[HN Gopher] I've started using Firefox and can never go back to ...
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I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome
Author : p4bl0
Score : 868 points
Date : 2022-07-17 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techradar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techradar.com)
| selfhoster69 wrote:
| I feel like I'm in the minority here, but Edge has been
| consistently better than every other browser I've tried.
|
| I have about 30 tabs open across 3 windows on my 10 yo. laptop,
| that I upgraded to 8GB of RAM. If I try to open even 10 tabs in
| Firefox, the laptop slows down to hell.
|
| Running a local speed test to my Linux server on MS Edge, I get
| ~910Mb/s download (CPU maxes out) and ~980Mb/s upload.
|
| If I fire up Firefox and run this same test, I get ~260Mb/s
| download/upload, with the CPU maxed out of course.
| briHass wrote:
| Edge is the way to go for Windows machines,especially if you
| prefer the chromium engine.
|
| MS made lots of Windows specific optimizations, with a focus on
| memory use. The other killer feature is 'secure mode' that
| disables JS JIT, which is where most if the security issues
| have come from in modern browsers. Plus, in this context, MS's
| incentives align much closer to mine than one if the largest
| advertising companies in the world.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I disagree. I have yet to see a browser try to enable so much
| telemetry and features that track everything you do on the
| web. There are like 30+ things unique to Edge that they push
| on users. Even after turning them off, I've had Edge
| magically turn them back on without my consent. Chrome isn't
| perfect, but if you know what to disable it really isn't that
| challenging to make it as privacy-friendly as Firefox... and
| Firefox isn't the perfect angel here either. Chromium is even
| better, especially on Linux to escape some of the "Google-
| ification". I really do not see any difference between
| Chromium and Firefox when it comes to default privacy
| settings. Regardless, it is always best to go in and disable
| them or use a policy file to do so.
| thomascatt wrote:
| I've used Edge for almost a full year, didn't notice any
| difference from chrome, despite being complimented for better
| windows optimization. Moved back to Chrome.
|
| It wasn't disappointing, but it's just that I didn't have a
| reason to stay there.
| binarymax wrote:
| I don't intend to diminish the article itself, since yes ditching
| chrome and Google is a win for personal privacy.
|
| But I can't ignore the irony of this article loading dozens of
| trackers. Like, is the cognitive dissonance that bad in web
| publishing? Do the teams writing the content not know about the
| way the publisher presents the data? Is this just pure hypocrisy?
| I'm at a loss.
| z3t4 wrote:
| It's corporate politics. The amount of tracking and data
| collected is not decided by the engineers nor the content
| creators. Most entrepreneurs think that the more data the
| better and that it somehow can be monetized in the future - and
| analyzed by "AI", but don't want to to be liable so they use
| third parties to collect and store the data.
| mikkergp wrote:
| The primary goal of this article is clearly ad impressions, any
| attempt to educate and inform on privacy is clearly secondary.
| lolinder wrote:
| The article encourages people to install uBlock. If it's
| primarily designed to drive ads, that's some bad short-term
| thinking.
| dylan604 wrote:
| An author doesn't get to choose what the website of the
| publisher does. It's not like this is the author's personal
| website that they have decided to put all of these trackers on
| it. This is a voice crying from within the system about how bad
| the system is. Is there a lot of cognitive dissonance in
| understanding how web publishing works?
| a2800276 wrote:
| An author does get to choose which platform they publish on.
| I'm really surprised by all the apologists here, the article
| is clearly click bait trying to cram ads down your throat.
| The real irony is that while the post is bearable to look at
| in chrome it's near enough unreadable in Firefox.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Funny, I had no problem reading it in FF. Of course, I run
| uMatrix, so my experience is probably better.
|
| Also, the author in this case is a staff writer for the
| publication. The entire point of her being on staff is to
| write content for that site.
| haswell wrote:
| > _An author does get to choose which platform they publish
| on._
|
| A climate scientist traveling to a conference to meet with
| policy makers with a goal to increase awareness about a
| particular issue might be forced to use a mode of
| transportation that itself contributes to the problem of
| climate change.
|
| Should the scientist adopt an absolutist/idealist position
| and refrain from anything that contributes to the problem,
| up to and including not traveling at all, because of the
| harm that the plane will cause in transit? Should they
| discard the potential longer term impact of convincing
| policy makers to change policy?
|
| This is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees.
|
| > _I 'm really surprised by all the apologists_
|
| It think you are misinterpreting the sentiment. An
| apologist would defend the tracking and ads themselves.
| People are not defending tracking, they are defending the
| _utility_ of using the available medium to raise awareness
| about tracking and tools that can help mitigate it.
|
| > _the article is clearly click bait trying to cram ads
| down your throat_
|
| I would reframe this to something like: the majority of the
| content publishing business has adopted a model that
| embraces click bait and cramming ads down readers' throats.
|
| This is the reality we're in.
|
| As an author, if you want to bring awareness to this
| problem, or offer solutions to this problem, it only makes
| sense to publish that content where the readers are.
|
| At no point does the article try to reframe the problem of
| tracking itself as a good thing. If it did, this would be a
| very different conversation.
| shortformblog wrote:
| People don't usually automatically get to write at a
| specific outlet just because. In this case, the writer
| spent nearly a year freelancing at this outlet before they
| became a full-time staff writer just last month, which
| means they had to put a lot of work in to even get their
| spot.
|
| Publishing is a very competitive field, especially in the
| last decade as newspaper jobs have gone dry. Don't trash on
| the writer because of where they work.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Traditionally, at publications of repute, the advertising and
| journalism departments were entirely segregated from one
| another. This gives the appearance of independence, rather than
| being influenced by an advertiser. I expect that, especially
| since the skill sets are rather orthogonal, that kind of
| segregation still happens today on web publications.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I was actually pretty impressed that a mainstream (read 'ad-
| supported') outlet would run a story that encourages you to set
| up uBlock etc. Contrast it to this article that ran recently[1]
| on 'securing' your browser, which somehow manages to avoid
| mentioning that adblocking would do ten times more to protect
| you than any of the config changes it recommends...
|
| 1:https://gizmodo.com/how-to-secure-web-browser-chrome-edge-
| fi...
| notriddle wrote:
| There are sensible game-theoretical reasons for behaving that
| way. Individually choosing to forgo tracking hurts your
| competitive edge. Advocating for ad blocking, environmental
| regulations, or other industry-wide taxes will not, because
| everyone gets hit with that.
| sdoering wrote:
| This was one of the reasons I left online publishing.
|
| When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I was
| told was to install an adblocker. Talking about hypocrisy.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I
| was told was to install an adblocker.
|
| Is it possible there's an innocent explanation? Like to avoid
| accusations of impression fraud or otherwise mitigate the
| risk of false impressions?
|
| Yet I imagine one would also need a non-blocked browser to
| check results and competitor ads too.
| Bayko wrote:
| Was a software developer in the ad industry. We dealt with
| billions of ads. A hundred hell thousand ads here or there
| won't make any difference. I did use ad block though except
| for running tests on the code that I wrote.
| [deleted]
| for1nner wrote:
| In fairness, the person writing the article doesn't really have
| a say in the infra that the publisher is using. I agree that
| doesn't make the hypocrisy magically disappear, but it
| shouldn't detract from the points being made about the
| platforms we use to access the web.
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| A team owner can advocate for safety related rules in a
| league while not having his own players adopt those changes
| and start losing.
|
| Warren Buffet can advocate for changes in the tax laws that
| benefit the country while still playing hard by the existing
| rules.
|
| Authors can advocate for changes to the web while their host
| is still doing the bad thing.
|
| These can be seen as hypocrisy, but I think there is a large
| dose of honesty and in some cases humility in these
| situations.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| True in theory but you also have to consider most writers
| are just freelance and therefore have zero pull with the
| publisher.
| phkahler wrote:
| So those are the least guilty of the examples I gave :-)
| ta988 wrote:
| And many are just desperate to have a publisher at all.
| [deleted]
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I feel this sort of black-and-white thinking about morality is
| responsible for a lot of problems. Short of moving into the
| desert and becoming some sort of Hesychastic hermit, it's
| difficult, near impossible to lead a life where you do no evil.
|
| The conclusion many draw from that is not to even bother
| trying. I think the better conclusion is to be forgiving of the
| failings of others, because they too struggle with this. Maybe
| the point isn't to be perfect, but to reach for what's good.
| Epa095 wrote:
| Perfect is the enemy of good!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Meh, it's quite easy to set up a website without third party
| (or first party) trackers. Even some github.io kind of
| website is better than a website with loads of tracker spam
| on it. It is not about black and white thinking, it is about
| putting in minimal effort and sticking to ones principles.
|
| Maybe it also involves greed for viewership, "wanting to make
| it big" with some article, who knows. There is not much
| preventing people from setting up a blog by themselves or ask
| someone else to help them publish in an ethical way, at least
| in many countries.
|
| I guess at least some positive outcome can be concluded:
| People, who read on those websites might learn a thing or
| two.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well it's a trade-off. Let's hypothetically say you have an
| important message that could save the world or something,
| but scream as loud as you can, you can't make everyone hear
| about it. You realize the only way to reach people is to do
| compromise with your principles, like publishing it on a
| major website that doesn't align with your values; which is
| the lesser evil, not spreading your message, or spreading
| it using those corrupt channels?
|
| I don't think there's an easy answer to this. It's easy to
| focus too much on not doing evil that you miss the
| opportunity cost of doing good.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| I don't think writing a piece about privacy and then
| including dozens of trackers is honest and helping the case
| at all; "evil publisher" isn't an excuse. Can't have your
| cake and eat it, too.
| haswell wrote:
| This assumes the author has any control over this.
|
| On a web dominated by tracking, the harsh reality is that
| the avenues capable of reaching the widest audiences are
| going to bring with them some...baggage.
|
| To conclude that this is dishonest is missing the forest
| through the trees.
|
| Since tracking is the dominant reality, one of the best
| things a smart consumer can do is use tools that help
| counteract it.
|
| An article like this is using the medium available to help
| people similarly unable to change that medium navigate it a
| bit more safely.
|
| > _Can 't have your cake and eat it, too._
|
| What is the cake here? What double standard does the author
| benefit from if his writing encourages more people to
| switch to a browser that is more resistant to the tracking
| people are accusing the author of (endorsing? It's not
| clear what the accusation actually is).
|
| Let's examine an alternative: The author tries to convince
| the publisher to forego the apparatus that currently drives
| their business model or they'll threaten to publish
| elsewhere.
|
| The publisher calls this bluff, and the author self-
| publishes instead.
|
| Fewer people read the article, fewer people switch to
| Firefox, and fewer people gain a modicum of protection from
| tracking.
|
| What about this outcome is better?
|
| If you gatekeep the act of publishing privacy awareness
| content in this way, the only thing that happens is fewer
| people become aware. The only thing that can weaken
| tracking (aside from regulation) is making it less
| effective.
|
| This mindset that only the pure/virtuous/perfect
| implementation is acceptable, and anything else is somehow
| unacceptable seems like a really good way to make no
| progress at all.
|
| Refusing to acknowledge the situation we're in is just
| denial.
| wnevets wrote:
| Reminds of "You say you want to improve society and yet you
| live in one, how interesting"
| alex_sf wrote:
| I still don't understand why that's a bad argument. In
| context, it's generally used to oppose hard leftist ideas
| (Marxism, etc). It's rarely a criticism leveled at
| reasonable reform or change; more when it nears outright
| revolution. In that case, it's not an unreasonable
| criticism.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| It's a bad argument, it's a tu quoque logical fallacy.
|
| You can be a serial killer and admit that murdering
| innocents is immoral.
|
| The identity and the actions of the person making the
| argument have no bearing on the validity of the argument
| itself, it should be judged purely on its own merits.
|
| Is that statement that "murdering innocents is immoral"
| actually correct or not, regardless of who makes the
| statement?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
| alex_sf wrote:
| I addressed this in lighter terms below, but I don't
| think this is a logical fallacy (in context). To carry on
| your example, a serial killer that believes murdering
| innocents is immoral should also consider themselves
| immoral. They have the option to not kill, and continue
| to do it.
|
| This is very different from the 'holier than thou'
| perspective taken by those who condescendingly dismiss
| arguments that they are contributing to things, by their
| own free actions, that they claim are evil.
| js8 wrote:
| It's a bad argument, because validity of a critique is
| not predicated on critic's life choice. It's like arguing
| that you cannot critique a movie because you have never
| made one.
| alex_sf wrote:
| It's not a critique of the idea alone, it's forcing it
| into context.
|
| If we take a common example of how I've seen this play
| out:
|
| A: iPhones and Apple are evil because they require child
| slavery.
|
| B: But.. you own an iPhone?
|
| A: Oh so I'm just supposed to go live in the woods?
|
| I don't think B supports child slavery. B is pointing out
| that even people espousing this idea participate in the
| system because the alternative (not owning the iPhone)
| results in a worse outcome.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Black and white? Or is the publisher + author being a
| hypocrite? Feels like the latter.
|
| "Do as I say, not as I do" is rarely forgivable. One or two
| lingering trackers? Maybe. But that's not the case here.
| lolinder wrote:
| OP's point is that we're all hypocrites to some degree.
| Expecting someone to be doing everything right before they
| can comment on how we can all improve leaves us waiting for
| deity to resolve our problems.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes we are. Agreed. But in this case the publisher +
| author are on the wrong side of the grey area. The number
| of trackers is not an "oops".
| alex_sf wrote:
| I don't think it's ever fair to expect someone to do
| everything right, but if you want to pontificate on a
| specific issue, you should act in congruence with that.
| sparrc wrote:
| It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an
| article about privacy and web tracking. The business people
| want ads on the website to keep the lights on.
|
| And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have
| much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and
| they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?
| bombcar wrote:
| Sometimes the only moral act is to die.
|
| "Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of
| coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing
| certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not
| doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die
| rather than to do evil."
|
| At some point a company may have to make a decision that
| results in their death if they want to continue to act
| morally.
|
| But much, much more often they simply modify their morals
| slightly and continue on. We humans are great at that.
| shortformblog wrote:
| Don't aim your weapons at the publishers, who are generally
| working as morally as they can within the parameters
| they've been given.
|
| Aim them at the ad technology firms that set the ground
| rules for the industry decades ago. The publishers are
| generally not the ones who let it degrade like this--the ad
| industry, which set the expectations for advertisers and
| marketers, did.
| lolinder wrote:
| What good would dying do in this case? There will be no
| shortage of other publications that will fill in the gap
| and happily embrace invasive advertising. If an
| organization keeps the lights on with ad revenue and
| teaches its readers to protect themselves from trackers,
| they've done _more_ good than if they never existed at all.
| afrcnc wrote:
| tapper wrote:
| Yeah that site is rideled with shitty trackers!
| rvz wrote:
| Well I had a look at this article on Firefox, just to see what
| all the fuss is about and instantly in my face are all these
| Ads on TechRadar's website. They weren't even disabled by
| default on the first install and then you have Google being set
| as the default search engine. I wonder who is going to tell the
| editor why that is?
|
| So either way, nothing has changed from the typical user
| standpoint who wants to just use a browser that not only
| doesn't hog their computer but takes privacy _very_ seriously
| and with that simple experiment I have done, it is clear users
| are still no better off.
|
| They might as well use Brave instead of Firefox which actually
| disables _ALL_ these ads by default on the first install by
| having Brave Shields ON.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| Is it a win?
|
| Last I heard FF was generating a unique identifier on each
| installer download. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-
| firefox-download-has-...
|
| I'm hoping the Duck Duck Go browser or Vivaldi is better.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Usage analytics are pretty important for any product to stay
| competitive, and IMO it's very different from any sort of
| personalized ad tracking.
