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So Long, Firefox, Part One

33 points by HotGarbage

by ksec

2 subcomments

Ironically Firefox is currently at its best and most competitive since its inception. But people lost trust in Mozilla, not Firefox and there is no easy way to earn it back.
I am looking forward to Ladybird, I guess for old folks like us it is the second time we are trying to dethrone the incumbent. But this time around it will be so much harder because Google isn't sitting still like Microsoft did with IE.

by TurboSkyline

2 subcomments

Even though the title suggests this piece is about Firefox, most of it is bashing at Google. The author’s main reason for leaving Firefox seems to be that… others have left Firefox?! That, and the quintessential mention of “AI is now in Firefox” that all these articles seem to repeat.

by mindcrash

1 subcomments

A lot of people are switching to Zen Browser, which essentially is a heavily modified, extremely moddable/themable and UX driven Firefox:
https://zen-browser.app/
Zen really becomes particularly awesome if you run Linux with a alternative Wayland compositor like Sway, Hyprland, Mango, Wayfire and friends due to the window management in those environments. As a example: https://www.reddit.com/r/zen_browser/comments/1ky8rdp/arch_h... (this particular Zen instance is modded to be transparent, by the way)

by 1970-01-01

0 subcomment

I pinned where it went wrong. It was obvious at the time yet criticism was ignored. Firefox 4 in 2011. The rapid-release model. That's the exact point in time when they decided to increment version numbers over quality, and everything began to rot from the inside out.
https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/08/12/milestone-fire...

by HelloUsername

1 subcomments

OP fails to mention their alternative browser? If I understand correctly they switched to LibreWolf (or Vivaldi)?

by m000

1 subcomments

This was a rant at best for the sake of ranting, if not for some more insidious ends. What's the point made here? Abandon Firefox because it's market share is 2%?
"I can finally say I'm Firefox-free."? Like if Firefox is the plague or something.
"Just What Went Wrong?": You went wrong, dear TFA author. Choosing hype over substance? Too desparate to meet your hackaday post quota? Who knows.
Let me anecdotally recap the state of Firefox as of 2025:
- Handles 100s of open tabs with no sweat.
- Allows ad blockers.
- Firefox tab sync. Send a tab from my phone to my desktop. See my laptop's open tabs from my desktop.
- PiP videos. Keep a video playing without obstructing you from other tasks.
- Tab containers cleanly separating work and private sessions.
- Free.
Yes, there are things to be desired from the Mozilla Foundation management end. Yes, at some point (optional) integrations were shoehorned into the browser. Yes, newer browsers may offer a friendlier out-of-the-box experience for the average user (e.g. Brave has ad blocking built-in). But all-in-all, Firefox is a fantastic browser and a real workhorse. For free.
And to be fair, the dip in Firefox popularity around 2010-2015 was deserved. The experience kind of sucked at the time, compared to the rising Chrome. Also the decision to drop XUL was in retrospect the technically correct choice. It was the main reason that Firefox managed to catch up in terms of speed and security with Chrome. Unfortunately, the change was not reflected back to the browser's market share.
/EOR

by kgwxd

1 subcomments

I'll try any alternative uBO functions properly in. And it needs to be uBO. I do NOT want my blocking made by the same people that make the browser, it's a major conflict of interest, and should be keep separate no matter how convenient it is to merge them.

by jokoon

3 subcomments

Sometimes I find important websites I use which breaks with Firefox

by theandrewbailey

0 subcomment

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