[HN Gopher] Testing the Firefox Alternatives
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Testing the Firefox Alternatives
Author : MaxBarraclough
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-09-14 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tommorris.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tommorris.org)
| lolinder wrote:
| > You can totally still stick with Firefox... but remember to
| download userChrome.css from GitHub. And if you want vertical
| tabs, be sure to install Sidebery until Mozilla get around to
| implementing native vertical tabs.
|
| I'm a constant critic of most things Mozilla (as well as an avid
| Firefox user... there's a lot of overlap in that venn diagram)
| and most of what this intro rails against resonates, but I'll
| never understand why they get hammered for not implementing
| vertical tabs.
|
| This is a feature that a small but passionate subset of their
| users use, but it's also a feature that _already_ has an
| extension that said subset of their users uses. Further, said
| subset has a _strong_ overlap with the never-Chromium crowd, so
| they 're not going to lose them any time soon. Out of the
| thousand and one things that Mozilla could be doing to make
| Firefox more competitive, vertical tabs is solidly in the second
| half of the list.
| bloopernova wrote:
| In my experience, once people see how sidebar/vertical tabs
| work, they're a lot more interested. Most folks I've talked
| about this with have not even known there was an alternative.
| After someone has been shown how to change between tab layouts,
| they mostly stick to sidebar/vertical tabs.
| lolinder wrote:
| Maybe I should have tried plain vertical tabs--I tried out
| tree-style tabs and kind of hated it, so I went back to
| horizontal.
|
| Regardless, the question isn't really whether vertical tabs
| would be a useful feature, it's whether it would be the _most
| useful_ thing Mozilla could be working on.
|
| I'd much rather see them pour resources into making Firefox's
| devtools the best again. I'm pretty much the lone pure-
| Firefox holdout among my coworkers, with everyone else at
| least switching into Chrome for serious devtools work, and
| most now run it all the time. Make Firefox the best for
| devtools and you ensure it has reliable support across all
| browsers _and_ put it back in the hands of the biggest
| browser-evangelists.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Purely out of curiosity, what did you prefer about
| horizontal tabs, and what did you dislike about vertical
| tabs?
| wtcactus wrote:
| Well, the entry barrier is higher than simply installing an
| extension. You also need to change the userChrome.ccs (if I
| remember the file correctly), to get rid of the horizontal
| tabs.
|
| For a base/intermediate user, that's not a simple thing to do.
| jrajav wrote:
| I think it's fair to count at least a subset of Arc users in
| the "wants vertical tabs" camp. I have several friends and co-
| workers who use it now, and most of them mentioned vertical
| tabs at least once.
|
| I agree that it's probably still an 'enthusiast' feature, but
| it's one that I think is starting to catch the road and has a
| pretty solid future trajectory.
| callahad wrote:
| Edge and Safari have had vertical tabs for years; when the
| default browsers on Windows and macOS offer that affordance, it
| becomes more of a mainstream parity issue. Which is thankfully,
| finally, being addressed.
| thayne wrote:
| I'd be fine with letting an extension take over that niche ...
| if they made an API that let it replace the horizontal tabs
| instead of only being able to duplicate the tabs in the
| sidebar. Or even a way to configure that as a user.
|
| That is how tree style tabs worked before Firefox switched to
| webextensions. And when Firefox switched to the we extensions
| API, a ticket was immediately opened requesting an API allowing
| hiding the horizontal tab bar. But despite some initial
| interest, nothing really ever happened with that.
| larntz wrote:
| It's not an api, but just in case people don't know... It is
| possible to hide the horizontal tabs via userChrome.
|
| https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-
| fo...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hmm but I don't want to use vertical tabs in every window.
