this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Firefox

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edited the heading of the question. I think most of us here are reasoning why more people are not using firefox (because it was the initial question), but none of that explains why it's actively losing marketshare.

I don't agree ideologically with Firefox management and am somewhat of a semi-conservative (and my previous posts might testify to that), I think Firefox browser is absolutely amazing! It's beautiful and it just feels good. It has awesome features like containers. It's better for privacy than any mainstream browser out there (even counting Brave here) and it has great integration between PC and Phone. It's open-source (unlike Chrome) and it supports a good chunk of extensions you would need.

This was about PC, but I believe even for Mobiles it looks great and it allows features like extensions (and I hear desktop extensions are coming to firefox android?), it's just a great ecosystem and it's available everywhere unlike most FOSS softwares.

So why is Firefox's market share dying?

I mean, I have a few ideas why it might be, maybe correct me I guess?

  1. Most people don't know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30's still live without ad blockers, so I don't think many are educated here)
  2. It's just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can't deny this, but despite of this, I find it's worthy.
  3. It's not the default.
  4. Many features which are Google specific aren't supported.
  5. Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it's market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.

But what else?

I might take time (a lot of it) to get back at you, thanks for understanding.

occasionally I’ll find websites that don’t work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

For me, until all below are supported Firefox can't be my primary browser.

  1. PWA not supported and only possible with FirefoxPWA. I can't rely to anything but native, Mozilla could break FirefoxPWA any time they want.
  2. I use my browser for my multimedia needs and I use my own Emby Server. Firefox doesn't support mkv container and the most important it desn't support HEVC. Please do not tell me about HEVC royalties and how much Mozilla would have to pay MPEG-LA. Chromium based browsers have enabled hardware HEVC decoding and they pay nothing to MPEG-LA because the royalties have been already payed by my graphics card. Mozilla simply doesn't care.
[–] kier 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, not having a PWAs is a bummer

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

idk what you guys are on about, PWAs work fine for me.

[–] kier 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you must be in an alternate universe

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

pehaps.

I mean I even developed a few for my previous employer. I think chrome is just more permissive with the config and people settle when chrome works. Since I dev on firefox, maybe that's why my apps worked.

[–] kier 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hmm, maybe were area talking about different things

I'm talking about "installing" any website as an app, and your OS treat it like an independent app

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

pwa it's just a browser shortcut without the toolbar and you install it from the browser if the page provides info about that.

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