[byuu]

Which is why I specifically pointed out that it doesn't matter whether you personally like any specific change or not. (I actually like some of those changes too, eg dropping the status bar in favor of hover hints.)

Every single one of those had a very vocal minority protest the change. Nearly every single one was very easy to leave as an option; at least as an about:config toggle. And every time they didn't, they lost a lot of those vocal users to another browser. And this happens so often that, well, this is why Firefox's market share is currently at 11.6%.

You can either have a browser that your users think is pretty great with a 50% market share; or a browser that your users think is absolutely fantastic with a 10% market share. Firefox has chosen the latter. It's no surprise that the few remaining users love it: it's a browser highly customized to exactly what they like, to the exclusion of everyone else.

I've done and seen this exact same thing with my own software. It's not nearly at the scale of Firefox, but the effect has been the same. I went from catering to what my users wanted and having tons of options, with about 100,000 downloads per release; to now doing things the way I want, with few options, and about 10,000 downloads a release. Many people now insist on using a release I put out three years ago; kind of like how I insist on sticking with Firefox 28.

It's fine if you want to go the route of making the software you want, rather than the software your users want, just don't act surprised about the inevitable result.