else to buy the code and actually try to develop a quality, leading, browser like it was 20 something years ago.
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GeraldB
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by GeraldB »

Well, dang it. I've enjoyed Firefox since version .7.
It works for me so I'm hanging on... but I may take a little peek at Opera.
morat
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by morat »

Isn't Opera owned by a Chinese company?

I noticed many former Firefox addon developers using Vivaldi.
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Snake4
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by Snake4 »

morat wrote:Isn't Opera owned by a Chinese company?

I noticed many former Firefox addon developers using Vivaldi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(we ... consortium
In 2016, the company changed ownership when a group of Chinese investors purchased the web browser, consumer business, and brand of Opera Software ASA. On 18 July 2016, Opera Software ASA announced it had sold its browser, privacy and performance apps, and the Opera brand to Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership, a consortium of Chinese investors.[46][47]

In January 2017, the source code of Opera 12.15, one of the last few versions that was still based on the Presto layout engine, was leaked.[48]

To demonstrate how radically different a browser could look, Opera Neon, dubbed a "concept browser," was released in January 2017. PC World compared it to demo models that automakers and hardware vendors release to show their visions of the future. Instead of a Speed Dial (also explained in the following chapter "Features"), it displays the frequently accessed websites in resemblance to a desktop with computer icons scattered all over it in an artistic formation.[49][50]
Benny Cemoli
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by Benny Cemoli »

I just got a prompt to update to Firefox Version 98.0. and was presented with this travesty:
Firefox has a new optimized download flow. Instead of prompting every time, files will download automatically. However, they can still be opened from the downloads panel with just one click. Easy!
and
And now, every time you start a download, Firefox will automatically bring up the Downloads panel by default.


Who in the world thought this was a good idea is beyond me. I don't want my Firefox simply download files to random spot on my hard disk chosen by some Firefox developer. I want to chose my own spot. Be it the Desktop, the Downloads Folder or even a folder on my external hard drive. I want to make that decision. Not Firefox.

And yes, I understand you might be able to configure Firefox and prevent it from using this WTF feature but that's besides the point. Who needs this? Just who. And why did they simply have to change the "download flow". It was fine the way it was.

Stupidity like this, just another reason why Firefox is rapidly becoming my third-tier browser. If I bother to use it at all.

Source:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/9 ... out-dialog
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MarkRH
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Re: The Future of Firefox?

Post by MarkRH »

If you decide to try it again:

Go into about:config (typed in address bar) and set the following to "false":

browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel

It downloads them into the Download folder that you've chosen so it's not random. If you want it to always ask you what to do with them, set the applications in the general settings to Always Ask.
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