[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now
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Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now
I was having trouble loading GMail in Chrome. I wasn't sure if it
was my spotty internet or the browser acting up so I gave Firefox a
shot. And behold! Firefox opened it in a jiffy. What impressed me
most was that it was able to import saved passwords, bookmarks and
websites history from Chrome pretty quickly. Previously, I had
imported these to Chromium based web browsers (Brave & Edge) but
was afraid that it might be an issue for non-Chromium browser like
Firefox, but to my pleasant surprise, it wasn't. Some really cool
observations in first 30 mins of using it : 1. It opens websites
really quickly, much faster than Chrome 2. All parts feel really
customizable. I was able to get rid of the Firefox View tab really
easily (I may explore it in the future because it seemed quite
interesting to send links from phone to desktop). It was also easy
enough to customize bookmarks bar to only show up in new tab. 3.
Extensions ecosystem is thriving . I was glad to find my old
favorite: Dark Reader. But I have also found a new favorite - Tab
Stash. I also found an extension to download Youtube videos - Video
Downloader, something I didn't find in Chrome 4. Clean look that
gets out of your way. I had given Firefox a shot in the past and
had found Chrome to be a better performing browser at the time. But
this time, Firefox seems to really have clicked with me. I'd be
glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions that y'all
might want to share.
Author : rrishi
Score : 1122 points
Date : 2023-02-03 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
| adenozine wrote:
| This is very obviously an ad... at the top of the front page...
|
| Y'all crack me up sometimes.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This level of cynicism would make more sense if you spent any
| time on the Internet, where normal people regularly evangelize
| for their browser of choice simply because they feel strongly
| about it. It's a very common thing. Check out Reddit.
| Aldipower wrote:
| It is opinionated, but is it en vougue nowadays to call
| everything an ad? Come one.
| adenozine wrote:
| It's literally a product name drop and elevator pitch of user
| features.
|
| I mean, I can appreciate your trying to take a nuanced
| approach, but it is quite literally and quite clearly an
| advertisement.
| scotty79 wrote:
| For months my Chrome (on Windows) just stopped showing new tabs
| when there are so many that they are supposed to scroll.
|
| Bug is known, but I haven't seen a solution even though it's not
| recent.
|
| Reinstalling doesn't help. Disabling extensions doesn't help.
| Same thing on another computer with same google account logged
| in.
| pontifier wrote:
| I switched to Firefox several years ago out of principal, but
| it's been a struggle to stay with it.
|
| 2 big issues I have are the tendency to freeze, and then say
| "restart to keep using Firefox" because it updated in the
| background and can't continue.
|
| The other was almost a deal breaker, and still could be. When
| using a barcode scanner, Firefox can't keep up with the
| characters coming from the scanner. It will randomly drop
| characters. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why some
| scans weren't working, and the scanner works perfectly in Chrome,
| works perfectly in a text editor and intermittently drops
| characters randomly in Firefox.
|
| If it were just the start character, or the end character it
| wouldn't matter so much, but it drops characters in the middle of
| a barcode. It has for years, it's a known issue, I don't see it
| ever being fixed.
| kapep wrote:
| > the tendency to freeze, and then say "restart to keep using
| Firefox" because it updated in the background and can't
| continue.
|
| I never encountered that, neither freezing nor being forced to
| restart. By default Firefox will only download updates in the
| background and inform you that the update will be installed if
| you restart.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That is incorrect. By default, it installs in the background
| and then displays the behaviour reported by GP. You probably
| have it set to not install before prompting you.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Assuming you're talking about an actual barcode scanner device:
| barcode scanners commonly present as USB keyboards to the OS.
| The thing about USB keyboards is that events aren't pushed to
| the computer but are polled at a set rate (commonly 125Hz). It
| could be that the scanner produces the numbers quick enough to
| approach the USB polling rate, and maybe Chrome has some
| additional smarts to handle it, or maybe Firefox just adds a
| bit of overhead that's enough to lose some of the characters.
| You could try increasing the computer's polling rate and see if
| that helps.
| pontifier wrote:
| The scanner works perfectly in everything except Firefox.
| I've tried multiple scanners, I've tried different settings.
| I think I even tried setting an inter-character delay.
| Firefox is the only thing that seems to drop characters. I
| basically had to write the back end of my web app to do error
| checking after the fact and reject barcodes that didn't have
| the right number of characters. Which doesn't help at all
| when some barcodes are different lengths. I had to add an
| extra step for the user to tell the back end how many
| characters were in the barcode before they can scan one.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Just a guess but you could avoid the step with length input
| (if the only purpose is to check for errors) if you checked
| the CRC checksum of the barcode. But that's just an
| uneducated guess, I have no idea how your app works.
| Teamteam16 wrote:
| Hsolo8553@gmail.com
| OOPMan wrote:
| Obvious shill post is obvious
| nmstoker wrote:
| I considered switching a while back, but it only got compelling
| when I took the leap and switched on Android and my various
| desktops.
|
| Sync'ing is great, general use is pretty good. I keep Chrome in
| backup for a handful of sites that just don't work on Firefox.
|
| Not sure if it has changed recently but for ages the regular
| version of Firefox on Android lacked several things that were in
| Firefox Nightly (eg pull down to refresh, which might seem
| trivial but it's annoying as anything when it's not there!)
| bspammer wrote:
| It's not firefox exclusive but SponsorBlock is an incredible
| extension if you watch a decent amount of Youtube. It's not just
| about skipping sponsorships (which it does well of course), but
| having a bunch of crowdsourced metadata about every video is so
| useful if you just want to skip to the point of the video. You
| can also skip non-music portions of music videos, filler content,
| etc.
| throwaway2056 wrote:
| > Some really cool observations in first 30 mins of using it :
|
| > 1. It opens websites really quickly, much faster than Chrome
|
| This is the same thing everyone says whatever new browser they
| move to. Once some one hoards 100 tabs it becomes slow.
|
| (Again,I am not against firefox or chrome - just meaning that
| everything is quick initially - somehow becomes slow in a few
| weeks)
| rrishi wrote:
| Yea I put that in as a disclaimer that these are my first
| impressions after a quick 30 min session. I'll see how it feels
| after month or two
| haunter wrote:
| [flagged]
| moffkalast wrote:
| Maybe, but I've been noticing the same in the late week or so.
| Github was actually unbearably lagging the other day and some
| pages perform really terribly on occasion. It's probably some
| of the new haphazardly implemented garbage from manifest v3,
| after all it's all about Google shooting the browser in the
| foot to save their adsense business.
|
| I haven't really checked if it's better on FF because it can't
| screenshare specific tabs so it's dead to me.
| pivo wrote:
| Huh, I regularly have 300+ tabs open in Firefox and have never
| had a problem (macOS).
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >Also FF shits itself over +100 tabs
|
| 10 years ago, sure. I currently have 235 tabs open, plus
| another window with 172. Firefox is at 5.3G of RAM, 0% CPU.
| Most of these tabs have gone to sleep and get restored in less
| than a second. Tabs have not been a problem with firefox in
| years.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I love firefox but it's kind of annoying that it doesn't have the
| chromecast option in the android version for most videos. so i
| have to open chrome only to do that.
| naavis wrote:
| It is the same on desktop. But that is probably because of
| Chromecast being proprietary to Google, so sadly nothing
| Mozilla could do.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| Wait till you discover container tabs.. you're gonna love the way
| you browse!!!!
| toyg wrote:
| Container tabs feel so "good old internet": a power-user
| feature that changes the game but will never be very popular.
| hello2023 wrote:
| I've been using firefox for years... Firefox is cool. Slack
| huddle in my Firefox never works, I don't know why. But that's
| cool. If someone in the team needs a "huddle" I can give a reason
| and ask them to describe their problem instead. That works 99%
| and saves me a lot of time.
|
| I love firefox.
| fersarr wrote:
| I wish it had better permissions around extensions. So I could
| only allow them for certain pages like in chrome.
| seren wrote:
| Firefox on Mobile supports uBlock origin, and is very nice as
| well.
|
| edit: on Android
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I found having the address bar at the bottom of the screen odd,
| but within a few minutes I realised it was the right way and
| now having it anywhere else feels wrong on mobile.
| Zak wrote:
| But only a handful of other extensions, a deliberate
| restriction that strikes me as almost malicious.
| montroser wrote:
| Yes, Firefox on Android is really fantastic now.
|
| I've been impressed to find literally zero compatibility issues
| in the last year with it being my primary browser on mobile.
| Works perfectly with my bank, works with heavy WebRTC apps,
| etc. It's quite a feat, especially given its market share is so
| low, and so there are relatively so few users to report
| feedback.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Does Firefox on Android still reload idle tabs when returning
| to them?
|
| If I open a page, navigate away from it for a few days, and
| come back, I do not want the page to reload automatically,
| ever. Firefox was doing that, Vivaldi does not. I moved to
| Vivaldi.
| xigoi wrote:
| I've found that <input> with <datalist> doesn't work on
| Firefox Android -- and the issue has been reported for years.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Do note this is Firefox on Android.
| account-5 wrote:
| Assuming it's not available on iPhone is what you're getting
| at. In that instance Apple is the one to blame.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
| kragen wrote:
| What is?
| 1maginary wrote:
| Support for ublock is only available on Android's Firefox
| kragen wrote:
| i'm using ublock origin in chromium for desktop linux and
| firefox for desktop linux
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| They're talking about mobile. Since Apple doesn't let
| browsers use their own engine, uBlock Origin doesn't work
| on Firefox for iOS, only on Firefox for Android. On the
| desktop, it works everywhere.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Not just on Android, I'm using it with uBlock Origin on a
| GNU/Linux phone as well. Only iOS is an exception.
| simlan wrote:
| Yep. Firefox on Android is really awesome. If I only could
| replace the android WebView with it...
| ap916 wrote:
| If all you need is for apps to open browser window on firefox
| instead of chrome, you can just disable chrome. That's what I
| have done and it works fine for me.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I love that browser menus and address bar are at the bottom
| instead at of top.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Meanwhile Apple fanatics .....Muhahahah
| aendruk wrote:
| Wonder what's preventing this on iOS. iirc Orion manages to do
| it.
|
| Update: Just tried it in Orion. I could install the extension
| but it seems to be broken. This is what I remember reading
| though:
|
| _## Wait, are you saying I can run uBlock Origin and other
| Chrome /Firefox extensions in Orion?!
|
| Yes, Orion makes it possible!
|
| ## Wait, are you sure? No browser on iOS can use Chrome/Firefox
| extensions!
|
| Orion makes it possible!_
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220329163943im_/https://browse...
| photon12 wrote:
| Apple has a very strict browser policy on iOS: you must use
| either Safari or an Apple approved skin over the same
| underlying rendering engine.
|
| Apple policy is preventing Mozilla/Gecko from being
| built/distributed for the app store.
|
| It's so notorious that there has been legislation considered
| to address that practice:
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/apple_ios_browser/
| kuxv wrote:
| Unfortunately Firefox on Android is noticeably slower than
| Chrome / Kiwi browser. But on desktop it is great!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's a mixed bag. Ad blocking speeds up some websites
| substantially. IMO that makes Firefox mobile faster overall.
| causi wrote:
| Vivaldi puts Firefox Mobile to shame when it comes to
| speed.
| capableweb wrote:
| Unfortunately, Vivaldi is not FOSS which makes it a non-
| starter for many.
| Operative0198 wrote:
| Brave is FOSS and fills the gap (if you can find all the
| crypto ads toggles hidden as hamburgers).
| robjan wrote:
| I find Brave slower than Chrome on my phone even on sites
| filled with ads.
| folmar wrote:
| Enable JavaScript JIT (disabled by default on Brave for
| something like a year) to trade some safety for
| performance.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Kiwi browser also has ublock (and supports adding any
| desktop add-on) and still does not crash or slow down like
| firefox does. I'd really like to use firefox in mobile too
| but with Kiwi being an option, there's almost 0 reason to
| use firefox.
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| I frequently have to close all my tabs because the browser
| has become unresponsive.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| This doesn't happen to me. I currently have 60 tabs open,
| and that's only because I have 'auto close after 1 month'
| turned on.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| berry_sortoro wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| eps wrote:
| If you are on Firefox and you run into an overall system
| slowdown, check how many subprocesses it has spawn.
|
| With the release of Fission (their website isolation tech) this
| number becomes unbound. In my case it was close to 100, each
| eating up at least 50MB with some well into hundreds megs. It was
| a swap fest. Not sure what they were thinking, but a simple post-
| update warning would'be been nice... or perhaps it _was_ there,
| behind all that "aww, let's select your mood color" nonsense
| that now refularly surfaces after every second update. In any
| case Fission is easy to disable once you know it exists.
| rrishi wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep an eye out.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Firefox was my go-to 3 years ago because it was just lighter than
| Chrome (and easier on my battery).
|
| I still hate the fact that different browser profiles and profile
| switching aren't surfaced like they are in Chrome. I think it's
| such a major use case for modern web browsing, I find it hard to
| believe they aren't prioritizing it. (FWIW this isn't even
| supported in Safari, which I would have preferred using)
|
| I still keep it around because I love it's download manager, but
| I tend to use a lot of Google services, and out of habit, I stick
| to Chrome.
|
| (ps. I was an early Chrome adopter, so it's quite sticky with me)
| chopin wrote:
| What's wrong with using about:profiles?
|
| Edit: you even can set it as bookmark into the toolbar.
| lxgr wrote:
| Nothing really, it just feels like I'm "breaking glass"
| whenever I do it, so I end up using Chrome for the multi-
| profile use case.
|
| If Firefox was to add a similar GUI, I'd probably get by
| completely without Chrome.
| Semaphor wrote:
| 2 clicks instead of one. There's an extension to make it one
| click, but it requires a helper app installed, which is not
| great.
| Zurrrrr wrote:
| I don't think profiles are that important when most users have
| their own account these days.
| Piko wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what do you need different profiles for?
| Kids/SO?
| ydant wrote:
| One example - my shopping profile runs the extensions
| Rakuten/Honey to find coupon codes. I don't want those
| running on every single page I load outside of the shopping
| intent, so I use a separate profile.
|
| Firefox's containers don't allow for limiting extensions, so
| you have to use profiles. Chrome only has profiles.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I have separate profiles for personal/work.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Work. I count 5 profiles on my current laptop. I like to
| compartmentalize my work/external projects, so I don't mix
| things like search histories, multiple Google accounts, etc.
|
| These are the profiles I currently have:
|
| 1. Default, personal. My personal Gmail and other sites.
|
| 2. Non-profit that I run, signed in to its Gmail and other
| email account, etc
|
| 3. 3 profiles for different volunteer/contract roles, each
| signed in to their Gmail and other accounts.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I use it when I need to log into multiple AWS accounts.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| The official Container Tabs extension on Firefox seems to
| be perfect for that. You can login to different accounts on
| the same profile.
| chaosite wrote:
| Multi-Account Containers are like profiles, but in tabs instead
| of other windows. They're pretty great.
|
| It's an official Mozilla Firefox extension:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
| ttctciyf wrote:
| If I understand correctly, these only compartmentalise
| cookies and browsing history, whereas full profiles (via the
| -ProfileManager switch in Firefox) compartmentalise the whole
| browser config (add-ons, permissions, etc.) as well, which I
| think is much more useful.
| matsemann wrote:
| To me it's the opposite. I'd like the same browser config,
| use the same window, keep my bookmarks, history etc., just
| want different logins and website contexts. I love
| Firefox's implementation of containers, and find Chrome's
| way of doing profiles useless.
|
| But Firefox supports profiles as well if that's what you
| want, as you say. So best of both worlds.
| doubled112 wrote:
| If you want to open 5 of the same website but with
| different accounts, containers are the way to go.
|
| The AWS console comes to mind.
|
| I don't want separate configs, just separate accounts.
|
| I have also used it as a proxy manager. Different proxy
| config in a different container.
| lxgr wrote:
| Both have their merits, in my opinion.
|
| Given that Firefox already has multi-profile support
| internally, it would only be a matter of adding a GUI
| similar to Chrome's to make it the best of both worlds.
| chaosite wrote:
| Yes, containers compartmentalise the web-facing side of the
| browser, not the user-facing side.
|
| This fits with my use case for profiles.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Depends on usage.
|
| I use distinct profiles for testing, but during the day, I
| open versions of the site for personal and work for
| example. Or at work for different clients.
|
| It depends on workflow IMO. There are uses for both.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| Yes, perhaps I should have said 'more powerful'. Utility
| is definitely relative to usage.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| I've been using a multi-profile setup in firefox for years,
| just by launching it with firefox --new-
| instance -ProfileManager %u
|
| which lets me pick a profile at startup, each with its own
| settings, cookies, history, and add-ons, etc.. This works fine
| for me, I don't really feel the need to launch into a different
| profile from the browser's own menu, if that's what you're
| referring to?
| nicoburns wrote:
| Can you run multiple profiles at the same time using this
| approach?
| Semaphor wrote:
| Firefox doesn't restrict how many profiles you run at the
| same time. You can start them either via -ProfileManager,
| or by going to about:profiles.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| The --new-instance flag lets you run multiple copies of
| even the same profile.
|
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/CommandLineOptions#-new-
| ins...
| ttctciyf wrote:
| IME, starting Firefox with this flag, then (from the
| profile manager) picking an already-running profile, I
| get the fatal error:
|
| > Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To
| use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox
| process, restart your device, or use a different profile.
|
| So I guess it allows multiple instances but only with
| different profiles, at least on my system.
| account-5 wrote:
| Open new tab, type: "about:profiles" create as many profiles as
| you want. Or as others have said you can use tab containers or
| the profile manager switch.
| sp332 wrote:
| I think Container Tabs are a better fit for the way most people
| use multiple accounts online.
|
| Plus it enables the Facebook Container extension, which
| sandboxes all facebook-directed network requests so they can't
| track you across the web.
|
| And the third party Container Proxy extension lets you set
| different proxy setting for different containers. So your work
| tabs can use a different network route.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Container Tabs are not a replacement for profiles though. It
| doesn't let you have different bookmarks, extensions, theme,
| etc, which doesn't work when you want to have a separation
| between work and personal stuff.
|
| Firefox already supports profiles, all it needs it's a simple
| UI to switch between them. Profiles + Containers (and
| everything that comes with them) would be perfect.
| mariusor wrote:
| This addon[1] is very, very close to the way chrome handles
| having different profiles. That is what I'm using to separate
| my work vs personal browsing.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-
| switc...
| nodar86 wrote:
| I use Firefox as my daily driver but I really miss user
| profiles and tab groups from Chrome. None of the tab related
| extensions for Firefox give quite the same ease of use as the
| built in tab groups do in Chrome.