| lelandfe wrote:
| One-time download telemetry is a pretty minor reason to
| choose an entirely different browser
| jeltz wrote:
| Chrome does the same and more. So, yes, it is a win. But
| Firefox should really stop doing that.
| agilob wrote:
| Are you writing this on internet - a tech that most if not all
| government use to spy on their citizens? Did you buy your
| computer online paying by a card or cash? Is your hardware,
| software all opensource and audited? Did you compile it all
| yourself?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Why would you go back to Chrome? Everyone knows that the best
| desktop browser these days is Edge
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| WebKit gets small details right such as option left right arrow
| selects a word but not a comma after it. In Firefox if a comma is
| next to a word without a space, it also gets selected. Stuff like
| that makes Firefox less polished in my opinion.
| kahnclusions wrote:
| I've switched from Firefox to Safari for most of my browsing, and
| Chrome for anything that needs devtools.
|
| Why? Battery. Efficiency. On the new M1 Macbooks I can run Safari
| and be unplugged all day long. The increased power consumption
| and battery drain is noticeable when using FF and I can't make it
| all the way through the day. As far as extensions go, I have
| 1Blocker and it works well, it does block YouTube ads. The only
| things I miss are Tree Style Tabs and Container Tabs.
|
| I also find performance on FF to be a lot worse than both Chrome
| and Safari. Firefox gets sluggish with many tabs open. JS-heavy
| sites will be jittery and laggy in Firefox, but buttery smooth in
| Chrome. Having 100 tabs open is sluggish in Firefox, but smooth
| in Chrome/Safari. In FF some sites will occasionally crash their
| tab, but they don't crash in Chrome/Safari. Etc.
|
| Then there's the attitude of Mozilla constantly changing the
| interface, shoving things like Pocket or Mozilla VPN in my face.
| Sorry Firefox, but I've left and not coming back.
| nullwarp wrote:
| My favorite part about Safari is how, because I don't own an
| Apple device, I have next to no options for testing and fixing
| the issues that get filed with regards to my web application
| not working in Safari.
|
| Probably 2/3rds of the bugs I get are specifically related to
| Safari while the other 1/3rd are just general issues that
| affect every browser.
|
| It's insane to me that they provide no way to possibly resolve
| this without going out and spending money to buy their
| hardware.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| What exactly do you expect? That Apple brings back Safari to
| Windows and Linux? There's public demand for that every now
| and then (eg [1]), but that has it's own set of problems ie.
| that Safari-on-Win/Lin won't be representative of what's
| rendered on Mac OS due to font handling, antialiasing, power
| management, and other peculiarities on Mac OS (Mac OS would
| typically run on much higher resolution than Win/Lin).
|
| I'm not even using Mac OS currently, but I don't think it's
| Apple's job to make your web app run like on Chrome when
| Google is calling the shots on so-called "web standards" with
| tens or hundreds of new features every quarter, with
| necessarily surprising results. Personally, I'd find it ok if
| you just label your app with "Best run on Chrome" because
| that's the reality the web has degraded to, and the actual
| problem of web apps. Or deploy as Electron app on Mac OS.
|
| Maybe Apple could provide a Mac OS + Safari VM, like MS was
| doing (or still is doing?) when they were producing IE. But
| then the question is on which machine would you be able to
| run those VMs given Apple is heading towards ARM-only
| instruction set machines. Should Apple commit to produce x64
| binaries for backward-compatible emulation on historic
| hardware? Personally, I do like Apple's innovation where the
| rest of the industry is lagging behind.
|
| [1]: https://www.xda-developers.com/safari-for-windows-
| editorial/
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| This comes up every time and I have to point out that Apple
| provides Linux builds of WebKit.
|
| => https://WebKit.org/downloads
|
| They're not marketed as "Safari" because Safari is part of
| macOS, but it's an official build of the same rendering
| engine.
| seejayseesjays wrote:
| Is Epiphany unworkable for testing? It's got the same engine
| behind it.
| selfhoster69 wrote:
| Wait, Epiphany on elementaryOS is 100% WebKit? Had no idea
| tbh.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| On the smoothness of JS, I wonder if that is more about site
| developers testing against Chrome and Safari but not FF.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I tried safari, but the lack of extensions is a major turn off.
| How do you browse the web without uBlock Origin or "I don't
| care about cookies"?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| An ad blocker is still a must have, and there are several
| available.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I notice no difference between chrome and ublock origin or
| safari and Wipr or Firefox Focus.
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| Safari feels like what would happen if Playschool made a
| browser.
|
| It's funny to me how many people give one tiny reason and are
| like... Nope goodbye forever.
| Macha wrote:
| The extension list is a bit based on dated information.
|
| HTTPS everywhere is discontinued and replaced by built in browser
| features.
|
| Privacy Badger doesn't do user side learning anymore as people
| proved that in itself could be used for fingerprinting.
| butz wrote:
| Yes, Firefox has quite a few issues, starting from strange UI
| decisions (tabs that don't look like tabs, etc.), product
| integration (Pocket) and promotion (Firefox VPN in private mode
| window), compatibility issues with video conferencing
| applications (MS Teams, Facetime, probably others). But compared
| to other browsers, you can customize browser and solve quite a
| few of them, unlike in other competing browsers, where what you
| get, that you are forced to use and cannot change. I'd only wish
| Firefox developers (or management team) would take customization
| more seriously, as it is one of main selling features, that few
| users know about.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'm still missing the "share tab" option in Google and Jitsi
| Meet, without it work meetings get a lot less private. I've
| found a pretty good plugin to fix the 'tabs that don't look
| like tabs' design problem, though it's a real pain in the ass
| to install and a major problem when switching to new devices.
| I'm not sure why they changed that, the old design was a lot
| clearer. On the other hand the fact that it doesn't support
| Chromecast is a big plus, since that's impossible to turn off
| in Chrome with recent updates and can it be problematic if
| you're not the owner of all Chromecasts on your damn network.
|
| As of right now Firefox stays the side browser for code testing
| and whatnot, but it falls short for daily use for me.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| What customization do you use? Personally I only customized FF
| by adding a youtube video downloaded, and I just open Firefox
| whenever I need that.
| stavros wrote:
| I've been using Firefox for around a decade, maybe? I've always
| liked it, but recently I switched to Vivaldi and I'm impressed by
| the amount of useful features it has.
|
| My first browser was Opera and I'm a huge fan, so to see that the
| CTO of Opera has decided to basically recreate Opera is very
| alluring.
| CarVac wrote:
| Firefox is worth it if only for Tree Style Tab.
| [deleted]
| DeathMetal3000 wrote:
| Firefox is the best browser in many respects. But even if it
| wasn't. Even if it was missing extensions, used all my RAM and
| chewed my CPU, I would still choose it over Chrome. Because using
| a browser from the world's biggest advertiser is wrong on
| principle. And using an ad blocker (I don't use one) while using
| a browser made by an advertiser is next level cognitive
| dissonance.
| philsnow wrote:
| > using a browser from the world's biggest advertiser is wrong
| on principle
|
| Spot on. As said many many times, the browser is the new OS.
|
| If Google wowed the world and introduced a free (beer or
| speech, doesn't matter) Windows-killer OS[0] that was better in
| every way than Windows, was Windows-compatible, _tons_ of
| people would use it. You and I wouldn 't.
|
| [0] I do know about ChromeOS, yes
| mrits wrote:
| It is literally not cognitive dissonance.
| haswell wrote:
| It would be helpful to share an argument supporting your
| assertion if the goal is to help people understand and/or
| agree with your position.
|
| If you consider a simplified definition of cognitive
| dissonance that goes something like "thoughts or actions that
| do not match your beliefs or values", then the behavior
| described by the parent comment could be cognitive
| dissonance, but probably only if certain things are true:
|
| - The person understands the nature of Google's business
|
| - The person believes that using Chrome still benefits Google
| even when anti-tracking extensions are installed
|
| That said, the people who understand enough to be categorized
| as such are not the average Chrome user. The average user is
| not experiencing cognitive dissonance, they just don't know
| any better.
| dontcontactme wrote:
| I think most people use an adblocker to avoid seeing ads, not
| privacy. Most people (myself included) care more about saving
| time on YouTube videos and making webpages not have pop ups all
| over the place than privacy.
| feanaro wrote:
| That's a pretty big assumption. I'd say my motivation is
| exactly the reverse of that.
| haswell wrote:
| > _I think most people_
|
| > _I 'd say my motivation_
|
| I'd be careful not to generalize your own experience here.
| Just the fact that we are having this conversation on HN
| puts us in a bubble that is not representative of "most
| people".
|
| My motivation is privacy. The motivation of many people I
| know is "ads are super annoying". Privacy awareness is
| growing, but most people are not as aware as the people on
| this thread.
| feanaro wrote:
| This works both ways, and I'm warning of generalizing in
| the other direction based on an _assumption_ of what is
| "normal among normal people".
| [deleted]
| fernvenue wrote:
| Here's another thing, Firefox use OCSP to check certificates of
| websites by default, but Chrome don't.
| Beached wrote:
| I wish I could use FF full time. but unfortunately I need to be
| able to use background blur in Google hangouts, and FF doesn't
| support. that's the last feature I'm waiting on.
| lol768 wrote:
| Is it FF that doesn't support these things, or Google that
| doesn't bother supporting browsers that aren't their own?
|
| I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle.
|
| Here's the bug:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1703668 - sounds
| like it would work, but not with acceptable performance at
| present
| g3rv4 wrote:
| Replied with this on a different thread, but I built an
| extension[1] so that I could choose which sites are opened in
| Chrome... so that whenever I need to use Google Meet, it
| automatically opens it on Chrome.
|
| [1]: https://onchrome.gervas.io
| rmdoss wrote:
| As a long time Firefox user, my main issue with Firefox is
| Mozilla itself and their focus shifting to VPNs, pocket and
| things non browser related.
|
| But still love Firefox.
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| Unfortunately Mozilla needs money.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Oddly, I kind of like Pocket but I understand why you might
| choose not to use it.
| bbkane wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Firefox containers. I occasionally need
| different logins for the same sites and containers make that much
| easier than Google's profile feature.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Containers is the big thing imho. Having two bookmarks that go
| to different Gmail accounts, with each opening in a different
| container tab, and each container being logged into just that
| account. Same for AWS accounts.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is the purpose of using two bookmarks to open the container
| and gmail simultaneously? I just use one bookmark, two
| containers, each is only logged on to one gmail account.
| adamfrank321 wrote:
| Are extensions and their settings shared across all containers?
|
| One thing I love about Chrome/Edge profiles is being able to
| different extensions enabled/disabled and configured
| differently across them.
|
| For example, I have a "private" profile that always runs
| windscribe vpn and other privacy-heavy extensions that I might
| not necessarily want running on my "base" profile.
| happymellon wrote:
| Saves us with AWS accounts!
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| O365 tenants too! Finally possible to log into multiple at
| the same time.
|
| Though MS Teams often gets stuck in a reload loop inside a
| container, but Teams is a total trainwreck anyway.
| happymellon wrote:
| Not surprised. Do they not realize that some of us deal
| with more than one account?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I've always been pragmatic about my browser choice, not
| prioritizing performance but rather security, configurability and
| open source contribution. So I used Firefox since the very first
| Phoenix beta because I came from using the Mozilla browser.
|
| Only for a short while in the early 00s my poor laptop couldn't
| runt FF with 256M RAM so I had to use Opera. I had to enter PF
| rules to make the stupid ads in the UI disappear. But within
| probably 2 years I had a new laptop and was back with FF.
|
| The main sell in the early 00s was that afaik noscript could not
| function in Chrome or Opera due to the design of its web plugins,
| so FF pretty much had a monopoly of the paranoid like me.
|
| And by now I just feel that any privacy enhancements can be done
| with a custom user.js so I see no reason for any other browser
| than the upstream FF.
| newbieuser wrote:
| I've been using google chrome for years but now it works worse
| with every new update. constantly changing features, newly added
| nonsense, ram usage problems, I'm really tired of it all now. I
| think it is the most logical to switch to firefox or another
| alternative.
| HKH2 wrote:
| If Mozilla really cares about your privacy, why do you have to
| install extensions in Firefox to get it?
|
| By the way, Firefox does track you. At the very least, it phones
| home, and it gives each installer a unique identifier.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| If you use Firefox Focus, you don't need to install extensions.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Mozilla actively removed the ability to conveniently disable
| javascript, and left deleting cookies or localStorage from
| specific sites hellishly difficult. Mozilla somewhat cares
| about press releasing about your privacy.
| jfk13 wrote:
| There's a vast difference between Mozilla's telemetry and
| Google's user tracking.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| I started using Firefox ages ago because of firebug. I've been
| using it as my primary browser ever since. I've never had an
| issue with it (other than the occasional web site that is
| designed to only work with Chrome). Maybe I don't know what I'm
| missing since I haven't given Chrome a try (other than loading
| the occasional website that only works on Chrome). Maybe Chrome
| is better than Firefox, but I don't have any complaints about
| Firefox (though I do have complaints about bad website
| developers).
| Beldin wrote:
| I keep having to "forget about this site" for YouTube after
| watching (admittedly many) videos - every 2 months or so. The
| tell-tale sign is that videos stutter outrageously. It is
| surprisingly consistent - stutters / freezes happening, forget
| about site, problem solved.
|
| I would be surprised if this is solely due to Firefox btw; I
| trust YT-owner Google about as far as I can toss the lot of
| them.
| julianlam wrote:
| The big one for me is that Chrome's JavaScript engine is much
| faster than Mozilla's. I'm not sure why, but it makes a
| noticible difference.
|
| I use this to my advantage by using FF as my daily driver. I
| believe that if my site is fast on Firefox, then it's damn near
| fast enough for everyone.
| drathier wrote:
| Lots of web devs only testing in chromium browsers, perhaps?
| irrational wrote:
| What we do at my company is I only test in Firefox, another
| developer only uses Chrome, a third only uses edge and QA
| tests on Safari.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I ran into an interesting situation where I was building a
| Conway implementation and getting 60fps in Firefox / 10fps in
| Chrome. Turned out that Chrome had absolutely horrible
| performance with attempts to access out-of-bounds array
| indexes, where Firefox had some early fail fasts in place.
|
| So anecdata, but I wouldn't rely on Chrome automatically
| working well if Firefox does.
| roschdal wrote:
| Once you go Firefox, you can never go back.
| aikah wrote:
| The 2 reasons why I don't use Chrome is
|
| 1/ You can't mute tabs by default
|
| 2/ You can't prevent videos to auto-start.
|
| Simple as that, I think muting tabs was possible in the past, but
| of course, Chrome team removed that function because youtube.
| tomComb wrote:
| Gawd yes, thank you.
|
| I actually find Chrome to be faster and generally appreciate
| the contributions that Google has made to try to keep the web
| competitive with the proprietary platforms, but I can't get
| past the auto-start video issue.
| gernb wrote:
| You know that Chrome tried to remove auto-start videos and
| advertisers just ended up writing their own battery sucking
| slow canvas based software decoders?
|
| That Firefox is doing this is very much like yesterday's new
| Facebook URL
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32117489
|
| where people complained Firefox screwed up by escalating.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| > where people complained Firefox screwed up by escalating
|
| I believe that was a single person.
| bilkow wrote:
| By default firefox only prevents content with audio from
| autoplaying, which I can't think of any way to circumvent and
| it's probably good enough for most people.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| I started using a text-only browser for recreational web use (not
| lynx) and can never go back to a graphical one.
|
| The popular graphical browsers keep growing in size and
| complexity but I am still doing the same basic tasks on the web,
| i.e., retrieving files and consuming them. For these basic tasks,
| the so-called "modern" browsers are overkill. Chrome is something
| like 150MB with dynamic libraries. The text-only browser I am
| using to submit this comment is a 1.3MB static binary.
