I think Mozilla is misapplying its development time on stuff like social integration [1] and Firefox OS [2]. I would say these types of projects would be fine if they weren't ignoring their mainstay, by first canceling the process per tab project Electrolysis and now abandoning 64bit builds on Windows says to me that Mozilla seriously has its priorities screwed up.
The web browser has become the most important app on the PC, with more and more web pages demanding more and more resources, I really wish Mozilla would refocus on making the best web browser available.
A few weeks ago I tried to delete some of my history from Firefox, I opened the history window, hit Shift and selected about 6 months of history and hit delete, and it took Firefox about an hour to delete the history all the while the UI going from responding to not responding back and forth. Firefox has some serious performance problems.
Firefox OS is using the Electrolysis code, and since it is all the same core, Gecko, this means Firefox Desktop and Firefox Android are benefiting from engineers that were allocated to Firefox OS continuing to make Electrolysis better for all three targets.
There are plenty of engineers still working on Projects Snappy and MemShrink who are looking directly at the metrics related to the performance problems you describe.
The places database is known to have serious performance problems, as you discovered. It is difficult to reengineer but it is being worked on.
Finally, 64 bit windows builds are not being abandoned. They are being disabled for a time until the issues with marking bugs as 64 or 32 bit and other administrative details are ironed out.
These are my own perceptions and opinions about the situation.
Thank for enlightening us on the matter.
Well, maybe that would be worth a blog post ?
What about a quarterly "state of the union" to let people see the big picture instead of apparently unrelated and confusing press release ? Not that it's a due but it would certainly help your communication ;-)
Developers are not fungible. The social integration work was mostly HTML5 and JavaScript, and Firefox OS is partly kernel and OS work (B2G), and partly HTML5/JavaScript work (Gaia). 64-bit builds on Windows requires Windows developers, who are focusing on the Metro UI.
EDIT: I'm responding to your edit here:
> A few weeks ago I tried to delete some of my history from Firefox, I opened the history window, hit Shift and selected about 6 months of history and hit delete, and it took Firefox about an hour to delete the history all the while the UI going from responding to not responding back and forth.
I would imagine the Firefox developers spend their time optimizing the parts of their browser that users would most likely use. I suspect that they are not terribly worried about an action that users would take (at most) once every six months.
EDIT2: I guess I'll respond to this one too:
> The web browser has become the most important app on the PC, with more and more web pages demanding more and more resources, I really wish Mozilla would refocus on making the best web browser available.
Making the best web browser is not Mozilla's goal. Their goal is to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web" [1]. Integrating social features into the browser is part of that, in the sense that users will be able to control their social presence from their browser, rather than being locked-in to a specific social provider's web site. Mozilla's actions are not inconsistent with their stated mission. (Whether you agree with that mission is another argument entirely).
According to W3Schools[1] ~84% of web traffic comes from Windows users. In light of that wouldn't it make more sense to hire more Windows developers? If cuts have to be made it doesn't seem reasonable to make cuts to your main source of revenue.
edit: In response to your edit:
>Making the best web browser is not Mozilla's goal. Their goal is to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web"
If Mozilla's goal isn't to make the best web browser then no one will end up using their browser, and if no one uses their browser then they wont be able to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web", no market share = no voice. During the days of IE6's dominance Mozilla got its large user base because it was the best browser available. Mozilla is in danger of hemorrhaging users if it continues making these sort of decisions.
Us "hackers" got Mozilla its user base, we started using it first and convinced our family, friends, workmates/workplaces to switch. If the power users leave, the rest will be soon to follow.
This is off-topic, but you should know that there are a number of significant issues with W3Schools that prevent it from being a reputable source: http://w3fools.com/
No offense, but anyone who visits w3schools is probably clueless and lost. It's a terrible resource that needs to be destroyed, scrubbed from the search results like Stack Overflow did to Experts Exchange, all for the sake of humanity.
I'm surprised only 84% of the traffic is Windows users.
That is ridiculous. Sure it isn't the best resource available and on some things makes some out of date or wrong recommendations. I have gotten refreshed on basics plenty of times though from a wc3schools links. Does that make me less of a developer?
You are also implying that developers using windows are all second rate.
> I have gotten refreshed on basics plenty of times though from a wc3schools links
When even the basics are wrong you're not getting refreshed much. Especially when adding three letters ('mdn') to the query at the end gives you a much better resource by all metrics.