| Only some of them, in the others (with few tabs and
| narrower 4:3 displays) i want horizontal. If I hide it in
| userchrome I end up with no tab bar in those cases.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yep. While Sidebery, TST, etc have done about as well as they
| can given the limitations of extensions, the resulting
| vertical tab experience is half-baked without userChrome
| mods. It's also still kinda janky even _with_ the mods unless
| one spends time polishing out all the edge cases, but then
| there 's a high chance the mods will randomly break in weird
| ways after an update one day. There's real value in having
| the feature be native.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Native vertical tabs are already in nightly and it's about as
| neutered as its Edge and Vivaldi counterparts. What Edge and
| Vivaldi does not have is APIs for implementing something as
| impressive as the nested style Sidebery or Tree Style Tabs.
|
| Making it sound like Edge and Vivaldi has the upper hand, when
| it comes to vertical tabs, is not fair.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Because Edge, Brave and Vivaldi has GOOD vertical tabs and they
| made it native somehow so much be a very small userbase
| right??? :)
|
| ALSO it is now native in Nightly anyway, so we won and it is
| good. :)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not a big fan of having such core functionality in extensions.
| Firefox translations work better now that they're in the core
| and it keeps the number of extensions down (and thus the
| messages of "Firefox is.. starting.. slowly")
|
| The same with the AI stuff, i don't mind that in the browser.
| It does an okay job though it needs a lot of work. And I can
| already use it with my local AI server. Unlike the copilot crap
| in edge and whatever AI Google has in Chrome (I've not used
| chrome in years, only chromium)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Nice little article, posted via eww on emacs :)
|
| Edit: via Firefox. The odd thing about eww and ycombinator, the
| line size is limited on eww and you are limited to 1 line in eww.
| It is a eww thing, but surprisingly eww renders pages rather
| well.
| pndy wrote:
| Waterfox is nearly same as Librewolf; it comes with own set of
| additional settings and tweaks. From what I saw around some users
| weren't fond of the arrangements the author of the project went
| into (startpage, fastly) and bundling of tree tabs extension that
| had to be disabled by about:config entry change.
|
| Pale Moon: IIRC initially it was a fork of Firefox ESR then
| project switched to own Goanna engine, which in turn is a fork of
| Gecko; it also tries to keep alive XUL extensions platform. There
| were some dramas happening in the past around the project, esp.
| regarding porting browser to OpenBSD. It's kinda a niche project
| I'd say - surely it has some community but it's not that big.
|
| As for IceCat - I'm surprised it's still around; seems it runs
| own extensions database (https://gnuzilla.gnu.org/mozzarella/)
| but these aren't keeping up with official releases, at least on
| the page. Perhaps autoupdate bumps these to the current versions;
| still, uBlock Origin is stuck at 1.51.0 from last December, while
| the current version is 1.59.0.
|
| I tried Zen recently - it's kinda hard to get used to tabs
| sidebar. For some people this might be useful but not for me - I
| prefer tabs on top.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Also try the Mullvad browser which I believe is based on the
| TOR browser with the TOR bit removed
|
| https://mullvad.net/en/browser
| bloopernova wrote:
| One minor nitpick: Firefox has vertical tabs, they were recently
| added in version 131 nightly builds. (Blog was probably written
| before it was added)
|
| Also Edge/Vivaldi have sidebar/vertical tabs, but they don't nest
| which reduces their utility in my opinion.
|
| The Miller Columns view implemented in a recent HN post[1] would
| be great way to view history. Each column could be linked
| visually with its sidebar tab. I use my sidebar tab tree
| structure to give additional context on what I've viewed, I can
| see that page G is a child of B, etc.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263203
| gmueckl wrote:
| Vivaldi tabs do nest one level deep via tab groups. Drag one
| tab over another to group them. That's at least something.
| bad_user wrote:
| I'm using Brave.
|
| Vertical tabs don't nest; however, you can group them using
| Chromium's native groups. In Brave, I can also assign custom
| keyboard shortcuts, so I have Ctrl+G for starting a new group,
| and Ctrl+T for opening a new tab in the same group.
|
| I've also been a user of Firefox for years, and the tree-style
| tabs extension are all slightly broken, enough to make me
| disable them. I also never found much value in nesting.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > And if you want vertical tabs, be sure to install Sidebery
| until Mozilla get around to implementing native vertical tabs.
