Good change. It's sad that Firefox can only do these sort of changes under the cover of Safari's or Chrome's larger marketshare. I imagine they would instigate more of such changes sooner if they had a more dominant position.
I feel like anyone who has the slightest interest in the web, or even tech in general, should use Firefox. I don't even think whether Chrome or Firefox is the superior browser is relevant in this context.
Firefox has become the only real cross-platform and non-Google-controlled alternative to Chrome/Chromium. It needs as much marketshare as possible in order to stay relevant and prevent Google from completely dominating the web.
After seeing how google treat's users of other browsers as second class (YouTube, search, to name a few), I decided to switch to Firefox before Google gain's complete control over the open web
Google might be #1 but they're there because people chose them and people can just as easily choose something else. The only company that actually has control of the web is Apple because the 1.5 billion iOS/iPadOS users have no choice in browser engines and so Apple can basically prevent any standard from progressing by refusing to ship it in Safari iOS. On Mac if they don't ship people can choose Firefox or Chrome or whatever else. No other company has that kind of power over the web, certainly not Google since at any time people can switch away from Chrome.
I disagree. While I agree with you that it is highly problematic that iOS/iPadOS users have no alternatives to WebKit in terms of what rendering engine their browser uses, I disagree with the sentiment that Apple has a level of control over the web that is remotely comparable to Google’s.
Why? For one, Chrome has much higher marketshare than Safari on mobile. While Apple has a huge marketshare in terms of revenue, Android devices are much more popular than iOS/iPadOS devices in terms of sheer numbers, and these devices predominantly run Chrome.
As such, Chrome dominates both the mobile and desktop browser market, and the only way for the consumer to work against that is, simply put, to run Firefox/Gecko on his computer and his (Android) phone, or if you’re basically anti-Google like me, WebKit on your iPhone.
No, people don't choose them because they like Chrome, people choose them because Google makes sure that their services don't work well in other browsers!
It's the only browser that gives me complete control over my session logins in containers, and it respects the cardinality of the URL - never meddles with it, conceals part of it, autocompletes it... I use Chrome only when forced to by lack of Firefox support.
Since a couple of versions ago, the history dropdown in the URL bar (but not the URL bar itself) has been hiding the "https://", at least for me. Which is incredibly annoying when you're used to "not having a https:// prefix" implying "use http:// as the prefix", since it makes it look like every site in the history dropdown is insecure. And it's inconsistent with the URL bar itself: type "example.org" on the URL bar, and not only will it go to http://example.org, but also it will hide the http://.
People aren't going to do that, though. There's not enough people that understand the issue and are willing to work through the problems to use Firefox.
This is a classic case of chasing after the ideal solution and ending up nowhere instead of making a compromise and actually improving things. It would be far better for everyone if Mozilla used the Chromium engine and built features on top of that like Microsoft is doing. Instead they are putting massive amounts of effort into a rendering/js engine that will always be "broken" because it's not exactly the same as Chrome.
I have this option enabled and you would be surprised how many major web sites it breaks.
We can blame chrome and safari all we like, but the real blame is on web devs who had 1-2 years to fix this and just can't bother (until forced by Google or Apple).
Edit: I generally address this by contacting the site admins, showing them screen dumps of their broken site and say they should demand their web devs fix this for free since their design goes against industry best practices (I often include link to Mozilla article on this).
If that doesn't help, I try again with the higher ups, telling them their store have silently been rejecting paying customers and their IT people have refused to fix it. This usually fixes the issue quickly, only to come back after the next major site update.
> I have this option enabled and you would be surprised how many major web sites it breaks.
It's caused two major outages for us. Rather insidious as well since Chrome does A/B testing and gradually was rolling this change out.
> I generally address this by contacting the site admins, showing them screen dumps of their broken site and say they should demand their web devs fix this for free since their design goes against industry best practices
That's just not how the world works. Sites today are a mish mash of different application engines, SAAS providers, libraries and frameworks. If the version I built on two years ago doesn't set the Same-Site property that's not my (or the vendor's) fault. They gotta pay me to upgrade to fix it. And that's hoping that everything I depend on has upgraded their stuff to fix it.
Requiring the whole world to change instead of just changing a choke point like three major browsers is an unreasonable ask and only postpones actual progress.
Nothing is tangible to anyone until something is broken.
While I agree that much is on the web developers, there is also management to blame for not allowing time for fixes, until stuff is truly broken and lies in pieces.
Mozilla is no longer in a position to make such a change. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that management will care in most cases and the errors resulting from this will be blamed on FF and not on the site in question.
It was important enough around 2010 to have a real impact (30+%).
Why wouldn't people switch to FF anymore? I'd say because they prioritize their product development in the wrong way. It's really sad. Competition would be helpful for the market.
I don't really think that's it; I think people just don't believe their personal choice of browser is going to make enough of a difference to privacy and competition to actually positively affect them; they just don't care in other words. And... I'm not sure their wrong. Sure, more competition would be good, but it's hard to see that being enough to address the monopolistic issues browsers currently face. And on iOS - you don't even really have a choice, given apples rules.
I have tried switching from Chrome to FF multiple times in the past 18 months. It just doesn't work. Neither for development nor for general use. It's sadly just not competitive anymore.
I like to use my Bluetooth headset (or to be more specific, the touch bar on my Mac indirectly) to control YouTube video playback. It's 2020 and Firefox still does not support it. It's really a basic feature that any other app on the Mac supports. Don't get me started on its performance in the dev console and in general. It just cannot keep up performance-wise, neither with Safari nor with Chrome. Instead, we now got a Mozilla VPN. I am not at all surprised their market share won't go up.
