What always strikes me about these pleas is how familiar they sound. They're reminiscent of all the things we "should" -- eat better, exercise more, lower our carbon footprint -- and I suspect they all see just about the same level of long term success.
Firefox did well when their only real competitor (MS) was actively trying to make their own browser bad in order to preserve the relevance of the desktop OS and their dominance in that area.
Now that they have a competitor (Google) which is actively trying to make their own browser good in order to increase the relevance of online services and their dominance in that area, Firefox hasn't fared so well.
I don't necessarily disagree with the author of this post, but it doesn't seem like moral high ground alone is going to make Firefox any more successful than the other things we "should."
What I wonder about is what larger systemic or structural shifts would have to occur for Firefox and the other "shoulds" of the world to have a chance.
The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative.
I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for people who don't want to eat meat for ethical reasons, increasing their freedom to live life the way they want without it being prohibitively inconvenient. A similar argument can be made for desktop Linux or using Firefox.
This is a misleading comparison. You imply that firefox is far behind chrome in terms of general quality. Although I use chrome a lot, I also use firefox daily. And the quality difference is essentially nil(1). In many relevant ways firefox was at times better; but the details shift from release to release. I certainly isn't true that typical users would run into huge problems by using firefox.
1: on a desktop. I also regularly use FF/chrome/edge on a laptop, where FF's slowness+ power usage is possibly slightly noticeable (not very), and I also use multiple browsers on mobile, where FF clearly is behind (though it's not clear how much of that is due to FF+chrome, and how much is due to websites simply only ever testing on mobile chrome and possibly iOS - not that it does the end-user any good)
The difference between the browsers is overstated. If it weren't for vendor lock-in effects, you could use FF today and barely notice the difference.
On desktop it's google having (almost) monopoly on search and abusing it market its other products.
On mobile, it's Google abusing its power over the platform to make OEMs use Chrome in the same way MS pushes OEMs to ship Windows and Secure Boot and various other shit.
Firefox could be perfect (and it isn't, because what do you know, developing good software takes insane amount of money) and it wouldn't help.
I rather have people write such texts to encourage people to switch to Firefox then have Chrome installed accidentally because they again bundled it like some crappy AntiVirus software in the installer of another program (together with the google updater service and god knows what).
From my own experiences, Firefox is a better product than Chrome in a lot of ways. For my daily needs, Firefox can easily survive 150 tabs, while Chrome nearly chokes my machine in 30. Firefox on Android has a quaint reader mode, which I use to read at night. Firefox on Android supports extensions. It stays the most standard implementation of web standards that I know. I have been using it for over 5 years, and though I am forced to use Chrome occasionally (for Chromecast related work), it remains my primary browser. I will use it as long as I can.
Limiting features such as Google Docs offline access to only Chrome is bad. I don't see that as Google is making efforts to make chrome good. I see it as Google is trying to promote Chrome browser through the demand it has generated for its core products. That kind of exclusivity is what worries me most. Especially when Google built chrome on open source Chromium.
I do agree with you. It's difficult to convince anyone with those kind of arguments. As I've written on The Unshut, I'd say the problem is the perception of value:
When I switched to Chrome I did because it felt better. The decision would be tougher today because Firefox, Chrome and Opera (Edge has to mature) are great options and not that different in performance and features. Change is tougher now because the perceived value isn't really there in most cases.
This article convinced me personally to switch back to Firefox, but I'm disheartened by seeing a number of comments here which amount to "Firefox is fine," "Firefox is just as good," "The Foundation is fine," and so on.
That attitude is a recipe for shrinking market share. FF is competing against extremely well funded, extremely aggressive and competent competitors. You don't get to stop listening to the market in an environment like this. It will run you out.
As someone who manages a 450-user IT department (academic), supporting roughly 50/50 BYOD/supplied computers, and staring at my stats, Firefox is the most reliable browser. We see %300 more problems with Chrome than Firefox.
Reading the comments my suspicion is that what shortcomings it does have affects the hacker news crowd a disproportionate amount more than usual, or affects the academic crowd disproportionately less
I prefer Firefox over Chrome for several reasons, including usability, flexibility and freedom. Could you list down a few things that are problematic, in your experience, with Chrome but are not so in Firefox? Although it could be construed as purely anecdotal, it may provide some insight and understanding into the strengths and weaknesses of the two browsers.
