They've also put a lot of effort into looking and acting more like Chrome. I killed auto update on Firefox when they added search suggestions more like chrome because it broke my workflow. People had complained about the ui being made more like chrome, features being dropped to be more like chrome, etc., for a while. Then you have the deprecation of the Firefox extension model in favor of, essentially, chrome's.
It is harder and harder to see how Firefox stands out on its own as opposed to being a chrome imitator. This is just the latest example. If they think they can sell Firefox based on a free and open web instead of based on power user features, a great extension ecosystem, or whatever, I can only say...good luck. I don't know many projects that have succeeded outside a small core of users based on ideology.
Servo may be the distant future of Firefox. But I am becoming increasingly pessimistic that Firefox will even make it to that future, which I feel awful about. I don't understand what mozillas leadership is doing.
> Then you have the deprecation of the Firefox extension model in favor of, essentially, chrome's.
This comes up every time as an example of Firefox copying Chrome. It's not.
Firefox's extension model wasn't a model, it was a wide open API hole which you could reach into and tweak whatever internals you want with. That's not great -- each update is bound to break things, and architectural changes like electrolysis are even harder to make.
This needs to go. What can it be replaced with? A web standard! Web extensions are this web standard. Now is an ideal time to do this replacement because electrolysis already broke a large part of the addons ecosystem, so you can piggyback on this breaking change.
Chrome and Opera both use the same API. It makes sense to use this as a base for a standard. The old XUL API in Firefox can't really be used as a base since there was no API boundary.
However, Firefox plans to implement a more powerful version, such that most extensions that worked with the old API will continue to work after upgrading. So while code will break, the new API will still expose the same functionality. Well, it can't expose all of the same functionality since we're back to square one in that case, but it can expose enough to make most extensions still work. As an end user, I suspect you will just have to upgrade your addons and otherwise not feel a thing.
I don't know of any other features being dropped to be more in line with Chrome. The UI is at most superficially similar to chrome wrt the tabs (and you can go back to square tabs if you like with a setting, one which is enabled by default in dev edition). The rest of the UI changes (e.g. the customizeable UI) that landed then are nothing like Chrome.
People always being that up like it is a good thing... I like Firefox the way it is, I do not like electrolysis or the way chrome does it processes
>>Firefox's extension model wasn't a model, it was a wide open API hole which you could reach into and tweak whatever internals you want with. That's not great
Actually it was/is Awesome, It is what made Firefox great.
> Firefox's extension model wasn't a model, it was a wide open API hole which you could reach into and tweak whatever internals you want with. That's not great
It was great for the extension ecosystem, which, of course, could literally do anything.
Did it have drawbacks? Of course it did. Nothing in life is free. The fact that extensions could do anything was one of the key features that made Firefox stand out, almost since the beginning. Now, aren't able to, because Mozilla wants to make the same trade-off Chrome made. In fact, they want to make almost the exact same trade-off. They are attempting to ameliorate the issue, by, essentially, adding to the API to grandfather in many popular Firefox extensions.
The fact you mention Opera has another adopter of this 'standard' pretty much only helps emphasize the point. Opera dropped everything that made Opera Opera and turned into, essentially, a reskinned Chrome. That's why you don't see the very vocal Opera fans posting anymore - they abandoned Opera (or the later versions of Opera) because they didn't want a reskinned Chrome.
> I don't know of any other features being dropped to be more in line with Chrome. The UI is at most superficially similar to chrome wrt the tabs (and you can go back to square tabs if you like with a setting, one which is enabled by default in dev edition). The rest of the UI changes (e.g. the customizeable UI) that landed then are nothing like Chrome.
It's been going for on for years, and sometimes Mozilla developers literally cite Chrome as the reason they're doing it.
My friend's big complaint is that Panorama was dropped, which had been around since Firefox 4, if I recall correctly. Panorama, and many other features, have been dropped because, supposedly, not enough people used it. But that's exactly what you expect from power user features: 80% of the people use 20% of the features, but they all use different sets of features.
What killed Firefox for me was "unifiedcomplete." This feature is a move towards having a unified search bar and address bar. While at the time I last used it there still were separate UI elements for the address bar and the search bar, the first result in the address bar was always "Search $SEARCH_ENGINE for X", which meant that every single time I used the address bar, I had to hit tab at least one extra time. Additionally, it crippled the Awesomebar - my address bar results no longer bore much resemblance to what they had been, so I had to do a lot more typing or tabbing to get where I wanted to go.
But there are plenty of examples going back years. It's rare, now, that a release doesn't drop something or change functionality to be more like Chrome. That was just the last straw for me. There was a very vocal group of users that hated Australis for being too Chrome like (was that when we got the hamburger menu? and when the status bar went away? I don't remember). Another example is the six-week release cycle, or multi-process browsing. Though these are sold as uniformly good, they come with tradeoffs, and Mozilla is choosing to make the same tradeoffs as Chrome.
Not all of it has been explicit Chromification - some of it has been the attitude, apparently prevalent, that as much configurability as possible should be removed lest it confuse someone. For example, the removal of the "disable Javascript" checkbox.
