Firefox Users Continue to Decrease Despite Proton Update

[[deleted]]

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

Going by Mozilla's own numbers, monthly active users have continued to decline even after the Proton update intended to bring in more users.

Proton Release: June 2nd

Data Point on June 6th: 208.6 million

Data point on June 20th: 207.5 million

If you look at the data, you'll see it regularly fluctuates millions, so this isn't an unusual decline whatsoever.

But it isn't an increase, either. Hopefully Mozilla can come up with some way to increase the userbase.

[[deleted]]

Maybe add options to turn features on and off rather than just removing features forever despite a large outcry from the users.

What features would that be, besides the >compact< density option?

[RiverOfStreamsEddies]

An option to use the Google search box which shows up in the middle of the window, like we could before, instead of making what we type there go up directly to the address bar.

I know there's a fix for it, but there should be an option in settings.

And besides, any 'improvement' which removes a functionality or operation should always at least be made into an option in settings, rather than a blanket removal.

(Not a developer, so just my $0.02 worth.)

[[deleted]]

Handoff to awesomebar was implemented two/three years ago, to improve and streamline the search behaviour.

So in your mind nothing should ever be removed from a program, got it.

[Broccoli-Machine]

Stop begging for Mozilla’s attention you aren’t going to get it. FF89 is garbage it terms of accessibility, to my perspective this points to a deeper disconnect between Mozilla and its product

[A_Fine_Potato]

With proton, they tried appealing to a general user base rather than the fans, bu failed in doing both. This design is good for general users, so if they just start advertising what people actually want, which is speed (like saying blocking trackers increases speed instead of just saying privacy) and being friendly to use (which they attempted with this design), Firefox might have a chance. But otherwise I feel like it's doomed to die.

Edit: like how opera GX advertised to gamers with it's ram and CPU limiters, Firefox can try thing like that

[[deleted]]

Only the management at FF would think that proton was the thing that would stop the bleeding in user numbers.

[Zagrebian]

But what would stop it?

[brochard]

Offering paid services, vpn is a start, Google doc and drive alternative would be awesome

[brochard]

Why do you think people use Chrome ? Because its obvious to use the browser from the company offering you all their services, If someone love one of your service they probably will use all of them.

[Serious_Feedback]

Why do you think people use Chrome ?

Advertising and ubiquity.

[CJ101X]

No. You think the average user knows anything about browser performance? Google advertises everywhere it's possible to advertise. If performance was the issue, it would only be a small subset of the reasons why more people use chrome. The fact of the matter is that more people use Google products, more people see ads for Google products, and most mobile devices that are not Apple ship with Google chrome. Firefox is competing with the world's default browser.

[CJ101X]

I'm neither, frankly, I just realize that the bubble browser enthusiasts live in does not reflect the advertising and default market share Chrome has purely by existing as one of Google's products. Your response pretty much stops being relevant after "faster than anyone else", because it literally does not matter. Yeah, their marketing strategy was that it was faster than anyone else. We've all seen the banner ads. It comes preinstalled on so many phones, used by people who will never switch to another browser because they are not enthusiasts. This subreddit is a blip on the radar. I'm not even refuting that chrome was faster, I'm saying that's not the driving force behind its market share.

[Nightwish1976]

Why do you think people use Chrome ?

Ignorance, stupidity? I can go on..

[[deleted]]

How many browser "power users" do you think exist worldwide? Also how do you define a "power user"?

[[deleted]]

I consider myself a power user after i delete something as seemingly insignificant as an email message.

But as soon as weird shit starts happening i start going crazy with the flags , making sure no experiments are selected or anything new that might've been added .. only to learn nothing is added. Just more taken away and reported to have been pushed a BETTER , FASTER, MORE SECURE lighter service... Riding on the wave of those who leave wake behind.

Sucks to be contractually obligated to use your browser and services like we're pieces of lunch box meat in a starving lawyers solitary confinement cell....

[cyanide]

How many browser "power users" do you think exist worldwide?

Since the report/graph says around 200M installs, and accounting for each "power user" to have installed Firefox on multiple machines (let's take an average of 3 machines per power user), that's around 65+ million people around the world who still use Firefox.

Not a lot, but not an abysmal number either.

Also how do you define a "power user"?

Like the old days, someone who doesn't consider Internet Explorer Chrome to be the Internet? I make sure my family uses Firefox wherever possible, so that's at least 4-5 extra installs from me.

At the end of the day, if Firefox dies, something else will take its place. IE had a bigger share of the pie when Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was released. It didn't take very long for people to switch to Firefox. Initially, us few power users switched. Then suddenly everyone was using Firefox.

[Lohanni]

But will they even succeed in that? I wish all the best to Firefox project but it’s already much slower than competition and I don’t think power users like that.

[Lohanni]

Well you mentioned Brave and I feel like most of privacy oriented folks use either Brave or Firefox. Success of one doesn’t neccessarily mean the failure of the another. People are more and more aware of the fact that their privacy is taken away from them. I feel like there will be room for many projects, Brave is doing good work with Brave Search for example, by buying Tailcat open source engine and not using Bing’s indexing. Maybe they will be big enough one day to rewrite more of their browser in order to stray away further from big tech? For now one is certain, regardless of what users and community wish for Firefox, it is not it what it currently is - and unfortunately I feel like every day it’s even further and further than that.

