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I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and li

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking protection (not just Do Not Track toggle but actual blocking of trackers). That's something that's just not in Google's interest to put in Chrome. Browsers are becoming more and more aggressive in protecting the interests of users. Becoming true "User Agents," in other words. See also Safari iOS allowing content blockers and now in iOS 11 blocking some popular tracking behaviors by default. It's absolutely great. And it's not surprising to me that Chrome is not a leader here. It's owned by the biggest advertising company on the internet. I predict Chrome will continue to lag on pro-privacy, anti-nag features.

mtgx 9y ago
For those who don't know, if you sign in to your Google account in Chrome, Google will automatically save all the searches you've done in the omnibox. I don't remember Google ever warning me specifically that this was happening in the background, and after I checked https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and noticed it was doing that, I was so furious that I deleted all the data Google kept on me there, and paused all tracking in the Activity Controls page. I also stopped signing in to the Google account in Chrome. This is why I'm a big supporter of EU's "explicit consent" idea. I should be knowing stuff like that without having to read a 5-page privacy policy that's often hidden somewhere on the Help page. Speaking of Firefox, version 57 also makes it easier to enable Tracking Protection in settings now (before you had to switch to the private windows to benefit from it, although you could make it so that FF always opened private windows by default). https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/07/firefox-57-full-tracking-protection-functionality-included/ https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/07/firefox-57-full-tracking-p... You can download FF57 from their FTP servers (they published it today), if you can't wait for the auto-update tomorrow: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/
- ihale 9y ago
  That data is never truly deleted, not for a while at least. I suppose it has benefit now with Android, and multiple devices, but Google, and Youtube both started saving searches long before the release of Chrome. Quite terrible.
- colanderman 9y ago
  It's pretty easy to accidentally enable uploading all your cleartext passwords to Google's cloud service too (the dialog to do so is a dark pattern). I similarly was furious when I discovered that. Firefox is now my go-to, and what I recommend to friends and family.
  - zeveb 9y ago
    Do note that if you enable Firefox's sync functionality, all of your passwords will be encrypted with a function of your Mozilla Account password, and that Mozilla can target your browser instance with JavaScript to steal your account password at will (their protocol specifies that they never see your plaintext password, but they serve JavaScript to hash the password — which means they could serve JavaScript to send the password anywhere they like). Firefox is more secure than Chrome, but it's not very secure. The sad thing is that it used to be more secure and Mozilla deliberately weakened their security.
    - mgbmtl 9y ago
      I agree that is a valid issue, but it's still quite a different scale than using Google. If I understand correctly, you're saying that we should be careful about saving passwords in Firefox if we could be the target of a National Security Letter from the US. The attack would be detectable, so it cannot be used very often (and they would need a really good excuse for doing so). By contrast, Google takes all our data and can do whatever they want with it, without a warrant/NSL?
      - zeveb 9y ago
        Oh, I certainly don't recommend Google over Firefox. But I do not recommend using Firefox's Sync functionality, which is indeed insecure by design. I have no idea why so many downvotes. Can anyone disagree that a system in which Mozilla is able to decrypt user data is insecure? One note: the attack is not necessarily detectable, unless you are in the practice of verifying the JavaScript you receive for each page. If there were some public registry of hashed versions of Mozilla-served JavaScript, it would be detectable. Also, you need not worry only about the U.S. government, but also about any government which can compel Mozilla to act, and any government which can compel an employee of Mozilla to act, and finally any employees at Mozilla with access. And also you need to worry about bugs in Mozilla's JavaScript: since they did not design a system in which they can't know your password (which is the key to all your secrets), an implementation error might send them your password (and thus allow them to decrypt all your secrets).
mtmail 9y ago
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium removes many of the nagging and background features related to Google services.
- teamhappy 9y ago
  Browser vendors influence upcoming web standards. If you use ungoogled-chromium then your vote still goes to Google.
- bad_user 9y ago
  Unless Chrome has features you can't survive without (and I admit its dev tools are pretty good), then I don't see the purpose of this. If staying free of Google becomes a goal, then by using Chrome you're still helping them, even if your Chrome is un-googlified. This is because you help Chrome become a monopoly in the marketplace, I view it as the new Internet Explorer already. Many people here probably don't remember, but IExplorer also won on technical merits, version 5 being an excellent browser compared with its competition. Market dominance that allowed Microsoft to screw the web for a decade at least. And no, in this context its open source nature does not matter much for as long as Google controls its implementation and distribution. Firefox is right now truly the best browser, at least for my usage patterns and needs, but even if it weren't, I would still use it, because when web standards are endangered due to a monopoly, then I consider it my duty to support the underdog. Now don't get me wrong, it is true that Google and Chrome have helped the open web. But that doesn't matter that much, because they can always turn and you can see how lately Chrome is making bold changes without waiting confirmation from W3C or the other browser vendors — like disabling forms auto-complete or deprecating certificating pining. They are at a point where Chrome has enough market share to implement whatever the heck they want. DRM? H.264? Lost battles after they ended up in Chrome.
