What’s Next For Firefox?

My hope is that they see positive pickup from their "developer" release and also start making a "power-user" release. Because all the good work that they have been doing with regards to speed/responsiveness & memory management is being undone by dumbing down the interface to Chrome levels or worse. And if I wanted my browser to look like Chrome, I've would have installed it already.

Why is it that in the year 2014 there are still buttons that I cannot move (back/forward/reload/etc..)? Why is it that there still is the obsession with making all button bars and menus smaller or even hide them completely? I needed that on my Asus eee netbook in 2007, now, in 2014, I have retina screens everywhere. The icons for home/bookmarks/reload are so small on my screen that I have problems positioning my mouse over them. no: I do not want to hunt for a 18pix target when I have at least 1440pix vertically available.

And don't even get me started on hiding parts of the url. WHY would anyone on purpose hide parts of the web address that I need to see, if only to check that it is correct...

Of course there are many things that can be configured by userchrome scripts and about:config settings. But I do not want to carry around my personal "patchset" just to make a browser usable.

From the article:

In many ways, it feels like the Firefox team is mostly fighting a battle of perceptions. Ask anybody why they don’t use Firefox and they’ll say: “It’s too slow.” That’s not actually the case anymore.

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. Firefox's UI often goes (Not Responding) for me, while Chrome's UI is always responsive.

Yes, this worries me, quite a lot. I think that the web needs a healthy Firefox. I know it's their standard marketing messaging, but I don't think any org but a non profit with a large userbase can keep the web open.

Apple still doesn't allow 3rd party browser engines, which is why Firefox is nowhere to be seen on iOS.

What Apple do allow is to build a custom app around a limited version of the Safari engine.