Firefox Developers Hate You

[HardwareGeek]

@Tsaukpaetra said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@HardwareGeek How come?

The answer is: "I don't."

You're not wrong.

[sh_code]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

And anybody who thinks minor UI changes are the reason everybody switched to Chrome

i switched to Opera GX. Purely because it has CPU and RAM usage limiter settings which sadly turn out to be the most important web browser innovation in the past 10 years

[BernieTheBernie]

Still using Firefox, but not a current version. Because they destroyed proxy.pac file handling, which I use for ad and malware blocking.

[Medinoc]

@El_Heffe said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

The arguments are what TFA says: the people complaining are a minority, telemetry shows that ${x} isn't being used, etc. But each time a few people get pissed and switch.

The problem with the "telemetry shows that ${x} isn't being used" argument is that most knowledgeable users turn off the telemetry because they don't want their browser spying on them. So Mozilla's telemetry is not accurate and only represents the usage patterns of people too lazy or stupid to turn off the telemetry.

I think that's one of Firefox's major problem: That most of Firefox's remaining userbase is the tech-savvy users, the kind that disable telemetry on sight. And they don't realize this.

Which is why they do stuff like bump the menu item spacing to levels that make no sense on desktop, remove the "View Image"[in the same tab, without losing Back] option, copy every misfeature of Chrome, etc.

[Karla]

@HardwareGeek said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Unperverted-Vixen said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

I don’t know your definition of “too many”. I have about three dozen;

I don't know, either, but it's definitely somewhere between the 27 windows with 146 tabs I have open on this computer and the 94 windows with 798 tabs I have open on my old computer.

it won’t fetch content for inactive tabs until I switch to them, though.

Exactly. That's is a desirable feature, the way I use a browser.

I regularly use 5 browsers, the 5 taps on FF are for XYZ, the 5 on Chrome are for ABC.

I want to see my tabs and what they are, and not accidentally close one because I was trying to make it active.

I do that a bit with text editors too.

[Parody]

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@HardwareGeek said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Unperverted-Vixen said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

I don’t know your definition of “too many”. I have about three dozen;

I don't know, either, but it's definitely somewhere between the 27 windows with 146 tabs I have open on this computer and the 94 windows with 798 tabs I have open on my old computer.

it won’t fetch content for inactive tabs until I switch to them, though.

Exactly. That's is a desirable feature, the way I use a browser.

I regularly use 5 browsers, the 5 taps on FF are for XYZ, the 5 on Chrome are for ABC.

I want to see my tabs and what they are, and not accidentally close one because I was trying to make it active.

I do that a bit with text editors too.

Me too. Notably, I keep Google and Facebook confined to Chrome and only open it when needed.

[HardwareGeek]

@Parody said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

I keep Google and Facebook confined to Chrome and only open it when needed.

So you never open Facebook?

[Gribnit]

@HardwareGeek said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Parody said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

I keep Google and Facebook confined to Chrome and only open it when needed.

So you never open Facebook?

No, this joke only available if they used them, not it. It's heartening to see you attempt creativity, but not for very long. Not for very long, at all.

[PotatoEngineer]

@remi said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

It's (part of) what kills FF because indeed the majority of users don't care, but it also shows how basic the browser has become, which is great overall (i.e. everyone can and do use one).

I'll admit that the main reason why I use FF is because I use Edgium at work. (And because Chrome nags me whenever I want to open 20 tabs at a time. It's today's comics list! Of course I want to open 20 tabs at the same time!) They all want me to "log in" and "sync" and "unify" and "obey" and "crush EastEurasia", and using a different browser means that even if I click that button, it won't actually unify my home/work data, because I use different browsers.

And because all browsers are pretty darn similar (except the name of the extension that lets me run user scripts), it's no big deal for me to have different browsers at home and work.

[The_Quiet_One]

Kay.

So, let's start with the axiom that Firefox users switched to Chrome.

Tabs-On-Top

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?

Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

Constant removal of features “that no-one uses”

Alright, this might be a factor. It's been about 10 years since I've really used Firefox. I was an early adopter of Chrome, but I know Firefox went through big changes over the years. And as we all know, a browser doesn't even have to remove features, they just have to change something innocuous and people will complain.

