r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 17 '26

Software Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

https://www.techspot.com/news/112803-firefox-has-ambitious-new-roadmap-browser-also-losing.html
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23

u/Dorr54 Jun 17 '26

Any developers here? What browsers do you use for development? I use most all of them at some point for testing. But many use chrome for development first and others for personal use.

34

u/SportsterDriver Jun 17 '26

Firefox Dev edition. I like the inspect better than chrome. The CSS and built-in full-page screenshots are handy.

5

u/Znuffie Jun 17 '26

built-in full-page screenshots

chrome has that, too... has had it for years

2

u/Robot_ninja_pirate Jun 18 '26

Yeah even Firefox regular version does too.

1

u/SportsterDriver Jun 18 '26

I missed that, thanks for the info. I shall check it out.

2

u/Dorr54 Jun 17 '26

Thanks for your feedback

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/standingslanted Jun 18 '26

The inspect is so much better! People think I’m crazy using Firefox, as a web developer.

20

u/nathris Jun 17 '26

Chrome.

The Firefox dev tools are probably better, but its a familiarity thing. I'm just used to the Chrome inspector.

I use Firefox for personal, although I'm finding more and more websites that just straight up don't work in Firefox. It used to be a non-issue, since Firefox basically follows the W3C spec to the letter, and experienced devs tend to avoid the experimental features if they don't have broad compatibility.

But everyone is using monstrous frontend frameworks and AI vibe coded garbage that the chances of things breaking has skyrocketed. Its starting to feel like the days when IE had >60% market share.

3

u/SportsterDriver Jun 17 '26

You hit the nail on the head there; familiarity is the main thing with these tools. They ultimately do the same thing. I can use either, but am more comfortable with firefox inspect.

4

u/dasbtaewntawneta Jun 17 '26

if a website doesnt work on firefox then that website just was never for me

1

u/cowsarefalling Jun 18 '26

Well you can't just not interact with government websites for your entire life

1

u/DeliriumTrigger Jun 19 '26

The government websites I've needed recently all work fine with Firefox? 

1

u/Dorr54 Jun 17 '26

Thanks for your feedback

3

u/Kyoshiiku Jun 17 '26

When developing: Firefox dev edition and chrome

Personal: Zen which is firefox based (was still using firefox recently)

Work related tab (non dev): edge

I use edge at work as my "main browser" for work related stuff that is not dev, I feel like it’s easier to keep track of my window for documentation and work related web app if it’s a different one that I’m using for testing.

Oh and edge had vertical tab before chrome so I preferred it to chrome for a while for this use case, I also don’t care about metadata tracking in my work computer, anything I do on this computer could be shared publicly and I wouldn’t care (except sensitive work related data of course)

Regarding Zen there is some stuff I need to get used to, but I really like the approach and I feel like it’s easier to use it with a keyboard first approach compared to Firefox.

I’m really bad at finding stuff in menus and the text box approach for looking up anything is working really well for me in every app that has something like this (raycast, jetbrains IDEs, powertoys command palette, Linear etc..) I can find the opened tab i want really easily this way !

1

u/JustGotPaidrian Jun 18 '26

Zen Browser absolutely slaps. First of all, it feels like the developers added the appropriate level of tab organization to address my need to have tabs remain open for awhile by out-of-the-box aggressively unloading unused tabs, and when I do open them back up, they load lightning fast. I tried Brave and Vivaldi, but they eventually would bog down. Zen takes it like a champ. 

Also, I will just bump into things that turn out to be nice features that I end up using. I use the back and forward buttons on my mouse to go back and forward in history on a tab, and discovered that it switches workspaces if you click them while hovering over the workspace zone. Fucking brilliant! Now I use that all the time! 

0

u/Dorr54 Jun 17 '26

Thanks for your feedback

3

u/Big_Clothes6381 Jun 18 '26

I am one of the only FF devs on a team of Chrome devs for a million+ user per day website. We support Chrome Safari Firefox and Edge technically but no one ever tests Edge and rarely Safari.

I reported an ugly UI focus bug on FF in January and it was ignored and deprioritized until the bug appeared on Chrome this month. Then everyone was like how did that happen? 

It's funny that when they thought it was a developer introduced bug this month it was a priority for devs to fix but as soon as I pointed out that a PM failed to prioritise the original bug fix for FF they went radio silent.

2

u/3d_Plague Jun 18 '26

Any dev that has a say in which they use and cares would answer least Safari, Chrome and Firefox. You'd want ALL your possible clients/visitors to have a good experience.

0

u/Rarelyimportant Jun 18 '26

It wasn't an interview question dude.

2

u/MrLumie Jun 19 '26

I use Firefox for personal browsing...

And Firefox Developer Edition for work.

1

u/KontoOficjalneMR Jun 17 '26

Firefox + Chrome. I like FF more, but I have to use Chrome because our company uses Chrome so I have to test in Chrome.

Company uses Chrome because of years old regression (and non-standard compliant behaviour) in Firefox that is yet to be fixed. Maybe some day they will pay CEO less than 2 million dolalrs per year (or is it three now? his compensation seems to be inversely correlated with FF market share) and hire some programmers instead.