[HN Gopher] My essential Firefox fixes in 2022
___________________________________________________________________
My essential Firefox fixes in 2022
Author : Tomte
Score : 298 points
Date : 2022-03-13 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rubenerd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rubenerd.com)
| elcapitan wrote:
| My essential Firefox fix in 2022 is to say no to updates. Sad it
| has come to that, but I just hate their constant destruction of
| the user experience that I'm used to.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I'd just like my default start/home/new tab page to be my
| bookmarks. Not my recent bookmarks, not my most visited, not ads.
| Just a simple scrollable list of my bookmarks and folders.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| You can set home to
| chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml
|
| Unfortunately changing new tab to a custom page is no longer
| possible.
| Zren wrote:
| Was looking for how to do this when I switched back to FF
| from Chrome! Seems there's also these in that folder:
| chrome://browser/content/places/bookmarksSidebar.xhtml
| chrome://browser/content/places/historySidebar.xhtml
|
| I ended up writing my own newtab page that lists selected
| bookmarks folders by recent.
| https://github.com/Zren/NewTabRecentBookmarks
| [deleted]
| conceptualspace wrote:
| me too! so i wrote this extension:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-s...
|
| its oepn source, and feedback always appreciated!
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >Oops! We can't find that page
|
| Link seems wrong.
| IRP wrote:
| Likely this one : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-s...
| fartcannon wrote:
| I would like to see it but the link doesn't work and the name
| is truncated!
| colordrops wrote:
| You gotta mention containers if you are going to talk about
| optimizing Firefox for privacy
| nayuki wrote:
| A couple of mine:
|
| - browser.urlbar.trimURL = false
|
| - browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled = false
|
| - browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 50
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| When I think of "essential Firefox" Gecko and Spider monkey come
| to mind.
|
| Not repainting the living room from eggshell white to Greek
| villa.
| jandrese wrote:
| One thing I do is re-enable the searchbar and then disable the
| "everything you type in the URL bar is sent to Google" option.
|
| However, recent Firefox has this annoying feature where if you
| type in the search box on the main page it redirects your typing
| into the URL bar instead of the search box, making it then fail
| because a search is not a URL.
| user3939382 wrote:
| What I want from Firefox is a mode, even hidden behind
| about:config, even by a combination of settings, that results in
| 0 network traffic upon start and all traffic is associated with
| my UI interactions.
|
| Even with telemetry off, all kinds of information about my
| browsing behavior from the myriad connections it makes upon start
| and exit can be gleaned. Certificate chain updates, etc can be
| delayed until a secure connection is requested by me.
|
| The amount of unsolicited and virtually uncontrollable network
| traffic from macOS, Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, etc
| is bad enough, I expect more from Mozilla that never stops
| marketing its privacy features.
|
| I believe I have the right to control when and for what purpose
| the computer and software that _I_ own communicates with third
| parties.
| causality0 wrote:
| I agree. It's fucking ridiculous that someone at Mozilla
| forgetting to renew a cert resulted in the simultaneous
| disabling of every single Firefox extension on earth. I
| wouldn't be surprised if someone (an activist, a gay person,
| etc) in an oppressive country died as a result of suddenly
| losing their VPN/privacy extensions.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| I sure hope that none of the people that are in danger trust
| in the obscurity provided by in browser vpns.
|
| If they do then it always was just a question of time for
| them to be found out, as just adding a webrtc session to the
| website makes their ip transparent again. Same with unique
| dns queries etc
| Borealid wrote:
| Is there a phrase that describes the process of taking
| something one thinks is bad - here, Firefox extensions being
| disabled - and searching for the most egregious possible
| negative consequence that might have occurred (here, someone
| being murdered), and then using that as a hypothetical? The
| goal is obviously to try to increase the emotional weight of
| the argument against... whatever... but I'm seeing this
| demilogical construction used more and more in the wild and
| would like to know its name.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| its mainly because saying "someone could have gotten a slap
| on the wrist because of this mistake" isnt really worth
| mentioning
| klysm wrote:
| Is it not useful to consider the envelop of possibilities
| from a widespread outage like that?
| djbusby wrote:
| Might be this one?
|
| "Reductio ad absurdum"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
|
| Or "Logical Extreme"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme
| avar wrote:
| In a word: hyperbole or adynaton.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| I find your demands reasonable, especially the principle where
| HTTP traffic is initiated if and only if carried out in
| response to direct user interaction.
|
| The thing with right to control, though, is that someone,
| somehow has to develop a browser and make ends meet.
| endgame wrote:
| What if - and bear with me here - Mozilla set up a way for us
| to fund Firefox directly?
| Groxx wrote:
| You have been able to for a very long time, quite possibly
| for all of its existence: https://donate.mozilla.org/
| endgame wrote:
| People always post this in reply. I don't want to donate
| to the Mozilla Foundation's CEO salary package, or their
| navel-gazing side projects, or their endless reshuffling
| of deckchairs. I want to fund _Firefox_, the only browser
| engine keeping us from an endless monopoly of Chrome
| reskins.
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| Donations to the Mozilla Foundation support the
| Foundation's outreach and education efforts, not Firefox
| development. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla
| Corporation, which is a for-profit entity owned by the
| Foundation and is not donation-supported.
|
| See the sections "How will my donation be used?" and
| "Don't Mozilla products, like Firefox, earn income?"
| here: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq/#item_8
| dorgo wrote:
| As far as I remember the problem was that you can donate
| to Mozilla foundation, but not the Mozilla corporation (
| which is responsible for Firefox + other stuff ). There
| is no direct way to finance/donate for Firefox
| developement (without other projects).
