Macha 7 days ago | next |

A lot of people here will react to the advocacy cuts, and the idea that advocacy make up such a large portion of the workforce.

30 percent seemed like a lot, but I think it's just 30 percent of the foundation's direct staff. I suspect the corporation employs more people than the foundation? So stuff like development is not included in that count.

I do wonder if the cuts are because of anticipation of lower search revenue from Google with tech restricting legislation on the horizon and google's focus pivoting to AI.

gsnedders 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

> I suspect the corporation employs more people than the foundation?

Yes; the corporation is, last I knew, about a thousand, and the foundation about a hundred.

mossTechnician 6 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

> While Mozilla Foundation declined to quantify the number of people being let go... The Register understands the current headcount is closer to 120, so presumably around 36 people stand to lose their jobs.

Compared to their other investments, how much money are they actually saving by doing this?

appplication 6 days ago | root | parent |

I think it’s a fair question, but I don’t think it invalidates the validity of looking at this particular division and evaluating if it brings the company more value than it costs. It’s like when I cancel Netflix. Compared to my other spending it’s not a lot, and to be honest I won’t even notice the savings. But if the value isn’t there, why spend money on it?

Granted I’m not moralizing about the actual value or correctness of this decision, I know nothing about Mozilla’s inner workings or the work of this division in particular.

necovek 7 days ago | prev | next |

A job for advocacy division is to, uhm, advocate for the product and mission.

We all know how that has worked out in the last decade or so (down to <3% market share from 14% in 2014 and 31% in 2009, though I wonder about absolute numbers as number of Internet users has gone up).

It's fine for Mozilla to recognize this as a failed approach (or team), without dropping their mission altogether.

mmooss 7 days ago | root | parent |

At Mozilla, they advocate for a free and open Internet, user privacy, and more. That's part of the organizations mission. See the OP for more information.

stackghost 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

The Internet has never been less free and open than it is today. Their advocacy has utterly failed.

mmooss 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

> The Internet has never been less free and open than it is today.

In what ways? I'd say it was less free and open when Microsoft controlled almost everyone's browsers, when user data was sent in the open (https wasn't standard), .... It was less free and open in early days when users was restricted to specific types of work; for example, I think conducting business wasn't allowed.

> Their advocacy has utterly failed.

What have they advocated for that has 'utterly failed'?

stackghost 6 days ago | root | parent | next |

We're back to a browser monoculture, Chrome, and Google controls browsers to maliciously cripple ad blocking because it affects their bottom line.

DRM is rampant.

Network neutrality is moribund at best.

Power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few megacorps so you and I can't, for example, run our own email servers if we expect to actually be able to communicate with users of Google or Microsoft.

AI companies get rich doing things that would be illegal for you and me, such as hoovering up copyrighted works without paying for them.

Surveillance is pervasive.

That's just off the top of my head.

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

There are many problems, but that's not evidence that Mozilla's programs are ineffective. People have many health problems and diseases, but that doesn't mean the healthcare system in ineffective. What it shows is that we need Mozilla and healthcare.

> We're back to a browser monoculture, Chrome, and Google controls browsers

Don't forget Apple's browsers, including all the iPhone users.

stackghost 6 days ago | root | parent | next |

>People have many health problems and diseases, but that doesn't mean the healthcare system in ineffective.

This is a deeply flawed analogy, and the two situations are superficially similar at best.

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

Unless you share your reasoning, it's just a baseless claim. Also, what about the issue, whether or not you happen to like the analogy?

stackghost 6 days ago | root | parent |

HN is a very poor medium for this type of conversation, so I'm just going to move on

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

What is the motivation for saying these things? You aren't the only one - lots of people on HN do it, especially today for some reason. It's some sort of rhetorical game or social activity, but I don't quite understand it. I'm genuinely trying to understand.

stackghost 6 days ago | root | parent |

HN is just not a very good platform for discussions that go more than 4-5 replies.

The UI is just poorly suited for protracted discussions, to the point that I'm not interested in continuing this comment chain.

JohnFen 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

> What it shows is that we need Mozilla and healthcare.

I agree, although I'd say that we need a mozilla-like effort that is effective.

> Don't forget Apple's browsers, including all the iPhone users.

Sure, but Apple's world is effectively a monoculture itself. If you don't buy into Apple and their ecosystem, the existence of those things is irrelevant.

mmooss 5 days ago | root | parent |

> Sure, but Apple's world is effectively a monoculture itself. If you don't buy into Apple and their ecosystem, the existence of those things is irrelevant.

