Special Firefox 100 celebratory thread: Why do you choose Firefox?

[Jon]

Happy Firefox 100 Release Day! 

(Read the full Release Notes here)

(SPOILER ALERT: there’s a Mozilla Connect mention ❤️)

17 years. 100 versions. What a ride. A special thanks to everyone who has helped, supported, and collaborated with us along the way. We couldn’t have made it here without you…and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.  

This is also an especially exciting milestone for this community as some of the new features have come from ideas and discussions in this space. 

So to celebrate and keep the good vibes rolling along, let’s kick off a special discussion in the community. We’re inviting community members—aka YOU—to share the main reason(s) why you choose Firefox? Let us know in the comments ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Things to consider:

-What’s your favorite feature?

-How long have you been a Firefox user?

-For those who have been around a bit longer, what are the biggest advancements on Firefox (or the web in general) since Firefox 1 back in 2004? 

When participating in the conversation, please remember to:

-Follow the Community Guidelines 

Anything that violates the guidelines will be flagged and removed. 

-Stay on topic

Let’s keep this thread focused on the exciting theme. If you have additional feedback or ideas unrelated to the discussion topic, create a new post.

Thank you all so much! 

[Pedro]

Congratulations!!!!!

The main reasons are the customizability and strive to innovate in different areas. Also, being open and embracing the community is a huge plus. The path was not easy, and it had bumps for sure, but since 2004, I feel Firefox was and is the only browser that respects people, not as a product, but with the decency we all deserve.

[Jon]

Thank you! And love that you mention community.

[XOG9000]

Thank you Mozilla for bringing me out of my AOL/Netscape browser (~98 or 99, it's been a while 😕 ) into a sleek ( minimal ) browser that I trust ( security/browser plugins ) daily. If you don't already know, you rock!

[Jon]

Oh wow, it has been awhile...and hey you rock too! 

[m4k]

Congrats!

I've been using Firefox since version 1.0, the main reason being the way tabs were implemented. But then I also enjoyed the search-bar, which later became part of the address-bar and the extensibility of the browser with add-ons and themes. The bookmark/history experience is also great nowadays with the side-bars, even if the latter can be improved to make even easier the search of the visited pages.

Later on, the Quantum release dramatically changed the responsiveness of the browser and made it more performant for the new intensive tasks required by the web such as video streaming, real time calls, etc. The phishing and privacy protections of the latest releases made Firefox a must for me.

The open-source nature of the project is also a plus, last but not least, Firefox uses the only popular-non-chromium based web-engine available:  something that should be preserved, continuously improved/upgraded, and ALWAYS kept under the open-source license.

AOL destroyed Netscape. Mozilla rebuilt-it from scratch. Quicker. faster, modern.

Some of us may disagree because of some unpopular choice of the Mozilla Foundation, especially when it comes to privacy and advertising, but at the end of it all, the Mozilla Foundation has always been transparent and all the choices were put upfront so the users could choose.

100 more years for Mozilla and Firefox (but also Thunderbird and Rust and all amazing projects!)

[Jon]

Yesss, here's to 100 more! Excited to continue working together with our community to build better products.

[steel835]

Congrats on this epic number!

The main reasons I keep choosing Firefox are

• I have used it since before Chrome, and it was good enough not to switch (Chrome was smoother, but Firefox eventually got here too)
• Niche productivity and personalization features like recently ordered ctrl+tab or nicely organized dev-tools, userchrome.css, bookmark tags, download prompts (for one-time files, cancelling unwanted downloads) , awesomebar's fast filters and ability to pick search engines per query, etc
• If we all switch to Chrome, web won't have a competition, and it will be a monopoly, sad and not user-centered. Firefox is a worthy opponent, that strives for the good of the internet, not just business.

[Jon]

All great reasons! Thanks for sharing and celebrating this milestone release with us.

[MintMain21]

I switched from Chrome to Firefox in Autumn 2019 cause I was fed up with Google's News Feed and how they constantly kept tabs on my activity across multiple platforms (not just the internet browser). Earliest I tried Firefox before that was at a Library in 2012, and when I decided to leave Internet Explorer shortly after I chose Chrome because I trusted Google at the time.