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Shocking idea in 2022.
|
| No, but seriously, Mozilla -- I'll pay you real dollars for
| this.
| leeoniya wrote:
| too late for me.
|
| they fired a ton of engineering talent working on
| exciting tech (servo) to chase some bundled vpn rebrand.
| what a misguided move, like most everything they've done
| in non-engineering space. sad.
|
| before, i would have donated hundreds or more if there
| was a way to pay directly for firefox and thunderbird.
| but not anymore.
|
| at least the CEO's salary keeps going up:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698
| shubhamkrm wrote:
| There's a way to directly donate to Thunderbird:
| https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/
|
| Unfortunately, there's no such option for Firefox.
| jdlshore wrote:
| They have--it's their VPN offering.
|
| (Cue complaints about it not being the _right_ way to fund
| Firefox, because it's not a pure donation. Before you go
| down that road, tell me: what evidence do you have that
| pure donations would get enough transactions to be worth
| the overhead? Have they ever worked at scale for any other
| software?)
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Their business model doesn't have to be donation-based.
| It can be, (surprise!) purchase based.
|
| I pay for lots of software I use, and do so happily if it
| delivers value -- it would be extremely easy for me to
| justify paying for what's probably one of the apps I use
| the most. Why can't we pay for good browsers, that put
| the focus squarely on being the best tool to access the
| www? Why can't that money be used to hire back some of
| the talent Mozilla has been letting go? I say it
| elsewhere in this thread -- Mozilla should let us pay for
| the bloody thing.
| dralley wrote:
| That creates a branding risk. If the idea spreads that
| Firefox is a paid product you might scare people away
| from the free version and the net impact becomes
| negative.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Honestly, the real branding risk is Mozilla's brand being
| tarnished by firing engineering talent, bundling Pocket,
| adding opt-out telemetry, etc. I'll take the branding
| risk that saves a beloved browser and company, over the
| branding risk that destroys both.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I would pay for a "Firefox Pro" which allowed greater
| control/modifications for power users.
|
| Make it open source, but have the official download for
| builds (and source code?[0]) be payed. Bonus points if
| the download bundle includes source code and a simplified
| build process.
|
| [0] obviously it'll be mirrored in 2 seconds, but still.
| xeromal wrote:
| Several thousand people would donate. Several million
| wouldn't care. Chrome wins.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >especially the principle where HTTP traffic is initiated if
| and only if carried out in response to direct user
| interaction.
|
| How do you propose notifications for new YouTube videos or
| tweets to work then?
| Minor49er wrote:
| I'd imagine that the user could toggle a setting to connect
| to those things on startup if they wanted them.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >software that _I_ own
|
| You don't own Firefox. You have a license to use it. Background
| network traffic is not a big deal. Ignoring downloading
| important updates the bandwidth the requests use is not
| significant. In such a large and complex piece of software as a
| web browser I do not understand why traffic should be
| associated with UI interactions. How is the browser supposed to
| show a notification when someone tweets? Would you prefer to
| hit a "Check for Notifications" button or would you prefer to
| just get a notification. The latter option has a million times
| better UX.
| user123456780 wrote:
| > Would you prefer to hit a "Check for Notifications" button
| or would you prefer to just get a notification. The latter
| option has a million times better UX.
|
| I would a love a button for every action. Particularly for
| things like check for notifications. The current problem is
| that someone else believes they know what a better UX is, any
| by better they mean better for the company for whatever
| reason.
| foresto wrote:
| GP's needs are not invalid just because they differ from
| yours.
| rhizome wrote:
| Is this to say you want zero page-loading of existing tabs on
| startup (if in fact you save your tabs across restarts)?
| offmycloud wrote:
| Actaully, yes. They could replace the content of the page
| with a message box containing the page's title and URL, and a
| "click to reload" button.
| kroltan wrote:
| It seems this could be accomplished by extensions - at the
| very least for tab-related requests, as far as I know -
| since uBlock Origin has a setting that holds every request
| until it can update the filter lists.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I do not save tabs and I do not want anything to load at
| startup: just one window with one completely blank tab,
| please!
| alberth wrote:
| Devils advocate...
|
| How should auto-updater work then?
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Here it updates when I run pacman -Syu. If I were to use
| Firefox built-in update, I would want it to show me a popup
| asking me whether to update
| batch12 wrote:
| Well a popup asking if it okay to check for updates which
| would run every x times the browser is launched or on a
| schedule. The popup should have an option to not ask again
| for those that get annoyed. Otherwise the browser would
| need to call home to see if an update is available before
| asking if you want the new version of course.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| It shouldn't?
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| It shouldn't. Users should be using a package manager to
| manage software. Windows fucked up users expectations by not
| including a sane one by default... ever. And no, Windows
| Store doesn't count.
| oblio wrote:
| > Users should
|
| Users should and regular people should:
|
| * not smoke
|
| * not drink
|
| * eat healthy food in moderate amounts
|
| * ...
|
| "Should" almost never works, especially at scale.
| myfonj wrote:
| I understand your intention is to launch "cold" Firefox
| instance that does not call home, update the "safe browsing"
| databases etc, so this will probably not be of any help, but
| you may try launching it with `--offline` command line argument
| and uncheck the (alt) Menu > File > Work Offline when you are
| ready to "reveal yourself". For testing it with throwaway
| profile you can do: firefox --offline --no-
| remote --profile <path where throwaway profile folder can be
| created>
|
| The `--offline` argument is quite strange for a several
| reasons: 1. it is quite undocumented, but works from what I've
| tried. It is not even exposed in `firefox --help | more`. It
| used to be mentioned at MDN page [1] but that is gone now. 2.