  - zach43 9y ago
    > Firefox is right now truly the best browser, at least for my usage patterns and needs, but even if it weren't, I would still use it, because when web standards are endangered due to a monopoly, then I consider it my duty to support the underdog. I just love that the web community actually thinks about this, and actively works to avoid monopolization and nonstandard behavior on the different browsers. Recently, I have moved into desktop development (using Qt and GTK+), and it is atrocious just how difficult it is to deploy a non-trivially sized native application on the three common operating systems. I really wish that the desktop development community could have unified around a similar set of standards for all the OSes when it comes to desktop applications too. The web application platform is painful in several ways too, but I think they have nailed it with attention to standards compliance and weeding-out monopolistic behavior
nerdwaller 9y ago
I've been on Firefox since I can remember it being out, but the latest versions, 56+, have me using it only intermittently due to battery drain issues on Mac[0] :(. I am really hoping they get this fixed shortly. [0]https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
- acqq 9y ago
  Exactly, Firefox is slower for both me and my girlfriend, I am a kind of "typical non-typical" and she "typical typical" user, and it got annoyingly slower for both. And now I've just lost all the extensions too, including NoScript and the dictionary(?!?)! See my other post here for details.
  - sverige 9y ago
    I've been using firefox since forever too. (Actually, since Mozilla 1.0 (aka Nutscrape) in 1993 or thereabouts.) I'm at that point where I'm about to dump it again, as I have periodically in the past. They keep making it more and more like Chrome. If I wanted to use Chrome, I would. It's gotten to bloat maximum. It's slow as hell. It's less flexible and less easy to personalize. They have broken some of my favorite add-ons. This piece is pure propaganda.
    - mgbmtl 9y ago
      I was feeling the same, but FF57 really is much better. It does break some extensions, but many have converted. Which are you having trouble with? The main one I'm missing is "Disable Ctrl+Q". My notes: https://www.bidon.ca/fr/random/2017-10-05-webextensions-supporting-firefox-57 https://www.bidon.ca/fr/random/2017-10-05-webextensions-supp...
      - sverige 9y ago
        The main one I've been missing is Pentadactyl (for quite a while). Vimium-FF is ok I guess. My main objection is still the sheer size and the amount of memory it takes, and the continual feature creep to make it more and more like Chrome. I know I'm in the minority, and also that it's heresy to say anything bad about Mozilla here. Oh well. I only wish I had lots of money and/or time so I could help revive the development of xombrero, but at least it's still available.
e40 9y ago
The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies? It was locking out journalists drafting stories! How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mountain View.
  - orbat 9y ago
    People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we've become extremely reliant on cloud services; Google closing someone's account without the possibility of appeal may not be politically motivated censorship, but it's still arbitrary censorship (even if you did click on the "agree" button on the EULA nobody ever reads). Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it?
    - deong 9y ago
      > If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it? Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools. Corporate censorship is entirely under your control. You can always stop the censorship by simply not saying it using that corporation's tools. Corporations can control how you say something, but not what you say. Governments can control the act of saying it. One is far worse than the other.
madeofpalk 9y ago
> I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking protection (not just Do Not Track toggle but actual blocking of trackers Here's something I find curious. When Apple does it, it's because they want to kill the open web and drive more people to their closed Apple News platform. When Mozilla does it, it's because they're saints. How am I able to reconcile these two?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > How am I able to reconcile these two? It's like reviews on Amazon. You skim the highs and the lows and you read the rest. People who say Apple is killing the open web are at the extreme. Skim what they say just to be familiar with their argument, but be careful not to get sucked in.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  Perhaps because Mozilla doesn't have a News platform? So it is easier to believe that they are doing it for you. I don't mean to imply that Apple have any other motives, I know nothing about them except that there appears to be a greater likelihood of a conflict of interest.
- kazagistar 9y ago
  Because more then one person has opinions on the Internet, so sometimes you hear inconsistent opinions.
- xenophonf 9y ago
  In my mind, the distinction is simple: Apple is a for-profit corporation, while Mozilla is a charity operating in the public interest. I sometimes agree with Apple's actions while simultaneously distrusting their motives, and I sometimes disagree with Mozilla's actions while simultaneously _trusting_ their motives.
ieshaholley 9y ago
Good luck with it all
frik 9y ago
Firefox 56 is actually pretty good. It's now fast again. I am using a fresh new profile. Please let me increase "content process count" higher than 7. Chrome opens hundreds of child-processes (no problem at all on my PC). And I am still keeping an older Firefox 48 around, as it's the last version that runs Firebug and other good but now unsupported addons. Firebug had this "DOM" panel which showed the non-default DOM attributes in a different color and showed them as first few entries, and the rest below. The DevTools in new Firefox has a less useful DOM panel (it shows all attributes not grouped or colored differently, makes the DOM panel useless and chaotic) - please improve the DOM panel to be feature-equalent to the old Firebug DOM panel!!