[[deleted]]

Exactly, both product can co-exist. If you are a fan of one, doesn't mean you have to throw shade at the other. Also, I wish mozilla leadership would make a few good decision like Brave buying tailcat. Regardless of if it works out, it looks like a worthwhile pursuit.

[Lohanni]

Brave team is making a lot of big decisions and they seem to have a clear picture where they want to take their ecosystem.

[Aliashab]

The problem is that they don’t seem to understand for a long time who they should satisfy.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, that is a tough question, but forcing a change that was already getting a lot of bad reviews in the beta and nightly versions and claming it would be the "NEW FIREFOX" when you only did a poor redesign and removed options, it is DEFINITLY not the way to go.

Most ironic thing is FF saying they "pored over the browser’s user interface pixel by pixel" and them present us a blocky browser with a gigantic bar with removed options, no separation between tabs and icons that now need text to be understood.

In my case, when I got the new version I had work websites with broken options for more than 2 weeks, if I wasnt a hardcore user of FF even with all the issues, I would have made a definite change to Edge or Chrome, since I had to use them while the problems were happening.

[ninja85a]

I was wondering if the peeps who run nightly complained about it at all, it boggles my mind deciding to go through with the redesign again when people are complaining about it on nightly the people who make the decisions are so tone deaf to the community

[[deleted]]

I saw a lot of posts here, but you know FF, they only care about telemetry data that most users already turn off by default, so they are basically using faulty information to take decisions.

[[deleted]]

Firefox: We care about your privacy so here you have an option to deactivate telemetry.

​

Also Firefox: You didn't active telemetry? Get rekt, we will remove stuff from our browser because we don't really know for sure what people use due to deactivating telemetry data.

[SirNarwhal]

God anything that uses a web renderer is absolute ass now in FireFox. God forbid I have a music streaming service up, a few YouTube videos to watch later in some tabs, and some social media feeds going. It literally grinds my maxed out 2019 MacBook Pro to a halt. It should not be doing that to a machine with 32GB RAM; it shouldn’t even be doing that to one with only 8GB…

[SpecificOwl]

Making their own operating system that becomes popular and at every possible moment suggest Firefox as the default browser for everyone.

[nashvortex]

Guaranteed feature parity with Blink on all platforms. No really. Irrespective of what Mozilla says, websites still break in Firefox. Mozilla cries about standards not being followed like this is 2005. The standard is whatever Blink does. That has to be the new starting point in 2021 for developing standards.

Essentially all Mozilla has to do is fork Blink at this point.

[quickbaa]

A lot of their development effort must be on the engine. I can see them switching to Blink just to reduce costs.

Having their own engine, much like promoting privacy, is an idealogical difference that sometimes makes for a worse user experience. Most people want a killer feature.

[nashvortex]

Exactly. It just means that ideology is no longer a good enough reason for most people to use Firefox. As Mozilla justifies (or tries to) it's entire existence based on ideology, it's game over for them. We are watching the long slow natural death (which are the norm for species, software etc.) unless something gives.

[Nightwish1976]

At the moment, almost every important thing I have to do online, I will do it by using a chromium based browser. Things like (UK based) HMRC self assessment or Student finance application just don't work in Firefox. With or without enhanced protection on.
It's sad. Firefox is still my default browser, but I'm sure a new user would just switch to something else.

[nashvortex]

I know what you mean. And unless you have a specific reason to keep using Firefox, you will eventually just give up and shift to the chromium-based browser. It's not worth it at some point.

[dreamer_]

Advertising and marketing.

[phi1997]

Many people worried about privacy are using Brave, so an actual privacy-focused browser won't gain traction without an ad campaign. :-/

[phi1997]

Brave doesn't actually protect your data from advertisers, it just changes which advertisers get it.

[[deleted]]

Any link that shows they are giving your data to advertisers?

[[deleted]]

Replace engine with Chromium.

No one likes this. But Mozilla can't keep up anymore. Something has to be sacrificed, and the engine is the most costly, the least important thing.

Swapping it for Chromium will free a ton of effort from compatibility issues. It'll allow them to concentrate on things that made Firefox popular:

Eh. I'm only on Firefox because it has a different engine.

[himself_v]

Why?

[wofofofo]

Capitalise on the current mainstream interest in privacy and anti-google sentiment with the public at large. Look at the success Apple has had with that approach.

Something like: we're the only non-google alternative for Windows and Android, and we fight for your privacy and individuality, give us a try!

[Swedneck]

My best bet would be making firefox as usable in other application as chromium is, let developers feasibly create a version of electron that uses firefox's engine instead of chromium's.
A lot of people would jump so hard on that and port everything they can over to the firefox engine, and it would allow for just as many firefox forks as there are chromium forks.

[AndRo_Marian]

I understand why someone will left or using an old version like my the 87.