| From what I've tried now, offline mode lets you browse
| localhost, what seems super useful but I don't recall it have
| always been this way. 3. Also browsing properly cached pages
| seems to work super well; not sure it is due service workers
| finally caught up and works or proper HTTP headers are used
| nowadays. Interesting is that even the hard refresh of cached
| page gives you cached version in offline mode. (Again, I'm not
| sure it used to be this way in the past. I remember that nearly
| no webpage worked well in offline mode few years back.)
|
| I have not run any network traffic audit so I cannot verify it
| really does not attempt to reach for something outside
| localhost.
|
| [1]
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210530092017/https://developer....
| (I have a super murky memory it might be me who added it there,
| but today I had to find SU answer mentioning it [2] to even try
| that) [2] https://superuser.com/questions/1691419/how-to-start-
| firefox...
| MikeCapone wrote:
| The primary reason why I don't use Firefox on the Mac is because
| there's a bug that makes keyboard text-replacement-shortcuts not
| work (ie. you write some pre-defined keyword and it gets replaced
| by something else, like replacing ":shrug:" with "-\\_(tsu)_/-" )
| superkuh wrote:
| My most essential fix is getting the unbranded builds of Firefox
| so that I can control my own browser. These builds have no FF
| branding and they've disabled auto-update in them but they have
| the major advantage of actually allowing you to edit your
| extensions/add-ons without having to play security theater with
| Mozilla's automated signing portal every time you make a change.
|
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded... -
| the linked 97.0.1 is still exploitable with the xslt bug so you
| have to dig into the build system at,
|
| https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=mozilla-release&s...
|
| And no, running the unstable developer builds is not an option.
| The dev line goes back to "alpha"/aurora in the old times and it
| still plays that role. It crashes in my experience on weird
| setups.
| eli wrote:
| Giving up the security and ease of auto update seems like a
| huge trade off
| superkuh wrote:
| Yeah, I really wish they'd allow auto-update for the
| unbranded builds. Now I just do it manually, often. But with
| the profiles being the same it's not too bad. It's much
| better than having to ask Moz every time I tweak an
| extension.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| It's not disallowed: you can setup your own (even local)
| update server and point to it, but it's a bit of an
| undocumented chore.
|
| Depending on you OS, it may be easier to eg. use an apt
| repo if you are running a Debian derivative.
| notriddle wrote:
| > These builds have no FF branding and they've disabled auto-
| update in them but they have the major advantage of actually
| allowing you to edit your extensions/add-ons without having to
| play security theater with Mozilla's automated signing portal
| every time you make a change.
|
| "Security" isn't even the word I'd use for what extension
| signing seems to do. After all, full-out malware -- the illegal
| stuff -- can replace firefox.exe with their own.
|
| What it really seems to be intended to protect against is
| legal-but-scummy applications like Oracle Java that installed
| random toolbars and add-ons that almost nobody wants. They can
| legally install an add-on, but patching Firefox itself would be
| a clear-cut trademark violation, so they won't do that. Since
| the Java installer ran with the same permissions that a regular
| user runs as, they can't really stop that thing without
| stopping you.
|
| The phrase I'd use to describe this is _brand protection_ , not
| security.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Tangential but does anyone know why the --screenshot feature
| stopped working in recent versions of Firefox?
|
| firefox --screenshot ~/s.jpg https://example.com
|
| Used to work nicely in older versions.
| nabaraz wrote:
| I'd suggest "first party isolate" here. The feature restricts
| cookies, cache and other data access to the domain level so that
| only the domain that dropped the cookie or file on the user
| system can access it.
|
| I removed Decentraleyes and just have FPI enabled.
|
| Also, this is pretty much I do after installing Firefox.
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
| rsync wrote:
| About:tabs should give you a plain text list of all tab urls you
| have open.
|
| So, so simple and so necessary and so totally ignored _even
| though I keep offering to pay thousands of dollars to have it put
| in place_.
| protomyth wrote:
| Sadly, you have to use an extension for that. I have Export
| Tabs URLs installed.
| desktopninja wrote:
| Every now and then I catch myself doing some odd: On a new os
| installation, using firefox to download librewolf and ms-edge.
| Many moons ago it would have been using IE to download firefox.
| What's happened here!
| StayTrue wrote:
| Not mentioned so far is the ClearURLs extension [1], which
| removes tracking elements from URLs and adds other anti-tracking
| functions.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/clearurls/
| hotty3 wrote:
| Not needed since ublock origin can also remove parameters from
| url.
| uallo wrote:
| Thanks! I did not know that. Related documentation:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-
| syntax#...
| mimimi31 wrote:
| According to [1], uBlock origin can't yet do everything that
| ClearURLs can do.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/rttrbp/no_
| lon...
| cercatrova wrote:
| Note that if you spend a lot of money online, extensions like
| Honey or Capital One Shopping won't work as they often use a
| url parameter for tracking affiliates and thus giving out cash
| back.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Anyone know how to disable the timeout on XHR/fetch requests?
| This is helpful when running a server under a debugger, using
| breakpoints or single-stepping.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Mine is to open about:config, search for sponsored and turn of
| the relevant ones.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| I play around with the following about:config settings:
|
| ( _Name of setting NEW VALUE original value_ , description
| below it)
|
| _media.peerconnection.enabled FALSE true_
|
| Disables WebRTC, which blabs identifying info
|
| _gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled FALSE true_
|
| Disables downloading of fonts in favour of system fonts - no
| download delay
|
| _webgl.disabled TRUE false_
|
| Disables WebGL, which blabs identifying info
|
| _browser.sessionhistory.max_entries 2 50_
|
| Disables tab history to prevent snooping by websites
|
| _browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers 1 -1_
|
| Reduces ram use on lesser machines
|
| _fission.autostart TRUE false_
|
| Enhances site isolation for security
|
| _browser.cache.disk.enable FALSE true_
|
| Disables local disk cacheing for speed
|
| _layout.css.visited_links_enabled FALSE true_
|
| Disables visited links data for privacy
|
| _dom.storage.enabled FALSE true_
|
| Disables local storage - Warning: breaks some sites!