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  dom.ipc.processCount in about:config
  - frik 9y ago
    Thanks a lot! I increased it to 50, it Works great. Please remove the UI restriction with the next release.
- inDigiNeous 9y ago
  You will be pleasantaly surprised when you get updated to 57 :) Have been running the beta for 3 weeks now, very stable, fast, snappy. Amazing work.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
on_and_off 9y ago
>My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google One thing they have been doing very well is allowing history to sync between multiple devices on different OSes. Right now I use Chrome everywhere because : - It feels pretty fast (I still have to try the new FF) - Any replacement needs to come with an extension covering this feature and working across all my OSes.
- ared38 9y ago
  Firefox has had syncing built in for a while: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/ Haven't tried it on iOS yet, but it worked great on my Android.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    and this is where Chrome has a good hook on me. In order to switch, both FF desktop and mobile need to be better than Chrome. Does FF support a version of Chrome tabs too ? Damn, they have built themselves a good moat just with features I will miss.
    - inanutshellus 9y ago
      I don't know about iOS but the Firefox Android app is great and works with Firefox Sync, of course.
    - allenz 9y ago
      I prefer FF over Chrome on mobile. FF mobile allows extensions such as uBlock Origin and Google Link Fixer which I find essential. FF supports sending tabs to other devices, if that's what you mean by Chrome tabs.
      - jazoom 9y ago
        Firefox on Android has awful scrolling physics. I will never be able to use it while the scrolling is different to every other app on my phone.
tspike 9y ago
Thanks for the reminder. I just downloaded the latest FF beta and exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role. All the back-and-forth about speed and features is understandable, but misses the point that Firefox needs our support if we are to have any real non-proprietary options for what is quickly becoming the base system abstraction layer for most computing.
- Santosh83 9y ago
  Indeed this is the main point, and the reason I've stuck with Firefox ever since it launched, despite being rather slow a few years back. This is the only browser engine that is not shaped by major corporate interests. And frankly it has no major downsides as compared to Chrome. The latter only enjoys the market share it does (in my opinion) because of being aggressively pushed on Google.com and being bundled everywhere.
  - Kluny 9y ago
    I gave Firefox a try a month or two ago when people started saying it was good again. I think I had a problem with uBlock origin not working well enough - too much crap was getting through. What are people using for adblock?
    - SSLy 9y ago
      uBlock origin with uMatrix
      - jordanb 9y ago
        I use uBlock Origin plus uMatrix but I have to say that it's probably only for people who are really serious about security. It breaks nearly every site by default.
        nextos 9y ago
        Does uMatrix really give a lot more security on top of uBlock Origin, in exchange for all the inconveniences? I tried several times, but ended up sticking to a sandbox (firejail) + uBlock Origin + HTTPS Everywhere.
merb 9y ago
you need to use the dev edition. this is fast... I found Electrolysis still quite slow. but the new engine ("Quantum"), is ridiculous fast. The last ~5 versions were such big improvements, that I even switched from Chrome. It's so good know that there is no need to keep Chrome. Firefox isn't good enough again, Firefox is the browser again.
feelin_googley 9y ago
"Becoming true "User Agents," in other words" I remember the early browsers as smaller programs that were oriented around retrieving content for further viewing/interaction using other applications. As I understood it, this was one of the ways that MIME was useful. The problems with "modern" web browsing that annoy users probably have less to do with what, back then, would have been separate programs. They have more to do with the retrieval step. User have little control over 1. the content the browser requests and retrieves and 2. whether and how that content is processed (i.e. the "default settings" of the browser decide and to my knowledge few users today manually adjust MIME settings or whatever today's equivalent is). Because users today expect the browser to do everything. It is more than a user agent i.e. http client, it is an "all-in-one" program that can seemingly do anything. No auxiliary programs are needed. This comes at a cost. I would argue that cost includes many hassles that users experience, including "speed". The point is that this blog post is talking about #2, the processing of retrieved content. But is that really what causes most of the user annoyances? Is that what ultimately affects "speed"? Or could it be, at least in part, that some web page is controlling the web browser to have it make dozens upon dozens of DNS and HTTP requests, not only for tracking, but in some cases for "content" the user does not want. The first task of the user agent, #1, to retrieve content, is not nearly as complex as the second, #2. It probably has not changed much since the early days of the www. (I still use original netcat from 1996 as well as other 1990's tcp clients to great effect.) Retrieval of content can be user controlled. The complexity is manageable. The "user agent" can be small, open source and easily compiled by the user. And with todays memory and networking retrieval can be very fast. When I think of a "user agent" I think of a tcp or http client, a small program that can make TCP connections and HTTP requests, not one that is also a graphics rendering engine, a video player, a programming language interpreter or a PDF viewer, etc. It is the disappearance of the MIME idea in favor of a highly complex, all-in-one application called a "modern web browser" that is at the source of every known problem I can think of that is associated with "modern web browsers" today, whether it is browser "speed" or privacy or security or whatever. It is the price one must pay for not having separate programs with separate privileges to accomplish separate tasks.
- Santosh83 9y ago