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| As noted by others in this thread, you want the
| -ProfileManager flag when you start it. You should be able to
| either have it remember you always want the profile manager
| on startup, or change the application shortcut to always use
| the flag.
|
| It would be great if they made this more easily available
| though. It was the default once upon a time.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I hear you on profiles. My go-to for this is to use firejail or
| podman to keep truly separate browsers on all my alternate
| profiles.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I now use Brave on everything: Linux, Mac, iOS, iPadOS.
|
| Mozilla has some really weird stuff going on in their financials
| that bother me, and as a result, I just can't use their products
| anymore. This is similar to my feelings about Google, Microsoft,
| and so on. I prefer tech companies to just be tech companies and
| not branch into other fields. I understand that Brave's stance on
| certain things bleeds into politics with things like thwarting
| censorship and encouraging encryption, but those are also still
| technical problems. Tossing money at social issues isn't what I
| want out of a tech company.
|
| Full disclosure: philosophically, I am an anarchist. You should
| look for yourself at Mozilla's financials if you don't agree with
| my politics.
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
|
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...
|
| Also, just search up some of the organizations and stuff that get
| mentioned here. It's weird.
|
| ---------
|
| Edit: so, of their 1.1billion dollars in assets (the foundation,
| and two wholly owned for profit subsidiaries) Mozilla cut 100
| million from software development expenses, while at the same
| time spending large sums of money on groups with no tie to
| software at all. It also seems that the vast majority of their
| revenue comes from Google search inclusion as default in
| Firefox... so why cut the software development funding?
|
| Regarding Brave, it's funded by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital,
| Digital Currency Group, Pathfinder, Foundation Capital, Rising
| Tide, Hone Capital, Propel Venture Partners and through their BAT
| tokens. I find the crypto side annoying, but that doesn't feel as
| morally "icky" as some of things Mozilla appears to do (calling
| themselves a non-profit without mentioning for-profit
| subsidiaries, spending money on things that have nothing to do
| with software, reducing funding to the development of their core
| product).
|
| In short, I kind of hate all major browsers, but there aren't
| good ones to choose from so I try to pick one that feels least-
| evil. When LadyBird browser gets to some kind of truly usable
| level, I will certainly switch to it for daily use.
|
| https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| I'm not seeing what's troubling here. Going strictly off of the
| examples you provided, I see that they largely hold their
| donations as bonds, while re-donating the rest to either
| purchase open source software or, at the government level,
| prevent tech companies from selling privacy or participating in
| censorship. As an anarchist, wouldn't that be something you'd
| approve of?
|
| I don't use Firefox. I find the UI to be clunky. But after
| reading your examples I'm persuaded to switch.
| Keegs wrote:
| > As an anarchist, wouldn't that be something you'd approve
| of?
|
| I suspect GP considers themself an anarchist in the pop
| culture sense, which has little in common with the political
| practice.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I'm not an anarchist, but I did the same thing for the same
| reasons.
| lxgr wrote:
| Sure, Mozilla seems to have quite severe organizational issues,
| but to me, the deep integration of a crypto wallet into Brave
| is what's keeping me away from it.
|
| A Crypto pivot didn't end well for Opera, it ruined one of my
| favorite OSM apps for iOS (maps.me; fortunately there's an open
| source spin-off available now, i.e. Organic Maps), it left a
| bad taste in my mouth when Signal did it...
|
| I use Firefox as my main browser, and more or less consider my
| relationship with Mozilla to be not different from any other
| corporation - as long as the product itself works for me and
| doesn't seem to be heading into a predatory direction (e.g.
| heavily pushing a subscription model, needlessly collecting
| data server-side etc.), I'm fine with its creators spending
| their money however they see fit.
|
| That said, I'll also definitely not donate to Mozilla in its
| current state.
| propogandist wrote:
| It's possible to be completely bearish on the crypto ponzi,
| and use Brave with all the crypto features completely
| disabled.
|
| Their crypto play is a novel revenue generation scheme which
| doubles as a "web3" marketing campaign to acquire a niche
| userbase. Good for them, but it's not for me so I opt out all
| of it, and it's trivial to do so.
|
| Brave is more aggressive on protecting user privacy than all
| the other browsers also, including Mozilla who is completely
| dependent on Google to pay their bills.
| 3np wrote:
| Opera was ruined by many other things. The new owners (since
| 2016) have been running it into the ground basically.
|
| The ads, tracking, dark UX patterns, performance regression,
| and social media integrations are things that together made
| it for me, even before I heard how even OG ex-Opera employees
| won't touch it out of mistrust anymore...
|
| The crypto wallet you can take or leave, it's not like they
| shove it in your face.
| notafraudster wrote:
| I clicked on your links but I don't really understand what it
| is I'm meant to be seeing. I haven't read a balance sheet since
| college, but things look pretty normal to me? Is the objection
| that about 2% of their expenses are on Grants and donations? Is
| it that they make revenue through a VPN subscription they
| offer? Is it that their taxes show spending about $14 million
| (a drop on the bucket) on policy programming (mostly it seems
| about building the Common Voice dataset and funding external
| data scientists to work on data stewardship policy stuff; these
| feel, I think, like what you're suggesting that it's fine for
| Brave to do because they're "technical problems"?)
|
| I read -- skimmed, but I think that's fair -- through a dozen
| pages to try to understand your point and nothing jumped out at
| me. There's a part where they talk about how they made a few
| thousand dollars from credit card rewards points. I did a
| ctrl+f for "woke" and "transgender" and "critical race theory"
| and "covid vaccination" and "cico versus macro-based dieting
| strategies" and didn't find anything. It's a little frustrating
| because I spent more time trying to figure out your point than
| you spent to make it.
| buttspelunker wrote:
| > You should look for yourself at Mozilla's financials if you
| don't agree with my politics.
|
| It has nothing to do with your politics, but I shall continue
| to not care about Mozilla's financials.
| Aissen wrote:
| Can you show us how did you inspect Brave's financials ?
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I've been using Firefox for twenty odd years now. It's
| performance is comparable to that of other browsers.
|
| But the pilfering of Mozilla by its management (giving themselves
| million dollar bonuses and pretending they're managing a billion
| dollar corporation) and their illogical and fickle decisions has
| reduced IMHO the need for an independent open-source browser.
|
| The only rationale for having a browser like Firefox now is to
| push back against megacorps like Google adding extensions to prop
| up their agenda (like preventing ad-blockers from working).
|
| Mozilla had its day in the sun. I still use it but if it were to
| go away I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Indeed. It's the best. Unless you have a veeeery old PC (if you
| do then Chrome feels faster).
| throwaway1492 wrote:
| Shout out to all the peeps who never left firefox, and recognized
| Chrome for what it was. A cynical grab for influence and
| surveillance dominance it was from the beginning. Chrome always
| offered technical and ui excellence in exchange for your soul.
| Personally googles motto "don't be evil" always made me sick
| because corporations are by their very nature psychopathic. Now
| their motto is "do the right thing", yes, right by the company.
| Let's all be clear about what going on here.
| fIREpOK wrote:
| > 3. Extensions ecosystem is thriving . I was glad to find my old
| favorite: Dark Reader. But I have also found a new favorite - Tab
| Stash. I also found an extension to download Youtube videos -
| Video Downloader, something I didn't find in Chrome
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
|
| About 2.5 years ago, extensions came back in Firefox mobile
| Nightly and it is still a hidden feature in mainstream Firefox?
|
| I just had to reinstall Firefox Mobile, and tried to re-add my
| addon collection and I get the following error messages "No
| addons here", "Failed to query addons" ... Why are cumbersome
| collections required to access the addons that you love?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I use both Chrome and Firefox daily and I must say that over the
| years, from personal experience, Firefox has improved to the
| point of being about as fast and stable as Chrome. The downside
| is that Firefox lost most of its identity, the big one being XUL,
| which made for more powerful plugins and customization.
|
| So yeah, Chrome and Firefox are more of less interchangeable now
| and the choice is essentially about how much you like Google, and
| specific details. Details include the presence or absence of a
| plugin you particularly like, support for video codecs and DRM
| (for streaming platforms), and specific features and bugs.
| Generally, I find Chrome better on the "specific details", one of
| it ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=791429 )
| actually was the trigger that made me switch to Chrome some years
| ago.
|
| About extensions, I think all the extensions I use are available
| on both platforms or have equivalents. Now using
|
| - uBlock Origin (of course)
|
| - SponsorBlock for YouTube (autoskips sponsors in YouTube videos,
| user-contributed)
|
| - Behind the overlay (remove most overlays, have many
| equivalents)
|
| - URL to QR code (shows the current URL as a QR code, so you can
| scan it to open it on your phone, have many equivalents too)
| JLCarveth wrote:
| I disagree on the two browsers being interchangeable. Chrome
| supports quite a few Web APIs that Firefox doesn't. For example
| the lack of support for platform authenticators in WebAuthn.
| znpy wrote:
| Firefox used to be even better.
|
| I'm still bitter they dropped that workspaces feature where you
| could group tabs together and switch to a completely different
| group of tabs witha few keystrokes.
|
| And no, the replacement feature is not equivalent nor better in
| anyway.
|
| Still better than that bag of spyware trash that google chrome
| is.
| culi wrote:
| People use a browser, overload it with extensions, then try a new
| one and are impressed by how fast it is lol
|
| On benchmarks, both Firefox and Chrome have their advantages and
| disadvantages. One thing about Firefox is it has a richer
| extension ecosystem so you're probably even more likely to fall
| into the trap of overloading your browser with extensions
|
| However since _real_ adblocking is threatened in Chrome 's future
| and adblockers can significantly improve performance on some
| sites, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually this works to
| Firefox's benefit
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| Firefox enjoyer since 2008 over here :)
| EchoReflection wrote:
| Firefox is cool and would be great if it wasn't overly uptight
| about 2FA. Vivaldi is the best browser by far.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Front page of HN for what clearly is opinion and user error.
| Nice. Enjoy.
| pictur wrote:
| so much irrelevant stuff is on the front page now that i'm
| pretty sure they did it on purpose. and they are right, such
| things cause more comments and more discussion.
| matt_s wrote:
| You should checkout the ability to use containers (no not docker)
| in the browser for certain sites like social media, keeps their
| tracking nonsense contained.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I prefer a fork of Firefox, focused on privacy:
| https://librewolf.net/
|
| Highly recommended.
| tommica wrote:
| Yep, its the best!
| l0b0 wrote:
| Nice coincidence: I've been using Teams in Chromium for a few
| months because audio just wouldn't work in Firefox. The Chromium
| experience then kept degrading until I couldn't reliably receive
| video or audio. Usually it would "fix" itself with a reload or
| two, but when even a reboot didn't help I tried Firefox again. Lo
| and behold, everything worked immediately! I swear MS must be on
| their old "let's make sure the customers have to spend XX% of
| their time trying dumb shit to keep our products working, and the
| sunk cost fallacy will keep them using our software" shtick.
| dom96 wrote:
| > I'd be glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions
| that y'all might want to share.
|
| I built an extension to inject your Mastodon timeline into
| Twitter[0], recently added Firefox support as well. Especially
| useful as a stop gap in light of Twitter getting rid of their API
| access and hopefully will be a first step for many to
| transitioning to Mastodon.
|
| [0] - https://chirper.picheta.me
| archontes wrote:
| I want to begin typing a website's name, have firefox recognize
| it and indicate it to me, and press 'tab' to begin searching.
|
| The lack of that single feature makes firefox unpleasant to use
| for me.
| bmn__ wrote:
| What does begin searching mean?
|
| I just tested, the tab key cycles through the list of results
| for the input typed into the location bar. What should happen
| instead?
| archontes wrote:
| If I type 'goog', and the history result is google.com, then
| pressing tab should result in calling the search function in
| the tab with google as the search engine, and with the cursor
| in the box for the query.
|
| It should _not_ cycle through the drop down menu.
| rrishi wrote:
| This feature is present in my install. You should try updating
| perhaps.
| archontes wrote:
| Will try.
| radiojasper wrote:
| that literally works in Firefox. It didn't in earlier versions,
| but it does now.
| countrymile wrote:
| I love firefox and have been using it for nearly 20 years now,
| but my latest employer doesn't support it so they recommended I
| switch to Edge on my work machine... Don't get a job in academia
| rrishi wrote:
| Hahaha ... that's a pretty odd thing to not support. I don't
| understand the rationale.
| Swinx43 wrote:
| I just came to offer my sympathies. That sucks in ways few will
| understand. Please tell me you have been spared from using
| Microsoft Teams...
| yashg wrote:
| Firefox is my default browser across devices. The killer feature
| of FF for me is primary password. One main password which
| protects all my other passwords and I have to enter it once after
| I start the browser.
| josefresco wrote:
| Yeah I love the primary password feature. Chrome now prompts to
| login which is nice (to protect your saved passwords), but I
| like Firefox's "local control" model better.
| lazerl0rd wrote:
| Still waiting for FIDO2 support on macOS, unfortunately.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The real reason to use Firefox is to prove Netscape won the
| browser war and Microsoft sucks.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| It's been that way since the mid-2010s, especially if you don't
| have at least 16GB of RAM. I switched from Chrome circa 2015 but
| use both extensively. As a developer what I found worked best was
| to develop sites in Firefox and then test them in other browsers
| - it avoided relying on Chrome-only features but since the
| developer tools both have things they do better you'll naturally
| find certain tasks are easier in one.
| fellerts wrote:
| I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and have not looked
| back. What eventually threw me over the edge is a recent "fix"
| [0] in Chromium after which Chrome will scroll an enormous
| distance per click of the scroll wheel from my MX Anywhere mouse.
| Of course, there's no way to get the old behavior back (see:
| https://xkcd.com/1172/).
|
| In Firefox, the scroll multiplier can be tuned to perfection.
|
| [0]
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=127008...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Firefox has been my main browser for a long time.
|
| At work we have one screen an an interface that has an extreme
| number of items in a grid control. Chrome is noticeably faster in
| that screen but otherwise I find Firefox performance to be great.
| tzs wrote:
| Firefox was my main browser on Mac for years, but a year or two
| ago it got demoted to secondary primarily because of one issue:
| spelling. I just found myself spending too much time when writing
| anything in Firefox dealing with false positives in its spell
| checker [1].
|
| I _still_ have no idea why it has so many false positives. They
| use the same open source spell checker that LibreOffice, Chrome,
| and MacOS use, and none of those have trouble with the words that
| Firefox does. (I don 't know what Microsoft uses, but Office on
| Mac and Windows and Edge on Windows also are fine with the words
| Firefox can't handle).
|
| That suggests they just need a better English dictionary, which
| they could get from LibreOffice.
|
| [1] Here are some words it incorrectly flags as misspelled:
| manticore survivorship misclassified ferrite massless rotator
| dominator untraceably synchronizer. Those were reported on their
| Bugzilla bug for reporting spell check problems 25 months ago.
|
| Here are some more, reported 19 months ago: ad hominem backlight
| coaxially hatchling impaction intercellular irrevocability
| licensor measurer meerkats mischaracterization misclassification
| misclassified partygoers passthrough plough retransmission
| seatbelt sensationalistic trichotomy underspecified untyped.
|
| All the words in batches I submitted 30 months or more ago have
| been fixed.
| bmn__ wrote:
| Weird, the English (UK) dictionary knows most of these words.
| https://files.catbox.moe/wfbedm.webp
| rrishi wrote:
| Interesting, I'll keep an eye out if I encounter this issue
| soliton4 wrote:
| i started using firefox for spotify since i dont want to install
| the app and it would stop playing during potcasts after about
| ~1hour on chrome
| myfonj wrote:
| > All parts feel really customizable.
|
| This is one of the selling points for me as well. Literally just
| before opening HN I've looked at my overflowing bookmarks toolbar
| and thought _" Those folder icons and default favicons feels
| quite unnecessary any only occupies precious space. Let's get rid
| of them."_ and then did exactly that in few lines in the
| userChrome CSS [1] and voila, toolbar no longer overflows.
|
| I don't think any other major browser lets you do that.
|
| [1]:
| https://gist.github.com/myfonj/f5415dd0580663a82ea18407ef2ee...
| shafyy wrote:
| I also use Firefox as my main daily driver and have been for 5
| years or so. Recently I started trialing Arc (https://arc.net/)
| and it's interesting. They try to be quirky and have a bit of a
| different approach. What I like is that they also have the idea
| of different profiles (like Firefox Multi-account Containers)
| built in. I'm not 100% convinced of Arc yet, but it's good enough
| for my secondary browser (also for stuff that required Chrome,
| since it's based on Chromium).
| rrishi wrote:
| I am definitely interested in giving Arc a try after reading
| about it in different parts of the interwebz.
|
| However, I haven't received an invite despite being on the list
| for close to a month.
| shafyy wrote:
| I can send you one if you email me at canolcer@hey.com
| rrishi wrote:
| Thank you for the offer. I just shot you an email.
| qbit42 wrote:
| I've really loved using Arc recently, it's a very fresh take on
| web browsing. I've found that its spaces feature handles my
| uses of (most) bookmarks and tab groups in a more coherent way.
| My main annoyance is that there isn't any sort of backup
| standard bookmark system built-in.
| shafyy wrote:
| I also like Spaces a lot. I think my main issue is that I
| don't like the vertical sidebar, and doing cmd+s to hide and
| show it all the time is not that great (also because some web
| apps hijack cmd+s).