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| > browser.sessionhistory.max_entries 2 50
|
| > Disables tab history to prevent snooping by websites
|
| How does this accomplish that? Websites can't access your
| browser history.
| ChrisGranger wrote:
| _fission.autostart_ true is the default.
| SkySkimmer wrote:
| Disable clickselectsall in address bar based on
| https://superuser.com/questions/540851/go-back-to-not-select...,
| but wrapped in a .deb using triggers so I don't have to do it
| manually everytime firefox updates.
| https://gist.github.com/SkySkimmer/ae3038a20b68c0c85155c5d23...
|
| When the web extension change was new and people were complaining
| I wondered if this sort of patch would replace some extensions,
| but it seems that hasn't happened. I guess distribution is too
| painful?
| jvillasante wrote:
| My essential Firefox fix is Brave these days.
| ravenstine wrote:
| My favorite is places.history.enabled=false.
| epivosism wrote:
| -- Take over the new tab page with a local file (which I edit to
| have everything useful) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/new-tab-overr...
|
| -- about:profiles is actually a useful way to manage multiple
| logins. I used to have one set of accounts in ff, another in
| chrome. But now I just have multiple windows open in different
| profiles (and themes to distinguish) each with different login
| states.
| shadowfox wrote:
| > about:profiles is actually a useful way to manage multiple
| logins. I used to have one set of accounts in ff, another in
| chrome. But now I just have multiple windows open in different
| profiles (and themes to distinguish) each with different login
| state
|
| You could also use firefox containers:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
| k__ wrote:
| I switched from Firefox to Brave and now the only extensions I
| use are very use-case specific.
|
| All the quality of life adblock and privacy stuff is already
| integrated.
| binaryanomaly wrote:
| --> Cookie AutoDelete https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
|
| Has been proven to be one of the best extensions I discovered in
| the last few years.
|
| Enable 15s autodelete and only set exceptions for the few sites
| that you really need it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| My firefox for Linux (latest version, 98.0) has had image loading
| on Facebook broken for a while. Approximately 1/4 of images on my
| feed never load. Googling shows it's persistent problem. Some
| complex combination of clearing cache and tweaking configuration
| supposedly solves but shouldn't it just work?
| Medicineguy wrote:
| My two cents for FF about:config changes:
|
| 1. disable Fullscreen "XY is now Fullscreen" text. Set full-
| screen-api.warning.timeout to 0 2. disable Alt key: set
| ui.key.menuAccessKeyFocuses to false 3. don't select space after
| double clicking a word (together with auto highlight selection
| addon very nice for skimming code in browser like GH): set
| layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word to false 4. reduce
| forced wait when downloading a file (Download button in small FF-
| modal takes time to enable/activate, hard to explain, but
| annoying) : set security.dialog_enable_delay to 300ms 5. disable
| "This Connection is not Secure" Warning in (for pages like
| fritz.box together with XCkeepass very annoying)
| security.insecure_field_warning.contextual.enabled
| user_7832 wrote:
| FYI OneTab has a history of crashing, and unfortunately looses
| all your saved tabs when it does (likely due to how little
| thought-out an extension's storage support is). Keep exporting
| regularly to take backups in txt if you value your tabs.
| (Speaking from personal experience.)
| AdamGibbins wrote:
| For you maybe, its never crashed for me, I still have tabs
| going back to early 2020.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| For anyone else who dislikes the recent change with the Downloads
| status popup behaviour, setting this flag to false resets it to
| the way it worked before the last update:
| browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel
|
| Thanks to a thread a couple weeks ago I also managed to make the
| scrollbars wider with widget.non-native-
| theme.scrollbar.size.override
| seqizz wrote:
| Thank you. I hate mini scrollbars.
| jchw wrote:
| My essential Firefox fix is Librewolf.
|
| https://librewolf.net/
|
| Unlike many Firefox forks, it tracks modern Firefox. I believe
| they run a similar set of tweaks to Tor browser, just without the
| Tor. This is quite nice. It's autoplay blocking has actual teeth:
| I'm delighted when YouTube's annoying autoplay-next-video is
| foiled by it.
|
| Since it is smaller and from a less well-known group of
| developers, I can totally understand this being untenable. But
| the added risk is worth it for me, because while it isn't
| perfect, it feels like I have gotten a little slice of control
| back with it.
| bigbugbag wrote:
| Have you heard of freetube[1] ?
|
| I find the experience way better than vanilla youtube in a
| browser. It allows to remove all youtube annonyances (autoplay,
| comments, suggestions, ads, in video ads, and more) and tweak a
| number of things.
|
| Only a couple downside for me, the playlist support is a bit
| shaky and once in while a video will fail to load or start and
| requires closing and reopening the window.
|
| [1]: https://freetubeapp.io/
| Ayesh wrote:
| It looks like a great project, but I'm afraid it exceeds the
| privacy protections rendering it somewhat unfeasible to be a
| primary browser.
|
| uBO pre installed, telemetry turned off, etc are all great
| steps, but the lack of DRM, for example, makes it a deal
| breaker for me. Brave, despite their shady practices with their
| own ads and cryptocurrency, is at the sweetspot balance between
| privacy and functionality.
|
| I find the time it takes to fine tune my Firefox worth the
| work, but Librewolf looks like a project I would gladly trust
| with good privacy defaults.
| mkdirp wrote:
| > _I'm delighted when YouTube's annoying autoplay-next-video is
| foiled by it._
|
| YouTube has this built-in nowadays. The button is at the bottom
| of the player, on the right hand side, on the left of the
| subtitles/captions button.