Not in this context: Someone claimed above that the web browser market was a monoculture of only Google Chrome. Apple browsers has a large market share, so it's not a monoculture.

JohnFen 5 days ago | root | parent |

By that I mean is that in order to use Apple's software, you have to join Apple's entire ecosystem. That means it's not really an alternative if you otherwise find Apple's products unacceptable.

tivert 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

>> The Internet has never been less free and open than it is today.

> In what ways?

In the past the internet was a collection of a multitude of relatively open and decentralized sites. Now, it's utterly dominated by a few large platforms, frequently focused on exploiting user data to the fullest. Everything else is pretty marginal.

psd1 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

They're are at least two different lenses looking at "the internet" ITT.

I don't see how Mozilla could have shifted the needle on the rise of big web properties. In fact, I want a browser to be completely agnostic, so if Mozilla had, e.g., prevented the rise of Facebook, then I'd probably conclude that they were anti-open.

What I do want is web standards. IE built its moat, partly, by breaking standards. To be charitable, perhaps standards were moving too slowly.

The sane thing is ming again with chrome. Now, by my choice not to use a chrome engine, i have patches of nonfunctionality. I feel like we've been trojan'd.

frenchy 6 days ago | root | parent |

Standards are great, in theory, but a standards group can easily be co-opted by throwing enough people and money at it. That's basically what happened with DRM.

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

> a standards group can easily be co-opted by throwing enough people and money at it.

The word 'easily' does a lot of work there. How easy? Many standards work well. The Internet, an incredibly successful engineering project, is built on standards.

pjmlp 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

We are back to MSN, Compuserve and AOL days, before Internet became widespread.

Apparently centralization is what most regular folks rather adopt.

Xelbair 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

This time Google controls everyone's browsers, and has perverse conflict of interest between advertising and users - which Microsoft didn't had(yet).

also internet has become more and more centralized compared to it's heyday. even that alone makes it less free and open.

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

> Google controls everyone's browsers

Apple has a large market share, unless we exclude mobile users.

JohnFen 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

> I'd say it was less free and open when Microsoft controlled almost everyone's browsers

Now it's Google, so that situation hasn't changed any.

> What have they advocated for that has 'utterly failed'?

Privacy and keeping the web open, mostly. The privacy situation is worse now than ever, and the open web is continuing to shrink.

> It was less free and open in early days when users was restricted to specific types of work; for example, I think conducting business wasn't allowed.

When was this? I've been on the internet since before it was open to the general public, and I don't remember a time when users were restricted to specific types of work, nor a time when conducting business was not allowed.

Anthony-G 5 days ago | root | parent | prev |

One huge success that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in this discussion is the Let’s Encrypt project which was started by Mozilla staff and has had remarkable success in setting up a public key infrastructure that makes it free – and easy – for server admins to configure TLS on their web servers. 20 years ago HTTP was the default protocol for web traffic; now HTTPS is the default.

akira2501 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Then they take Google's money and fail to influence open standards meaningfully.

mmooss 7 days ago | root | parent |

> fail to influence open standards meaningfully

I'm not sure what you are referring to: What open standards have they tried and failed to influence, and where have they succeeded?

ffsm8 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

> What open standards have they tried and failed to influence,

That's most definitely a reference to the comitees Mozilla is part of, i.e. the W3C, but never actually meaningfully influence their decisions. Google just does whatever it wants, and the rest need to chase their implementation or become less relevant as website start using the new features.

> and where have they succeeded?

I thought their point was that Mozilla doesn't...?

mmooss 6 days ago | root | parent |

> I thought their point was that Mozilla doesn't...?

If their argument that Mozilla has failed at everything, then it's ridiculous. If they want to evaluate Mozilla overall, then that includes both Mozilla's successes and failures.

necovek 6 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Firefox is a tool they use to achieve that mission: success of it should correlate with them achieving free and open internet.