| damnesian wrote:
| My favorite is Library Extension which watches pages you surf for
| media titles and gives you a link to your library to check them
| out instead of buying them. Works well for me.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Recommend:
|
| 1. Sign up to Firefox sync
|
| 2. Install the Multi-Account Containers extension. Create
| containers to partition your identities. Eg: Banking, Shopping
| different Gmail accounts, different AWS console accounts etc
|
| 3. Install the "containerise" extension so you can create URL
| rules that automatically open sites in the correct container. (It
| can match URL regexes, allowing you to identify different
| accounts on each platform. Eg: on gmail,
| 'mail.google.com/mail/u/?authuser=hunter12@gmail.com', which you
| can bookmark as "Hunter12 Gmail")
|
| 4. Kagi search
|
| 5. uBlock Origin extension
|
| 6. Simple Tab Groups extension
| rrishi wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestions. I have got uBlock origin and
| will look into Multi-Account Container pretty soon too!
| wolongong942 wrote:
| In the wake of Lastpass there were some criticism of Firefox's
| password storage security IIRC, might look into that before
| using sync for passwords.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I disable all password storage in the browser and use a
| password manager. It's just used to sync extensions,
| bookmarks and open tabs
| jaywalk wrote:
| Why is your email address my password? Wtf?
| hosteur wrote:
| Would love to actually be able to use Firefox Sync. But I
| refuse when I cannot self host it. It seems it is not actually
| possible to self host it.
| cx0der wrote:
| Looks like you can with some extra steps
| https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| 7. Don't use any add-ons for sensitive identities like the
| Banking one.
| ydant wrote:
| You can't (as far as I can tell, and I'd love to be wrong!)
| set add-ons to only activate on certain containers in
| Firefox. You have to setup separate profiles, which are fully
| isolated browser contexts and only install extensions you
| want into each profile.
|
| It's the biggest thing that I like better about Chrome - the
| profiles are seamless and easy to switch and I can set up
| different profiles with different extensions.
|
| Containers work "ok" for Firefox for me, but for my biggest
| use-cases, like splitting work, personal, banking, shopping
| (e.g. where "Honey" or "Rakuten" are allowed to live) into
| different contexts with different extensions - Chrome is so
| much more seamless/effortless.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I think that private tabs are the ones where you can set
| extensions to not run
| clircle wrote:
| What's the advantage of using multi-account containers and
| partitioned identities?
| phaedrix wrote:
| If you have multiple awa accounts it's a godsend.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Typo in my text, can't correct it now. But you can
| simultaneously log into multiple Google accounts by putting
| each into a different container. These containers are mapped
| onto tabs. So in one tab, one Gmail account, in another tab,
| another Gmail account. And it's not just Gmail it's anything
| that you might want multiple accounts in (eg: AWS)
|
| The containerise extension is the cherry on top. Once you've
| set up your containers, it can recognise URL patterns so you
| can set up bookmarks for each Gmail account and they'll
| automatically open in the correct container, already logged
| in.
| clircle wrote:
| Interesting. I don't have multiple accounts.
| branon wrote:
| Firefox View is decent, I don't often wish to transfer tabs
| between devices, but Colorways has a home now which makes much
| more sense.
| kevincox wrote:
| > it seemed quite interesting to send links from phone to desktop
|
| This is a killer feature for me. Last time I used chrome it
| supported "pulling" tabs between devices but not "pushing". It
| seems like a minor difference but it really improves the UX for
| me. Often I am reading something on my phone but get interrupted
| so just fire it to my desktop. This is much better for me than
| remembering that I wanted to finish something and then find it in
| my list of tabs.
| rrishi wrote:
| Yea definitely a use case a lot of people would run into.
| ciroduran wrote:
| Always has been
|
| I used Firefox when it came out, then I moved to Chrome when
| Chrome came out because Firefox was terribly slow (and it was
| because of the addons). When Chrome became slow because of the
| addons, I jumped back to Firefox, and I haven't looked back.
|
| It is specially important to use Firefox now given that there are
| very few non-Chromium alternatives for web browsers. Keep the web
| open!
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > 1. It opens websites really quickly, much faster than Chrome
|
| I wonder if it's a question of accumulated cruft.
|
| My main browser is Firefox, but there is this one site that's
| broken on it, so I use Chrome for that. It's the only thing I use
| Chrome for. But I find that it's much faster (even when testing
| other sites) than Firefox.
| rrishi wrote:
| > I wonder if it's a question of accumulated cruft.
|
| Definitely a possibility. Another user suggested deleting
| cookies and re-trying. I might give that a shot at some point.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| I used Firefox exclusively for years, but I switched away when
| they bundled "pocket" and kept trying to force it down my throat.
| rchaud wrote:
| Tab Stash is amazing. This is how bookmarking should work in the
| modern age, where it's normal to have > 50 tabs open, and not
| want to close any of them.
|
| Click one button, and all your open tabs are saved in a nice,
| tabular view. If you saved tabs from yesterday as well, those
| will be visible in another grid on the same screen, so you can
| drag and drop tabs into categories, which you can then rename.
| Brilliantly simple.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/tab-stash/
| rrishi wrote:
| Yes I like it too.
| jvnnmfjvfjvflkj wrote:
| Firefox's best engineers left after they fired Brendan Eich. That
| was the worst decision they ever made.
| revskill wrote:
| It's not about Chrome, it's more about Google itself i think.
|
| Basically, Google services are mostly dead eventually, given
| enough time.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Still, firefox drains battries on MacOS.
| wolongong942 wrote:
| Opposite experience here. Long time Firefox user and in the past
| 3 years it's gotten incredibly bad for me as sites have gone more
| JS heavy, and video in particular has become a huge problem for
| my Firefox install it seems. Major sites like Youtube (~25% of
| videos get an error, forcing me to open in chrome), Reddit (yeah
| this one sucks for everyone, but at least loads on chrome if you
| have a high end pc+connection, which i do) and Instagram can't be
| reliably used for watching video. For years i used Firefox with a
| bunch of privacy/security-hardening settings but I've had to undo
| a lot of it to even use the web as of recent as the number of
| broken websites was getting too ridiculous.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| This doesn't really sound like a FireFox problem. Not sure how
| it could be their fault that installing extensions which
| intentionally disable parts of the browser required to run the
| websites you use breaks things. Literally none of those
| websites ever have any problems on any of the computers my
| family uses FF on, running UBlock Origin.
| wolongong942 wrote:
| Ublock origin is my only extension and this is a fresh
| install with no about:config changes.
| aembleton wrote:
| I've never seen a YouTube video not play on Firefox. What does
| the error say? Can you give an example URL?
| amflare wrote:
| Firefox is alright, and I use it for some things, but the killer
| feature preventing me from transitioning over is the inability to
| cast to my TV. Even with the janky plugins, the friction is too
| great to allow me to commit to a full switch of my browsing
| experience.
| chrismonsanto wrote:
| At least for me (Linux, Wayland) it is literally unusable, due to
| this bug[1] and related issues in the comments. I finally stopped
| putting up with it and switched to Chrome this year, after being
| a loyal user since the browser was called Firebird.
|
| In retrospect I should have jumped after Mozilla ruined Firefox
| on Android.
|
| [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1789602
| rrishi wrote:
| Oh sad to hear that. I am on Windows though.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Proud to say I never left. I used Mozilla, and as soon as Phoenix
| was released I jumped on it. Stuck with it through thick, thin
| and name changes. Just had a short period when Firefox became too
| bloated for my 256M FreeBSD laptop so I had to use Opera
| temporarily. But as soon as I upgraded my laptop I was back with
| Firefox.
|
| For a long time, maybe still, noscript was unchallenged on FF.
| Something about Chrome API not allowing the deep JS blocking
| required. I consider JS to be the number one threat online, so I
| must block it by default to feel safe(r).
|
| But really it's a no brainer to me that my web browser, my most
| used graphical program, should be FLOSS.
| negative_zero wrote:
| So there are others!
|
| I've also ever used Chrome and I never will. Also never used IE
| either. Netscape was way better.
|
| I actually found a copy of the Firefox 1.0.14 (I think)
| installer when going through an old hard drive a few months
| ago. That was a cool little discovery.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I prefer Firefox, even though I don't experience the benefits you
| seem to be experiencing. I find Firefox to be more sluggish than
| Chrome, and it's less compatible with websites than chrome.
|
| I love it for tab containers - a game changer in web browsing.
| And ublock origin, and the fact that it isn't chrome.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Also it feels "more on the side of the user". Like for instance
| if you do shift right click it bypasses the website's attempt to
| hijack your contextual menu. I think Chrome disabled that.
| rrishi wrote:
| Yea the feeling I get from them is they are more on the side of
| the user too.
|
| > Like for instance if you do shift right click it bypasses the
| website's attempt to hijack your contextual menu. I think
| Chrome disabled that.
|
| Interesting, didn't know that.
| nend wrote:
| I just switched back to chrome for the same reason. Every page in
| Firefox was taking 60+second to load. Tried it on chrome and
| pages were loading instantly.
|
| I had originally switched to Firefox for privacy concerns but
| that and the memory usage/occasional crashing were too much for
| me.
|
| edit: not sure what the downvotes are for. I'm glad there's a
| second option out there. It didn't work for me but figured it was
| worth sharing my anecdote along with OPS. I just wish there was a
| third option, or more.
| dxxvi wrote:
| Did you try to clean up Firefox (i.e. remove the whole Firefox
| profile on the disk)?
| nend wrote:
| No, but at the same time I don't really want to diagnose my
| browser. I just want something that works.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Occasionally, the first page takes 30+ second to load. I am on
| Lubuntu 20.04 and only have ublock extension active.
|
| Usually to "fix it" (bringing time to below 10s), Hamburger
| Menu -> Help -> More troubleshooting information -> Clear
| Startup Cache. Also making sure my dns/network is up by pinging
| successfully a external website before launching Firefox.
|
| But sooner or later startup time will creep-up again. I'm not
| quite sure what's happening. Maybe it's trying to load various
| file from disk (and not the SSD), or waiting for some blocking
| network request. I guess maybe I'll get luckier when I'll
| migrate to 22.04. My chrome is completely broken and cannot be
| installed at all since I've inactivated Snap forever for
| botching the migration process from 18.04 to 20.04.
| nend wrote:
| This sounds like it might be the same issue tbh, although I'm
| on windows. I'll give it a shot if I feel like switching
| back, thanks.
| drita wrote:
| 60+ seconds seems really odd. It sounds like less of a
| rendering issue and more like some more fundamental technical
| problem. Have you tried all the usual things, e.g.
| reinstalling, previous versions, etc.?
| catfishx wrote:
| I think you got confused here, OP had the exact opposite
| experience
| patates wrote:
| > Every page in Firefox was taking 60+second to load
|
| That really sounds like a broken installation. Out of
| curiosity, would you care to share what add-ons you have/had
| installed?
| nend wrote:
| Yeah good point, could be that. Just keeper and ublock, on
| windows
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Snappyness is really a feeling. It could be cache or something
| else. Sometimes you want to use something else. Like cpu doing
| some work on something else while it put the browser on pause.
| All browsers should be able to render all sites really fast.
|
| I don't have a dedicated browser, I use edge chrome safari and
| Firefox interchangeably. However, I work on websites for a
| living. Using different browsers is part of the job and if I
| don't I might miss something breaking somewhere.
|
| Generally my thinking has been get passwords into 1P, store
| bookmarks and interesting sites in zotero. Now, all I use the
| browsers for its pure rendering capabilities.
| nend wrote:
| It wasn't a rendering issue, it was a network connectivity
| issue. I probably sound like I don't know what I'm talking
| about, but it is what it is. Switched to chrome and the
| network issue resolved immediately.
| xattt wrote:
| Portability of saved passwords is a hassle that might get
| regulated in the next decade or two.
|
| I have 15 years of saved Keychain credentials that I've been very
| slowly porting over to Firefox Sync since switching to Windows.
| The fact that I let Apple generate complex passwords makes entry
| by hand even more slower.
|
| Apple's Chrome iCloud plug-in for Windows is just paying lip
| service.
| Someone wrote:
| > I have 15 years of saved Keychain credentials that I've been
| very slowly porting over to Firefox Sync since switching to
| Windows. The fact that I let Apple generate complex passwords
| makes entry by hand even more slower.
|
| Do you know you can export all Safari passwords to an
| unencrypted .csv from the Safari Preferences page? (Preferences
| Passwords, click the "circle with 3 dots" pop-up, choose
| "Export All Passwords")
| xattt wrote:
| I had no idea! My faith in technology companies is restored!
|
| I tried to export from Keychain Access before without
| success.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Pro tip: use Nightly on Firefox, it's a much better experience
| egberts1 wrote:
| Right now, I have had to move off of Firefox on my iOS iPhone
| because Google persistent ad is punching thru some websites.
|
| Temporarily, Brave/iOS is filling in that void of much needed ad
| blocker.
| frontierkodiak wrote:
| FF with Sidebery is nearly perfect, except that it seems that
| persisting pinned tabs across sessions is an alien technology
| that nobody has quite figured out.
| laborman wrote:
| Awsome, yeah, sure... what are the most interesring speed or
| usability improvements were in ff during past 2 years?
|
| How many core devs are working on changing things to make ff
| secure, faster and (not-so-dumb-)user-friendly? Telemetry opt
| out? Sure, but... you need to patch and build your own version of
| firefox to make it really privacy-friendly. And do not forget
| about re-branding.
|
| For me, OP looks overly excited and hallucinogenically
| optitimistic.
| beaconfield wrote:
| Yay. I'm glad to hear more and more folks are moving back to
| Firefox. It really is the best browser IMO. Like you said, it's
| fast, stable, has all my extensions and gets out of my way. Love
| it.
| butz wrote:
| Oh Firefox, the best of the worst browsers, as there are no new
| and exciting browsers any more. Added new unremovable extensions
| button, video conferencing support is still flaky, but I use it
| daily, no matter what. Maybe one day Andreas Kling's browser
| Ladybird will replace it...
| codalan wrote:
| I switched to Vivaldi for most of my browsing. I was a Firefox
| users for over a decade, but had to quit after they kept
| rearranging the UI every six months.
|
| Vivaldi isn't perfect. It takes a lot of searching around the
| internet to find out how to enable or disable certain options
| (and there are a lot of them), but right now I consider it the
| best of the worst for 2023. It's the most customizable, and the
| browser sync feature works pretty well.
| butz wrote:
| Thanks for reminding about Vivaldi. I loved Opera back in the
| day, when they had their own browser engine and kept on
| innovating browser UI.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Firefox's default theme is just...bad.
|
| I use ideaweb's Safari theme https://github.com/ideaweb/firefox-
| safari-style
| [deleted]
| loa_in_ wrote:
| I love Firefox but some JS heavy demos etc. just don't work fast
| enough. I hate that I know exactly why. It's because they were
| only ever tested on Chrome during development.
| rrishi wrote:
| Interesting, I haven't run into it as upto now and I was
| checking some pretty cool and intense CodePens earlier.
|
| I'll look into some threeJS demos to see how it goes (ex.
| https://bruno-simon.com/ ). Are there any other specific JS
| demos you've had a bad experience with?
| mpawelski wrote:
| For me a good example have always been
| https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ which rendered
| very poorly on Firefox. I see it's better now, but still, try
| to hover over the table (do couple of mouse movement, some
| circles or something) and see that it's not as responsive as
| Chrome is.
|
| Another example is iD[0] Editor on
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/. But there, to be fair, it's
| also slow on Chrome but I feel it's a bit slower on Firefox.
|
| [0] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD
| rrishi wrote:
| > https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/
|
| Oh man this was a rough one both for FF and Chrome but
| Chrome did perform better slightly on cursory glance.
|
| Thanks for providing these links, they're definitely a good
| rule of thumb benchmarks to test new browsers
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Doppio (JVM implemented in JS) is absurdly slower for running
| java programs in Firefox compared to Chrome.
| rrishi wrote:
| That 3D website ( https://bruno-simon.com/) ran well enough
| though it did cause my laptop's fans to run but I believe
| that happens in Chrome too.
|
| So far, I haven't found much of a difference in performance
| of websites but it's still early times for me.
| ldh0011 wrote:
| I tested this on FF/Chrome/Safari on an M1 Max, couldn't
| see any difference at all between FF and Chrome but on
| Safari it was _incredibly_ slow (which actually let me
| drive the car, that thing turns fast). I also wasn 't aware
| prior to clicking that it was even possible to create web
| apps like this.
| rrishi wrote:
| That person (Bruno Simon) is fantastic at creating 3D
| experiences on the web. He has a course on three.js too
| that I hope to buy and go through hopefully within this
| year.
| t235a wrote:
| I test on https://demo.scichart.com/javascript-chart-
| realtime-performa... , can clearly feel performance
| differences(firefox 5fps, chromium 70+)
| petemir wrote:
| To me it's not only a speed problem. Some pages directly won't
| work on Firefox because of some JS issue, but they do work in
| Chrome.
| wrldos wrote:
| Lets be clear here. They were only tested on some developer's
| fast machine on Chrome. All the users are going to be using it
| on some bag of shit $300 laptop running crapware infested Edge
| so they will be suffering like your Firefox users are.
|
| The problem is the left hand side of the chain. Stop pulling in
| thousand layer garbage abstractions and making the user pay the
| penalty for it.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| No, Firefox just flat out has some worse JavaScript
| performance and bugs/incompatibility with other browsers.
|
| I've been/am currently burned by Firefox's pretty poor
| IndexedDB support and performance. IDBObjectStore.getAll()
| fails with a cryptic exception if you store too much in
| IndexedDB (iirc 256mb is the limit), whereas Chrome and
| Safari have no problem with it. It also has terrible
| performance - about 4x slower than Chrome, with Safari having
| the best performance.
| wrldos wrote:
| That's a microscopic problem in a macroscopic ocean of
| shit.
| [deleted]
| cleanchit wrote:
| All web developers should be required by law to work on 4gb
| 3ghz laptops with a 3G mobile connection.
| zamalek wrote:
| On the contrary, colossal GitHub diffs routinely crashed Chrome
| for me [in the past], while Firefox dealt with them
| effortlessly. Different browsers have different strengths.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I recently wrote a small JS page, the core of it is a table of
| tens of thousands of items and a for(let i=0; i<len(array);
| i++) loop with DOM CSS changes to hide/show rows matching a
| filter in the inner loop.
|
| In Edge the page loads quickly and the loop is typically under
| 20ms.
|
| In FireFox the page lags many seconds while loading and
| rendering, and several seconds when the loop involves a lot of
| hide/show of the table.
|
| It's not that I haven't tested, it's that FireFox just isn't as
| fast as Edge. This simple approach relies on the browser
| handling a lot of items because I can't write a complex indexer
| in JavaScript and don't want to spend more effort on a low-use
| page and I refuse to put up with 'paging'.
| chronial wrote:
| > It's not that I haven't tested, it's that FireFox just
| isn't as fast as Edge.
|
| Only in this one specific case. You don't know the other
| cases. What you do is write code and check if it's fast
| enough in Chrome. If it's not you change your code. You never
| check if it's fast in Firefox instead and then go on with
| your day, saying "well chrome's just slow".
