[Bo102010]

Firefox isn't doomed. Not only is it still a good web browser that many (myself included) continue to use daily, inertia will keep it installed on millions of PCs.

As far as I know, Mozilla and Google maintain good relations. Even if the deal that provides money from Google to Mozilla isn't renewed, I doubt they will entirely disentangle themselves from each other.

[rjd]

Firefox is doomed because its lost its developer foot hold, anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead. Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation.

On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better, historical problems have never been addressed, version fragmentation is occurring, on several matters its in direct conflict on the w3c standards with other major players.

The UI is polarising (its the major complaint I actually here next to 'laggy behavior'), the options to change it rely on 3rd party modules which are often bugging and not supported between versions. It's never nailed OSX, it just doesn't 'feel' the same as the rest of the operating system and is slightly jarring at times.

Personally if you take a base install of Opera 11 it is exactly how I want FF to be set up, everything works smoothly, fast, and 'clicky'. I'd recommend any FF user to try the new version of Opera for a few days, then go back to FF and see just how different it feels even though they are aesthetically quite similar.

[FrankBooth]

Most of your post is emotion and opinion, so I thought I'd address the part that is factually incorrect:

> On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better

That's simply not true. To take a single example, the type inference engine added to the JS engine in FF9 significantly improved performance. With the new high frequency release strategy, it's not guaranteed that there will be huge new features or improvements in any given release, but the features and improvements are coming as fast as ever.

> historical problems have never been addressed

You can find ancient pet bugs for any project that either take a long time to get fixed or are never fixed. Do you have something specific in mind?

> version fragmentation is occurring

That's more-or-less false. There's some adjustment going on due to the switch to the high frequency release schedule, but the fact is the vast majority of Firefox users are on a small number of versions, almost all that have been offered an upgrade are on the latest stable release.

> on several matters its in direct conflict on the w3c standards with other major players.

Can you point to anything specific to back up your claim? If you pick and choose specs, this is true for all browsers. Nobody implements everything completely and correctly. The specs are being developed as fast as ever, and it's common for one browser to be ahead in certain areas. It's also common for competing implementations to differ as the standard develops. This is not confined to Firefox.

[theshadow]

"anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead."

Ahh the world of cargo cult browser fanboyism. All I can say is that the devs you are hanging out with aren't very good, any dev who would write off and "laugh at" a browser which boasts the widest and the most mature array of development tools is probably not very good to begin with.

[sounds]

Developer here, and I prefer firefox over chrome.

[grannyg00se]

"The UI is polarising"

What exactly do you mean by that? The UI in a browser shouldn't do anything but get out of the way and display the web page's UI.

Personally, I don't even want to see a menu bar unless I hit the ALT key - which is working nicely for me in Firefox right now.

And I don't notice any "laggy behaviour". Although I haven't run any comparison tests so maybe I'm missing out.

[knewter]

> Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation.

I agree with the first part of your statement, and partially agree with the second. I personally recommend it to everyone over chrome, because firebug is better than chrome's dev tools...well, chrome's js tool is perhaps as good now, but firebug's better for everything else.