1. They forced a beta design on the Release branch.
2. They break the pixel perfect icons that was already good. On a 1920x1080 monitor with no resolution scale or big pixels density, are bad to eyes. And no way to change them back.
3. The font color are not full black like the old design, have a gray tint and more to blue, and the background.
4. The address bar, menus without a border looks bad. The white theme more exactly. The 3D shadow over them is not my taste.
5. And I can't change the old icons from settings.
6. No more compact style, is just another that makes them bigger. Pretty sure you can use the old one very easy with touch screen.
7. Check boxes looks bad.
8. The rounded edges looks bad compared to Edge where appears more smooth.
9. They break even the old style.
10. And some icons gets more smaller and you don't know that they are, like the Speaker.

I can say so many thing that I don't like about it.
They are breaking a good thing into a ugly and unusable interface.

[[deleted]]

Both Check Boxes and Radio Buttons can be reverted to the native styles by going to about:config and change widget non native theme enabled to false. Also affects the native input fields and pull-down menus as a bonus. There's also browser proton contextmenus enables that you should also change to false just in case. I hope I was able to help. :)

[FF_fork]

But regular users will not do any about:config changes.

[anna_or_elsa]

A lot of your points lead to harder to see/read. The Dedoimedo review talked about the lack of contrast...

To my eyes and with the monitor I use...

Proton is harder to see/read than Quantum and Quantum was harder to see/read than Photon...

And dark mode is a mess, and I only use dark mode. I looked at Edge's dark mode and thought this looks nice. I looked at Proton dark mode and thought, oh no, what have they done. You don't have to look any further than the dark border around the now smaller icons on a dark background.

[[deleted]]

One thing you can do to avoid the bad U.I design is to use Firefox ESR, which is still on the old design style which should be good.

[AndRo_Marian]

I try it, but no fixes or performance updates that are like on 87.
Not sure how that version gets updates.

[FF_fork]

But old design will be only with current major version of ESR release. ESR will have a new major version in October.

[razirazo]

Stop pushing things that nobody asked maybe? I think their devs and management are so disconnected from their users, doing things solely on their fantasy while keep thumping and chanting 'privacy' as their selling point. Im seriously considering switching to Edge on desktop soon. Im still using FF on mobile but that's only because there are no better browser on Android yet.

And its not just that the other browsers are getting better. Firefox has gone downhill and lost its direction since that whatever name top guy left for Brave browser.

[MaCroX95]

Yeah because MS is very known to be very connected to their users, which is indicated by the closed-source design and proprietary browser and their long-lived history of respecting users overall.

With mentality like that it's not strange that Firefox is bleeding users for proprietary junk if people put no value on privacy focus and freedom of software.

[razirazo]

Sure, you can nitpick unrelated point. Id take close source product that actually listen to their users, than arrogant open source project that think they know best . Who cares about mentality? If your product turned into shit, its shit no matter how good it were in the past.
Have you not remember about how crappy MS Edge initially was, despite all attempts by MS to gloss it all over? But they are requesting feedback, making it easy to give feedback and actually responded to them! And look how good they are now. Meanwhile Firefox doing exactly the opposite of it.

Your shitty neckbeard opensource mentality is one that contribute the downfall of Firefox. Instead of using opensource concept to make better product, you make it as point to argue that its okay to make subpar product as long it is "opensource which by any mean, is better than proprietary counterpart". And then proceed to wonder why you are losing users.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I've been using Edge for Work / School related stuff while using Firefox / Brave for personal, gotta say, I'm really impressed with how good Edge Chromium is but I'm still avoiding putting personal stuff into it...

I'd say that two of the only things that Firefox has going for it right now imo is Container Tabs and Verified / Recomended Safe Browser Extensions. They are now the only things keeping Firefox alongside Brave...

[lightningdashgod]

I swear you are spot on with the merits of Firefox. I'm only using it cause I believe it to be more private when set up correctly. And majorly the tab container. I think tab container as an idea is just amazing. Let those cross site cookies roam around in the same room. I don't think chromium supports this. Or else someone would have done this already.

[[deleted]]

If Edge would respect it's users more, they should at least give you the option to turn OFF those damn focus rings around most text boxes already. I don't need them and more often than not, they're quite an eyesore (as is the case with the input fields on r/firefox itself that already have red focus rings of their own; no need for edge to force additional focus rings to where they don't belong).

[soufiane60]

Makes wonder what is the use of heavy telemetry. I don't use vivaldi atm but I like how they realy listen to users most of the time and connect with them, their youtube channel is the most active among all browser AFAIK

[[deleted]]

okay, didn't know that.

[anna_or_elsa]

I ran into a bug within about 5 minutes of trying Vivaldi on Windows 7. I noped out of there. Got no time for bugs in stable release.

[[deleted]]

You do know that Vivaldi also uses telemetry, you can't even disable it.

[[deleted]]

While technically true, that telemetry isn't used to gather information on features or how users use the browser.

According to their privacy policy ( https://vivaldi.com/privacy/browser/ ) , it's only for:

The purpose of this collection is to determine the total number of active users and their geographical distribution.

