[HN Gopher] Where's Firefox Going Next?
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Where's Firefox Going Next?
Author : ReadCarlBarks
Score : 32 points
Date : 2025-07-15 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (connect.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (connect.mozilla.org)
| Animats wrote:
| Not going compute-bound for two minutes after launch, while not
| displaying pages?
| blahaj wrote:
| Android?
| Animats wrote:
| No, Linux. I don't know what it's doing in there. Lots of
| disk I/O. Clearing the "startup cache" can help.
| quesera wrote:
| My guess: something is seriously borked in your profile.
| Easy to test.
|
| I have run Firefox on Linux for decades (and a few
| extensions, and metric gobs of tabs), with zero cases of
| the behaviour you describe.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Same here, vanilla Firefox snap on Ubuntu. If anything,
| Firefox with hundreds (literally) of tabs starts way
| faster than Chrome with 10, thanks to lazy its loading.
| RAM usage has always been stellar in Firefox, in my
| experience.
|
| Maybe their distro has a broken Firefox package, they
| messed with the default installation, have too many
| extensions, or malware? A slow mechanical disk?
| jjordan wrote:
| It would be great if they restored the `Smart Bookmarks` feature
| they removed a number of years ago. Smart Bookmarks were
| fantastic. Add your favorite sites' RSS feeds to your bookmark
| toolbar and you'd have all the recent headlines from all your
| favorite sites at one click. Fortunately I wasn't the only one
| that appreciated this long neglected feature so someone created
| Livemarks (https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/) that mostly
| replicated its functionality, but it's not quite the same as
| having native support for them.
| deanc wrote:
| I want nothing more now from Firefox than iterative performance
| improvements across all platforms and adherence to web standards.
| That's it. Let extensions handle all the other crap.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Agreed! I stuck with Firefox for a long time, but within the
| last year moved to Brave because too many sites were breaking.
| To your list I'd add "adblock," though, because it seems like
| extension standards are converging on a point where that's more
| effectively scaffolded inside the browser.
| rtpg wrote:
| Tbh I disagree, the official vertical tab support is so nice
| and less janky than any of the extensions I used that had this
| functionality
|
| After opening FF while previously using Arc for a while I was
| super happy with the usability improvements (that don't seem to
| have impacted older workflows fortunately... big fan of how FF
| makes it easy to customize the toolbar etc)
| dns_snek wrote:
| I've tried the new vertical tabs and I'm not a fan, it's very
| primitive compared to my favorite vertical tab extension
| Sideberry.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I really have to emphasize that browser extensions are a
| terrible security nightmare and generally speaking, should be
| avoided _at all costs_. I understand they 're fun and
| convenient, but it's one of those things that really doesn't
| age well into our modern cybersecurity issues.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| I only stick with the "recommended" extensions that are
| reviewed by Firefox.
| molticrystal wrote:
| Yes, Firefox should focus on being a lean mean machine, with
| the caveat that it returns to exposing its API and making it
| easily accessible for anyone who wants to go beyond that
| principle of leanness at the expense of speed or memory.
|
| I'd even go so far as to say that extensions should have full
| control over Firefox again. They shouldn't have to wait 20
| years for a tray icon on minimize feature to be added or
| require external apps to add that feature on certain operating
| systems. Min2Tray existed. They should have the ability to
| completely alter the UI to make it function however you want.
| For example, the old search was great for keyboard users. A
| couple of strokes and you could switch search engines to site
| specific ones. Now it takes dozens. And when they all have the
| same icon, it is a painful experience. There was even at one
| point an add-on to restore that functionality. All this should
| be exposed.
|
| The extension and plugin infrastructure didn't die. It was
| killed! If security is a concern, just add more warning cones
| and blood red messages.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Made a comment, it then asked me to sign up and couldn't be
| bothered.
|
| The comment was: make the Firefox containers work in private
| mode.
|
| In Safari private mode. Each tab has no knowledge of another
| (e.g. log into Gmail and then open a new tab and go to Gmail and
| you won't be signed in).
|
| Firefox doesn't have this tab level isolation.
|
| Also offer equivalent of safari's lockdown mode. So images and
| site features capable of loading malware etc are blocked by
| default.
| acheong08 wrote:
| > The comment was: make the Firefox containers work in private
| mode.
|
| My solution to this is having multiple Firefox profiles where
| the default one clears all history/cache/etc automatically upon
| closing (default in Librewolf). It's not technically private
| mode so containers work.
| weikju wrote:
| temporary containers [0]
|
| > disposable containers which isolate the data websites store
| (cookies, storage, and more) from each other
|
| Granted, they're not in private broswing mode just normal mode,
| but same effect
|
| [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
| con...
| sneilan1 wrote:
| How about fix copy and paste on Linux?
| quesera wrote:
| Hm. Are you referring to bracketed paste thing?
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1532688/pasting-required-tex...
| charcircuit wrote:
| Firefox has search based discover of content on the web, but it
| has failed to keep up with the trend of discovery using
| recommendation feeds. Firefox should be able to recommend new web
| pages I would be interested in.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| They should fix bugs.
|
| Computer A:
|
| Sometimes I cannot close tabs by clicking the X, or refresh/go-
| forward/go-back using the buttons next to the address bar.
|
| Computer B:
|
| Sometimes I get downloads that have "Unknown time left" (0
| bytes/sec) when the X of X KB/MB is 100% and you can't remove it
| from the downloads dropdown.
|
| I just discovered a new bug on Computer B, clicking the hamburger
| menu doesn't do anything.
|
| Both are Ubuntu.
|
| (I'm not a fan of the new menu in Firefox Beta for Android. I
| guess it looks nicer due to the greater whitespace, it just break
| muscle memory and has less options/selections.)
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Does computer B ever finish?
|
| Do you see any disk i/o spikes when this is happening?
| RandomBacon wrote:
| > Does computer B ever finish?
|
| No, it stays there until I close the browser at which point I
| get the option to cancel the download or not to exit.
|
| > disk i/o spikes
|
| Unknown, I don't monitor that, and the bug doesn't happen all
| the time, not sure how to recreate it.
| shmerl wrote:
| What I want to see:
|
| * Use Vulkan for rendering instead of OpenGL
|
| * Drop dependency on GTK (it's a source of many problems) and
| just implement their own full fledged Wayland handling like Wine
| is doing.
|
| * Back Servo again as the future engine.
| bigiain wrote:
| Sadly "I'd like Firefox to not be owned by an
| advertising/surveillance company" is unlikely to be considered in
| that forum (even if I were prepared to sign up to comment).
|
| Everything else is minor details compared to that.
|
| (Yes, this was posted using LibreWolf, but I often wonder if I
| can even trust that, having the vast majority of it's code
| written and managed by Mozilla.)
| eth0up wrote:
| I use FF as a primary browser on Desktop and Nightly in Android.
| There's much I could say about FF, but I think it would be
| futile.
|
| In Debian, I'd use FF-LTS and regular FF. Since moving to Void,
| xbps allows only one version, so I use FF and Vivaldi.
|
| I'd appreciate any opinions on Vivaldi. It's the only functional
| alternative browser I've found in the repos. But I have to start
| it with: LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1
|
| Which sucks, and applies to OpenShot and a lot of other software
| that gets fussy with intel chips in some versions of Linux.
| Chromium I prefer to avoid, and it wants a password to initiate,
| which I understand but refuse to comply with. But that's all
| aside the point. Opinions, please...
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| > Where's Firefox Going Next?
|
| I've forgotten the name of the destination, but the transport
| vehicle is something called a "handbasket".
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(page generated 2025-07-15 23:01 UTC)