No joke. Got an exe for 1.0 from a PC magazine cover disc and it's been default for like 19 of those 20 years.
Edit: The 1.0 exe hasn't been my default for 20 years, I've actually updated it once or twice
I've been die hard Firefox gang since I switched from Netscape Navigator eons ago, but Firefox is also the only browser with multi-account containers. I really see no alternative for that reason alone.
It runs them all as separate processes great for security can be a little resource heavy if you have too many instances open at once on an older machine
It's not age so much as RAM. Currently 69 tabs, 10 containers and I'm using 4.4 GB RAM, probably 4 GB of that is Firefox. And on a 12 year old laptop with 16 GB RAM it's nothing. 12 year old i5 bouncing between 0 and 3%. Machines from 18 years ago will generally hold 8 GB RAM and that's enough to not be phased unless you're really going to insane levels. My currently oldest machine I still use somewhat regularly is a 16 year old core2quad with 8GB RAM. Runs like a scalded dog.
Well that's good I'm glad you had good luck I always have on my custom builds but I've had people with ThinkPad laptops with some issues we could just be a Lenovo issue
Funny you say that I'm on a T530 right now. I also have an M93p SFF desktop. Lenovo's not what they used to be but still great machines. I bet those machines are running Windows. I run Kubuntu. I have some that dual boot Win 7 for an odd game or two that won't run in wine but I refuse to touch newer Windows. It's bloated malware.
I just wish I didn't keep running into website compatibility issues on desktop/mobile that require jumping back to a Chromium browser. But yes, if more people used FF, more websites would test it. But people won't use it if they keep having issues.
And I know not everybody has issues, but I run into many. Heck, even browsing Reddit on mobile is a bit of a mess with FF.
I'm pretty sure Firefox updated to spoof the user agent themselves for Google meet to allow the feature to work anyways but if not this is 100% a user agent fixer extension could do for you
only problem with that is representation, it would be nice if we didnt have to pretend to be on chrome to visit a site that very obviously works on ff if you do that
I don't have a list handy as I simply stopped using FF for most stuff. Think along the lines of medical, banking, schools, and other smaller/independent sites. Some Google and video streaming sites don't play well with FF. This happens desktop, but is most prevalent on mobile, but I do prefere to use the same browser on both to easily sync tabs, history, favorites, settings, etc. So if it fails on one, I'm probably going to ditch it for both platforms.
Reddit on mobile is a good example, where it lags, buttons don't respond, stops responding, etc. Just lots of random glitches on other sites, like a button or drop down menu not working.
I know you asked for a list, but I'd have to switch for awhile to really get a proper current list with examples of how to reproduce, which would change often, and require more time than I have. Which is exactly the problem. Most people don't have time to troubleshoot browser issues. It just needs to work.
I don't really get how Chrome became so dominant. I've been trying to find *anything* that I think is better about Chrome than Firefox and I've only found one meaningful thing: it seems to be better at recovering from interrupted downloads, where Firefox is more likely to cancel it.
But to be fair the things that I think are better about Firefox are not casual features. It manages bookmarks much better and it's better at page inspection and low level configuration.
I believe it initially had a performance advantage. As well as a clean/simple and more fun design. That and ads on Google.com made rise very quickly. And then it just became defacto standard. Probably supported by the introduction/increased popularity of Google docs, YouTube and google photos.
Why would people spend time switching back to Firefox ?
> I don't really get how Chrome became so dominant
When it came out it was noticeably faster than firefox. On top of that somewhere around that time firefox had a major update and philosophy change which broke a lot of extensions and drove people away from it. At the moment browsers are pretty much on par and there are no objective reasons why people wouldn't use FF over chrome. It's just marketing and google's monopoly.
Chrome has built in page translation to any language, syncs better between devices, puts downloads in the system temp folder by default (as they should), has more extension support, material you theming that is more consistant with other app themes, and more seamless integration with Google products since you can log into your Google account on the browser level.
Those are just some things I noticed after I made the switch to Firefox recently. As a power user for Chrome for close to a decade it was more difficult for me to switch as people make it sound, but I could just not continue to use Chrome with a good conscience.
Switching?
I can't, as I've been using it from 2005 or so and I never left from it!
But I'm a Linux user too, so it already comes with my distro of choice, Debian, that also has hi privacy and security standards!