If that is not the case, and they have achieved their mission with Firefox being a non-factor, they should instead stop funding FF development.

hoseja 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

They should advocate for independence from Google and a good browser. These parasite efforts are just so disgusting.

pyrebrowser 6 days ago | prev | next |

Pyre Browser is 44% faster than firefox and our running costs are $20 a month. It reduces global energy consumption by 60tWh and allows free speech across all domains. We dont need an advocacy division - we have already freed the internet!

arunabha 7 days ago | prev | next |

Is there an alternative to Firefox that is not controlled by big tech? One of the saddest outcomes of what seems to be the inevitable demise of Firefox would be that there would be no viable alternative to big tech browsers.

lmm 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Konqueror was always the only sensible choice, the only browser built from the ground up as open-source, and still the best I've ever used.

jraph 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Konqueror is unfortunately not an option anymore when it comes to having an alternative to the big web engines, as it relies on Blink or WebKit now.

extraduder_ire 7 days ago | root | parent |

Konqueror has been written in webkit since back when it was called KHTML. It's where apple got the original source code to make Safari.

jraph 6 days ago | root | parent |

The KDE folks did some impressive work back then. That the world basically runs on derivatives is quite the achievement.

But you can't say anymore that Konqueror is an alternative to big tech.

I wish we still had a live khtml developed by KDE today but we don't.

We don't have any non big tech alternative today. Firefox is funded by Google.

There's hope with servo and ladybug.

Netsurf seemed like a very nice codebase but somehow it seems to remain small and too limited for most uses.

rpgbr 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Konqueror isn’t the main KDE browser anymore. It’s Falkon, and both use QtWebEngine, which is based on Chromium. KHTML is dead AFAIK.

autoexec 5 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Forks of firefox? LibreWolf seems nice but it remains to be seen how long they'd last if firefox stopped being developed by Mozilla

ozornin 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Orion by Kagi https://kagi.com/orion/

psd1 7 days ago | root | parent |

It says on the first line that it's powered by webkit.

You're technically correct, it's an independent browser, but I find that moot if it's just a repackaging of a big tech render engine.

kevincox 7 days ago | root | parent |

WebKit has mostly splut from Blink. Really as long as you aren't using a repackaged Chromium you aren't getting all of Google's harmful features by default and are resisting the monoculture.

Safari definitely isn't the best option to diversify into (Apple shares lots of Google's harmful ideas such as their own version of Web Environment Integrity) but I consider it a significant step up from Chrome.

insane_dreamer 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Opera?

jraph 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Nope. Opera now relies on Blink, Chrome's engine. It is an alternative browser UI bit relies on Big Tech for the rendering.

yesbut 7 days ago | prev | next |

The workers should fire the execs and convert Mozilla into a democratically controlled worker-owned company.

miki_oomiri 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

90% of 2010’s Mozilla employees are gone. Most core employees are gone. Most Firefox-era developers are gone.

Most PM and directors were brought in after firefox got big.

They can’t even find a CEO.

The people who made Mozilla great are now working somewhere else.

kleranc 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Yes, this is another example how foundation directors and CEOs profit from OSS while ruining the organization.

One wonders if that is the overarching strategy of those who fund OSS.

matheusmoreira 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

That's incredibly sad. I wish those people had forked Firefox and created their own company to rival Mozilla. I would have switched.

drak0n1c 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

One did. Brave browser.

fyrn_ 7 days ago | root | parent |

Isn't brave just a chromium flavor?

matheusmoreira 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

It is. At least they're not forcing the controversial changes such as Manifest V3 onto their users.

Daedren 7 days ago | root | parent |

They very much are. V3 support comes with Chromium, and once Google removes V2 from the codebase they'll have to abide.

The difference is that it's less impactful since it has a near uBO-level blocker built-in to the browser.

matheusmoreira 6 days ago | root | parent |

> The difference is that it's less impactful since it has a near uBO-level blocker built-in to the browser.

I think that's the right thing to do. Honestly V3 is pretty reasonable. It's just that uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should be an exception. It should be built into the browser, only conflicts of interest prevent this. Can't trust an ad company to maintain an ad blocker.

Alupis 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

That is the problem that got them into this situation in the first place.

No consistent leadership vision or direction - do everything and anything their staff wanted, almost none of which was actual tech. They hired activists - not technologists.

Look at the results.

Qwertious 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

>No consistent leadership vision or direction

On the other hand, random side-projects are necessary for finding new ground before it craters you - like how Microsoft was absolutely cratered by the "smartphone" thing and their too-little-too-late Windows Phone.

int_19h 4 days ago | root | parent |

Microsoft didn't need a side project to figure that out, though. Hell, WinMo was already one of the two major smartphone/PDA OSes long before iPhone was a thing.

Loughla 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

What are the results? I can't seem to Google that and get anything meaningful.