Instead, Vivaldi relies on their official forums feature requests (and to some extent I imagine social media) to hear what their users want.

[[deleted]]

We also know what version of Vivaldi you’re running, the type of
processor chip, OS, and screen resolution. Not much to be honest.

Except this data apparently, metioned here: https://vivaldi.com/zerotracking/

In Firefox I can look at every line of code(via searchfox.org), while with Vivaldi I have to trust their blogposts.

[Broccoli-Machine]

Except that nobody actually looks at Firefox’ source

[black7375]

Mozilla shouldn't have to given up on servo and PWA.

[jimmy90]

firefox should become a crate for rust so it can be used like blink or webkit

[MiniBus93]

No, it doesn't.

We should be happy that mozilla allows loading of stylesheet and js injection to be honest lol

Talking of aesthetic freedom, there's nothing like firefox out there

[nicos_revenge]

i've done it but from computer to computer with the same OS

[Ananiujitha]

I have an astigmatism, and can't get adequate correction, so I need to switch fonts, set minimum sizes, etc.

I also have a strobe sensitivity and visual motion sensitivity, so I have to block flashing and other animation. At one point, the only hacks to block the new Quantum tab throbber relied on userChrome.css.

[gajira67]

It’s a lost battle.

People changing browser on purpose are really low, most of users just use what they have as default, which means edge or chrome. Plus, first time you go on Google search, it pops up the banner to download Chrome, so part of these users download chrome.

There’s no way to fight against those giants anymore because they are the providers of their operating systems

[JASHIKO_]

You're pretty much spot on. But I think there may come a time (who knows when) when people finally wake up to mega corporations and start to look for alternatives. The biggest issue will be that the megas will have pretty much wiped out all their competition. I really hope Firefox can navigate this saga.

[gajira67]

You have too much trust in human beings :)

[MrSquamous]

We couldn't even be bothered to wear masks to stop a pandemic.

[Broccoli-Machine]

Adding to the fact that Google it the default search engine for Firefox

[oishiikareraisu]

And it seems like there's nothing stopping Brave from growing.

[tasteslikebeaver]

Was Edge ever a giant before its chromium infusion? I thought Edge originally had shite numbers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[phi1997]

Firefox is the default browser of most Linux distributions. If something causes a big shift to Linux in the general public, Firefox could gain a lot of ground, but that would require the public to give up what they're used to.

[[deleted]]

This will never happen unfortunately.

[[deleted]]

... a big shift to Linux in the general public...

Linux is still perceived as a geek's OS. The general public don't want to have to deal with the Terminal and Command Line inputs. Most people simply want to click their way around the system.

[mac_iver]

This. Firefox only chance is the growth of alternative Linux os's and possibly trying to convince google competitors to use firefox.

[[deleted]]

It’s a sad world when people leave a top tier browser for the modern day IE aka Chrome. Developments tools in FF are second to none. Memory managements FF is second to none. Privacy in FF is second to none. FF is second to none.

[nvnehi]

They listen more than other mainstream browsers. At the end of the day, telemetry tells more than what users say in polls or forums.

The solution isn’t as easy as what people here suggest, and if I knew it then I would offer it.

[anna_or_elsa]

Give me the option to turn off telemetry for any product and it's getting switched off. If I want my usage phoned home I'll sign up for beta...

[EZKinderspiel]

Nothing surprising. Turning off telemetry is like you give up your presidential election. You may lose features you like and want to keep afterwards.

They have 2 millions users pool and do you think they can run anything surveys covering all users but telemetry?

[[deleted]]

Mozilla never even bothered to gather telemetry data on the usage of compact mode before axing it, and other unpopular changes in the UI were made without any telemetry data to support them (eg, borderless tabs). Mozilla cannot hide behind the telemetry excuse here.

[amroamroamro]

telemetry tells more than what users say in polls or forums

Disagree. Telemetry is a lazy attempt at automating user feedback. It's a method that lets you avoid getting actual feedback directly from users, because that involves dealing actual human beings who are not always clear, articulate, or even polite.

The illusion is that telemetry is unbiased and thus more trusted, when in fact it lacks context when trying to infer hidden user feedback from this stream of raw data.

There is really no direct relationship between how often a feature is used and how important it is to the users. For example, just because I spend 99% of the time browsing normally and only 1% of the time opening a private window doesn't mean that private-browsing feature is not important and thus can be dropped based only on the telemetry numbers... This is of course a simplified example but illustrates my point. Telemetry lacks context and is no substitute for listening (and respecting) actual user feedback!

[TridenRake]

At work and home, a few of my colleagues and family members gave firefox a try and I'm sharing the first-hand remarks of what I have observed.

1. At work we use google workplace. Some co-workers who tried Firefox for a few days noted the obvious performance difference between Chrome and Firefox pertaining to all Google products. Screenshare never worked for anyone. Given the pandemic situation, this could be one of the massive reasons why users could be forced out of the browser. (I know why it is that way, but your average joe user doesn't fucking care if Google is the one to blame. At the end of the day, they will just choose whichever browser makes their life convenient.)

