On Firefox and its decline

I recently encountered a blog post by a former Firefox insider discussing its declining market share.

When it comes to the important question “why?”, he offers that “Google is aggressively using its monopoly position in Internet services such as Google Mail, Google Calendar and YouTube to advertise Chrome.”—which cannot be more than a part of the truth.

If it were the entire truth, this would mostly show in new or inexperienced users going to Chrome instead of Firefox, those that have not yet grown accustomed to a particular browser.

Then why is there a drop among the long-term users? Those who have used Firefox for years? Those who (like me) first used the Firefox grandfather Mosaic well over twenty years ago and then graduated to its father, Netscape?

Things like that happen either because the competition grows better (or better faster) or because the own product grows worse. Indeed, this is what I have repeatedly experienced as a user: After Netscape, I switched to Opera for a number of years, because Opera actually was a better browser, especially with its tabs. Year for year, Opera failed to add new useful features and tried to force-feed the users poorly thought-through ideas that some manager or developer out of touch with his users saw as revolutionary. Eventually, I gave up and moved over to Firefox, which at the time did a reasonable job and had over-taken Opera—not because of its own qualities, but because Opera declined.

Unfortunately, Firefox has gone down the same destructive path as Opera followed, has grown worse and worse, and the only reason that I am still with Firefox is that I use the “Tor Browser Bundle”, which is based on Firefox and recommended as the safest way to use Tor by the Tor developers.

To list all that is wrong with Firefox and its course would take far too long—and would require digging through many years* of memories of “for fuck’s sake”–memories.

*I am uncertain how long I have been using Firefox by now. In a rough guesstimate, the Opera-to-Firefox switch might have occurred some ten years ago.

However, to list some of the most important (often over-lapping) issues:

1. The removal of preferences that should be standard, e.g. the ability to turn images and JavaScript on and off. If these remain at all, they are pushed into the infamous, poorly documented, and unreliable “about:config”—the use of which is strongly discouraged by Firefox.

   When such preferences are removed (respectively moved to “about:config”) the handling can be utterly absurd. Notably, when the setting for showing/not showing images in web pages was removed, the Firefox developers chose to defy the stated will of the user by resetting the internal setting in about:config to the default value…

   To boot, config switches that are in “about:config” often stop working after some time, merely being kept to prevent scripts from breaking, but no longer having any practical function. Among the side-effects is that someone finds a solution for a problem on the Internet, alters the configuration accordingly—and has to spend half-an-hour researching why things still do not work as intended. (The reason being that the solution was presented for an earlier version of Firefox and Firefox failed to make clear that this solution was no longer supported.)

2. Forcing users to download add-ons to handle tasks that a good browser should have in its core functionality, while adding nice-to-haves appropriate for an add-on to the official interface… (The “sync” bullshit is a good example.) Worse: Not all add-ons are compatible with each other (or with every Firefox) version, making this road unnecessary problematic, with results including even browser crashes. To boot, any additional add-on increases the risk of a hackable vulnerability, data being leaked to a hostile third-party, or similar.
3. Failing to add functionality that would be helpful, e.g. a possibility to disable the design atrocity that is “position:fixed” or a user-friendly mechanism for mapping keys.
4. One truly great (and expectedly oldish) feature of Firefox is the ability to save tabs and windows when exiting or the browser crashes and have them restored on the next start. This especially since Firefox crashes more than most other applications.

   Unfortunately, the configuration of this feature is a bitch (and probably disabled by default). There are at least two (likely more; it has been a while since I dealt with this the last time) flags that have to have the right value for this to work—one of which should rightly be entirely independent*. The names of these settings in about:config and the description in the GUI are non-obvious, more-or-less forcing a user to search the web for information—if he is aware that the feature exists in the first place. And: In several releases this feature has been so bug ridden that no combination of settings has worked…

   *The one appears to control the feature; the other controls whether a warning is issued when a user tries to close more than one tab at a time. When the latter is disabled, which is very reasonable even for someone who uses the former, the former is ignored…

   Worse, without this functionality a simple “CTRL-q” just quits the browser—no confirmation, no tabs saved. For a power surfer who regularly has dozens of tabs open at the same time, this is a major issue. This is the worse since someone heavy on tabs is almost certainly a frequent user of “CTRL-w”* and there is no good native way to change key bindings—amateurish!

   *I.e. “close the current tab”. Note that “w” is next to “q” on a standard QWERTY-keyboard, making the likelihood of occasional accidents quite high.