Bad coding paradigms

Yeah, I don't think the 75% of the Firefox user-base gives a shit about how the app is coded. I'm sure the code is shit. I'm sure I use software that is coded like shit which I enjoy. Unless I'm actively maintaining the code, who cares? I don't think that many Firefox users are actually editing the source code.

Poor memory management

For the record, this is what got me off of Firefox in favor of Chrome back in the day. Firefox was a hog, and Chrome as a new shiny minimal browser that did its job with little CPU and memory usage. Since then Chrome's probably gotten worse than Firefox ever was back when I stopped using it. My understanding is Firefox has since gotten better at performance.

Invading your privacy at the same time as telling us “we value your privacy”

So, people abandoned Mozilla for Google in the interests of privacy?

[Zecc]

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

[topspin]

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?
I’m a serious opponent of the whole modern “let’s put garbage in the non-client area title bar“ craze, but I really couldn’t care less about this when choosing browsers, unless the choice would be between otherwise exactly equal options.
I feel like everyone wants to chime in with their opinions why Firefox lost users, while most people (me included) don’t really know, and at the same time people who do are tech nerds who think such a fucking triviality matters. At all.
This just doesn’t even make sense.

[Gribnit]

@topspin this is why the only software I give a fuck about is the IDE and the shell. I have not got time enough to care about other points of environment customization - and if I do, it would be better spent rustling up jimmies.

[JBert]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?
I’m a serious opponent of the whole modern “let’s put garbage in the non-client area title bar“ craze, but I really couldn’t care less about this when choosing browsers, unless the choice would be between otherwise exactly equal options.
I feel like everyone wants to chime in with their opinions why Firefox lost users, while most people (me included) don’t really know, and at the same time people who do are tech nerds who think such a fucking triviality matters. At all.
This just doesn’t even make sense.

Because the whole Tabs-on-top UI thing meant they redesigned the title bar, menu bar and everything else.

Here's a screenshot of how Firefox looked (I'm using PaleMoon, where I can still switch):

Then with Tabs-on-top they reasoned that they couldn't display tabs on top of such a menu bar, so they squeezed everything into the orange "Firefox" menu button at the top left: (note: the tabs aren't really on top here because the window isn't maximized - it's a random screenshot from the Internet and I'm not going to attempt to replicate it)

Another generation later and the menu is this tiny square button in that awkward spot on the right:

So in a way, everything changed once they let the UI people out of their pen and fed them pizza after midnight.

[HardwareGeek]

@JBert said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

let the UI people out of their pen and fed them pizza after midnight.

Bad idea.

[Karla]

@JBert said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?
I’m a serious opponent of the whole modern “let’s put garbage in the non-client area title bar“ craze, but I really couldn’t care less about this when choosing browsers, unless the choice would be between otherwise exactly equal options.
I feel like everyone wants to chime in with their opinions why Firefox lost users, while most people (me included) don’t really know, and at the same time people who do are tech nerds who think such a fucking triviality matters. At all.
This just doesn’t even make sense.

Because the whole Tabs-on-top UI thing meant they redesigned the title bar, menu bar and everything else.

Here's a screenshot of how Firefox looked (I'm using PaleMoon, where I can still switch):

Then with Tabs-on-top they reasoned that they couldn't display tabs on top of such a menu bar, so they squeezed everything into the orange "Firefox" menu button at the top left: (note: the tabs aren't really on top here because the window isn't maximized - it's a random screenshot from the Internet and I'm not going to attempt to replicate it)

Another generation later and the menu is this tiny square button in that awkward spot on the right:

So in a way, everything changed once they let the UI people out of their pen and fed them pizza after midnight.

Since I have a wide-screen as my main monitor, I kinda like the tabs on the side. I discovered it by accident in Vivaldi. I can see what the tabs are better and less likely I will accidentally close one.

Note, I also always move my OS toolbar to the side.

(When I need help desk support, they hate me between toolbar on the side and the trackball they can't even.)

[Zecc]

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Note, I also always move my OS toolbar to the side.

Yess. Join us.

It works specially well when you also use remote desktop (and sometimes remote-in-remote ) and have taskbars on different sides. (I'm a heathen using a single monitor)

[Karla]

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Note, I also always move my OS toolbar to the side.

Yess. Join us.

