Didn't they say not a few months ago that "the reason Firefox has fallen behind is that we focused on stuff that wasn't browser-related like MozillaOS etc."?
Learning from own mistakes anyone?
Learning from own mistakes anyone?
"These are obviously experimental tools and there’s no guarantee they will ever make it into a release version of Firefox. Indeed, the idea behind Test Pilot is to allow the Firefox team to test new concepts."
The efforts on making Firefox faster and more responsive have been going on for a few years (e10s/electrolysis being one of them) and are appearing in the releases as fast as the team can develop, test and deliver them. I personally believe Mozilla has a highly capable core team on this, and to insinuate otherwise, to me, seems like accepting commercial interests of other browser makers as higher than FLOSS interests. I don't disagree on quality of the product being a huge aspect in value judgments, but it cannot and should not be the only one.
"Fast and more responsive" is just one aspect. Because "we're getting faster" and "these are just experiments" lead to a situation when "Browse against the machine" [1] uses FF for work and Chrome for play, and pretends it's ok.
[1] https://medium.com/the-official-unofficial-firefox-blog/brow...
In general I agree that Mozilla has lost its way with its current head count; successfully funding a company with advertising revenue tends to do that.
As an example, they tried vertical tabs, and it appears it didn't work as well as they needed it to be so it has been left out. On the flip side, the empty tab page was also an experiment, and that worked well and made it to the default browser.
These experiments are work on the browser. But instead of adding them as features, introducing them as experiments and then adding the polished, stable, feedback adjusted version as a true feature that can be marketed effectively.
Vertical tabs have never been built into Firefox.
Unsure what you mean by "they dropped it because they couldn't get it to work again" -- it was never built into Firefox.
There's only one interest in the browser wars: prevail or perish. If Firefox cannot secure a large enough market share, it will be insignificant, lose funding, and die off.
I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent.
Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new competitor within only a few years due to a lack of focus.
And due to their competitors ability to advertise on the majority of people's home page. For most people, chrome wasn't a firefox alternative, it was an internet explorer alternative.
Firefox was in need of technical improvements for some time, but they only started acting when Chrome already had a noticeable market share and that's not how you stay at the top.
No one is criticising Mozilla for coming up with Rust, yet if they didn't take the time to experiment Rust wouldn't be around.
So yeah, good on them, I'm happy for them to try voice recognition and other endeavours, who knows what they might discover?
>who knows what they might discover?
They'll discover, just like Opera, that an abundance of useless features doesn't make up for a browser that is lacking speed, security, a clear design, ease-of-use and configurability.
Coincidentally, all of the examples you mention have been a major focus for far more people within Mozilla than their experiments are, and improvements in these areas have really been noticeable if you've been using Firefox lately.
Like many others, I used Firefox for a long time despite it being technically inferior to Chrome, but at some point you say 'fuck it' and make the change.
Mozilla, given their market share, should have been first to offer 64-bit support, separate processes for tabs, sand-boxing and a lot of other stuff, but they've been asleep, because for a long time there was no strong competitor.
I've been waiting for working and full printing support something like https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print... for years now. Printing articles from the browser is the same pain as 10 years ago.
But yes this is not as fancy as voice search or file sharing (or their single sign on, identity and all the other failed stuff).
Mozilla has been a vehicle for people who play out their tech and political dreams and then move on. And FF is crumbling all the way.
But this misery is soon over, we're in the end game of Firefox.
https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
(Written from FF - a browser I've used since Mosaic)