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _You don 't know the other cases._"
|
| Why would I care about the other cases? It's no use to me
| if FireFox is really fast at caching if I'm not using
| caching.
|
| > " _What you do is write code and check if it 's fast
| enough in Chrome. If it's not you change your code._"
|
| I can't change my code, it's at the limit of (my
| understanding of JavaScript/web performance) crossed with
| (how much work time I can spend developing this page). I've
| already got rid of function calls in the inner loops,
| trimmed the data set aggressively, pushed more into SQL
| than in client side, have an out-of-band dataset generator
| so querying the DB isn't part of page load it's a static
| page served with static compression, it's taken days longer
| than I wanted to get even this functionality fast enough to
| be as fast as I want, if it needs double the time and
| SpiderMonkey performance expertise to cater for FireFox
| then the result is tell people to use Edge for it.
|
| > " _You never check if it 's fast in Firefox instead and
| then go on with your day, saying "well chrome's just
| slow"_"
|
| I did check if it was fast in FireFox and it wasn't. I
| carried on trying to make it faster until I ran out of
| ability and it went from 'okay I guess' on Edge to 'great
| that's what I hoped for' on Edge. And sluggish on FireFox.
| The reason I don't go on saying "Chrome's just slow" is
| because Chrome isn't.
| chronial wrote:
| > Why would I care about the other cases?
|
| Because you talk about the other cases when you make
| general statements like:
|
| > it's that FireFox just isn't as fast as Edge.
|
| > I can't change my code,
|
| I wasn't suggesting you change anything about your code.
| Remember, the context of this conversation is this
| Statement by GP:
|
| > I hate that I know exactly why. It's because they were
| only ever tested on Chrome during development.
|
| The reality is that Firefox has a tiny market share at
| this point, so it is questionable how much time should be
| invested into optimizing pages to make them fast on
| Firefox. But that is a problem with Firefox's market
| position, not technology.
|
| My point was that when code is slow in Chrome, you change
| it and never notice whether Firefox would have been
| faster in those cases. You only test code that is
| sufficiently fast in Chrome in Firefox. Thus, you don't
| usually see the cases where Firefox is faster than
| Chrome.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| The context from the GP is relevant, my reply was to say
| no don't accuse laziness and ignorance, I do use FireFox
| as my daily browser, I did test with FireFox, I wanted my
| page to be equally good and I couldn't achieve that. The
| effort of rewriting to get 'great' responsiveness in Edge
| got 'sub-par' in FireFox - and it's not because I didn't
| bother trying.
|
| Your last paragraph is probably true in general, and true
| specifically for me because the Windows server I was
| using had Edge and didn't have Chrome or FireFox.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I wouldn't make dom changes in a tight loop like that. Better
| would be to accumulate the changes that need to be made and
| then do a batch change operation instead of one at a time
| like it sounds like you're doing. That code would be slow in
| any browser.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| You say "it would be slow in any browser" but that's not
| true. It's fast in Edge and Chrome and slow in FireFox.
|
| > " _then do a batch change operation_ "
|
| What would the 'batch change' be if not a loop over all the
| changes, making the changes one by one?
| gramie wrote:
| One possibility would be to create all the matching rows
| of the table in text (<tr><td>...</td></tr>), and then
| replace the contents of the table in one assignment.
| That's pretty fast, although I'm not sure about OP's
| case.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It shouldn't matter honestly, I didn't notice any performance
| difference in benchmarks for react.
| starik36 wrote:
| Can you give an example of something JS heavy that is slow in
| Firefox? I haven't encountered something like that in a very
| long while.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Idk if being JS heavy was the issue here, but Twitch had
| terrible performance on Firefox for years. I installed Brave
| specifically for Twitch (and Twitch alone), and could finally
| use the site without everything feeling sluggish and super
| laggy.
|
| I don't use Twitch much anymore, but the one time I opened it
| recently (for NeoVimConf), it seemed much better.
| rikroots wrote:
| This might be a bit niche, and not specifically JS, but
| drawing anything in a HTML <canvas> element which involves a
| CanvaAPI ShadowBlur[1] is guaranteed to make Firefox weep.
|
| The issue was mentioned on Bugzilla (at least) 11 years
| ago[2], performance remains abysmal.
|
| [1] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...
|
| [2] - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763120
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| SAP Concur
| onion2k wrote:
| It's interesting that you put the blame for the slowness on
| Firefox. I blame web developers for failing to build things for
| browsers rather than just Chrome.
| [deleted]
| rideontime wrote:
| This isn't blaming Firefox any more than one would blame
| other web browsers for a bad enterprise app requiring
| Internet Explorer, it's just the sad reality that users have
| to deal with.
| zeendo wrote:
| Which part of their comment reads as blaming Firefox?
| onion2k wrote:
| _I love Firefox but some JS heavy demos etc. just don 't
| work fast enough._
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Have you read the last sentence as well?
|
| > It's because they were only ever tested on Chrome
| during development.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| That only means the developers didn't care if it was
| fast, or even works, in other browsers. It says nothing
| about Firefox. The first sentence, where the author
| complains that JS heavy apps are too slow in Firefox, is
| the part that's about Firefox.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That sentence is a simple statement of fact - that some
| apps are too slow in Firefox. It places no blame for the
| slowness. The blame comes later, and is put on lazy
| developers.
| eCa wrote:
| What the OG commenter meant (as I read it) was that the
| page was slow in FF solely because the developer didn't
| test the page in FF.
|
| It does in no way imply that FF is worse than Chrome, but
| it _does_ imply that (some) web developers are lazy.
| reportgunner wrote:
| When that happens I just fire up a vanilla chrome and look at
| the js thingy there. It doesn't happen more than once per week.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If developers are writing in a vanilla style based on open
| standards, then why should there be performance idiosyncrasy
| among browsers?
| capableweb wrote:
| > why should there be performance idiosyncrasy among
| browsers?
|
| Because the engines work differently, some are better at some
| parts and worse at others. That's just the name of the game
| when you have different implementations of something.
|
| Not saying that work shouldn't be done do make them on-par
| with each other, just providing a reasoning why things are
| like they are. I remember at one point some Google product
| was using some JavaScript API for lots of things and
| obviously only tested things in Chrome, when testing it in
| Firefox the performance was a lot worse, as Gecko performed
| worse than V8 using the data structure/API. They ended up
| disabling Firefox access to it because of this.
|
| Eventually, Firefox got the bug fixed I think, so the product
| enabled support for Firefox.
|
| I guess the point is, the standards around the web platform
| say how the user should be able to use some
| API/format/structure, not much about how said
| API/format/structure is internally implemented.
| Zurrrrr wrote:
| I use Waterfox personally, but it's a minor difference.
|
| Some lesser known extensions:
|
| LocalCDN
|
| Tab Session Manager
|
| Feedbro
|
| Enhancer for YouTube
|
| Request Control
|
| Trace
|
| There is a lot of configuration you can do with a user.js file as
| well. I took a lot of options from the tor browser config since I
| value privacy.
| morjom wrote:
| I recommend checking out some of the guidelines of the
| arkenfox.js for extensions.
|
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-don...
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| Is the fact that it's owned by an analytics/ad company a
| concern for you?
|
| https://avoidthehack.com/review-waterfox-browser#thebad
| Zurrrrr wrote:
| No, but I'm choosing to trust the developer for the moment.
|
| https://www.waterfox.net/docs/faq
| synergy20 wrote:
| I use firefox more and more these days on my android phone as it
| does ads-blocking _much_ better than chrome, like 100x better,
| after many years I somehow feel it might be time to retry firefox
| on desktops.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Couldn't disagree more. Between ~October and ~December of last
| year, Firefox mobile on iPhone was essentially broken. The main
| menu would take 30 seconds or more to pop up. Switching to
| another app and coming back (or bringing up the control center)
| would result in Firefox hanging for 20 seconds if not outright
| crashing.
|
| Before last October, I would have recommended Firefox to anyone
| who asked. Now, I would recommend Chrome for their ability to fix
| bugs in a timely manner.
| aldanor wrote:
| Been on Firefox for many years for one reason only - TreeStyle
| Tab. Once other browsers implement it, if ever, would consider
| jumping ship.
|
| Orion has something similar, but it's a baby version of that,
| really...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I had to switch to Sidebery after some bugs with TST (broken
| hierarchy, etc.).
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I don't know when you had those problems but I had similar
| problems in the past (>1 year ago) but they all seem to have
| been fixed.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I had to uninstall Sidebery as it would put my CPU on a high
| spin and hurt battery life.
| parasti wrote:
| I'm a daily Firefox user for many years, because they have the
| best devtools, in my opinion. But Firefox and Mozilla have weird
| priorities that are not focused on their users. I just don't
| understand them. Firefox added a "temporary feature" called
| Colorways that let's you, I guess, change the browser's color
| theme to one out of, like, five colors? Wasn't this a thing that
| you could already do twenty years ago, and it wasn't temporary?
|
| They also moved "Close tabs on the right" from the bottom of the
| menu and moved it to a submenu next to "Close tabs on the left".
| So now it's a multi-step process to close tabs on the right with
| a higher chance of misclicking on the action opposite of what I
| want, that I also will never use in my life.
|
| Just seems like they're fond of making many odd, small UI
| decisions to create the appearance of progress without really
| moving forward.
| pornel wrote:
| I'm a tab hoarder, and I love the scrolling tab bar. No matter
| how many tabs I keep open, they remain readable, instead of
| squishing into ||||||||||||||.
| mcv wrote:
| Definitely. I wouldn't mind a feature that makes it easy to
| locate a particular tab, though. Often I know I've got it open
| somewhere but I just can't find it, causing yet another
| duplicate tab.
| glandium wrote:
| type % in the url bar, and keywords will search in your open
| tabs.
| rrishi wrote:
| Yes the scrolling tab bar is another good design choice.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I've also recently switched back to Firefox. The Simple Tab
| Groups is the killer feature for me. It allows me to group tabs
| by task which is a godsend if I ever need to work on multiple
| unrelated tasks concurrently.
| nathias wrote:
| Firefox nightly has become nearly impossible to use, everyone is
| blocking, falsly assuming your version is too low, trying to get
| you to use chrome or assuming you're a bot and forcing you into
| CAPTCHa hell.
| mancerayder wrote:
| My browser preference is almost 100% tied to how well it blocks
| ads and auto play/scripts and other enemies of attention. The
| rest is mostly irrelevant to me personally.
| alhirzel wrote:
| The Tree Style Tab extension[1] is wonderful for "keeping tabs"
| on our modern "to forget" lists (unclosed tabs). Putting tabs on
| the left is also a good screen real estate trade for wide aspect
| ratio screens.
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
| ta...
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Tree Style Tabs is absolutely vital to me, I don't understand
| how people can live without that extension.
|
| The other thing I use a lot is firefox's readability builtin
| (it's not an extension), which removes all the cruft and *walls
| from websites and makes them... readable in one click.
|
| These two together are killer apps for me. I might consider
| switching to another browser (firefox isn't exactly the paragon
| of virtue it used to be either anymore), but the new browser
| would need to have these two features.
| rrishi wrote:
| Thankful for the readability builtin.
| silon42 wrote:
| I used to use it, until I wrote my own vertical tabs
| extension, which acceptably handles thousands of tabs...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Safari has vertical tabs natively now. The interesting part
| is hierarchical tabs
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| It's the hierarchical tabs that I need. If you are
| traversing large hypertexts you need to keep track of
| where you are and where you were.
|
| Middle-clicking to open-in-new-tab together with Tree-
| Style-Tabs is incredibly useful in this scenario.
|
| You can rapidly open a large number of potentially-
| interesting links in tabs, and then weed out the ones you
| don't need just as rapidly. Then wash, rinse, repeat.
| It's an assembly line approach.
| kiliankoe wrote:
| Where does Safari have vertical tabs? I've been using
| Orion for a while now mainly for that feature, a WebKit
| browser with well working vertical tabs.
| rovr138 wrote:
| View > Sidebar
|
| On the left, it should show the number of tabs in the
| current window. If you click on that, it lists the tabs.
| kiliankoe wrote:
| That's cool, thanks! But there's no way to hide the
| normal tab bar, is there?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not yet but I hope Apple brings it back. It used to be
| possible
| noloblo wrote:
| Is there a link to this extension for your own vertical
| tabs
| rrishi wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion !
|
| I'm giving Sidebery a shot first. If I'm not a fan, I'll give
| Tree Style a try.
| OJFord wrote:
| I use Sidebery, which is similar, but adds features like
| 'panels' (essentially switch between sets of tree-style tabs in
| the sidebar) that integrates with Firefox 'containers', so you
| can have a 'work' vs. 'personal' panel&container for example.
|
| The tabs being listed vertically is by far the most important
| aspect to me though, I previously used something (that stopped
| being maintained) that did that without being 'tree-style'.
| Nesting is probably not what I wanted as often as it is.
| rrishi wrote:
| Interesting integration of panels and containers. Definitely
| going to try it.
| kps wrote:
| As someone who uses wide screens to hold multiple page-shaped
| windows, sidebars are a no-go. I really like Chrome's recent
| addition of what they call tab groups; anyone know of
| equivalent functionality for Firefox?
| Izkata wrote:
| Dunno how similar it is, but there is Simple Tab Groups:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-
| gr...
|
| Also there's a bunch of userChrome css people have shared for
| Tree Style Tabs that makes the sidebar collapse and auto-
| expand on mouseover so it doesn't take much space. It's not
| part of the extension itself because they lost access back
| with the Firefox Quantum release and I guess no new API was
| ever made.
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| For my new job, I've switched to using the Orion Browser [1] from
| Kagi since I was noticing some weird typing lag on my MacBook in
| Firefox. I still use Firefox at home on Windows, but native
| vertical tabs in Orion are enough for me to use it full time.
| It's also handy that it supports both Firefox and Chrome
| extensions, albeit some features don't fully work (e.g. "Block
| element" of uBlock Origin doesn't let me choose anything).
|
| I'm not a fan of Mozilla currently, but they do have the least
| bad non-chromium, multiplatform browser out there.
|
| [1]: https://browser.kagi.com
| shaunsingh0207 wrote:
| I've found Orion wonderful as well. It fixes all my extension
| gripes with safari while still keeping the performance and
| battery life.
| rrishi wrote:
| Interesting, definitely going in my list of browsers to try at
| some point in the future.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > I was having trouble loading GMail in Chrome
|
| You should avoid using GMail. Messages sent from and to GMail
| addresses are occasionally copied to the US government, and
| analyzed and possibly copied by various commercial companies who
| pay Google/Alphabet for the privilege. (You should also encourage
| your friends to stop using GMail).
|
| Also, regardless of whether it's GMail or not - use an email
| client. GMail and all other email providers suppose access using
| the IMAP and/or POP3 protocols. That (mostly) guarantees no ads,
| and is much faster.
|
| As for Firefox - Mozilla has decided to block extensions' access
| to most APIs and limit them only to a "WebExtensions" API (even
| though Mozilla's internal UI code is basically just like an
| extension, i.e. they don't _have_ to do this.) So, FF is only
| partially customizable and manipulable, and the extension
| ecosystem is somewhat stunted. I use FF, but let's not go
| overboard with the praise.
| echobear wrote:
| I just use firefox bc its opensource. I use it with the
| duckduckgo extension as my search engine
| lucky_cloud wrote:
| I'd like to use FF but I've never been able to figure out how to
| replicate something Safari does that's ingrained in my fingers at
| this point.
|
| In Safari, I can use command+1-9 to open bookmarks. So command+1
| is my PRs, command+2 is the JIRA board for the current sprint,
| etc.
| bmn__ wrote:
| You can give bookmarks nicknames, e.g. "PR". You can activate
| those from the location bar by typing the nickname. Then set up
| a keyboard macro that maps <command>+<1> to <control>+<l>, <p>,
| <r>, <Enter> etc.
| RektBoy wrote:
| > "import saved passwords"
|
| Yikes
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I honestly don't think there is much difference between each
| major browsers nowadays, so just pick whatever you like.
|
| I personally go full utilitarianism about the tools/software I
| use, so I can't care less about the companies behind them.
|
| I was an avid Firefox user since version 1.5, simply because it
| was objectively superior than competitors and way more polished
| (at the time, other browsers like IE didn't even have tabs).
|
| Then Chrome came out, which was indeed blazingly fast but the
| feature set just wasn't there (in both basic features and the
| extension scene. It didn't even have a proper multi-language font
| setting which was a deal breaker for me).
|
| A few years past, XUL-based Firefox became unbearably slow (it
| didn't help that I have 50+ addons), and Chrome was steadily
| catching up in every aspect. Right before Firefox's transition to
| Quantum, I couldn't take it any more and started to use Chrome
| primarily.
|
| After 57, Firefox Quantum was obviously great, but at that point
| I just didn't have any reason to switch back. All the heavy
| lifting parts (webext) are the same, so it's down to some minor
| details, which TBH, I'm getting used to the "Chrome way".
|
| The final nail in the coffin of Firefox for me, is its
| development. I'm not a professional software developer, and lack
| the ability to contribute code to large open source projects like
| browsers. So instead, I tried my best to help by reporting bugs.
| I've filed at least 50~100 tickets on both Mozilla's bugzilla and
| chromium's trackers.
|
| I hate to say it, but I can see the sheer difference between the
| maintenance effort of the two projects, even in basic triage. I
| understand the two companies are not really comparable in their
| sizes, but Firebox's is declining hard. It was much better
| several years ago. More and more bug tickets are not touched by
| anyone. Legit problems got closed for no reason. Sometimes you
| can even spot management-level interference despite clear
| objection from users and even internal developers, which I would
| think I should see more on Chrome's end. Filing bugs about
| Firefox no longer feel fulfilling or even fun, because I KNEW if
| it's a minor issue, it won't get fixed in years, if at all (hell,
| it took them 5+ years to fix something major like full-range
| video playback). I just don't have faith in its future.
| 8bitme wrote:
| It also supports a subset of extensions on the Android app vs
| most other browser apps that support no mobile extensions
| hankmander wrote:
| The suggestions you get when typing in the address bar are miles
| better than the chrome counterpart imo. Otherwise I think these
| browsers are more equal now than ever.
| Semaphor wrote:
| For extensions:
|
| [0] Better History NG (my fork of the unmaintained non-NG
| version, so far I only fixed bugs, so it works again, same
| performance issues as before), apparently inspired by the Vivaldi
| history.
|
| [1] uMatrix, which has the superior interface for
| blocking/unblocking of domains compared to uBlock (which you
| obviously have as main adblocker ;) )
|
| [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/better-
| histor...
