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Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Let me preface this by saying I am open to a new browser, especially one

by g00gler 10y ago

Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Let me preface this by saying I am open to a new browser, especially one that is always in "incognito" and doesn't share sessions between tabs/windows. My favorite is Lynx but that doesn't always work . Facebook & Messenger for Android is pretty much spyware and they have over 1B downloads each, so that takes spying out of the discussion. The last time I checked Chrome performed best (even if it is only marginal) on all benchmarks. I know there are lots of serious reasons not to trust Google aside from user tracking (changing search results for political reasons[1], Eric Schmidt being a little too friendly w State Dept.[2]) but they make damn fine products. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-think-tank-launches-new-weapon-fight-against-isis-n682036 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-think-tank-launch... [2] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

jonchang 10y ago
> Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Because your techie friends tell you to. This moved people off of IE6 to Firefox and this is what initially got people to move to Chrome from Firefox. Google's muscle on its web properties did the rest. Even you admit that Chrome is only marginally better on all benchmarks. For me, it's worth it to help your non-technical friends keep the web a bit more open by making them wait 0.1s (or however much longer) to open Facebook.
- blackoil 10y ago
  People listened to the real benefits in terms of speed, tabs and UX while moving from IE, not to the rheotric about freedom, OSS etc. Do we have any such reasons now?
  - g00gler 10y ago
    Exactly my point.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Firefox was superior to IE 6 even back when it was called Phoenix. The user experience was just SO much better.
- necessity 10y ago
  Firefox is just as responsive as Chrome (or even better). Default configs is what ruins the experience, Mozilla is way too conservative with their defaults. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks
- g00gler 10y ago
  I hate telling people to do things, then they come to me when they inevitably do something wrong :p. ... works for me
redditmigrant 10y ago
Choosing linux at the time when you had to compile drivers, apply patches before you could get a monitor properly running was also not very user "standard" from a consumer perspective. But that spirit of trying out a piece of software that gives your more freedom, or allows a more open ecosystem to thrive is and will always be a good reason. Browsers and mobile OSes are two places where I think even we as developers have accepted the closed and encumbered ecosystem as the status quo because the alternatives are not user friendly.
- rtpg 10y ago
  I still feel like Chrome being called closed is in pretty bad faith. Chromium holds almost all of Chrome and is open source. Multiple (!) alternative browsers are based on this. You could argue against the WebKit monoculture, but that's a different topic. The browser ecosystem has never been this open
xyzzy123 10y ago
I think your answer is in the title. I'm not sure how concrete you want to go in terms of answers? The reason you should is mostly constituted from all the things your browser does that you don't know about. I get that's a hard sell. Firefox is (currently) measurably much less binary exploit secure than Chrome, but it is the browser with a development community thats trying hard not to sell you out.
shakna 10y ago
Self-Destructing Cookies [0], for the security conscious. It has near parity with Chrome's extension APIs now, so what works on one usually works on the other, but Firefox lets people dive deeper to build things like the above. You can use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, NoScript and any of the others. All for nearly Chrome performance, but probably less than half of the memory use of Chrome, and Firefox is getting faster. As for the average user... That story won't fly. It never has, and never will. Chrome is not as damn good as it was when it first launched, and launched from the company that has nearly ubiquitous control over web searches. Bigger issues to Firefox adoption from the public are things like, "This site only runs on Google Chrome. Download from here." Big name sites have been known to do this, like Netflix (on Linux, at least). Or how Edge re-adds itself to the user's taskbar with nearly every Windows update. Those things are what impacts day to day users, and that determines what they use to browse the web. That being said, Chrome's more aggressive blocking of sites with poor SSL, and more aggressive blocking of Flash, might just push users to another browser... Which will probably be Edge. Because it's on their taskbar. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...

by g00gler 10y ago

jonchang 10y ago

> Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Because your techie friends tell you to. This moved people off of IE6 to Firefox and this is what initially got people to move to Chrome from Firefox. Google's muscle on its web properties did the rest. Even you admit that Chrome is only marginally better on all benchmarks. For me, it's worth it to help your non-technical friends keep the web a bit more open by making them wait 0.1s (or however much longer) to open Facebook.

blackoil 10y ago
People listened to the real benefits in terms of speed, tabs and UX while moving from IE, not to the rheotric about freedom, OSS etc. Do we have any such reasons now?
- g00gler 10y ago
  Exactly my point.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Firefox was superior to IE 6 even back when it was called Phoenix. The user experience was just SO much better.
necessity 10y ago
Firefox is just as responsive as Chrome (or even better). Default configs is what ruins the experience, Mozilla is way too conservative with their defaults. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks
g00gler 10y ago
I hate telling people to do things, then they come to me when they inevitably do something wrong :p. ... works for me

redditmigrant 10y ago

Choosing linux at the time when you had to compile drivers, apply patches before you could get a monitor properly running was also not very user "standard" from a consumer perspective. But that spirit of trying out a piece of software that gives your more freedom, or allows a more open ecosystem to thrive is and will always be a good reason. Browsers and mobile OSes are two places where I think even we as developers have accepted the closed and encumbered ecosystem as the status quo because the alternatives are not user friendly.

rtpg 10y ago
I still feel like Chrome being called closed is in pretty bad faith. Chromium holds almost all of Chrome and is open source. Multiple (!) alternative browsers are based on this. You could argue against the WebKit monoculture, but that's a different topic. The browser ecosystem has never been this open

xyzzy123 10y ago

I think your answer is in the title. I'm not sure how concrete you want to go in terms of answers? The reason you should is mostly constituted from all the things your browser does that you don't know about. I get that's a hard sell. Firefox is (currently) measurably much less binary exploit secure than Chrome, but it is the browser with a development community thats trying hard not to sell you out.

shakna 10y ago

Self-Destructing Cookies [0], for the security conscious. It has near parity with Chrome's extension APIs now, so what works on one usually works on the other, but Firefox lets people dive deeper to build things like the above. You can use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, NoScript and any of the others. All for nearly Chrome performance, but probably less than half of the memory use of Chrome, and Firefox is getting faster. As for the average user... That story won't fly. It never has, and never will. Chrome is not as damn good as it was when it first launched, and launched from the company that has nearly ubiquitous control over web searches. Bigger issues to Firefox adoption from the public are things like, "This site only runs on Google Chrome. Download from here." Big name sites have been known to do this, like Netflix (on Linux, at least). Or how Edge re-adds itself to the user's taskbar with nearly every Windows update. Those things are what impacts day to day users, and that determines what they use to browse the web. That being said, Chrome's more aggressive blocking of sites with poor SSL, and more aggressive blocking of Flash, might just push users to another browser... Which will probably be Edge. Because it's on their taskbar. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...