Maybe with web standards (maybe, I'm not sure), but not the rest.
Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through. Downloading files has the same problem, it's relegated in a small button, while it's one of the main features.
The whole interface is one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, considering how simple a browser can be in terms of functionality the user must access. I'll also never forget they they thought tabs on top didn't make sense (it's actually still an option you can change).
Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser.
In terms of how pretty the UI is, Firefox 53—which just got released—looks better, but it took them years to get to where Chrome was back at version 1.
Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient.
From a technological point of view, it took them years to implement sandboxing, and they're still not done. If a tab misbehaves in Firefox it can take down the whole thing. Chrome had it right away.
I briefly tried switching to Firefox again a few months ago. Initially I tried fixing it via changing the interface via XUL, but the problems were too deep. I got very frustrated and went back to Chrome.
It seems you prefer the more "modern" style of relying on Google's online services and Chrome's frequent updates. That's fine, but it's not an objective standard.
For example, some of us consider a UI that doesn't keep moving around every few weeks to be a feature, not a bug. I have absolutely no problem with a practical tool like Thunderbird still using the same layout it had 5 years ago, if that layout works well.
Likewise, some of us consider the separate search box of Firefox to be a plus point. I don't want or need everything I type in a URL bar being sent to Google's mothership, and my screen has ample space for both bars.
Meanwhile, I'm getting awfully bored of dealing with customer support issues that come down to someone using Google for their mail and not receiving legitimate messages because of whatever Google have broken, deemed spam, or unilaterally declared not to be acceptable this week. I shudder to think how much time and effort are being wasted like this around the world if everyone else's experience is as negative as ours has been lately.
Apple Mail and Thunderbird give me a lot of false positives, and usually leave spam right in my inbox. Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox.
Both Apple Mail and Thunderbird are so dumb that they can't figure out I don't speak Chinese, and even after I mark 100 emails in Chinese as spam and have written 0 emails in Chinese since I've installed the apps, they happily fail to recognise emails in Chinese as spam and let them through.
Google—whom I'd assume look at what other users do with an email to figure out what's spam—always manage to filter out unwanted mail and keep legit emails in my inbox.
Unfortunately, your personal experience doesn't change the fact that Google do classify significant amounts of legitimate mail as spam. It appears that at some point in the somewhat recent past, they may have decided that literally anything new sent from a domain without SPF set up is spam, for example. That is simply broken, but they appear to have excessive spam filtering in other respects as well. We even see things like payment confirmation emails, which we are legally required to send and our customers might actually need, and which are basically factual plain text and a very lightly styled HTML version, getting rejected at times.
Personally, I'd rather a few false negatives hit my inbox and click the junk icon for a moment to deal with them than actually important things get lost in junk and opportunities missed as a result. I honestly have lost count of how many times I've seen that happen recently, but it's a lot, and it's almost invariably been a result of excessive spam controls by Google and one or two other big mail services.
In gmail right now I have 50 emails in the spam folder. About 3 are actual spam. The rest are from automated mailing lists where most of the mails go into the inbox, but it rejects some at random. That's a terrible way for a spam filter to behave.
Several of these I specifically have incoming mail filters for, and they still go to spam at random.
>Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser.
As did Firefox, kinda, and they keep flip flopping on it. It used to be that if you type any string, it does a "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. Now, on my FF, it does a Google search. So it still works...
>From a technological point of view, it took them years to implement sandboxing, and they're still not done. If a tab misbehaves in Firefox it can take down the whole thing. Chrome had it right away.
I keep hearing this. Yet, Chrome still crashes for me. And at this point, FF is very stable.
I know every time I looked, FF + extensions still had much that I could not do in Chrome (including extensions). But it's been a few years - I wonder if Chrome has caught up in functionality?
> As did Firefox, kinda, and they keep flip flopping on it. It used to be that if you type any string, it does a "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. Now, on my FF, it does a Google search. So it still works...
The mozilla suite had it long before firefox too. This kept me on it for years after firefox was released.
>Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through.
>..
>Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser.
Most of these seem like opinion of aesthetics and fashion?
Syncing and sandboxing seem to be the ones that are about actual functionalities.
Regarding those: I don't have many devices (actually only desktops), but syncing seems to work ok. Lack of sandboxing is actually valid point, but I don't remember any crashes in recent times. On the other hand, I block most of the JS, so there's less opportunities for things to crash.
The web standards and avoiding Chrome/Google Search-based monoculture are also important things for me, so I'm sticking with FF as long as it is OK.
> Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient.
Anything to back that up? I'm pretty happy with Firefox syncing.
I tried to switch to Chrome but it used a lot more memory than Firefox (and it was in days when Firefox was know for using much memory, Chrome somehow was able to get ahead on that also).
One thing would be that with Chrome I can login with my username and password, and I get all my extensions synced the first time I install it or I'm on a friend's computer, while with Firefox I have to wait for their confirmation email, click on it, then wait for it to sync.
You might argue that Firefox's approach is more secure, but every single website in existence is fine with my username and password—including online banking—and I think Firefox is the only software that make me do that extra step.
It's the little things, Firefox just seems to not care about my time. Too many buttons that I'm supposed to hide myself while they should've known no one uses them, too many steps to get to that setting, etc. etc.
Just the fact that the address bar font is the same size as the rest of the UI gives me the impression that they didn't think it through. Downloading files has the same problem, it's relegated in a small button, while it's one of the main features.
The whole interface is one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, considering how simple a browser can be in terms of functionality the user must access. I'll also never forget they they thought tabs on top didn't make sense (it's actually still an option you can change).
Chrome had search integrated in the address bar from version 1, every time I opened Firefox year after year and I saw that little separate input for searching I felt like using grandma's browser.
In terms of how pretty the UI is, Firefox 53—which just got released—looks better, but it took them years to get to where Chrome was back at version 1.
Syncing of bookmarks, settings, addons, passwords, tabs across devices etc. on Firefox is a lot less efficient.
From a technological point of view, it took them years to implement sandboxing, and they're still not done. If a tab misbehaves in Firefox it can take down the whole thing. Chrome had it right away.
I briefly tried switching to Firefox again a few months ago. Initially I tried fixing it via changing the interface via XUL, but the problems were too deep. I got very frustrated and went back to Chrome.