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/
| propogandist wrote:
| Firefox gets all their operating funding from Google's Search
| agreement. This prevents FF from protecting user privacy as it'd
| jeopardize their primary source of income.
|
| Firefox also has a lot of telemetry and experiments enabled, even
| if users opt out in the GUI. These have to be disabled in the
| about:config setting.
|
| It is the slow and uses a lot of RAM, but despite all these thing
| it's the second most popular for a reason (kept alive as an easy
| way for Google Chrome to avoid anti-trust)
| ggrelet wrote:
| Could you kindly provide a reliable guide about how to
| completely disable telemetry in FF?
| propogandist wrote:
| There are many such guides out there with each covering
| slightly different things, this may be a good starting point
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Privacy
| Parae wrote:
| > Firefox also has a lot of telemetry and experiments enabled,
| even if users opt out in the GUI. These have to be disabled in
| the about:config setting.
|
| Have you heard of LibreWolf ? It is basically FF without the
| telemetry and with a lot of privacy and security features [1].
| I've been using it for 2+ years and I'm very happy with it. The
| transition from FF to LibreWolf was seamless.
|
| [1]: https://librewolf.net/docs/features/
| propogandist wrote:
| It's been a while since I've looked for alternatives, and I
| remember coming across Ice Weasel and similar forks in the
| past, but they had slow security updates. I will take a look
| at Librewolf.
| innerbits wrote:
| Firefox is my primary browser at present but definitely has
| annoyances: - unable to close pinned tabs without
| custom extensions - unable to undo close open tabs after
| closing last window (also solved with extension) - pins
| itself to taskbar and install desktop icon on every install
| - I prefer how downloads' progress is handled in Chrome better
| - Not all settings are synchronized (esp. around privacy), making
| it very hard to configure computers the same consistently
|
| Favorite extensions: - Vimium - Undo Close
| Tab - Shortkeys (using it specifically to move tabs around)
| - Aardvark Duex
| ectopod wrote:
| On your second point the History menu has a Restore Last
| Session option (or something like that) when you reopen the
| browser after inadvertently closing a bunch of tabs.
| account42 wrote:
| > unable to close pinned tabs without custom extensions
|
| Middle click works and there is also a context menu option to
| close the tab.
| innerbits wrote:
| I should've clarified that I meant closing using keyboard
| shortcuts
| bmacho wrote:
| No it is not. In the past months/years they removed:
| - ability to zoom out images. Firefox has two different zooms,
| but none of them can zoom out images. If an image doesn't fit
| your screen, you can't see it period. - ability to open
| an image in the same window - ability to use different
| search engine in the search bar and URL bar - ability to
| quickly change search engine clicking the magnifier icon top
| right - custom search engine URLs - showing
| download speed
|
| I bump these into like every day, and they cause me minutes of
| annoyances. (and probably some others I can't recall now)
|
| Firefox 2 years ago was a way better browser than it is now. And
| a lot of things still missing, like proper profiles.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| zoom: not experienced here. I just visited a page with an image
| that doesn't (naturally) fit; Ctrl-scroll zooms it to fit (and
| back)
|
| image in same window: seems true, but i can't imagine why you'd
| want this
|
| search engines: I use single letter keywords to drive this. "g
| foobar" searches on google for foobar. "d foobar" searches
| duckduckgo. "o foobar" searches on google maps. Never had any
| desire to "quickly change the search engine" or have custom
| search engine URLs given keywords.
|
| download speed: shows in the download dialog for me
| bmacho wrote:
| Zoom is my wrong, I've set away browser.zoom.full option to
| text only.
| dandellion wrote:
| They removed RSS, removed compact mode, removed bookmark
| descriptions... I'm scared that at their current pace by 2030
| they'll remove the last remaining feature and it will
| disappear.
| codalan wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if Mitchell Baker and the product team are
| paid by Google to destroy their own browser.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| In Firefox Developer Edition Desktop, I was able to
| - Quickly change search engine clicking magnifier icon top
| right - Set a custom search engine keyword ("wiki" +
| search term in the URL) via right-clicking a search bar -
| View download speed of an ISO file - Zoom images in and
| out, both as part of a page and as a standalone file
|
| I was not able to right-click > open image in same tab, or have
| different default engines in URL vs search bar. That last use
| case is really edge, considering _they have a search bar with
| multiple search engines_ and one can set search keywords and
| for most people, having different engines per bar would be
| unexpected and confusing.
| bmacho wrote:
| Zoom is my wrong, I've set away browser.zoom.full option to
| text only.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Proper profiles are there what they need is a proper profiles
| UI. Just a switcher button in the normal browser window like
| Chrome and they'd be all set.
| kls0e wrote:
| LibRedirect by ManeraKai redirects YouTube, Twitter, TikTok...
| requests to alternative privacy friendly frontends and backends.
|
| https://libredirect.github.io/
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Just tangentially related, but on Windows I find that Edge is
| _way_ faster than Chrome nowadays. No idea why, and it feels
| stupid to even consider it, but the difference is staggering.
| Tomte wrote:
| I'm even happily using Edge on Linux. I know, sacrilege.
| rrishi wrote:
| I did try Edge a couple of years ago and I would agree with
| your observation too. I just didn't stick with Edge and came
| back to for some reason that is escaping me right now.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Not on Android (it stutters on scrolling even on newest Pixel).
| And I also think it's not the most safest browser on Android
| because Chromium is much more hardened there.
|
| Source: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
| neogodless wrote:
| FWIW we don't have that issue on a Pixel 5a, OnePlus 7 Pro or
| Galaxy S21 Ultra.
| [deleted]
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'll pile on and say that it doesn't stutter on my old and slow
| OnePlus Nord. Only on one weird page that was recently on the
| frontpage, but I guess they were simply also doing some fuckery
| with the scrollbar.
| feanaro wrote:
| Firefox for Android does not stutter when scrolling for me on a
| phone much weaker than a Pixel. That suggests it's not a
| universal issue but something more specific to your setup.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I've been using it on desktop for a while, but on Android it's
| pretty rough, at least with the address bar on the bottom. I
| think there's a bug with touch locations being mapped to the
| correct place on a website.
| YoshiRulz wrote:
| I can't fathom why you prefer it at the top, but it's in
| Settings > Customise.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Any must have extensions?
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I use FF as my daily driver (but I'm also a Linux desktop user so
| take my views with a grain of salt lol) and I can't say the
| experience is any better than Chrome. But honestly I think that
| is probably the best thing that can be said about it. It works
| just as well as Chrome for all of my use cases and it isn't run
| by Google.
| rnmkr wrote:
| [dead]
| nunez wrote:
| The reasons why I continue to use Safari right now despite
| wanting to use Firefox really badly:
|
| 1. Apple Pay integration only works in Safari. 2. Firefox on iOS
| uses MobileWebKit underneath, which is basically just Safari with
| a mustache 3. Firefox on iOS is (was?) also buggy in weird ways,
| like tabs would close unexpectedly or pages would fail to load.
| 4. (Biggest reason) Firefox on iOS does not support extensions.
| Safari does.
| drita wrote:
| I love Firefox and use it as my main browser. I do sometimes see
| issues with JavaScript on some sites which I assume are the
| result of developers mainly testing on Chrome these days.
| tomrod wrote:
| Feels a bit PG submarine-ish, but I'll bite.
|
| Firefox took away a lot of accessibility options in a large
| August 2021 and broke my trust in them. Good that they brought
| back extension options in Android, as I read other comments, but
| taking away the text size render option killed me.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| but taking away the text size render option killed me.
|
| Maybe you're talking about something different but zooming text
| only is still there on the View -> Zoom menu for me in current
| Firefox.
| wolfium3 wrote:
| Wow... after some searching I eventually found out what PG
| is... Paul Graham (PG) wrote an essay titled "The Submarine".
| http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I use Firefox sort of begrudgingly. It's marginally less bad than
| the other options, but it's still an awful browser.
|
| I vehemently disagree with almost all of its design decisions,
| and with every new release they seem to stray even farther from
| sane UX.
|
| It has hamburger menus on desktop and a lot of weird space-saving
| design that makes no sense on a modern high resolution display.
| Buttons are small, have cryptic flat Linear B icons with no
| labels, and the menus are hard to navigate.
|
| It's also nearly impossible to disable all the tracking they do.
| Even if you do, they'll sometimes remotely change your settings,
| so there's no guarantee settings will stay the way you configured
| them. They love to talk about how privacy is important and keep
| building tools to disable other people's tracking, but their own
| data gathering is sacrosanct and must be retained at all costs.
|
| Overall Mozilla seems to wage an all-out war on user agency,
| constantly trying to take away configuration options, while
| pushing shit nobody wants like Pocket or their themes.
| slondr wrote:
| It's trivial to increase the UI button size in Firefox, though.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Really? How do you do that?
| swozey wrote:
| I can't open it right now but I'm pretty sure you right
| click anywhere around the bookmarks bar (NOT a bookmark)
| you get an option to customize the UI/bars and there's a
| checkbox for icon size
|
| Unless I'm completely mixing this up with Chrome but I
| don't see that here.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Nope, not getting any of that. If it ever existed, it's
| another casualty in the war on configurability. There's
| an option to add more space between the icons, but
| they're still as tiny as they ever were.
| moskimus wrote:
| It still exists. Customize Toolbar -> Density (bottom
| left). There are only 2 or 3 presets, but it is possible
| to slightly adjust the icon size. Just confirmed on
| 109.0.1.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Huh, I get two presets. And the density only changes the
| spacing between the buttons. They're still the same size.
| moskimus wrote:
| You may be right. I checked before replying, but I may
| have just been tricked by an optical illusion with the
| extra padding shifting everything.
|
| By default there are only 2 densities, but there used to
| also be a "Compact" option which was removed. I believe
| it is possible to still enable this, though it is
| officially unsupported at this point.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I appreciate the space saving. Not everyone has a 4K 30 inch
| display
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Why can't a browser exist that makes use of such a display
| though? Seems like every browser is targeting 121/2" monitors
| to the detriment of proper desktops.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I would not be shocked if 13" was, in fact, the modal
| display size.
|
| A _lot_ of people work off of laptops or even tablets.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Why is not possible to cater to the needs of more than
| one group of users?
|
| Windows 95 had the ability to change the size of its
| icons. Clearly it can be done.
| lostmsu wrote:
| You can scale the whole UI
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7wnf7y/is_there
| _an...
| micahdeath wrote:
| This also sounds like Chrome and Edge.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| I think part of the problem is that if all they're doing with
| their browser is to emulate Chrome, they'll never be more
| than a Chrome clone.
| starik36 wrote:
| > Buttons are small...
|
| I don't understand this criticism. How often do you actually
| have to use those buttons? At best, once in a long while. So
| given that, why not make the buttons unobtrusive.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If the buttons are small, they are harder to click. It's also
| harder to understand what they do, which is important when
| they have icons that are just cryptic monochrome squiggles.
|
| What's the merit in making the buttons unobtrusive? What are
| you going to do with all those saved pixels? There is no
| pixel shortage on desktop! That's a mobile design
| consideration.
|
| When the browser is covering a sixth of my screen it's
| already uncomfortably large. There is no reason to save
| hundreds of pixels when there are literally millions to
| spare.
| xigoi wrote:
| > There is no pixel shortage on desktop! That's a mobile
| design consideration.
|
| I'm using Firefox on half of my laptop's screen, so I'm
| glad the menus don't take up that much space.
| starik36 wrote:
| Given this line of thought, why doesn't Firefox put every
| single icon from the menu on the toolbar. Since there is so
| much space. My argument is that since those buttons are
| rarely used, they should be unobtrusive.
|
| Looking at my toolbar now, I really don't think they are
| that small. Just the right size.
| https://i.imgur.com/wyM9c2k.png
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well if you make something hard to access, of course it
| won't be used very often.
|
| The buttons are pretty tiny within the context of the
| entire screen: https://imgur.com/BGKsaeD
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| >My argument is that since those buttons are rarely used,
| they should be unobtrusive.
|
| Why the half measure? If they are rarely used remove
| them. If they are used enough to leave them on the UI
| make them big enough and labeled well enough that I don't
| need a decoder ring and magnifying glass. Making them
| small and unintelligible is probably the best way to make
| them rarely used.
| rrishi wrote:
| Curious to know the set of extensions you've got there
| starik36 wrote:
| In order of buttons:
|
| Downloads (not an extension)
|
| Firefox Account (not an extension - I really should hide
| it) uBlockOrigin
|
| Honey (basically coupons)
|
| PushBullet (I use this occasionally to move links or
| images between the PC and iPhone. Should probably get rid
| of it since Firefox now supports functionality natively).
|
| Multi-Account containers
|
| Translate this page
| thesimp wrote:
| Your toolbar is a nightmare for people that may have some
| eyesight problems or are not expert FPS shooters in the
| latest triple A game and miss some mouse dexterity.
|
| What I'm trying to say is that a large surface is good
| for muscle memory. And I have a lot of pixels to play
| with, 4k screens are cheap. Of-course programs have to
| scale between small and (very) big screens, but making
| everything very small by default is not the way to go.
| 3np wrote:
| Some of those things are sorted out easily with Librewolf
| (patched Firefox) and Arkenfox (drop-in user.js configuration).
|
| Both are easy and encouraged to customize but also work fine
| out of the box.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| You can change every aspect of the chrome yourself if you want.
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment. To address privacy concerns I
| decided to use a privacy-oriented fork: LibreWolf -
| https://librewolf.net/. I use it as a daily driver for all my
| use cases and it works like a charm (inc extensions).
|
| It is frustrating that Mozilla/firefox position themselves as
| user friendly and privacy-focused but they don't walk the talk.
| It's all marketing lies so my sympathy for the org is on an
| all-time low.
| rft wrote:
| As a long time FF user my opinion of it took quite a hit
| recently. I wanted to hack together a small personal extension,
| likely outside the scope of what Tampermonkey can do easily. I
| was really shocked by the mandatory signature enforcement. You
| need to get your extension signed by Mozilla with no way to
| disable it in the standard FF, the about:config setting does
| nothing (see [1]). Your temporary extension will also be
| deleted on browser restart. Sure, I can use the developer
| edition, but why? I am not a web developer. I get Mozilla's
| arguments about user security, but isn't an about:config tweak
| obscure enough? It already shows you plenty warning when you
| open it.
|
| Looking at the mentioned LibreWolf, the changes reminded me of
| my time using ungoogled Chromium. I left that path, because it
| seemed like an uphill battle to keep up with upstream changes
| in the long term. Also you potentially risk using a somewhat
| outdated browser until all changes are ported to the new
| version. I was also not a fan of giving Chromium browsers
| additional market share.
|
| For me switching to FF was primarily about using a browser
| supporting user choice and privacy, not for its UX or anything
| else. However Mozilla is losing my trust in this regard. Opt-
| out telemetry/tracking/whatever you want to call it and user
| experiments as well as reducing user choice with forced
| signatures by a central party, this sounds counter to why I
| switched in the first place. I hate that I have to go into
| settings after installing it to disable "features", it is not
| Windows...
|
| [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-on-signing-in-
| firef... (I am also a bit surprised I had to strip an utm key
| from this URL...)
| pja wrote:
| Usually you find that the reason these barriers exist is
| because people were abusing the previous system.
|
| There are (sadly) plenty of people out there who will install
| a browser extension & tweak an about:config setting if you
| set up the right incentives to get them to look past the
| warnings.
|
| The price of protecting these people from those that would
| take advantage of them is developers having to download a
| different version of the browser in order to develop their
| extensions.
| oauea wrote:
| When you dig deeper, you will indeed find that the public
| reason for these kind of restrictions is "to keep the user
| safe".
|
| They claim to be worried about malware installing their own
| extensions, so they lock everything down. As if that same
| malware wouldn't just patch the firefox binary to allow
| loading unsigned extensions.
|
| It's ridiculous and obviously meant as a first step towards
| a walled garden. It's very unfortunate that firefox
| followed google in this.
| blendergeek wrote:
| > It's ridiculous and obviously meant as a first step
| towards a walled garden. It's very unfortunate that
| firefox followed google in this.
|
| Check out Firefox for Android. It has a Walled Garden of
| extensions. There is a list of about 20 whitelisted
| extensions. All others are (falsely) claimed to be
| "incompatible".
| rft wrote:
| > Usually you find that the reason these barriers exist is
| because people were abusing the previous system.
|
| I absolutely get this argument and this is also what I got
| from the Mozilla docs. For me the decision for user safety
| moved too far away from user freedom. I get that this is a
| tradeoff, I am not happy with the outcome personally. I
| have no perfect solution to this problem either, I just
| find the current state runs counter to what I personally
| would expect.
