Mozilla is trying to innovate and bring new features to Firefox, but the browser continues to lose users. Despite these concerning market trends, the company is actively...

Can the open source browser get its mojo back before turning into history’s footnote?

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
    13·
    1 day ago

    tbh it’s working really well enough now, i just wish they focus on technical stuff like optimization instead of messing with the UI and adding useless ai “features”

  • lacethespace@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    49·
    2 days ago

    Article is fluff, just read the source of info: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/whatsnext/

    I like built in ad blocking and further privacy protection. I’d like to see more of it, to firmly establish where firefox stands in the big tech war against personal freedom.

    Unpopular opinion - for me Firefox is a joy to use. I appreciate that we still have a strong alternative to web monopoly. Sure things could be better but when was this not true? I’ve used it for many many years and there’s nothing on the horizon that I would consider as alternative.

    • matlag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think it’s that impopular. I’ve never switched to Chrome or any derivative. I never felt a need to migrate, and with Google tightening rules on extensions, I feel even better standing by FF.

      I’ve loathed the higher management giving themselves raises while market share was in free fall, but I have no complains about that piece of software. Over time, all the performance and weight issues have been dramatically improved, so what’s greener on the other side??

  • grandel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    26·
    2 days ago

    Are Firefox fork users not considered firefox users? Without Firefox, the forks cease to exist. LibreWolf, etc users should be considered Firefox users.

  • LeepII@piefed.socialEnglish
    663·
    3 days ago

    Dont believe the article at all. Everyone I talk to is switching back to Firefox. I never left.

      • morto@piefed.socialEnglish
        8·
        3 days ago

        Didn’t know they have those data. Some c/dataisbeautiful material here!

        Some things are really interesting. I’d expect more people with extensions, but the majority don’t use. I’d also expect more linux users, but it seems the popularity among linux users is about same level as the general users. It’s also interesting to see a reasonable amount of 32 bit systems

      • Dultas@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        3 days ago

        I’d say it’s not clear if those numbers include FF forks that still use Firefox auth and sync or not.

        • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOPMEnglish
          9·
          3 days ago

          By default it does as they send baseline telemetry to Mozilla servers, unless fork or individual user disables it. That said, many privacy oriented forks do disable it by default so they wouldn’t be counted.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
      10·
      3 days ago

      Both are true, I’m not sure I’d call it “millions per month” though…

      Usage has been slowly dropping year on year since 2022 but also this year usage is up

      • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Looks basically the same to me in absolute numbers (although good luck getting a clear picture here), lower percentage of relative users.

        In the same 12 months, Brave reported a 33% increase in monthly active users.

        screenshots

        (That small rise in the previous screenshot is 2.33%)

        Brave

        88100000 to 117600000

        • numbermess@fedia.io
          1·
          3 days ago

          I never finished downloading Netscape from the university gopher because my roommate took the phone cable. And they only had 24 connections available to the while place.

    • James R KirkEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      Same, and I personally know two people who I would describe as college educated white-collar folks, but definitely not into “tech”, who recently told me they switched to Firefox.

  • HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    3 days ago

    Really hoping for the best for this browser. They absolutely need to drop ai as well as reassess their budget distribution. They are vastly overpaying their ceo.

    • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      For real. Firefox should be positioning itself as the only real alternative to the vast Blink-based “It’s all just pallet swapped Chrome” ecosystem but every opportunity Google gives them to do that instead of actually positioning themselves as an alternative, they shoot themselves in the foot. It’s gotten bad enough that people who advocated for Firefox for years have thrown their hands up in the air, given up, and moved on to other browsers without any so much hope to be positioned as a real alternative like Waterfox and Servo. I don’t think it’s being talked about enough how Mozilla has squandered all of the good will they ever had when at one point it was advocates like us who pushed it to become the only real alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer. We were able to overthrow a browser with just as much reach into market share as Google Chrome has now, but in order to do that we need an alternative browser that is actually factually an alternative. And Mozilla just isn’t giving us one at this point

  • heartSagan5@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I’m sure since people are buying Chromebooks, where Chrome is the default and Windows, where Edge browser is the default — and they both use WebKit, it doesn’t help since now, people no longer see benefits over Gecko.

    I use browsers that ARE NOT the default. I want my Web traffic in a different app than the system’s “Explorer.exe” (shell). For example, I refused to use Konqueror on KDE for the same reason as (Internet) Explorer and such.

    I’m an outlier. People, sometimes due to work constraints, literally see the app as “the internet app.” They don’t compare and they often follow their cliques advice (or ads).

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
    332·
    3 days ago

    The Firefox forks are just so damned good. Zen, Librewolf, and Waterfox are just great.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
      465·
      3 days ago

      This assumes a broad misunderstanding I keep seeing here on Lemmy.

