The future of the Fx browser looks grimmer...

[polonus]

Hi malware fighters,

Well hard times ahead for Fx - the coming five years will be much harder than the previous five years have been.
That pessimistic view is resounded here:  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/is-firefox-heading-for-a-huge-user-decline/8344
IE9 and GoogleChrome are steaming ahead. Will Fx's market decline sharply under the growing competition of competitive browsers.
Will we again see the timid browser development of former days or will the 400 million users hang on to the Mozilla browser?
Here is an more optimistic vision on Fx's future: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/future-of-firefox/

How do the users here see the future for the Fx browser?

polonus

[Lisandro]

Hope they continue developing. Chrome is good but the available addons are reduced and does not give me the flexibility and features that I want and/or need.

[Hermite15]

Mozilla has been just too slow to react They took their user base for granted, and that's a huge mistake. How things will be will be decided when Firefox 4 comes out...but that's in a few months, and the Chrome devs are moving fast...I don't think Mozilla has anything to fear from Internet Explorer. IE is losing market share, under 60% now, may be because of the ballot screen popping up on OEM systems. The danger for FF is Chrome, and just Chrome, no need to mention again why: speed  
 The extensions in Chrome are so far well behind the standard in Firefox, but that will change too. Just browse Chromium bug tracker, it's not just bugs being reported but projects about changing the API etc...

[Chris Thomas]

I don't think Firefox will lose out in the near future

They are planning to incorporate the Jaggermonkey javascript into Firefox 4, a mix of Gecko and Webkit

I wish they optimize it for speed, if not, Yes, Fx browser looks grimmer

[DavidR]

I don't think that many people make plans five years in advance, especially if what they are using happens to work well for them. I was happy using an IE clone, Avant Browser and then Maxthon until Firefox came on the scene.

I watched it progress and tried one of the early builds and it was a bit too early for me, I the 1.5 version where I used it as my default browser and I haven't looked back. It is a highly configurable browser with great add-on support which allows for greater security and user functionality.

I have in the interim tried Opera and Chrome a couple of times. I couldn't live with the Opera interface (I had tried this many times before I used firefox also). Chrome, great name but needed a good deal more finishing (buffed up), the page loading speed increases (marginal in my case) couldn't make up for its lack of configuration and add-on support.

So I'm not looking 5 years down the line, but monitor what is happening now, 6 months and possibly 12 months. Crucially I generally don't go looking if what I have works for me. If that time comes when firefox doesn't meet my needs, I'm not tied to it for life.

[Alan Baxter]

Crucially I generally don't go looking if what I have works for me. If that time comes when firefox doesn't meet my needs, I'm not tied to it for life.

+1

[scythe944]

Avant Browser

Woohoo! avant!  I used that too... loved the built-in mouse gestures.

Maybe I'll check that out again, I think they made one that runs on firefox too... can't remember.

[DavidR]

I still have it as my secondary browser, though it doesn't get much time in the daylight