  How would you propose "splitting" a modern web app between two programs, one to retrieve its content and another to render it, without the sort of tight integration between these two programs that would be needed to again lead to the kind of "kitchen sink" situation that we have today?? IMO the problem is not the kitchen sink nature of web browsers, the problem is the kitchen sink nature of the web itself. It needs to be split into functionally separate parts that can be interfaced with different programs and workflows, instead of being a huge, integrated 'web' that is in turn parsed by a similarly huge, integrated program, the browser.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
The most anti-user "User Agent" thing of Chrome, in my experience, is their refusal to let me open my myriad dev sites with bogus certificates claiming some bullshit HSTS problem, without giving me a "do it anyway, you stupid browser" button. So, literally, I still use Chrome (because I'm too used to it), but I do all my dev work on Firefox, which has a dev-friendly user policy.
- dylz 9y ago
  type badidea
- Retr0spectrum 9y ago
  I believe if you type "badidea" at the error page it will let you through unconditionally.
  - pzduniak 9y ago
    I wish I knew that when adding auto-HTTPS and HSTS functionality to a product - typing out "chrome://net-internals/#hsts" almost became muscle memory.
  - SomeHacker44 9y ago
    Holy crap. I have Google'd a zillion times for a workaround and they all were insane "do about a zillion steps on Keychain access or just fix your server." THANK YOU BOTH.
- gkfasdfasdf 9y ago
  FWIW blocking sites with bogus certs and not allowing a user bypass is exactly what the HSTS RFC requires. If you were testing the HSTS feature of your website, Chrome is doing the right thing. It's possible to clear Chrome's cache of HSTS-enabled sites btw: https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/clear-hsts-settings-chrome-firefox/ https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/clear-hsts-settings-chrome-...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lukaa 9y ago
I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't.
- harterrt 9y ago
  I use bookmark keywords [1] to register new search engines. [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches
- vmarsy 9y ago
  > I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't. Where do you see the search bar being removed? I can't see any announcements, I don't think it's going away. Also, I don't think the combined bar is missing functionalities, at least not the one you're describing. On Firefox Developer Edition 58, in the menu you can choose between : Use the address bar for search and navigation or Add search bar in toolbar This decides between combining the address bar and search bar into one, or having a separate address bar and search bar. You can also pick a keyword for each search engine. Even if you decide to use the combined bar, I just tried adding "+ddg" keyword[1] on Duck Duck Go and type "+ddg test" and it searched for "test" on Duck Duck Go instead of my default search engine. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...
norswap 9y ago
Counterpoint: as a longtime Firefox user, I have to restart it every couple day. It still hemmorhages memory and just gets unusable after a while. Even if it's the extension fault, why they aren't sandboxed properly, or even why there eisn't basic reporting about the offenders boggles my mind. Maybe it's because of the API... I find it hard to believe it isn't possible to retrofit some of that on the current design to be honest. And now, because they couldn't handle it, we're getting extensions with crippled power, that are very (very) far away from feature parity with the old ones. I wasn't happy before, and I'm not happy now, albeit for different reason. The fact that I'm using Firefox of course means I'm not thinking too much of other browsers. The fact an extension in chrome can't add a frigging sidebar is a personal pet peeve of mine. I remember when Firefox was the lightweight alternative to Internet Explorer 6...
- scottlamb 9y ago
  Are you using Firefox nightlies? As I read the article, the Quantum improvements they're talking about are nightly-only today; they get released tomorrow. So I think when you say "now" you're still talking about pre-Quantum. That said, I don't know if Quantum fixes the specific memory leaks you have, adds (back?) the extension hooks you miss, or adds the reporting you're looking for.
  - jibesh 9y ago
    Not "nightly-only" but also "beta" channel since weeks/months. The today beta version is in fact the tomorrow stable one (57.0).
- srean 9y ago
  This sounds genuinely odd, could you be using a add-on that is causing a problem ? I leave Firefox open for months on end without problem and with several hundred of tabs open, multiple windows too. I do use a tab unloader, that unloads an inactive tab after a while. Its precisely because of this that other browsers are not suitable for me
  - lc5G 9y ago
SkyMarshal 9y ago
54 is not even fast compared to 57 ("Quantum", launching tomorrow 11/14). Seriously if you think 54 is fast, 57 blows it out of the water. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance-test/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance-test/
throwaway_882 9y ago
I am not Pro-Google or Pro-Chrome by any means, but I think builtin tracking blockers is a bad idea because we'll be destroying the internet's primary model of monetization. At least AdBlock plays nice with Google, Facebook, and other advertisers who are not intrusive and slow down page speed with a million trackers. That being said, I think it's hard to trust any organization whether open or not; It's blind faith. Firefox has attempted browser login through Mozilla before with Persona, Google's not the first to push cloud browser personalization.
jgalt212 9y ago
> Browsers are becoming more and more aggressive in protecting the interests of users. Becoming true "User Agents," I really like the built in free VPN that Opera provides. http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn
- xenator 9y ago
  This only means that Opera have all your data and can aggregate it in one place.
  - jgalt212 9y ago
    that's true with any VPN though.
pacala 9y ago
On the verge of switching back to Firefox. Then Pocket. I don't want to give my private data to any cloud service out there. Full stop. The only way the cloud gets my data is encrypted with a key I solely own.