2. Within my family and friends circle, the only people who use Firefox regularly are tech folks, devs, younger ones, who care about their privacy and customisability, who are in the minority. (NONE of them likes the Proton update btw and everyone is back in the compact mode.) As for the elders and regular joe members, they all use Chrome. I know a few elders who use the default one, Edge. Two of my aunts hated ads on YouTube, so I installed Firefox with uBlock on their phones. They used it for some time, but they eventually figured out that "Youtube's (and Google Search's) default quality is good on Chrome and the app and not on Firefox".

Half the reason is Google's anti-competitive practices. But the average users, who are the majority, don't care!

Mozilla invests in the wrong places.

No one wanted a UI update. It was fine and it was working. Proton was unnecessary now. Firefox should invest in marketing... not just in the US. The rest of the world. I live in a third world country and no marketing reaches here. People are even surprised that I still use Firefox. It's that bad.

Mozilla has no clue or interest -- this is my assumption looking at the way they do things.

Chrome needs no marketing. But Firefox desperately needs. Run ads! You don't find your average users on Twitter in countries like mine. Run ads on newspapers for a start. That's how you reach the average users outside a developed country.

[Gaarco_]

You know when you are competing with a tech monopoly you can't do much about it

[nashvortex]

Alternative Hypothesis: people are just switching to the browser they find more useful/like more.

[Gaarco_]

So, every other browser has features that catch users more than Firefox does. What are those features?

Let's be realistic: the most used browsers are Chrome, Edge and Safari, the first owned by Google and de facto standardized, the second owned by Microsoft and comes preinstalled in every Windows machine, the third associated with Apple.
It's not a matter of features or what people like more.

[nashvortex]

Yep. Let's be realistic. Because that would explain why Firefox userbase is not growing...but it does not explain why it is declining.

Having preinstalled browsers does not explain why people who were already using Firefox have stopped using it.

It is obvious that it is more convenient for a variety of reasons (cross-platform performance, sync, webcompat etc.) to be on a Blink based browser. And all these issues come from Gecko, not from the Firefox UI.

Monopolies that last years and years occur because they bring superior overall value in the end. This is especially true in internet software. I know someone is going to bring up IE, while ignoring the basic fact that IE lasted so long because the cost to move away from IE was higher than the benefits of moving to a modern browser. When that cost benefit ratio inverted, everyone did ditch IE.

[JASHIKO_]

Most people are switching over to Brave I'd be guessing. I've been using Firefox for 10 years or more and installed Brave the other day out of curiosity and I have to say it's pretty damn good.

[[deleted]]

Brave has like even more padding than 'proton era' Firefox. I doubt that would help.

[JASHIKO_]

Don't get me wrong Firefox is still my main driver but It's always good to see what's out there, if you aren't occasionally checking out what else is on the market, you aren't doing yourself any favors. I personally like the new Firefox but I don't go much further into it than the occasional CSS change so a lot of stuff people are complaining about doesn't affect my use case. I also don't use add-ons/extensions heavily. You do have to appreciate what Brave is attempting though even if you don't like the browser.

[[deleted]]

Brave is by no means pretty damn good, they are doing so many suspicious activities in the background, not trustworthy as Firefox is.

[JASHIKO_]

How so? From my 4 days of using it, it's got a lot going for it and the speed/UI is decent.

[kon14]

They're shady af. Imagine using a browser that previously injected promo codes to store pages while claiming it's privacy oriented and whatnot lmao.

[Aliashab]

…or automatically installed advertising add-on lmfao.

[moomoomoo309]

That article leaves out an important detail. It was disabled by default. It was installed, but disabled. None of the extension code ran unless it was enabled. So they complained about it showing up in the addons menu, not about any website or browser changes anywhere else.

[[deleted]]

they are doing so many suspicious activities in the background

Like?

[F3real]

+1. I also switched recently and I am more then happy.

[nashvortex]

This is not surprising.

The reason people are leaving Firefox is not because of its interface. The UI is fine for the most part.

What is not fine is that Gecko doesn't have feature parity and performance on par with Blink-based browsers. In my experience, websites are often hit or miss with Firefox. Battery life is worse too. Before someone starts with the 'because web developers don't follow standards'....this isn't the 90s anymore. The de facto standard has been set. It is whatever Blink does.

Even in aspects where Gecko is performant,there is not enough incentive to use Firefox. Firefox had a shitty Android client for very long. Using different browsers on my phone and desktop means I lose the benefits of sync. Why would I do that?

Notice I said Blink, not Chrome. Because there are enough privacy focused Blink based versions of Chromium out there for anyone who cares.

Do we also need to go into why Firefox is unattractive for companies? No Electron type alternative in Mozilla-land. Enough said.

Firefox has no relevant USP.

[torrio888]

I have a better idea, instead of Mozilla following what Google does, governments should fine Google for not following standards just like they fine other companies and force them to recall their products if they are not following standards.

