How Mozilla Firefox is Falling Behind

How Mozilla Firefox is Falling Behind

Posted by George Tinari | March 4, 2010 at 2:43 PM | Comments
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Mozilla Firefox, an open-source web browser, used to be the coolest kid on the block. It was much speedier than Internet Explorer and it was much more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. This wasn't very long ago, either. I would say about a year or two ago, Firefox was the top dog. While Internet Explorer remained on top with plenty more market share, Internet Explorer was mainly for all those non-tech savvy computer users, and it still is.

Firefox 3.0 was even a bigger success from Firefox 2.0 with great new technologies, much faster, and new features of course. The problem came about when delays kept coming for Firefox releases. When Firefox 3.5 was planned to be released a couple months before it actually was released -- same scenario with the current version, Firefox 3.6. So Mozilla got the reputation of not being able to keep up with their word.

Plus, in 2008, Google introduced its own browser, Google Chrome, but it didn't really get that much spotlight until about Google Chrome 3.0. It really started to pack in some useful features and technologies, while still maintaining a simple interface and it was claimed to be the fastest browser on Earth. This was Firefox's opportunity to integrate that speed and technology into their browser, but they didn't. They had only had plans for all that great stuff maybe in Firefox 4.0. We're waiting and waiting... why not just slam that stuff in now?

Firefox's market share in the past few months has began to decline as they fall behind, the speed is far slower than both Google Chrome and Safari 4. It's faster only than Internet Explorer. They still are far behind in supporting aspects of HTML5. And they still have that old style Windows XP look and feel to the user interface going on, ever since Firefox 2.0 and even before that. It is said that they are working on Firefox 4.0 with a new design, but that isn't planned until late 2010 and in Mozilla's world, that's in first quarter of 2011.

The point of this whole article? Firefox needs to step up their game or they will slip into Internet Explorer's ways. They are taking too long to make a better browser, when Google Chrome is constantly being updated on. It's time to stand your ground, Firefox, because 25% of PC users ditched Internet Explorer, and they can ditch you too.



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10 Response to "How Mozilla Firefox is Falling Behind"

  1. Anonymous March 5, 2010 at 8:52 AM
    As long as it's faster than IE it's all good!
  2. Anonymous March 7, 2010 at 9:27 PM
    I feel like security-wise, Firefox is the way to go. Also, I feel like Chrome is missing all the features and custom-ability that Firefox has.

    Just sayin...
  3. Anonymous May 1, 2010 at 5:24 AM
    Chrome can't even print a selection of text from a webpage... = Total Failure.

    And it's easy to be the fastest one when not even all basic functions are implemented and active!
  4. Anonymous May 28, 2010 at 7:45 PM
    Although I longed to use Chrome, I was only able to do so when Google updated their browser allowing stable extensions, including the absolutely necessary Xmarks. Chrome is faster, and Google does update much more often than Mozilla. Although I have security gripes about Chrome, until Firefox updates substantially enough to hold my attention again, I will continue to Chrome it up.
  5. Anonymous June 10, 2010 at 7:11 AM
    Its heart breaking to see firefox falling behind...

    And chrome is really stepping up podium!
  6. George Tinari June 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM
    I think the problem with Firefox is its failure to push out updates quick enough to compete with Chrome and even now Safari 5.
  7. Lars Gunther (itpastorn) July 12, 2010 at 4:23 AM
    Firefox falling behind is basically an exaggeration. they are behind ins some areas and very much the leader in other areas. Problem is journalists and blogger are clueless.

    Complaining about not getting 1900/100 on Acid, while being totally clueless about the value of what's missing. (Yeah, you really miss those SVG fonts, do you?)

    A quick list of what Firefox has pioneered the last 3 years:

    - WOFF fonts (way more important than SVG fonts in Acid3)
    - WebGL (Mozilla and Chronos)
    - Hardware accelerated Video, canvas and SVG (yep, Mozilla started this before MS)
    - ECMAScript 5th edition. SpiderMonkey is furthest along of all browser JS implementattions. Very close to 100 % support for strict mode.
    - ECMAScript harmony proxies and ephemeron tables (the latter will be renamed to something understandable)
    - Grouping selectors with the -moz-any() selector
    - Using any element as background (-moz-element())
    - Usable syntax for gradients, close to what will be the W3C standard
    Etc

    And most important. Everything in Firefox is being implemented with rigorous quality, including accessibility. Chrome has zero accessibility. It does 0% ARIA. Every single so called HTML5 control has zero accessibility.

    In fact, I've written about this recently.

    http://itpastorn.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-browser-supports-html5-yet-part-1.html

    http://itpastorn.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-browser-supports-html5-yet-part-2.html
  8. George Tinari July 12, 2010 at 12:50 PM
    I understand everything you are saying about not scoring well on Acid3 and where Firefox makes up for it. That's all well and nice, but if something is as low on Acid3 as IE (not saying Firefox it is) well then the rest is history. However, keep in mind that this article is based largely on the performance of Firefox and the fact that Mozilla is very slow to release game-changing updates. I do have some recent first impressions on Firefox 4 you might want to check out. http://www.techbitts.com/2010/07/some-first-impressions-on-firefox-4.html
  9. Lars Gunther (itpastorn) July 12, 2010 at 5:22 PM
    I read that article first actually, but thought my comments were more appropriate in this blog post. And I agree that MSIE <= 8 has an abysmal Acid3 score, but more important than the number is the fact that it misses some very important tests, like basic SVG support, media queries and CSS 3 selectors. The problem with Acid3 is that it has a great number of test for really useful stuff, but also a many tests for obscure stuff and minor edge cases. Therefore the score is only half the story.

    When Acid3 was released, indeed even before it was released, Safari and Opera had a race to be the first to 100, pass the rendering test and the "smoothness criterion" - the latter being a really artificial score about speed with almost no bearing on real world web site performance. In so doing I could clearly observe Webkit developers cutting quite a few corners just to win the race. (I tracked this in their Bugzilla. I could not track Opera equally wll, since they are closed source.)

    One example is SMIL. In order to achieve a point in Acid3 you really only need some very rudimentary support, not at all usable in any real world scenario. As soon as that rudimentary support was implemented, the bug was closed immediately. The corresponding Gecko bug, OTOH, was kept open for ages.

    This is yet another illustration about the peril of putting too much emphasis on Acid3, when comparing browsers. Having an Acid3 score of 50 is definitely not good, but 2 browsers being withing 10 points of each other, well that's just numbers.

    (Since Webkit got its 100/100 on Acid3 they have really improved their SMIL support, so today it is very complete.)

    I chose not to comment on the other blog post, since it is mostly about the UI. When it comes to UI every browser is trailing (and trying to mimick) Opera, IMO. And personally I'm a fan of the status bar. But all this is just taste, and everyone is entitled to his or her own. That's the best thing about having browser choice.
  10. George Tinari July 12, 2010 at 5:51 PM
    Right, well the reason why I made it mostly about UI is because it's simply first impressions and not a full review. And you are right again about Acid3 only being half the story, but it seems to be marketed the most. Well, when a browser receives a good score on it, anyway. Regardless of technologies and web standards, Firefox was really falling behind on speed too but they seem to be making a good comeback with Firefox 4 with the exception of a few things I had to nitpick at -- but that's just me. And as for the dreadful IE, the IE9 developer preview is looking promising but I have no doubts that shortly after its final release, somebody else will quickly catch up if it ends up being in the lead by any miracle.

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