mtgx 9y ago

For those who don't know, if you sign in to your Google account in Chrome, Google will automatically save all the searches you've done in the omnibox. I don't remember Google ever warning me specifically that this was happening in the background, and after I checked https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and noticed it was doing that, I was so furious that I deleted all the data Google kept on me there, and paused all tracking in the Activity Controls page. I also stopped signing in to the Google account in Chrome. This is why I'm a big supporter of EU's "explicit consent" idea. I should be knowing stuff like that without having to read a 5-page privacy policy that's often hidden somewhere on the Help page. Speaking of Firefox, version 57 also makes it easier to enable Tracking Protection in settings now (before you had to switch to the private windows to benefit from it, although you could make it so that FF always opened private windows by default). https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/07/firefox-57-full-tracking-protection-functionality-included/ https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/07/firefox-57-full-tracking-p... You can download FF57 from their FTP servers (they published it today), if you can't wait for the auto-update tomorrow: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/

ihale 9y ago
That data is never truly deleted, not for a while at least. I suppose it has benefit now with Android, and multiple devices, but Google, and Youtube both started saving searches long before the release of Chrome. Quite terrible.
colanderman 9y ago
It's pretty easy to accidentally enable uploading all your cleartext passwords to Google's cloud service too (the dialog to do so is a dark pattern). I similarly was furious when I discovered that. Firefox is now my go-to, and what I recommend to friends and family.
- zeveb 9y ago
  Do note that if you enable Firefox's sync functionality, all of your passwords will be encrypted with a function of your Mozilla Account password, and that Mozilla can target your browser instance with JavaScript to steal your account password at will (their protocol specifies that they never see your plaintext password, but they serve JavaScript to hash the password — which means they could serve JavaScript to send the password anywhere they like). Firefox is more secure than Chrome, but it's not very secure. The sad thing is that it used to be more secure and Mozilla deliberately weakened their security.
  - mgbmtl 9y ago
    I agree that is a valid issue, but it's still quite a different scale than using Google. If I understand correctly, you're saying that we should be careful about saving passwords in Firefox if we could be the target of a National Security Letter from the US. The attack would be detectable, so it cannot be used very often (and they would need a really good excuse for doing so). By contrast, Google takes all our data and can do whatever they want with it, without a warrant/NSL?
    - zeveb 9y ago
      Oh, I certainly don't recommend Google over Firefox. But I do not recommend using Firefox's Sync functionality, which is indeed insecure by design. I have no idea why so many downvotes. Can anyone disagree that a system in which Mozilla is able to decrypt user data is insecure? One note: the attack is not necessarily detectable, unless you are in the practice of verifying the JavaScript you receive for each page. If there were some public registry of hashed versions of Mozilla-served JavaScript, it would be detectable. Also, you need not worry only about the U.S. government, but also about any government which can compel Mozilla to act, and any government which can compel an employee of Mozilla to act, and finally any employees at Mozilla with access. And also you need to worry about bugs in Mozilla's JavaScript: since they did not design a system in which they can't know your password (which is the key to all your secrets), an implementation error might send them your password (and thus allow them to decrypt all your secrets).

mtmail 9y ago

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium removes many of the nagging and background features related to Google services.

teamhappy 9y ago
Browser vendors influence upcoming web standards. If you use ungoogled-chromium then your vote still goes to Google.
bad_user 9y ago
Unless Chrome has features you can't survive without (and I admit its dev tools are pretty good), then I don't see the purpose of this. If staying free of Google becomes a goal, then by using Chrome you're still helping them, even if your Chrome is un-googlified. This is because you help Chrome become a monopoly in the marketplace, I view it as the new Internet Explorer already. Many people here probably don't remember, but IExplorer also won on technical merits, version 5 being an excellent browser compared with its competition. Market dominance that allowed Microsoft to screw the web for a decade at least. And no, in this context its open source nature does not matter much for as long as Google controls its implementation and distribution. Firefox is right now truly the best browser, at least for my usage patterns and needs, but even if it weren't, I would still use it, because when web standards are endangered due to a monopoly, then I consider it my duty to support the underdog. Now don't get me wrong, it is true that Google and Chrome have helped the open web. But that doesn't matter that much, because they can always turn and you can see how lately Chrome is making bold changes without waiting confirmation from W3C or the other browser vendors — like disabling forms auto-complete or deprecating certificating pining. They are at a point where Chrome has enough market share to implement whatever the heck they want. DRM? H.264? Lost battles after they ended up in Chrome.
- zach43 9y ago
  > Firefox is right now truly the best browser, at least for my usage patterns and needs, but even if it weren't, I would still use it, because when web standards are endangered due to a monopoly, then I consider it my duty to support the underdog. I just love that the web community actually thinks about this, and actively works to avoid monopolization and nonstandard behavior on the different browsers. Recently, I have moved into desktop development (using Qt and GTK+), and it is atrocious just how difficult it is to deploy a non-trivially sized native application on the three common operating systems. I really wish that the desktop development community could have unified around a similar set of standards for all the OSes when it comes to desktop applications too. The web application platform is painful in several ways too, but I think they have nailed it with attention to standards compliance and weeding-out monopolistic behavior

