Firefox leaves in 3 years

nhgibbwosk · March 27, 2019, 2:04pm

Hello.

I have a few thoughts on Firefox and its future. I want to share them with the community.

Mozilla developers are puffing and puzzling, they want to give out new versions, everything as soon as possible. They literally rip the ass themselves with this update and new versions. Users have not had time to get used to the previous version, but the Mozilla developers are releasing the next version.

I’ve compared the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox for Windows 7 for the main purpose of the browser - displaying HTML pages. Firefox 60.6.1 esr and Chrome 73 are the latest versions for Windows 7 SP1.
https://html5test.com/
Firefox 60.6.1 esr: browser scores 485 out of 555 points
Chrome 73: BROWSER SCORES 535 OUT OF 555 POINTS
They do not even stand close.

Mozilla developers claim, prove, and believe that they make the Firefox browser better and better with each version. But there are less and less users with each version: https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/ . Their number for the year is reduced by 2%-4% steadily since 2010. If this trend continues (and why would it change? It is stable for many years; and the developers do not change their attitude to work, to discipline, to the selection of participants, to prudence, to common sense, to users, to add-on developers, to requests from sensible users and brainless users), then Firefox will play noticeable role among browsers for 3 years (10% ÷ 3%⁄year = 3 years).

When will Mozilla developers already understand that we, the users, do not consider the change in the shape of the corners of the tabs from rectangular to rounded (and then again to rectangular - that’s where the pronounced manifestation of schizophrenia), redrawing the logo (and proving that it is necessary, important and this is an advanced improvement), changing the color of icons and panels, deleting legacy add-ons, etc. as useful improvements? And we do not need such “improvements”. But we consider the really important and necessary improvements to be HTML5 full support, optimization of RAM consumption, etc. And we need such improvements.

The purpose of the message is not another holy war, but I just can not understand, do not Mozilla developers notice that there are less and less users. And they can not really understand that the important reasons for reducing the number of users are their “improvements” and a small number of good improvements.

nukeador · March 27, 2019, 2:28pm

Hi @nhgibbwosk,

Welcome to Mozilla discourse and thanks for your feedback!

In terms of HTML5 tests there are a few considerations:

Some of these tests do not prioritize features that are used everyday by users, so having a lower or higher score doesn’t equal as worse experience in everyday browsing. Mozilla usually tends to implement first the features that are fully standard and that have a clear impact in daily browsing.
My personal opinion is that the bast majority of users don’t care about HTML5 or HTML5 tests, they want websites to work, and work fast.
Mozilla has been doing a lot of user research to understand users and the results are really focused on website compatibility, speed, security and privacy.
That’s why we have been doing a huge effort to increase performance and catch up with the competition and there is an ongoing effort to implement features that make Firefox the browser who protects people’s choice and privacy, and we believe this will increase its usage.

I hope this brings you a bit of perspective from my internal lenses, although I don’t work on the Firefox team and other people can probably provide your more technical details on why we are doing what we are doing.

Cheers.

mkohler · March 27, 2019, 2:37pm

I’m not gonna go down the rabbit hole of arguing whether that test is relevant or not. However:

I don’t think this is fair. Why are you comparing against ESR? If so, I’d say compare against the latest stable release and not Enterprise. This would be Firefox 66 which scores 513, showing exactly that there are improvements being done.

Edit: that score is for Mac, so not comparable, sorry.

decoder · March 27, 2019, 2:35pm

Firefox 60.6.1 esr and Chrome 73 are the latest versions for Windows 7 SP1 .

I don’t think this is correct. The latest Firefox version is 66.0.1. If you compare the ESR version of Firefox (which is half a year old by now) to the newest Chrome on regular release train, that comparison won’t work very well.

nhgibbwosk · March 27, 2019, 3:49pm

After 8 years of constantly reducing the number of users, only a fanatic will believe this.
Let’s live in objective reality, not in our fantasies.

I took for comparison the version of Firefox 60.6.1 esr, because this is the latest version for Windows 7. I do not have other operating systems.

What do you think about the fact that for 8 years in a row (2010-2019) the number of users is constantly decreasing? Have you noticed this trend? What are some reasons why people refuse to use Firefox? Do not you think that one of the main reasons lies in yours actions?

mkohler · March 27, 2019, 3:55pm

Firefox 60 is not the latest version for Windows 7. Windows 7 is still supported in recent builds: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/66.0.1/system-requirements/

nhgibbwosk · March 27, 2019, 4:34pm

It seems that Firefox 60.6.1 esr does not automatically update from the ESR channel to the main channel. And I thought that it had ceased to be updated, because this is the latest version for Windows 7.

In any case, it’s not about a specific version of Firefox, but about the fact that Mozilla employees should understand that users do not like their work.
Stop redoing the shape of the corners of the tabs and redraw the icons and etc. Make useful improvements. Otherwise, Firefox will die. After 3 years, almost all users will forget about you.

Thanks.

decoder · March 27, 2019, 5:03pm

It seems that Firefox 60.6.1 esr does not automatically update from the ESR channel to the main channel.

Yes, because that is exactly what it should not do. Companies deploying ESR explicitly want to stay on ESR and not go back to the main channel. If you want the regular version of Firefox, you will have to install it yourself.

In any case, it’s not about a specific version of Firefox ,

Your post was about a benchmark comparison. If you want to compare, you should at least compare the correct versions (leaving aside that this and other benchmarks have flaws as pointed out before).

andreip · March 27, 2019, 9:09pm

Nobody uses W3C anymore. Devs switched to MDN these days. Wikipedia is reporting Firefox is staying the same level for the past year. This is a huge growing market where there are more phones being added which run by default Chrome. Firefox does not to beat Chrome to get market share, it need to beat both Chrome and Android which is really really hard taking into consideration that Mozilla 's revenue is 0.5% that of Google.

Wikipedia is a web site from the top 10, W3C is not.
https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser/browser-family-timeseries

It’s interesting that users are still going down but usage is going up and that is why FF kind of has the same market share.

I think Mozilla is not at all in a bad state. It’s David and Goliath.