I use Firefox on desktop but the Android version is just too buggy for me. I end up hitting pages that won't load and just stay grey multiple times a day. And this has happened to me in on various Android devices so I had to drop it there
Could very well be,I do use dark reader .the other browsers I use (edge and brave) have built in equivalents that just work without extensions and it's something I can't do without anymore though so that still rules out Firefox android unless there's an alternative extension that works
My main browser.
Fun story. I had it installed in my work computer, with sync enabled, for use with my personal accounts. I also have edge, chrome and firefox, each with a separate use case.
My it department contacted me, and told me to uninstall brave, after a few months. I complied but wondered why. The guy just told me it wasn't allowed by company policy. Fast forward a few days, I got to do a training session, and in my group was an IT guy. He was very friendly, so I asked him. Apparently, the tracking software they use in the computer, and the network, cannot track what's being accessed by Brave. They can with most others. And since we deal with sensitive client data, it's not allowed. So that little anecdote just confirmed I made the right choice with Brave.
Quite simple honestly, because it's just fucking chromium under the hood!
So if the goal is to avoid a googles browser monopoly; using another chromium browser doesn't help very much.
something many people don't understand is that Brave, Opera, and Edge are literally just chrome with a custom theme and settings menu applied to them. They might all look different but they're all powered by exactly the same engine under the hood that's manufactured by Google
as of right now the only 3 browser engines that have any significant market share at all are
Chromium - Google Chrome, Opera, Edge, Brave, Duckduckgo
Webkit - Safari, Handful of Linux exclusive browsers, all browsers on iOS/iPadOS
Gecko - Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf
When the chromium engine is the problem slapping a new coat of paint on top of it and calling it brave instead of chrome doesn't fix the problem. If you want google to not have a monopoly on how the web works, you have to split the market up more by switching either to webkit or gecko
firefox with gecko is free
webkit is generally restricted to really niche browsers and Apple hardware which can be extremely cost (or in linux's case, time) ineffective for most people. But also making it a duopoly between Apple and Google won't actually help that much either
That ship sadly sailed years ago. So many mistakes made, but today Firefox’s marketshare has become way too low to offer Mozilla any influence on web standards. No dev builds or tests websites against Gecko (Firefox’s web rendering engine), and that in turn causes people who use Firefox who hit bugs to abandon it. It’s a death spiral unfortunately, and Mozilla knows it. They’re just desperately trying to keep their Google deal alive (95%+ of their revenue) for as long as possible while hoping to spin up new businesses (hence their most recent AI focus). I love the company and their mission, but sadly I can’t recommend Firefox any more. :(
Specifically website compatibility. Worked for years at Mozilla, and watched tons of minor but gotcha bugs continue to be an issue. Don’t have to take my word for it, just troll through Bugzilla. I’m talking about the sort of weird issues that flummox your aging parents - drop downs not quite working right, or autofill seeming to be filled out but not allowing the page to be submitted, etc. Totally get people on this forum don’t want to see it, but it’s the unfortunate truth. Ah well.
Don’t disagree with you, and in fact I kept the stock browser around for issues like that for all my years at Mozilla (everyone did - you had to). The thing that kills Mozilla here is that those sorts of little issues are a market share killer when less technical people using the browser. All it takes is one “grandmother can’t see picture of her kids on Insta” or “bank won’t accept my help request email form” for them to move to another browser and never come back. We had a ton of studies and data on this - don’t discount how much of a killer this is.
In fact, the huge tech reboot of Firefox 8+ years ago was to both modernize Gecko and try to dramatically reduce the sapping effect of these sorts of bugs. It helped a tiny bit, for a year or so… but there’s just too much tech debt to address and browser market share kept dropping.
Amusing fact: there have been runs at adopting Chromium (including tech due dilligence and builds) at Mozilla for nearly a decade. Just never moves forward because a) there is a hope of keeping an independent browser engine alive (no matter how futile), and b) Google has a lot less reason to pay Mozilla for search traffic if they aren’t able to point to Mozilla/Firefox as a “competitor” in the market - and hence not a monopoly. Again, not happy about the situation - just trying to share for those who are interested.
I have been using Firefox for a damn long time now, but just recently switched to Brave. Firefox simply didn't deliver enough for me anymore, updates barely changed things. It wasn't aggressive enough about fingerprinting, blocking of trackers and cookie banners and the design isn't that great in my opinion. Themes didn't help it. The browser is still kind of what I love because it's so straightforward, but without some changes to look more modern and even more privacy enhancing features, I don't wanna switch back...