nerdwaller 9y ago

I've been on Firefox since I can remember it being out, but the latest versions, 56+, have me using it only intermittently due to battery drain issues on Mac[0] :(. I am really hoping they get this fixed shortly. [0]https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

acqq 9y ago
Exactly, Firefox is slower for both me and my girlfriend, I am a kind of "typical non-typical" and she "typical typical" user, and it got annoyingly slower for both. And now I've just lost all the extensions too, including NoScript and the dictionary(?!?)! See my other post here for details.
- sverige 9y ago
  I've been using firefox since forever too. (Actually, since Mozilla 1.0 (aka Nutscrape) in 1993 or thereabouts.) I'm at that point where I'm about to dump it again, as I have periodically in the past. They keep making it more and more like Chrome. If I wanted to use Chrome, I would. It's gotten to bloat maximum. It's slow as hell. It's less flexible and less easy to personalize. They have broken some of my favorite add-ons. This piece is pure propaganda.
  - mgbmtl 9y ago
    I was feeling the same, but FF57 really is much better. It does break some extensions, but many have converted. Which are you having trouble with? The main one I'm missing is "Disable Ctrl+Q". My notes: https://www.bidon.ca/fr/random/2017-10-05-webextensions-supporting-firefox-57 https://www.bidon.ca/fr/random/2017-10-05-webextensions-supp...
    - sverige 9y ago
      The main one I've been missing is Pentadactyl (for quite a while). Vimium-FF is ok I guess. My main objection is still the sheer size and the amount of memory it takes, and the continual feature creep to make it more and more like Chrome. I know I'm in the minority, and also that it's heresy to say anything bad about Mozilla here. Oh well. I only wish I had lots of money and/or time so I could help revive the development of xombrero, but at least it's still available.

e40 9y ago

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

ghostcluster 9y ago
But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies? It was locking out journalists drafting stories! How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mountain View.
- orbat 9y ago
  People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we've become extremely reliant on cloud services; Google closing someone's account without the possibility of appeal may not be politically motivated censorship, but it's still arbitrary censorship (even if you did click on the "agree" button on the EULA nobody ever reads). Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it?
  - deong 9y ago
    > If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it? Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools. Corporate censorship is entirely under your control. You can always stop the censorship by simply not saying it using that corporation's tools. Corporations can control how you say something, but not what you say. Governments can control the act of saying it. One is far worse than the other.

madeofpalk 9y ago

> I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking protection (not just Do Not Track toggle but actual blocking of trackers Here's something I find curious. When Apple does it, it's because they want to kill the open web and drive more people to their closed Apple News platform. When Mozilla does it, it's because they're saints. How am I able to reconcile these two?

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> How am I able to reconcile these two? It's like reviews on Amazon. You skim the highs and the lows and you read the rest. People who say Apple is killing the open web are at the extreme. Skim what they say just to be familiar with their argument, but be careful not to get sucked in.
kwhitefoot 9y ago
Perhaps because Mozilla doesn't have a News platform? So it is easier to believe that they are doing it for you. I don't mean to imply that Apple have any other motives, I know nothing about them except that there appears to be a greater likelihood of a conflict of interest.
kazagistar 9y ago
Because more then one person has opinions on the Internet, so sometimes you hear inconsistent opinions.
xenophonf 9y ago
In my mind, the distinction is simple: Apple is a for-profit corporation, while Mozilla is a charity operating in the public interest. I sometimes agree with Apple's actions while simultaneously distrusting their motives, and I sometimes disagree with Mozilla's actions while simultaneously _trusting_ their motives.

ieshaholley 9y ago

Good luck with it all

frik 9y ago

Firefox 56 is actually pretty good. It's now fast again. I am using a fresh new profile. Please let me increase "content process count" higher than 7. Chrome opens hundreds of child-processes (no problem at all on my PC). And I am still keeping an older Firefox 48 around, as it's the last version that runs Firebug and other good but now unsupported addons. Firebug had this "DOM" panel which showed the non-default DOM attributes in a different color and showed them as first few entries, and the rest below. The DevTools in new Firefox has a less useful DOM panel (it shows all attributes not grouped or colored differently, makes the DOM panel useless and chaotic) - please improve the DOM panel to be feature-equalent to the old Firebug DOM panel!!

