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."?
"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.
It doesn't matter if they are experimental or not. It doesn't matter if they will make it into the release or not. There is one very certain thing: these experiments divert resources and people.
"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.
More people won't necessarily help solve any problems though. (Insert obligatory Mythical Man Month mumble mumble, hand-waving, etc. here.) Perhaps additional resources could help.
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.
This is how they are adding features to the browser. This is a smart way of doing it. Make it experimental, gauge the feedback, and integrate it if the feedback makes it seem useful.
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 used to work so well on Firefox that I held on for just that, even when everybody had already left for Chrome. Then they killed it. Now you're saying they dropped it because they couldn't get it to work again. Kind of sad.
>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.
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.
Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other.
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.
I'd like to know how much of an impact that had, but nonetheless Chrome is technically in many areas the best browser today and Mozilla, being the clear market leader at one point, could have done a lot more to prevent that.
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.
Rust is a technical improvement, so it's exactly what many users are asking.
>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.
Yes, but these changes take time and they only started working on them when users started leaving for Chrome.
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.
Those are accurate comments about Mozilla in the past, but you can't say development currently is bad when they're working exactly on what you say they should be working on (and some other things).
The linked page seems to indicate Chrome is leading because people are browsing on their Android phones. So it would seem if Mozilla should concentrate on anything it would be improving the mobile experience.
That is actually the one area where Firefox is already better for me, because of extension support. Having an ad blocker on mobile devices is priceless.
Learning from own mistakes anyone?