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> And I think there are a number of ways that the core (i.e. non-extension based) functionality is superior to that of e.g. Chrome Like what? Genuinely curious

> And I think there are a number of ways that the core (i.e. non-extension based) functionality is superior to that of e.g. Chrome Like what? Genuinely curious.

reitanqild 11y ago
Awesomebar for one. Being able to just type in the random things you remember from a url / title (I think it combines them) and have FF narrow down the alternatives, -fast, is something I haven't found in any other mainstream browser. Another aspect is it doesn't automatically send everything you type to google (I don't worry to much but it is a nice touch.) Maybe the average user is confused by having a separate search field in addition to the address bar but I like it. (And yes, you can search from awesomebar as well, although there is no suggest feature.)
- _yy 11y ago
  > Being able to just type in the random things you remember from a url / title (I think it combines them) and have FF narrow down the alternatives, -fast, is something I haven't found in any other mainstream browser. Chrome has exactly the same feature. You can disable Google Instant, too, but it's actually a really useful feature.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Common misconception I guess[0]: Chromes version is not the same. (Unless I am seriously wrong.) Try to type new com <part of title of something you read on hn today> to test. On FF and PM this just works but on Chrome I still don't think it works. [0]: which might explain why not everyone is using the better browser :-P
    - ino 11y ago
      That has always worked for me on Chrome. On the other hand, chrome lets me use the websites own search without setting up anything. For example: you [tab] searches on youtube. news [tab] searches hn. I've never set it up and works with almost every site I've performed a search on.
      - mcintyre1994 11y ago
        Does "new com webex" work for you in Chrome? It won't offer anything but a Google search for me. On Firefox it'll either offer to switch tab to here if it's still open or it'll find this in history. I agree Chrome's site search thing is awesome, but how did you teach it to use the new HN one? EDIT: Chrome settings -> manage search engines. Very impressed with the list of those it's stored automatically. Point stands that it doesn't seem to relearn though when one changes.
        ino 11y ago
        yes it does: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku9zzet28pzjcc9/Screenshot%202015-08-27%2009.06.06.PNG?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku9zzet28pzjcc9/Screenshot%202015-...
    - efdee 11y ago
      That works for me on Chrome. The misconception might be on your side ;-)
    - joshuacc 11y ago
      Just tried it in Chrome and it has the exact same behavior as FireFox.
      - borgbean 11y ago
        When I do this in chrome, it opens a new instance of the page. In Firefox, it switches to the tab you're searching for.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Safari does this, as does Chrome. For example, typing "webex" will show this discussion as one of the autocompletion suggestions. Safari will suggest also suggest things like Wikipedia articles and popular sites. Similarly, if I type "imdb michael mann", Safari will suggest "Search imdb.com for michael mann". Firefox's location bar is arguably much worse than both Safari and Chrome — it won't really autocomplete anything except "search Google for this" and bookmarks/history. Safari also leaves the search standing in the location bar when you submit it, whereas Firefox replaces it with an obscure, unreadable google.com URL.
ishansharma 11y ago
I am a Firefox user and there are couple of core functionalities that keep me with it instead of Chrome(or Opera/Safari) 1. Tab Groups: This is a must have for organizing tabs and keep me sane with 30+ tabs open. 2. Lazy loading: I am not sure if Chrome has it or not but FF doesn't load a tab content until I switch to it. I can regularly have a lot of tabs open without all of them using resources.
- gioele 11y ago
  > 2. Lazy loading: I am not sure if Chrome has it or not but FF doesn't load a tab content until I switch to it. This is usually transparent to me. Except when I am on a train and realize that all the tabs I have opened in the background have never been loaded. :( For this and other reasons I have removed tabs from my workflow, now I use 90% maximized or half-screen windows. It is also easier to alt-tab between them.
  - hvis 11y ago
    You can simply uncheck "Don’t load tabs until selected" in the General section of Preferences.
- yoodenvranx 11y ago
  I don't know how people can live without Tab Groups. Usually I am working an 5 to 10 different "projects" and for each project I have a tab group with everything from 3 to more than 20 open tabs. Based on the project I am working on I can just switch to the correct set of tabs. I could do something similar with bookmarks but that would be way slower and not as comfortable.
  - gnud 11y ago
    I do this manually (in FF) with one window per project, and N tabs per window. Works well enough even without extensions.
    - yoodenvranx 11y ago
mnarayan01 11y ago
Specific: If an anchor element has its download attribute set, Chrome won't display any indication at all that it has been clicked until the server responds (at least AFAICT). Circumstantial: In most cases I prefer the way Firefox handles runaway scripts. Though when it fails, it fails hard. There are many others, though like I said...I doubt they'll out weigh Chrome's advantages sans the existing extension ecosystem.
jitl 11y ago
I use a few heavy user interface customization extensions: 1. Tree Tabs: this extension lays out my tabs stacked vertically on the left of my window. I can fit upwards of 50 tabs in a window before I have to scroll the tab list. This is great for managing big research or documentation sessions without the squinting in Chrome. The APIs necessary for tree tabs are not yet in chrome, although there is some discussion now of a sidebar API. 2. Vimperator: this extension provides a very powerful vim-like interface, including a .vimperatorrc file. I don't use any more of the advanced features like that, but it is excellent for keeping my hands totally on the keyboard as I switch between Tmux splits, vim windows, and my browser. There are several vimperator-inspired plugins for chrome, some of which are passable. However, vimperator is a lot faster than Vimium, and the interface is more concise and vim-like. A big difference is the UI for opening links: in Vimperator, you press `f` to enter follow-link command mode. Each link is assigned a number by page order; you filter links by typing letters, and can follow the first link by pressing `enter`. So to submit this text form, I would press `esc` to return to normal mode from edit mode, then press `f`, and then type "rep<enter>" to filter links to reply, and then click it. It's rather natural, and easy to click the right link. In Vimium, each link is assigned two letters (which are easier to type than numvers), but you can't filter links. There's a lot more squinting at the little labels to type the right thing. Plus, it's easy to fat finger the link text with no recourse.
- ikurei 11y ago
  > n Vimium, each link is assigned two letters (which are easier to type than numvers) Are you sure you can't change that in Vimperator? I use Pentadactyl (can't even remember why I chose it over Vimperator) and i can just do `set hintkeys=asdfghjkl`.
  - 0942v8653 11y ago
    You can make vimperator work like vimium but not the other way around.
leoc 11y ago
FF still has bookmark tags, right? Living without them on Chrome is not pleasant.
- TsiCClawOfLight 11y ago
  This. They are one of my most loved feature on Firefox.