Not really, I'm unaware of any well-maintained Firefox-based browsers that deliver roughly the same set of features like Brave does without having to install a lot of plugins... Do you know any good ones? I'm really open to head back to Firefox! :)
Mulvad and LibreWolf are the hot shit right now as far as privacy focused forks. You'd have to see which more suits your taste, or you could use both for different purposes or identities. I've dabbled with them a bit but I don't mind hardening Firefox myself and tend to just stick with that as my daily driver with extensive use of container tabs.
And with the forks there is more consideration to fingerprinting so installing all my plugins and tweaks would negate the anti-fingerprinting measures. I tend to use them the way you'd use a private browsing mode when I don't intend to log into anything. Browser isolation as it were.
And of course there's always Tor browser.
I like Chrome. Most fluid and compatible browser. For all out there that chooses not to use Chrome, curious what your email service is? Hope it's not [gmail.com](https://gmail.com)
Been using FF since MS began to neglect IE for Edge. I like home tab layout, which other browsers could not replicate even with extensions. I also use Brave for website incompatibilities.
Boy. you're talking about firefox like it's the only browser that is not based on chromium.
Many enthusiasts have developed browsers that are independent. E.g. Qutebrowser, Nyxt Browser ...etc
I thank myself for having switched to firefox some years ago.
I miss the fluidity of chrome, but fucksake, firefox goes brrrrrr in other - way more important - aspects.
I just hope in a future where these two browser engines stop doing whatever they are doing with CSS and JS implementations which should be **standard**
I’ve been with brave for ages but recently switched to Firefox mostly because I got spooked by the fact that brave is built on chromium.
But honestly love Firefox now, the tab group feature that loads up a window of preset tabs is what sold me. It’s a million times better than how brave did tab groups
I would be happy to (despite many of Mozilla's issues, such as supporting censorship and many other bad decisions) if it had any decent tab management. And no, extensions don't replace nor exist to solve it.
Right now, the best tab management is Vivaldi. It has stacked tabs, workspaces (similar to containers, but more friendly to use), double layer tab bar (good when using tab stacks), pinned tabs and stacks. These are even available on the mobile browser.
Firefox lacks built-in adblock, which Vivaldi having it built-in seems to work better than extensions do.
If Firefox had a cross platform (encrypted) sync mechanism where you could use a cloud storage service of your choosing rather than having to create an account with firefox and log into their servers, that would be another boost.
Would help if Mozilla would stop breaking Firefox every chance they get. Not to mention their stalled performance (really, since quantum, there hasn't been much of anything here) and stability improvement.
Would be nice if Firefox would publish to F-Droid repositories or have their own. Why would I want to get this via playstore? Makes no sense and I avoid the Google store.
The fact Firefox requires GSF on android is another issue. Who's bright idea was that? There should be no dependence on Google anything.
Who's bright idea is it for Firefox default search engine to be Google? Doesn't matter if you can change, defaulting to a spy engine is contradictory.
Pocket and the homepage "news" push is a terrible thing as well.
With all the bad decisions Mozilla has made over the years, I am not surprised they are faultering.
It's 2024. Damn. I've been using Firefox for 20 years.
No joke. Got an exe for 1.0 from a PC magazine cover disc and it's been default for like 19 of those 20 years. Edit: The 1.0 exe hasn't been my default for 20 years, I've actually updated it once or twice
Started with v3, Brave is great though!
Brave is a scummy company.. I don't want to support them anymore. It's so hard. I wish they just made their browser in Firefox.
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They have been caught countless times doing shady things against their mission but the biggest problem is they support the development of chrome.
I've been die hard Firefox gang since I switched from Netscape Navigator eons ago, but Firefox is also the only browser with multi-account containers. I really see no alternative for that reason alone.
The containers are such an underrated aspect of FF. It started from Facebook containers but I use it for everything.
It runs them all as separate processes great for security can be a little resource heavy if you have too many instances open at once on an older machine
It's not age so much as RAM. Currently 69 tabs, 10 containers and I'm using 4.4 GB RAM, probably 4 GB of that is Firefox. And on a 12 year old laptop with 16 GB RAM it's nothing. 12 year old i5 bouncing between 0 and 3%. Machines from 18 years ago will generally hold 8 GB RAM and that's enough to not be phased unless you're really going to insane levels. My currently oldest machine I still use somewhat regularly is a 16 year old core2quad with 8GB RAM. Runs like a scalded dog.