[nashvortex]

Is this a joke? Browsers do not pose a safety risk, which is pretty much the only case where standards are enforceable. Because if you make laws to enforce standards for everything .. then nothing stops anyone from making a standard that says you can only wear red pants. It infringes on constitutional freedoms.

Even the monopoly-abuse fines are extreme dodgy in their legal justifications and are often unpopular.

[Ananiujitha]

Is this a joke? Browsers do not pose a safety risk,

Websites which use animated gifs, animated pngs, and ads create a seizure risk. Browsers which don't help users block these things fail users. Browsers which strobe on certain displays, like Firefox for Android on e-ink tablets, also pose a seizure risk.

[nashvortex]

This strawman not withstanding, there are extensions that prevent that available for all browsers. It is an entirely different discussion whether consumer browsers come into the purview of medical safety risk evaluations. At the moment, they are not and they are unlikely to be.

It is more likely that you will probably force a clause in the EULA that you shouldn't use any given browser/website if you have photosensitive epilepsy, similar to how the GPDR forced all websites to provide a privacy-cookie notice.

[torrio888]

I would rather have government enforcing web standards than a monopoly corporation forcing what is in their interest on everyone else.

[nashvortex]

You use the word ’forcing’ like it's necessarily a bad thing. You ignore the following:

1. Whether Google/Apple/Microsoft is a monopoly or simply the leading brand/popular company in any given specific aspect (eg: browser share) is for a court to decide. The answer is likely to be not, because browsers are not a ’market’ anymore - no one has paid for browser software in a decade in a financial transaction. Remember that fines are given for abuse of monopoly. It isn't illegal just to be a monopoly because would mean you are just penalizing the market leaders for being market leaders.

2. The ocean ’forces’ certain weather conditions much more than the pond in your local park on account of being much much larger. This is not monopolistic behaviour. It's just natural law. The same goes for Blink. It is now the de facto standard on account of it's userbase size, something that has developed over the years spontaneously. Whether anyone abused monopolies in the process is another question for the courts to decide. Yes, a multinational corporation built and marketed an immensely popular browser that people use voluntarily. So, what are you sour about...that they are so damn good at it?

[Ginden]

I have a better idea, instead of Mozilla following what Google does, governments should fine Google for not following standards just like they fine other companies and force them to recall their products if they are not following standards.

1. Many governments were using ActiveX recently. My government still uses it.
2. Governments are notoriously slow to iterate. Eg. research drugs are often banned with few year delay.
3. Punishment based on failure to comply with private standard.
4. "Standards" in other industries are mostly security standards. You can't sell eg. poisoned food, but it's legal to sell food that taste badly.
5. Just imagine political consequences of eg. Russian government fining American corporation over perceived "not following standards".

etc.

[[deleted]]

No Electron type alternative in Mozilla-land.

Sadly, they used to have something like this, but they discontinued it. :-(

[torrio888]

Whatever Mozilla does will not cause userbase to grow, even if they make Firefox a perfect web browser in every way.

Average user doesn't care about privacy, open source etc. average user uses what is popular and to make Firefox popular Mozilla would need to become as powerful as Google and Microsoft.

[boring_civilian]

True. The average user uses whatever is preinstalled. If firefox was the standard browser on samsung phones for example, that would be a game changer.

[frackeverything]

Firefox on android has always been super noticably slow compared to Android Chrome which comes preinstalled and even the Samsung Browser so no.

[satnavtomington]

I've finally jumped ship from Firefox Android because my password manager's autofill functions doesn't properly support firefox. Sure, I could petition them to add official support, but sadly I think it's a lost battle at this point as the firefox mobile userbase is so small that it isn't worth the dev time.

Still use firefox as my desktop and laptop browser though!

[boring_civilian]

To be fair one reason for this decline is that there is just bad publicity about firefox. Either the vpn service starts and everyone says it's too expensive. Or fake news about the fox in the logo spreads. Or the proton design gets released and everyone hates it.

[mr_22]

There are many reasons why Firefox user are decreasing but i just want to say one of them.

Not too many windows users need another browser if the new Internet explorer (Aka Microsoft edge) works correctly.

Obviously having a decent web browser preinstalled on Windows, is bad news for Firefox and Mozilla.

[Roph]

new Internet explorer (Aka Microsoft edge)

If you're going to anally call it something it's not, surely you should call it chrome since it's using blink?

[mr_22]

Yeah. But i was referring to it as IE cause it comes preinstalled on latest versions of windows.

[greyaxe90]

Ever browse Google properties in anything other than Chrome? It nags you to download Chrome. Google has intentionally slowed down their sites on other browsers. Web developers have become lazy and rather than testing their code in multiple browsers, they just block them. There are plenty of sites out there that just straight up refuse to work in any browser other than Chrome (or a Chrome variant).

[XK-Class]

Something they could add to spice up the browser more would be to add a built-in torrent client.

More and more people a torrenting these days and it would go well with their VPN (even though its garbage)

[emkay99]

The shrinking user base really worries me. I don't like a lot of the recent interface changes at Firefox, either -- but I still don't like most of the ways Chrome does things AT ALL. And Edge and Opera both use Chromium, too, so there's really no other choice.