> And I think there are a number of ways that the core (i.e. non-extension based) functionality is superior to that of e.g. Chrome Like what? Genuinely curious.

reitanqild 11y ago

Awesomebar for one. Being able to just type in the random things you remember from a url / title (I think it combines them) and have FF narrow down the alternatives, -fast, is something I haven't found in any other mainstream browser. Another aspect is it doesn't automatically send everything you type to google (I don't worry to much but it is a nice touch.) Maybe the average user is confused by having a separate search field in addition to the address bar but I like it. (And yes, you can search from awesomebar as well, although there is no suggest feature.)

_yy 11y ago
> Being able to just type in the random things you remember from a url / title (I think it combines them) and have FF narrow down the alternatives, -fast, is something I haven't found in any other mainstream browser. Chrome has exactly the same feature. You can disable Google Instant, too, but it's actually a really useful feature.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Common misconception I guess[0]: Chromes version is not the same. (Unless I am seriously wrong.) Try to type new com <part of title of something you read on hn today> to test. On FF and PM this just works but on Chrome I still don't think it works. [0]: which might explain why not everyone is using the better browser :-P
  - ino 11y ago
    That has always worked for me on Chrome. On the other hand, chrome lets me use the websites own search without setting up anything. For example: you [tab] searches on youtube. news [tab] searches hn. I've never set it up and works with almost every site I've performed a search on.
    - mcintyre1994 11y ago
      Does "new com webex" work for you in Chrome? It won't offer anything but a Google search for me. On Firefox it'll either offer to switch tab to here if it's still open or it'll find this in history. I agree Chrome's site search thing is awesome, but how did you teach it to use the new HN one? EDIT: Chrome settings -> manage search engines. Very impressed with the list of those it's stored automatically. Point stands that it doesn't seem to relearn though when one changes.
      - ino 11y ago
        yes it does: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku9zzet28pzjcc9/Screenshot%202015-08-27%2009.06.06.PNG?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku9zzet28pzjcc9/Screenshot%202015-...
  - efdee 11y ago
    That works for me on Chrome. The misconception might be on your side ;-)
  - joshuacc 11y ago
    Just tried it in Chrome and it has the exact same behavior as FireFox.
    - borgbean 11y ago
      When I do this in chrome, it opens a new instance of the page. In Firefox, it switches to the tab you're searching for.
lobster_johnson 11y ago
Safari does this, as does Chrome. For example, typing "webex" will show this discussion as one of the autocompletion suggestions. Safari will suggest also suggest things like Wikipedia articles and popular sites. Similarly, if I type "imdb michael mann", Safari will suggest "Search imdb.com for michael mann". Firefox's location bar is arguably much worse than both Safari and Chrome — it won't really autocomplete anything except "search Google for this" and bookmarks/history. Safari also leaves the search standing in the location bar when you submit it, whereas Firefox replaces it with an obscure, unreadable google.com URL.