I generally agree with the sentiment here, but somewhat similar to using Linux over macOS, my experience has been that it's just a worse user experience in exchange for "doing the right thing." In the end, it's about how much you're willing to sacrifice convenience and user experience for an ethical ideal.
For me, the last time I attempted to switch from Chrome to Firefox, it drove me nuts after a few days because of one behavior: When you click a web link in another application, it opens it in your non-incognito (or whatever that's called in Firefox) window, even if the incognito window is the one on top. Instead, you have to copy the link from the other app, tab over to Firefox, and manually paste it into the incognito window. This is a flow I use many times a day, and having to do this workaround was really annoying. I found a thread about it on Firefox's issue tracker, but it was closed with a response that basically amounted to the developer telling the user that reported it, "this isn't a valid use case."
I may be able to switch back to Firefox when they implement that feature where each browser tab is essentially an isolated "incognito" context, which is really what I want. The distinction between "incognito" and "not incognito" windows has really just been a proving ground for the idea of concurrent browser sessions isolated from each other, which is a much overall solution to controlling your privacy on the web.
If this is your only or main issue with FF, it can't be that bad.
I tried Chrome from time to time and the endless processes eating up an immense sum of RAM (I had to add together first to realize) as well as the missing addons drove me away.
I never considered myself a participant in the ideological browser war and whenever I have to fix a computer somewhere around my friends and family (besides my parents) I left Chrome on their computers. It somehow always is there. Installed through Avast or similar. This annoying and disgusting behavior and the fact that Chrome wasn't anywhere faster or better led me to the conclusion that there is no better browser for me then FF.
A thousand times this. Ironically Firefox had this feature in the past ( I don't remember the exact version). My workaround is to start Firefox in anonymous mode always (Settings->Privacy->History->"Never remember history). But it's a workaround and I wish Firefox would be able to open links in an incognito window.
- Chrome is usually faster/smoother, even if not by much. For very odd or intensive sites. And for things like dragging a tab into another window and how long it takes until inspect element loaded.
- Firefox has Tree Style Tab, Chrome doesn't and will never have. This alone makes FF the only usable browser for me
- I find the non-optional non-native and childish look of chrome silly
- Some google sites like the play store and youtube just work better on chrome
For me, I use FF because of the memory, the styling and Tree Style Tabs. And I hope they keep on fighting. I understand the chrome users though.
Chromium is actually a good browser. Until Servo picks up the technical slack, Mozilla will not have a browser I can afford to waste my time running. Firefox is completely unusable for me. The UI is slow, ugly, clunky, and complex. The rendering performance is abysmal. The extensions ecosystem has collapsed from a decade of API breakage, and now total deprecation. The organization is hostile and political because Mozilla lets people push their personal ideological agendas on foundation dollar.
Compared to Chromium, Firefox is a slow, confusing, incompatible security liability with no consistent wins. Even when they do uniquely good things (like the WebGL live shader editor) they are held back by the general inadequacy of the product.
Unfortunately Chrome/ium has the best security story at the moment. Mainly due to good separation/sandbox. Firefox is only now catching up, slowly. So while I'd like to use FF, it's simply not a reasonable choice for me.
I love the Firefox extensions! (I hope they will stay for a while, using tons of quite old extensions)
Extensions that have no even chrome extension:
- tree style tab: nested tabs on the side of the screen
- Imagus: elaborate image preview on mouse-over
- FF Rocker: click right+left for history back and the other way around for forward (there is a chrome extension, but it's no fun)
- grab and drag: I hold right click to scroll as if I was dragging the scroll bar handle (only works for single-core FF :/) (there is a chrome extension, but it's no fun)
- All-in-Sidebar: bookmarks, downloads etc in a sidebar
- tab grenade: store all open tabs in a link list and close them (might have a chrome equivalent)
- Link Alert: hover to see if you are going to an external page or pdf or image (might have a chrome equivalent)
- Vimperator/Pentadactyl: vim style shortcuts for everything, no more clicking. Currently both projects struggle to stay compatible with recent FF versions, can't recommend to switch to it now :/
Keeping choices open for the future is one good reason to use Firefox. My main reason to use Firefox on all my devices is because it is much better than Chrome. It has more predictable behavior, it does not require to be connected to a major cloud, I can tweak it to my liking and I do, I can backup the configuration, and I can do advanced but necessary things such as "text reflow" on my phone.