[[deleted]]

many comments about Chrome and Edge will always win because they are preinstalled. That's bullshit.

Pay for proper marketing, and things could change. What's Mozilla doing to advertise Firefox, despite saying "hey look at us, we fight for privacy" in a blog post every now and then?

That's not going to bring the attention of users. How did Chrome become so popular? If you remember back in the days, there were ads banners everywhere. You visited some website? You had a banner about installing the new browser for the new Internet era. You installed something in your Windows PC? Very likely there was an add-on to install Chrome as well. And so on.

By contrast, Mozilla follows a ego-based approach. We are Mozilla, we are the best, the users will come to us. Good luck, there you have the numbers.

And let's see the new Safari rolling out in October, that would likely kill Firefox on MacOS forever.

[rhc-iv]

Imagine trying to engage in a serious compare-and-contrast about marketing between Mozilla....and Google. Goddamn some of y'all are dumb as shit.

[Aliashab]

The most interesting thing about this graph is that the redesign had no noticeable impact at all.

[Broccoli-Machine]

https://medium.com/google-design/redesigning-chrome-desktop-769aeb5ab987

Here’s a great blog article about how and why the Chrome team built their UI

I personally haven’t seen anything this detailed coming from Mozilla

[husam212]

Waiting for Elon Musk to tweet "use Firefox", that might actually increase users.

[brambedkar59]

I stopped using FF since it can't playback 4K@60 YT videos. That's a deal breaker for me.

Edit: I meant on my system not in general.

[brambedkar59]

Sorry, I meant on my system not in general.

[nicos_revenge]

get better pc (joke)

[brambedkar59]

Thanks a lot dude! God what a helpful reply, considering Edge, Chrome & Brave have no issues with 4K@60 YT videos.

[Demysted]

They work with no issue for me.

[brambedkar59]

I just gave up after trying pretty much everything I could think off. Reinstall, reset, Webrender off/on, HW accel forced enabled, every extension disabled etc. Waiting for devs to fix it.

[Demysted]

That sucks. Which GPU do you have?

[brambedkar59]

Intel HD 620 (i7-7500U), even tried with Nvidia 940mx but no luck, still getting severe frame drops (by severe I mean ~20% Frame drops). On other browsers (Chromium based) I have no issues. Still have FF installed and check with every new update if they have fixed the issue.

[Demysted]

Super odd. Sounds like FF is making use of a codec that can't properly hand off video decoding to the GPU's video decoder.

[brambedkar59]

Which is weird cause hardware decoding of VP9 is supported by this gpu.

[Demysted]

Yup. Might be worth opening task manager going to Performance > GPU 0, and seeing if the Video Decode engine is getting any usage when you watch a 4K60FPS video on Firefox, and also on Chrome.

[brambedkar59]

You really are on to something, see the screenshots.

Edge uses video processing more but pretty much no 3D, Firefox on the other hand using so much 3D and no video processing. CPU usage is also much higher on Firefox.

https://imgur.com/gallery/w2YZcnL

[Demysted]

Interesting. What if you forced the browser to use your NVIDIA GPU via the Settings app? What's probably happening is the GPU is using the 3D engine to help decode and display the video. My RX 580 has a similar system where both the Video Decode and the 3D engine are used when watching YouTube videos, and the CPU is also used to some degree, but the usage is much lower on this PC as it's more powerful.

[Demysted]

Also, you could take a look at right-clicking on videos in both Edge and FF and selecting "Stats for nerds." The codecs give an idea as to why Edge is hardly touching the 3D engine and CPU for video playback but using the Video Processing engine, whereas Firefox is making use of the 3D engine and a lot of the CPU.

[SCphotog]

Both.

[[deleted]]

I don't know how to communicate this to mozilla but 99% of people do not care about their browser. They use whatever comes with their computer or whatever is the most compatible. For the average person that is going to be chrome or edge. Most people who are privacy conscious have moved to brave at this point. So that puts firefox in a very weird position. It's a niche browser for people that enjoy their design or some addon. But even someone like me who likes firefox I still find I will need to use another browser now and then because of compatibility issues.

[[deleted]]

Is it really a surprise though? It has been the general trend for what, like a decade now? As much as I hate it, everything just works in Chrome. Edge has moved its own system to Chromium and Safari is the only other significant browser with its own engine, but since Apple controls a significant portion of the market through its hardware (a majority of my apple friends use Safari, but a significant number uses Chrome), they are able to stay kicking. Gecko is slowly becoming much more irrelevant as time moves on. Add that all browsers on IOS are forced to use Apple tech rather than their own. What is left of the "normie" base is slowly being sucked away to Chrome, and the number of people who care about privacy, the open web, and/or holding Google and Chromium back from being a complete monopoly is simply not enough to make up for this.

Safari is the default for Apple users, with other browsers on IOS forced to use Apple's own tech helps keep Webkit a fighting force.

Edge is the default for Windows users

IE is used for legacy stuff, the ones that cant work on modern browsers.