| (You know, like Chromium-based browsers including Edge and
| Vivaldi already have.)
|
| I've been using vertical tabs in Firefox ever since Mozilla
| implemented it back in 2016 as "Tab Center" long before any
| Chromium-based browser decided to do so too. Of course the
| official feature has been discontinued long time ago, but I've
| been a happy user of its webext-based replacement ever since.
| Just a bit of CSS goes a long way in making it compact and well-
| integrated, unlike stuff like Sidebery or Tree Style Tabs that
| always felt big, clunky and filled with stuff I never use. For
| the past 8 years, my Firefox looked like this:
| https://dosowisko.net/firefox-tabcenter.gif and I never stumbled
| upon a reasonable alternative, including the native
| implementation Mozilla recently added back into Firefox (though
| it's a step in the right direction).
| pasc1878 wrote:
| I have been using vertical tabs since the mid 90s - OmniWeb on
| NeXT then OSX. Unfortunately that stopped being usable in the
| late 200s then I used Firefox extension TreeStyleTabs - I did
| not know that Mozilla did vertical tabs. Chrome also had
| vertical tabs then but the bug tracker is hilarious in that the
| authors really did not understand its use and eventually
| removed it.
|
| After 2016 then Vivaldi and in the last couple of years Safari
| (there was a horrible admin 10 years ago)
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| For the record, the CSS used to achieve that result can be
| found at https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/3715038
| codethief wrote:
| For the lazy here's the link to the extension:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reb...
| drdaeman wrote:
| Given that this whole "AI" integration shtick is minimal effort
| thing with negligibly small value (if any), I suspect it was
| either an attempt to just ride on "AI" hype (certainly didn't
| work, feedback comments are virtually univocally "AI" hate), or
| attempt to find new monetization source (e.g. for a default
| provider).
|
| My own thoughts on the AI feature:
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedba... -
| LLM integrations can be useful and actually supporting end-users,
| but it must be based on entirely different paradigm (all about
| user agent automation, not a website in a sidebar) and it's
| probably best left out of the core application itself and rather
| be a external co-program.
|
| As for the alternatives - to be honest, I don't really see much
| difference beyond various cosmetics. Both Zen and Floorp are
| basically the same Firefox for me, containing all the things I
| hate about Firefox ("sponsored" stuff everywhere, Firefox Account
| and Sync overengineering abomination, all the "safety" features
| that "protect" browser from its users, hardcoded built-in things
| that should be pluggable rather than fixed), while bringing
| nothing I actually care about and want to see (such as
| decluttering websites _aggressively_ minimizing all the noise I
| don 't care about - kinda like improved reader mode for
| everything by default, flexible automatic workflows for personal
| routine things, advanced history with optional content indexing
| for finding back things I _vaguely_ remember seeing _somewhere_ ,
| automatic tab management to solve 100 open tabs problem, removal
| of tightly integrated bits like password or download management
| in favor of replaceable classic UNIX-way style external programs
| so I can use any tool I want while feeling those tools are
| properly truly and fully integrated and aren't some hacks like
| those password manager extensions messing with HTML).
|
| Honestly, I'm sad that niche stuff like surf and Uzbl had
| essentially died, instead of evolving towards a pre-packaged
| "batteries included out of the box, but you can replace
| everything with your own" suites. I wished for a non-monolithic
| browser for technical/power users, with replaceable components
| for about a decade now - don't think I'll ever see it happening.
| SlackingOff123 wrote:
| There are sooo many AI chat options to choose from[1] that I
| don't need my browser to provide one too. I just want my
| browser to be a good browser.
|
| [1] I've been enjoying my self-hosted instance of LibreChat a
| lot, but I also started using Kagi's assistant lately. Besides
| those two I'm also using 'aichat' cli tool for quick queries,
| particularly for helping with cli commands since the context is
| already there.
| prmoustache wrote:
| aren't all "antifeatures" disabled by default on most linux
| distro packaged firefox?