I have switched back to Firefox one year ago, and never looked back.
For every person who says Chromium's developer tools are better than Firefox's, you can find another person who will say exactly the reverse. It's possible one of the two positions is correct and the other is not, but I find it more likely that people are just used to particular developer tools and that there is no significant difference between the two. People get work done with Firefox and Chromium's developer tools equally, you just have to learn to use them.
Nonsense! Firefox Developer Edition [0] is the best browser for web development and it doesn't need Firebug as it has better built-in tools! Not to mention the lovely dark theme!
I use Chrome for developing and Firefox for normal browsing. That way, I know when I'm wasting my time ;-)
Simply, I just couldn't switch to Chrome for normal browsing. One thing I couldn't do without is the bookmark tagging in FF. I also like the fact that the address bar behaves much more predictably, like when I type something and it shows me links only from my recent history.
Youtube does play better in Chrome, FF uses a lot more CPU and it is a known issue. So now I use Chrome for playing Youtube and FF for everything else! It's a mess.
Android is winning but the percentage that still use Apple is significant. Thank "the sheep" I guess...
The winners mentioned are the ones that require the most resources, so I guess they'll keep being that even with Bing, etc
I do use Firefox, sometimes it seems Chrome has more issues, sometimes it's FF, but I'd say they're pretty comparable (though FF has better dev tools builtin and it is easier to configure a proxy, because Chrome depends on a system config, which is not what I want to change usually)
I never understood why Mozilla has allowed their main product and their only money maker to fall so far behind.
They have a lot of income.
I don't mind them going of on various edgy projects.
But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years. They should really refocus their efforts to concentrate on delivering the best browser again, as it was before Chrome came along.
> But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years.
Can we please stop fueling this myth?
Maybe for some of you Firefox lacks something you actually need.
For others, like me and a bunch of others it is completely the other way, -if I was forced to use any other browser it would annoy me to no end (not tree tabs, etc etc).
So while I think it is totally fine to point out where other does better, telling everyone that Chrome is better isn't even true except for very specific cases.
Chromium is free software too, but that does not justify any usage of Chrome. If you use Chrome, you can't justify it on Chromium being open source. As for Chromium itself, it is very obvious that it is not actually meant to be used by anyone: it has no stable releases, no binary downloads (except the nightlies published by the build system), and its website is hosted on nothing else than… Google Sites.
Chromium does have stable releases, they are the same as for chrome. And about every linux distribution out there ships chromium binaries, so what's your point?
I think the most effective way to get people to change browser habits, is through something compelling over a period of time. So far I don't find Firefox compelling enough nor this post. (Keep trying please, we really do need competition here)
As much as I like Firefox, it’s not usable on my “eco” PC (Celeron N3150, 8 GB RAM). Chrome is.
It’s really unfortunate that developers of many interesting products (or websites!) seem to be forgetting about CPU efficiency. The Atom editor is another example.
I absolutely believe that there is no way around the described future of Alphabet dominating the web sooner or later.
But I also believe that this is not going to be the end but instead will make it desirable again to create something new - there will be a new breed of hackers and power users creating new and alternative web based on P2P- and blockchain-technologies, meshed-networks ... I think it's going to be cool :)
(Though I'd be in favor of simply reducing Google's power - but that is simply not going to happen - no matter what browser I use and how many people I convince to use FireFox.)
I will switch back when it has what I need. Currently my biggest need that Firefox doesn't support is MIDI access (i.e. hook a digital "piano" to it and Javascript in a page can talk to it). It's been in development for who knows how long in Firefox, I'm not holding my breath.
This thread on reddit captures many of the reasons why I stopped using firefox - https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/3hugul/the_future_... . Extensions are what made firefox great for me, with the constantly evolving story for extensions over the years the community around building extensions appears to have dissipated.
The only thing I miss after switching Safari->FF (moved away from OSX) for regular browsing is that all 'incognito' tabs in safari are completely isolated from each other and share no cache, cookies, bla. This seems like a small thing and I barely noticed it at the time I switched TO safari for all non-devtools related tasks (battery and perf was better on my lappy) but now, I do miss it.