|
| I see a sliding scale from Apple walled garden to Windows
| XP wild west. I think I am more on the XP side than the
| Apple side, so my view likely clashes with what Mozilla has
| in mind.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Usually you find that the reason these barriers exist is
| because people were abusing the previous system.
|
| Why be vague? Point out some people who were abusing the
| previous system who couldn't abuse it now.
| alex7734 wrote:
| > The price of protecting these people from those that
| would take advantage of them is developers having to
| download a different version of the browser in order to
| develop their extensions.
|
| So what stops these people from downloading a developer
| version of the browser themselves?
|
| You cannot protect people from themselves. The only cure
| for idiocy is death after all.
| altairprime wrote:
| Telemetry is not synonymous with tracking. You can implement
| telemetry while not tracking users. You can track users without
| telemetry.
|
| There is a lot of _telemetry_ , but there doesn't seem to be
| any tracking.
| freedude wrote:
| "Telemetry is not synonymous with tracking. You can implement
| telemetry while not tracking users. You can track users
| without telemetry."
|
| Yes, it is. If you have the ability to track, then tracking
| is done. It is the nature of risk management.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| What's the difference here? There's a unique client ID
| included in the report, so that means statistics can be
| tracked at the individual level.
|
| In theory you can have telemetry without tracking but I'm
| pretty sure nobody does it anymore.
| altairprime wrote:
| Telemetry analysis doesn't care who you are, and makes no
| effort to find out, even if it's plausible that one could
| find out of effort was taken to do so.
|
| Tracking analysis does care who you are, and makes every
| effort to find out, whether to sell marketing to you or to
| sell your data to others.
|
| It isn't necessary to deanonymize telemetry to make use of
| it, and it's quite costly to do so (both in PII storage
| duties to GDPR et al. and in enrichment terms), so tracking
| _isn't_ knowingly done by default by lots of telemetry
| implementers (for example, Homebrew).
|
| Note that telemetry implemented using Facebook clearly
| _does_ end up with Facebook trying to track you in order to
| sell you ads and sell your data; implementation decisions
| are critically relevant when it comes to collecting
| telemetry, in order to not accidentally cause tracking.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't want my applications to dial home and tell Mozilla
| what I'm doing with them. Doesn't matter what you call it.
| altairprime wrote:
| It does. "I don't want telemetry" and "I don't want
| tracking" are two overlapping sets of people. Whether or
| not you care about the distinction, others do.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It doesn't. You're replying to marginalia_nu, who has
| just clarified their position after you made a point.
| You're not replying to all those hypothetical people who
| haven't made a peep.
| nfriedly wrote:
| If you use Android, Firefox on Android is also really nice
| because it can sync with your desktop and also has about a dozen
| extensions (ublock origin, dark reader, etc.)[1].
|
| And then Iceraven[2] is even better, because it's just Firefox
| for Android, but with several hundred extensions enabled and a
| few other annoyances fixed.
|
| (A few years ago _all_ extensions were enabled on Firefox on
| Android, but a few didn 't work so they decided to limit it to a
| very short list of allowed ones. And then they let that list
| stagnate for years. Kind of a dick move IMO.)
|
| If you use iOS, then "Firefox" is really just a skin on Safari,
| so no extensions (this is entirely Apple's fault), but the sync
| features work, so that's something if you use Windows or Linux.
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/android/search/?promoted=re...
|
| [2]: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
| Snuupy wrote:
| fyi you can create a custom list of addons and tell iceraven to
| use that custom list, so all extensions can be installed (but
| are not guaranteed to work) on iceraven now.
| commoner wrote:
| > (A few years ago all extensions were enabled on Firefox on
| Android, but a few didn't work so they decided to limit it to a
| very short list of allowed ones. And then they let that list
| stagnate for years. Kind of a dick move IMO.)
|
| After years of negative user feedback, Mozilla finally enabled
| custom add-on collections in Firefox Beta for Android last
| October, which allows any add-on from addons.mozilla.org to be
| installed again. (Firefox Nightly for Android recieved this
| option in 2020, but the nightly channel was not stable enough
| for my daily use.)
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-n...
|
| Last December, Mozilla announced their intent to fully support
| WebExtensions on Android with work starting this year.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/12/15/new-extensions-av...
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yeah, I almost wish there _weren 't_ workarounds, because
| then I feel like there'd be more pressure on Mozilla to
| reverse course and re-enable addons in the normal release.
| cronix wrote:
| I love firefox except for a fairly recent feature adopted by
| chrome, which is the ability to update usb device firmware
| through a web browser via the Web Serial API. I do a lot of ESP32
| stuff and it's so much nicer to be able to go to a webpage and
| just install the firmware directly rather than having to actually
| configure and compile it from scratch in vscode/platformio.
|
| For instance, if you want to install WLED, just go to
| https://install.wled.me, select the version, select the usb port
| your device is connected to and "install." Bam, done.
|
| Firefox team views it as insecure:
| https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336
| Mizza wrote:
| "BypassPaywallsClean" is a must-have extension for the modern
| internet.
|
| Does anybody else use multiple browsers? Maybe it's just because
| I'm doing web-dev right now, but I think using as many browsers
| as possible is necessary as I find inconsistencies that could
| become bugs all the time. I use Firefox as my "main" and Chrome
| as my "alt".
| contravariant wrote:
| I use chrome as a backup. Though initially I only did this to
| support some legacy software that only worked through Flash
| (don't ask), so if I'm forced to use Chrome I get the distinct
| impression that I'm looking at a buggy/legacy/badly written
| webpage.
| veganjay wrote:
| What's the difference between "BypassPaywallsClean" and
| "BypassPaywalls"?
|
| - Related HN thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22482329
|
| - Reddit thread:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/pwtafe/bypass_payw...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Does anybody else use multiple browsers?_ "
|
| Yes, now everything is in a browser there aren't different
| programs visible on the taskbar so I make do with different
| browsers for different tasks. It's not because I love browsers,
| it's a bodge for the decline of good dedicated desktop GUI
| programs.
| catfishx wrote:
| I have to use Chromium for MS teams unfortunately (calls and
| screen sharing are not allowed on FF)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| IIRC the thing that turned me away from Firefox most recently was
| the "Pocket" spam on the front page. I vaguely recall that you
| couldn't customize it, and the content that was pushed had a
| strong ideological bent that I just didn't want to have to deal
| with every time I opened my browser. I might be misremembering
| some of the details; it's been a few years.
|
| I tried Safari, Brave, etc as well but they all had usability
| issues in one form or another. I didn't really want to settle
| with Chrome, but it has been the least grating for me personally.
| krackers wrote:
| Firefox feels really visually noisy, almost to the point of
| spaminess on a fresh intall. Out of the box you have a
| gazillion ads everywhere on the new tab page, below that some
| "firefox tips" advertising sync, pocket shoved into the
| toolbar, when you go to the url bar it flies outward, inside
| the url bar there are buttons for various search engines, and
| there's a persitent "tab pickup" option that fools you into
| thinking you have a tab open when you're not. (Not to mention
| recently they removed tab distinction entirely).
|
| And to top it off it's a nightmare to even figure out how to do
| something basic like install your own extensions straight from
| a folder. Apparently if you download developer mode you can at
| least load unsigned packed extensions, but I don't want to do
| that, I just want to load it from a folder like the "load
| temporary development add-on" mode except permanent.
|
| Not to mention they don't even support something basic like
| reconfiguring keybindings without editing some obscure omni.ja
| file.
|
| Firefox forks might be better, but right now Firefox doesn't
| feel like it's really targeting anyone. I bet the average
| person would look at chrome compared to firefox and say the
| former feels "cleaner" and easier to use because it quite
| frankly is. On the flipside Firefox feels quite hostile to the
| power-user, and every update makes it feel like you're fighting
| the browser. At that point it's far less effort to use an
| ungogled chromium fork. At least despite their terrible
| decisions regarding manifest v3 they still allow you to load
| your own extensions with a simple checkbox.
| gbil wrote:
| Time for my rant as a Firefox user since the beta Phoenix
| versions, stating that I'm a daily MacOS and Android tablet user
|
| * Firefox uses much more battery on MacOS than any chromium based
| browser. Bugzilla ticket exists since ages, few things have
| change
|
| * Firefox on Android tablet after the change to Fenix is a
| stretched phone browser, with no tabs support, no default desktop
| support. Firefox developers treat this as a ER instead of bug
| totally ignoring that it was there before and they dropped it, no
| development whatsoever
|
| At the same time, Firefox history sync is like no other but
| balancing what I care for the most, I had to drop firefox after
| literally decades and every now and then I look if at least there
| is something on the tablet support, hoping that I'll be able to
| change back at some point
| dahfizz wrote:
| You consider it a bug that you don't like the UI?
| gbil wrote:
| It is not if I like the UI or not, the UI after fenix on a
| tablet is just the phone UI and is a waste of space and
| functionality. Before Fenix you had a proper tablet UI with
| visible tabs like a desktop browser, utilizing the extra
| space properly, so this is a downgrade regardless of the
| "like" factor you mention. And missing a desktop mode is a
| huge omission.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > Firefox uses much more battery on MacOS than any chromium
| based browser.
|
| I really don't see that. Firefox with certain extensions is a
| battery hog but the browser itself is pretty lightweight on CPU
| for me.
| debug-desperado wrote:
| Not sure on MacOS memory usage (I stick with Safari and Edge on
| respective laptops for battery life reasons), but agreed 100%
| about Firefox on Android tablet. It's just awkward.
|
| They need to make the Android UI in general a closer match for
| the desktop and iOS (skinned Safari) browsers. For instance,
| note how buried things like "passwords" are in the Android
| menus compared to iOS and desktop browsers:
|
| Desktop: Menu->Passwords iOS: Menu->Passwords Android:
| Menu->Settings->Logins & Passwords->Saved logins
|
| It's almost like the Android team doesn't even use their own
| browser on other platforms, or there's no product lead to make
| things consistent.
| readingnews wrote:
| I use firefox a lot. When I have to build a PC / workstation for
| grad-students or labs, I install linux, and the distro I use has
| Firefox by default and no chrome installed. The number one
| complaint / request I receive when I build a PC / workstation for
| the grad-students after they get it? Can you please install
| Chrome?
|
| When I ask them... they have not even tried Firefox. Chrome is
| all they know, and therefore they do not want to even look at
| Firefox. As a longtime user of Firefox, I find it odd. I suppose
| if you put me on a new box, with Chrome as the only browser that
| came up, I guess I would ask you to install Firefox :)
| pwg wrote:
| > The number one complaint / request I receive when I build a
| PC / workstation for the grad-students after they get it? Can
| you please install Chrome?
|
| Have you tried changing the desktop Firefox icon to be chrome's
| icon and naming it Chrome?
|
| This complaint sounds like the old meme from years back of not
| so internet savy folks who thought "the internet" was inside
| "the blue ball" (the old IE icon). I.e., these students only
| know "Chrome" and only look for the chrome icon. It would be
| interesting if they would complain if the icon matched their
| possible expectations.
| readingnews wrote:
| Ah, the old social behaviour experiment. I like it. I might
| change my image to reflect that.
| pwg wrote:
| If you give it a try, it would be interesting to learn the
| results.
| rrishi wrote:
| Reminds me of the meme that the only thing people search on
| Internet Explorer is "download Chrome".
|
| I hope some of them give FF a fair chance.
| rnmkr wrote:
| [dead]
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| Putting aside all politics, end of the day, despite all of
| Google's shortcomings - they actually got the UX of Google Chrome
| REALLY RIGHT.
|
| The tabs are awesome. The unified search bar is awesome. The top
| panel UX is really tight and compact and looks good at the same
| time. The ability to sweitch between profiles which I now use a
| lot (work/leisure) works great.
|
| ps: did I mention the smaller details like the immediate visual
| feedback you get when you use a search keyword? It's frigging
| awesome and one of the main reasons I abandoned Firefox and never
| looked back.
|
| I mean even if you disliked Google you can just use Chromium or
| some un-Googled version.
|
| Chrome is literally the BEST browser UX as far as mainstream is
| concerned. Obviously power users are always going to find issues
| with it. But as an attempt to provide a user friendly browser for
| the largest audience possible, it's simply excellent.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > The tabs are awesome.
|
| Not that special anymore.
|
| > The unified search bar is awesome.
|
| No, they're not. By design they're very leaky, they send your
| typed queries to the search engine that your browser is set to
| PLUS a few to Google for analytics. That includes every website
| you type the address into.
| Mathildebuxton wrote:
| [dead]
| winrid wrote:
| The FF JS engine is too slow. I like to check my Screeps account
| every now and then and even Chrome on my phone is faster than FF
| on my 2700x desktop.
|
| I just tried it last week. :/
| mathfailure wrote:
| Firefox WAS a good browser.
|
| Firefox has been a failure since their values shifted from
| developing an extensible browser for advanced users to protecting
| lgbtq+$^! rights.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Your Gmail/Google cookies are probably in a weird state with
| chrome. Clear the cache and all saved cookies (will log you out
| of every site fyi) and I bet it will load right up again.
|
| But all that said, yes, Firefox is very good. I wish it was a
| little more bleeding edge with stuff like experimental web
| standards (native filesystem access, USB, etc.) but I still use
| it for most of my browsing.
| rrishi wrote:
| > Your Gmail/Google cookies are probably in a weird state with
| chrome. Clear the cache and all saved cookies (will log you out
| of every site fyi) and I bet it will load right up again.
|
| That's definitely a likely candidate. I'll try that, thanks!
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| I feel it is the awesome browser since some years, already. With
| UBO, TSTabs and containers every other browser out there feels
| broken.
| jmartrican wrote:
| It doesn't support the webkit scrollbar variables.
|
| -webkit-scrollbar
|
| -webkit-scrollbar-track
|
| -webkit-scrollbar-thumb
| mejutoco wrote:
| To be fair, vendor prefixes are there while standards are
| adopted. I do not expect Chrome to support the -moz prefix
| either.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Vendor_Pre...
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| That's because Firefox is not based on webkit. Of course,
| nonstandard webkit extensions only work on webkit browsers.
| vehemenz wrote:
| So? Chrome doesn't support hyphenation yet.
| [deleted]
| matsemann wrote:
| Why would it..?
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yeah, because they are -webkit variables.
| jarbus wrote:
| Switched from FF to Brave, just because FF spins up my fans and
| uses far more battery than Brave on arch linux. Wish I could
| switch back.
| LoganDark wrote:
| And if you use it longer than 30 mins the memory leak will crash
| your computer. /s
|
| (this is my own experience, FWIW, but I understand not everyone
| has this.)
|
| -Emily
| reportgunner wrote:
| Works well on my machine(s), even the 2010 TP x201 that has a
| whopping 4GB RAM.
| LoganDark wrote:
| yes, our comment indeed said that not everyone has this
| problem
|
| -Emily
| tgv wrote:
| Right now? It's been like this for years.
| kurtprp wrote:
| I only use firefox, because people don't use it. I always choose
| the 3rd
| alganet wrote:
| I agree. Maybe not for the same reasons:
|
| FF has awesome privacy tools and extensions. I use it because I
| can configure it to be extremely pendantic about a lot of stuff.
|
| For example, my setup requires me to whitelist each and every JS
| external script I ran to. The NoScript extension provides me
| granularity to choose whether fetch requests are allowed, fonts
| are loaded, etc. It remembers my choices and provides a quick UI
| for making these decisions.
|
| For normal, non-paranoid users, I would recommend Chrome though.
| Not exactly because it is better, but because some pages will
| only work properly on it (due to lack of testing by the page
| authors, this is not FF fault)
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I'm using Edge because it's like Chrome but has the vertical tabs
| which is a killer feature for me
|
| Does Firefox have vertical tabs? If yes, I am switching
| jonaustin wrote:
| Firefox's killer feature is isolated Containers.
|
| Dealing with multiple AWS accounts would be awful without them.
| bartimus wrote:
| I wasn't happy when they moved the "Close tabs to the right" menu
| option into a submenu and then not have that configurable. It's
| an important feature for me. I now need to install an add-on to
| get the desired behavior. Which just seems a bit silly to me. For
| the rest it's wonderful.
| sshine wrote:
| I love Firefox, too.
|
| It is more customizable than Chrome.
|
| But it isn't fast. Especially not on iOS.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Firefox, as well as every other browser on iOS, is as fast as
| Safari since they are all required to use the same WebKit
| rendering engine. That is, at least with regards to website
| rendering.
| kanapala wrote:
| Can't use it on a Mac as it won't play ball with Keychain. Not
| going to reenter all my passwords.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I don't use Keychain as I have BitWarden but, AFAIK, the only
| browser able to connect to Keychain is Safari, isn't it ?
| pornel wrote:
| Sadly, Apple has just completely cut off 3rd parties from
| Keychain for website passwords (they can use the Keychain for
| their own isolated items, but can't touch any shared password
| data). All non-Safari browsers are affected.
|
| Firefox on iOS a loophole for this, because it's forced to use
| Safari's WebView, so it gets Safari's keychain, but it can also
| then prompt to save in its own password sync. Far from ideal,
| but at least a way to escape Apple lock-in.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I agree it's annoying, but it's also not that big of a deal. I
| have 200 or so passwords duplicated in both Keychain and
| Keepass.
| cloudking wrote:
| We had a case where Chrome was choking on really large Google
| Sheets when you tried to use filter views, it would freeze for
| 10-20 seconds. With Firefox there was no freezing, which is
| strange considering Sheets should be optimized for Chrome.
| k_ wrote:
| Funny timing for me to see this on HN today
|
| After some years of love/hate relationship with Vivaldi, I'm
| currently trying (once again...) to go back to Firefox after one
| too many chrome-based browsers fuck-up: opening Edge in a windows
| VM suddenly got my RAM usage up by 32GB, which were shared with
| my non-VM chrome-based browsers (chromium, vivaldi). First time
| just crashed my whole computer, second time I had to kill it all
| (the memory usage moved to chromium and then vivaldi when I
| closed the VM).
|
| Vivaldi performance issues (and some bugs) was already putting me
| on the edge very often, but I really like the features so
| switching is very hard and will take a lot of time getting used
| to. Mouse gestures, panels, integrated mail (took way too long to
| come), tab stacking/tiling, command palette, etc. Sure some of
| these have firefox extensions doing something similar but it's
| still far from being the same.