| sumuyuda wrote:
| Not the telemetry
| politelemon wrote:
| This part is misleading. It is possible to make the same point
| without having to make it sounds the feature has been introduced
| nefariously:
|
| > Yes, I get that some people want it, and you can turn it off.
|
| It is already off. You have to opt in to the 'experiments' area.
| causality0 wrote:
| I wish someone would release a good mobile fork. Firefox Mobile
| probably has the worst UX of any mobile browser I've used since
| 2009 and I'm convinced whatever intern they have locked in a
| closet coding it doesn't use it themselves. It's as if they used
| a supercomputer to predict user behavior for the sole purpose of
| making sure their obnoxious purple toast messages cover the exact
| button you need to use and that they last exactly one second
| short of the time required to make you uninstall it in fury.
| cuu508 wrote:
| What are your main gripes?
| causality0 wrote:
| If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks the
| view of the next tab. If I full-screen a video, the "you
| fullscreened a video!" message blocks the entire video
| progress bar so I can't move forward or back. I don't need
| the damn browser to tell me what I just did. I was there.
| Adjusting the volume while watching a full screen video drops
| the whole browser into a 4mmx4mm picture-in-picture window on
| my home screen. Oh, and the bug where using the back button
| sometimes completely breaks the "view desktop site" button
| until I manually kill the app is still there.
| jorams wrote:
| > If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks
| the view of the next tab.
|
| This only happens if you close a tab just above the bottom
| of your screen. You can scroll the entire list up past the
| point where any tabs will be obscured by the toast (which
| has an undo button), and it even does so by default when
| you open the list with one of the lower tabs active.
|
| To reproduce your complaint I have to either explicitly
| scroll the tab I want to close into the area that will be
| obscured, or I have to have a tab higher in the list
| active, then open the list, and then close one of the tabs
| at the bottom of the screen.
|
| > If I full-screen a video, the "you fullscreened a video!"
| message blocks the entire video progress bar so I can't
| move forward or back.
|
| This is/was indeed annoying. It's been resolved in a recent
| update for me on Beta.
|
| I've never seen the other two things you mention and I
| can't reproduce them, but they don't seem like UX issues,
| just bugs.
| causality0 wrote:
| Bugs that go years without being addressed _are_ UX
| issues.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Not GP, but mine are:
|
| - I open link in new tab, a button to switch to it appears -
| and disappears right before I manage to click it (unless I'm
| on redbull, then it's fine). Every. Single. Time.
|
| - extensions - why do I need to create my own list of
| extension and publish it, just to include some extension
| Mozilla didn't approve? It's not like they are checking them
| much anyway.
|
| - stop the telemetry. Seriously. If I wanted someone spying
| on me I would have used Chrome. And even worse, stop
| contacting Google (firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com)! I'm
| blocking it all with NetGuard, but it's annoying knowing I
| can't trust the browser.
|
| Not much else really. It works pretty nicely once you have
| the obligatory uBlock Origin installed and blocking in
| NetGuard set up.
| yesco wrote:
| Bad Parts:
|
| - Installing custom addons is so obnoxiously complicated it
| makes me think Mozilla has it out for me sometimes. It's
| actually easier to sideload apps on Android than it is to
| "sideload" addons into Firefox mobile.
|
| - You can either close all tabs or methodically select and
| close every individual tab, no in-between. Makes cleaning
| them up super tedious. Wish there was atleast an option to
| close all above or below (like close all left/right on
| desktop)
|
| - Swiping left/right on a tab in the tab page will close it,
| closing tabs this way is slower than hitting the x button and
| seems to have some kind of rate limit? In practice it exists
| solely so I can accidentally trigger a swipe when scrolling
| and close an important tab I wanted (the undo pop-up only
| lasts a couple seconds so I only manage to undo about 2/3s
| the time. It seems to get dismissed if I don't perfectly
| select the right spot, but maybe that's just in my head).