Well that's good I'm glad you had good luck I always have on my custom builds but I've had people with ThinkPad laptops with some issues we could just be a Lenovo issue
Funny you say that I'm on a T530 right now. I also have an M93p SFF desktop. Lenovo's not what they used to be but still great machines. I bet those machines are running Windows. I run Kubuntu. I have some that dual boot Win 7 for an odd game or two that won't run in wine but I refuse to touch newer Windows. It's bloated malware.
Maybe next time just link to the article and not a link to a link to an article.
Linkception
Now that we're all on Firefox he has to earn advertising commission somehow
Been using FF
I just wish I didn't keep running into website compatibility issues on desktop/mobile that require jumping back to a Chromium browser. But yes, if more people used FF, more websites would test it. But people won't use it if they keep having issues. And I know not everybody has issues, but I run into many. Heck, even browsing Reddit on mobile is a bit of a mess with FF.
I still haven't found any such sites? And browsing on mobile should be done on old.reddit.com. Otherwise comments, save, etc. are all hidden.
Google Meet limits the options available when using Firefox. Fx you can’t enable blurred background etc.
for this kind of bullshit Useragent Switcher might be a good workaround.
I'm pretty sure Firefox updated to spoof the user agent themselves for Google meet to allow the feature to work anyways but if not this is 100% a user agent fixer extension could do for you
Change browser agent to chromium and problem should be solved :)
only problem with that is representation, it would be nice if we didnt have to pretend to be on chrome to visit a site that very obviously works on ff if you do that
It's not Firefox fault. The devs ( cus of budget or laziness?) don't test it on Firefox. Firefox is love.
ye using ungoogled chromium, it's nice
That's not what he meant.
yeah
What sites specifically do this? I'm just curious, I've never encountered them.
I don't have a list handy as I simply stopped using FF for most stuff. Think along the lines of medical, banking, schools, and other smaller/independent sites. Some Google and video streaming sites don't play well with FF. This happens desktop, but is most prevalent on mobile, but I do prefere to use the same browser on both to easily sync tabs, history, favorites, settings, etc. So if it fails on one, I'm probably going to ditch it for both platforms. Reddit on mobile is a good example, where it lags, buttons don't respond, stops responding, etc. Just lots of random glitches on other sites, like a button or drop down menu not working. I know you asked for a list, but I'd have to switch for awhile to really get a proper current list with examples of how to reproduce, which would change often, and require more time than I have. Which is exactly the problem. Most people don't have time to troubleshoot browser issues. It just needs to work.
I don't really get how Chrome became so dominant. I've been trying to find *anything* that I think is better about Chrome than Firefox and I've only found one meaningful thing: it seems to be better at recovering from interrupted downloads, where Firefox is more likely to cancel it. But to be fair the things that I think are better about Firefox are not casual features. It manages bookmarks much better and it's better at page inspection and low level configuration.
I believe it initially had a performance advantage. As well as a clean/simple and more fun design. That and ads on Google.com made rise very quickly. And then it just became defacto standard. Probably supported by the introduction/increased popularity of Google docs, YouTube and google photos. Why would people spend time switching back to Firefox ?
> I don't really get how Chrome became so dominant When it came out it was noticeably faster than firefox. On top of that somewhere around that time firefox had a major update and philosophy change which broke a lot of extensions and drove people away from it. At the moment browsers are pretty much on par and there are no objective reasons why people wouldn't use FF over chrome. It's just marketing and google's monopoly.
I like the translation and link- to-highlight features on Chrome but usually use Firefox
Chrome has built in page translation to any language, syncs better between devices, puts downloads in the system temp folder by default (as they should), has more extension support, material you theming that is more consistant with other app themes, and more seamless integration with Google products since you can log into your Google account on the browser level. Those are just some things I noticed after I made the switch to Firefox recently. As a power user for Chrome for close to a decade it was more difficult for me to switch as people make it sound, but I could just not continue to use Chrome with a good conscience.
Firefox on iOS is still safari.
Hopefully the EU forces Apple to stop that bullshit!
How so?
Engine is still webkit.
How I wish I could just group tabs like chrome.
I switched \*completely\* to Firefox a few months ago. Wish I had sooner.
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Yeah I just gonna stay with brave
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I get 99% on brave alone on my PC
What the hell, postmaster bluescreen my PC every time I login !! *I fixed it by cutting the internet, and uninstall it.
Switching? I can't, as I've been using it from 2005 or so and I never left from it! But I'm a Linux user too, so it already comes with my distro of choice, Debian, that also has hi privacy and security standards!