| frebord wrote:
| Recently started Vivaldi and it's pretty nice! I switched
| because it's the only decent browser that I can remove the
| address bar and use it only with a hot key. So far it seems
| fast enough and haven't run into bugs.
|
| It does have a ton of features that I'll never use that I wish
| were extensions or something
| k_ wrote:
| I'm experimenting with that right now on firefox with
| userChrome.css changes, and it's starting to work:
|
| /* Kinda unrelated, but I'm using this to go with Sidebery /
| Tree Style Tab */
|
| #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
|
| /* Hide the whole top bar */
|
| #nav-bar { position: fixed; top: -10vh;
| width: 100%; z-index: 1; height: 0; min-
| height: 0 !important;
|
| }
|
| #urlbar-container:focus-within, #search-container:focus-
| within { position: fixed; top: 15vh;
| left: 50%; background: #111; outline: 4px solid
| #f8b218; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 1em;
| transform: translateX(-50%); width: 40vw; border-
| radius: 4px;
|
| }
|
| Top bar stays hidden, but url bar / search bar appear when I
| press ctrl+l / ctrl+k. Likely need to tweak css to your
| likings, and you need to set
| toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true
| in about:config to enable userChrome.css (you can find
| various guides on that if needed)
| Vinnl wrote:
| > I'd be glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions
| that y'all might want to share.
|
| I'm sure others will be sharing it as I type this comment as
| well, but for many HN readers, Multi-Account Containers [1] are
| bound to be a godsend. Easily log in to different accounts for
| any website, in different tabs. Great feature that's not
| available in other browsers.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-
| conta...
| [deleted]
| Vinnl wrote:
| And some more tips:
|
| - Translate web pages locally, without sending any data to
| remote servers:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translation...
|
| - Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/
|
| - If you're in the EU:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/
|
| - If you use RSS:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feed-preview/
|
| And I assume you've already got uBlock Origin. And as others
| mentioned, try also using Firefox as your mobile browser, so
| you can send tabs from one to the other, which is pretty neat.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| This is one of those moments where I realize other folks on
| HN have almost _exactly_ the same Firefox setup as me. Nice
| list of add-on recommendations!
|
| I would add in a couple more, for anyone tempted to switch
| away from Chrome or Safari:
|
| - Redirector: https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Very
| helpful for redirecting "new" reddit to old.reddit.com, AMP
| links to normal links, Twitter to Nitter, etc.
|
| - RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite):
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-
| enhanc... Provides built-in image preview and lots of other
| subtle goodies for old.reddit.com. I have a very hard time
| browsing reddit without it!
|
| - Sponsorblock for Youtube: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ If you watch any amount of
| YouTube on channels with lots of sponsors, this is a great
| way to keep your sanity. Works just like sponsor skipping in
| the Overcast podcast client.
| rofrol wrote:
| nice, also these
|
| - https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-
| clea... -
| https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/android/addon/onetab/ -
| stylish - kill sticky
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Would you share your redirector redirections list?
|
| (Sorry for the lazyness :P)
| bmn__ wrote:
| Use libredirect instead, it comes with a prodigious
| amount of configured redirections.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641069
| abareplace wrote:
| Consent-o-matic does not work on most websites; you still
| have to click the consent banners manually. Try
| https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
| speed_spread wrote:
| > Translate web pages locally
|
| This is a good start for a but what I'm looking for is Local
| Full Text Search of every page in my history. It shouldn't be
| hard to automatically maintain a text index of the pages I've
| browsed so that I can search them by keyword without
| bookmarking everything. Maybe it's just me but chronological
| history is useless beyond a few days.
| bmn__ wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/falcon_extension/
|
| Why don't you just search the add-ons? This would have
| taken less time than to formulate your post.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I did, and never found this. Thanks.
|
| You could have just pasted the URL. When someone here
| asks a well-formulated question I assume they've done
| their research first.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >- Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/
|
| This is the biggest reason why Chrome sucks - they have no
| workable version of vertical tabs.
|
| Reasons why horizontal tabs are clearly inferior:
|
| 1. Screens (generally) have way more horizontal space than
| vertical and you read webpages vertically. I already have an
| OS top bar and a browser top bar taking some of this valuable
| vertical space.
|
| 2. Most webpages have predefined right and left margins, so
| vertical tabs don't take away from the visible space of the
| page.
|
| 3. The size of the tab header is critical for being able to
| read the name of the tab. I have my vertical tabs set to 30
| characters. If I had horizontal tabs with 30 characters, I
| could fit maybe 6 tabs on the screen at once.
|
| 4. Ease of having many more concurrently open tabs. I easily
| have 38 tabs open and visible without scrolling. 8 of those
| are pinned tabs which take up the space of one tab. I use 6
| different windows (which are category titled using the Titler
| extension). That is 228 tabs open at once and very easily
| accessible and readable. (of course I use Total Suspender to
| keep them from taking too many resources)
|
| All this said, Firefox still sucks because vertical should be
| the default or at least a simple toggle. As it is, you have
| to trust some extension and then you have to jump through
| obnoxious hoops just to get the damn horizontal tabs turned
| off. And yes, there are some other browsers that have
| vertical tabs built in, but I am not touching Edge or Opera
| as they are from dubious companies. I also think that Brave
| is working on it, but they seem dubious as well.
|
| Now to my complaints about Sidebery (which is superior to
| Tree Style Tabs). Sidebery has tree style as well, but I turn
| it off as it undermines the value of #3 above. It has panels,
| which are goofy and, while you don't have to use them, you
| still lose a tab worth of space for it. You also lose an even
| larger tab space to the Sidebery title (which is a menu and
| an X that aren't necessary. Sidebery doesn't work well with
| the Titler extension - when you want to move a tab to another
| window, it doesn't show you the title.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| In addition:
|
| - SponsorBlock - Automatically tag and skip portions of
| youtube videos, such as sponsors, intros, recaps, and others.
| - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
|
| - Firefox Relay - Automatically create up to 5 (for free,
| more if paying for it) email addresses that redirect to your
| actual address, to avoid giving your private address to
| everyone. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/private-relay...
| rrishi wrote:
| Those are some really interesting extensions you've
| suggested.
|
| I'll be sure to keep Relay in the back of my mind, I
| haven't had need of it yet.
|
| Though I do have requirement for SponsorBlock avid watcher
| of YT that I am, I am a little hesitant to add SponsorBlock
| as I am not quite sure how it would work flawlessly without
| some really complicated algorithms potentially involving ML
| work. I am curious to know if in your experience it has
| ever erred and automatically skipped portions it wasn't
| supposed to ? Or any other type of errors ?
| godshatter wrote:
| It's crowdsourced. The downside to that is that less
| popular videos may not have the sponsor information
| skipped, although you do have the ability to post start
| and end timestamps for videos that don't have it in place
| yet.
| setuids wrote:
| From my understanding SponsorBlock doesn't use any ML
| stuff, but is simply a database that allows other users
| to submit what they think is a sponsor (or other
| annoyance). I've found it to sometimes not get all
| sponsors (especially for more niche videos), and the
| self-promotion sections are usually too agressive (but
| they can be disabled). I'd say give it a go honestly
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Yeah, the word "automatically" does a lot of heavy
| lifting there. But like others said, it's crowsourced.
| You watch a video, tag it, done. There's some anti abuse
| tools, like tags done by new users being served not all
| the time and tested by other users before it's trusted.
|
| I have never seen bad section tagging over the past two
| years.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Ha, thanks for sharing Firefox Relay - I actually work on
| that, so I was a bit hesitant about sharing it. I'll add
| that "paying for it" is EUR1 a month for unlimited email
| addresses.
| 3np wrote:
| Not a paying customer but if there was a way to sign up
| and pay anonymously (crypto and/or cash via mail), I'd be
| banging on the door even at a significant markup.
| xp84 wrote:
| Is something like privacy dot com (virtual card numbers)
| not anonymous enough? I kinda don't wanna know what
| you're doing with these email addresses
| lostoldsession wrote:
| There are a lot of people who just want privacy wherever
| they can get it. It's not necessarily something
| nefarious, but the result of the question "Does this
| person need to know who I am? No. Therefore there is
| nothing to gain and only something to lose by telling
| them."
| zedadex wrote:
| For me it's more like "Do I want to waste time dredging
| this info back up in case they ever get breached", to
| which the answer is almost always "No".
| culi wrote:
| feed preview seemed to break my browser since I have a ton of
| tabs open all the time. Not sure why the extension causes
| this, but just a head's up
|
| Firefox has a really great json viewer that I prefer even
| over my IDE, but it's one weakness is it's lack of XML
| support which Chrome does have :/
| SanchoPanda wrote:
| Feed-preview is so helpful, thank you!
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I love tree style tabs and I really want to encourage people
| to set it up and really customize their user stylesheet to
| make the best use of it. I have removed all traces of the
| original tab bar at the top and the three primary window
| buttons (close, restore, minimize) giving me back lots of
| that precious vertical space. Their GitHub has a ton of CSS
| snippets to help you with customization. I'd also be happy to
| share my user CSS file.
| dedsm wrote:
| Multi account containers + Temporary Containers [1] + I don't
| care about cookies [2] are an awesome combination I use, I have
| ~10 fixed containers and for almost everything it's a new
| container that lives as long as the tab is open.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
| con... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
| nashashmi wrote:
| Hate to be a black cloud, but as much as I love containers, my
| containers and their settings often disappeared. I can no
| longer remember exactly why. it may be if i disabled containers
| and then re-enabled them. (Containers may be a source of
| glitches so disabling is to help with troubleshooting.)
|
| getpocket.com needs to be logged in via container 0. if you put
| getpocket to a personal container, and don't login to getpocket
| from container 0, then firefox's save to pocket feature does
| not work.
|
| i cannot save bookmarks to automatically open in set containers
| (personal gmail to open in one container, work gmail to open in
| another container, etc.).
|
| Otherwise, containers is something i miss and i have used
| workarounds to implement the same with MS Edge.
| overtomanu wrote:
| instead of bookmarking if are fine using another extension,
| then use "Session Boss" to save and restore sessions
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Why not start firefox with the -P flag for troubleshooting?
| And keep your default Profile using containers.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Not sure what the flag does but your context tells me
| another profile without my extensions is established. The
| problem is I am trying to figure out which extension is
| causing the problem. So enabling and disabling each one is
| supposed to be a procedure.
|
| Regardless, enabling/disabling should not cause losing
| settings.
| alexelcu wrote:
| You're right, but for a counter-point versus Chromium, multi-
| account containers are worse for security compared with
| profiles...
|
| This matters when you can't 100% trust your browser session, or
| the installed extensions. Did you ever load
| https://my.1password.com in your browser? How do you feel about
| it? Do you trust your installed extensions to not take a peak?
| I don't.
|
| Chrome solves this elegantly via profiles. Even more, you can
| install websites as "apps", with a shortcut that gets indexed
| by the OS, and Chrome remembers the profile. I simply type
| "1Password Online" or "Banking" and my Chromium opens a new
| window in my "Private" profile that has no extensions
| installed. Firefox dropped the ball on both PWA shortcuts, and
| on profiles.
|
| Even for using multiple accounts, I feel like Chromium profiles
| are a better solution.
|
| For example, my workplace has very strict security
| requirements, and when looking at company documents it's not
| cool to provide access to extensions like LanguageTool or
| Grammarly. I'd be in trouble. And Chromium always had finer
| grained permissions for extensions, like activating or
| deactivating them per website.
| II2II wrote:
| Wouldn't Firefox's profiles accomplish the same thing? (Yes,
| I understand they are difficult to access but they are still
| there.)
|
| That said, containers are a handy tool for people who want to
| access multiple accounts without the trouble of setting up
| individual profiles. Keep in mind, if you're only trying to
| access a personal and work Google account you probably don't
| want to spend time setting up a separate profile for each
| then keeping the settings synchronized.
| alexelcu wrote:
| Yes, but Firefox's profiles are very hard to use (apart
| from keeping multiple Firefox channels installed, e.g.,
| stable, beta), I tried, and I couldn't.
|
| Starting a profile is difficult, and also switching between
| windows, since the OS sees profiles as different apps. It's
| probably not hard to fix, but Mozilla has had other
| priorities.
| godshatter wrote:
| Just open about:profiles. You can create new ones, remove
| old ones, set which one is the default and can open them
| in a new browser. I use this all the time to open a
| browser as a new SSO functional user without having to
| log out.
|
| I don't know why they don't add this somewhere in the
| menus and I don't know why you can't bookmark
| about:profiles, but this works well for me as it is.
| commoner wrote:
| Try Profile Switcher for Firefox, which provides a
| Chrome-like interface for managing and switching between
| profiles in Firefox.
|
| Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
|
| Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-
| switcher
| r1cka wrote:
| My problem is opening links from apps. Sometimes I want a
| link in Slack (or other desktop apps) to open in my
| personal profile and sometimes I want it to use my work
| profile. With Brave/Chrome, the link will open in
| whatever profile window is active. I can't find a way to
| make this work with Firefox.
| space_debris wrote:
| I never understood the concept of Multi-Account Containers. I
| would guess it makes sense when one hardly closes the browser
| (and clears the cache) and has dozens of tabs open? What is a
| standard use case (home/work)?
|
| I simply use Temporary Containers to isolate tabs (or different
| domains) and login to websites either by hand or via
| KeepassXC's browser integration. No per-container setup needed,
| every tab just lives briefly in its own little container.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I wrote about my favorites here [1]. I make an active effort to
| sculpt my online experience into something useful rather than
| intellectually draining; every time I fire up an unconfigured
| browser instance on a new machine I'm taken aback at how much I
| lean on various extensions and configurations to make the web
| usable.
|
| [1] https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-
| produ...
| rrishi wrote:
| Oh that's definitely a use case that had arisen in my workflow.
| I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks!
| kirimita wrote:
| I'd love to be able to enable DRM for a single container. Until
| then, I have to continue with profiles.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Holy crap thank you!
|
| I have to log into multiple Microsoft365 tenants and it drove
| me crazy with the amount of signing OUT I needed to do when
| switching accounts, to the point where my crappy workaround was
| to use different browsers for each account (Chrome, Firefox,
| Edge, Opera, Brave, etc) but I started to run out of different
| browsers.
|
| This multi-account container extension is a godsend
| nashashmi wrote:
| Use profiles to separate work for each tenant, whether you
| use firefox or chrome. Firefox supports multiple profiles
| too! Chrome supports multiple profiles. And launching
| chrome/firefox with certain profiles requires setting up
| shortcuts with --flags. So you can have one browser shortcut
| for one tenant and another shortcut for another tenant.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| simple tab groups + Firefox counters are far superior that
| using different profiles
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| Chrome supports multiple user profiles. I assume Edge and
| Brave do too.
| djbusby wrote:
| Or you can start them pointing to a completely different
| user-profile-directory.
|
| I do that, no chance for one to leak into the others.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| Or you can just use FF containers - which is 99% less
| work.
| djbusby wrote:
| Yea, but those came about after I'd built the wrapper for
| quickly launching different profiles of either Chrome or
| FF.
|
| FF containers are more work than the 2 clicks I do now,
| powered by some Python I wrote like 15 years ago (with
| minor maintenance).
| overtomanu wrote:
| you still have to switch through browser windows right?
| with containers it is just a tab click and you can put
| related tabs for a particular topic in a single window
| briffle wrote:
| that works to some of the same things firefox can do, but
| you can also tell firefox to "Always open this site in my
| banking container" and the next time you load it up, from
| any container, it will switch it the one you prefer. Also,
| I really love having amazon and facebook on their own
| containers, to cut down on all the weird advertising stuff
| I see..
| godshatter wrote:
| You can also make new profiles on about:profiles and open a
| browser as another user without destroying SSO for your
| current user. I'm assuming Chrome has something similar, but
| I've never installed it so I don't know.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Caveat: there is still no first-party support for resetting the
| cache or the cookies in a per-container fashion.
| https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...
| jdlshore wrote:
| Cookie AutoDelete is my go-to for deleting cookies.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| One thing I haven't figured out with container tabs: say I'm
| currently in one of the container tabs and I want cmd + T to
| open a new container tab. This doesn't work by default,
| AFAICT...instead it opens a regular non-container tab. How can
| I make it so that I get a new tab for the same container I'm
| currently on. Right now, I have to either go to File > new
| container tab or right-click the tab and click "new tab"..but I
| don't like using the mouse.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Control + Shift + a number key should open a tab in a
| specific container. You can map containers to specific number
| keys in the addon settings.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Oh awesome, thank you!
| erainey wrote:
| cmd + shift + <number>
|
| You can configure 10 different tabs in extensions settings
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I can't imagine browsing the web without MAC and Temporary
| Containers. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
|
| It's sort of like everything opens in a private browsing
| window, except the stuff I've whitelisted.
| waz0wski wrote:
| One more extension related to container management -
| https://github.com/kintesh/containerise
|
| This lets you set regex/wildcard to contain subdomain or
| redirect happy sites into a single container
| makingstuffs wrote:
| Personally I find the most useful part of FF to be the events
| inspector in the console. More often than not I use it solely for
| that purpose.
| blacklight wrote:
| This post feels a bit like fanboy without much data backing, but
| I think the OP could have mentioned a big win of FF over
| Chromium-based browsers: support for Manifest V2.
|
| As an extension developer who makes heavy use of HTTP requests
| and header sniffing, I feel like V3 literally put me in a cage
| carefully crafted by Google (and their explicit hatred for ad-
| blockers, no matter if making life difficult to uBlock developers
| eventually makes life hard for all other developers too).
|
| I feel like V3 is a grave mistake that eventually will make
| Chromium-based browsers less flexible. No matter if Brave
| announced that they'll keep supporting V2 extensions: they don't
| have their own store, they still rely on the Chrome store, and
| the Chrome store now only accepts V3 extensions.
|
| So FF announcing their continuous support for V2 is really a
| breeze of fresh air, and eventually it'll be (at least for me)
| their biggest selling point over Chromium.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I love Firefox too but this is a really weird post.