ishansharma 11y ago

I am a Firefox user and there are couple of core functionalities that keep me with it instead of Chrome(or Opera/Safari) 1. Tab Groups: This is a must have for organizing tabs and keep me sane with 30+ tabs open. 2. Lazy loading: I am not sure if Chrome has it or not but FF doesn't load a tab content until I switch to it. I can regularly have a lot of tabs open without all of them using resources.

gioele 11y ago
> 2. Lazy loading: I am not sure if Chrome has it or not but FF doesn't load a tab content until I switch to it. This is usually transparent to me. Except when I am on a train and realize that all the tabs I have opened in the background have never been loaded. :( For this and other reasons I have removed tabs from my workflow, now I use 90% maximized or half-screen windows. It is also easier to alt-tab between them.
- hvis 11y ago
  You can simply uncheck "Don’t load tabs until selected" in the General section of Preferences.
yoodenvranx 11y ago
I don't know how people can live without Tab Groups. Usually I am working an 5 to 10 different "projects" and for each project I have a tab group with everything from 3 to more than 20 open tabs. Based on the project I am working on I can just switch to the correct set of tabs. I could do something similar with bookmarks but that would be way slower and not as comfortable.
- gnud 11y ago
  I do this manually (in FF) with one window per project, and N tabs per window. Works well enough even without extensions.
  - yoodenvranx 11y ago

mnarayan01 11y ago

Specific: If an anchor element has its download attribute set, Chrome won't display any indication at all that it has been clicked until the server responds (at least AFAICT). Circumstantial: In most cases I prefer the way Firefox handles runaway scripts. Though when it fails, it fails hard. There are many others, though like I said...I doubt they'll out weigh Chrome's advantages sans the existing extension ecosystem.

jitl 11y ago

I use a few heavy user interface customization extensions: 1. Tree Tabs: this extension lays out my tabs stacked vertically on the left of my window. I can fit upwards of 50 tabs in a window before I have to scroll the tab list. This is great for managing big research or documentation sessions without the squinting in Chrome. The APIs necessary for tree tabs are not yet in chrome, although there is some discussion now of a sidebar API. 2. Vimperator: this extension provides a very powerful vim-like interface, including a .vimperatorrc file. I don't use any more of the advanced features like that, but it is excellent for keeping my hands totally on the keyboard as I switch between Tmux splits, vim windows, and my browser. There are several vimperator-inspired plugins for chrome, some of which are passable. However, vimperator is a lot faster than Vimium, and the interface is more concise and vim-like. A big difference is the UI for opening links: in Vimperator, you press `f` to enter follow-link command mode. Each link is assigned a number by page order; you filter links by typing letters, and can follow the first link by pressing `enter`. So to submit this text form, I would press `esc` to return to normal mode from edit mode, then press `f`, and then type "rep<enter>" to filter links to reply, and then click it. It's rather natural, and easy to click the right link. In Vimium, each link is assigned two letters (which are easier to type than numvers), but you can't filter links. There's a lot more squinting at the little labels to type the right thing. Plus, it's easy to fat finger the link text with no recourse.

ikurei 11y ago
> n Vimium, each link is assigned two letters (which are easier to type than numvers) Are you sure you can't change that in Vimperator? I use Pentadactyl (can't even remember why I chose it over Vimperator) and i can just do `set hintkeys=asdfghjkl`.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  You can make vimperator work like vimium but not the other way around.

leoc 11y ago

FF still has bookmark tags, right? Living without them on Chrome is not pleasant.

TsiCClawOfLight 11y ago
This. They are one of my most loved feature on Firefox.