It works specially well when you also use remote desktop (and sometimes remote-in-remote ) and have taskbars on different sides. (I'm a heathen using a single monitor)

My main (home) machine is Linux, so I have to remote into my windows laptop, then jump through hoops to get to my work computer. The laptop, since it is rarely used for anything, I put the tool bar at the top.

And at one point I was migrating our web apps from window server 2012 to 2016. And that required remoting into a number of webservers from my work machine.

So, yeah, having the toolbar in different places helps orient me.

[Gribnit]

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So, yeah, having the toolbar in different places helps orient me.

Some OSs support an experimental feature called a "background image".

[Zecc]

@Gribnit said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So, yeah, having the toolbar in different places helps orient me.

Some OSs support an experimental feature called a "background image".

Aka, the thing you only see immediately before opening your fist maximized window.

[Gąska]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?

What else is there to base the choice on? Every browser is identical to each other, aesthetics is about the only difference remaining.

[Zecc]

@Gąska Oh come on. The icons are completely kind of different.

Yeah, yeah that's included in aesthetics I guess.

[Zecc]

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

your fist maximized window.

INB4

[Applied Mediocrity]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

I feel like everyone wants to chime in with their opinions (...), while most people (me included) don’t really know, and at the same time people who do are tech nerds who think such a fucking triviality matters. At all.

Welcome to WTDWTF

[dcon]

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Note, I also always move my OS toolbar to the side.

The One True Way.

[topspin]

@Gąska said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?

What else is there to base the choice on? Every browser is identical to each other, aesthetics is about the only difference remaining.

For one, Firefox tries to prevent privacy ass-rape while Chrome has it built-in.

[Gąska]

@topspin and that's why they're pushing their Cloud Pocket Sign-In-To-Browser thing so strongly! To protext our privacy!

[Gribnit]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Gąska said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@The_Quiet_One said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So if I get this right... Chrome adopted Tabs-on-Top... something I had to even google and take a bit to understand wtf this even means. And I still don't get it. What is tabs-on-top, and why is it so bad?
Whatever it is, Chrome has it and users hate it. So, what this author is saying is after Firefox copied Chrome's tabs-on-top, and as a result, users abandoned Firefox to adopt... the browser that invented this apparently abhorrent design?

It used to be possible to have tabs on the bottom in Firefox. Once they got rid of that, people thought "well, I might as well use Chrome then". See also: constant removal of features.

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?

What else is there to base the choice on? Every browser is identical to each other, aesthetics is about the only difference remaining.

For one, Firefox tries to prevent privacy ass-rape while Chrome has it built-in.

If you'd said Pale Moon vs Firefox, I'd be agreeing. The Pale Moon change log indicates Firefox does not really understand privacy too well.

[sloosecannon]

@dcon said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Note, I also always move my OS toolbar to the side.

The One True Way.

Since downvotes mean nothing in this topic, allow me to express my dissatisfaction with a message.

[topspin]

@Gąska said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@topspin and that's why they're pushing their Cloud Pocket Sign-In-To-Browser thing so strongly! To protext our privacy!

I don’t have that. But I have tracking protection.

[Karla]

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Gribnit said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Karla said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

So, yeah, having the toolbar in different places helps orient me.

Some OSs support an experimental feature called a "background image".

Aka, the thing you only see immediately before opening your fist maximized window.

Exactly, work machine all major apps maximized. That machine gets rebooted only with a windows update.

I try to keep unneeded items off the servers.

So my linux machine is the only one that has a pic of my daughter. But that machine has 3 monitors and the main is the widescreen so I did put a picture of my daughter as background.

[topspin]

@topspin looks like a Chrome user got butthurt?

[LaoC]

@Medinoc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@El_Heffe said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

The arguments are what TFA says: the people complaining are a minority, telemetry shows that ${x} isn't being used, etc. But each time a few people get pissed and switch.

The problem with the "telemetry shows that ${x} isn't being used" argument is that most knowledgeable users turn off the telemetry because they don't want their browser spying on them. So Mozilla's telemetry is not accurate and only represents the usage patterns of people too lazy or stupid to turn off the telemetry.

I think that's one of Firefox's major problem: That most of Firefox's remaining userbase is the tech-savvy users, the kind that disable telemetry on sight. And they don't realize this.

Which is why they do stuff like bump the menu item spacing to levels that make no sense on desktop, remove the "View Image"[in the same tab, without losing Back] option, copy every misfeature of Chrome, etc.

