These are not good days for Firefox.
The real battle for the number one Web browser in the world these days is between Chrome and Internet Explorer. Firefox, by StatCounter’s latest numbers, is a distant third. The latest release of Firefox, had to be patched to deal with a serious Adobe Flash crash and many users tell me they’re not happy with it. Now, adding insult to injury, former Mozilla developer Jono DiCarlo claims Firefox’s rapid release schedule has “ruined” Firefox and “killed [its] reputation.”
Firefox started its rapid-release schedule in an attempt to play catch-up with Google Chrome. But, as DiCarlo wrote, “Credit where it’s due: the way Google handled Chrome updates was very, very smart. They recognized that updates are one of the hardest things to get right, so they solved that problem first, before releasing version 1. The first release of Chrome was little more than an empty box of a browser, but it was wrapped around an excellent updating system. This let them gradually transform that empty box into a full-featured browser, without the users ever realizing they were getting updates.”
That’s true.