What I'm implying is that a lot of Windows developers don't have a choice. It's the standard issue computer they're given. Maybe they work for a gigantic company with a fossilized IT department. Maybe they work for the government. Either way those kinds of organizations are not running Linux or OS X or Chrome OS. There is a very strong bias towards Windows because of that.
If you subtract that quotient from the general pool of "Windows developers" it becomes much more of a fair comparison.
Yes, there's useful things on w3schools, but like picking through a trash heap full of rusted bicycles and used syringes, it's a dangerous expedition. You might pick up some awful bad habits along the way.
> I would imagine the Firefox developers spend their time optimizing the parts of their browser that users would most likely use. I suspect that they are not terribly worried about an action that users would take (at most) once every six months.
I stopped using Firefox years ago. Reading an apology on a tech site explaining why, in 2012, it's acceptable that deleting 6 months of history can take one hour (!) gives me confidence that I'll never ever go back to Firefox.
I only use Firefox for development now, mainly for Firebug (and related plugins) but now I am starting to use the Chrome dev tools much much more. The only plugin I am missing to fully ditch FF is Selenium IDE.
I stopped using FF when I left my previous job, synced up my bookmarks before I left but then was unable to retrieve them because I had not written down the access guid. I'll just sync with my Google account and be done with it!
> I would imagine the Firefox developers spend their time optimizing the parts of their browser that users would most likely use. I suspect that they are not terribly worried about an action that users would take (at most) once every six months.
I wish I could use that excuse at work, but it doesn't work like that.
In fairness, Chrome/Chromium have their own set of issues. I use both browsers and come across crashes, poor renderings, bad performance, etc. I still prefer Firefox for a few extensions I use, though.
I stopped using FF when I left my previous job, synced up my bookmarks before I left but then was unable to retrieve them because I had not written down the access guid. I'll just sync with my Google account and be done with it!
Having been a user and developer for almost any time, I would never have relied on that! A simple bookmark export, spot check for some URLs, USB drive/email/FTP to somewhere. I've always done that when leaving jobs (along with other personal things or notes/application settings).
Maybe I'm too cautious, but I've always ended up with a good copy of my data.
To be fair, I had a backup by doing a simple export, it was about a month old so I didn't lose anything important (and reason I did it this way) but the fact it worked that way did annoy me. I just like the way the Google products are much more synced with my life. I was a "work" email which syncs with work related stuff, and personal email with syncs with regular stuff.
I still use both for cross browser testing, and at the moment I still use FF & Firebug but I am weaning myself off it. My day to day browser for everything is Chrome, in much the same way we all ditched IE but still had to occasionally use it for those sites "optimized" for IE.
The Firefox sync is probably the nicest piece of technology they have.
The google account is pretty much the opposite of "secure". Grants access to all the things. And 2 factor auth doesn't exactly help when you computer is compromised.
FF Sync is separate and secure - but - I bet they'll change it for something more Google-like, as usual.
Mobile is very much the future. Windows desktop is both the past and present. The browser has already won the desktop, but its losing on mobile, which is why its so important to focus on Firefox OS, and not so important to focus on Windows desktop.
Isn't the Firefox browser, and through it the search engine traffic which they sell the rights to, the thing that keeps their company running?
You'd think they'd be focused on making a better browser, clawing more market share, and cementing their presence in the browser space.
I used to use Firefox almost exclusively, but lately Chrome and Safari have filled that need. Breaking compatibility with old plug-ins might have been necessary, but it made switching a no-brainer.
I entirely agree with you, but then again, I don't think Mozilla has always had their priorities straight. My favorite example is the 3D view in the inspector. At the end of 2012, you still can't live edit in Markup Panel in any meaningful way, and yet you have a 3D view. I would LOVE to use the inspect bar if it was usable, but now I'm stuck with it and 8 other items in the Web Developer submenu and Firebug. Firebug's been around forever and does everything the other 9 items can and cannot do. Just bundle it into Firefox already and move on to other things geez...
I could not agree with this more, Mozilla is making some strange strategic decisions these days which really make me worry about it's future, because I am a big supporter of Mozilla in general.
I just wish they would "stick to the knitting" and make the best browser they possibly can for multiple platforms.
The web browser has become the most important app on the PC, with more and more web pages demanding more and more resources, I really wish Mozilla would refocus on making the best web browser available.
A few weeks ago I tried to delete some of my history from Firefox, I opened the history window, hit Shift and selected about 6 months of history and hit delete, and it took Firefox about an hour to delete the history all the while the UI going from responding to not responding back and forth. Firefox has some serious performance problems.
[1]. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/11/20/firefox-introduces-...
[2]. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefoxos/