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Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?:
Mozilla has released Firefox 89, proclaiming it a "fresh new Firefox," though it comes amid a relentless decline in market share.
Firefox matters more than most web browsers, because it uses its own browser engine, called Quantum, and its own JavaScript engine, called SpiderMonkey. By contrast, most other browsers, including Chrome and Chromium, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi use the Google-sponsored Blink engine, while Apple's Safari uses WebKit (from which Blink was forked). The existence of multiple independent implementations is important for web standards, helping to prevent a single vendor from pushing through changes without consensus, and ensuring that the standards are coherent.
A glance at a statistics site like W3Counter is telling. In April 2008, Microsoft enjoyed a 63 per cent market share with Internet Explorer, and with Firefox performing strongly behind it at 29.3 per cent. By April 2010, IE was down to 48.6 per cent, Firefox up to 32.7 per cent, and Google's newer Chrome was starting to make an impact, at 8.3 per cent.
In April 2012, the three were almost on a par, though Chrome (26.8 per cent) had overtaken Firefox (25 per cent). Today, Chrome is at 65.3 per cent, Safari second at 16.7 per cent, IE and Edge has 5.7 per cent, and Firefox has just 4.1 per cent share. Despite numerous updates, Mozilla's browser has declined from 6.1 per cent share a year ago. Statcounter tells a similar story, reporting a 3.59 per cent share for Firefox, down from 4.21 per cent a year ago.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @08:34AM (8 children)
A lot of "improvements" to Firefox over the last decade are among the biggest reasons for the browser's decline, and glancing at the article's mention of things such as "simplified menus," I somehow doubt this is going to go the way Mozilla is hoping.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Sunday June 06 2021, @10:56AM (3 children)
Personally, I think that development focus (or lack thereof) is the crux of the problem Mozilla has with Firefox; they need to stop emulating Chrome and find their own way that clearly differentiates them and provides something that users will relate to. OK, we've got a new UI (again!) in Proton - so *fucking stick with it*; fix any major issues in v90, then leave the damn UI alone for several revisions (at least!) and put the development focus onto something else! Might I suggest more fine-grained control over privacy options and putting control of the web into end user's hands, because Apple, Google, and Microsoft certainly won't do that? That means exposing configuration options again, even if many of them are in "Advanced" tabs, (and no, that doesn't mean "Here be Dragons" about:config - the main options need to be fully supported), and perhaps looking into how to provide users with much more control over what individual sites can and can't do/save on their computer. Allowing users to set a "security/privacy policy" on a per-domain basis, for instance - e.g. I could allow a site I trust somewhat (Soylent News, say) to run scripts, save first-party cookies, and cache data, others might only be allowed to save first-party cookies and cache certain data, while the worst offenders (e.g. Facebook, et al) have any temporary data nuked form orbit as soon as I close the tab or shutdown the browser.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @11:21PM
Exactly. All they have to do is focus on what people really want/need. People wanted easy local backup of login creds and what did these bolshevik whores do? Copy Chrome and make a cloud only backup. Suited Whores.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @02:16PM (1 child)
They broke vertical tabs so much it is not possible to do it properly with any of the available extensions anymore. I switched to vivaldi (i know it uses chrome, but at least has old opera devs) the day it implemented sync and haven't looked back.
palemoon needs funding. it has been abandoned by extensions community and so doesn't bring anything new to the table.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday June 08 2021, @01:26AM
What are you talking about?
I use Tree Style Tabs, and it works perfectly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @02:18AM
It's basically the same problem as new coke, they started copying chrome for no good reason and upset people. From idiotic things like the version number bumps every few weeks to the interface that regularly changes for no good reason, they've made the experience bad.
When they rewrote the engine for multithreads, that was going to cause issues, but most of the other stuff is just a middle finger to the users.
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Monday June 07 2021, @07:12AM (2 children)
If you look at who is funding these "improvements" to Firefox, they will become much less confusing. :)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 07 2021, @05:39PM (1 child)
Who *is* funding the "improvements"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @11:33PM
Probably Google.
Seriously.
So far as I know, Google is the source of most of Mozilla's money. In theory it's to make Google the default search engine. In practice, they're paying Mozilla to continue to breathe and produce Firefox, in whatever form it may be, so that they're less likely to be lynched as the monopolist they are, at least in the browser market. The post you replied to implies that there may be some additional conditions to this funding, such as pressure towards the gradual crapification of the browser.