| dleslie wrote:
| ... so which one is it, if not Lynx?
|
| Links, elinks, links2, netrik, w3m, ..?
| epups wrote:
| My computer has enough power that any performance hit from
| Firefox is negligible. I will continue to use it over Chrome as
| long as possible.
| tzs wrote:
| I went the other way after a few years on Firefox mostly for one
| reason. Too often when posting something here, on Reddit, in a
| web-based email client, on Facebook, etc., I'd end up having to
| spend too much time dealing with false positives in its spell
| check.
|
| It's weird because they use the same spell check engine that
| Chrome, Apple, LibreOffice, and a bazillion other commercial and
| open source things use, and those almost never produce false
| positives on my writing.
|
| Mozilla needs to address things like this if they want to stop
| losing share to other browsers.
| megraf wrote:
| I feel the same way about Safari. Yes, it's not perfect- and no,
| you don't get all the flexibility, but it's so lightweight,
| stable, and energy efficient, I have a hard time considering
| something with a few more features in the categories I've been
| able to do without.
| colordrops wrote:
| I'm finally using Firefox as my daily driver now after a half
| dozen attempts over the years. They finally got the major perf
| issues and UX warts ironed out. I don't feel like I'm
| compromising anymore, in fact quite the opposite, especially when
| using privacy containers.
| baby wrote:
| Just for tree style tabs, firefox is worth it
| flerchin wrote:
| Firefox on Android with ublock origin is a _must_. Otherwise the
| mobile web is nigh unusable.
| haolez wrote:
| I use Chrome Mobile with NextDNS blocking the ads. The
| experience is mostly the same.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| A lot of stuff is loaded from the same host as the content.
| For example, a DNS blocking solution like NextDNS can't block
| YouTube ads without breaking the videos (same with ads on
| Google Search and many other sites). It also can't apply
| cosmetic filters to block things like cookies popups or hide
| empty spots where ads are supposed to be displayed.
|
| DNS blocking is better than nothing, but it's very basic when
| compared to a browser extension like uBlock Origin.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Except the cost, unless that's now free
| baal80spam wrote:
| I use Brave - it has builtin ad/scriptblocker.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| But also builtin cryptoscams :(
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you have an issue with crypto as a
| whole or is there something about Brave's BAT in particular
| that you dislike?
| gnlrtntv wrote:
| Aside from some of the common critiques of purpose-
| oriented blockchain tech, I think there's a question with
| BAT of if creating a token-based ecosystem with this
| thing actually creates economic incentives that align
| with the overall improvement of our society, or if it
| merely contributes to the existing problems that have
| enabled intrusive ad tech in the first place.
|
| On a small scale, paying to be able to take away ads (or
| getting paid to see them -- ultimately, the difference is
| negligible, given how pervasive ads are in our lives) is
| a nice experience to have. But it has a lot of
| implications long-term on our society, given ads are the
| primary way we finance pretty much all information we
| have access to these days.
|
| How does this affect upward mobility? If a person in
| poverty wants to get out of poverty by learning a
| difficult skill, getting access to the information and
| learning it will be a longer, more difficult process for
| them. They will be interrupted more often than wealthier
| people, they will have less time to dedicate to doing the
| task at hand than wealthier people, etc.
|
| I personally think it's difficult to get excited about
| any system that wraps the way we gate access to
| information in our society without considering this
| element, because the ability for people to move up in
| life is really one of the great promises of the internet,
| and nobody should lose that.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think crypto in general is disastrous for our
| environment right now, and has offered none of the self-
| control finance benefits it promised due to ever more
| regulation (the EU is soon planning to ban private
| wallets, you can only legally host money on exchanges
| then, which basically means we're full circle to the old
| banking system). All this has been precipitated by the
| frantic speculators looking for a quick buck. Bitcoin
| wasn't invented to enable money-hoarding investors, it
| was designed to undermine the old banking system and give
| us back full control over our money. This aspect has been
| completely undermined by regulation now.
|
| But BAT is a different beast as it doesn't use mining. So
| my concern is not the same as for general crypto schemes.
|
| It's the BAT idea in particular that I don't like though.
| It's just a new, more indirect, payment scheme for
| advertisers. I just want the advertising industry to die
| and get out from between the content creators and
| consumers. I know this is not a realistic viewpoint but
| I'm not willing to contribute to it. Brave solves the
| privacy problem to some extent but not the ad problem.
| And in a way they even promote ads by paying users to
| view them.
|
| Brave seems to be looking to make the current system more
| palatable (and of course become the gatekeeper for this
| new tech which would be priceless if it ever took off).
| I've long given up on the ad system completely. I already
| pay for the sites I like and use a lot (at least where
| they offer this option) but I don't make any exception
| for adblocking ever. Even when they're non-tracked.
| cowtools wrote:
| >the EU is soon planning to ban private wallets, you can
| only legally host money on exchanges then, which
| basically means we're full circle to the old banking
| system
|
| They can try to "ban" whatever they want, but it's not
| happening.
| zamadatix wrote:
| There are a dozen Chromium browsers on Android with blockers
| but it's still not quite the same.
|
| Raw < DNS blocking < custom solutions < uBlock Origin
| RedComet wrote:
| I doesn't block most (1st party) ads. See twitter, reddit,
| etc for example. Yes, that is with shields set to aggressive.
|
| FF + uBlock, on the other hand, has no problem with this.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| Brave feels much more cluttered and heavier.
|
| Secondly, enabling JS on per site basis is easier on FF
| Android with UBO. Speeds up browsing a lot.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| I switched to FF when Safari became unusable on Mac (Apple
| killing off extensions). For me FF is the least worst browser.
| They all suck. FF just sucks less.
| donutshop wrote:
| Love FF. Container tabs was a game changer as it allows for easy
| contesting switching between different identities.
|
| For those who are more privacy focused LibreWolf is a good fork.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ironically I just went the other way today, because Firefox
| became unusable in a 2009 laptop, and requires add-ons to control
| their exponential use of processes (on a dual core).
|
| Meanwhile Chrome, with all its usual bloat, works perfectly fine.
| yasoob wrote:
| PiP in Firefox is the killer feature for me.
| rraghur wrote:
| You'll have to pry Firefox from my cold, dead hands!
|
| At the outset, yes, chromium based browsers feel snappier..
|
| But, stuff that Chrome will not have and are absolutely essential
|
| 1. Containers... I use another unverified extension to match urls
| and automatically assign containers...
|
| 2. Ublock origin
|
| 3. Tree style tabs
|
| 4. Developer console... Edit and resend any request
|
| That said, i still end up using chromium for teams and outlook
| 365 (pwa install feature is nice)... But that's only because i
| don't have any other options with those two
| wizofaus wrote:
| "4. Developer console... Edit and resend any request" - there
| have been extensions for that in Chrome for a long time, though
| I don't know if they integrate with the developer tools/network
| tab itself. Agree it would be handy - I use the "replay"
| command in Chrome DevTools quite a bit, and if I need to modify
| it usually end up importing it into Postman (via the copy as
| cURL command, which I believe Firefox also supports).
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| I am confused about the "I don't have any other choice"
| comment. I assume you mean because Firefox doesn't support
| whatever teams uses for meeting audio/video, or maybe it's the
| install feature you mentioned, but I use Firefox for both and
| use my phone for meetings.
| whitesilhouette wrote:
| There are times when I've noticed Teams to fail if I try to
| open it from one of my Container tabs. It complains about
| supported browser and stuff. But it opens perfectly on the
| default tab always.
| ghjnut wrote:
| Which container extension are you using for domain grouping?
| I've been looking for a good one
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps someone can build a container system around chrome (or
| in fact any application). Ideally, an OS should be able to do
| something like this.
| zh3 wrote:
| On linux, just create a separate login and use Chrome there.
| In fact, what I do is create a separate user, start Chrome
| once, do any configuration I want and then create a tarball
| of the separate user's home directory. Then to start a fresh
| it's just a wipe of the whole directory and unpack the
| tarball again.
|
| It's fast enough to just run Chrome in a loop, and on each
| exit wipe and unpack the original state again.
|
| I call it Groundhog Day Mode.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| On Linux you could do the same with mount namespace without
| making a separate user etc.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The way Firefox style containers work they need to be "built
| into" not "built around". It's not as much about creating a
| profile and running it separately (that's just standard
| profiles in Chrome/Firefox, or normal OS level sandboxing) as
| it is auto-launching webpage requests into that profile based
| on matches and integrating the profiles into the app UI so
| the tabs stand out, can co-exist in the same window, and can
| be managed via built in tab creation UI.
|
| Chromium hasn't been interested in this feature but nothing
| would stop someone from making a Chromium derivative that
| does this.
| vachina wrote:
| Why not use the native user profile function? E.g. set up a
| "user profile" dedicated to access only Meta/Facebook
| properties (and therefore only be able to track you within
| that container)
| theden wrote:
| uBlock Origin does exist on chrome btw
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
| feanaro wrote:
| But with Manifest v2 will be crippled.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| feanaro wrote:
| As the other poster said, I meant Manifest v3 (can't edit
| anymore).
|
| To answer the poster's curiosity, I messed it up by
| pressing the neighbouring key by accident and not checking
| sufficiently. :-P
| rocho wrote:
| As far as I know Chrome has its own tracking which can't be
| blocked.
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| It's not feature complete.
| grupthink wrote:
| What features are incomplete?
| seejayseesjays wrote:
| My pecking order is Firefox on my PC, Firefox on my Mac when I
| need uBlock for something, Safari for everything else. (And Edge,
| for when I want to make sure everything I make looks as good on
| Chromium as it does on WebKit and Gecko)
| j45 wrote:
| I'm curious if anyone is using Brave or another Chrome based
| browser in lieu of Chrome and what their experience has been?
| endorphine wrote:
| Without Firefox and a few extensions like uBlock Origin,
| Decentraleyes and Privacy Badger, I feel like I'm naked when
| browsing the web.
|
| Also, check out Firefox Focus on Android. Pretty convenient to
| use as the default browser for guest browsing.
| ssl232 wrote:
| You don't actually need Decentraleyes or Privacy Badger now
| that Firefox has total cookie protection and that uBlock Origin
| supports their other features (some via lists). Arkenfox has a
| useful write-up on this:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions.
|
| I only have four extensions now: uBlock Origin, I Don't Care
| About Cookies, one for user agent switching, and one for
| removing HTML elements via the context menu.
| nklmilojevic wrote:
| You can also add I Don't Care About Cookies list in uBlock
| Origin.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Oh that's great - thanks - yet another extension to
| disable!
| patrick451 wrote:
| I used to use firefox exclusively.
|
| But they have been on a road of adding increasinly user hostile
| "features" to the browser that I just can't take.
|
| I snapped when they implemented automatic updates. I've never
| been so pissed at a piece of software than I have been at firefox
| when I hit Ctrl-T and the damn thing refuses to work until I
| restart it. And for a long time, it wouldn't even restart, it
| just exited.
|
| While I'd prefer to install updates manually through apt (like
| every other piece of software on my laptop), if they are going to
| be so patronizing that they won't allow that, they need to fix
| they update process to not require a restart. Until that happens
| I'll use chromium.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Firefox has always had automatic updates but only on systems
| that don't manage the software updates via centralized package
| manager. E.g. any chance you're an Ubuntu user? They just
| switched it over to being a snap package instead of an apt
| package with 21.10.
|
| Regardless if you open settings UI there is a radiobox to
| toggle between auto-installing updates and just notifying you
| when your version is out of date. If that's not there then it's
| your distro's build that is forcing updates to be done that
| way, not Mozilla.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I only use Chrome for some of the pants-down redirect-happy stuff
| required by work. FF tends to break the transitions because they
| are inherently insecure, but Chrome happily proceeds with them.
| siraben wrote:
| The HTTPS Everywhere extension has been redundant for some
| time[0] and I have Firefox configured to give a visible warning
| when connecting to a website with HTTP.
|
| [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/https-actually-
| everywh...
| Jenk wrote:
| I used Firefox in the early-mid 00s, switched to Chrome not long
| after launch, after my colleagues showed me how much slicker is
| was than a now fairly heavy Firefox (at the time.)
|
| Then evil Google emerges, Chrome got fat, FF trimmed up and went
| privacy-as-a-default, and I'm back on FF again for the better
| part of the last decade.
|
| Opera had a look-in around 2008 but it didn't last long, although
| some of the features were nicely done, it just had a clunky
| feeling and the rendering was ... Different.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| The right click mouse gestures of Opera were great for quickly
| navigating back/forward and creating new tabs.
| chx wrote:
| I never stopped using them. I never _could_ stop using them,
| it feels so clumsy to work a PC without gestures. I am
| currently using StrokesPlus.net for this purpose, I am sure
| there are others.
| kitd wrote:
| _Chrome got fat_
|
| Vivaldi works quite well as a thinner Chrome alternative IMO.
| geogra4 wrote:
| Big Vivaldi fan here.
| go2europa wrote:
| do you have any recommended extensions for auto-hibernating
| tabs? or how do you approach having many tabs? having no
| built-in way to do it is unfortunate but I'm really liking
| the other tab features
| pmoleri wrote:
| Around 2012 my 6GB Ram laptop was struggling with Chrome, I
| switched to FF and got much better experience there. Then with
| FF Quantum release I adopted it definitely.
| chappi42 wrote:
| I never switched to Chrome, always used Firefox.
|
| But it increasingly got more config-involving to make FF do
| what I wanted and maybe I overdid some settings/plugins and
| websites started to show incorrectly. Also the imho (much) too
| high salary for the CEO annoyed me (Mozilla is supposed to be
| "Internet for people, not profit").
|
| Tried Brave and it was a nice experience after some initial
| cost to e.g. disable crypto. Some weeks ago I uninstalled FF on
| all my computers...
| monetus wrote:
| It is kind of a conundrum. The Mozilla situation seems
| clearly to be self serving and crippling the potential of the
| browser. The CEO's pay exemplary of that - and similar
| situations are there with brave. The founder was forced out
| of Mozilla for a reason, but setting that aside, the liberty
| they took with collecting crypto for businesses while those
| businesses were unaware put me off of them in a profound way.
| The niche the browser itself fills is obviously good but the
| methods seem... off, not malicious intent, just questionable.
| Changing the ad economy isn't bad for example, a great
| driving motivation.
| jshen wrote:
| How much was the CEO getting paid?
| causality0 wrote:
| The worst thing about using Firefox is that the longer you
| use it the more things you have done to un-fuck it and the
| more work it is to replicate all those things on a new
| system.
| divs1210 wrote:
| Same! I switched from FF to Brave a few months back, and I'm
| liking it a lot.
|
| I miss a few features, but nothing major.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I used to work with Brendan and despite being trans felt he
| sorta got the shaft from Mozilla. I know everyone was upset
| with him, but for a year and a half I worked with him and
| he was never anything but cordial to me... an out trans
| queer person.
|
| So when he launched Brave I wanted to give it the benefit
| if the doubt. But the early messaging about what conditions
| ads are replaced was hamfisted and I stopped using it
| relatively quickly.
|
| That being said... all the browsers (FF, Brave, Chrome,
| Safari, etc.) embody the agenda of their respective
| organizations. The question you may want to ask is "what
| organization has the most motivation to address issues I
| care about most?"
|
| This is why I use Lynx.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Yep! Lifetime FF user and I switched to Brave a few weeks
| ago. It took a little while to get used to the interface
| but otherwise enjoying it.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Given that Brave is a for-profit business backed by VC
| money[1], sooner or later it'll become what you hate and you
| will find yourself wishing there was a browser ran by a
| strong non-profit like Mozilla.
|
| That being said, perhaps they should just piggyback off
| WebKit/Blink and save themselves a ton of resources.