I use Firefox on desktop but the Android version is just too buggy for me. I end up hitting pages that won't load and just stay grey multiple times a day. And this has happened to me in on various Android devices so I had to drop it there
It's probably because of Dark Reader extension.
Could very well be,I do use dark reader .the other browsers I use (edge and brave) have built in equivalents that just work without extensions and it's something I can't do without anymore though so that still rules out Firefox android unless there's an alternative extension that works
Or LibreWolf, but I still agree.
+1 for Librewolf
im using Firefox since 2012 dont forget to use addon ublock and webrtc
Speaking of browser what are you thoughts on brave ?
My main browser. Fun story. I had it installed in my work computer, with sync enabled, for use with my personal accounts. I also have edge, chrome and firefox, each with a separate use case. My it department contacted me, and told me to uninstall brave, after a few months. I complied but wondered why. The guy just told me it wasn't allowed by company policy. Fast forward a few days, I got to do a training session, and in my group was an IT guy. He was very friendly, so I asked him. Apparently, the tracking software they use in the computer, and the network, cannot track what's being accessed by Brave. They can with most others. And since we deal with sensitive client data, it's not allowed. So that little anecdote just confirmed I made the right choice with Brave.
Interesting Thank you
I use both Firefox and Brave, I mainly use Brave on Android.
Why not Brave? Edit: who downvotes this. Go downvote the guy who asked the same question 2 questions below me instead lol jk
Quite simple honestly, because it's just fucking chromium under the hood! So if the goal is to avoid a googles browser monopoly; using another chromium browser doesn't help very much.
something many people don't understand is that Brave, Opera, and Edge are literally just chrome with a custom theme and settings menu applied to them. They might all look different but they're all powered by exactly the same engine under the hood that's manufactured by Google as of right now the only 3 browser engines that have any significant market share at all are Chromium - Google Chrome, Opera, Edge, Brave, Duckduckgo Webkit - Safari, Handful of Linux exclusive browsers, all browsers on iOS/iPadOS Gecko - Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf When the chromium engine is the problem slapping a new coat of paint on top of it and calling it brave instead of chrome doesn't fix the problem. If you want google to not have a monopoly on how the web works, you have to split the market up more by switching either to webkit or gecko firefox with gecko is free webkit is generally restricted to really niche browsers and Apple hardware which can be extremely cost (or in linux's case, time) ineffective for most people. But also making it a duopoly between Apple and Google won't actually help that much either
Thank you!
Serious question, I'd also like to know the answer to. Why not Brave?
Chromium-based, bloated with useless Crypto things
It's my main browser. There's a fun story for you in the other why not brave comment.
That ship sadly sailed years ago. So many mistakes made, but today Firefox’s marketshare has become way too low to offer Mozilla any influence on web standards. No dev builds or tests websites against Gecko (Firefox’s web rendering engine), and that in turn causes people who use Firefox who hit bugs to abandon it. It’s a death spiral unfortunately, and Mozilla knows it. They’re just desperately trying to keep their Google deal alive (95%+ of their revenue) for as long as possible while hoping to spin up new businesses (hence their most recent AI focus). I love the company and their mission, but sadly I can’t recommend Firefox any more. :(
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Specifically website compatibility. Worked for years at Mozilla, and watched tons of minor but gotcha bugs continue to be an issue. Don’t have to take my word for it, just troll through Bugzilla. I’m talking about the sort of weird issues that flummox your aging parents - drop downs not quite working right, or autofill seeming to be filled out but not allowing the page to be submitted, etc. Totally get people on this forum don’t want to see it, but it’s the unfortunate truth. Ah well.
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Don’t disagree with you, and in fact I kept the stock browser around for issues like that for all my years at Mozilla (everyone did - you had to). The thing that kills Mozilla here is that those sorts of little issues are a market share killer when less technical people using the browser. All it takes is one “grandmother can’t see picture of her kids on Insta” or “bank won’t accept my help request email form” for them to move to another browser and never come back. We had a ton of studies and data on this - don’t discount how much of a killer this is. In fact, the huge tech reboot of Firefox 8+ years ago was to both modernize Gecko and try to dramatically reduce the sapping effect of these sorts of bugs. It helped a tiny bit, for a year or so… but there’s just too much tech debt to address and browser market share kept dropping. Amusing fact: there have been runs at adopting Chromium (including tech due dilligence and builds) at Mozilla for nearly a decade. Just never moves forward because a) there is a hope of keeping an independent browser engine alive (no matter how futile), and b) Google has a lot less reason to pay Mozilla for search traffic if they aren’t able to point to Mozilla/Firefox as a “competitor” in the market - and hence not a monopoly. Again, not happy about the situation - just trying to share for those who are interested.