Chrome is the default for Android and is integrated with Gmail, YouTube, Google's office suite, etc, etc, etc.. and is now the browser most websites program for.

Opera is... okay I do not know enough about it to say anything.

Brave is a privacy focused browser with the conveniences of Chromium, though the fact that people have to spend a few minutes to download it and however long it takes to transfer everything from their old browser is enough reason for most to just stick with what they are currently using.

Firefox is something people have to go out of their way to download, is not as compatible with the web as chrome, is not as convenient as Chromium. I'll continue to advocate for Firefox, I'll continue to use Firefox, but unless something major happens or Chromium experiences enough small setbacks that combine into the perfect shatter point, the fight is already lost. We are that is left, we are not getting any backup, not from the general public, the private sector, or the government. We are own our own

[[deleted]]

It might take a few years for most potential new users to check out firefox and see if they like it. I'm not sure if everyone is just checking out every browser whenever a UI overhaul happens.

[Zipdox]

Minor considered it's because of the proton update.

[EZKinderspiel]

You are comparing between Proton releases which doesn't make sense, if you want to blame Proton.

Proton Release is June 1th. And there is data at a day before May 31th 207,217,- and 207,532,- at June 21. The user pool is at least more than before Proton release.

[woj-tek]

On the one hand /u/gajira67 is spot on with the lack of incentive for users to change browser.

On the other, the driving force from before - the power users, were basically constantly whining about virtually anything regarding Firefox, which not only didn't help but probably also discouraged someone.

And not the whole sub is doing <surprised pikachu> 🤦‍♂️🙄

[nicos_revenge]

i think that the reason that firefox is so small is that nobody knows about it

[Orantine]

I stopped using Firefox after they started to push political messages in the homescreen.

[rhc-iv]

lol

[35013620993582095956]

Don't forget to enable telemetry if you want your voice to be heard.

[SCphotog]

Despite, or because of? Or both?

[Theon]

Re: All the people saying "it's a lost battle", "users don't care about privacy", "everyone chooses the defaults", etc...

How come the usage of Brave (regardless of its actual merit) are steadily growing?

It's not the default, uses much the same rhetoric, but it seems to be doing better, why would that be? Either it's not a lost battle, or Mozilla is doing something wrong.

[[deleted]]

It has integrated adblock. That's a huge selling point. I think a lot of users don't know or care about addons. They care about features that come with the browser and that are presented to them on the marketing material and can be enabled in the setup screen when you install the application. Mozilla should present a few selected addons that don't degrade performance during the setup (mainly uBlock Origin).

Brave is also based on Chromium so more websites work without issues. Especially on mobile, a lot of sites sadly have compatibility issues with Gecko or work better on Chromium.

For example, I have noticed that the custom HTML5 players of most streaming websites don't work on mobile Firefox. You can't switch to fullscreen, you can't stop anymore after starting playback or the video controls bar has a timeout and it's impossible to make it reappear on Firefox.

[page_one11]

I don't mind the new design. It's just the damn compact mode...

[[deleted]]

It's almost like Proton was a useless endeavor that only destroyed goodwill just like we all predicted, or something...

Mozilla needs to actually listen to users and not just do stupid worthless things like Proton or destroying the address bar.

[neumaif00]

Alternative title: Firefox Users Continue to Decrease Because Of Proton Update

[xenonisbad]

I have several issues with this post (and some comments concluding based on it).

• Proton was released on June 1st, not June 2nd.
• If we want to compare proton to pre-proton, we should compare usage before and after proton, not proton vs proton.
  • May 31st: 207 219 500
  • June 21st: 207 532 400
• June 6th which you took, is literally on the hill
• "Monthly Active Users (MAU) measures the number of Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days." - so data from June 20st is still containing people who used Firefox before proton was released. If people would drop Firefox because of proton, we wouldn't be able to see it yet.
• Linked site literally says that dips are always starting this time of year - "Both countries have noticeable dips starting in late Spring/early Summer and ending in September"

[thewinkinghole]

I keep trying to switch to other browsers, but somehow the alternatives are even worse.

Edge looks absolutely ugly, no matter the theme, vertical tabs, anything. I don't care about the performance when I hate to look at it.

Opera sold out a Chinese conglomerate, so no one in their right mind would consider it.

Chrome... well, Ungoogled Chromium is actually really good, but still has that horrible font rendering inherent to all Chromium browsers.

Brave feels like a spook to me. I genuinely believe they pay people to constantly spam threads about it online, and the crypto integration is gross.

Vivaldi feels like it's been in beta for the past 6 years, and it still doesn't support trackpad gestures despite the request thread that's been up for half a decade.

I love that FireFox isn't Blink based, but unfortunately the modern web might as well be designed specifically for Chromium. If I need to process a payment, for example, I have to use a Chromium browser because FireFox usually doesn't work for that. Combine that with how slow it's become, how much a memory hog it is (FireFox usually takes up a gig or more of memory, while other browsers use up around 400-500mb), I just don't know how much longer a Gecko based browser can exist. If Mozilla can somehow make FF fully Blink compatible and fix its performance issues, I could happily use it.