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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: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Sunday June 06 2021, @09:15AM (6 children)
Probably, which makes it all bullshit. I use PaleMoon, but it lies to just about every site about what it is. Usually it claims to be the latest Firefox, but sometimes it's chrome or IE. There are several screenfuls of useragent.override strings in my about:config.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 06 2021, @11:32AM
Old Opera (_not_ chrome-based, but v12 and down Presto based) also had that ability- limited to presenting itself as IE or Firefox, but sure helped (helps) with the too many idiotic sites that detect your browser and refuse to load the desired page, rather telling you to "upgrade to a modern (or compatible) browser".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @01:38PM (1 child)
It's funny how so many websites break until you set a modern user agent string, then like magic it works
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @09:43PM
I doubt much of that is malicious and more about a global check to make sure a user's browser supports all of their features.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday June 07 2021, @12:05AM (2 children)
How many people do you think that mess with agent string? 50%? I don't think so. Probably a 0,1% is generous
So, no bullshit, but statistically a very good approximation
(Score: 2, Insightful) by deimtee on Monday June 07 2021, @12:26AM (1 child)
I would say just about 100% of the people who don't use Firefox / Chrome. There are far too many sites that go:
If Chrome
Serve This;
Elseif Firefox
Serve that;
Else
Serve "Get a New Browser";
So whatever the proportion of non-Firefox/Chrome is, they will be almost completely hidden.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday June 07 2021, @12:48AM
I agree that the users of other browsers are probably under-represented because they likely set their User Agent string to Chrome/FF, but I'd be surprised if they represented low single-digits in any case. Don't forget that for every Soylent reader on the internet, there are 10,000 Walmart shoppers.