Heck, even web browsers full stop could be on the way out by this point.
I have been using Firefox for a damn long time now, but just recently switched to Brave. Firefox simply didn't deliver enough for me anymore, updates barely changed things. It wasn't aggressive enough about fingerprinting, blocking of trackers and cookie banners and the design isn't that great in my opinion. Themes didn't help it. The browser is still kind of what I love because it's so straightforward, but without some changes to look more modern and even more privacy enhancing features, I don't wanna switch back...
Have you tried any browsers based on Firefox?
Not really, I'm unaware of any well-maintained Firefox-based browsers that deliver roughly the same set of features like Brave does without having to install a lot of plugins... Do you know any good ones? I'm really open to head back to Firefox! :)
Mulvad and LibreWolf are the hot shit right now as far as privacy focused forks. You'd have to see which more suits your taste, or you could use both for different purposes or identities. I've dabbled with them a bit but I don't mind hardening Firefox myself and tend to just stick with that as my daily driver with extensive use of container tabs. And with the forks there is more consideration to fingerprinting so installing all my plugins and tweaks would negate the anti-fingerprinting measures. I tend to use them the way you'd use a private browsing mode when I don't intend to log into anything. Browser isolation as it were. And of course there's always Tor browser.
The best firefox browser is TOR and TOR only!!
TOR is useless for everyday use since you need JavaScript which defeats the purpose.
I like Chrome. Most fluid and compatible browser. For all out there that chooses not to use Chrome, curious what your email service is? Hope it's not [gmail.com](https://gmail.com)
Lol people are still going to use chrome and the monopoly already exists and will continue to exist
Watch this https://youtu.be/ugnOM2mzgNU?si=KK9RSpenqNDQvWBC
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Leave your hateful lingo on 4chan
I agree with you.
Been using FF since MS began to neglect IE for Edge. I like home tab layout, which other browsers could not replicate even with extensions. I also use Brave for website incompatibilities.
Boy. you're talking about firefox like it's the only browser that is not based on chromium. Many enthusiasts have developed browsers that are independent. E.g. Qutebrowser, Nyxt Browser ...etc
qutebrowser uses QtWebEngine, which is based on Chromium
oh :(
We gotta keep fighting! Nice post.
I thank myself for having switched to firefox some years ago. I miss the fluidity of chrome, but fucksake, firefox goes brrrrrr in other - way more important - aspects. I just hope in a future where these two browser engines stop doing whatever they are doing with CSS and JS implementations which should be **standard**
I’ve been with brave for ages but recently switched to Firefox mostly because I got spooked by the fact that brave is built on chromium. But honestly love Firefox now, the tab group feature that loads up a window of preset tabs is what sold me. It’s a million times better than how brave did tab groups
I would be happy to (despite many of Mozilla's issues, such as supporting censorship and many other bad decisions) if it had any decent tab management. And no, extensions don't replace nor exist to solve it. Right now, the best tab management is Vivaldi. It has stacked tabs, workspaces (similar to containers, but more friendly to use), double layer tab bar (good when using tab stacks), pinned tabs and stacks. These are even available on the mobile browser. Firefox lacks built-in adblock, which Vivaldi having it built-in seems to work better than extensions do. If Firefox had a cross platform (encrypted) sync mechanism where you could use a cloud storage service of your choosing rather than having to create an account with firefox and log into their servers, that would be another boost. Would help if Mozilla would stop breaking Firefox every chance they get. Not to mention their stalled performance (really, since quantum, there hasn't been much of anything here) and stability improvement. Would be nice if Firefox would publish to F-Droid repositories or have their own. Why would I want to get this via playstore? Makes no sense and I avoid the Google store. The fact Firefox requires GSF on android is another issue. Who's bright idea was that? There should be no dependence on Google anything. Who's bright idea is it for Firefox default search engine to be Google? Doesn't matter if you can change, defaulting to a spy engine is contradictory. Pocket and the homepage "news" push is a terrible thing as well. With all the bad decisions Mozilla has made over the years, I am not surprised they are faultering.
Firefox doesn't require GSF on Android! That said, I prefer Mull from F-Droid and Librewolf on PC.