|
| [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/brave-software
| chappi42 wrote:
| I'm aware that Brave is a for-profit company, this must not
| necessarily mean that they'll do evil things. And if they
| would and Mozilla is no longer around, this could also be
| because Google stopped funding them.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Mozilla may be a non-profit but there's a saying: "non
| profit doesn't mean they don't make money".
|
| It's not _too_ difficult to disable, but Firefox does push
| suggestions by default and has a revenue sharing agreement
| with Pocket.
| Lev1a wrote:
| > Firefox [...] has a revenue sharing agreement with
| Pocket
|
| "Mozilla Corporation" bought Pocket in 2017.
|
| Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service) :
|
| > On February 27, 2017, Pocket announced that it had been
| acquired by Mozilla Corporation, the commercial arm of
| Firefox's non-profit development group. Mozilla staff
| stated that Pocket would continue to operate as an
| independent subsidiary but that it would be leveraged as
| part of an ongoing "Context Graph" project.[6] There are
| plans to open-source the server-side code of
| Pocket,[11][12][13] with more than 50 repositories
| already available on the company's GitHub account,
| including their iOS app.
| cedilla wrote:
| Pocket has been acquired by Mozilla a few years ago.
| avereveard wrote:
| Same path, the late xulrunner runtime was squeaking around all
| corners and chrome came out at Firefox weakest moment, it
| spread trough my friends circles like wildlife.
|
| I went back to Firefox just because of Chrome api change
| against adblockers, and found it very usable and mature, but
| it's a tougher sell to my friends as the difference
| unnoticeable
| spurgu wrote:
| I'd switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if I could somehow focus
| the URL bar with Cmd+D instead of Cmd+L (years of muscle memory
| with Alt+D on Linux previously).
|
| Other browsers have a menu entry for this (File -> Open
| Location... in Chrome) so keyboard shortcuts can be switched in
| the Keyboard settings but Firefox doesn't have this. :|
|
| I've tried various methods without success. If anyone had a
| working solution I'd be very grateful.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think it may be possible to change browser shortcuts with a
| custom UserChrome.js but it is very much going down a
| nonstandard path.
| kavothe wrote:
| Just press F6 and it'll focus into the URL bar
| bl4ckcontact wrote:
| If I recall, F6 should get what you're after.
| spurgu wrote:
| As I said I want it specifically to be Cmd+D (instead of
| the default Cmd+L).
| atwood22 wrote:
| It would be pretty trivial to write an extension that
| does that.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I don't think Firefox extensions can do this sort of
| thing.
| atwood22 wrote:
| Yea you're right. Looks like they removed the ability of
| extensions to do that back in 2017. Sad :(
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Option+D would be the analogue on Mac.
|
| This might work: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/shortkeys/
| spurgu wrote:
| > Option+D would be the analogue on Mac.
|
| For me it's "the key to the left of the spacebar" in terms
| of muscle memory, so Cmd on Mac.
|
| Tried it, as well as modifying omni.ja... From the add-on
| page (I tried it):
|
| > shortkeys cannot override Firefox default shortcuts
| bussierem wrote:
| I'm on Windows 10 with FF right now and Alt+D just worked for
| me, along with Cmd+L and F6 as other have said. I think your
| muscle memory should be just fine. Time to switch!
| spurgu wrote:
| Time to switch to Windows? :o
|
| Edit: I moved off Windows around 2005 followed by a decade
| of Linux and since then Mac.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I find Firefox to be a superior browser and I use it Firefox on
| all my devices. But I would have used it even if it wasn't
| better, because I have lived through IE6 era and I know what
| browser monoculture results in. We don't need another browser
| engine monopoly.
| ecuaflo wrote:
| When I tried it a few years ago on iphone, it would constantly
| crash and I'd lose all my tabs. I wanted sync between mobile
| and desktop so needed to switch to Chrome. Any idea if it has
| gotten better?
| roca wrote:
| iPhone Firefox isn't really Firefox, it's still using Apple's
| Webkit engine (as does Chrome on iPhone).
| na85 wrote:
| Firefox sync works well. I have an Android so can't comment
| on the iphone but Firefox works well on my MacBook.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| It hasn't crashed for me in a very long time. IOS now
| (reluctantly) lets you set it as the default browser,
| although you'll need to hunt around the settings.
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic, but perhaps the smart people on HN can help
| me with this.
|
| The one thing that keeps me from switching from Safari to Firefox
| is that I cannot customize tab switching. In every macOS program
| I use, I use the same key binding to switch between tabs. Because
| there is no "Next tab" or "Previous tab" menu item in Firefox, I
| cannot assign this function to a key with the macOS keyboard
| shortcuts in System Preferences.
|
| I've looked in Firefox's setting and searched online and haven't
| found anything that helps. Though, to be honest, I'd prefer it to
| be part of the system native options so that it can follow me
| during upgrades.
|
| At this point, I'm willing to consider employing BetterTouchTool,
| if that's a solution. But again, I'd rather go native.
| zerop wrote:
| I did that transition recently and have no major problem with FF.
| I am liking it.
| brassattax wrote:
| Says a website with 20 ads on it
| comprev wrote:
| I only ever use Chrome for websites which need translation into
| English - probably less than 1% of those I visit. Firefox for
| everything else.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| I don't get the extensions part. All of them apart from the
| containers (that's a browser or more like engine specific
| behavior) are available for Chrome so they are not FF-only. Most
| of them are "over the top" if you start with uBlock Origin too.
| Like you don't need multiple extensions to do the same thing >
| most of the time that leads to broken sites. uBlock Origin on its
| own is incredibly powerful. Last but not least HTTPS Everywhere
| is also obsolete because you can force any browsers now to open
| sites with HTTPS only, you don't need it that anymore.
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/https-actually-everywh...
|
| And no offense if TechRadar is writing articles like this... they
| should open their own site without any of the extensions and
| watch the ads, popups, autoplay videos and such. Maybe they will
| notice the problem doesn't start with the browser of your choice.
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're also more frequently updated on Chrome, and smell less
| like malware. The Firefox addon directory is a hellhole. The
| only place where Chrome fails on this is on uBlock, but that's
| completely intentional because they're an ad company.
| foepys wrote:
| uBlock Origin is already working better on Firefox than chrome
| since Google is crippling features.
|
| See "uBlock Origin works best on Firefox" in the official
| GitHub repo's wiki:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| The article specifically talks "of Google breaking those
| AdBlock extensions in 2023 with a massive update, which is
| rather terrifying, to say the least." What is referenced here
| is Manifest V3. Gorhill, uBlock Origin developer, agrees that
| this will significantly limit uBlock Origin on Chrome.
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...
| thrown1aways wrote:
| >The article specifically talks of Google breaking those
| AdBlock extensions
|
| I bet there will be a Chromium for without that + Brave is
| already working on it. Power of open source I guess?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Every feature removed by Google will have to be maintained
| by the open source community instead. That's going to be a
| workload that I'm not sure who is going to pick up. After
| all Chromium right now is maintained by Google. There's
| some forks like degoogled chromium but they are mainly
| focused on removing features, not rebuilding ones that have
| been deprecated.
|
| Brave is an option but I don't really like where they're
| heading with their crypto tokens.
| tomComb wrote:
| Oh, no, Microsoft, Brave, and all the other companies
| that repackage Chrome will have to actually contribute to
| the base (or a fork). /s
| thegabez wrote:
| The crypto aspect is opt-in
| swat535 wrote:
| Only for now, they will bait and switch soon enough. We
| have seen this happen too many times.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I know but it's a core integrated part of the product.
|
| If you don't care about that, firefox with uBO is really
| much better IMO.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah you can bet that Google will do anything they can to
| stop adblockers once their FLoC replacement is online. After
| all, in their view they have solved the "privacy problem".
|
| Chrome is only going downhill from now. So is Edge, Microsoft
| has already at the stage where they don't prioritise user
| experience and appeal anymore and are priorising
| monetisation. Like with the "buy now and pay later" scams
| they're including. It's IE4 all over again, once they arrive
| at the desired marketshare the user is just a dumb sheep to
| them again.
|
| Unfortunately Mozilla is far from perfect, they're becoming
| too corporate and weaseling in monetisation schemes totally
| in conflict with their goals. But they're still a world
| better.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the Mozilla corporate weasel part? As
| far as I can tell, they are just a) poorly managed and b)
| desperately trying to diversify revenue away from search
| prioritization contracts.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| True but they are looking in all the wrong places.
| Including pocket "featured headlines", vpn services that
| are just a resell, just lowhanging fruit that does
| nothing but annoy the users that still care about them.
|
| Meanwhile they try to make the browser as mainstream
| friendly, not understanding that the mainstream has long
| given up on them and they only have the last remaining
| bastion of hardcore privacy users left. Whose user
| patterns they're not seeing because they focus too much
| on telemetry.
|
| I think since they became Mozilla Inc they started
| thinking like big tech and are slowly becoming just like
| it. But because their foundation origins the declining
| marketshare is not ringing their alarm bells like they,
| in a real company, would.
|
| If they really wanted to diversify and get me to pay for
| something, they have to do more than just resell mullvad.
| I'm a mullvad user but I much rather pay for that
| directly as it gives me a lot more features. I love
| mullvad but I want to use it in more than just a browser.
|
| What I'd want to see and would pay for:
|
| - A service like Apple's iCloud Private Relay that really
| makes browsing more anonymous (rather than a basic VPN
| which they offer now, that's too little too late).
|
| - Paid Sync storage (with full E2E so I have no reason to
| self-host)
|
| - An archiving service of webpages (also E2E). Because
| onenote sucks more and more
|
| Basically things other than 'quick wins' but that need
| some serious vision and development. Right now they're
| thinking way too much like a lazy CEO, doing a quick tie-
| in with another service hoping for some takeup or some
| cheap marketing benefit.
|
| If they want to diversify and get people to pay they
| really have to offer some real benefits that are a gap in
| the market. Those exist but they need some more work than
| just a quick joint marketing effort.
| zargon wrote:
| I would pay for Firefox itself, no extras necessary or
| wanted. But there's no way to do that.
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| You're fixating on the details too much, but if you wanna
| fixate on details, you can't install unlock origin in chrome
| Android.
|
| The big picture however, is that Firefox works for you, chrome
| works for Google.
| Zekio wrote:
| anyone else find that only Firefox behaves properly when opening
| up a saved state that opens multiple windows on multiple virtual
| desktops.
|
| I've had problems with both Edge and Chrome changing the current
| virtual desktop or behaving weird until I click at least once on
| every window that opens
| Snuupy wrote:
| Shout out to librewolf which removes all the dumb Mozilla stuff
| like Pocket/telemetry (default on)/etc.
|
| I wish firefox would have live captions for audio/video. It's one
| of the few features Chrome has that I use regularly and miss on
| FF.
| pveierland wrote:
| For the privacy conscious, the arkenfox user.js template provides
| a nice structure for setting up Firefox settings [1]. This works
| extra nicely if version controlled with your dotfiles and NixOS.
| programs.firefox.profiles.<name>.extraConfig = builtins.readFile
| ./user.js;
|
| One of my favorite settings is setting "keyword.enabled" to
| false, to prevent leaking mistyped URLs to the search engine
| provider. It feels much cleaner to explicitly specify the search
| engine using e.g. "g<space>" when you want to search.
|
| [1] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/
| tapper wrote:
| If you use a screen r3eader then firefox is the best. Plus all
| the addons that block all the shit on the web. ublock being the
| best of them.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| The only thing I really hate about firefox is the build. Building
| FF from scratch is a fucking nightmare. It's the only shitty
| package that REQUIRES python 2 for building.
| mdaniel wrote:
| That information is outdated; I build FF from source a couple
| of times a week, and use python3.9 for mach's python. I do
| agree the build is special needs, made worse by all the rust,
| but of the things I _really hate_ about Firefox, the build is
| pretty low on that list
|
| The Chromium (and its derivatives) builds makes it clear they
| have a compile farm of unlimited compute and ram, so it's just
| "which kind of bad" I nowadays, I guess
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Browsers seem to require an order of magnitude more effort to
| package than is typical that distros occasionally struggle to
| keep up. It's the only software in which I use upstream
| binaries out of preference. I assume it's a safer bet from a
| security and/or performance perspective.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| Vivaldi browser https://vivaldi.com/ and Vivaldi browser snapshot
| (both available for desktop and mobile) have become my
| favorite(s). Support all Chrome(ium) extensions, highly
| customizable, tab groups and tab-stacking. Been using both for
| 5ish years and probably never going back. I like FF but its
| insistince that I need to sign in from another device to verify
| that I am me has always been a little bit...obnoxious. Google is
| a joke in terms of privacy, no matter what they claim. Their
| entire business model is selling ads, and they do that by
| watching us.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't have the impression that Firefox is so much more
| optimised. If anything I had the opposite impression (Chrome
| using less CPU than Firefox). Makes sense too because Google has
| a ton of money and Mozilla doesn't.
|
| Still I mainly use firefox and on most computers it's the only
| browser I even have installed.
| rvwaveren wrote:
| I'm back to FF as well (after some Chrome years), and love it.
| However, for my work I use Google Meet and online collaboration
| tools such as Miro. Unfortunately, I only use Chrome for those
| services because FF will jumpstart my Macbook fans quickly when
| using Google Meet / FF.
| eimrine wrote:
| I use both browsers (mostly FF on powerful machines and Chrome
| if I need to use Core2Duo or older) and I have an impression
| that Firefox has some memory leaks. Chrome browser loaded with
| as much tabs as allowed by my RAM can store its tabs forever.
| But Firefox can not do the same, despite it has been written on
| Rust.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm glad it's working for her. I unfortunately had the opposite
| experience... Some sites I use that are smooth enough on Google
| Chrome just positively chugged on Firefox. I assume there's some
| key differences in the rendering engines.
|
| If that's not a problem you have, then I can't think of a reason
| not to use Firefox.
| zahma wrote:
| Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use
| over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed
| with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's
| better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| The killer features is the developer tools panel. It's so
| packed with features it might as well be an IDE. I use Firefox
| on all my devices for personal browsing, but I still use Chrome
| for webdev works.
| canistel wrote:
| I would say that it is the other way around.
|
| Firefox provides essential functionalities that are altogether
| missing in Chrome:-
|
| 1. _dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled_ - Enable copy paste
|
| 2. _dom.event.contextmenu.enabled_ - Always enable context menu
| (right-click)
|
| 3. First party isolation.
| mbrubeck wrote:
| I'm a longtime Mozilla contributor, so I'm probably biased
| toward Firefox, but there are still a few Chrome features that
| I wish Firefox had, like:
|
| - Easier to create and use multiple profiles (somewhat
| mitigated by Mozilla's multi-container add-on)
|
| - Google Translate integration
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's a profile switcher extension:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-
| switc...
| [deleted]
| evulhotdog wrote:
| The profiles is what gets me. I have a personal bad
| professional profile on my device and whenever clicking on a
| link, it will open the page in the latest chrome window (re:
| profile) that was last accessed and it works wonderfully.
| Firefox profiles are a completely different
| process/app/structure and it just really does not work
| gracefully in any scenario I've tried.
| mh- wrote:
| This is also what keeps me from considering FF for a daily
| driver. I have the same workflow and it's very easy to keep
| straight.
|
| I have hotkeys assigned to each profile via macOS
| shortcuts. Cmd-shift-# focuses a given profile. Or opens a
| new window of that profile if there wasn't one already.
|
| Links from other apps always open in the most recent
| profile.
|
| This makes it very simple to ensure links I click in
| Slack/iMessage/etc open where I want them to.
|
| (Took the time to write this out in the hopes some Firefox
| folks see this..)
| lstamour wrote:
| It's not built-in, but you can get Google Translate browser
| extensions, and these are promoted on Firefox marketing
| pages.
