[tucnak]

Why would you use Firefox—that would be supporting Mozilla, or Safari—as they correctly pointed out in the comments—the IE of 2020's? Have you actually seen Firefox source code? It's horrible; not one bit surprising that Chromium won! This is also why there's rich ecosystem of browsers around it. Brave comes to mind; built-in ad-blocker is not half bad, not to mention they're committed to v2 extension APIs, deserving praise. I've been really happy with it. Not sold on most products they're trying to sneak in there like Search, or the AI things, however as occasional crypto user, I'd found the built-in Wallet real handy. Vivaldi? I was told it's quite popular with streamers and so on. Edge from Microsoft, too.

What does Firefox have going for it? LibreWolf? Tor Browser?

Edit: mobile Firefox is still superior, I think, because extensions.

[aeonik]

Firefox and Safari are nothing like IE.

IE used to crash ALL the time, and a lot of those crashes could be triggered by really nasty vulnerabilities in ActiveX which had kennel level access in Windows.

[tucnak]

I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS. You cannot use it on Linux, and nobody really uses it on Windows. You cannot use it on Android. It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too. In that sense it's totally IE-like. Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

[VPenkov]

Safari is a bit behind, but not hopelessly so.

You can check the Interop 2024 initiative to get a better understanding on where everyone is with standards: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024?stable

[dorianmonnier]

> Cross-platform is a must for a modern browser platform.

I don’t understand why. I’m very happy with Safari, it works great. Yes, it’s not the fastest to implement web standards. But it just works very well in Apple ecosystem, and for common usage, it’s way more important and useful than to be the best to support web standards, users don’t care about this.

(And to be clear, the situation is really different than the IE6 era, WebKit respects standards, doesn’t invent its own standard and it doesn’t have a monopoly on web browser market)

[lapcat]

> I'd never suggested Firefox is akin to IE. Safari is, however, as it's tied to macOS.

This analogy is strange, because Internet Explorer was cross-platform and indeed was the default web browser on Mac OS X until Safari was created.

[simondotau]

Huh? The problem with IE6 wasn't its lack of cross-platform support.

Microsoft used a stifling dominance in desktop operating systems to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance meant that a single entity (Microsoft) dictated the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (bad and slow) while developers treated IE6's broken implementations and Windows-exclusive features as de-facto standards.

Today, Google's dominance is being used to achieve a stifling dominance in browsers. This browser dominance means that a single entity (Google) dictates the quality and rate of progress of the web as a platform (whatever suits Google, as fast as possible) while developers are treating Chrome's firehose of features as de-facto standards.

The most IE6-like problem with today's ecosystem is people reflexively defining the web as being a single browser (then IE6, now Chrome). Complaining that Safari is bad because it isn't Chrome is proof that Chrome is the new IE6.

Not only is Safari not like IE6, it's actually the anti-IE6. It's the only thing left to remind web developers that the web is supposed to be based on standards. Safari for iOS is the last significant remnant of browser diversity in a market otherwise stiflingly dominated by Chrome.

[troupo]

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Chrome-only APIs are not "modern web standards".

[achierius]

There is a Linux build!

[notpushkin]

Safari is macOS-only afaik, but there totally are WebKit-based browsers, like Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web – kinda meh name I’d say)

[handsclean]

> It's hopelessly behind on many modern Web standards, too.

Let’s put this narrative to rest, please. Web standards that Safari skips are usually PWA stuff that Google unilaterally declared a “standard”. On actual web features, Safari is behind only about as often as Chrome is, and both (and Firefox) are so far from bad it’s ridiculous to complain about. WEBP was the exception that was just very late, but in hindsight it wasn’t so good after all, which Apple might have known, and anyway at present JPEG XL is shipped by Safari, held back by Chrome.

What I do think is real, though, is developers living their lives in Chrome then only testing in Safari, which makes wherever Safari lags bite them in the ass, and wherever Chrome lags not even noticed.

[forgotpwd16]

>This is also why there's rich ecosystem of browsers around it.

The initial releases of Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge (Chrome-based) were in 2016, 2015, and 2018, respectively. In 2015, Chrome already had a ~50% usage share, followed by Safari and IE, at ~10%, and Firefox at ~5%. Now the choice is between basing your browser on one with ~50% usage share and one with ~5%. Here's the first reason MS provided for the decision to migrate their browser to Chrome base:

>Although Microsoft Edge has very high web compatibility for both standards-based HTML and for capabilities added by highly-used browsers like Chrome, our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers.

The "rich" ecosystem you're talking about could be due to technical merit but could also be irrelevant to it.

[n144q]

Are you serious dude?

> Have you actually seen Firefox source code? It's horrible

That's the first time in many years I have seen anyone saying something like this (on HN, reddit or other forums where I waste my time). It's so elitist and ridiculous that it's almost funny -- really? You read (likely a very small portion of) a product's source code and use very short-sighted, biased and subjective understanding of the code to determine whether it's a good product? How is that any better or more meaningful than flipping a coin?

I happened to have read the HTML page source of some random Amazon product page and Apple product page a while ago. Wow that seems a horrible unmaintainable mess with lots of waste of bandwidth. But that's just my very uneducated opinion by quickly scanning the code without more context and could be completely wrong. Even that's "true", it doesn't matter -- it does not affect my shopping experience a single bit, and they are both great websites to use in the end.

[ferguu_]

Just curious, what is wrong with the Firefox source code specifically? I've used it for a couple years and haven't noticed anything awful, but if there's something I'm not aware of and it's as bad as you say I'll swap in a heartbeat.

[justinclift]

Not a problem with the source code, but did you see that Mozilla has literally become an advertising company?