seba_dos1 9y ago
dom.ipc.processCount in about:config
- frik 9y ago
  Thanks a lot! I increased it to 50, it Works great. Please remove the UI restriction with the next release.
inDigiNeous 9y ago
You will be pleasantaly surprised when you get updated to 57 :) Have been running the beta for 3 weeks now, very stable, fast, snappy. Amazing work.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

on_and_off 9y ago

>My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google One thing they have been doing very well is allowing history to sync between multiple devices on different OSes. Right now I use Chrome everywhere because : - It feels pretty fast (I still have to try the new FF) - Any replacement needs to come with an extension covering this feature and working across all my OSes.

ared38 9y ago
Firefox has had syncing built in for a while: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/ Haven't tried it on iOS yet, but it worked great on my Android.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  and this is where Chrome has a good hook on me. In order to switch, both FF desktop and mobile need to be better than Chrome. Does FF support a version of Chrome tabs too ? Damn, they have built themselves a good moat just with features I will miss.
  - inanutshellus 9y ago
    I don't know about iOS but the Firefox Android app is great and works with Firefox Sync, of course.
  - allenz 9y ago
    I prefer FF over Chrome on mobile. FF mobile allows extensions such as uBlock Origin and Google Link Fixer which I find essential. FF supports sending tabs to other devices, if that's what you mean by Chrome tabs.
    - jazoom 9y ago
      Firefox on Android has awful scrolling physics. I will never be able to use it while the scrolling is different to every other app on my phone.

tspike 9y ago

Thanks for the reminder. I just downloaded the latest FF beta and exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role. All the back-and-forth about speed and features is understandable, but misses the point that Firefox needs our support if we are to have any real non-proprietary options for what is quickly becoming the base system abstraction layer for most computing.

Santosh83 9y ago
Indeed this is the main point, and the reason I've stuck with Firefox ever since it launched, despite being rather slow a few years back. This is the only browser engine that is not shaped by major corporate interests. And frankly it has no major downsides as compared to Chrome. The latter only enjoys the market share it does (in my opinion) because of being aggressively pushed on Google.com and being bundled everywhere.
- Kluny 9y ago
  I gave Firefox a try a month or two ago when people started saying it was good again. I think I had a problem with uBlock origin not working well enough - too much crap was getting through. What are people using for adblock?
  - SSLy 9y ago
    uBlock origin with uMatrix
    - jordanb 9y ago
      I use uBlock Origin plus uMatrix but I have to say that it's probably only for people who are really serious about security. It breaks nearly every site by default.
      - nextos 9y ago
        Does uMatrix really give a lot more security on top of uBlock Origin, in exchange for all the inconveniences? I tried several times, but ended up sticking to a sandbox (firejail) + uBlock Origin + HTTPS Everywhere.

merb 9y ago

you need to use the dev edition. this is fast... I found Electrolysis still quite slow. but the new engine ("Quantum"), is ridiculous fast. The last ~5 versions were such big improvements, that I even switched from Chrome. It's so good know that there is no need to keep Chrome. Firefox isn't good enough again, Firefox is the browser again.

feelin_googley 9y ago

"Becoming true "User Agents," in other words" I remember the early browsers as smaller programs that were oriented around retrieving content for further viewing/interaction using other applications. As I understood it, this was one of the ways that MIME was useful. The problems with "modern" web browsing that annoy users probably have less to do with what, back then, would have been separate programs. They have more to do with the retrieval step. User have little control over 1. the content the browser requests and retrieves and 2. whether and how that content is processed (i.e. the "default settings" of the browser decide and to my knowledge few users today manually adjust MIME settings or whatever today's equivalent is). Because users today expect the browser to do everything. It is more than a user agent i.e. http client, it is an "all-in-one" program that can seemingly do anything. No auxiliary programs are needed. This comes at a cost. I would argue that cost includes many hassles that users experience, including "speed". The point is that this blog post is talking about #2, the processing of retrieved content. But is that really what causes most of the user annoyances? Is that what ultimately affects "speed"? Or could it be, at least in part, that some web page is controlling the web browser to have it make dozens upon dozens of DNS and HTTP requests, not only for tracking, but in some cases for "content" the user does not want. The first task of the user agent, #1, to retrieve content, is not nearly as complex as the second, #2. It probably has not changed much since the early days of the www. (I still use original netcat from 1996 as well as other 1990's tcp clients to great effect.) Retrieval of content can be user controlled. The complexity is manageable. The "user agent" can be small, open source and easily compiled by the user. And with todays memory and networking retrieval can be very fast. When I think of a "user agent" I think of a tcp or http client, a small program that can make TCP connections and HTTP requests, not one that is also a graphics rendering engine, a video player, a programming language interpreter or a PDF viewer, etc. It is the disappearance of the MIME idea in favor of a highly complex, all-in-one application called a "modern web browser" that is at the source of every known problem I can think of that is associated with "modern web browsers" today, whether it is browser "speed" or privacy or security or whatever. It is the price one must pay for not having separate programs with separate privileges to accomplish separate tasks.