|
| The OP is clearly having performance issues with Chrome
| presumably due to extensions interfering or something else. I can
| guarantee you that Google makes sure Gmail loads at least as fast
| in Chrome as in Firefox.
|
| Chrome is customizable too (panes you can open/close), Chrome
| extensions are also thriving, and Chrome was the one who invented
| the "clean look", same as Firefox invented tabs.
|
| This post just feels like weird marketing. There's nothing
| actually substantive about it. It doesn't feel like it belongs on
| HN.
| dewarrn1 wrote:
| In these discussions, I am always mindful that the two browsers
| have shared developer DNA (not to say code) from the inception
| of Google's offering: "Messrs. Brin and Page hired some Firefox
| developers who built a demonstration of Chrome. "It was so good
| that it essentially forced me to change my mind," Mr. Schmidt
| said..." [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200805000248/https://blogs.wsj...
| glandium wrote:
| You can add Safari to the mix: Dave Hyatt (ex-
| Netscape/Mozilla) was part of the team at Apple that created
| Safari.
| awb wrote:
| It might be the excitement from the novelty:
|
| > Some really cool observations in first 30 mins of using it
| bbor wrote:
| I think it's just some uncritical excitement. Given the typical
| discourse on our browser options, I thought it was nice :)
| perhaps not academic or technical, but relatable.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| Good think with firefox is if an extension slow down a page,
| it'll tell you which extension to blame. I was having an issue
| with a page with a huge form loading super slow (10 minutes!)
| in chrome until I tried loading it on firefox and it told me
| that lastpass was the culprit.
| jjraden wrote:
| I hope you've dumped Lastpass and changed all your passwords
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/lastpass-
| cus...
| drdec wrote:
| There is also "about:performance" which will tell you
| resource use by page.
| makapuf wrote:
| > Same as Firefox invented tabs
|
| I think opera did
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
| mr_sturd wrote:
| > Chrome was the one who invented the "clean look"
|
| Ironic naming given their aim was to get rid of as much chrome
| as possible.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _It doesn 't feel like it belongs on HN._
|
| A discussion about the state of two modern web browsers doesn't
| belong on HN? Why not? There are 300 comments in a couple
| hours.
|
| > _This post just feels like weird marketing._
|
| Come on. Direct links to Apples new product announcements
| aren't?
|
| No need to police the articles, just skip over them.
| bmn__ wrote:
| Yes, I also felt similarly. I guess OP has this overwhelmingly
| positive opinion and is so easily impressed because his bar of
| acceptance is so low.
| ccouzens wrote:
| > I can guarantee you that Google makes sure Gmail loads at
| least as fast in Chrome as in Firefox.
|
| Why? I can imagine them working hard to make sure that Gmail
| loads fast in Chrome. The Gmail team probably suggests changes
| to the Chrome team and vice versa.
|
| So long as Gmail is fast in Chrome, I can't imagine Google
| would be all that upset about Firefox or any other browser
| loading it faster. At most it would be an indicator that they
| need to make changes to stay competitive.
| agluszak wrote:
| > Chrome extensions are also thriving
|
| Yeah, especially with Manifest v3 :)
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...
| charcircuit wrote:
| Which ironically could have solved the network performance
| problems that the OP is experiencing.
| alexelcu wrote:
| Mv3 blocking has some advantages, and may be enough for most
| people, currently, at least until things escalate. Mv3's
| blocking capabilities are similar with Safari's, and have the
| advantage of performance and security.
|
| You can see it for yourself by trying uBO Lite:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-
| lite...
|
| This extension is Mv3 compliant and decent enough. It blocks
| Google's trackers and ads, it blocks YouTube ads.
|
| Also, keep in mind that other Chromium browsers have ad-
| blocking built-in, e.g., Brave and Vivaldi.
|
| And Google's problem will be that all of Chrome's competition
| will have better adblocking as a selling point (except for
| Edge). So they can't keep Mv3 functionality too ineffective.
| tapoxi wrote:
| This post is over a year old. Requiring Manifest v3 has been
| indefinitely postponed. There are arguments for using
| Firefox, but if people keep crying wolf about Manifest v3
| before it hits and has a negative impact, especially over
| such a long timespan, it loses its impact.
| frx wrote:
| > Requiring Manifest v3 has been indefinitely postponed.
|
| From docs [1]: "As of January 17, 2022 the Chrome Web Store
| has stopped accepting new Manifest V2 extensions."
|
| [1]:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/
| BarryMilo wrote:
| "Mandatory beatings have been indefinitely postponed"
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| I have seen this phrase in several places, but cannot
| find the origin of the phrase. Where is it from?
| monetus wrote:
| I thought it was an upside down version of "the beatings
| will continue until morale improves."
| trarmp wrote:
| It could well be a riff on the more famous, "The beatings
| will continue until morale improves"
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Yeah, there was some blowback to make the big G reconsider,
| but don't you worry. I'm sure they're cooking up something
| similarly nefarious to accomplish their goal.
|
| Google is the world's biggest ad company. Sufficiently few
| people use ad blocking that I don't think it's an
| existential threat, but as long as the shareholders demand
| infinite growth, getting rid of ad blocking will be
| seductive to Google.
| freedude wrote:
| I feel like they lost me when they got rid of "Don't be
| Evil" as their motto. I realized their slide down the
| slippery slope was well underway.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The goals of the advertising business model do
| not always correspond to providing quality search to
| users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page -
| The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search
| Engine
|
| Ditto for extensible browsers.
| thiht wrote:
| > Firefox invented tabs
|
| Wow, that's false. Firefox was NOT the first browser with tabs.
| From the top of my head, Opera had tabs before Firefox,
| confirmed by a quick Google search. And apparently Opera wasn't
| the first browser with tabs either, although it was probably
| the first browser with a significant market share with tabs.
|
| Also tabs were not _invented_ by any browser, other programs
| used to have tabs before it was integrated into browsers.
| hjkl0 wrote:
| I have a feeling it was either omniweb or icab. But I'm
| probably wrong. And anyway, tabs existed in other
| applications before browsers adopted, rather than invented,
| them. Right?
| aliqot wrote:
| simplebrowser had them before opera
| OrbiterToad wrote:
| dont know what kind of googling prodigies you are, but I
| googled 'first browser with tabs' and it says the
| InternetWorks Browser was the first
| runnerup wrote:
| They're not googling. Google is useful but sometimes has
| incorrect answers. The truth is we probably won't know
| the true first browser with tabs. It could have been
| before the one you found.
|
| These people are saying "I personally used browser Z with
| tabs before your example Browser A was even released". If
| enough people continue the chain, we'll get to "the
| oldest tabbed browser that anyone on HN remembers using".
|
| The nice thing about these anecdotes is that they can
| generally be validated quickly and easily. But your
| google result cannot be validated easily.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Related to this, the first browser I experienced with
| tabs was a custom VB3 wrapper around shdocvw.dll (IE)
| somewhere around early Windows 9x that I wrote myself.
| I'm not suggesting I invented tabbed browsing and
| certainly that VB project never influenced anyone else, I
| just find it a fun anecdote.
| aliqot wrote:
| you know, you're alright with me
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| Way to jump in with a quick retort, when GP already
| conceded that Opera wasn't the first browser with tabs. But
| it was arguably the first browser that popularized tabs.
|
| Besides, their point was refuting the "Firefox invented
| tabs" statement, which is valid.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| It's only a "retort" if you read it uncharitably, and
| there's no reason to do that.
| aliqot wrote:
| listen here poindexter if you're feelin froggy you can @
| me in the parking lot about it and we can nerd out
| darreninthenet wrote:
| I ran virtually the same extensions and set of open tabs when I
| tried Firefox and I have to say my (yes, anecdotal) experience
| was that FF loaded Gmail quicker than Chrome as well...
| [deleted]
| shaunsingh0207 wrote:
| Chrome also has objectively better performance
| (https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Chrome-109-Benchmarks),
| especially for 3D performance. I'm sure on modern machines both
| browsers are more than fast enough, but I'm not quite sure why
| everyone seems to think firefox is faster.
|
| On the other hand, I feel like the nyxt browser
| (https://nyxt.atlas.engineer) has a spot on HN, its very much
| like emacs in the sense everything is just Common Lisp you can
| redefine. Its definitely still considerably slower than chrome
| and firefox, webkit doesn't perform all too well.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| "objectively better performance" What are yon talking about?
| How many people browse the web on an i9 13900K with 32GB RAM?
| Try a 5 year old laptop with 4GB RAM and you'll see a
| completely different picture - Firefox is far better at
| managing limited memory.
|
| Also on Android (probably on iPhones as well) Chrome doesn't
| allow installation of ad-blockers - making it 10x slower than
| FF with uBlock Origin.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Chrome doesn't allow installation of ad-blockers
|
| That is not accurate. The Android version of Chrome does
| not support web extensions at all. It's not like Google has
| a switch somewhere that they can flip and make web
| extententions work. Supporting web extensions on Android
| would be a brand new feature and would need significant
| development time.
|
| Not even Firefox properly supports web extensions on
| Android. They tried, but then seemingly gave up and just
| whitelisted a select few extensions from developers they
| could trust not to abuse the security of it.
| rofrol wrote:
| I use 8 extensions on firefox nightly on Android. They
| work quite well.
| Zak wrote:
| You have to jump through a bunch of hoops to use them, to
| the point that only a handful of people do it, which
| decreases the motivation for anyone to put effort into
| supporting Firefox for Android in their extensions.
|
| It really seems to me like Firefox _wanted_ to prevent a
| healthy extension ecosystem on Android, but they have not
| been transparent about their reasoning.
| CountHackulus wrote:
| What hoops do I have to jump through to get some
| extensions on Chrome on Android?
| Zak wrote:
| Whataboutism isn't a particularly useful response.
| Firefox used to have thousands of supported extensions
| and allow users to install unsupported extensions. Now it
| doesn't, deliberately, and I would like them to reverse
| that decision. The fact that a more popular browser has a
| worse situation is irrelevant.
|
| You can run a fork of Chromium that supports most desktop
| Chrome extensions: Kiwi Browser. That's not so different
| from having to run an unstable build (nightly) or fork
| (Iceraven) of Firefox.
| Zak wrote:
| > _Supporting web extensions on Android would be a brand
| new feature and would need significant development time._
|
| Kiwi Browser, a Chromium fork for Android with a small
| development team manages to have extensions, and
| successfully runs almost all extensions for desktop
| Chrome.
|
| Google doesn't have extensions in Android Chrome because
| it doesn't want them. I'm not surprised; many popular
| extensions make Google's business model less profitable.
| Firefox also significantly crippled extensions in its
| Android version, and I'm more puzzled as to their
| motivations.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Did Google reject an effort to upstream this support? The
| priorities of a small browser trying to have unique
| features to offer people to use it are different from a
| large existing browser which isn't trying to attract new
| users, but are more focused on more impactful changes.
| Zak wrote:
| It appears they accepted changes to make it easier for
| third-party projects based on Chromium to enable
| extensions, implying they are actively choosing not to
| enable it on Chromium or Chrome.
|
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=107
| 471...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If I say your chevy doesn't allow you to travel the
| friendly skies in your car this covers both lacking wings
| and a lock on the throttle keeping you from achieving
| sufficient lift. They chose not to port that pre-existing
| feature from desktop chrome when they built mobile chrome
| and I think arguably for an ad company not supporting ad
| blockers is a feature.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Firefox did win in the small JavaScript benchmark they had,
| which covers 99% of the use case "websites that I'd willingly
| return to."
| gpvos wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that Opera invented tabs, not Firefox.
| oauea wrote:
| > Chrome is customizable too
|
| Not really. Got a link to a Tree Style Tab that properly
| renders itself in a chrome sidebar? Because that's still not
| possible.
| lol768 wrote:
| > There's nothing actually substantive about it. It doesn't
| feel like it belongs on HN.
|
| Most of the comments on every new Firefox release post are just
| as bad and have nothing to do with the actual release (folks
| whining about how their incredibly-niche use-case isn't
| supported anymore which breaks their workflow etc.), so in some
| ways it's nice to see something positive (which I would wager
| is more representative of the average user).
| Ygg2 wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1172/
| goose847 wrote:
| Wow there really is an xkcd for everything.
| Zecc wrote:
| You didn't know that one?
|
| You must be one of today's lucky 10000 [1].
| [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| It's xkcd's, all the way down.
| Elyra wrote:
| > It's xkcd's, all the way down.
|
| Forgot your link [1]
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/1416/
| chrsig wrote:
| It really is
|
| https://xkcd.com/1416/
| mrinterweb wrote:
| Yeah. The votes are just the normal FF fanclub, which I'm a
| card holding member of. This post seems a bit like karma
| farming to me.
| SilasX wrote:
| By coincidence, just this morning I had a panic because I
| tried to close FF by closing the only window (which is
| something I need to do periodically because memory usage will
| build up over time), and I thought I had lost the tabs
| because when I opened it back up, they were gone with no way
| to restore. Apparently the behavior had changed so that
| closing the last window no longer closes FF, but just that
| window a la Skype.
|
| (Fortunately I was able to figure out what was going on and
| restored the previous window.)
|
| Also, the automatic "check before exiting FF" got turned off
| somehow.
|
| So, yeah, lots of fun surprises to deal with.
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| I also suggest using Tab Session Manager. Sometimes I save
| a session and close everything and start working on a
| different project, but I know I can go back to my previous
| session and continue the previous project. I'm not afraid
| of losing any tabs because it also has an autosave.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Does it save each tab's back/forward history? AFAIK, the
| WebExtension API doesn't provide any robust mechanism to
| obtain it directly.
| entropie wrote:
| > and I thought I had lost the tabs because when I opened
| it back up, they were gone with no way to restor
|
| You know ```Ctrl+shift+t``` this opens the last closed tab
| and - at least in chrome - restores the previous
| environment after restart
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Firefox normal collection, automatic or triggered in
| about:memory, will reduce memory used by Firefox about the
| same as restarting firefox. The latter only SEEMS to reduce
| usage because it also unloads all tabs which are only
| reloaded when accessed. If you want to prove that to
| yourself compare a restart preserving tabs and manually
| trigger tab unloading in about:unloads
|
| If you are dealing with normal amounts of memory usage and
| you have less than 16GB you may consider upgrading RAM
| considering this is as little as $40-60 at this point and
| well worth the look.
|
| The check before closing multiple tabs didn't get turned
| off somehow the default changed in 2021 to default
| unchecked.
|
| Lastly the behavior regarding closing the last window
| closing Firefox remains unchanged. It does in fact still
| work that way. If it didn't properly close I would suggest
| that is a bug or a second window on another workspace. If
| all you desire is to restart as opposed to actually closing
| firefox you can trigger a restart in about:profiles this
| has the benefit of working no matter how many windows you
| have open.
| SilasX wrote:
| >Firefox normal collection, automatic or triggered in
| about:memory, will reduce memory used by Firefox about
| the same as restarting firefox.
|
| Obviously not, since the memory usage is increasing
| without bound despite no corresponding increase in
| memory-intensive tabs. Thanks for suggesting an alternate
| workaround for the collection failures though.
|
| >If you are dealing with normal amounts of memory usage
| and you have less than 16GB you may consider upgrading
| RAM considering this is as little as $40-60 at this point
| and well worth the look.
|
| I have 32 GB, which it (thankfully) hasn't come close to,
| but would, if I weren't periodically restarting. Kinda
| funny how we automatically don't expect 16 GB to be
| enough memory for text/image web pages though.
|
| >The check before closing multiple tabs didn't get turned
| off somehow the default changed in 2021 to default
| unchecked.
|
| Makes sense, I think it was a while since I was shocked
| to see that behavior.
|
| >Lastly the behavior regarding closing the last window
| closing Firefox remains unchanged. It does in fact still
| work that way. If it didn't properly close I would
| suggest that is a bug or a second window on another
| workspace.
|
| No other workspaces, so probably a bug. I found this
| report of something very similar, though on Mac rather
| than Windows:
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1772056
|
| >If all you desire is to restart as opposed to actually
| closing firefox you can trigger a restart in
| about:profiles this has the benefit of working no matter
| how many windows you have open.
|
| Thanks, but I'd prefer the option that can be done with a
| few quick key commands, and Firefox isn't customizable in
| that way anymore.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The quit behavior does seem to be a Mac specific behavior
| not a bug. You'll note the request to change it is
| labeled an enhancement as opposed to a bug. I agree it
| seems a sub-optimal choice.
|
| Your memory usage growing without bounds on the other
| hand is obviously a bug. I would create a fresh profile
| and see if you can reproduce this behavior without
| extensions and report it.
| kokanee wrote:
| Agree; and in general I think people underestimate how heavy
| and potentially dangerous extensions are. Adding an extension
| is like loading an additional webpage on each primary page
| load, and it can make as many requests and consume as many
| resources as it wants. It can also interfere with or alter the
| behavior and performance of the primary page in any manner that
| the DOM allows. As a web dev who has investigated a lot of
| performance complaints, disabling extensions is one of my first
| debugging steps.
| cod1r wrote:
| Firefox's "Take Screenshot" feature is too good.
| mcv wrote:
| Biggest difference compared to Chrome, of course, is privacy. Of
| course Chrome cares about performance and all that other stuff,
| but significantly less about privacy.
|
| The downside of that is that ReCaptcha sucks more than usual.
| Because Google knows less about me, I sometimes have to do a
| ReCaptcha two or three times before it will grudgingly
| acknowledge my humanity.
|
| Usually I see ReCaptcha as a sign not to use that site.
| mac-chaffee wrote:
| Don't use it on macOS. It has no protections at all for cookie
| theft. Unencrypted SQLite DB sitting in a user-readable
| directory. Chrome and (I think) Safari both use encryption keys
| in the secure enclave. That's still not perfect (Chrome remote
| debugging and Safari code injection can get around those), but
| better than nothing at all.
| agumonkey wrote:
| chrome still has some slick and instantaneous-ness over firefox
| bryan0 wrote:
| I'm not sure how it compares or works with Tab Stash, but I have
| used Tree Style Tabs[0] for years and couldn't live without it.
|
| [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
| ta...
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