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Comment by II2II

13 hours ago

It is sad to see Firefox riding various hype trains over the years, but I can't really blame them. Miss the wrong train, and you fall behind and may not be able to catch up. Miss the train to nowhere, and you are only wasting resources.

As for the excellent browser that people want, that raises the question of what people want. There are likely as many answers as people.

12 comments

II2II

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epihelix  7 hours ago

I don't understand this - what is wrong with Firefox these days? It does everything I need, and very few things I don't want.

Very puzzled why there isn't more love for Firefox, even on HN.

cecexacjrgec  13 hours ago

Yeah. It’s a tough balance to achieve but that’s the situation we’re in right now so Mozilla really ought to step up (and I totally wish they would).

My biggest pain point at the moment (entirely subjective mind you) is not even the AI nonsense, but how disjointed and alien the Firefox UX and general feel is to Apple platforms (what I use, at the moment). I don’t want Firefox to mirror Safari 1:1 but I do want the Firefox UI and UX to feel polished, well thought out and thoroughly in line with system HIG specs—given that I spend a lot of time in a browser, it shouldn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land amidst my other desktop applications.

Aggressive UI improvements would go a long way to restore some faith in the incandescent fox‘ mission—at least for me.

  • II2II  10 hours ago

    Behaving like a native application also has tradeoffs. If you're only working on one platform, then sure you will want it to behave like a native application. If you're working on multiple platforms, chances are that you're going to value consistency. And while macOS users prefer their UI, the same can be said of Linux and Windows users. Guess which one is going to win out there.

  • takeda  12 hours ago

    Maybe I'm not enough of an Apple fanboy but using work provided mac with firefox for 15 years I never noticed UI being disjointed from the system any more than Chrome.

    • cecexacjrgec  3 hours ago

      > Maybe I'm not enough of an Apple fanboy

      Maybe you’re too preoccupied trying to discredit valid criticism as “fanboyism” to realise how important UI and UX are for products such as browsers.

      Besides, Chrome itself is already an absolute mess of conflicting and downright distasteful UX choices and patterns. Firefox seems to be stuck in the past but Chrome seems to actively DESPISE being available on Mac.