In retrospect, I feel like I could've chosen Firefox and saved myself a lot of trouble.

Firefox respects the user. It respects the user's privacy, the user's autonomy, the user's intelligence, and the user's freedom. It offers so many excellent features, and the few that it doesn't can be recreated with extensions. The fact it can do this, with it's own independent browser engine no less, while providing a solid and stable "default" state for those unwilling or afraid to customize, it all demonstrates what a true gem Firefox is in a world slowly being taken over by Chromium.

It's not been an easy road getting here, I couldn't imagine life on the internet without Firefox, and I will advocate for Firefox as the most stable, fast, user-friendly, and generally satisfactory browser I could recommend to anyone.

Here's to tomorrow. 🙂

[Jon]

What an awesome answer! And yes, here's to another day—there's still lots of work to do. And we're excited to have this community to help us along the way 💪

[Danny]

Hi Jon, my team and I use firefox for our work. We are in and out of Firefox all day long. This is mostly a trust issue for us given the conflicts of interest at Google, suspicion of Edge, and Oh my Gosh Opera potentially allows spying on webcams. However, it is quite jarring to have firefox update in the middle of the day and then display a message we have to click through. Please keep it light like Google does, where a landing page or graphic or info bar appears where you can click if you are interested, otherwise, we should be able to carry on as normal. However, when we are with a customer or on phone it creates a gap in our flow where we have to think less about our interraction with our very important customer and more about what is this message and why is it sidelining our work. Kindly think about this before giving us non-critical notifications we have to click through before firefox will work. Congratulations on reaching this coding milestone. We were glad you fixed the performance issues way back in the day. We will gladly raise a nice cold glass when you reach 20 years since the first release, but please, think of our flow and let us know gently. Please keep up the good work, stay true and trustworthy.

Thanks

Danny

[Jon]

Hey @Danny, 

Thanks for the thoughtful response and constructive feedback—always helps to hear about workflow and how we can potentially eliminate pain points. Looking forward to raising that cold glass!

[Anonymous]

I have been using Firefox since 1.0. There have been many changes to it over that time, but I still find it to be the most secure and customizable browser for me.

[Jon]

Since 1.0 🙌 thanks for being on this ride with us! And glad to hear you find it to still be the most secure and customizable. 

[Anonymous]

Japanese Firefox users are very conservative; when Quantum was released, they angrily said they would use Chrome. However, I don't think Firefox needs to offer services for those who don't realize that they will not only gain nothing, but also lose.

[firefoxer]

Just because Google do evil then I turn to firefox. But some website not fit firefox, I still got chrominum, Edge with IE as backup.

[Michael69]

Same reasons today as back then - reliability & trustworthyness. Also, I believe the first version I downloaded came out in 2004...;)

[Jon]

Yes, those are two very important values to us! Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

[hute37]

Only 17 years? I started surfing the web with Mosaic in 1994. Thanks!

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[Jon]

This is amazing. Thanks for sharing!

[luk1515]

Honestly i don't know why i am still using this browser back then when FF was in version 3.0 and i started using it, it was quick and innovative, now i feel like from some time this browser is staying in one spot. And that you have no direction, all my friends moved to edge or others.  Only thing which keeping me here is the attention to privacy. But there were several moments when i wanted to change the browser. Lockwise sucks on android it doesn't properly handle password prompts.. so i need a 3rd party password manager... and other small things started to be exhausting...

[Jon]

Thanks for this honest answer! Please continue sharing your constructive feedback here in the Mozilla Connect community—we want to hear ideas for new features and also have meaningful discussions on how we can improve.

[w_spiess_de]

Congratulation for V 100!

But:

I don't understand your policy of Version-#. What is your target? Would you like to reach 111 or 864??? Nobody can match this to a special step of develepment.

I prefer numbers with a prefix of the current year, maybe 2022.00x.

Please think about my option an excuse my bad english.

[firefoxy]

Guess they need to compete with the chrome versioning...

Soon we see firefox 1000 for sure!

[pieman3141]

Back in 2002/03, I switched to Firebird 0.6.7 and never looked back. Plugin support is still the best out of all the browsers, and I'm used to how the location bar works. Other browsers try to be too smart, and I don't need that.