5. The config management is lousy.

   For instance, Firefox started with the Windows style concept of “one user; one configuration” and never added provisions to e.g. specify config files on the command line. Among the negative side-effects is the later need to invent the redundant and poorly implemented concept of a “profile”—confusing, user-unfriendly, and bloating the code.

   For instance, “about:config” provides many, many options of the type normally found in a config file, that could have been edited with a text-editor much more comfortably than over the about:config interface. However, this opportunity was not taken and the users are stuck with about:config. Actually, there are some type of files, but these are absurd in comparison with those used by most Linux applications—and it is very, very clear that users are supposed not to edit them. (Statements like “Do not edit this file.” feature prominently.) For example, Firefox uses user_pref(“ui.caretBlinkTime”, 0); where any reasonable tool would use ui.caretBlinkTime=0.

   For instance, there is so much secrecy about and inconsistency in the configuration that the standard way to change an apparently simple setting is to install an add-on… (Also cf. above.) Where a user of a more sensible application might be told “add x=y to your config file”, the Firefox user is told to “install add-on abc”…

   For instance, copying the configuration from one user to another fails miserably (barring subsequent improvements), because it contains hard-coded paths referring to the original user.

   For instance, it used to be the case that a Firefox crash deleted the configuration, forcing the user to start over… (This was actually something that kept me with Opera for a year or so after I was already thoroughly feed up with it.)

6. The support for multi-user installations, the standard for Linux and many corporate Windows installations, is weak and/or poorly documented. The results include e.g. that all users who wants to use popular add-ons have to install them individually—and keep them up-to-date individually.

   (Disclaimer: I looked into this on several occasions years ago. The situation might have been improved.)

7. There are a number of phone-home and phone-third-party mechanisms that bring very little value, but often pose a danger, e.g. through reducing anonymity. This includes sending data to Google, which I would consider outright negligent in light of Google’s position and how it has developed over the years.
8. The recent, utterly idiotic decision to drop Alsa support in favour of Pulse on Linux. This decision is so idiotic that I actually started to write a post on that topic alone when I heard of it. Most of what I did write is included as an excursion below. (Beware that result is not a full analysis.)
9. The address bar started of very promisingly, e.g. with the addition of search keywords*. Unfortunately, it has so many problems by now that it does a worse job than most other browsers—and it grows worse over time. The preferred Firefox terminology “awesomebar” borders on an insult.

   *For instance, I have defined a keyword so that when I enter “w [something]”, a Wikipedia search for “[something]” is started. “ws [something]” does the same for the Swedish version of Wikipedia; “wd [something]” for the German. (I have a number of other keywords.)

   Among the problems: If a page is loading slowly and I re-focus the address bar and hit return again, the obvious action to take is to make a new attempt to load this page—it does not: It reloads the previous page! The history suggestions arbitrarily excludes all “about:” entries and all keyword searches—if I search with “w [something]” and want to switch to “g [something]”*, I have to retype everything. Per default, for some time, the history functionality is weakened through not listing the potential matches directly, but preceding them with annoying and useless suggestions to “visit” or “search” that only delay the navigation and confuse the users. Moreover, while there used to be working config flags to disable this idiocy, there are now just config flags (that do not work)…

   *Used to mean “search with Google” a long, long time ago; hence the “g”. Currently, I use duckduckgo.

10. The layout/design and GUI (including menu handling) have been drastically worsened on several occasions.
11. Many of the problems with Firefox can be remedied with “Classic Theme Restorer” (an absolute life-saver) or similar “user empowering” add-ons. Unfortunately, these all use the “XUL-framework”*, which Firefox has decided to discontinue. There is a new framework for add-ons, but it does not support this type of functionality (whether “yet” or “ever” is not yet clear). Many of the most popular add-ons, including “Classic Theme Restorer”, will therefore not be able to provide the full scope of functionality and at least some of them, again including “Classic Theme Restorer”, will be discontinued by their developers when XUL is turned off.

    *In a twist, XUL was once considered a major selling point for Firefox.

    My poor experiences with Firefox and the absurd attitudes of the Firefox developers might have made me paranoid—but I cannot suppress the suspicion that this is deliberate, that the add-ons that allow users to alter the default behaviors are viewed as problems, as heretics to burn at the stake.

To this should be added that since the switch from a “normal” versioning scheme to the idiocy of making allegedly major releases every few months*, the feature cramming has increased, with a (very predictable) increase in the number of run time problems. The Firefox makers were convinced that this would turn Firefox from a browser into a super-browser. In reality, this only resulted in hastening its demise—in much the same way that a TV series fighting for its survival ruins the good points it had left and drives away the remaining faithful**. If in doubt, most people who try to jump the shark are eaten…

*I.e. making version jumps of 44 to 45 to 46, instead of 4.4 to 4.5 to 4.6 or even 4.4.0 to 4.4.1 to 4.4.2.