Otherwise, I've no probs with FF these days. 49 seems solid on BSD, at least.
[+] [-] moxie|9 years ago|reply
Firefox did well when their only real competitor (MS) was actively trying to make their own browser bad in order to preserve the relevance of the desktop OS and their dominance in that area.
Now that they have a competitor (Google) which is actively trying to make their own browser good in order to increase the relevance of online services and their dominance in that area, Firefox hasn't fared so well.
I don't necessarily disagree with the author of this post, but it doesn't seem like moral high ground alone is going to make Firefox any more successful than the other things we "should."
What I wonder about is what larger systemic or structural shifts would have to occur for Firefox and the other "shoulds" of the world to have a chance.
[+] [-] ookdatnog|9 years ago|reply
I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for people who don't want to eat meat for ethical reasons, increasing their freedom to live life the way they want without it being prohibitively inconvenient. A similar argument can be made for desktop Linux or using Firefox.
[+] [-] emn13|9 years ago|reply
1: on a desktop. I also regularly use FF/chrome/edge on a laptop, where FF's slowness+ power usage is possibly slightly noticeable (not very), and I also use multiple browsers on mobile, where FF clearly is behind (though it's not clear how much of that is due to FF+chrome, and how much is due to websites simply only ever testing on mobile chrome and possibly iOS - not that it does the end-user any good)
The difference between the browsers is overstated. If it weren't for vendor lock-in effects, you could use FF today and barely notice the difference.
[+] [-] glogla|9 years ago|reply
On desktop it's google having (almost) monopoly on search and abusing it market its other products.
On mobile, it's Google abusing its power over the platform to make OEMs use Chrome in the same way MS pushes OEMs to ship Windows and Secure Boot and various other shit.
Firefox could be perfect (and it isn't, because what do you know, developing good software takes insane amount of money) and it wouldn't help.
[+] [-] aluhut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoffcoder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallace_f|9 years ago|reply
Is this conspiracy or fact?
[+] [-] gordon_freeman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javipas|9 years ago|reply
http://theunshut.com/2016/09/26/firefox-chrome-and-the-perce...
When I switched to Chrome I did because it felt better. The decision would be tougher today because Firefox, Chrome and Opera (Edge has to mature) are great options and not that different in performance and features. Change is tougher now because the perceived value isn't really there in most cases.
[+] [-] apatters|9 years ago|reply
That attitude is a recipe for shrinking market share. FF is competing against extremely well funded, extremely aggressive and competent competitors. You don't get to stop listening to the market in an environment like this. It will run you out.
[+] [-] indlebe|9 years ago|reply
Reading the comments my suspicion is that what shortcomings it does have affects the hacker news crowd a disproportionate amount more than usual, or affects the academic crowd disproportionately less
[+] [-] newscracker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Perceptes|9 years ago|reply
For me, the last time I attempted to switch from Chrome to Firefox, it drove me nuts after a few days because of one behavior: When you click a web link in another application, it opens it in your non-incognito (or whatever that's called in Firefox) window, even if the incognito window is the one on top. Instead, you have to copy the link from the other app, tab over to Firefox, and manually paste it into the incognito window. This is a flow I use many times a day, and having to do this workaround was really annoying. I found a thread about it on Firefox's issue tracker, but it was closed with a response that basically amounted to the developer telling the user that reported it, "this isn't a valid use case."
I may be able to switch back to Firefox when they implement that feature where each browser tab is essentially an isolated "incognito" context, which is really what I want. The distinction between "incognito" and "not incognito" windows has really just been a proving ground for the idea of concurrent browser sessions isolated from each other, which is a much overall solution to controlling your privacy on the web.
[+] [-] aluhut|9 years ago|reply
I tried Chrome from time to time and the endless processes eating up an immense sum of RAM (I had to add together first to realize) as well as the missing addons drove me away.
I never considered myself a participant in the ideological browser war and whenever I have to fix a computer somewhere around my friends and family (besides my parents) I left Chrome on their computers. It somehow always is there. Installed through Avast or similar. This annoying and disgusting behavior and the fact that Chrome wasn't anywhere faster or better led me to the conclusion that there is no better browser for me then FF.
[+] [-] chopin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s9w|9 years ago|reply
- Firefox uses way less RAM
- Chrome is usually faster/smoother, even if not by much. For very odd or intensive sites. And for things like dragging a tab into another window and how long it takes until inspect element loaded.