|
| - No way to duplicate existing tabs, this is honestly the
| silliest one to me, why wouldn't they let you do this? Who
| thought it was okay to leave this one out? Perhaps I've
| simply missed the option for this because I certainly can't
| find it anywhere. This isn't even a power user feature, it's
| like not being able to close the passenger window in the
| drivers seat of your car.
|
| - The process for making new tabs is confusing, it will have
| an option to "jump back in" to the last tab you had opened
| but sometimes it will also replace that tab entirely and I
| can't understand why. Wish it was just a normal new tab page
| instead of whatever this is.
|
| - Scrolling always seems fucked up on a bunch of sites, it
| sort of forces you to move the address bar to the top to make
| things work but the interface is so over-designed for your
| thumbs this ends up always being terrible.
|
| - The interface just objectively sucks on tablets because of
| the over-designed for thumbs thing, Chrome reverts to
| standard tabs like you see on desktop, wish Firefox did the
| same, or at least something similar. Looks ridiculous.
|
| Good Parts:
|
| - I liked the way bookmarks/pinning works, use that all the
| time
|
| - I love that I can use uBlock Origin, frankly this is the
| main reason I'm even using this thing
|
| - I like the general idea of a page that shows all my tabs as
| little window boxes, just wish it was executed better.
|
| - Reader mode is awesome, I barely use on desktop but it's
| critical on mobile. This is indirectly because the scrolling
| is fucked up on most sites because of the bar thing though so
| maybe this one only half counts. It would also be nice if
| they put the slightest bit of extra effort into the
| customization options for the reader page. This is literally
| just updating some values in a style-sheet after all... I
| would do it myself if addons weren't so painful
|
| - It actually plays media when I change the app focus unlike
| the user hostile Chrome does, in practice this still doesn't
| actually work very reliably but I appreciate the effort
|
| - I can install it from F-Droid
|
| - I like that really old tabs get smushed into a menu that
| makes it easy to delete them. It's sort of niche and makes me
| wonder why they would implement this before any of the other
| more obvious features for managing tabs, but I digress,
| better than nothing.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > The interface just objectively sucks on tablets because
| of the over-designed for thumbs thing, Chrome reverts to
| standard tabs like you see on desktop, wish Firefox did the
| same, or at least something similar. Looks ridiculous.
|
| True. Firefox sucks on DeX too because it lacks tabs in
| tablet mode..
| amid11 wrote:
| In my experience, Firefox for mobile falls short in several
| key areas compared to other modern browsers.
|
| - From a UX/UI perspective, its design feels _outdated_ and
| _lacks intuitive features that have become standard
| elsewhere_.
|
| - Features like _' tab previews'_, _' tab grouping'_, or
| built-in _' swipe gestures' for back/forward navigation_ are
| noticeably absent.
|
| - While extensions may offer some workarounds, these should
| ideally be _core functionalities_ , as relying on third-party
| solutions adds _unnecessary complexity_ for users.
|
| - It would be a significant improvement if Firefox natively
| supported these features or, at the very least, provided
| _clearer documentation_ to help users seeking these features.
| cdrini wrote:
| It's been my daily driver for years and I've never had any
| issues. There are some bits of the UI I would change, but
| they're minor, and every application is like that
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I like it especially now that it has pull to refresh. I really
| missed that.
|
| And ublock origin on mobile really makes the web actually
| useful.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Librewolf ships with uBlock Origin preinstalled, however the
| default installation of uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by
| default. EasyPrivacy blocks legitimate websites, and there is no
| recourse to try to have a false positive become unblocked.
| Because of this, I do not recommend enabling EasyPrivacy if you
| are installing the browser for another person, unless they are
| comfortable with changing extension settings to disable the
| filter.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I use ~10 desktops across the day (physical, remote and virtual).
| They all have Firefox (rel, ESR, nightly) as their primary
| browser. I also use of Ffx alts every day (presently Waterfox).
|
| I co-use Ffx alts to segment browsing - and as a quick fix for
| when sites develop Broken Control Syndrome.
|
| Outside of the Ffx ecosystem, I'm using Brave (today) to test
| Google products and deal with Google's passive-aggressive
| hostility to Firefox.