| dceddia wrote:
| Yeah, the annoying thing about that button is it defaults to
| "on", though.
|
| So if you're, say, opening a video in incognito because you
| want to watch a single video without that channel being
| recommended for the next 6 months, that little autoplay
| button is always toggling itself back on.
| dessant wrote:
| I use my own extension to always disable the automatic
| playback of the next video on YouTube.
|
| https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay#readme
| input_sh wrote:
| I believe that the commenter above is referring to instant
| playback when you click on a YouTube link, not about
| autoplaying the next video.
|
| Though I have that in vanilla Firefox and it works fine for
| me on YouTube.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't think they ever shipped it without the ability to
| disable it, I'm just happy it doesn't work by default. It
| will try, but it can't actually play unless you click. This
| tiny detail made me instantly feel more in control again.
|
| Makes me wonder what the web would be like if browsers were
| never subject to this conflict of interest in the first place
| and always prioritized keeping the user in control.
| oauea wrote:
| I like it when I tell a website it can play video, that it
| can also play more video without having me click again and
| again.
| jchw wrote:
| Easy fix: just allow it to autoplay using the icon in the
| address bar. And you can add this allowance permanently.
|
| This is how it _should_ work. It only doesn't because
| autoplay is great for metrics and it's nice for their
| metrics that all major browsers allow YouTube to
| autoplay.
| rhizome wrote:
| Great! Have a "play next automatically" toggle with an
| "always do this" checkbox.
| bigbugbag wrote:
| Came here to state the same, for a few years my firefox fix was
| to use waterfox[1] instead of firefox.
|
| And now my best firefox fix is to use librewolf[2] instead of
| waterfox instead of firefox.
|
| I had enough of mozilla treating me and my business like sh*t
| when the silently dropped alsa support on a ESR release and
| justifying by saying linux distro package maintainer should
| have not disabled our surveillance and tracking and no one
| wants to work on ALSA as it is a mess, turns mozilla code was a
| mess and in a matter of days someone came up volunteering to do
| the works they refused to, but then they switched their stance
| to say it's too late they're not going back to alsa just deal
| with it.
|
| So I dealt with it by switching to waterfox which supported
| alsa with no plan of stopping and allowed firefox extensions to
| keep working.
|
| When will mozilla stop hurting its own product by trying to
| make it the same as google's browser and mistreating their user
| base and supporters ?
|
| [1]: https://www.waterfox.net/ [2]: https://librewolf.net/
| kakkun wrote:
| I set the following within about:config. It's killed a lot of
| annoying auto play videos for me.
|
| - media.autoplay.default = 5
|
| - media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
| aendruk wrote:
| No love for HTTPS-Only Mode?
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/https-only-prefs
| limeblack wrote:
| They need an emulate chrome option: Match keyboard shortcuts,
| menu, and compact layout. I have said this before.
| zer0-c00l wrote:
| I switched to Sidebery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/sidebery/) over Tree Style Tabs, I like it
| better.
| epivosism wrote:
| just what I was looking for. being able to turn off the tree
| structure.
| albert_e wrote:
| This looks great - thanks for sharing.
|
| Is there an equivalent extension for Chrome that you know of?
| mariusmg wrote:
| Nothing as good as Sidebery for Chrome. But if you want to
| consider Edge, it has a great built-in implementation for
| vertical tabs.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Vivaldi does vertical tabs really well.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What do you like better about it? As a chromium user, I'd be
| happy just to have a TST option that sits in the same window,
| not a separate window that causes focus issues.
| jlokier wrote:
| For me, it was the discovery that most of my browser slowness
| was due to TST, and Sidebery didn't have that problem.
|
| Probably only a problem for people with lots of tabs.
| [deleted]
| Sunspark wrote:
| I'm still driving 88.0.11, last version before the UI re-design.
| I have a current version installed in parallel as well to keep an
| eye on things.
|
| One problem I have with some applications these days, and now
| Firefox as well, the techniques they use internally affect
| rendering which I find gives me more eyestrain. 88 is comfortable
| for me to use, 99 is tiring. Maybe it promotes too much acutance
| around letters, I don't know, but it seems like it's flickering
| subtly like a refresh rate. I've had this problem with other
| browsers too, sometimes it is fixed by newer versions. It's
| frustrating.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Interestingly enough I find myself fixing and customizing Firefox
| less and less. It feels like all the functionality that allows
| customization is bit by bit being deprecated away and I don't
| want to get disappointed.
|
| Now I just click through the options on a new setup and disable
| various things I don't like, remove the search engines and enable
| the search bar again. After installing Ublock Origin of course.
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| Tangential -- but my biggest pet peeve with firefox is its
| autocomplete behavior in the address bar. It seems to be
| impossible to prevent it from putting website.com before
| website.com/page_I_actally_want
|
| The specific case I have: I use the URL bar basically as my
| bookmarks (turned off browsing history and top sites in address
| bar suggestions), and one of the pages I frequency is
| https://hackaday.com/blog/ (note that this is distinct from the
| base https://hackaday.com). In chrome it works fine, if I hit h
| in the address bar it immediately autocompletes it to the full
| url, but in firefox it autocompletes it to the base url so I have
| to hit h then down arrow to get to the site I want.
|
| For the life of me I haven't been able to figure out a way to
| change the behavior, and it absolutely infuriates me that there
| is no obvious way to fix it.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Have you tried typing "blog" or "hack blog"?
