Firefox

Ever since the first release, I've tried Firefox a few times. Each time I was left with a feeling of needing dozens of extensions to get it up to par with the browser I was using at the time (mainly Opera and now Vivaldi). The extensions I found were never customisable enough, and would often break and/or be abandoned after a while.

Don't get me wrong: Chrome, IE, Edge, and Safari are worse - each time I used them I got the urge to throw my computer out the window after just a few minutes. But Firefox is just not customisable enough to my liking, and extension are IMO not the answer.

1. It doesn't have native integration for features some people find incredibly useful. For example, tab stacking and the eternally useful side bar of Opera/Vivaldi. These features are hand waived away by FF fans but to those that find them integral it's worth staying on a browser that doesn't require bloating it up with extensions just to replicate the baked in features of another offering.

2. People are starting to realize that all the "Mozilla is the hero in the fight against chromium!" Bullshit is really just talking points since they're funded primarily by Google. Taking the bite out of any moral arguments to use it. Convincing the couple hundred thousand fediversians to switch would be consider a rounding error in the global user base of chrome, and the future of the web will continue to evolve as browser suppliers find ways of circumventing whatever crap Google cooks up. Nothing is ever "the end." As long as software exists something will be designed to crack it.

3. You sound like an AI generated Firefox Ad.

I actually switched away from Firefox to Vivaldi a few months ago mainly for 2 reasons.

1. Firefox's profiles are dogshit. They are almost a hidden feature and are very cumbersome to use.

2. The Android browser support for certain types of extensions is dodgy. Using uBlock Origin delays the loading of all webpages by a few seconds for some reason. There is a Github issue about this that has been open for a few years now.

I want the browser I use to be on both Android and desktop. Vivaldi has been OK so far.

I do miss a lot of the good stuff from Firefox, especially their address bar. For some reason I find it much better than anything on Chromium based browsers. Firefox's is much snappier and is correct with it's suggestions the majority of the time.

I also like Firefox's sync between devices to be much better.

When those 2 issues are resolved I will come back, but as it stands now it's a hassle for my needs.

Most people don’t know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30’s still live without ad blockers, so I don’t think many are educated here)

All browsers have extensions, even Safari. This has nothing to do with FF particularly

It’s just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can’t deny this, but despite of this, I find it’s worthy.

Firefox is now a memory hog as bad as Chrome, but doesn't offer speed and responsiveness, which is kind of a shitty trade-off

It’s not the default.

Neither is Chrome, yet people actively download and install it.

Many features which are Google specific aren’t supported.

True

Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it’s market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.

True

Firefox on android is terrible. The UI is awful (how hard is to create a usable bookmark system?) and forced opening a new tab are my two pet peeves. Also, it is much, much slower than a chromium based browser in my experience and seems to take a lot more memory. Also, occasionally I'll find websites that don't work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google.

I suppose I never considered switching off of Chrome because I didn’t need my browser to do anything better for me. I’ve always been fine with Chrome’s speed, the UI is nice, and in general I don’t experience any issues with it.

Despite the memes, Firefox was the one which decided it wanted to deep throat 30gb of my ram by default for no discernable reason so I stopped using it. Only extentions I had installed were ad block and the reddit enchantment suite. Since then I've been really enjoying the video pop out of opera.

Firefox lost it's shares to normies because it was bad. Then it lost shares of tinkers because it moved extension, user agent and so on to chromium. Small market shares means developers don't give a damn about testing on firefox. Firefox doesn't show correctly pages and has no good support for pwa, microsoft teams etc. Chromium invents new things wich only edge and chrome have/support. Normies use browser wich just work out of the box for work and pleasure. It's a circle. You can tinker with your niche browser but massed decides what is what. Chrome/Edge are just better for every day use. Simple as that.*