|
| I had tried Opera before Brave but it felt like being trolled.
| Something is very wrong in that house.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > Outside of the Ffx ecosystem, I'm using Brave (today) to test
| Google products and deal with Google's passive-aggressive
| hostility to Firefox.
|
| Well said! I do the same.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I may get some naysayers for this, maybe because I'm on macOS and
| not Linux or Windows but...
|
| Two features I love about Safari is:
|
| - Pinch/Zoom to view all my tabs as windows to switch between
| tabs
|
| - What at least appears to be total isolation between tabs when
| in private browsing mode. If I login to Facebook in one tab, then
| open up a new tab and go to Facebook, it will not see me as
| logged in.
|
| Chrome nor Firefox have either of those features.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| I did not know that thanks, been using Orion for a while now as
| my main browser and, oh wait, yes same thing. very nice. I only
| used firefox to test local webdev projects and still switched
| to librewolf which is fine. And I have a chrome browser so it
| can pull up the results of a local lighthouse test but that is
| it.
| curt15 wrote:
| Do Firefox [temporary container
| tabs](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
| con...) fit the bill?
| xemdetia wrote:
| That is an interesting Safari feature for private tabs, when I
| start needing to have more than two levels of isolation past
| the non-private universe and the private universe I start using
| profiles. My intuition that my private tabs are logged in and I
| can open more tabs with the same credentials is a big part of
| my workflow so I never thought of needing that further
| isolation.
| Dwedit wrote:
| There is a fork of Pale Moon that is compatible with Windows XP
| called "New Moon". It's based on Palemoon 28.10.7a1. While an old
| version of the browser, it is still compatible with modern
| websites, such as Github.
|
| It is available at http://o.rthost.win/palemoon/ , but make sure
| you don't download a 64-bit version by mistake. (Providing a non-
| secure http link because the MSIE version that ships with Windows
| XP is not compatible with modern https websites)
| d0mine wrote:
| https://zen-browser.app/ killer features for me:
|
| - web panel: to show/hide messenger/mail quickly. I don't see it
| -- no distractions -- but it is instantly there when I need it -
| hor/vert. grid/tiling on keyboard shortcut: pair some web pages
| together so that they are visible/hidden at the same time -
| Firefox addons work (that I use) e.g., Vimium C - vertical tabs
| combined with compact mode that show/hides them on keyboard
| shortcut
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I'm hoping Ladybird makes it across the finish line.
|
| https://ladybird.org/
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's years away according to the most optimistic planning so
| I'm not holding my breath.
| cdrini wrote:
| Man, Firefox users are something else. So many of these
| complaints are kind of annoying or have internal contradictions.
|
| "That's rather disconcerting if you'd like Mozilla to focus on
| making a good browser instead of chasing the new and shiny
| because it is new and shiny." - contradiction, you just conceded
| that there are Firefox users that want these new AI features, so
| no it's not just a shiny because it's shiny. Just because _you_
| don 't want it doesn't mean it's "shiny for shiny".
|
| "I'll note that some of the AI stuff Mozilla is pursing is
| reasonable. The translation feature uses a local model for
| translation, which is a great idea. It doesn't support all the
| languages that Google Translate does, but it's good."
|
| Great, it's not as good as one of the largest, richest companies
| on the planet, that has had translation as a feature for what
| like 20 years now. Firefox introduced translation like this year!
| Can't we just celebrate the successes when they happen and
| recognize it as an important step?
|
| "the rollout of the ghastly Proton UI, which necessitated (and
| still necessitates) setting up Lepton aka Firefox-UI-Fix"
|
| I'm so tired of this view, why can't people recognize when a UI
| preference is just a preference? The UI is fine. This is why
| browsers are configurable, so you can shape it to your
| preferences.
|
| Don't get me wrong, there are lots of problems with Mozilla and
| things they could be doing better, but when these are being
| touted as the primary problems at the top of the article, it just
| seems petty and overly negative.
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(page generated 2024-09-14 23:01 UTC)