4 ms·

This kinda post reminds of these posts decrying how bad things are with x and a threat to do y, eg: move to Canada. And the punchline is always a soggy: "I'm s

This kinda post reminds of these posts decrying how bad things are with x and a threat to do y, eg: move to Canada. And the punchline is always a soggy: "I'm seriously reconsidering". Post would be much more effective if you just switched already, and discussed your experience having done so.

zzzcpan 10y ago
It's hard to reconsider firefox or safari because they are also very much anti-user. Maybe a fork of firefox/chromium without all that anti-user stuff would be better, with plugins only click-to-play, with no autoplay for animations, with a quick way to toggle javascript in a tab, etc. But there is no such fork.
- hashhar 10y ago
  Could you elaborate on some anti-user stuff that Firefox and Safari do? I'd like to know. I do consider Firefox comparatively more open than Chrome though, so I may have my biases.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Not OP, but I tried both FF and Safari recently hoping they would reduce the footprint. FF ended up being way too slow. I stopped using Safari after a few minutes because they decided to not show favicons on tabs anymore and you can't enable it at all. How is anybody supposed to find the right one of the 15-20 tabs that are open. Insanity!
    - rickycook 10y ago
      i agree; no tab favicons is upsetting. they do come back if you pin tabs (so only the icon is visible), and i'd say apple wants you to do the "zoom out beyond maximum" gesture to show all pages for navigation. i don't really use tabs when i have many open any more, because they go off the edge of the screen pretty quickly anyway. safari is also incredibly fast compared to chrome and ff. i love ff, but since starting to use safari i honestly don't think i could switch back
    - ValentineC 10y ago
      > I stopped using Safari after a few minutes because they decided to not show favicons on tabs anymore and you can't enable it at all. On Sierra, you can reenable favicons with MySIMBL [1] and SafariStand [2]. [1] https://github.com/w0lfschild/mySIMBL https://github.com/w0lfschild/mySIMBL [2] https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    It's simple, really, all of them prioritize the ability to show ads over user experience, privacy and security. For example, animations hurt user experience pretty much all the time, and yet they are not click-to-play.
    - yoasif_ 10y ago
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toggle-animated-gifs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toggle-animat...
  - vetinari 10y ago
    I'm Firefox user, but I consider it the 'lesser evil', not the only good guy. The anti-user stuff in Firefox is: - forced bundling of pocket/readability, - forced bundling of hello, - forced and heavyweight extension signing (I understand them wanting to sign extensions in user profiles; but the extensions installed by root should not need that - this killed the config extension for FreeIPA, for example), - I understand their desire to change their extension model, but killing many popular extensions is not a way. How it was communicated was a great example of hubris, - DRM support should not have been the default choice, - but MSE WebM with VP8 and VP9 still doesn't work, - the Australis redesign was controversial. (And from personal interest standpoint: still no Web Components support? still no WebP?)
    - hashhar 10y ago
      Those are really great points you brought up. They went to the back of my head after all these years. I think they dropped Hello altogether. Extension signing is not forced though, can be toggled from about:config. In my opinion WebExtensions is a last ditch attempt to gain users and devs. If FF abandons XUL, WebExtensions will be the ONLY STANDARD way to write extensions. But in their defense there are active discussions about adding new APIs to enable more powerful integrations. DRM is off by default on fresh installs, AFAIK and is user toggleable in Preferences unlike being hardcoded in Chrome and Edge.
      - cpeterso 10y ago
        Firefox no longer includes Hello. Hello only used standard WebRTC APIs, so anyone could create a comparable service as a regular website, such as Talky.io. Extension signing can be disabled in about:config, but I think the pref ("xpinstall.signatures.required") only works in the Firefox Nightly and Developer Edition channels. EME DRM is enabled by default in Firefox, but it won't work until the DRM blob (Google's Widevine CDM DLL) is automatically downloaded about one minute after Firefox launches. Here are instructions for disabling EME DRM and uninstalling the Widevine CDM: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
  - chris_7 10y ago
    Firefox needs a UI implemented in AppKit, I think.
0x0 10y ago
I'm hoping some of the new crazy changes won't be implemented, because switching is a lot of hassle (bookmarks, saved passwords, saved per-site preferences, extensions, cookies and localstorage data are all things I'd like to keep).
kelnos 10y ago
I switched back to Firefox a few years ago and have been really happy with it. I only have Chrome installed for tab-casting (Amazon Prime Video, ugh).
vonklaus 10y ago
Eh, maybe off of all google services, but the barrier from switching of the consumer version of chrome is frictionless. Uprooting you're whole life and moving to canada is a non-trivial commitment that it would be difficult to get the numbers neccesaary to have an impact. Moving to something like Brave not only limits googles potential developers & information flow, but harms there cash cow:ad revenue. That said, I like Canada a lot and have spent a lot of time there. It is quite nice
vonklaus 10y ago
Eh, maybe off of all google services, but the barrier from switching of the consumer version of chrome is frictionless. Uprooting you're whole life and moving to canada is a non-trivial commitment that it would be difficult to get the numbers neccesaary to have an impact. Moving to something like Brave not only limits googles potential developers & information flow, but harms there cash cow:ad revenue. That said, I like Canada a lot and have spent a lot of time there. It is quite nice

zzzcpan 10y ago

It's hard to reconsider firefox or safari because they are also very much anti-user. Maybe a fork of firefox/chromium without all that anti-user stuff would be better, with plugins only click-to-play, with no autoplay for animations, with a quick way to toggle javascript in a tab, etc. But there is no such fork.