Seems like it's time to develop a standalone "FF Voter" applicationvery small shell script that you can run in the background and that will submit some mix of preconfigured and randomized statistics that have nothing to do with your browsing habits but push the features you want .

[LaoC]

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@Zecc said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

your fist maximized window.

INB4

INB4

[marczellm]

@JBert

[Zenith]

Too bad Mozilla makes the Firefox renderer so difficult to embed like the IE ActiveX control...

[topspin]

Someone hates this whole topic!

[Luhmann]

@Zecc
a boxing glove would a nice touch ... maybe even yellow

[Zecc]

@Luhmann I just remembered my current background image.

[Zecc]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?

To be clear, these were tabs at the bottom of the web content, not next to the address bar.
It was the style at the time

Also, I have no idea if getting rid of tabs at the bottom actually had any noticeable impact on Firefox market share. All I know is there were a few vocal users complaining about it.

[DogsB]

@sloosecannon said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

It’s also nowhere close to what I’d call a normal GUI program.

It's a game where it's not expected that you follow the standard GUI conventions for your platform.

Unlike every Java GUI ever, where you have to work hard to follow those conventions....

Swing was fucking God awful for that. Put everyone off Java guis for life. Eclipse RCP isn't too bad. JavaScript frameworks appear destined to replicate it badly. See the occasional desktop app that uses it and it sours me immediately.
The main problem with Java on the desktop is that it really lost the PR war not to mention it was such a pain to install and configure for your average developer not to mention your average user. .net you download, install and then ran app. Something you rarely have to do anymore. Java on the other hand you Google it, find Oracle, asked to sign up, realise they want your entire life story so you close the browser and find something better to do.

[BernieTheBernie]

@topspin said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

Why the actual fuck would you choose a browser based on if it has tabs below or above the address bar?

Btw, I found that strange feature only on the machine equipped with Windows 10, running Firefox 85. My good machines with Windows 7 use older FF versions.
And, with Windows 10, all UI is just fücked up. So, that FF85 fits well there.

[dkf]

@DogsB said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

.net you download, install and then ran app

Or you see .net and go “ah, the developer can't be bothered to support my platform so I'll take my money elsewhere”.

[DogsB]

@dkf said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@DogsB said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

.net you download, install and then ran app

Or you see .net and go “ah, the developer can't be bothered to support my platform so I'll take my money elsewhere”.

If its not in apt get it doesn't exist.

[HardwareGeek]

@DogsB said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

JavaScript frameworks appear destined to replicate it badly.

If you're replicating something awful, but doing it badly, does that mean your replica is actually good?

[loopback0]

@BernieTheBernie said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

My good machines with Windows 7

[DogsB]

@HardwareGeek said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@DogsB said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

JavaScript frameworks appear destined to replicate it badly.

If you're replicating something awful, but doing it badly, does that mean your replica is actually good?

No. Remember that the well can cave in.

[acrow]

@DogsB Did I ever tell you about this one ex-co-worker of mine, who tended to ship a copy of Java with his programs? The installer just plopped it in the same folder as the executable.

Come to think of it, I do the same myself with Qt now.

So, really, who makes their users install the whole framework separately? Disk space is free when it's on the user's machine.

[Gąska]

@acrow said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@DogsB Did I ever tell you about this one ex-co-worker of mine, who tended to ship a copy of Java with his programs? The installer just plopped it in the same folder as the executable.

Considering all the hoops Oracle added that you need to jump through to obtain old JREs, and the multi-vendor shit going on since Java 10 - it isn't such a bad idea, and the more recent the story, the more sense it makes.

Java-based IDEs have been shipping with JREs since forever. I remember seeing it with a few other applications too but can't remember what they were.

Come to think of it, I do the same myself with Qt now.

Everyone making Windows apps did it with everything written in C++ since at least late 90s. So I'd be more surprised if you didn't.

[DogsB]

@acrow said in Firefox Developers Hate You:

@DogsB Did I ever tell you about this one ex-co-worker of mine, who tended to ship a copy of Java with his programs? The installer just plopped it in the same folder as the executable.

Come to think of it, I do the same myself with Qt now.

So, really, who makes their users install the whole framework separately? Disk space is free when it's on the user's machine.

Yeah that's what eclipse RCP based desktop apps do. Short circuits the needing to download a ire step.