• https://archive.md/6Un3E (using archive.md to avoid a disappointing problem with the source website)

Mozilla seems to still claim they're "stewards of the open web", yet they're so far off topic it's just impossible they can believe that with a straight face. :(

[forgotpwd16]

>Mozilla has literally become an advertising company

How is this relevant? Assuming what you say is true. The alternative GP promotes is building browsers atop Google's engine. If Mozilla is "literally an ad company", what is Google with ~80% revenue off ads?

[justinclift]

You have no problem with Google being an ad company?

[ferguu_]

Oh damn that sucks, still nothing affecting user experience... yet. Reminds me of a nightly build I saw where they tested forcibly putting fakespot products on the frontpage. [https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/11/19/experimental-add...]. I think they knew this was gonna be controversial, you'd think the blog title would mention something like this but they choose to focus on smaller bug fixes and tuck the literal forced advertising near the bottom. For now I'll stick around, but if this stuff ever gets released / impacts the way the browser functions I'll have to find something else.

[justinclift]

If you're using macOS, then Orion might be a good option:

https://kagi.com/orion/

[tucnak]

It's many things; overall low-quality compared to Chromium. Thankfully they have deprecated XUL a few years back which was really holding people back in major ways, but yeah, it's not good. People don't like to hear that, but that's probably the reason why Chromium won. Much easier to patch it, & the inner layout of components, separation make more sense.

[ferguu_]

Sorry, could you be a bit more specific? As a user, not a developer, I'm curious if there's any flaws in the source code (potential security vulnerabilities, inefficient code that might cause slow / slower execution, dodgy third party data extraction, stuff like that.) that might affect day-to-day user experience. Personally, when I switched from Chrome to Firefox, I found I had much more control over each aspect of the browser experience and that's been the main reason I've stayed. I especially like the "about:config" page, chrome is sorely missing something similar.

[tucnak]

Until recently, Firefox was quite slow but with the Quantum release they addressed it somewhat. From a user perspective, I say, if you like it, trust Mozilla, don't care about what they have become, you're fine. In my opinion, it's only downhill from here. That said, I think they did a good job over the years on security, the containers are neat, however the profile design in Chromium is probably superior. The majority of Web security research comes from Google, they invest deeply into security, although it doesn't matter as much because they're also cooperating with the industry, coordinated release is a thing, etc. The cache model specifically is more powerful in Chromium; memory usage is often touted as advantage for Firefox, but it's a statement on how Chromium cache model is superior more than anything.

I'm not sure what "aspects of the browser experience" you're referring to specifically, but I would guess it's probably marginal as in terms of Web standards Firefox is playing catch-up. It took them a long time to implement JIT in the engine at the point when V8 had it for years; touted as a huge accomplishment, and it was—considering how it's so hard to work with Firefox codebase. There's a dedicated group of developers punching above their weight, unfortunately they're at a disadvantage.

[ferguu_]

Hmm... alright, thank you. I'll stick with what I've got for now. You're right though, it seems like Mozilla is looking for a way to monetise their platform, at the expense of user experience.

You mentioning memory usage reminds me of this article, which was actually the reason I switched over. [https://www.pcmag.com/news/firefox-power-user-keeps-7400-plu...] Not sure if you could do that in Chrome!

[bayindirh]

> Have you actually seen Firefox source code?

Yes.

> It's horrible; not one bit surprising that Chromium won!

Nope. It's just old (maybe older than you, even, IDK). It's Netscape, actually. It's very commendable that the codebase we're talking about has been successfully evolved up to that point [0].

[0]: https://arewefastyet.com

[tucnak]

> maybe older than you, even

Okay so what? I appreciate good code, not old code. I needed to patch _some_ web browser a few years back, and had attempted Firefox first for kicks. It was a very painful experience, a few weeks no gain. The system design is arcane, all over the place. I later attempted the same with Chromium, and it worked out beautifully. I'd eventually opted for QtWebKit at the time.

There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is horrible. You could make an argument that it is "tradition", of course. I'm not convinced.

[bayindirh]

> I'm not convinced.

I have not written that to convince you about anything. My aim was to tell the truth, as is.

Like it or not, Mozilla Firefox as we know it is almost 24 years old that point. Before that it was living as Netscape Navigator (which was born in 1994), and tried to be cross platform since get go.

This means it has born in a place there was no version control, almost no modern programming language facilities, and you had to pull a lot of "neat" tricks to be able to run the same code on very different architectures. On top of that these guys invented "push" and Javascript along the way.

Also, codebases rot. This is another reality of software. As a codebase lives longer than their primary caretakers, even if people document everything, new maintainers have different opinions on how to do things, and things evolve in a way that primary designers didn't anticipate.

This is reality of the software. You don't have to like it, but you can't prevent it. Actually, everything rots in the stack. From hardware architectures to OSes, and everything on top of these...

> I'd eventually opted for QtWebKit at the time.

The funny thing is QtWebKit is a fork of Apple's WebKit, which is a fork of KDE's KHTML browser engine, which also Chrome has forked (from Apple), and evolved. So they had a lot of time to redesign something which was working very well from the get go. They didn't write something from scratch like Netscape guys, and they had an advantage here. Plus, the initial devs were from Mozilla, so they knew the shortcomings of Gecko, and avoided the problems.

All in all, Chrome had a second mover advantage with the added benefit of carrying learnt lessons of the first mover.

> There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is horrible. You could make an argument that it is "tradition", of course.

There's no beating around the bush; Firefox code is old. You could make an argument that you didn't work with legacy systems in your life ever, of course.

I'm not convinced.