Alupis 7 days ago | root | parent |

You can google Firefox market share, Thunderbird market share, Mozilla's financial standing over the past two decades, all of their failed social justice endeavors, etc.

The company rotted from the inside by allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Now Mozilla is severing the limb responsible for endless side-quests - but probably way too late.

FTA: "Fighting for a free and open internet will always be core to our mission, and advocacy continues to be a critical tool in that work. We’re revisiting how we pursue that work, not stopping it"

How about you just make the best damn web browser imaginable?

One of the most important and influential technology companies ever ate itself into a failed advocacy group with a couple mediocre tech hobbies. What a joke...

cxr 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Your diagnosis is off. So many of the good workers got poached by Facebook and all the other companies that HNers dream of working for. Not all of them ever even worked for Mozilla Foundation or its subsidiaries—some simply got reassigned by the company that was actually paying them. Pre-Chrome, for example, the Firefox lead was a Google employee.

And not that it's the product of any of the people who were let go, but developer.mozilla.org is a pretty valuable and high-impact resource. It's more "advocacy for a free and open Internet" than it is "making a browser".

rurban 7 days ago | root | parent |

In which illusionary world would HNers dream of working for Facebook, the ultimate evil cooperation, even more evil than Oracle, the CIA or Palantir?

einsteinx2 7 days ago | root | parent |

Do you really believe there are no Facebook/Meta employees that use HN, the site based in Silicon Valley?

_HMCB_ 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I’ve been following them for over 20 years. Mozilla’s problem is idealism. One project to the next. At the end day, you have to pay your bills.

Alupis 7 days ago | root | parent |

They seemingly spent the last 20 years actively figuring out ways not to make money. It's a terrible shame. They coast on the memories of yesteryear - a shell of their former selves.

naasking 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

They did create some things of lasting value though, like Rust.

lolinder 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

And then proceeded to lay off the Rust team and force it out on its own. That probably worked out for the best in the end, but they don't get to claim credit for Rust's subsequent successes.

naasking 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

They absolutely can. The funded and drove all of the research and development that led to Rust, which would not have been created otherwise.

asadotzler 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Bullshit. They made it. There is no Rust success without Mozilla, none. They can claim 100% credit for all of its successes, legitimately.

lolinder 6 days ago | root | parent |

Just like you can claim 100% credit for all of your child's successes if you boot them out of the house without support as soon as they come of age?

Alupis 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Another missed opportunity in my opinion.

Why do I use a Microsoft product to develop in Rust? Mozilla could have built the best-in-class Rust developer experience, a la Jetbrains.

Just another mismanaged, incoherent side quest.

naasking 6 days ago | root | parent |

Development environments are a time and money sink, a total distraction from Mozilla's actual goals.

Alupis 6 days ago | root | parent |

Perhaps - but Jetbrains pulled in over $400MM USD in revenue in 2021[1]. Jetbrains now even offers a Rust IDE.

Besides - what were Mozilla's actual goals? Find ways to not make money?

People would throw money at a competent, coherent, privacy-centric, non-Microsoft collaborative office suite. Mozilla had Thunderbird, messaging apps, file sharing apps, etc - and somehow never got organized enough to form a single coherent strategy that would make money. Instead they were all one-off half-baked products that were DOA.

It's dumbfounding. GSuite did so well because it's not Microsoft. Today we have many offerings, from Zimbra to Zoho and more - just imagine what someone with Mozilla's reputation and morals could have done for SMB's in this space, before anyone else moved?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains

cxr 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

This presupposes that decisions made by the collective would be better than the direction the execs have given. They won't. It will be just as ineffectual as the Mozilla we've known for the last 10 years.

zxilly 6 days ago | prev | next |

"Fighting for a free and open internet", and got paid by Google.

Well, it's really hard.

autoexec 5 days ago | prev | next |

Now Mozilla is an ad-tech company that spies on its users and sells data to marketers so what use is an advocacy team that spreads lies?

b59831 7 days ago | prev | next |

Hopefully they'll replace them with people who'll make firefox better.

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

I doubt it. This company seems to have major structural problems, and cutting some stuff here and there isn't going to fix it. Its expenses are huge, and it pays its executives obscene amounts of money, and meanwhile they've been wasting tons of money on stuff like Pocket, AI crap, and now they're pissing off supporters by getting into ads.