|
| Also, there's an offline translate extension being worked on
| in open source: https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-
| translation-add-on-pr...
| kevincox wrote:
| You can also make a bookmarklet that loads Google Translate
| into the page. It isn't quite as nice as the auto-detect in
| Chrome but very close.
|
| With the new offline translation support I actually prefer
| this setup as I can try the local translate first, then if
| the quality is bad or the language isn't supported I can
| make the decision if I want to upload the page to Google.
| petronio wrote:
| Chrome has support for casting to Chromecasts. While not enough
| reason to daily drive Chrome, it does come in handy for the
| random video player that doesn't natively support it.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| DevTools I think... although FF's are solid, Chrome's are just
| that much better.
| bit_logic wrote:
| Firefox had the chance to remain relevant when it still had
| some significant market share and if they had gone all in on ad
| blocking (basically something like merge ublock origin directly
| into Firefox). Unfortunately, since most of their revenue is
| from Google, it could never happen due to conflict of interest.
| abirch wrote:
| Do you think major websites that are funded by ads would
| simply block Firefox with merged ad blocker?
| bit_logic wrote:
| At this point, probably, but in the past when FF had 30%
| market share? It would've at least forced a serious
| discussion in the industry on what are acceptable ads. Or
| maybe it would've been the impetus for a working
| microtransaction system built into the browser. Instead,
| they did nothing with their influence.
| krolden wrote:
| Chrome works better with google crap, by design. That's about
| the only reason I ever use chromium.
| system2 wrote:
| If you are using gmail, syncing browsers with everything in
| them is very easy. I do feel like the extension library of
| chrome is also larger.
|
| FF is sluggish to open first time and if there is an update,
| god help you.
| CoolCold wrote:
| Interesting..I can't even say I notice the update time..it
| happens but never stand in my way that I'd notice it..under 1
| minute may be? Not sure to be honest. What's your experience
| here?
| PossiblyKyle wrote:
| Its only killer feature to me is that websites are designed and
| tested with a Chromium-first attitude. As a regular FF user I
| might stumble upon a website that's quite buggy or straight up
| doesn't work, which forces me to use Chrome for that specific
| website. Other than that I don't really feel like there's
| anything, and Edge is currently a better Chrome than Chrome
| anyway.
|
| EDIT: and for the record, I'm still upset Microsoft didn't
| choose FF and willingly increased Google's grasp
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah I'm still surprised MS did that too.
| g3rv4 wrote:
| I built an extension[1] so that I could choose which sites
| are opened in Chrome... so that whenever I need to use Google
| Meet, it automatically opens it on Chrome.
|
| [1]: https://onchrome.gervas.io
| abirch wrote:
| Microsoft had a huge hit with VSCode. They like
| Blink/chromium.
| amelius wrote:
| Can you explain that for those not familiar with VSCode?
| noman-land wrote:
| I've been an FF user and developer of many frontends for
| years and the amount of times I run into serious differences
| between browsers is somewhere near zero.
| CactusOnFire wrote:
| I've been on team FF since the switch from IE like 20 years
| ago- I agree sometimes there is additional jank, but I also
| want to add that it is rare enough that it's been a non-issue
| 99.9% of the time.
|
| Even then, I expect some of it is the fact I use an obscene
| number of plug-ins to break most social media sites (to
| prevent overuse).
| ccmcarey wrote:
| I flip flop between Firefox and Chrome constantly and for as
| long as I can remember, Chrome has always just felt snappier
| 13of40 wrote:
| I have an older Surface tablet (that I recovered from a
| recycle bin, TBH) and I've been using Chrome on it, but I was
| annoyed by some of the latency and tried Firefox the other
| day. It had all the problems of Chrome, plus jittery
| scrolling and some extra random lags thrown in, so I noped
| right out of it. I've got nothing against Firefox as a
| concept, but it's apparently too hardware intensive for that
| scenario.
| porker wrote:
| Start typing a Web address, hit tab and search that website.
|
| In Chrome it works reliably for me; in Firefox it works for a
| small subset of the sites that work in Chrome.
| bgro wrote:
| Those experienced with web dev around here will tell you Chrome
| is the main (or only) browser tested with most websites these
| days. Some things might be slow or broken in Firefox. One
| example situation that comes to mind is you can't scroll to the
| bottom of the page on some sites in Firefox due to terrible
| spaghetti layout design, so the submit button is not normally
| reachable. Or it loads under a banner and becomes unclickable.
|
| There's also some sites that seem to actively make things worse
| on purpose or refuse to load even if they otherwise do work. I
| think YouTube was noted for doing this a few years ago.
|
| In other areas, small company sites may claim Firefox just
| doesn't work on their site. Sometimes prompted because an
| ancient version once was broken and the browser entry list was
| never updated, or they simply forgot to account for it in the
| grouping of "Internet Explorer or Other." I see this more often
| than I would like.
| behringer wrote:
| I only had one site in recent memory that failed to load. I
| put in a call to the support line and they fixed it.
|
| Tbh this whole idea that the web is broken on ff is not true,
| tho it is true some web assembly apps fail to work properly
| in my experience.
|
| I challenge anyone here to give an actual useful site that
| fails to work properly in ff.
| bit_logic wrote:
| A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm
| (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF,
| works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge)
|
| This is just the most recent example I remember,
| unfortunately there have been enough at this point that if
| I'm doing anything important (such as filling and
| submitting some important form), I do it in Chrome because
| I don't want it to silently break in FF and cause other
| issues with invalid or corrupt data submitted to the
| service.
| lol768 wrote:
| > A recent example I found:
| https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing
| Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost
| immediately in Chrome and Edge)
|
| I can't reproduce this in FF 104.
| bit_logic wrote:
| The current release is 102.0.1, 104 is Beta:
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar
| nytesky wrote:
| Multiple profiles in parallel.
|
| Does Firefox support that yet??
| nytesky wrote:
| I know they have containers but maybe I'm using wrong as it's
| cumbersome.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| you have containers that are better that parallel profiles
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| A few months ago I tried to go back to Firefox and used
| containers a lot. It works fine, but sometimes I'd pick the
| wrong container, defeating the point of using containers
| (eg: using Google Search for personal stuff while logged in
| to a work Google Account).
|
| Containers are useful and we can do interesting things with
| them (eg: temporary containers), but they don't replace
| profiles. With a profile I don't have to mix personal
| bookmarks with work bookmarks, I can use different
| extensions/settings, a different theme so I don't use the
| wrong profile by mistake, etc.
| Yaina wrote:
| So...there are profiles (about:profiles) and you can run them
| in parallel. But it's not really feature meant for consumers
| as it is in Chrome.
| jcynix wrote:
| Multiple profiles in parallel? Sure, you can start multiple
| instances of Firefox in parallel from the command line and
| use them with different profiles. I do that (on a Mac)
| regularly. Works under Windows too, IIRC.
| cpeterso wrote:
| You don't need to use command line options to open new
| profiles in Firefox. Just open the _about:profiles_ page.
| thayne wrote:
| Yes. But launching them isn't as easy as in chrome. Depending
| on what you are using them for, firefox containers might be
| sufficient.
| commoner wrote:
| Yes, Firefox supports multiple profiles in parallel. For a
| Chrome-like user interface, try the Profile Switcher for
| Firefox add-on:
|
| - Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
|
| - Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-
| switcher
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Firefox has traditionally given a Bronx cheer to IT making it
| more difficult to manage updates and configuration.
|
| Maybe it's changed but I wrote them off years ago as a result.
| easton wrote:
| They added good GPO support a year or two ago AFAIK. And if
| you can send a config file to your Mac/Linux boxes it can be
| easily managed there too.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Some of us find Firefox incredibly useful for this reason.
| When my company's intranet site is down you can't open a new
| tab on Edge without it crashing trying to get there.
| more_corn wrote:
| Chrome profiles. I need a distinct browser environment for each
| of my clients.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Firefox supports multiple profiles, though the UI is not as
| streamlined as Chrome's. In Firefox, open _about:profiles_ to
| create and open new profile windows.
| teh_klev wrote:
| The Firefox implementation is clunky. If they fixed that
| then I'd readily switch to FF.
| puchatek wrote:
| There's a potentially a killer feature of Firefox that
| justifies its use over Chrome: it seems to be impossible to
| prevent youtube ads from playing on Chrome while in Firefox
| just having ABP installed does the trick.
|
| (this claim is based on rather limited testing so please
| correct me if I'm wrong)
| spurgu wrote:
| Not exactly "killer" but the ability to customize the keyboard
| shortcut to focus the URL bar (to Cmd+D) is what keeps me from
| switching to Firefox:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168
| kevincox wrote:
| I would pay $100 for fully customizable keyboard shortcuts in
| Firefox. Especially if they were Vim-like or could bind
| arbitrary JavaScript to a key.
|
| I miss vimperator so much.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| There are a couple of features in Chrome that I use every day
| for web dev.
|
| 1) when the console is open, you can right-click on the reload
| page button and choose hard reload.
|
| 2) when inspecting CSS properties, you can change many of them
| by dragging them with the mouse left and right. That makes
| positioning elements so much easier than guessing and adjusting
| a dozen times.
| mishafb wrote:
| 1. You mean ctrl-shift-r?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Ctrl F5, no?
| louhike wrote:
| You can drag CSS properties in Firefox too.
| 6510 wrote:
| Its in the ff dev tools settings. If the tools are open it
| reloads everything.
| raydev wrote:
| > Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its
| use over FF?
|
| I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing
| history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a
| typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on
| history a lot.
|
| My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm
| able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my
| personal history with boring work stuff.
|
| I assume Firefox probably offers account syncing, but there's
| no reason to switch at this point. They lost me more than a
| decade ago, I loved Chrome's out-of-the-box interface. It made
| Firefox seem ancient and cluttered with all the unnecessary
| buttons, and massive borders and tabs consuming precious screen
| space.
|
| edit: And I'm now reading that Firefox supports multiple
| browser contexts but requires some effort. No thanks.
| [deleted]
| kevincox wrote:
| Firefox also supports multiple browsers including the Android
| Password-Fill API. So you need to sign into your Sync account
| rather than your Google account but then you get a nearly
| identical feature set.
|
| Plus it is all end-to-end encrypted unlike the Google one.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Yikes. What if they ban your Google account? They have no
| customer support to speak of.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| What if they don't and I spent time micromanging my
| computer for nothing?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| You get account support with Google One or a Google
| Workspace subscription. There are other support avenues as
| well. Account bans do happen but for the most part it
| appears that when it does, that the person who got banned
| doesn't share the full story and people are more than happy
| to jump on the Google hate train. Google is a successful
| company and it annoys a lot of people that others don't
| have the same hate that they do.
| cowtools wrote:
| If someone gets banned from google, they probably deserve
| it even though I have no idea why it happened.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Yell on them on Twitter and hope you start trending.
| behringer wrote:
| Ask for support on hn when a Google post trends.
| AlexSW wrote:
| For me, it's simply the grouping of tabs. I use both, but if I
| ever want to keep my tabs organised (which is often) I cannot
| use Firefox.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Really? There are extensions for that sort of thing. Your
| extension list can even be synchronized across devices.
|
| Tree Style Tab, for example, allows control over how new tabs
| are opened in relation to existing tabs if you don't like FF
| defaults. Even if you don't like the tree view, you get a UI
| that adds settings for how your tabs should open and stay
| grouped.
| Yiin wrote:
| I personally dislike Firefox for its annoying "Looking for
| updates" pop-up whenever I open the browser. That 3 second stop
| generated more dislike from me for Firefox than bad privacy
| policies of Chrome ever could.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I use FF, but I have at times had to switch to Chrome for
| extended periods of time when performance of FF was bad after a
| particular release - maybe about 9-10 years ago? I think a lot
| of people experienced the same thing at the time, moved off and
| never moved back.
| mh- wrote:
| Anecdotally, I know several folks who got retina MacBooks
| when that was new (2012 or so?) and had to switch off of
| Firefox. For a while it didn't render correctly, and then
| once it did the performance made it unusable for daily
| driving.
| bballer wrote:
| The fact that the XHR/network console on Chrome doesn't format
| JSON responses is insane. Your in the most popular browser in the
| world and you have to copy paste the JSON into a formatter to
| read it?? Really??
| whittingtonaaon wrote:
| You just have to open the Preview tab.
| wishfull wrote:
| I wish I could switch to Firefox exclusively, but the commerce
| websites I frequent only work correctly with Chrome. No doubt
| it's due to laziness and lack of testing by these websites, but
| it is reality. The worst part is the complete lack of warning
| that these sites have not been tested on anything but Chrome, and
| are not likely to function correctly.
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| techradar on mobile is truely an awful experience.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Funny. I use Firefox Focus on mobile, and I didn't see any ads.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Any browser that do not have a multi-containers features is unfit
| for use in 2022.
| kretaceous wrote:
| Along with obvious ones like uBlock Origin working perfectly,
| etc., I have 2 other favorites:
|
| - Native reader mode
|
| - Native PiP mode for videos
|
| Yes, you can get extensions for this in Chrom(e/ium) but having
| these as a native feature is really nice.
|
| Things I want to see in Firefox:
|
| - Good/extensible keybindings
|
| - Tab groups
|
| - Tab search
|
| EDIT: How do I break sentences to newline in HN without really
| making a new paragraph? You know, for bullet points, etc.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Native reader mode
|
| This fixes most of the links on HN for me - I'm one of those
| people who doesn't like the browser to save anything, so every
| time I visit a site it's for the first time - so anyway reader
| mode just cuts right through all the shit in one click, no
| cookie banners, no subscribe banners, no interruption banners,
| it gets straight to the content if it's there (sometimes even
| cuts through shallow front end paywalls) - honestly if the site
| looks horrible and reader mode doesn't work, close tab - can't
| be arsed.
|
| It also makes far better use of screen space than most site
| designs, e.g those common yet horrible headers with css
| position: sticky. Pretty much every big news site is made
| better by pulling any content into reader mode.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _Good /extensible keybindings_
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-extension-shortc...
| is a little hidden, but gives you at least _some_ flexibility.
|
| > _Tab search_
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-open-tabs-
| firefo..., I use % in the address bar very regularly.
| kretaceous wrote:
| > I use % in the address bar very regularly.
|
| I use * for bookmarks and ^ for history but have never known
| about this. :)
|
| Thanks!
|
| And yes, I do use extension shortcuts. Can't imagine my life
| without Bitwarden or Tab Stash keybindings.
|
| See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1177108 to
| know what I actually meant.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| If you need tab groups and tab search, you're using tabs wrong.
| Bookmarks exist for that purpose and they do have search and
| grouping (folders).
|
| Coworkers look at me like I'm a freak because I usually keep
| fewer than 10 tabs open :)
| kretaceous wrote:
| > Coworkers look at me like I'm a freak because I usually
| keep fewer than 10 tabs open :)
|
| Haha! That's me. My maximum is 15 and then my cleanliness
| ghost kicks in. I said tab groups because I like organization
| even if it's just 10 tabs. I honestly don't know why I said
| tab search.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| No. Tab groups are great, they allow you to bundle context
| but persist it front and center. On a given day I might be
| working on five different things, I context switch between
| tab groups, make some progress within a group, and move
| along. Bookmarks absolutely do not solve this issue.
| Bookmarks are not ephemeral, and take considerably more time
| to organize than simply using tabs naturally.
| hansel_der wrote:
| strong agree
|
| maybe sometime will come the realisation that a tab, a
| bookmark and a history entry are basically the same
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Both have their use, I prefer bookmarks for separating tasks,
| and tab trees for organizing information I am actively using
| within a task.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I usually work on about 5 projects at a time. During a given
| day I will switch between those projects at least once an
| hour. With Panorama Tab Groups, I only see about 10-20 tabs
| at a time and they are all specific to the current project.