      These forks rely heavily on Firefox core engineering and development, which, if Firefox dies off, they will no longer have access to, thus relegating them to history as well.

      These are not hard forks. These are forks that maintain release parity with Firefox itself, absorbing the grand majority of all engineering efforts into Firefox into their own projects, meaning they are strongly tied to Firefox’s success or demise. And “strongly” is an understatement. We’re talking 95 to 99% of Firefox engineering efforts are consumed by these forks.

      So somewhere from 1 to 5% of the engineering effort these forks rely on to continue to stay relevant, secure, performant, and up to modern web standards is provided by their contributors.

      Keeping Firefox up-to-date with web standards and security is an engineering nightmare. I mean, just look at Safari.

      Having forks is awesome, but sitting back on our haunches, believing that they are safe, independent browser developments is absurd.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
        17·
        3 days ago

        I understand the relationship between Firefox and the forks. What I meant by my comment is that I suspect that a lot of their loss in users might be because of people going to the forks rather than the main product.

      • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        122·
        3 days ago

        I totally agree and thought about going back to plain Firefox multiple times, but I would like to argue that if you can do it better than Mozilla at basically 0 budget, that is kind of on Mozilla.

        Take Librewolf and Ironfox. They have clearly shown that there is an audience for hardened/privacy first Firefox. Mozilla can capture this audience very easily: Offer it yourself.

        I really don’t feel like researching all the settings I need to change to arrive at a Librewolf-ish level of privacy. I also think Librewolf could still do better. And I think Mozilla should do it better than them.

          • Cypher@aussie.zoneEnglish
            7·
            3 days ago

            No, the changes are made at compile time and extensions don’t have access to modify many of the features being stripped out by forks.

      • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
        29·
        2 days ago

        Firefox has to die because Mozilla is a shitty org. All they care about it money. The money from Creepy Goose is just too much. The devs should move on to Servo, Ladybird, or a Firefox fork. The users will follow.

      • chloroken@lemmy.mlEnglish
        210·
        3 days ago

        Downstream. WaterFox et. al. are downstream of Firefox. “Soft” and “hard” forks are not a thing.

        • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
          9·
          3 days ago

          A hard fork means that a project forks and then doesn’t take upstream patches any longer. That absolutely happens all the time. Not for the Firefox downstreams, which are all soft forks, but those concepts are a thing.

    • DdCno1@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      The problem is that they take their sweet time incorporating security updates.

  • pluge@piefed.socialEnglish
    16·
    3 days ago

    I’m bought in. Whatever Firefox is doing is better than Chrome in every way. The VPN feature is useless though. I can’t get any website that I actually care about to work with it turned on. Same with the email and phone number masks (Mozilla features not Firefox specific). Can’t use any Mozilla email/phone mask to work with 90% of the services I use. Amazing ideas in theory, but in practice they’re mostly useless.

  • Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    I personally think the report of bleeding users is exaggerated, Most people I know(yes its a biased sample group) have left chrome, and its 50-49 split between brave and firefox, with the 1% being on safari(this metrics includes mobile users) and most of these people have turned on some kind of do not track/do not send analytics checkmark, plus people who are miffed about firefox switch to something based on firefox, which imo are just more users of firefox.

  • Sina@beehaw.orgEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    Every month there are new webpages breaking on FF, if this trend doesn’t stop, then it’s curtains. (people increasingly don’t test their crappy JS code on FF)

  • dil@piefed.zipEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    I love zenbrowser, just try it and you’ll see why, I’ve left too many comments in the past detailing it, if you like swapping workspaces and having them organized without pausing all of your tabs everytime, and having essential tabs that stick around no matter what for easy access, like im jut rambling idk, it made me enjoy browsing the web again since I don’t lose tabs anymore, everything is organized in folders, pinned tabs, or essential tabs

    • dil@piefed.zipEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      Easily the best browser for widescreens too, vertical tabs take like a day or so to get used to, can’t go back now tho

      • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Not too fond of it on multiple screen setups though. Perhaps that has changed? Also last time I tried it, videos played horribly (especially live like Twitch/YouTube Live)

        • dil@piefed.zipEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          No issues with videos, I use yt in my essential tab daily with pip and have a bunch of folders/pinned tabs for blender tutorials. In the past I would sometimes get a crash and lose tabs but that hasn’t happened in months. I use it on windows, linux on the same laptop, and linux on my handheld daily with no issues anymore.

    • MimicJar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. For the average user Manifest V2 has been gone for about a year. Sure there were commands or preferences hidden away to re-enable it, but nothing user friendly.

      Maybe we’ll see a tiny bump, but I expect everyone who was going to switch has already switched.