**A topic I have been considering recently and intend to write a blog post on in the close future.

Sadly, the delusional author of the discussed article actually makes claims like “Firefox is losing despite being a great browser, and getting better all the time.”—turning the world on its head.

Excursion on the competition:

Unfortunately, Firefox could still be the lesser evil compared to the competitors. Chrome/Chromium, e.g., has many strengths, but configurability and adaptabtility to the user’s needs are not among them; on the contrary, it follows the deplorable school of achieving ease of use through reducing the controllable feature set—the equivalent of Apple’s infamous one-buttoned mouse. Chrome is entirely out of the question for anyone concerned with privacy; while its open-source sibling chromium (in my possibly incorrect opinion) trails Chrome in other regards. I have not tried Opera for years; but combining the old downwards trend (cf. above) with the highly criticized platform shift that almost killed it, I am not optimistic. Internet Explorer and Edge are not worthy of discussion—and are Windows only to begin with. Safari, I admit, I have never used and have no opinion on; however, it is Mac only and my expectations would be low, seeing that Apple has pioneered many of the negative trends in usability that plague today’s software. Looking at smaller players, I have tried possibly a dozen over the years. Those that have been both mature and user-friendly have been text-based and simply not worked very well with many modern web sites/designs, heavy in images and JavaScript; most others have either been too minimalistic or too immature. A very interesting concept is provided by uzbl, which could, on paper, give even the most hard-core user the control he needs—but this would require a very considerable own effort, which could turn out be useless if the limited resources of uzbl dry up.

Excursion on the decline of open source:

It used to be that open-source software was written by the users, for the users; that the developers were steeped in the Unix tradition of software development; that they were (on average) unusually bright and knowledgeable; … Today, many open-source projects (e.g. Firefox, Libre-/OpenOffice, many Linux Desktop environments) approach software development just like the commercial firms do, with an attitude that the user should be disenfranchised and grateful for whatever features the projects decided that he should like; quality is continually sacrificed in favour of feature bloat (while central features are often still missing…); many of the developers have grown up on Windows or Mac and never seen anything better; … Going by the reasoning used by many Firefox developers in their bug tracking tool, Firefox appears to have found more than its share of people who should not be involved in software development at all, having poor judgment and worse attitudes towards users.

Excursion on Pulse:

(Disclaimer: 1. The below is an incomplete version of an intended longer analysis. 2. At the time the below was written, I had a few browser tabs open with references or the opinions of others that I had intended to include. Unfortunately, these went missing in a Firefox crash…)

The reasoning is highly suspect: Yes, supporting two different sound systems can be an additional strain on resources, but this decision is just screwed up. Firstly, they picked the wrong candidate: Pulse is extremely problematic and malfunctioning so often that I would make the blanket recommendation to de-install it and use Alsa on almost any Linux system. Moreover, Pulse is not a from-scratch-system: It is an add-on on Alsa and any system using Pulse must also have Alsa installed—but any system can use Alsa without having Pulse. Not only will more users have access (or potential access) to Alsa, but good software design tries to stick with the smallest common denominator to the degree possible. Secondly, at least one abstraction already exist that is able to abstract multiple sound systems on Linux (SDL; in addition, I am semi-certain that both Alsa and Pulse provides backwards compatibility for the older OSS, which could have been used as a workaround). Thirdly, if none had existed, the proper Open Source way would have been to create one. Fourthly, a browser maker who tries to dictate what sound system a user should use have his priorities wrong in an almost comically absurd manner. (What is next? KDE only? Kaspersky only? Asus only?) Notably, there are very many Linux users who have made a very deliberate decision not to burden their systems with Pulse—and have done so for very good reasons*.

*Including how error prone it is, a too-high latency for many advanced sound users, the wish for a less bloated system, or Pulse’s straying too far from the classical principles behind Unix and Open Source software. Do an Internet search for more details on its controversy.

A particular annoyance is that the decision is partly justified by the claim that statistics gathered by Firefox’s phone-home functionality would indicate that hardly anyone used Alsa—which is extremely flawed, because many Linux distributions and individual educated users disable this phone-home functionality as a matter of course. Since the users who have a system with phone-home enabled are disproportionally likely to be unlucky/careless/stupid enough to also use Pulse, the evidence value is extremely limited.

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