hashhar 10y ago
Could you elaborate on some anti-user stuff that Firefox and Safari do? I'd like to know. I do consider Firefox comparatively more open than Chrome though, so I may have my biases.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Not OP, but I tried both FF and Safari recently hoping they would reduce the footprint. FF ended up being way too slow. I stopped using Safari after a few minutes because they decided to not show favicons on tabs anymore and you can't enable it at all. How is anybody supposed to find the right one of the 15-20 tabs that are open. Insanity!
  - rickycook 10y ago
    i agree; no tab favicons is upsetting. they do come back if you pin tabs (so only the icon is visible), and i'd say apple wants you to do the "zoom out beyond maximum" gesture to show all pages for navigation. i don't really use tabs when i have many open any more, because they go off the edge of the screen pretty quickly anyway. safari is also incredibly fast compared to chrome and ff. i love ff, but since starting to use safari i honestly don't think i could switch back
  - ValentineC 10y ago
    > I stopped using Safari after a few minutes because they decided to not show favicons on tabs anymore and you can't enable it at all. On Sierra, you can reenable favicons with MySIMBL [1] and SafariStand [2]. [1] https://github.com/w0lfschild/mySIMBL https://github.com/w0lfschild/mySIMBL [2] https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  It's simple, really, all of them prioritize the ability to show ads over user experience, privacy and security. For example, animations hurt user experience pretty much all the time, and yet they are not click-to-play.
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toggle-animated-gifs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toggle-animat...
- vetinari 10y ago
  I'm Firefox user, but I consider it the 'lesser evil', not the only good guy. The anti-user stuff in Firefox is: - forced bundling of pocket/readability, - forced bundling of hello, - forced and heavyweight extension signing (I understand them wanting to sign extensions in user profiles; but the extensions installed by root should not need that - this killed the config extension for FreeIPA, for example), - I understand their desire to change their extension model, but killing many popular extensions is not a way. How it was communicated was a great example of hubris, - DRM support should not have been the default choice, - but MSE WebM with VP8 and VP9 still doesn't work, - the Australis redesign was controversial. (And from personal interest standpoint: still no Web Components support? still no WebP?)
  - hashhar 10y ago
    Those are really great points you brought up. They went to the back of my head after all these years. I think they dropped Hello altogether. Extension signing is not forced though, can be toggled from about:config. In my opinion WebExtensions is a last ditch attempt to gain users and devs. If FF abandons XUL, WebExtensions will be the ONLY STANDARD way to write extensions. But in their defense there are active discussions about adding new APIs to enable more powerful integrations. DRM is off by default on fresh installs, AFAIK and is user toggleable in Preferences unlike being hardcoded in Chrome and Edge.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      Firefox no longer includes Hello. Hello only used standard WebRTC APIs, so anyone could create a comparable service as a regular website, such as Talky.io. Extension signing can be disabled in about:config, but I think the pref ("xpinstall.signatures.required") only works in the Firefox Nightly and Developer Edition channels. EME DRM is enabled by default in Firefox, but it won't work until the DRM blob (Google's Widevine CDM DLL) is automatically downloaded about one minute after Firefox launches. Here are instructions for disabling EME DRM and uninstalling the Widevine CDM: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
- chris_7 10y ago
  Firefox needs a UI implemented in AppKit, I think.

0x0 10y ago

I'm hoping some of the new crazy changes won't be implemented, because switching is a lot of hassle (bookmarks, saved passwords, saved per-site preferences, extensions, cookies and localstorage data are all things I'd like to keep).

kelnos 10y ago

I switched back to Firefox a few years ago and have been really happy with it. I only have Chrome installed for tab-casting (Amazon Prime Video, ugh).

vonklaus 10y ago

Eh, maybe off of all google services, but the barrier from switching of the consumer version of chrome is frictionless. Uprooting you're whole life and moving to canada is a non-trivial commitment that it would be difficult to get the numbers neccesaary to have an impact. Moving to something like Brave not only limits googles potential developers & information flow, but harms there cash cow:ad revenue. That said, I like Canada a lot and have spent a lot of time there. It is quite nice

vonklaus 10y ago