I’m a software engineer, and when I build web apps, Firefox now stands in the way of me being able to use new standard features (without polyfills). Meaning, if I want to support the 2-5% of users that may use Firefox, I have to explicitly go out of my way to either make my site less efficient for everyone, or build a special version just for Firefox because it’s so behind, like we used to with IE, making Firefox the new IE (except nobody is really using it). And of course, you can only polyfill so much. Some things are utterly impossible, such as the various PWA features that Mozilla refuses to support, or many new CSS features coming out.
This is sad, of course, as I had used Firefox since it was Phoenix circa 2002, and I kept using it until they decided to nuke all the extensions that kept me using it. They nuked a superior API for extensions, replaced it with Chromium’s extension system, and then only implemented 80% of it, so you couldn’t even use all the Chromium extensions you wanted, making it nearly useless. Less power, less customization, and behind Chromium in every single way. They’ve pivoted to pretending to care about privacy, but trusting another corporation with your privacy is flawed logic. They’ve already started including various ads in Firefox and have installed marketing extensions without consent. Do they really care about your privacy or experience? They care about money, and as their profits get squeezed, they’ll become more desperate and abusive like:
I’m a software engineer, and when I build web apps, Firefox now stands in the way of me being able to use new standard features (without polyfills). Meaning, if I want to support the 2-5% of users that may use Firefox, I have to explicitly go out of my way to either make my site less efficient for everyone, or build a special version just for Firefox because it’s so behind, like we used to with IE, making Firefox the new IE (except nobody is really using it). And of course, you can only polyfill so much. Some things are utterly impossible, such as the various PWA features that Mozilla refuses to support, or many new CSS features coming out.
This is sad, of course, as I had used Firefox since it was Phoenix circa 2002, and I kept using it until they decided to nuke all the extensions that kept me using it. They nuked a superior API for extensions, replaced it with Chromium’s extension system, and then only implemented 80% of it, so you couldn’t even use all the Chromium extensions you wanted, making it nearly useless. Less power, less customization, and behind Chromium in every single way. They’ve pivoted to pretending to care about privacy, but trusting another corporation with your privacy is flawed logic. They’ve already started including various ads in Firefox and have installed marketing extensions without consent. Do they really care about your privacy or experience? They care about money, and as their profits get squeezed, they’ll become more desperate and abusive like:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops-firefox-fullscreen-vpn-ads-after-user-outrage/