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| This is actually the root of the problem, the address bar
| behavior in my firefox config always gives me the first hit
| as one of 2 options:
|
| 1. Base url of a website (in my case, it only searches
| bookmarks, but if you enable search history it will match to
| base url of historical searches as well)
|
| 2. If it can't find a match, then it defaults to a web search
|
| What I want is for it to match full url's from either the
| history or bookmarks, but this does not seem to be an option
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Glad to see I'm Not the only one. One of my few complaints with
| FF.
| cambrianentropy wrote:
| I had the exact same problem! There is no configuration option
| to change this, and I literally kept using Chromium based
| browsers for years because of this.
|
| This workaround isn't perfect, but it has allowed me to switch:
| - Bookmark the url - Go to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks >
| [location of your bookmark] - In the keywords section,
| put the first two or three characters (I settled on three) of
| the domain, so 'hac' in this case
|
| Now when you start typing in the domain and you type those
| first two or three characters (or however many you want to
| setup), the first suggestion from firefox will be your
| keyworded bookmark and you can just hit enter instead of having
| to hit down!
|
| Crazy how Firefox always defaults to the domain instead of the
| most frequently visited URL for the characters typed in, but
| this has worked for me.
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| This is intriguing -- can you explain your preference setup a
| bit more to get this behavior?
|
| I was not able to get this to work on my setup. I added a
| keyword 'uniquekeyword' to the hackaday bookmark, but if I
| start typing uni... it just tries to give me a web search. I
| tried enabling/disabling the search bar and messing with my
| address bar preferences but no dice.
|
| Counter-intuitively, it does sort of work if I put the
| keyword as a tag. It still tries to offer me a search as the
| top hit, but the tag result is the second hit.
| mjhagen wrote:
| I have the exact opposite wish most of the time, in Safari for
| instance, it's almost impossible to go to
| https://example.com/blog when you've previously gone to
| https://example.com/blog/2022/01/01/my-article.html. In FF I
| like how it autocompletes with letter + right-arrow + letter +
| right-arrow. This way I can quickly go to different subreddits
| by just typeing r -> r -> f -> n for reddit.com/r/formula1/new
| and other subreddits using other first letters.
| matsemann wrote:
| For me it's the opposite. Chrome's insistence to not give you
| the result you want from your history (because it want's you to
| do a Google search) is infuriating.
| losingom wrote:
| I'd highly recommend using Firefox-UI-Fix (aka Lepton):
|
| https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
|
| It is a userchrome hack rather than an extension though, so I
| guess its time is limited.
| matsemann wrote:
| - I use Sidebery for tabs, and have disabled the horizontal tab
| panel on the top using oldschool userChrome.css file.
|
| - I use the dark theme. However, that makes lots of pages use
| dark theme as well, so I've changed layout.css.prefers-color-
| scheme.content-override in about:config to not follow my theme,
| but my OS settings. (So I can have dark themed web pages during
| evening, but not all the time)
|
| - And I use containers a lot. Very well integrated with Sidebery
| I feel.
| matsemann wrote:
| Ohh, and I've had to set gfx.color_management.enablev4 for the
| colors to display as expected
| trulyme wrote:
| I am still hoping someone picks up development of uMatrix.
| NoScript is great, but just too tiresome to use on the modern
| web, while uMatrix has this genius UI where you can pick the
| allowed parts of the page easily and save the rules for later if
| needed. Highly recommend it, though it is sadly no longer
| supported. For now it works. :-/
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| uBlock Origin has a picker too.
| chem83 wrote:
| I've been looking for a replacement for OneTab. The import/export
| functionality is broken (doesn't carry over the tab group titles)
| and although not everyone would like that, I'd prefer to have
| cross-device sync.
|
| I've been considering https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-
| Manager, not sure if folks have tried that and would/would not
| recommend.
|
| As for password manager, I'm happy with Bitwarden. I came across
| https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden recently, but I'm not
| currently self-hosting.
| 7839284023 wrote:
| Currently I am also testing Tab Session Manager &
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash Tab
| Stash side by side.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I just found out about tab stash, very interesting, and
| lighter weight than tree-style-tab for mass management
| agumonkey wrote:
| shout out to "Tab Stash"
| yewenjie wrote:
| Decentraleyes has been supplanted by LocalCDN.
|
| https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN/
| roughly wrote:
| What's the difference between the two?
| nabaraz wrote:
| Decentraleyes wasn't updated for a while, so folks ended up
| forking it and creating LocalCDN.
| kristofferR wrote:
| LocalCDN is updated much more frequently and features more
| updated libraries.
| ctur wrote:
| Citation needed. The addon certainly seems far less legitimate
| than Decentraleyes. For instance, who maintains this, why did
| they fork it, who has validated it isn't a malicious fork, etc
| etc. At least for Decentraleyes you have it being popular and
| "Recommended" by Firefox which puts a certain expectation to
| not be a flaming pile of malware.
|
| Some slightly dated discussion about this on Reddit; not much
| seems to have changed to make LocalCDN compelling:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/fc05uh/just...
| bstar77 wrote:
| Misleading title, these are customizations, not fixes.
| StayTrue wrote:
| It's half and half. The privacy suggestions are fixes for sure.
| psydvl wrote:
| You really should replace One tab with Tab Stash
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/
|
| Also, I'd recommend to test Sideberry
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ Over its
| main purpose, there are the most useful container controls
|
| And some other extensions which deserve to mention: Facebook
| container https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont... Search by image
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search_by_ima...
| Imagus https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imagus/
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I use Tab Stash at the moment but I think I might prefer One
| Tab. Tab Stash kind of just feels like "better" bookmarks as
| oppose to a way to keep tabs open without them using resources
| SubzeroCarnage wrote:
| For desktop I recommend you use the arkenfox templates:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/
|
| For addons in general I recommend sticking to this:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
|
| For Firefox on Android I maintain Mull for 4+ years now:
|
| - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/
|
| - Comparison: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=browsers
| fouc wrote:
| Does anyone happen to know how to stop firefox from deleting
| failed/incomplete downloads?
