Death Knell for Firefox

Has anybody else become as frustrated with Mozilla's Firefox web browser as I have?

What once distinguished Firefox from other browsers was the abundance of marvelous and powerful add-ons. Unfortunately, Mozilla's accelerated release schedule combined with its laggard approval system has rendered too many of my favorite add-ons totally inoperative.

With Firefox 3.6.18, I had 42 add-ons (excluding those having to do with Java). With Firefox 5.0, I was down to 29, a loss of 13, or 30%. A few of those lost add-ons were deadwood that I didn't really mind losing, but many others I considered essential. In any case, a 30% attrition rate is simply not sustainable. And without add-ons, Firefox becomes just another browser.

I had not even overcome the hurdles of going from version 3.6.18 to version 4.01 yet when Mozilla already released version 5.0. Not only has Mozilla outstripped its add-on developers ability to keep up, but it has left its users behind as well. Users value stability and continuity, not rapid-fire change just for the sake of change. Mozilla seems to have totally abandoned users in that regard.

Most of Mozilla's inconsequential, cosmetic changes are merely eye candy and/or otherwise irrelevant to the average user. Mozilla seems to have fallen prey to its own technical wizardry: making changes simply because they can, not because those changes add anything meaningful to the user's browsing experience.

I used to swear by Firefox, but now I find myself swearing at it. As a result, after using Firefox exclusively since 2005, my family and I have given up on Firefox entirely. Out of sheer frustration, we have instead switched to another browser. In our opinion, Mozilla has run a formerly great product right into the ground.

Can you say "Netscape?" For the opposite reason (too many changes in Firefox versus not enough changes in Netscape), the end result is likely to be the same: extinction.

As Buck Owens & His Buckaroos once sang, "Adios, farewell, goodbye, good luck, so long."