In fact, it's just sad. I would really love to make the switch to support Mozilla as an alternative to the Google Ads monopoly. But not at the expense of giving up basic features that I have gotten used to. Maybe I'll try again once Google has managed to completely screw up on uBlock Origin and other beloved filter extensions.
You've got to admit that's a pretty hyper-specific feature there. It shouldn't surprise you that many users haven't run into it. But a quick google finds an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-keys/ - does that do what you want?
Stuff like this is largely a matter of habit. You're used to chrome's details - so they make sense. But examples the other way around exist too - e.g. I'd find it hard to miss the picture-in-picture feature from FF when watching youtube in chrome. 'course, there's an extension for that too ;-).
So the browser as an integrated media playback system is an edge case? Are you serious? Media control keys support for software that claims media playback as one of its main features is hyper-specific? I mean if it's so rare, then why did Google decide to implement it? And why do other FF users not run into this? I'll tell you. Because there are virtually no FF users anymore. They don't even install it.
And btw. thanks for the media keys recommendation. From the extension's description page, literally the first thing that comes up when you look at it:
1. The browser window must be active for media keys to be detected due to a Firefox limitation.
2. Only Play/Pause is supported due to a Firefox bug.
3. Pinned tabs get priority over all other tabs when pressing a media key.
4. macOS is not supported due to Firefox bug.
It's literally mentioning three FF bugs preventing you from building something useful with it on its front page. Meanwhile, that feature should have been something that doesn't require an extension on any supported platform in the first place.
None of these bugs/limitations are present in any Webkit/Chromium based browser I tested so far on macOS.
I won't even get into other unrelated "curiosities" here, like the order of DOM mutation events being wrong when debugging, but correct when the debugger is not attached in FF.
Hey no need to twist words - I think the use of bluetooth controls for desktop browser media playback is an edgecase. On windows at least, most people use the website directly, not via media buttons - I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone use the buttons like that, chrome user or not. Still, it's a nice feature - sure! Shame the extension doesn't work.
As to a feature being something that should not have required an extension in the first place - I don't agree with this. It's not just that the feature may or may not be attractive to a small slice of users, it's that we're quibbling not over the functionality, but over how it's delivered. Not every project needs to increase its scope to cover every possible use-case, even if they're valuable; that's kind of the point of add-ons.
As to mutation events - https://caniuse.com/#feat=mutation-events that's deprecated, so not exactly surprising to see a stagnant debugging support. Or perhaps you meant its replacement https://caniuse.com/#feat=mutationobserver? Is this an issue of insufficient backwards compatibility (event's replacing observers are around 8 years old), or an issue in the newer api?
In any case; I'm not begrudging you personal bad experience with FF - it's your experience after all. But as you say, it's a shame there isn't more competition and diversity; so I'm curious as to what the root cause is for it's lack of competitiveness.
As a fun exercise, if you want to, type "media keys" in Google and look at the autosuggestions coming up :) Must be an edge case also.
I was talking about MutationObserver. I didn't have the urge to self-injure even more, so I didn't dive deeper into why FF is buggy there as well. I accepted it and moved on. By now, I am sure you will be able to find a way of arguing for FF regardless how buggy it is, so peace out bro – let's not spin this further :)
Just one last opinion: As to the root cause for its lack of competitiveness: My opinion is, as you may have guessed, that FF's codebase is pretty rotten and their product ownership is incapable of prioritizing correctly, both tactically and strategically. But of course, I won't be able to prove that. And you won't be able to disprove it. So let's leave it there.
FF's global desktop market share is at 8.6% [1] as we speak. Safari (macOS) is about to overtake it. When looking at global browser market share overall, it's at about 4.2% [2]. Safari has now double the market share of FF.
A welcome change indeed. Not that it couldn't be a good mechanism, but abuse has shown that these steps are necessary. I would go even further.
But I think this can be an argument to switch browsers. Common users might not have the technical insight, but are certainly not keen on being tracked.
Needs lot more imagination than what you see on the Mozilla discussion boards. Which is mostly people just reacting to issues like a mom and pop store reacting to Walmart. But timelines in brick and mortar land are very different from how things work on the internet.
Since things move fast these days(See TikTok) I think its a better strategy to just speed up Google's goal of turning the Internet into an exploitative cess pit.
Their main goal is to increase sewage flow and ensure all flows move through their useless cloud and devices. Every time a cell divides, if DNA has to be read from Google through Google that would be optimal. Its all great and visionary, but with those increasing flows the stink of their creation constantly rises.
The more it stinks the more people can't ignore it.
So lets speed it up. Mozilla get out of the way guys. They will just use you guys, as they have, to signal their generosity or openness to learning or whatever bullshit. Why allow that?
Everyone likes to focus on how fast things can scale UP.
But they can collapse fast too. We need tools to do both.
So if Google and Facebook and Twitter want to scale up and give us 20 Trumps and Brexits this year and 200 next year and 2000 the year after, how can we help them do it faster? Thats the only way change will happen.
If that's not interesting to Mozilla, its could just sell Firefox to Samsung or whoever and go off and do something totally different as the Whatsapp, Signal guys did.
Funniest written angry comment I've read recently, thank you. If the topic was not sad, I'd probably laugh by now.
The problem is, that many big ones including government and also in consequence smaller fish wont quit the Googlenet, but for the sake of short term profit will stay in it, no matter how much it stinks. (Oh, you got no Google shopping card? How are we going to check your identity then? No, we cannot deal with you here, we are sorry!) This might make it very difficult for people to get official service without involving big corp.
