The original design goal of Firefox was to be a "90/10" browser (relative to the old Mozilla suite). e.g. 90% of the people only need 10% of the features. Catering to power users was never the goal of Firefox and they lost users to Chrome when they did. What people want is a browser that loads webpages quickly and doesn't use a lot of system resources doing so.
These "most people only use 10% of the features, so we can drop the rest" ideas are just soo stupid & can quickly kill otherwise good projects.
And it's not just about chasing away power users, who are about the only advocates and marketing you have. Its mainly about the 10% being different for every user, effectively covering the full feature matrix!
Yet that seems to be precisely who they're targeting.
The only benefit Firefox now has over Chrome is a vague political notion of not using Google-made software, something that there isn't enough call for in the real world to drive significant marketshare. Their real differentiation was sacrificed on the altar of ease of development, and now what we're left with is an also-ran, in multiple meanings of that term.
Worse, an also-ran that's doing increasingly arational things, almost as if they're wildly groping about for the mythical marketshare.
Well, perhaps not the only thing: Tree Style Tabs opens in a sidebar in Firefox (and with user CSS, can be made to auto-expand), while in Chrome it opens in a separate window.
Well, Mozilla included email, chat, and whatnot. Regardless of what the goals were, it did cater to power users and clearly many people don't want the direction Firefox went in.
> and clearly many people don't want the direction Firefox went in.
A majority? I doubt it. I think it’s an extremely vocal minority that don’t care about the slowness of their browser (pre-e10s, pre-quantum), about things breaking (XUL extensions) or about UI features for the broad masses.
I’d bet money that FF’s 25% in Germany would be far closer to US numbers if they stayed where those vocal people want them.
All I'm saying is that based on my observations people's views on what Firefox should or should not be are different, and that this explains why people are still "angry" about the extensions breaking and such. I'm not having an argument with anyone.
I still miss the old Opera, including the built-in email client I used. So yeah, I agree.
Honestly, Opera is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It had tons of features and customizability without being slow or feeling "bloated". I never quite understood why it failed to gain marketshare 10 years ago while Firefox did.