> Well, it can't expose all of the same functionality since we're back to square one in that case, but it can expose enough to make most extensions still work. As an end user, I suspect you will just have to upgrade your addons and otherwise not feel a thing.
As a user, I disabled Firefox updates many versions ago to retain a working Firefox, so no, I won't. In the long term, I will have to switch to something else, because I'm not getting security updates, and I know NoScript doesn't give me 100% coverage. Which is really incredible - I spent years contributing to Mozilla and evangelizing Firefox, because I believed it was the best browser. Now, I don't recommend it (or anything in particular) because...why? I don't know what I can tell people that would justify me recommending it. "Free and open web" is not a reason I can use with the average user. I can't really see any real differences between Chrome and Firefox anymore, from a user functionality standpoint. More websites ask that you use Chrome or IE for compatibility. Chrome is generally ahead on "standards", if only because Google invents new ones that it then uses on its web properties.
> It was great for the extension ecosystem, which, of course, could literally do anything.
Right, and that helped keep the rest of the browser stuck and slow. I think electrolysis really drove this realization home.
> While at the time I last used it there still were separate UI elements for the address bar and the search bar
As far as the "hitting tab one extra time" is concerned, yeah, that should be customizeable. You can get rid of the search bar (which I do), but in case you have both visible you really don't need the awesomebar to do searches.
I wonder if I can add customization easily. In my personal workflow half of the time I need search but I get that that's not for everyone.
> Though these are sold as uniformly good, they come with tradeoffs, and Mozilla is choosing to make the same tradeoffs as Chrome
Fair. However, they both seem to address the needs of the majority of the user base (fast browser that works with modern websites and modern browser usage, not something that can be easily done with single process or a slow release cycle). This does mean that some users lose out.
Totally agree with the power users point. I was annoyed with the removal of Panorama as well. I now use Vertical Tabs (and may switch to Tree Style) and it is good enough, but if my tab usage was even higher it wouldn't be.
> In the long term, I will have to switch to something else
Sorry to hear that. I personally used to use Chrome (since around 2010) even when I started contributing to Firefox (I contributed to Firefox because it was easier; Chromium didn't have a great build/contribution process). I later stopped contributing to Firefox because I didn't have time, but I switched over to it around last year because it got much better. I'm surprised that folks find that it got worse in that time period, but I suspect it's just that the changes I liked were disliked by others.
If it helps, when the feature was first introduced (43, I believe), the pref to control it was browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete. It was later removed.
In addition to the search with, I believe it also changed up how the awesomebar search itself worked, weighting url contents, for example, much higher than page titles, and (I want to say just based on end user experience) throwing away page visit frequency information. Strangely, it would also recommend pages I had never visited, if that page was top level and something I had visited was further down.
Trying, yes. But the method they have chosen is to abandon what made Firefox popular in the first place and imitate Chrome. So why not just use Chrome?
IOW, they're killing the goose that laid the golden egg by trying to transform it into a duck. But if I wanted a duck, I'd already have a duck.
I guess they're blaming Chrome for their lost market share rather than blaming themselves for mismanaging their product. So instead of fixing their mismanagement, they're just trying to copy Chrome.
They used to be leaders (without Mozilla, Chrome probably wouldn't exist as it does today), but now the leader has become the follower. And who needs another follower?
Another perspective is that the Web has "grown up" since 1998. Back then the percentage of Web users who were "power users" (remember, empowering users was the mission back then; "Take back the web!") was much higher--but the raw number was still enough to be fruitful. Since then, half the planet is on the Internet, and the percentage of them that are power users is much lower. The raw number is surely much higher still, but that's not enough for Mozilla--they've got to appeal to the masses to get the percentages. All the loyal users who've been with Mozilla for nearly two decades? They can switch to...uh...Pale Moon, I guess. Mozilla just wants the noobs, because that supposedly brings in the most money.
I hate to say it, but Mozilla needs to die so it can be reborn--again. Every so often, the tree of browser needs to be cleansed with the blood of layoffs--something like that. Then their successors can focus on making a good browser instead of chasing more millions.
> "I hate to say it, but Mozilla needs to die so it can be reborn--again. Every so often, the tree of browser needs to be cleansed with the blood of layoffs--something like that. Then their successors can focus on making a good browser instead of chasing more millions."
And you're thinking that because in all of human history, a success story happened exactly once.
Not much of a sample dude and if I were to bet, I'd say that if Mozilla dies, then Firefox will be completely dead as well, because the market dynamics have completely changed since 1998. The elephant in the room being that developing a browser takes a lot of resources and can no longer be done by a bunch of students on their free time.
> "Mozilla just wants the noobs, because that supposedly brings in the most money."
That's a really condescending and damaging attitude. Most of us are in this industry to serve the needs of the "noobs", in order for them to be better at their own jobs. It's how society works you know.
> Not much of a sample dude and if I were to bet, I'd say that if Mozilla dies, then Firefox will be completely dead as well, because the market dynamics have completely changed since 1998. The elephant in the room being that developing a browser takes a lot of resources and can no longer be done by a bunch of students on their free time.
