Mozilla and why they remove features to be like Chrome - a detailed

Also to count into is the following:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/02/16/the-road-to-firefox-57-compatibility-milestones/#comment-223542

Jorge made it more than clear that ui customization is no longer a supported functionality!

Mozilla mentions also quite often maintenance or security reasons for removing features.. but the truth behind which everyone knows is the following:

Maintenance and security is a reason, but not the biggest. The thing is simple users are representing the biggest part of the market share. Chrome owns the largest percentage of the market share.

So what do companies do which try to gather a large part of that users too? They restrict and remove features from which they know that simple users are not going to accept them and refusing to use a browser with such features inside.

Opera has done it. Even Microsoft has done it partly with Edge - even if they can't remove much features as they do not had many in the first place. Everyone adopts that new simplicity trend because big companies show that they earn that way money and gather large influence. Even an Open Source company like Mozilla is not willing to ignore that.

Ask a simple user if he would use a software with customization and tons of accessibility features inside. The answer is a clear no-brainer. And what are you doing then to gather that users? Kill features and restrict the feature set until a point that these users switch over.

Saved money is a nice side effect, but not the main reason of all that. Like it or not, we experience a 180 degree shift of priorities. And in most cases advanced users are the one's who lose everything as it is not possible to earn enough with users like us today.

The rest is left to you, looking forward for a friendly and healthy discussion!

It is really cute how you think they actually care about market share. It's just a money making scheme for some people, I bet they don't even use Firefox themselves.

>>59001284
Well if you do not care about market share you could instantly close the building. Market share means money and influence, deciding the way how the web is evolving standards and drafts wise.

>>59001251
How hard would it be to take Netscape source code and compile a simple browser that supports modern formats and extensions like webm, pdf and uBlock?

Netscape was the peak of browsing technology, now its bloated as fuck for no reason.

tl;dr

I think the problem with Mozilla in particular is their codebase. Their biggest asset.
It's so big, old supports many architectures/OS that many of them are barely in use anymore if at all.
The switch migration to servo makes sense. The multiprocess model proven to be successful with Chrome. However dropping features seems like inevitable compromise in order to do this.
My biggest question would be if it was absolutely necessary to drop customization in order to achieve this goal? Is Mozilla losing addon developers because of this? Or did they wanted to capture the new developers that were working on addons for Chromium-based browsers before this? With an easier learning curve to develop addons (no XUL, just JS) seemed like the right move, and it also seems easier to maintain security wise, since you could launch third party executables via addons (like DTA).
Is their move to restrict functionality in favour security justified?

Firefox lost users because it was slow and unresponsive

They are starting to recover some users because of e10s.

Your overanalysis is stupid and you should feel bad.

>>59001255
>Jorge made it more than clear that ui customization is no longer a supported functionality!

He talks about extreme ui customization. Firefox UI will be customizable, just not as much as it used to.

Guess what: Nobody gives a fuck. The amount of experienced users and addon developers who need more customization are a a very, very very small share. Remind that 1/3 of firefox users don't use addons at all

>>59002720
>Remind that 1/3 of firefox users don't use addons at all

I actually meant: only 1/3 of firefox users install addons

>>59002737
This is one thing Mozilla should work on (in the future, post-webextensions). Like for new users on the first run page they should have their addon showcase that shows off popular addons and explains what they do to the user and allows them to download them. Right now people have to click the upper right menu, then go to addons, then go to "get addons", and browse around or search for something specific. People who aren't familiar with addons or don't even know what they are might not know what to search for or that they even exist.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1199718

They killed native.js cause [...in 2015 it was said we'd deprecate the permissive add-on model...]

Now I'll have to port my addon to vivaldi (a crippled version :( but that's what I'm gonna get with web-ext anyway) and then make sure it never works on firefox cause i don't want to support this bastards anymore.

They said native.js will bring the same flexibility that we have with xul/xpcom but it seems they just wanted some of the devs to shut up while they destroyed firefox.

So no xul, no xpcom, no native.js, they're slow as fuck extending web-ext apis, limited customization...

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>>59001251