I think what we really need is for a new company to get started in some other country, where the cost of living and the cost of executive salaries is much, much cheaper. Have that company fork the Firefox codebase, and then only concentrate on Firefox (Newfox? Betterfox?) browser development and maintenance, and nothing else. They could work more like Wikipedia, just taking donations and building up an endowment with that to fund themselves, and keeping their operations very lean so they don't need that much money to begin with.

bawolff 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

What they should have done was build an endowment when they were getting crazy google money. It obviously wasn't going to last forever.

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Yes, definitely. It would have been easy back then to build an endowment if they hadn't blown money on so much BS and prepared for a future where they wouldn't have all that money coming in. I think it's too late for them now, and I don't see how they can possibly trim things down into a lean, efficient organization, especially not in the US. That's why I think someone in a cheaper country needs to fork the thing and take over Firefox development. This will probably have to wait until Mozilla is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy though.

neilv 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Why haven't some EU and/or Latin American countries funded a Web browser in a meaningful way, in an effort to be less under the thumb of US tech companies?

They could fork Firefox or Chromium, poach some current developers, hire some more, and assert a strong presence on standards.

I_AM_A_SMURF 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Microsoft gave up on building a Web Browser engine and you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build. They requires a lot of (very expensive) niche technical talent. Not to mention the need to keep up with the rate of Google's improvements to Chrome/Blink. We're at a point where Chrome has a 10 year head start to any other engine other than Firefox, building a general purpose new engine from scratch is basically off the table, and hard forking Chrome/Blink is also off the table (because why would you toss the ~1bn$ Google puts into chrome every year?). We're in a world of a single browser engine, no way to go back for the foreseeable future.

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

>you think a government can?

Do I think a government can fund a group of developers to fork some existing code and run with it? Yes, I do. Radical concept, I know...

alternatex 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

I think you severely underestimate the size and complexity of something like Chromium. Not every project is fork and work material.

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent |

Well, a bunch of volunteers seem to have little trouble forking Firefox and creating Pale Moon, Waterfox, LibreWolf, and IceCat. You think a government can't do that? All they have to do really is throw some money to these existing groups.

Why do you keep bringing up Chromium anyway? We're talking about Firefox here.

krige 7 days ago | root | parent |

Yes, yes, and now Pale Moon is four years of web development out of date, Waterfox is not really recommended, LibreWolf has some sketchy history and so on. Forking is easy - keeping it updated and secure is hard.

I_AM_A_SMURF 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

A government funding a 1 billion dollars a year software project? That would never fly in any country.

shiroiushi 6 days ago | root | parent |

There's no way you need $1B/year to properly fund the ongoing development and maintenance of an existing web browser. The Ladybird team is making an all-new browser from scratch for almost nothing. Just because Mozilla is wasting so much money doesn't mean you actually need that much to do the same job.

marto1 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

> you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build.

As opposed to CERN being easy to build!? I'd say is totally doable, but it doesn't promise filling anyone's pockets at the moment so traction is hard. Who knows, maybe in the future..

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

>Why haven't some EU and/or Latin American countries funded a Web browser in a meaningful way, in an effort to be less under the thumb of US tech companies?

As with many things, it's just like Dark Helmet said in Spaceballs: "Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

Not to say that the US (or Mozilla or Google) is evil and the EU and LATAM are good (LATAM in particular is a really screwed up place, with a few exceptions that aren't as broken like Chile), but while the US obviously has its problems and does really stupid stuff (see the current election), other places do incredibly stupid stuff too (see Germany disarming, shutting down all its nuclear power and trying to make itself dependent on Russian fossil fuel energy). Honestly, I think the main reason the US is still doing as well as it is (see the strength of the USD) is because everyone else is so busy shooting themselves in the foot with a shotgun.

So yes, I totally agree: theoretically it should be pretty simple to just fork Firefox (or Chromium, though I think the former is a much better choice so we don't the whole web dependent on a single browser engine, if for no other reason), poach some current devs, hire some new ones locally, and then become the new "open standard". But good luck getting some national government (or even a group of them, like with the EU) having some vision and backing such a move.

emmelaich 7 days ago | root | parent |

Not sure that'd even work. The best developers would get paid a lot more by working for a for-profit company, probably US-based. It's just too tempting.

neilv 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

IME, the best developers tend to be genuinely passionate about principles.

They aren't necessarily working for Mozilla now, because they can see right through a lot of obviously bad moves Mozilla has made, and ridiculously overpaid executives.

