Join us for an AMA with the Firefox leadership team on November 14, [18:00-20:00 UTC]

[Jon]

Hi everyone,

The internet has changed a lot since 2004 when Firefox began as a community project. Today, Firefox remains at the forefront of championing privacy, open innovation and choice. And while the last 20 years have been transformative, the best is yet to come.

We’re thrilled to announce that the Firefox leadership team at Mozilla is joining us to host a very special AMA here on Mozilla Connect to celebrate Firefox’s 20th anniversary, and answer any questions you may have about what’s next for Firefox. 

As part of our anniversary celebrations, we’ve created a website page reflecting on what we’ve created together so far with videos highlighting Firefox’s evolution since 2004 and your favorite features. You’ll also find fan art and a hat tip to our incredible contributor community, who support Firefox users every step of the way.

This AMA is the continuation of a conversation we started on Reddit in June. We appreciate how actively engaged this community has been in helping us improve Mozilla products. This time around, we want to hear what’s most important to you about Firefox’s future. 

In the spirit of our birthday celebrations, we’ll also be gifting select participants in this thread with anniversary swag. Keep an eye on your Connect inbox (post-AMA) for a message from Mozilla staff.      

We are opening this thread up to replies starting today, November 8, and we’ll be joining you live with the Firefox leadership team on Thursday, November 14 from 18:00 - 20:00 UTC (time converter) to answer as many of your questions as we can. 

As always, we ask that you adhere to our Community Guidelines when posting. We also encourage you to show support for others by voting up your favorite comments using the thumbs up feature. 

See you on November 14th!

Event Details

Where: Right here! Questions and answers in the comment section ⬇️ 

When: Thursday, Nov 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC

Topic(s): Firefox 20th anniversary - reflecting on the past and looking ahead to the future

[Kvin]

Hello, congratulations on the 20th anniversary of our favorite browser! It's great to have Firefox, and to have you Mozilla! Without Firefox, there will be nothing, it is the last hope for a safe Internet!

Actually, we are already very grateful for the grouping of tabs, for vertical tabs, and for the improvement of profiles, and for pwa tabs, which is in the works, you know we really wanted it, and we appreciate it, very grateful!

There are a lot of questions, but the main questions are as follows

When will the next change in the design of the browser interface, and the change in the design of the add-on store, is it planned for 2025?

We expect that the new design will bring back the compact mode, icons in various menus, as well as redesigned history page, extension page, and new tab page.

Features and improvements
Is the ability to set a "custom wallpaper" on the new tab being developed?
Are there any plans for such features as workspaces, a built-in dark theme for websites, a portable version of the browser for windows, auto-disable extensions on certain sites?

Are there any major improvements and optimizations planned for the browser to speed up page loading?
In fact, we have the fact that other browsers load pages faster, and this was checked by different users on different computers, and the speed is really slow, we need to do something about it, we need to improve the weaknesses of the browser to catch up with others, to keep up.
Thank you for developing the browser and for hearing us!

[firefly1]

What's preventing Firefox from implementing a 'Force Dark Mode' similiar to what Chromium uses?  I know there is an extension that we can use but it slows the browser down considerably and uses a lot of CPU.

[November]

The overwhelming majority of your users do not want AI crammed into Firefox. Why are you ignoring them?

[ThePillenwerfer]

What's important for me in the future is Firefox remaining broadly as it is.  I use it because I like it; change it and I may not.  In an ideal world all updates would be restricted to security and support for new protocols and formats.

Most additions over the years have been useless bloat as far as I am concerned — Pocket, Firefox View, Reader Mode, junk on the Home screen &c.  Providing it can be switched off or simply ignored it isn't a great problem though.

The main thing I like about Firefox is that its annoyances can usually be mitigated with custom CSS, a feature that sets it apart from the competition.

Of course you can't please everybody — for instance I do not want Dark Mode/Themes full stop as I saw quite enough white (or green or amber) text on a black background back in the 1980s thank you very much — so choice and configurability are key.  Things like being able to increase the size and colours of the UI or elements on it isn't just about making it look to a user's taste but could be important for those with vision problems.

[dginovker]

I have no question, but only a hope you answer these questions the same way you would when talking to all your friends outside of a corporate environment.

[kinmfer]

I am very happy to see Firefox's 20th birthday, and I am also very happy about Firefox's contribution to the fight against Chrome. I hope to see Firefox working hard in the direction of web compatibility and performance in the future, especially web compatibility. And of course the tab group

[Skywind]

I'm generally satisfied with FF on PC, but not the same with the mobile version.

I don't understand why mobile version lacks all the UI customizability that we enjoy on PC, this makes mobile FF not as handy as its competitors like Edge. For example, no fully-customizable homepage website, complicated access of bookmarks (please DON'T HIDE the bookmark button in a second-level menu).

FF could be much better, but now it's not and making slow progress. Seeing that FF is losing more and more users makes me sad, as I really like this browser and has been using it for over 10 years. I really hope the 20th anniversary update can change it from head to toe and bring fresh vitality to this browser.