| when i switch, it does it all at once and the pages don't
| reload. They retain their state. I can be editing something
| in one tab group, switch to another tab group to check on a
| dependency, and then switch back to the firs group to finish
| editing.
|
| I do use bookmarks for longer term organization but my
| workspace is all handled in tab groups.
| lxgr wrote:
| Bookmarks and tabs serve different use cases.
|
| The former don't preserve login state (and site state in
| general) or scroll position, navigating between them requires
| an internet connection and often uses significant data
| (important when working from a metered and/or unreliable
| connection like on a train or plane), just to name a few
| differences.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Well, how are you persisting state? How do you quickly go
| back?
| jraph wrote:
| Why would it be wrong if it works?
|
| I don't use groups (I liked them when tab groups were a
| feature of Firefox). I search for tabs by typing stuff in the
| awesome bar, that works.
|
| I always have a lot of tabs and kill everything from times to
| times. But it's nice to reach a tab that's already loaded
| when you need it, instead of reloading the page every time,
| making a network access, using resources and having to wait.
| A page being already open is also a hint that it's something
| I accessed recently and that it's most likely the thing I
| need.
|
| I don't want to waste my time managing bookmarks (actually
| the sibling comment from lamacase captures my view very well
| on this). That's not how I use a browser. But it's good they
| are there for people like you who find a use for it.
| lamacase wrote:
| Ok, great idea. Now we just need an extension that auto-
| bookmarks every newly opened page until I unbookmark it, and
| a category of "super-bookmarks" to curate the pages I would
| manually bookmark now.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I usually keep fewer than 10 tabs open
|
| Same here, and I don't even use bookmarks! History and custom
| search shortcuts are enough.
| agumonkey wrote:
| seconded, all of your list
| Tagbert wrote:
| I use Panorama Tab Groups. It lets me create groups of tabs
| (obviously) for each project. Each project has 10-20 tabs and I
| can quickly switch between them. It means that most times, I
| only have 10-20 tabs visible. Makes things much easier to
| navigate and keep track of.
| dmytrish wrote:
| Tree Style Tabs solved the tab grouping problem for me. I like
| to put it on the right and I'm looking for a way to have the
| tab bar hidden.
|
| Tab search exists: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-
| open-tabs-firefo..., also you type % into the address bar to
| start searching over tabs. Not sure if this covers your needs,
| though.
| somishere wrote:
| Not quite a hidden tab bar but I modded the TST / FF chrome
| so only active or recently active tabs show (~3min timer) per
| personal preference: https://gist.github.com/theprojectsometh
| ing/6813b2c27611be03...
| appletrotter wrote:
| Is there a way to make TST look nicer? I'm sure a lot of
| people appreciate its UI, but it really stands out to me in a
| negative way.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I like using Sidebery, which on top of feeling lighter-
| weight offers a bunch of themes, including a very clean
| one.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People hate the UI. It was clean before the transition to
| webextensions, now it's messy and can only be fixed through
| futzing with userChrome.css (with no help from mozilla.)
| lordnacho wrote:
| TST is literally the killer feature for FF. It's actually the
| only reason I went to FF, it was getting out of hand to have
| all my tabs across the top, and it makes little sense with
| modern screens being so wide that giving up a little
| horizontal space to get legible titles is absolutely worth
| it.
|
| Someone in Chrome/Edge/Safari must be thinking about doing
| this, I don't know why it hasn't been cloned. Can't be too
| hard to do.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Edge actully does clone it. Which makes Edge quite usable
| for some things.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Vivaldi does this too.
| hansel_der wrote:
| > I don't know why it hasn't been cloned
|
| it's a elitist feature. pretty sure that most ppl on the
| internet don't know what a tab is.
|
| opera had vertical, grouped tabs over twenty years ago.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Edge has vertical tabs but no grouping by parent tab.
| sathyabhat wrote:
| Edge does have grouping (might be behind edge://flags)
| travbrack wrote:
| I can't overstate how much this extension has benefitted my
| work life. It's an absolute game changer.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > TST is literally the killer feature for FF.
|
| Which raises the question: why would FF sabotage it? Why
| isn't it easy to hide the default tabs, and why does the
| sidebar have the name of the extension providing it stuck
| at the top?
|
| They had all of the warning in the world about how
| important this extension was to people years before finally
| removing XUL, half a decade later you still can only repair
| the display problems through CSS that isn't kept consistent
| from version to version, and feature requests/bug reports
| on the issue are filled with antagonism from the project.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I never got to leverage TST, something about the UX bothers
| me. I have better flow with Tab Stash. Also TST suffers
| with my hoarding habits and the subtree features have bare
| naked UI.
| vin047 wrote:
| From the extension description, Tab Stash seems to save
| all open tabs as bookmarks. But this feature is already
| built into Firefox. Am I missing something? I've never
| used either of these extensions (will be trying out TST)
| so forgive my ignorance if I'm missing something obvious!
| agumonkey wrote:
| you can stash things as you want, it stacks them in a
| daily stash by default that you can rename, move links in
| and out of previous stashes
|
| with TST whenever I need to reorder/re-group things, it's
| a pain (I still appreciate TST a lot)
| [deleted]
| Kaze404 wrote:
| You can hide the tab bar through userstyles css. It can't be
| done from Firefox itself unfortunately, but once you set it
| up you never have to do it again.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| I prefer Chrome's tab groups over TST, its simpler and needs
| less organizing IMO. But needs some more keyboard shortcuts.
| timerol wrote:
| When I saw the title of this article, I assumed it had to be
| about Tree Style Tags. No other browser feature has so
| immediately become a feature I must have so quickly.
|
| Privacy and ad-blocking are great, but I could see myself
| being lazy and switching to a browser with a better UX, if
| one existed. But you'll have to take Tree Style Tabs from my
| cold, dead hands
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's pretty much the only reason I'm staying with Firefox.
| Mozilla has pissed me off often enough for me to attempt to
| jump ship, but there's just nowhere to go.
|
| (I'm aware of Orion, but when I last used it I found it to
| still have performance and polish issues)
| dandanua wrote:
| > I'm looking for a way to have the tab bar hidden
|
| 1. Go to `about:config` and set
| toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets true
|
| 2. Go to `about:support` and find your profile folder
|
| 3. Create subfolder `chrome` there
|
| 4. Create file `userChrome.css` in `chrome` folder
|
| 5. Put this text in it: #main-window
| #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse !important;
| }
| anotheryou wrote:
| also check out "sidebery" as a modern alternative that does a
| bit more
| Moru wrote:
| Am I doing something wrong? Every time I try to move
| something into a group, it just gets deselected and I have
| to select them again and then sometimes it works to move
| into a group.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| I was also going to recommend Sidebery - I switched to it
| from TST a while back and I've been very impressed with it.
| wussboy wrote:
| Yup. Sidebery is now Firefox's killer feature. Won't live
| without it.
| TheArcane wrote:
| Tab search doesn't work across containers afaik and it's
| therefore pretty useless
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The address bar searches open tabs by default.
| hawski wrote:
| Simple Tab Groups is how tab groups should have been done in
| Firefox from the start. I think if they would be like that they
| would not have to rip them out. Tab search or rather filtering
| is included and is such a splendid addition. Also automatic
| backup of groups is a fine feature, but so far I only needed to
| use it for migration.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/
| contravariant wrote:
| I'd like to add that it combines very nicely with Gesturefy,
| defining a couple of mouse gestures to switch between tab
| groups (either through a small popup or switching moving
| back/forth) is what got me to actually use the tab groups
| meaningfully.
| tyingq wrote:
| >EDIT: How do I break sentences to newline in HN without really
| making a new paragraph? You know, for bullet points, etc.
|
| Blank line / new paragraph is really the only option. Short
| bullet points might look better with the "code" option of
| preceding with two spaces, like: - this
| - that
|
| But long lines in that format force horizontal scrolling for
| some mobile users.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Hacker News text formatting news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc/
|
| Blank lines separate paragraphs.
|
| Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized. To get a literal
| asterisk, use * or *.
|
| Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces
| is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.)
|
| Urls become links, except in the text field of a submission.
|
| If your url gets linked incorrectly, put it in <angle brackets>
| and it should work.
|
| Alt-7 on the number pad give you a bullet "*", Alt-0151 an em
| dash "--"
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Tab search in FF: Type a percent sign and a space in the
| address bar, your search is now on tabs.
|
| % - Tab search
|
| ^ - History search
|
| * - Bookmark search
| for1nner wrote:
| I find multi-account-containers* incredibly useful re: tab
| groups. Coupled with a few pinned tabs (email), I generally
| always know where to look for what when I have the browser
| open.
|
| *https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
| account...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah this is an amazing feature. I never understood why they
| moved it to an addon. As part of the browser itself it would
| be easier to use.
| stop50 wrote:
| There are a few addons that use the builtin feature.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| >Tab groups
|
| Please no. I actually switched to Firefox on mobile just
| because I couldn't get tab groups to stay disabled in Chrome.
| kactus wrote:
| What do you dislike about tab groups? Or is Chrome's
| implementation on mobile not good?
|
| I think the current design is ugly. The way Edge handles them
| in the vertical tabs sidebar looks a lot better than the way
| other Chromium derivatives handle them in the tab strip, but
| still not the best. I like Vivaldi's implementation better,
| but the UI is relatively laggy. I miss old Opera.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I find them unpredictable. I don't know when something will
| open in a new group, I don't know how I can move a tab out
| of/into a group. I find it to be kind of a mess. And of
| course it was shoved at me without even asking whether I
| want it.
|
| (Thanks in advance for the solution. I mostly use Firefox
| anyway)
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Been long enough that I don't really remember the details,
| but I found it a lot harder to find what I was looking for.
| brasic wrote:
| Chrome has a native reader mode as well, it's just feature
| flagged off for some reason:
|
| https://knowtechie.com/how-to-enable-google-chrome-reader-mo...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Probably, because there are no ads there.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Also unblockable contextual menus (by pressing SHIFT).
|
| But on the downside no translate tool (though I read it is
| coming).
| m-p-3 wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-
| translation...
|
| Operates entirely offline.
| cfjgvjh wrote:
| The tool is already out and works pretty okay for the
| supported languages. (At least enough for me to find the page
| I'm looking for.)
|
| Bonus points for it being offline.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-
| trans...
| ichik wrote:
| There is tab search (and history, and bookmarks for that
| matter) from the address bar (i.e. typing `% foo` will search
| all tabs for `foo`). I don't know if it's turned on by default,
| but you can set it up from "Search shortcuts" settings section.
| alterneesh wrote:
| Regarding tab groups, there's two things that I've found that
| seems to have solved my requirements: - Workona (this is an
| extension for chrome) - Arc (https://thebrowser.company/)
|
| Both essentially have the idea of "spaces" for web browsers.
| uoaei wrote:
| I break up my tab groups into separate windows (by subject
| matter) and that seems to work great.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I want to see extensions which change how the user interacts
| with the browser (eg. Vimium or gesturify) work on browser
| internal pages such as settings, extensions or reader view. I
| know its not going to happen because "security".
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| For what it's worth, Chrome has a reader mode, just hidden
| behind an experimental flag, and a native PiP mode for videos,
| accessible with the media controls icon that appear when a
| video is playing.
| snthd wrote:
| >Native reader mode
|
| The unremovable "floating" controls are visually distracting.
| ikurei wrote:
| > Yes, you can get extensions for this in Chrom(e/ium) but
| having these as a native feature is really nice.
|
| I've been using Brave for a while and I'm considering going
| back to FF, partly to get out of Chromium.
|
| However, this is a point I don't get. What do I care if these
| features are native or plug-ins? My Brave plugins are synced,
| so whenever I install Brave and set it up I immediately. If the
| plugin is well done, there is no difference, and for people who
| don't care about that particular feature it could be less bloat
| to have it on a feature.
|
| Specifically for the Reader mode, the Chromium Addon I use
| comes from the Firefox code for the same functionality, so it's
| just as good. Kudos to FF, OSS is awesome.
| yonrg wrote:
| Sideberry is a great addon for tab tree, grouping and container
| mgmt.
|
| Tab search, keybinds, and many many other handy stuff, can be
| done in vimperator.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Not sure this will resonate with everyone, but Edge has both of
| these features built-in :).
| kretaceous wrote:
| It definitely does with me. I used Edge when I was using
| Windows and I liked it!
|
| I went back to Windows after almost 2 years for work and MS
| has managed to bloat it too. Don't understand why I need a
| Math solver. Edge bar is annoying. Favorites and bookmarks
| are 2 separate things?
|
| I turned them all off obviously but defaults matter.
| just_for_you wrote:
| I went from disliking Edge, to liking it, and then slowly
| disliking it again as they added bloat to it.
|
| What turned me off from it was when I lost a year's worth
| of (unimportant) bookmarks and history. One day I opened it
| up and it decided to kindly sign me in automatically
| (probably detected I was signed into an MS site in-
| browser), and it wanted to automatically sync all my
| history, auto-fill info and passwords to Microsoft's sync
| servers. I immediately disconnected my account to stop
| this, and then it deleted my Edge profile afterwards as a
| further courtesy.
|
| I understand that these two behaviors are probably
| Features, but I don't like the feeling of losing control of
| my software. And now these features like MSFT Rewards,
| coupon services, credit card services, and the "Bing Bar"
| (or whatever you call it) are just too much for me. Not to
| mention every PC I use Edge on tends to assault my eyes
| with political propaganda since Edge's New Tab page
| defaults to biased news outlets.
| xLink wrote:
| Edge is just another Chrome clone at this point.
| jackosdev wrote:
| If you're into Vim, this is a fantastic extension for
| keybindings: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim...
| kretaceous wrote:
| I should be clear. What I was referring to when I said
| `keybindings` is browser/developer keybindings that are not
| yet made configurable.
|
| There's been an open issue for 7 years asking for a shortcut
| key for the eyedropper[0]. The navigation between developer
| panels is also a bit tedious. The page focus key, F6, is not
| configurable.
|
| These are some instances I was thinking when I said I wanted
| good keybinding support. I'll be really willing to try an
| extension that achieves these but it's really the browser's
| job.
|
| With that said, I've tried a bunch of these extensions in the
| past! I'm not a vim guy so I settled with Link Hints[1] for
| in-page navigation. I cannot recommend it enough for non-vim
| guys. It's really underrated.
|
| 0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1177108 1:
| https://lydell.github.io/LinkHints/
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Thanks for the mention of F6, I had been looking for a page
| focus key for a while to restore focus after switching to
| the address bar.
|
| I've discovered that "ctrl-f esc" also works; focus goes
| back to the page when the search bar closes. Convenient if
| you have capslock remapped to escape.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| > focus key, F6
|
| JFYI, Alt+D and Ctrl+L also work.
| kretaceous wrote:
| These only focus the address bar, no? I want the other
| way round. I want to focus the page when the focus is
| outside it, like the address bar.
| [deleted]
| pure_simplicity wrote:
| Tab groups and search are there in the form of this excellent
| extension. Not native, but so well integrated that it may as
| well be.
| pure_simplicity wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-
| gr...
| frogperson wrote:
| My biggest complaint with Firefox is the upgrade nag. I get it, I
| need to upgrade, why can't they just put a reminder in the corner
| instead of insisting I click a dismiss button every hour.
| chii wrote:
| there's an easy way to fix this problem:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-usi...
|
| firefox supports a policy.json to turn off upgrade nagging via
| the `ManualAppUpdateOnly` key: {
| "policies": { "ManualAppUpdateOnly": true }
| }
| zamadatix wrote:
| As a heads up though as suggested by the name
| "ManualAppUpdateOnly" doesn't just disable the notification
| it completely disables the entire auto-update system. Not
| only will you not get notifications about updates you will
| not get updates at all until you remember to check the about
| dialog or manually download them. This is intended for
| environments that have managed packages where the browser
| doesn't need to update itself.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Not only will you not get notifications about updates you
| will not get updates at all until you remember to check the
| about dialog or manually download them.
|
| What if you feel like you can handle this not particularly
| difficult problem?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Then activate the setting and enjoy. If what you actually
| want is silent manual updates not just for the update
| notifications to go away then it's the perfect option for
| you.
| ffpip wrote:
| If you are using Nightly (which updates twice a day), you can
| turn on "Show fewer update notification prompts" in your
| settings (about:preferences#general) which removes the update
| nag and puts a small reminder in the top right corner like you
| asked.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I am cognizant it may not be universally true, but often those
| updates come with CVEs attached to them, a bad side effect of
| exposing several JITed virtual machines to the wild Internet. I
| know such advice from random folks depends heavily upon ones
| threat model, but bear the security consequences in mind, and
| that goes double if it wouldn't just be your network that may
| get taken over in an incident
| [deleted]
| gverrilla wrote:
| Chrome is horrible you can't even click on a tab sound icon to
| mute it, you have to right click and select mute. All Google does
| puts in first place their interests, not users. Fuck these
| people.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| This sounds like an AD more than a recommendation
|
| Everything listed can be achieved by using uBlock Origin
|
| There is a reason why people abandoned Firefox, Mozilla refused
| to fix the performance issues, they refused to do something about
| the toolbar bloat, the browser became a nest for
| adwares/malwares, a security and privacy nightmare
|
| and later they refused to abandon the Google deal
|
| Google came with chrome and everyone switched, safe, efficient,
| reliable, and it stayed with the same UX since the beginning, a
| win for the users
|
| Privacy? they don't share your data with anybody, there are no
| 3rd party addons or 3rd party links, unlike with Firefox for
| example (Pocket, Google, Duckduckgo, and various Ads in your home
| page)
|
| Chrome or Chromium is the way to go if you care about:
|
| - security
|
| - privacy
|
| - battery usage
|
| Concerning their position of power, i don't buy it, Apple and
| WebKit have a greater impact imo and now that Microsoft is
| working on Chromium, it no longer is a viable argument
| Kiro wrote:
| I'm making browser games and there are some still some
| performance issues that make my game unplayable in Firefox, e.g.