[k9x9]

You may have finally made Firefox so completely unusable that droves of users will be forced to leave the platform.  I had become accustomed to a plethora of banks prohibiting login with Firefox due to outdated security protocols and simply used other browsers to pay those bills, etc.  After updating to v99 (and now v100 - Windows 7 x64) though, things have become catastrophic.  I can no longer open the bookmarks in the file menu as they just auto-scroll very rapidly.  It works fine in the sidebar. This makes managing bookmarks a problem since I can't even access that option.  With v99, I also started having trouble with certain websites.  Realtor.com wouldn't allow me to view more than the cover photo and now with v100, the website doesn't work at all (client-side error).  Walmart.com stopped working with v99 and continues to not work w/ v100.  Similar results with a number of other major websites.  Why do I continue to use FF? I really don't know anymore. 

[LinuxDev]

Sir, I have been with Firefox since version 2.0 and have not had login problems for a decade or more. In the early days many banks and other official sites only supported Internet Explorer, but this has long since changed. May I suggest going into settings > general > browsing and there you can turn off "autoscrolling". I personally only leave "smooth scrolling" checked. This works very well for me.

[perlporter]

Congratulations to the whole Firefox community.

I use Firefox since 2010.

May it always continue to make the best browser on the Internet!

Greetings from Brazil

Regards,

Wendell Borges [perlporter]

[mconca]

Thanks for acknowledging the entire Firefox community, @perlporter.  We don't accidentally get to 17 years and 100 versions accidentally or alone. It takes the work of millions--employees, volunteers, contributors, and above all else, Firefox users.

[Alex1s]

I've been using firefox since 2013 and it never showed a single weakness.
I love you all firefox team ❤️

[Jon]

Thanks so much @Alex1s!

[BungayRoger]

Many years ago I had Windows95 with a 500mb hard drive. A friend, who worked in I.T. told me his workmates all used Firefox browser instead of IE. So I downloaded Firefox 3.
 I have used Firefox ever since. I tried others, as they became available, but none came close to Firefox. As the updates increased I wondered if I would see this day, but now, here it is, Firefox 100.
 So, a big thank you to Mozilla & the Firefox team, from one loyal & very satisfied end user.

[mconca]

Thanks @BungayRoger. I think a lot of people were wondering if we'd get to version 100, but here we are, due in large part to people like you.  Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

[GeraldB]

I've enjoyed Firefox beginning with Firebird .6.  Being able to participate in the Firefox forum and customizing the interface have been outstanding features for me, but the overall package and continued improvement call for a deep respectful bow to the developers.

[Jon]

Will share with the developers, thank you!

[Jesse]

I've been using Firefox since about 2011, when I first started using a computer, I tried using other browsers, but I liked Firefox the most and I became attached to it.

What I've always appreciated about Firefox is that the browser is built on its own re-created engine from Netscape's code.
I really liked the fox itself which represents the browser, and I definitely enjoyed the different drawings made for Firefox OS, it's just adding some personality to the fox which is really cool and I would love to see more of that in the future.
Obviously the browser privacy itself is great, the only downside you can give is that the browser doesn't have a built-in ad-block, but there are a lot of addons to fix this problem, so it's not a big deal.

All the best to Mozilla and the entire Firefox team who work hard every day to improve the browser ❤️

[Jon]

Thanks for sharing this journey with us since 2011! Speaking of a built in ad blocker, another community member just posted this today: Firefox built-in Adblocker 

[hamorimbr]

Não poderia deixar de vir aqui e registrar que sou Mozzila e Firefox desde criancinha! 😉 Antes do google. com o Netscape. Uso no PC no celular no tablet. Parabéns a equipe e a toda comunidade que colabora para tornar meu navegador do ❤️ cada vez melhor! Vida longa e cheia de inovações!

I couldn't help but come here and register that I've been Mozzila and Firefox since I was a little kid! 😉 Before google. with Netscape. Use on PC on mobile on tablet. Congratulations to the team and the entire community that collaborates to make my ❤️ browser even better! Long live and full of innovations!

[Jon]

Thank you! Yes, congrats to the community for the many collaborations...and more to come.