Santosh83 9y ago
How would you propose "splitting" a modern web app between two programs, one to retrieve its content and another to render it, without the sort of tight integration between these two programs that would be needed to again lead to the kind of "kitchen sink" situation that we have today?? IMO the problem is not the kitchen sink nature of web browsers, the problem is the kitchen sink nature of the web itself. It needs to be split into functionally separate parts that can be interfaced with different programs and workflows, instead of being a huge, integrated 'web' that is in turn parsed by a similarly huge, integrated program, the browser.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

The most anti-user "User Agent" thing of Chrome, in my experience, is their refusal to let me open my myriad dev sites with bogus certificates claiming some bullshit HSTS problem, without giving me a "do it anyway, you stupid browser" button. So, literally, I still use Chrome (because I'm too used to it), but I do all my dev work on Firefox, which has a dev-friendly user policy.

dylz 9y ago
type badidea
Retr0spectrum 9y ago
I believe if you type "badidea" at the error page it will let you through unconditionally.
- pzduniak 9y ago
  I wish I knew that when adding auto-HTTPS and HSTS functionality to a product - typing out "chrome://net-internals/#hsts" almost became muscle memory.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  Holy crap. I have Google'd a zillion times for a workaround and they all were insane "do about a zillion steps on Keychain access or just fix your server." THANK YOU BOTH.
gkfasdfasdf 9y ago
FWIW blocking sites with bogus certs and not allowing a user bypass is exactly what the HSTS RFC requires. If you were testing the HSTS feature of your website, Chrome is doing the right thing. It's possible to clear Chrome's cache of HSTS-enabled sites btw: https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/clear-hsts-settings-chrome-firefox/ https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/clear-hsts-settings-chrome-...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lukaa 9y ago

I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't.

harterrt 9y ago
I use bookmark keywords [1] to register new search engines. [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches
vmarsy 9y ago
> I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't. Where do you see the search bar being removed? I can't see any announcements, I don't think it's going away. Also, I don't think the combined bar is missing functionalities, at least not the one you're describing. On Firefox Developer Edition 58, in the menu you can choose between : Use the address bar for search and navigation or Add search bar in toolbar This decides between combining the address bar and search bar into one, or having a separate address bar and search bar. You can also pick a keyword for each search engine. Even if you decide to use the combined bar, I just tried adding "+ddg" keyword[1] on Duck Duck Go and type "+ddg test" and it searched for "test" on Duck Duck Go instead of my default search engine. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...

norswap 9y ago

Counterpoint: as a longtime Firefox user, I have to restart it every couple day. It still hemmorhages memory and just gets unusable after a while. Even if it's the extension fault, why they aren't sandboxed properly, or even why there eisn't basic reporting about the offenders boggles my mind. Maybe it's because of the API... I find it hard to believe it isn't possible to retrofit some of that on the current design to be honest. And now, because they couldn't handle it, we're getting extensions with crippled power, that are very (very) far away from feature parity with the old ones. I wasn't happy before, and I'm not happy now, albeit for different reason. The fact that I'm using Firefox of course means I'm not thinking too much of other browsers. The fact an extension in chrome can't add a frigging sidebar is a personal pet peeve of mine. I remember when Firefox was the lightweight alternative to Internet Explorer 6...

scottlamb 9y ago
Are you using Firefox nightlies? As I read the article, the Quantum improvements they're talking about are nightly-only today; they get released tomorrow. So I think when you say "now" you're still talking about pre-Quantum. That said, I don't know if Quantum fixes the specific memory leaks you have, adds (back?) the extension hooks you miss, or adds the reporting you're looking for.
- jibesh 9y ago
  Not "nightly-only" but also "beta" channel since weeks/months. The today beta version is in fact the tomorrow stable one (57.0).
srean 9y ago
This sounds genuinely odd, could you be using a add-on that is causing a problem ? I leave Firefox open for months on end without problem and with several hundred of tabs open, multiple windows too. I do use a tab unloader, that unloads an inactive tab after a while. Its precisely because of this that other browsers are not suitable for me
- lc5G 9y ago

SkyMarshal 9y ago

54 is not even fast compared to 57 ("Quantum", launching tomorrow 11/14). Seriously if you think 54 is fast, 57 blows it out of the water. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance-test/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance-test/

throwaway_882 9y ago

I am not Pro-Google or Pro-Chrome by any means, but I think builtin tracking blockers is a bad idea because we'll be destroying the internet's primary model of monetization. At least AdBlock plays nice with Google, Facebook, and other advertisers who are not intrusive and slow down page speed with a million trackers. That being said, I think it's hard to trust any organization whether open or not; It's blind faith. Firefox has attempted browser login through Mozilla before with Persona, Google's not the first to push cloud browser personalization.

jgalt212 9y ago

> Browsers are becoming more and more aggressive in protecting the interests of users. Becoming true "User Agents," I really like the built in free VPN that Opera provides. http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn http://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn

xenator 9y ago
This only means that Opera have all your data and can aggregate it in one place.
- jgalt212 9y ago
  that's true with any VPN though.

pacala 9y ago

On the verge of switching back to Firefox. Then Pocket. I don't want to give my private data to any cloud service out there. Full stop. The only way the cloud gets my data is encrypted with a key I solely own.