You're likely right, of course. I should have clarified that I don't think that Firefox necessarily will be reborn if Mozilla fails, only that I hope it would be. But I'm afraid that we will find out before long...
> by a bunch of students on their free time.
I'm not an expert on the history of Mozilla, but my understanding is that it was never developed that way. It started with the Navigator code drop from Netscape, and the Mozilla organization was quickly formed around it with existing developers. It took a few years before they had "Firefox" out the door, but I don't think they did that for free in their spare time. Please correct me if I'm wrong. :)
But you're right that developing a browser that can compete with existing ones (in security, at least) is probably impractical without a decent number of full-time staff.
And that brings to mind an idea: a community-funded security team paid to keep up with security fixes, while the rest of the browser is maintained by community volunteers. Sure, it wouldn't get developed as quickly--but I, for one, would be happy to have less UI churn...
> That's a really condescending and damaging attitude. Most of us are in this industry to serve the needs of the "noobs", in order for them to be better at their own jobs. It's how society works you know.
I understand how you could interpret that as condescending, but that's not how I intended it. From my perspective, it's the "non-noobs" that are being condescended to by Mozilla as they continually shoo them away, effectively telling them, "This browser you've been using for 18 years--it is not the browser you're looking for..."
Witness the bug report in question here, in which a Mozilla developer says that Linux users can be expected to build Firefox themselves--he assumes that all Linux users are "Linux developers." What does he care if thousands of people suddenly have their browser fail to function? Mozilla can't be bothered to maintain the existing ALSA backend code.
Is that not their job, to maintain the codebase? What are they getting paid for? Why are they being paid to remove features? Why are they being paid to do things that their users don't want? Please don't lecture me about "maintainability" and human resources--I understand the burdens of legacy code, spaghetti code, etc. The answer is not to toss it into the bitbucket, pulling the rug out from under users. The answer is to refactor the code to improve maintainability, and replace the old code when the new code reaches parity. This is like, they've hit the CADT-panic button, and anytime they see old code, they go, "Eww, gross! Deprecated!"
It's like the ship is sinking, so they're starting to toss things overboard--including pieces of the hull. That will make the ship lighter, while at the same time letting more water in. Eventually it ceases to be a useful or salvageable as a ship, and the passengers jump ship, and then the crew has no passengers or ship. It's like the ship of Theseus: an interesting thought experiment, but it turns out that replacing the hull during a voyage causes ship loss. If they want to build S.S. Mozillium, they should park the S.S. Firefox in drydock first. At least that way the passengers wouldn't have to swim.
Firefox started from a Navigator code dump, but KDevelop was developed in the open by volunteers, along with KHTML, which is how WebKit was then born. Back then it was completely possible to compete with IExplorer as an open-source project, because the expectations weren't that high.
I don't know what the situation for Linux is, even though I'm a Linux (Ubuntu) user at home. But traditionally Linux distributions have been building their own packages. I can understand such concerns though, I care very much about Linux.
That's a good point about KHTML. A long time ago, Konqueror was actually usable as a web browser on most sites. And of course, WebKit has diverged so far...
Maybe what we need is to split up the browser: develop the rendering engine, JS engine, UI, etc, separately, with well-defined APIs. Then the things that require dedicated expertise could be developed by full-time employees, and the results of their work could be integrated into different end-user products, different browsers with different target audiences, developed by different groups, with much less effort and expertise required.
Of course, this is what Gecko and XULRunner used to be. Now Mozilla's direction is just demonstrating how badly needed their former course of action still is.
libgecko, anyone? (or even libservo--but will they handle it the same way they've handled Gecko, and make it practically Firefox-only?)
> Desperately trying to get back to two-digit marketshare?
> Trying to compete, as the last major open browser, against all the corporate browsers?
Firefox was successful because it was a great browser that power users picked up and evangelized to their friends.
Chrome became successful because it was a great browser that Google has pushed hard to users on all their properties, which serve billions of people a day.
Internet Explorer is successful because it's a reasonably good browser that is installed by default on millions upon millions of computers, and because it supports all kind of enterprisey things that enterprises care about.
Safari is successful because it is a reasonably good browser that is installed by default on a platform used by millions of people, and is the only browser actually available on a platform used by millions and millions of people.
Nobody as big as Google or Microsoft is going to push Firefox. Nobody. And if they did, we'd probably consider it a corporate browser anyway. So what is Firefox's strategy to get ahead? To all appearances, cut out the features that made it popular among its core users and strong advocates, and imitate Chrome, because Chrome is popular. But Chrome is not popular because of its features or UI, it is popular because it's a Google product.
I cannot see how Mozilla's strategy is going to succeed, and I've only seen it drive people away - and that includes me, because eventually I will have to move off an outdated version of Firefox. Maybe they have some kind of master marketing plan when they get the product where they want it. I don't know. I don't see how even Servo is going to bring users back. Supporting a free and open web is great, and a goal I support 100%, but at the end of the day I need a web browser that works for me. You can't retain anything more than a very small user base by selling yourself on ideology if that's the only thing that differentiates you.
