[guelo]

Mozilla doesn't seem to have a clue why people prefer firefox. It's not because of privacy or security, though that's nice. It's certainly not because it behaves similarly to chrome. It was always the extensibility. The power of plugins that allowed adblocking to be invented on firefox. They threw that away in the name of security and supposed clean code. Clean code doesn't get you users.

[slightwinder]

> It was always the extensibility.

Going by the numbers, that's far from the truth. Majority of user never used addons, not even adblockers. Even the most popular addons are only used by a small minority of users.

I'm also a big addon-user and complain what firefox has lost over time. But we should also admit that we are a minority, and addons are simply not the major selling point for a mainstream product's success.

[antisthenes]

You shouldn't be afraid to cater to the minority of power users. Power users are the ones that make browser recommendations to an outsized group of people, e.g. friends, relatives and coworkers. They are also the ones that drive new standard adoption.

It's entirely plausible that when you alienate a power user, you also alienate their entire social circle, dependent on them for tech advice, so you lose 20x-100x of your audience/users.

I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, but it definitely happened to some degree. Personally, I no longer recommend or use Firefox to anyone. The techy people in my circle use Brave or ungoogled Chromium.

The untechy ones use Chrome/Edge and maybe have Opera/Vivaldi as their backup browser or Safari if they're big Apple fans. Almost no one uses FF anymore. Without its extensibility, it simply doesn't compete anymore.

[sillystuff]

> Majority of user never used addons

Do they get those numbers via telemetry or from the server-side? If the former, those stats may be skewed by the overlap between the users who use several extensions and those who disable all telemetry.

In a mozilla bug report where they discuss removing user.js, they point to telemetry that indicates that no one uses this functionality. I'd argue that the Venn diagram between users of user.js and those who disable telemetry approximates a single circle.

[OkayPhysicist]

I suspect that this actually explains a lot of Mozilla's decision making that seems utterly disconnected from their userbase. They don't seem to realize that compared to Chrome, their userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry. They talk about the importance of privacy and security and whatnot, but then make all their decisions based around the behavior of the people that don't care about their privacy.

[ryanklee]

"userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry"

You need data to support that claim. To me, it sounds unlikely. My guess, most users accept telemetry, tech savvy or not.

For instance, I'm tech savvy, and explicitly choose telemetry when on non-work computers because I want to enable companies to understand my behaviors so they can in the best cases deliver better features to me.

[rurp]

I think it's hard to tease out the size of effect. Extensions are only used by a minority of users, but that's mostly the set of vocal power users that are likely to be the go-to tech person within their social circles.

I'm sure I'm far from the only HNer that has recommended or installed Firefox for many friends and family. I mean, I used to recommend and install Firefox before their terrible management turned the org into a dumpster fire. They've lost both myself and everyone I would have turned onto Firefox.

[slightwinder]

That might have been 20 years ago when Firefox grew from it's grassroot-movement. But Chrome started without extensions and grew more through marketing and Googles fame. Power users have their influence even today, but I'd say it's not as strong as it was in the old days. Most users have emancipated themselves from us, and can choose now on their own, because this kind of information is not arcane anymore.

[mmmrk]

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.

[superkuh]

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.

[seszett]

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.

[WithinReason]

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.

https://earthweb.com/how-many-people-use-firefox/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

[soundnote]

> 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.

[superkuh]

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.

[Arnavion]

FWIW my distro's firefox package allows installing my own extensions. I wouldn't be using it if it didn't.

[MerelyMortal]

Speaking for myself, I wish I could run more addons in Firefox for Android than just uBlock Origin.

(I'm a 15+ year user, I started using it when I discovered I could run it off a flash drive on locked-down shared computers.)

[capitainenemo]

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.

[throw10920]

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.

[sbcd]

>Speak for yourself

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.

[slightwinder]

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.

[pessimizer]

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.

[CorrectHorseBat]

As if that has anything to do with it, Chrome is even worse in that regard and it's market share has only grown.

[pessimizer]

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.

[CorrectHorseBat]

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.

[yoasif_]

More addons on mobile?

[krzyk]

Chrome has any addons on mobile?

[mmmrk]

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 :)

[throwaway0x7E6]

then you're not a poweruser. you'd be perfectly fine with stock Chrome too.

[doix]

Yeah, when they did the big performance rewrite(quantum?) and killed pentadactyl (vim mode), I was really upset. I remember using Firefox 52-esr for as long as I could to keep my workflow the same.

In my mind, that was peak Firefox. Yes performance wasn't great, but I didn't care. It was good enough and I mostly browsed with JavaScript disabled.

The new vim mode plugins can't compete with the old plugins because they are much more restricted in what they can do.

[causi]

The really galling thing is they lied right to our damn faces about how "the new faster systems breaks the old add-on system" while they were still using XUL behind the scenes. In fact an HN reader compiled versions of Firefox 57 and above with user-installed XUL enabled and they work perfectly well.

[yoasif_]

Nothing is really stopping people from keeping those extensions compatible. Unsupported doesn't mean impossible - it just means you need to do some tweaks: https://webextensions-experiments.readthedocs.io

[causi]

I'm not understanding how that relates to the fact that the only thing stopping users from installing their XUL extensions on FF57 was a software switch they weren't allowed to touch without editing and compiling from source.

