I'm a decade-long user and am perfectly fine with modern Firefox (plus uBlock), both on the desktop and on Android. In fact, I don't want to go back to the before-times. Speak for yourself.
Don't worry, he's speaking for the majority of long term firefox users. You're the exception. I started using Firefox when it was Gecko/Phoenix in 2002, then Firebird, then Firefox. I started using it because it was so customizable. I stopped using it at version 37 in 2015 because that was when Mozilla destroyed the browser by removing user freedoms to install their own add-ons without Mozilla's approval. And no, using Nightly (alpha renamed aurora renamed nightly) is not an option because it is extremely crashy on non-standard OS/Distros.
Since 2015 Firefox has become rapidly less capable and rapidly more 'secure' for non-technical users. It's just not what I or the original userbase want. But like with all things Mozilla (including the original employees and CEO) we've been replaced. There's plenty of users who just want Chrome that's not labeled Chrome and Firefox modern gives it to them.
Just to chime in, I also started using Phoenix in 2002, but it wasn't because it was customizable. I've never used more than a couple of extensions and I actually have every extension I need on Android, so I'm fully satisfied for my particular use case.
I still think most of what Mozilla does with Firefox is absolutely stupid and I wish it was different because attracting or retaining more users would make Firefox less likely to die, and generally help the web.
I think you got this backwards. Firefox has 362 million users [0], while the uBlock Origin addon has 5,438,169 users [1], which is 1.5% of all users. If you use Firefox addons at all you're probably in a tiny minority of its users.
> There's plenty of users who just want Chrome that's not labeled Chrome and Firefox modern gives it to them.
Firefox isn't Chrome that's not labeled Chrome, though. Less customization doesn't mean it's necessarily more Chrome-like, especially lately where Chrome's implementing things like tab groups and keeping more or less the same UI design. The new Firefox looks more Safari-ish than Chrome-ish. to me.
True. I should have been more clear. I meant it's like Chrome in that it prioritizes being a javascript OS for e-commerce applications from corporate persons over a browser for HTML websites made by human persons. And with those priorities come inevitable design decisions re: ability to customize.
Ditto... For example. They allow NoScript, but they blocked Custom Style Script, Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey, Old Reddit Redirect all of which I used for small tweaks to common sites with poor non-JS CSS defaults to make NoScript more usable.
They also blocked about:config (fixed by using F-Droid Fennec). I also lost functionality that I had relied on (not going to turn this into a rant on that - and that's probably due to the rewrite, but it's still unfortunate).
Here are the addons I'm still miss post change. There's been no modifications to the list since.
"View Source" "Tampermonkey" "Old Reddit Redirect" "Custom Style Script" "Android PDF.js" "uMatrix" "Alt Text Viewer"
The only one they had an adequate replacement for was "Dark Mode" - "Dark Reader" does basically same job with slightly less convenient UI. "Dark Reader" is also an extremely crude alternative for custom CSS.
I'm also a decades-long user, and am very unhappy with many of the changes that Mozilla has made to Firefox (both on the desktop and on Android), and I do want to go back to the before-times.
I feel like it should be obvious that, at least in the case of addons, some users want addons and some users don't care about addons, but very very few users explicitly don't want addons to be available at all, and that consequently the correct approach is to make addons available.
Haha. Firefox went from above 20% marketshare in its early days, to below 4% today, and the number is continually dwindling. At this point it's the few defensive, aggressive fanboys left who are "speaking for themselves". We'll probably still hear this kind of comment from the likes of you even when usage drops below 0.01%.
And I don't want to hear the "it's chrome's fault" again from the FF brigade, IE had more marketshare in the IE vs Netscape days than Chrome has today, and it didn't stop Firefox from eating at IE's shares.
Firefox decline started long before they switched the extensions-system, In fact they lost majority of their share before that point, and seem to have gained a bit momentum back because of it, temporary.
> And I don't want to hear the "it's chrome's fault" again from the FF brigade,
Sure, who cares about facts when you can have guts-feeling...
> IE had more marketshare in the IE vs Netscape days than Chrome has today, and it didn't stop Firefox from eating at IE's shares.
IE had no marketing at that point, while Firefox did had significant marketing at the time. Chrome then started also with big marketing, while Firefox was busy with dying projects. Coincidence? Seems like marketing is a major factor for success even here.
If you compare the marketshare of firefox a decade ago to the marketshare of firefox now, you can determine pretty precisely how extreme a minority you are in that.
Even worse in what regard? Did you reply to the right comment?
Chrome imitates Chrome far better than Firefox does. I just don't think they can catch up at this point.
edit: maybe you meant addons? Chrome has more addons, with more users, updated more often. Chrome fails at ublock because it wants to, but as long as you're not messing with Google's core business, Chrome is (of course) going to be better off than the product of the endangered company that solely survives from Google's donations.
More addons on mobile and an more flexible add-on api on desktop. Chrome's API does what Google wants it to do, and it doesn't cost them any users which proves that's not what's the issue with Firefox.
Kiwi browser is basically chrome but with full extension/dev tools support. Nothing custom, all stock chrome. But I know the devs behind that browser rely on data collection themselves, so it's less than ideal (you can I think turn all of that off but I'm not sure). But it shows that it is possible to have full add-on support on mobile chromium. Especially considering Kiwi was developed by a single dev initially.
Most open source chromium forks on Android don't have add-ons though, so kiwi is the best option. I guess it's usually because those forks are usually very privacy centric so add-on support is far from a priority. Kiwi on the other hand is basically stock desktop chrome
Edit: apparently they don't outright collect user data!
>The browser is getting paid by search engines for every search done using Kiwi Browser.
>Depending on the search engine choice, requests may go via Kiwibrowser / Kiwisearchservices servers. This is for invoicing our search partners and provide alternative search results (e.g. bangs aka "shortcuts").
>In some countries, the browser displays sponsored tiles or news on the homepage.
>User data (browsing, navigation, passwords, accounts) is not collected because we have no interest to know what you do in the browser. Our main goal is to convince you to use a search engine partner, and this search engine makes money / new partnerships and shares revenue with us.
Am I the minority? To establish that, you'd need to survey a sizable part of the previously FF-using population and determine why they stopped using it. Going from "lost most marketshare" to "it's because techies were forsaken" does not seem logical to me.
And you know, even if I was indeed the minority, so what? I stand by liking FF and I will continue to use it until it's defunct. Because I can :)