- Firefox has Tree Style Tab, Chrome doesn't and will never have. This alone makes FF the only usable browser for me
- I find the non-optional non-native and childish look of chrome silly
- Some google sites like the play store and youtube just work better on chrome
For me, I use FF because of the memory, the styling and Tree Style Tabs. And I hope they keep on fighting. I understand the chrome users though.
[+] [-] microcolonel|9 years ago|reply
Compared to Chromium, Firefox is a slow, confusing, incompatible security liability with no consistent wins. Even when they do uniquely good things (like the WebGL live shader editor) they are held back by the general inadequacy of the product.
No amount of pleading will change any of this.
[+] [-] hubert123|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viraptor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotheryou|9 years ago|reply
Extensions that have no even chrome extension:
- tree style tab: nested tabs on the side of the screen
- Imagus: elaborate image preview on mouse-over
- FF Rocker: click right+left for history back and the other way around for forward (there is a chrome extension, but it's no fun)
- grab and drag: I hold right click to scroll as if I was dragging the scroll bar handle (only works for single-core FF :/) (there is a chrome extension, but it's no fun)
- All-in-Sidebar: bookmarks, downloads etc in a sidebar
- tab grenade: store all open tabs in a link list and close them (might have a chrome equivalent)
- Link Alert: hover to see if you are going to an external page or pdf or image (might have a chrome equivalent)
- Vimperator/Pentadactyl: vim style shortcuts for everything, no more clicking. Currently both projects struggle to stay compatible with recent FF versions, can't recommend to switch to it now :/
[+] [-] clappski|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbog|9 years ago|reply
I have switched back to Firefox one year ago, and never looked back.
[+] [-] anilgulecha|9 years ago|reply
I can only hope for chrome's devtools to be ported to firefox. (firebug is close but slow).
[+] [-] rvern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolay|9 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
[+] [-] Sylos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grokavi|9 years ago|reply
Simply, I just couldn't switch to Chrome for normal browsing. One thing I couldn't do without is the bookmark tagging in FF. I also like the fact that the address bar behaves much more predictably, like when I type something and it shows me links only from my recent history.
Youtube does play better in Chrome, FF uses a lot more CPU and it is a known issue. So now I use Chrome for playing Youtube and FF for everything else! It's a mess.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
Hasn't Firebug been mostly replaced, long ago, by Firefox' built-in tools?
Press Ctl+Shift+i, or click Tools > Web Developer.
[+] [-] nanis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
The winners mentioned are the ones that require the most resources, so I guess they'll keep being that even with Bing, etc
I do use Firefox, sometimes it seems Chrome has more issues, sometimes it's FF, but I'd say they're pretty comparable (though FF has better dev tools builtin and it is easier to configure a proxy, because Chrome depends on a system config, which is not what I want to change usually)
[+] [-] the_duke|9 years ago|reply
They have a lot of income.
I don't mind them going of on various edgy projects.
But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years. They should really refocus their efforts to concentrate on delivering the best browser again, as it was before Chrome came along.
[+] [-] reitanqild|9 years ago|reply
Can we please stop fueling this myth?
Maybe for some of you Firefox lacks something you actually need.
For others, like me and a bunch of others it is completely the other way, -if I was forced to use any other browser it would annoy me to no end (not tree tabs, etc etc).
So while I think it is totally fine to point out where other does better, telling everyone that Chrome is better isn't even true except for very specific cases.
Edit: clarify need
[+] [-] cft|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tharre|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] free2rhyme214|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzy2|9 years ago|reply
It’s really unfortunate that developers of many interesting products (or websites!) seem to be forgetting about CPU efficiency. The Atom editor is another example.
[+] [-] blubb-fish|9 years ago|reply
But I also believe that this is not going to be the end but instead will make it desirable again to create something new - there will be a new breed of hackers and power users creating new and alternative web based on P2P- and blockchain-technologies, meshed-networks ... I think it's going to be cool :)
(Though I'd be in favor of simply reducing Google's power - but that is simply not going to happen - no matter what browser I use and how many people I convince to use FireFox.)
[+] [-] robbrown451|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyberpunk|9 years ago|reply
Otherwise, I've no probs with FF these days. 49 seems solid on BSD, at least.