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025
|
| I really don't want to have a "works best in Chrome" banner but
| until Firefox catches up I don't have much choice (don't get me
| started on Safari, I've already given up).
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I assure you, if you had developed against firefox first, you
| would have found "performance bugs" on chrome.
|
| Source: I developed a web game.
| jlokier wrote:
| I agree, and will add that with ordinary HTML+CSS (not a
| game), I've occasionally seen Chrome/WebKit rendering bugs
| which I didn't see when testing during development with
| Firefox.
|
| Testing in Firefox is a pretty good way to approximate
| standards compliance, and then you have to deal with bugs
| when running on Chrome, if you do it that way around.
| koonsolo wrote:
| For me, it seems with the latest update of firefox, some
| textures are not rendered properly. All works fine in the
| other browsers.
|
| Before that, some other update gave issues with some
| certificate.
|
| Looking at all the issues this browser causes, and the very
| low usage, I'm not spending time tracking down what is going
| wrong.
|
| Safari on iOS is such another problem child, but used high
| enough to justify the time to investigate and fix.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| The low usage is a fair point, but "all the issues this
| browser causes" simply isn't true. You would say the same
| about chrome if you developed for Firefox first.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Having updates breaking stuff is still a different beast.
| rascul wrote:
| Was that back when Mozilla removed the WoSign and
| StartCom for doing shady stuff?
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-
| new...
| koonsolo wrote:
| No it was early this year so my guess was it was this one
| (happened at a user):
| https://support.mozilla.org/hsb/questions/1361315
| hansel_der wrote:
| >Looking at all the issues this browser causes, and the
| very low usage, I'm not spending time tracking down what is
| going wrong.
|
| been hearing this for about a decade now...
| koonsolo wrote:
| Firefox usage in 2012: 24%. Now: 7.8% on desktop, almost
| non-existent on mobile, which brings it to a total of
| about 4%.
|
| Your point of "been hearing this" is what?
| koonsolo wrote:
| Same here. Plus, I saw today that firefox doesn't support the
| file API while Chrome, Safari and Edge do.
|
| If you look at the usage numbers, it just makes no sense to
| support this browser anymore.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Wow, stating facts gets you downvoted. Nice one!
|
| Here are the facts:
|
| - multiple game devs have issues with Firefox
|
| - Firefox doesn't support File System Access API
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/File_System..., other browsers do.
|
| - Usage of Firefox is very low
|
| Live with reality people.
| crtasm wrote:
| > If you look at the usage numbers, it just makes no sense
| to support this browser anymore.
|
| It seems the reality is that people disagree with your
| opinion.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Probably the 4% of people still using Firefox, highly
| represented here on HN.
|
| Still doesn't change my assessment it's not worth it.
|
| Edit: especially since according to experience, when
| Firefox doesn't work for users, they just switch to
| another browser.
| rascul wrote:
| If it doesn't work in Firefox then I don't go to that
| site anymore. There's probably 2 other people in the
| world like me. Maybe 3.
| koonsolo wrote:
| The thing is, as a solo developer, you just have to be
| ruthless with cost/benefit. Either I give the same
| experience to maybe 2% of the users, or an overall
| improvement to 98%. Is it ideal? No. But a lot of things
| are about tradeoffs and deciding where you spend your
| resources.
|
| Ok, people here don't like it. They can make their own
| tradeoffs. But in my opinion my choice is not that crazy.
| rascul wrote:
| I understand. Not knocking you for it. Just letting you
| know there's 3 or 4 of us out there ;)
| muizelaar wrote:
| I've closed that bug as the problem as the originally reported
| problem is fixed by hardware accelerating filters as part of
| WebRender. Do you have more details on the performance problem
| that you're seeing?
| Kiro wrote:
| Looks like WebRender has been enabled by default as of
| Firefox 92 (September 7, 2021) so that's great news! I think
| most of my performance problems were due to filters so I'm
| eager give it a try. I saw your comment on Bugzilla and will
| do that if I'm still experiencing issues after testing it.
| Thank you!
| solarkraft wrote:
| Ah, one of those eternal issues. I've seen a fair share of
| them, often well over a decade old.
| butz wrote:
| How about adding "performance" mode and disabling advanced
| effects for worse performing systems? It could be done
| automatically, or by adding an option. So instead of "works
| best in Chrome", you would add short instructions how to set
| it. I think some players even prefer less resources demanding
| version of your game, especially on phones, where battery life
| is important.
| Kiro wrote:
| It's a good idea but unfortunately the effect is instrumental
| to certain parts of the gameplay. However, as per the sibling
| comment it looks like it may actually have been fixed as of
| end of last year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129916
|
| I do have some other problems only happening on Firefox that
| I don't know the cause of (so probably something I can fix)
| but I certainly would like to remove that banner. Mozilla
| fixing the filter issues is a huge leap toward that and gives
| me motivation to look into the other problems.
| ghoomketu wrote:
| Same for me, my app used the html5 webspeech api and the text
| to speech and speech to text on Ff was nothing compared to
| chrome. So had to put that dreaded banner myself.
|
| I hope things have changed now and ff is just as good as chrome
| now with the recent progress in ML and so many good open source
| projects for tts and dictation.
| rob_c wrote:
| Only people left using it are now tech people and they've started
| dropping decisions that lead mainly to bad profits... Albeit
| slowly...
| [deleted]
| esharte wrote:
| Firefox is worth it alone for its 'reader view'. Especially on
| Android. And it's the easiest way to get around the likes of the
| NYT weak paywalls.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| Reader view is great, but it seems to work on less and less
| sites every day. I don't know what the mechanism is by which
| the browser decides whether to allow reader view rendering, but
| it seems to not work on about half the sites I wish I could use
| it on these days.
| oxff wrote:
| I use Vivaldi, it is slowest of them all, but it is the best
| browser overall ime.
| stavros wrote:
| Is it that slow? I've recently switched to it and it doesn't
| feel slower, though I am indeed very impressed by it.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I use all of them. Edge for work pages/corporate intranet, Chrome
| for spe ific testing and customer remote, and Firefox with Ublock
| for web surfing. Duckduck for most and google search if I do not
| get what I am looking for.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Mmm... Firefox left me cold. But I have to admit I am
| increasingly suspicious of Chrome. My offspring just installed
| the latest version of Opera after a year or two with Brave.
|
| So... not sure Firefox works for me (though... dang... it's
| JavaScript implementation has come a long way) but solidly
| support the idea of finding something other than Chrome.
|
| Oh. Also. Most of my news browsing I now do with lynx in a
| terminal window. I see no ads, autostart videos or kruft. And HN
| doesn't look too bad in Lynx.
| firfog wrote:
| Same here, I recently installed Firefox on a new Android device
| and am very much enjoying the privacy features, particularly the
| adblocking capability via add-ons.
|
| The only three things I miss from Chrome are:
|
| - swiping down to refresh page
|
| - a Delete action on the menu of text box selections
|
| - the option to run webpages as separate apps
|
| For that last one, I do use Chrome for a couple of sites (Wordle
| and Quordle), but Firefox is excellent for everything else.
| llacane wrote:
| 3 work on my machine (Firefox 102 on Android 12) if the site is
| a PWA else it lets you to have a link in your home screen.
|
| The option is "Add to home screen"/"Install app" in the menu.
|
| --
|
| Also about 1: did you tried to put the bar in the bottom?
| terinjokes wrote:
| Firefox removed PWA support on desktop. It still exists on
| Android.
| nathias wrote:
| I can't go back because chrome doesn't allow customization that I
| really need.
| sydney6 wrote:
| Hacker's First Aid Kit: Firefox ESR with Raymond Gorhill's uBlock
| Origin.
| pachico wrote:
| I would love to switch to Firefox but Brave seems to be really
| faster. I'll give it a try again.
| zamadatix wrote:
| For me the containers on desktop and uBlock origin support on
| moble are the big features of Firefox. I was glad containers made
| it in considering usage must be pretty low since even just "user
| has an extension" is less common than "user has no extensions".
| mouzogu wrote:
| I find FF slower than Chrome. Tried to use it, ported all my
| preferences but it just feels heavier.
|
| Brave with uMatrix works well for me. Disabled the metrics and
| crypto stuff.
| frickinLasers wrote:
| This story is on the front page of Reddit. I wonder if it will
| make a dent in Chrome's market share.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Even if everybody that saw it on reddit switched to Firefox, I
| bet it'd gain a fraction of a percent.
| ph4evers wrote:
| I really enjoy Firefox. Only time I use Chrome is for Google
| Meet, that really sucks in Firefox
| weetniet wrote:
| As mentioned by others, the recommended list of extensions in the
| article is a bit outdated. These days not much more than uBlock
| Origin is needed for a good configuration, with the addition of
| maybe CanvasBlocker.
| zahllos wrote:
| True but I use some other extensions anyway. They are:
|
| - Multi Account Containers - does exactly what it says on the
| tin. I load Google stuff inside a Google container for example,
| and banking websites all get their own container only used for
| that purpose.
|
| - Auto Cookie Optout, with their config added to uBlock Origin.
| Basically automatically clicks "essential cookies only"
| everywhere it can (it helps to allow loading of these sites
| automatically in uBlock and uMatrix, otherwise it can't).
| Possibly not an issue if you're outside the EU, though.
|
| - uMatrix so I have some level of control over what loads when
| I want it.
|
| - ClearURLs - takes out tracking and unnecessary URL
| parameters. uMatrix tends to block and warn if you do click one
| and you can find the dest_url without parameters on its warning
| page, where ClearURLs fails.
|
| - Decentraleyes - injects resources instead of loading them
| from CDNs. Quite mixed results with this but it is still on the
| list for the moment.
|
| - Sideberry, basically another tree style tabs.
|
| Nice testing sites for these extensions are basically any
| newspaper website or shopping website, which are all thoroughly
| infested with trackers and such.
| aftergibson wrote:
| Just a heads up, with umatrix no longer being developed, you
| can actually enable the same functionality in unlock origin.
| zahllos wrote:
| Ahhh thanks! Didn't realize umatrix had been discontinued.
| Well, scratch that from the list, I've enabled it in uBO.
| Looks like the box to check is 'I am an advanced user'.
| Thiez wrote:
| > Basically automatically clicks "essential cookies only"
| everywhere it can
|
| But does it also object to 'legitimate' interests?
| zahllos wrote:
| I think it opts out as maximally as possible. The project
| is on github:
| https://github.com/CodyMcCodington/AutoCookieOptout
| wooque wrote:
| I tried to like Firefox, I really do, I tried to use it as
| primary browser, but it's just noticeable less snappy and slower
| than anything Chromium based, so I always return back to Chromium
| (now Brave).
|
| Not to mention that I always hit some glitches in sites or some
| things not working in Firefox because developers didn't even
| bother to test on Firefox or just plainly refuse to support it.
| a-dub wrote:
| this has been my experience. i even prefer some parts of the
| firefox ui. but for the reasons you mention, the net result is
| that then i have to run two browsers which means twice the
| work, complexity and risk.
|
| i hate this. i really want firefox to succeed and i really
| appreciate their stated goals with respect to privacy, and
| their significant contributions to the internet commons.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| That pretty much sums it up. The only thing I regularly miss is
| Firefox's Awesome bar (Omni bar) - its fuzzing engine works
| much better and seems to include the entire browsing history.
| AdvancedCarrot wrote:
| Will say as well that Brave is much, much better out of the box
| for privacy than Firefox. Even with uBlock Origin and other
| privacy-friendly extensions, Firefox doesn't offer much in the
| way of anti-fingerprinting.
| wooque wrote:
| I agree, Brave has pretty good privacy protections, anti-
| fingerprinting and ad-blocking out of the box. No need to
| install dozen of extensions and custom user.js like in
| Firefox. Only extension that I need is password manager and
| I'm good to go.
|
| Brave on Android is also best Android browser I used.
| hepinhei wrote:
| Firefox has great privacy features today. The containers, also
| Relay which allows you to create email alias. We all can wait
| some ms more to open a web page and support an independent
| browser
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| Firefox was good a few years ago.
|
| Somehow they managed to get on-par with Chrome performance. So, I
| switched back to FF after being a Chrome user for years.
|
| But they couldn't keep up, so I was forced to leave them again.
|
| I went for Brave, because I wanted to reduce my use of Google
| products and I couldn't be happier.
|
| Chrome performance, good adblock integrated, Tor, IPFS, and
| crypto wallet out of the box. Awesome piece of tech.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I've been on brave for years now. Two vital extensions though:
|
| uBlock Origin
|
| Sponsorblock - skips sponsored segments/outros/self promotion
| etc that has spread like a plague across YouTube
| k__ wrote:
| Thanks for these suggestions
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| I was made to believe(from my readings) that it's not the browser
| that tracks you, it's the corporations who track you by your
| browsers ID(signature). Therefore, the best we can do, is to use
| chrome for google stuff and facebook(the 2 biggest offenders) and
| use FF for anything else(meaningful/serious stuff). Additionally,
| get the container-tab addon for firefox for super secure
| engagements like banking and other sensitive connections.
| JshWright wrote:
| TouchID support for WebAuthn is the last thing I need to make the
| switch for my daily driver browser. I used Firefox for years, but
| being able to use TouchID for auth/MFA is just such a huge
| quality of life improvement for me that it keeps me on Chrome.
|
| Fortunately it looks like there has been at least a little
| movement on this recently (bumped from a P4 to P2)
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482
| CoolCold wrote:
| Afair couple of times I was using fingerprint auth (that'd
| touchid if I understand things right) in Firefox. Very rare,
| but definitely had it as it was big WOW for me.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes WebAuthn (passwordless mode) really needs to be fixed on
| Firefox.