[yoasif_]

No editing or compilation needed. You just needed to disable signature checks (xpinstall.signatures.required) and enable extension experiments (extensions.experiments.enabled) in a developer edition version (or nightly) version of the browser.

[doix]

I feel like if it was that simple, someone would have written instructions somewhere at the time. I remember having to set xpinstall.signatures.required before FF 57. I am not sure about extensions.expirements.enabled.

Unfortunately, I'm now at a point where I can't be bothered constantly fucking around with my setup and have resigned myself to just accepting whatever Mozilla wants to shove down my throat.

From what I can tell, the community has forked pentadactyl[0] and are using it on Palemoon[1]. I'm guessing if it could still run on Firefox today, they would do that instead of using Palemoon (but I could be wrong). Anyway, I still hate that they killed what made Firefox unique. Trying to beat Chrome at it's own game seems like a pointless battle.

[0] https://github.com/pentadactyl/pentadactyl

[1] https://www.palemoon.org/

[iggldiggl]

Download managers/mass downloaders have been similarly rendered impotent (can't download to outside of the Downloads folders without individually prompting for each and every download [1], can't intelligently handle naming conflicts between new downloads and existing files [2], etc. etc.)

And somewhat ironically, while I already had it installed for quite a while, I only really started seriously using and valuing DownThemAll after Firefox 57 had already come out.

[1] Eventually they relented somewhat and said that they would accept an API extension whereby an extension could download to the last downloaded-to location (even outside of the Downloads folder) without having to explicitly prompt the user again – but until now it was never actually implemented (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1342563).

[2] You can only choose between "automatically rename" or "overwrite", and you can only choose in advance (!) when you don't actually have the necessary information to make that decision (especially seeing as Webextensions can't read any local files, so they have absolutely no idea what sort of filename conflicts could potentially exist). There's no "skip" option, and while there's a "prompt" option (however well/badly implemented that might be), Firefox doesn't even support it.

[throwaway0x7E6]

they know it.

that's why they've killed XUL. that's why they're going even further by enforcing an inferior extension standard from their supposed competitor. that's why they've killed off the extensions and about:config for the android version. that's why you can't even use a private extension on desktop without jumping through the hoops. that's why usercss (toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets - legacy and disabled by default - the writing is on the wall already) and userjs will get axed. that's why about:config will get axed on the desktop version as well.

all of that is just off the top of my head. and in the end, Firefox will be a clunky and inferior alternative for Chrome with not 2%, but 0.2% of the market. which is the goal.

[dblohm7]

No.

> that's why they've killed XUL

We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.

> about:config for the android version

I completely supported this and continue to do so. GeckoView on Android works completely differently than desktop Firefox, and about:config's semantics are not identical between the two. A few of us were interested in offering an alternative that gave users a way to make adjustments in a way that was "safe," but as you can imagine that has never been a management priority.

[Dylan16807]

> We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.

So uh. What was that whole thing about making all the extensions rewrite their code to support multiprocess?

Which many extensions did, putting in huge amounts of work, only to be told shortly after that XUL was going away.

https://web.archive.org/web/20191220054834/https://developer...

[pseudalopex]

> We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.

But you did.[1]

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Add-ons_Schedule

[throwaway0x7E6]

>We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.

even if the management understood that advanced extensions were a major factor for choosing Firefox over the alternatives and were willing to dedicate enough time/people/money to tackling the issue?

[dblohm7]

Yes. It was an intractable problem.

[throwaway0x7E6]

well, shit. I concede that particular point then.

my presumption of malice was primarily based on what followed - crippled android addons, forced addon signing on non-Nightly, upcoming adoption of manifest v3. put together, the poweruser experience we had in 2015 is better than the one we have now. and unlike XUL, the only explanation I see for all of these is either malice or stupidity.

[anonymousab]

> which is the goal

I don't think so. There's many more ways and decisions they could have gotten away with to make Firefox worse without outright killing it, that they haven't done (yet).

Rather, I think it's more likely that Firefox, the browser application, is a bit of an albatross to the Mozilla foundation. Something they begrudgingly have to live with, at least in the short term. It's their organization's 'product', but to a certain layer of leadership and above, it's just another vehicle for their broader mission which could be accomplished much easier by just being a chrome fork instead. It'd also remove the need to hire and retain so many pesky and annoying engineers.

Such that the Mozilla corp. is something they have to keep around, but definitely not something they want to keep around.

It is an attractive way of rationalizing the astonishing and bewildering decision making at Mozilla.

[causi]

Mozilla lost the plot the day they decided chasing Chrome was more important than appealing to their actual userbase. That was about the time they started incrementing version numbers every six weeks and rendered the numbers meaningless.

[dblohm7]

Or you know, we just wanted to offer the closest thing we could get to continuous delivery of desktop software?

[causi]

Which is a great justification for releasing updates every six weeks. Destroying the paradigm of "integer release = major revision" instead of "Firefox 5.102" is what makes it a pointless dick-measuring contest with Chrome. One you lost, by the way.