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Firefox Containers is critical to my day to day and the number 1
| reason I use FF https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...
| vulcan01 wrote:
| As this has become a thread for "share your Firefox tweaks", here
| are mine:
|
| - uBlock Origin: https://ublockorigin.com/
|
| - Firefox Multi-Account Containers:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
|
| - Sidebery (vertical/tree-style tabs):
| https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery
|
| - and my short userChrome.css file (which primarily removes
| widgets such as the tab bar that are made redundant by Sidebery):
| https://gist.github.com/PerpetualCreativity/cfc3ff25acc63db5...
| modzu wrote:
| ill add a couple:
|
| yet another speed dial: https://github.com/conceptualspace/yet-
| another-speed-dial
|
| buster captcha solver: https://github.com/dessant/buster
| GNOMES wrote:
| My top tweaks:
|
| -- Disable accessibility services
| https://www.ghacks.net/2021/08/25/firefox-tip-turn-off-acces...
|
| -- Enable webrender all https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/14/how-to-
| find-out-if-webrend...
|
| -- Disable Pocket https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-
| or-re-enable-po...
|
| -- Add Ublock Origin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
|
| -- Disable Telemetry https://www.howtogeek.com/557929/how-to-see-
| and-disable-the-...
| [deleted]
| CJefferson wrote:
| That first one only occurred on a small number of machines, and
| looks fixed now.
| soco wrote:
| That, plus TreeStyleTab because every monitor is wide enough to
| get rid of the tabs bar https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
| JackGreyhat wrote:
| Try sidebery. I used to use treestyletab, but sidebery feels
| more modern. Its also easier to tweak with css :)
| muizelaar wrote:
| gfx.webrender.all shouldn't be needed anymore. Does it make a
| difference for you? i.e. Does the value of "Compositor:" change
| if you change the pref and restart?
| GNOMES wrote:
| Kudos, just reset the about:config change and the
| about:support is still showing webrenderer on my Mobile and
| laptop.
|
| Do you know if this includes all of the bells and whistles
| for webrenderer? I still see many webrenderer releated
| about:config options with false
| Sunspark wrote:
| No, it doesn't. It doesn't seem webrender can be disabled
| anymore.
| hffftz wrote:
| madmax108 wrote:
| Huge fan of Firefox (and Mozilla in general, leaving aside the
| recent controversies) for a decade and a half. But after the
| great improvements in performance as part of Quantum (v57), the
| last 2 years or so have been a slow degradation of performance
| for all power users (esp. users who keep a large number of tabs
| open, and especially so on OSX. Firefox is almost always the
| single biggest memory hog on my system, and pushes the fan
| spinning at full speed every few hours.
|
| I wish there was more focus from Mozilla on continuously
| improving (or atleast keeping stable) Firefox performance,
| instead of these cycles of degradation, 1 great release to fix
| issues, and then a few years of ignoring perf again. ;(
| perihelions wrote:
| I've fiddled with more details than I've bothered to write down.
| Here's a couple of the less common ones (that I'd consider
| "essential", to me):
|
| - Customized the response curve of trackpad scrolling. (I think
| no other browser has this feature? It's actually the top thing
| keeping me on Firefox). On my specific hardware, something like
| this is subjectively "snappy" and "precise" and "out of my way":
| mousewheel.acceleration.factor = 0
| mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount.factor = -1
| mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_{x,y,z} = 40 40 40
|
| - Disabled all fonts with about:config's 'downloadable_fonts'
| toggle. (An alternative is uBlock's remote-font preference, which
| can be toggled on/off per-domain. That's a useful escape hatch).
| gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled = false
|
| - Enable uBlock Origin's opt-in "annoyances" filters, which
| affects maybe half the web including every last GDPR banner:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lis...
|
| - userChrome.css is much more featureful than I understand; I
| just use it to adjust native widget font sizes:
| @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there
| .is.only.xul"); #tabbrowser-tabs .tab-text { font-size:
| 13pt !important; } #urlbar { font-size: 17pt !important;
| }
|
| - Firefox bookmarks can have *keywords* that macroexpand in the
| URL bar; these lower the friction of casual non-Google queries:
| en -> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%s#English man -> ht
| tps://dyn.manpages.debian.org/jump?suite=bullseye&binarypkg=manpa
| ges&language=en&q=%s hn -> https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%s
|
| - Obscure privacy settings that should have gone into the main
| privacy panel, IMO: beacon.enabled = false
| network.http.referer.spoofSource = true
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Beacon_API
|
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer
| morelisp wrote:
| If beacons go into the privacy panel, adtech will go back to
| using onunoad+onbeforeunload and everything will be worse. (I
| don't really have a technical solution other than also
| preventing requests during unload but last I heard this was not
| considered a reasonable option by browser developers.)
| bryans wrote:
| I'm consistently surprised that nobody ever talks about HTTP
| referrers, which are the most egregious of all privacy-invading
| functionalities -- and are enabled by default in EVERY browser,
| including the privacy-centric ones. If you're not blocking
| referrers, you don't have a sliver of privacy online.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Perhaps you have a fix for this which you could share?