|
| It _still_ doesn 't work on Mac or Linux.. FFS.
| sivakon wrote:
| Firefox is amazing except when working with electron based web
| apps. Most of the note taking apps I use only have chrome
| extensions. So now, I have to use both.
| natex wrote:
| Recently, I've researched browser battery consumption for
| laptops. Every test I've seen rates Firefox the worst out of the
| big 3 or 4. Are there any settings/extensions that may have been
| overlooked for these reviews that can be used to help Firefox be
| more energy efficient?
| solardev wrote:
| Meanwhile, most of the internet started using Chrome and can
| never go back to Firefox.
| spotlesstofu wrote:
| Mozilla plugin to Translate web sites without using the cloud
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translation...
| dabedee wrote:
| Agreed, and I would add that I have been keeping my bookmarks &
| tags synced on all devices using Firefox Sync for several years
| now without any issues. It's just great. Same for passwords.
| There is a in-depth article about the privacy features of their
| design [1]. If you add containers[2], then there is really no
| reason to use Chrome.
|
| [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
|
| [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
| account...
| onelovetwo wrote:
| multi-account container is *chef's kiss
|
| If only it synced with my vpn so each container got its own ip.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Mozilla VPN missed a real trick by being an additional client
| and not (also) integrating it into the browser/container
| natively.
|
| Was a real chance to do something better rather than just
| doing the minimum (rebrand an existing VPN client app) and
| potentially pulling in a new customer base.
| CoolCold wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but there is FoxyProxy extension which
| allows to use different proxies based on URI (domain). So you
| can point your uris to go to outside world via different
| proxies (say `ssh -D ...` to vps or your vpn gateway or ..)
|
| Technically as it's possible to use multiple profiles you may
| even be able to configure different sets for the same URLs.
| doliveira wrote:
| Firefox is worth it if only for the Ctrl-Tab going in recently
| used order. I hate using Chrome and needing to use the mouse to
| actually find a tab
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| It's mystifying why any browser would choose not to have that
| feature. It's basic ergonomics of tabbing UIs.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Firefox is literally the only program of any kind that I can
| think of that even _supports_ MRU Ctrl+Tab. _Windowed_ UIs,
| sure, MRU is conventional, but tabbed?
| layer8 wrote:
| All IDEs and editors I use support MRU order.
|
| IE also had/has MRU tabs.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Chrome uses an alternative tab workflow brought up by
| alt/cmd+shift+a which will bring up a list of tabs in last used
| order. You can then navigate via keyboard or just type to
| search tabs.
|
| That doesn't explain why the other method isn't at least an
| option in Chrome but I figured it was worth mentioning for
| those that missed the functionality.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Huh, you're the first person I've encountered liking that
| behaviour. Since Firefox switched to MRU Ctrl+Tab by default,
| _every_ Firefox user I know (whether a long-time user, one
| migrating from another browser, or someone for whom it is their
| first browser by virtue of their youth, and I have at least one
| in each category) has successfully found and toggled that
| option.
|
| I must admit, however, that I do have Tab Flip for Tree Style
| Tab, with Shift+F2 to switch between the current and most
| recently selected tabs (like Ctrl+6 in Vim to toggle between
| the most recent buffers), and have added similar elsewhere,
| with Meta+F2 to switch between most recent workspaces in the
| Sway or i3 window managers: bindsym Mod4+F2
| workspace back_and_forth bindsym Mod4+Shift+F2 move
| container to workspace back_and_forth, workspace back_and_forth
|
| I wouldn't want to be without at least this single-level MRU in
| my browser or window manager. (On more traditional window
| managers, you normally have Alt+Tab or [?]- and [?]` which are
| all some form of more extensive MRU list, though I find macOS's
| application-level treatment bizarre and extraordinarily
| frustrating because of how cripplingly limiting it is if you
| work with multiple multi-window apps and want to see a window
| of each. And yeah, it's easy to see when reflecting on Alt+Tab
| why Firefox went the way they did with Ctrl+Tab, making it
| behave similarly. But I haven't previously found anyone
| actually liking it.)
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Huh, this is the first time I heard that FF supports MRU, and
| it's amazing (well except that it's only current window, see
| below)! I don't know why it was turned off by default.
|
| MRU should always be the default, this is also what IDE's do,
| and alt+tab does with main windows.
|
| What is even the point of ctrl+tab cycling to next tab? You
| got to press it dozens of times to go back to the original
| tab... Why would anyone use that? You can use ctrl+pgdn and
| pgup to go to next/previous which is more sensible for this.
|
| So disappointingly, now I turned this feature on in FF, and
| I'm disappointed to see that it only cycles through most
| recent tab of _current_ window. I wish it would go through
| any window. I have always dozens of windows with dozens of
| tabs each, and I find myself sometimes just opening the same
| URL again due to not bothering trying to find back a tab I
| was in just a few minutes ago due to not having a ctrl+tab
| that goes to most recent tab in any window.
| tjoff wrote:
| alt+tab is a very different operation.
|
| ctrl+tab cycling to the next tab is essential for many ways
| of surfing the web.
|
| For instance, research a topic and tap up many tabs. Now go
| through them one by one. And in the process of doing so you
| might want to tab up even more.
|
| At this point cycling to the next tab becomes a way to
| navigate the history, but where you have the context of
| each step preserved. MRU in this context is a nightmare.
|
| MRU for tabs doesn't make any sense to me, that purpose is
| served by switching to another window instead (which is,
| and should be, MRU).
| Aardwolf wrote:
| But ctrl+pgdn already goes to next tab, so ctrl+tab
| doesn't need to do that same thing, MRU is what multi-
| document programs (like text editors with multiple open
| files, IDE's) usually do for ctrl+tab. And this for good
| reason: this allows to cycle through the most recent
| documents the easiest, following usage patterns. This
| usage pattern also applies to browsers (and as said,
| ctrl+pgup/pgdn already do prev/next tab for the other
| usage pattern)
|
| finding back your tab amongst the many open ones is a
| nightmare without some form of easily accessed recently
| used list that also works across windows
| jadyoyster wrote:
| Before most-recent-order was the default I turned it on
| manually, so it's most certainly not every user.
| Hedepig wrote:
| I shall be the second you've met.
|
| Its likely more useful for those who tend towards many tabs
| open at once
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Right now, I have 258 tabs open in my main window, of which
| I'm actively using at least a dozen, and will use another
| few dozen within a day or so. (Probably should go through
| and clean out a hundred or two.) Most of my family is some
| degree of tab hoarder as well (my eldest sister regularly
| has over a thousand tabs spread across a few windows).
| rntksi wrote:
| I used to do this too, then I got a bookmark save service
| (Pocket). Now whenever I see something that I have the
| reaction of keeping the tab around, I just save it and
| close it instead. Makes browsing lighter. I do still have
| around 20 tabs open normally, mostly things that don't
| fit in the "bookmark save" workflow, but definitely
| better than the 100+ tabs it used to be before.
| abyssphenom wrote:
| Get the "tab stash" extension, you can stash your tabs
| instead of nuking them. That way you can go back a few
| months and find things that would be tougher to find
| through history or other means.
| jhatax wrote:
| Yet another tab management (YATM) recommendation here. I
| use the OneTab extension to help me manage tabs. In a
| recent update, they added the ability to:
|
| A) name tab groups;
|
| B) lock specific groups which mimics the capability of
| bookmark folders (clicking a link doesn't remove it from
| the group).
|
| The extension has helped me reduce the number of open
| windows on my laptop, among other productivity
| improvements.
| tryauuum wrote:
| Funny enough, for me it's extremely uncomfortable when tab
| cycling doesn't represent the tab order I see on screen. I've
| always disable that feature and even have code to autodisable
| it on new installs
| layer8 wrote:
| The benefit of MRU order is that you can use it blindly to go
| to the last- _n_ th tab without having to eye-coordinate with
| the contents of the tab bar. It becomes an automatic muscle-
| memory thing.
| tryauuum wrote:
| how many tabs do you have open on average?
| layer8 wrote:
| Usually less than a dozen, though I don't quite see the
| relevance. I use MRU to switch between two to four
| (rarely more) related tabs.
|
| In code editors I often have several dozens of tabs open,
| and MRU is a crucial usability feature when coding, so
| I'd say that its usefulness is independent of the number
| of open tabs.
| Tmpod wrote:
| You can achieve ordered cycling with Ctrl+PgUp/Down in most
| software, like Firefox. I use a mix of that and Tab to
| navigate through my tabs
| doliveira wrote:
| With MRU order the stack order becomes automatically grouped
| by subject, like actual function stacks.
| tux3 wrote:
| I really had to go and disable that. I use a lot of tabs, I
| switch between them often, and a few of them stay open for a
| while
|
| I have tree style tabs so my tabs are all already ordered in a
| vaguely meaningful way, but the recent use order of my last
| tabs is completely unpredictable to me!
|
| With this feature on ^tab might as well be random for how badly
| it confuses me.. I'm so glad Mozilla hadn't removed the opt-out
| yet.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I think Sidebery is better for tab management. The default tab
| UI is horrible for any non-trivial work.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| As another big fan of MRU tab switching, there is an extension
| for Chromium based browsers that enables this feature:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-tabs/jnjfein...
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I'm a Firefox user but I'm not sure that I can agree that it's
| lighter than Google Chrome. I think Chrome is generally faster at
| everything.
|
| Chrome is also more stable. For some reason my Firefox randomly
| freezes once or twice a month and gets stuck in a crashing loop
| where only a reboot will fix it.
|
| But on principle I use Firefox whenever possible. I appreciate
| the effort that went into it. Still have to use Chrome daily for
| one or two business web apps that block FF.
| rkangel wrote:
| This is what keeps me away from Firefox. I gave it a try for 3
| months a little while back but it was _so_ much slower than
| Chrome for general browsing. Maybe I 'm due another try.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Weird... Since quantum, FF usually it's faster that Chrome
| for general browsing. Specially if you have uBlock origin
| installed.
| rkangel wrote:
| It was after all the press about quantum that I last gave
| FireFox a go and was disappointed. Still, I'm willing to
| try again - I'd like to do what I can to prevent another
| browser monopoly.
| szundi wrote:
| I have a colleage who has a separate monitor for the open tabs.
| That many he has. Only Firefox can do this for him.
| invalidname wrote:
| Chrome is possibly faster for 10 tabs or less. When you go
| upwards of 100 like I do... It's not even in the competition.
| Its UI becomes terrible and its unresponsive. FF keeps chugging
| along without missing a beat.
| haunter wrote:
| Total opposite experience. At least under Windows Chromium is
| perfectly fine with 150-200 tabs but FF starts falling apart
| invalidname wrote:
| Odd. I've been on Mac for more than a decade so no idea.
| Notice that this only became a thing with Quantum so if you
| used an older version of FF it wouldn't apply.
| jlokier wrote:
| I'm with the GP on this: FF is unstable with lots of
| tabs. It's a big memory hog, and it's been like this for
| about 2 years in my experience so far. I'm using a Mac
| with 16GB RAM, and it's not enough for Firefox any more
| (something changed, it used to use less memory). Using
| current FF (103.0b9). Lot of tabs, but auto tab-unloading
| so there shouldn't be a large number active.
|
| Reported memory use (in Activity Monitor) varies,
| 8GB-25GB, and it's often swapping. Sometimes it uses
| more, and then the system crashes. Often it fills my
| remaining 20GB of free disk space for swap space.
| Surprisingly, even opening HN pages and only following HN
| links (i.e. all text-only), the memory usage grows in
| this way over time.
|
| It's not possible to scroll smoothly or type a comment
| like this without pauses and occasional spinning beach
| balls. Just scrolling through a page with two-finger
| drag, it will stop every 10 seconds or so, then jump
| forwawrd. Moving the cursor with the cursor keys in this
| comment window is similar.
|
| The constant jank and pauses may be entirely due to
| memory swapping or some other garbage-collection like
| overhead, I have no way to know.
|
| What other people write about this issue is that it's
| likely some combination of number of tabs, and the fact
| that modern pages need a lot of memory for large images,
| compositing and similar, and perhaps memory used by add-
| ons. But all of this has suggestive evidence against it:
| If I go to about:memory and click "Minimize memory
| usage", it _consistently_ brings memory usage down to not
| much more than when Firefox starts up, without appearing
| to change any functionality or deactivate any tabs; and
| when it starts up it 's using less than 8GB despite
| loading up the same session. It also does this itself
| spontaneously from time to time, though not reliably
| enough.
|
| That said, I switched from Safari when I realised Safari
| was also being a memory hog and was causing everything
| else on the laptop to be slow. At the time I switched,
| Firefox was a lovely breath of fresh air in that
| department. Even though I copied over all my tabs from
| Safari (by hand), Firefox ran in very much less RAM, and
| life was good again on the laptop.
|
| Something has changed since then, making Firefox much
| worse for memory usage, and I don't yet know what it is.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Oddly, I also use FF on a 16GB Mac and experience none of
| those slowdowns that you mention. On my work machine, FF
| typically has around 100 tabs grouped into 4-6 tab groups
| by project and it is solid.
|
| I do find that some websites end up using 1GB+ of memory
| if you leave them running for an extended period of time
| (looking at you MacRumors forums) but that happens on
| Safari and Chrome, too. HN is usually the safest one that
| uses the least memory. Sites with lots of ads load all
| kinds of crap and can use surprising amounts of memory.
| invalidname wrote:
| I think this is due to specific sites. I try to avoid
| Google Docs and have a separate instance of Chrome only
| for that. I updated to the M1 Max with 64gb so even if FF
| slowed down at some point I wouldn't know at this point.
| But it was OK on my previous air which was pretty weak.
| jlokier wrote:
| "about:performance" does not show any pages or add-ons
| being memory hogs. The memory use per page that it shows
| is surprisingly small, and the _total_ comes to < 1GB.
|
| And I see the real memory usage grown, eventually to
| crashing size, even when I'm just reading around HN,
| clicking many article headings and comments but remaining
| within the HN text-only site.
|
| I agree it's probably made worse caused by specific
| sites, but I haven't been able to figure out which ones,
| or perhaps it's wide range of them, which defeats
| browsing in general. However, I now avoid Telegram Web,
| because that does consistently crash Firefox for me
| eventually (I've seen reported memory use grow to 67GB
| when TW was open, about three times).
|
| Whatever it is, it doesn't look like site JavaScript
| holding data in large JavaScript objects or DOM trees,
| because minimizing memory use with "about:memory" reduces
| the size to workable levels without any other observable
| effect on open pages.
|
| So I'm inclined to think of the Firefox as having a
| severe reclaimable-but-not-reclaimed memory leak or cache
| problem of some kind, that is outside the world of
| JavaScript data.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pre-Quantum Firefox handled more tabs better.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I've been using firefox for the last 2-3 years, and I've had it
| 'crash' 2 times, both on youtube, but that might be because of
| all the privacy related addons I have. Ublock origin reports
| more than 2k blocked scripts on youtube.
|
| Chrome also would crash occasionally and force me to reload
| tabs. I don't think chrome is significantly faster in practice.
| emsixteen wrote:
| Within the past couple years I've went from Chrome to Edge,
| then to Firefox, and on to LibreWolf. Edge is probably my
| favourite of the bunch, and I think the CSS devtools are a lot
| nicer in it, but I just want to keep my stuff as independent as
| possible etc.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| I'd consider faster as a different thing than lighter. I think
| benchmarks show that the JS engine in Chrome is faster, but you
| pay a price in memory and processor to get that.
|
| Personally, I have found FF really stable lately on both
| Windows and Linux and use it whenever possible as you do. And
| like you, I also need to fire up Chrome for the odd thing now
| and then.
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