Firefox is hard to love

I love Zen. Sadly, there's one part of it that's been...rough. Firefox just isn't a great browser. I wish it weren't the case.

SOURCES

S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[auslacroix]

As an engineer that worked on the core firefox code, it's a nightmare to implement new standard APIs. We're talking about a codebase that's on average 35 years old. It's like that because historically gecko (the foundation used to build firefox) had to compile and run on some ridiculous platforms and operating systems such as: HPUX, AIX, Solaris, and more. And don't get me started on how we had to put together Cairo to render shit on the screen.

At this point, the macros, wrappers, and templates that were used to allow for all of these OS and platform combinations to even work are so entrenched that it's a losing battle to modernize it without a significant shift to the left and upward. Moving to C++23, rewriting the bulk of the core document shell and rendering pipeline would go a long way but there's too much of a sunken cost fallacy to allow that to happen.

I'm super bummed it's this bad. I love Firefox, I loved working on it. Hell, we even made it into an OS for your phone. Maybe modern tools can help with a _real_ rewrite effort. Fingers crossed.

[ShadoFXPerino]

Fair enough, but for me it's:
gradient, transitions, etc. : +1 point each to chrome
real adblock : +10, 000 points to firefox

[Fan_of_Ado]

Note on your analytics:
- Firefox users probably block analytics
- Firefox users might be spoofing user agent so bad sites actually work

[echorises]

Argument: Firefox doesn't follow standards.
Dissection: Around 90% of all proposals made to W3C is by Google/Chromium based on what they want available in future (that are in alignment with their economic goals and business logic).
Extra: If Mozilla didn't have MDN Web docs, I wouldn't even be following the standards. I'd like to see Google trying their hands at making a documentation for web, as so far they have been quite good at making cryptic labyrinthine documentations for all the stuff they have done.

[JeyPeyy]

Well at least I can use a full fledged ad blocker without any problems

[LtdJorge]

Samsung Browser didn't land features before Firefox. Blink (Chrome) did, and Samsung Browser uses Blink. You literally have it on that table.

[linaori]

Firefox works fine for 100% of the browsing the majority of people do. You're not wrong about the issues, but they just don't affect people in how they use it.

[luminousherbs]

the funny thing about this is that i’ve literally never encountered any of these problems in my 9 years of using firefox

[LordWaterBottle]

I use Firefox mostly because I don't want to use a chromium based browser for fear of Google being able to dictate future web standards (such as the adblock controversies).
As far as missing standards, we kinda don't miss what we don't know. I honestly thought the gradient thing was a weird DarkReader interaction.

Mozilla needs to make the hard decision and fix the technical debt that I had no idea existed before, as I am a casual user.

DarkReader on mobile is cool though.

[vader]

I'm not a Firefox user but tbh, while those are legitimate issues, they don't really matter for 99% of people. Even for developers, it's very rare to develop (or even use) WebRTC apps or debug long-running streaming responses. And most websites don't use new features that aren't yet widely supported by all major browsers. Ofc it sucks for us web developers that we have to wait for FF and Safari to implement them but for users, it doesn't matter. The only real issues that I always encounter when using FF is that the dev tools are worse and don't support certain features like request overrides and some others. But tbh that's far from a showstopper and doesn't affect anybody besides web developers (which ofc doesn't mean that it's not a valid argument against it for you as a web developer).

[Maxo-bhni]

Theo, your criticisms are valid but the way you present them is so aggressive.
1. ".fuck-firefox"
2. The constant audible groaning
3. You stated that people in the WAN show stream were lying about using Firefox, while actively ignoring the loud minority issue that the entire clip is based on.

Not to mention that most of the issues you are discussing don't affect me, or many other people. What does affect me is the removal or reduction of ad blockers on chromium. For that reason, my stuff is staying on Firefox.

[gm]

I'm a regular Firefox user, even using it for web dev, and a lot of what Theo is saying is true. Firefox is stagnating on implementing new web features, and they slowed down especially so after 2018. I hope this video helps push the right people to make this change. I also like firefox a lot, but the lack of web features is a growing list as each year goes on... and its concerning, I want the browser to do better

[tereleksa]

Give the Firefox Community at least half of the money that Google invests in Chrome, and you will have support for all APIs, 1080p, and much more

[MaksimVasilev-ih]

opens the video in firefox:
- firefox users are delusional
- ad of his own garbage ai chat

-> closes the video and proceeds working with no issues

[elox]

I want to mention the new WebTransport API, which is actually in the opposite situation. After working with it for the past couple months, I can say that Firefox handles it WAY better. When trying to close a WebTransport connection, Chromium doesn't send any info about the disconnection to the client, on Firefox it works fine. On Chromium, my frontend gets flooded with STOP_SENDING errors on connection, on Firefox it works fine. It's the one thing preventing me from switching to Chromium for development

[SoreBrain]

Short term sure it's nice to pretend only chromium exists and develop for it. Monopolies suck and therefore I keep developing for Firefox as well.

[spacedumpster]

He can call people delusional or pretenders or whatever but the simple fact is that none of the items on his list of Firefox grievances matter to me in the slightest bit.

[TroubledTrooper]

The tone is not appreciated, sir. I am stupid and delusional because I don't notice glitchy rendering of a gradient and the lack of developer tools I don't use? Okay. How am I delusional or stupid when I literally had no idea these issues even existed on Firefox? I have never denied that these issues exist. You highlighted them and I agree that they should be fixed. But don't you see the humor of that a little bit? Most here who use Firefox had no idea these issues existed, if the conclusion of these issues that Firefox is falling apart and if you don't share that then you are "delusional", then I am sorry but for most people these are niche usage cases that don't really matter that much to them and Firefox is not unusable. There is no conspiracy to hide that these problems exist. Nobody is being delusional.

I get that it's frustrating when your usage case isn't supported or working well on FOSS. I have been there, but let me tell you how it always is on the other side of this: An user highlights a problem. We acknowledge the issue despite not noticing or having the same issue. We encourage a bug report. Either of two things then happen. The user takes it to Bugzilla and files a report, follows up on an existing one, or the user claims we are all coping or delusional. One of these is productive.

Nobody is coping or deluded about anything, we largely acknowledged the issues as comments show. What do you want people to do? Not use Firefox because of your issues? Admit that Firefox has problems? Okay Firefox has problems. Now what? I am still going to use Firefox, it works. None of these things are deal breakers for me or most others. File these issues with relevant parties and if you are unsatisfied with that then I don't know what else to really say.

[Kaznovx]

Whenever I ram into an issue or a missing / broken feature in Firefox, I find a 15+ years old bug report / feature request that had hundreds of upvotes, people asked for it repeatedly every year, but was deemed "low priority"

[Destroyer]

How is Samsung browser relevant in this discussion if it is just a chromium fork?
Secondly, as a firefox user for 10 years now, the biggest pain for me are sites that block me and otherwise work fine if i just change my browser agent - hence i am sending chrome as my user agent as well.
Warn me that my experience wont be perfect, but blocking me is utterly idiotic. Also is it really surprising that two megacorps are ahead in terms of features? It's called Embrace, extend, and extinguish

Thirdly, I am in firefox for the ultimate control, mainly over ads and tracking, i don't care if some gradient renders or not, i just want to see the content and do whatever i need to do and i often just switch to reading mode anyways.