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| In about:config, you can set the value of
| 'network.http.sendRefererHeader' to 0 (default is 2.) As
| usual, some websites may object to this.
| morelisp wrote:
| People talk about Referer constantly in privacy-related fora,
| the problem is that there's also still an enormous numbers of
| sites which will break if it's disabled. Browsers have
| gradually stripped it down to just the origin, and I expect
| we'll see it disappear entirely in non-same-origin non-TLS
| situations eventually, but there's not much more they can do by
| default.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I never understood this:
|
| 1) Why are the extension settings intentionally buried? Takes 4
| clicks to get to them.
|
| 2) I wish I can right click the extension icon and temporarily
| disable without laboriously going into the settings to do that.
| jdlshore wrote:
| Command-Shift-A takes you to the extensions configuration page.
| Other than that, some extensions have a button which you can
| add to the menu by using Firefox's menu configuration tool.
| mkdirp wrote:
| To disable pocket, you can set `extensions.pocket.enabled` to
| `false` in about:config instead of just dragging the button away.
| bigbugbag wrote:
| The list of things you have to toggle in about:config to have
| sane defaults is mindboggling and librewolf offers this out of
| the box.
|
| And instead of the bad UX about:config page, every tweak is in
| a configuration text file and you can easily override them.
| wooque wrote:
| My essential Firefox fix is Brave. Better performance and privacy
| out of the box.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I have highly customized it and it is still bad. Some things I
| did are:
|
| - Change the executable file to get rid of support for HSTS.
|
| - Disable JavaScripts in web pages (mostly).
|
| - Request/response rewrite engine.
|
| - Restore the status bar.
|
| - Get rid of all toolbar buttons and features other than the URL
| itself; no search, back/forward, etc.
|
| - Make the URL bar display only ASCII characters, and always
| display the full URL.
|
| - Make URL entry relative instead of absolute (e.g. CTRL+L and
| then / and then ENTER will navigate to the root of the current
| domain).
|
| - Use bitmap fonts for tab titles and URL bars.
|
| - Make tabs display only the title and not icons or other things.
|
| - Disable favicons completely.
|
| - Modified SQL schemas.
|
| - Implement text/gemini file format.
|
| - Disable external font loading.
|
| - Get rid of many animations (unfortunately, many web pages still
| have animations that this doesn't get rid of).
|
| - Using SQL to access bookmarks using command-line.
|
| - Cookie editor.
|
| - Many other things.
|
| Some things I had not managed to do (yet):
|
| - Implement Gemini protocol.
|
| - Table of contents window.
|
| - Changing behaviour of many Web APIs.
|
| - Changing meaning of some HTML/CSS.
|
| - ARIA view.
|
| - Using bitmap fonts in more places.
|
| - Time limits for rendering using CSS.
|
| - Save/recall form data in local files.
|
| - Changing the default save file name to use the actual file name
| instead of the title.
|
| - Capability to be used with other programs on the computer with
| pipes.
|
| - Many other things.
|
| I tried to change the scrollbar behaviour to be more like X
| Athena widgets, but it doesn't work properly.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| With custom userchrome currently slated for getting axed, what I
| want most from Mozilla right now is a built in way to:
|
| 1. Hide the unnecessarily huge sidebar header (allowing addons to
| show their own arbitrary fully custom sidebars separate from the
| official sidebar system could also work)
|
| 2. Hide the default tab bar
|
| I currently run a vertical tab setup with Sidebery that looks
| great with custom userchrome, but the release that kills
| userchrome will make it too much of a mess to bother with a
| redundant tab bar and ugly space stealing sidebar header.
|
| Additionally, an "adaptive" theme that pulls colors from the OS
| like Sublime Text's adaptive theme does would be greatly welcome.
| While it's nice that Firefox comes with a dark theme (and that
| there are plenty of third party dark themes), it's irritating
| that it's always a different shade than the rest of the OS --
| both the background colors (which change dynamically with
| wallpaper-adaptive appearance enabled) and accent colors (which
| is user specified on both macOS and Windows and soon on Linux
| with GNOME too).
| rasfincher wrote:
| Do you know when userchrome is going to be axed? I haven't seen
| anything about it.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I don't think there's any set date, but it's been deprecated
| for a while now. That's why you have to go into about:config
| to turn it on.
|
| I'm sure it'll make waves and be all over the front page of
| HN when the date is decided upon.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I'm somewhat active on r/FirefoxCSS, and have substantially
| customized my Firefox UI. Never saw any deprecation notices
| in the console, or a message on the subreddit.
|
| I highly doubt Firefox would ever drop support for
| userChrome. The themes aren't nearly as powerful and low
| level. The about:config toggles works as a footgun
| protection. I have yet to see any technical reason for them
| to drop support.
|
| That said, Firefox has dropped support for small yet useful
| features for no apparent reason, so there is a non-zero
| chance of them dropping support for userChrome
| customizations.
| rurp wrote:
| Killing userChrome would be extremely on brand for
| Mozilla, so I'm sure it will happen at some point.
| Killing features beloved by a subset of power users
| appears to be a guiding design principle there. I've seen
| userChrome suggested as the fix for all kinds of UX
| regressions that Firefox pushed on users. But if Firefox
| is willing to go out of its way to break the UX in
| various ways, why would I ever trust it to maintain that
| support?
| userbinator wrote:
| Of course people are going to find ways around it, simply
| because the alternatives are still so much worse, but it
| definitely disappoints me to see that we have to be
| fighting this constant war with the developers at Mozilla
| who are continuing to oppress users while thinking that
| they're doing the right thing.
| aftergibson wrote:
| In the post the writer mentions Keypass being the worlds best
| password manager and I see a lot of similar love here.
|
| Has Keypass improved a lot in recent years. I always found it
| incredibly clunky and ugly and getting it to work with browsers a
| real pain.
|
| Bitwarden seems like a steal at 10 bucks a year and avoids the
| stress of trying to self hoist the keys to the kingdom myself.
|
| But I see such love for Keypass and wonder.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I think you may have intended to post this comment on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658936 or
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30635676 rather than
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30663266
| aftergibson wrote:
| No my bad I clarified in my comment but it was in response to
| the author claiming Keypass as the worlds best password
| manager. Thanks for the links though.
| [deleted]
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