I will still use Firefox because I believe that it is the least-worst browser out there. That “knee-capping” of the best Ad-Block technology available, coupled with Firefox’s introduction of “allow reasonable ads” or whatever it is called (translation: allow ads from ad companies that pay us money) was a decision made by management at the Mozilla Foundation, not by the grass roots developers. What we have with the latest version is a pale shadow of its former self and is nowhere near as powerful or as easy to use. Then Firefox introduced a major revamp of the API that they expose to PlugIn developers, breaking that version of AdBlock Plus.
With the first version of this utility, I could very easily any object on a rendered page, see the full URL that pulled it in, then quickly and easily write a custom block rule, say with the inclusion of wildcard symbols to help improve the effectiveness of the filter. I’ve used Firefox since “Day 1” (still do) and among my favourite early add-ins was “AdBlock Plus”. I agree with everything you observe here, but would add another dimensionįor everything that we can see in Firefox is bad, it seems that some of the things they have done “under the hood” are worse. I'm about ready to start looking for another browser. By making the GUI actually, visually fade, they make the browser harder to use. That's fine as a guiding principle, but they are sacrificing actual usability for an illusion of simplicity. It seems like the designers have this idea that the browser should fade into the background so that the user can focus on web content. The forward and back arrows have the same problem, but I don't use them as much, so I don't care about them as much. It just sat there at the top of my screen and I clicked on it when I needed to. Again, I didn't used to be "aware" of the home icon at all. I'm also aware that they've hollowed out the home icon to the point where it is difficult to target with the mouse, because it doesn't look like a solid object. They've taken something that used to be handled by unthinking eye-hand coordination and pushed it up to the cognitive levels of my brain, where it competes for my attention with what I'm actually trying to do (read content on the web). Now I have to go searching for them, and there is this nagging insecurity as to whether I've got the right one (especially when I'm closing a tab, which is my most common use case). I just clicked on them when I needed them. Separating the tabs from the pages is major lossage. The people designing the FireFox UI manifestly do not. People who know something about human factors and GUI design. I need those people to be, like, UI designers. July 3, 2008: Firefox Breaks 8 Million, Gets Into Guinnessĭoes it really matter to you who the people who make your browser are like? September 11, 2007: Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads October 19, 2005: Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads July 29, 2005: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million September 19, 2004: 1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Daysĭecember 12, 2004: Firefox Reaches 10 Million Downloadsįebruary 17, 2005: Firefox Breaks 25 Million DownloadsĪpril 26, 2005: Firefox nears 50 Million Downloads Quite the irony, eh? Just for fun, here's a timeline of our stories reporting on Firefox's download milestones from the mid-2000s: Especially when Firefox manages to introduce some industry-first privacy practices. Considering 2021 is the year when privacy-focused tools saw a big boost in their userbase, Mozilla's Firefox is looking at a constant decline. So, that makes it a whopping ~46 million decline in the userbase. And, it seems to have declined to 198 million at the end of Q2 2021. And surprisingly, the original source for this information is Firefox's Public Data Report.Īs per the official stats, the reported number of active (monthly) users was about 244 million at the end of 2018. I came across a Reddit thread by u/nixcraft, which highlighted more details on the decline in the userbase of Firefox since 2018. However, even with all benefits as one of the best web browsers around, it is losing its grip for the past few years.
It has been the default choice for Linux users and privacy-conscious users across every platform. An anonymous reader quotes a report from It's FOSS, written by Ankush Das: Mozilla's Firefox is the only popular alternative to Chromium-based browsers.