"Go where the biggest paycheck is" is people who care more about career than mission. Why would you even want those people, unless you can't get the mission ones.

shiroiushi 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Maybe, but if you actually want to poach people, you have to make large pay offers to get them to jump ship. So instead of just paying the prevailing rate for SWEs in $country, they need to actually look at how much those devs are making in the US and match that. Sure, it'll be expensive, but if it's only a handful of key people, it doesn't matter.

aphantastic 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Trick is to start some sort of commune in Colombia and attract talent with the local amenities. Nice private community full of 10-15 software engineers, private chefs, security, etc would be less than $1-2k/month per person. Maybe turn it into a vacation spot: “tired of your work? Take 6 month sabbatical to come party in LATAM while making meaningful software. Work hard/play hard - apply by linking to the most meaningful PR you have contributed to an FOSS project.”

Honestly not a bad plan.

shiroiushi 6 days ago | root | parent |

After this election, not a horrible idea, but I'm not sure Columbia is the best choice for a destination. Panama would probably be a lot better, and you wouldn't need to make a commune. Panama City is a pretty decent-looking place, and even has a subway system that makes the public transit in the US look bad. Costa Rica would be good too.

aphantastic 4 days ago | root | parent |

Go for it. But based on reaction to my prior comment it looks like everyone wants someone to drop everything and dedicate their life to a web browser, but nobody wants to do it themselves.

briantakita 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Either they need to do drastic cuts & focus on fundamentals. Or a fork with less funding entanglements can. Or an alternative project like LadyBird can.

Loughla 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

What's wrong with Firefox? It's my daily browser and works great. What am I missing?

bluGill 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

The managemant behind firefox does not care about web browsers. They carre about their vision of social justice and the browser is just a tool to get funds for that.

Loughla 7 days ago | root | parent |

That doesn't really have anything to do with how it works though. I was looking more into its actual operation as a browser.

briantakita 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

I use FF as well. I think the problem is lack of focus on core workflows. This is a problem with all major browsers.

For example, why is the address bar so tiny on high resolution screens? One would think this is an easy fix that would improve the UX for many people. Yet years go by with unresolved issues in the trackers.

tpxl 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

> For example, why is the address bar so tiny on high resolution screens

Because in the year of our lord 2024, we for some reason still don't know how big a pixel is. Making a textbox 1cm tall should be trivial, but is for some reason either impossible or never done.

bluGill 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

For a browser UI 1cm is NEVER a useful measurement. 1cm is useful if you are writing CAD software (which you could write as a web app so firefox should know what 1cm is only for purposes of supporting such web apps), so you can touch a physical part to your monitor and visually verify it fits before having a one off part made to do further verification of your design. For everything else what matters isn't the physical size, but if it is visible, which in turn is a function of how far away the monitor is from your eyeballs and your glasses. My phone, laptop, desktop, and movie room (I don't have all of the above, but someone does) all need different sizes of address bar to be useful.

briantakita 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

I would be happy to be able to adjust the font size. It's almost as if these orgs don't use their product...or the effort to make this small change would require a major re-architecture.

trallnag 6 days ago | root | parent | prev |

What's high resolution for you? I'm using Firefox on a 32 inch 4k display and would not want the address bar to be bigger. Of course I could make it smaller / bigger thanks to Firefox supporting custom CSS

bluGill 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

If management cared about the browser they would have never had this staff in the first place, a similar amount of staff for programming, testing, and marketing their browser would have been effective at making a better browser and getting more market share.

hackingonempty 7 days ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Now that few people use it, major sites are not just no longer testing on Firefox they are actively blocking it. Slack, for instance.

KORraN 7 days ago | root | parent | next |

Source? I've been using Slack through Firefox for years, and I remember only one issue - huddles didn't work at the beginning, but it was a minor one, since I use Zoom.

hackingonempty 5 days ago | root | parent | next |

I went back and investigated: Huddles is blocked and I was using a user agent switcher to get around it. Then I had to switch back to Firefox agent string so Google Meet would work. Apparently my user agent switcher has out of date agent strings for Firefox so Slack started blocking me entirely.

So Slack was blocking me entirely because it thought I was using an out of date Firefox but using the default user agent string it works again.

tpxl 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

Huddles worked just fine if you spoofed the user agent, they actively blocked the functionality on firefox.

Lorak_ 7 days ago | root | parent | prev |

I use Slack on Firefox for over 3 years now, without any issues. I've never seen any blocking attempt.