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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: 4, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Sunday June 06 2021, @10:08AM (4 children)
I have stopped caring about UI changes. Very few core extensions have to be present, but else I gnash my teeth and adapt to the changes. However, if a full generation of processors separates browser engines (Quantum vs Blink) to get the same performance, it becomes hard to justify Firefox. I have recently switched away from Firefox. I still prefer Firefox overall but cannot justify new hardware just to keep running Firefox.
I know others having switched for performance reasons which is anecdotal evidence that performance should be the prime focus of Quantum. And Quantum should be the prime focus of Mozilla. The recent cancellation of Servo (https://github.com/servo/servo) by Mozilla, however, indicates that this is not the case. IMO Firefox has no chance of survival looking at its recent development trajectory.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 06 2021, @06:55PM (3 children)
Me too. The interface on my browser hasn't changed one bit in almost 25 years.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday June 07 2021, @03:38AM (2 children)
So, Lynx? :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 07 2021, @05:32AM (1 child)
Oh man! [seamonkey-project.org]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday June 07 2021, @06:39AM
I'm using it this instant. Nearest I can get to a practical Netscape 3. :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.