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Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about bei

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not because it is better, but because it is the right thing to do (I understand that not many people agree with this philosophy, which is fine). Having said that, all sites which I regularly use work perfectly for me in Firefox with acceptable performance. So I never found a reason to switch at all. Rarely, I come across a website which is "best viewed with Chrome"; my default action is to close that site immediately.

kees99 8y ago
> website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.
- latexr 8y ago
  Not only is it still a thing, Google itself is a major culprit of it. Seems like every new experiment they release is “best viewed” in — or worse, “requires” — Google Chrome.
  - Rovanion 8y ago
    Not just experiments. Neither Google Hangouts nor Meet worked in Firefox until the 22nd of May this year.
    - lambda 8y ago
      Oh, wow, Hangouts and Meet are working in Firefox now? I've been keeping Chrome running just for that for a couple of years, will be glad to stop having to do that.
    - novaRom 8y ago
      Google Flights is still not working in Firefox
      - baobrain 8y ago
        What is not working? I have been using google flights to book trips for months without issues now. The only google services I've had some trouble with firefox are hangouts, and even that is fixed.
        callahad 8y ago
        Try it on Android, where Google controls more of the market, and has less incentive for interop. You get a door slammed in your face: https://twitter.com/andrewhobden/status/1007668509826928640 https://twitter.com/andrewhobden/status/1007668509826928640 Great response from Alex Russell, but it's clear that the sentiments of the Chrome team aren't translating into policy elsewhere in Google, or we wouldn't be dealing with something like this every few months.
        baobrain 8y ago
        Oh wow, I never noticed this before, this must be a recent thing...Thanks!
    - pmontra 8y ago
      Meet didn't even work in Chrome on Ubuntu 16.04 last time I checked. A customer of mine that went all Google talked about going back to Skype, which fixed most problems in the last months (with the obvious exception of the uselessly sparse layout.)
    - JshWright 8y ago
      Meet works now? I knew about hangouts, but Meet was still not working last I checked. That would be fantastic if that was the case. EDIT: So it does! The last reason I was keeping Chrome as my default (so Meet calendar invite links would work) is gone.
    - swasheck 8y ago
      I've found that "work" in this case is still even a stretch. With it being the only application that I have open, with one tab on Firefox, these sites (but especially Inbox) cause my zBook to sound like it's mining Bitcoin or running SETI analysis.
  - GusRuss89 8y ago
    Well yeah, if it's an experiment that demonstrates a feature that Firefox doesn't support then of course it will be best viewed in Chrome. Experiments shouldn't count here.
    - forgottenpass 8y ago
      As soon as "experiment" stops meaning "soft launch" we can stop counting them.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    It's quite a good filter, they can get user feedback with less risk of negative reviews.
  - hellojason 8y ago
    Google Optimize requires both Chrome and a browser extension (which isn’t available for any other browser) to work.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  Well, "best viewed in IE" was the thing till 2010 or so. The Chrome version I have never seen except on sites experimenting with advanced features unavailable elsewhere.
- zeptomu 8y ago
  Unfortunately, yes, e.g. Google Earth: https://www.google.com/earth/ https://www.google.com/earth/
- scaryclam 8y ago
  Yep. You can't use google hangouts without chrome. I've seen other websites (non-google) doing the same. Chrome is the new IE it seems :(
  - filomeno 8y ago
    Well, at least this new IE is open-source, cross-platform, and way better than that browser which reached a 90% usage peak some time ago. Joking aside, I've never really known the difference between Google Talk, Hangouts, etc, but I regularly chat with my contacts from the Gmail website, using Firefox, without any problem so far.
  - krallja 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17364039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17364039 says Hangouts’ usable in firefox once more.
    - phyzome 8y ago
      I can tell you that it's pretty touch and go. They don't even support screensharing in Chromium, did you know that? Meet did start to work in latest Firefox recently, and then this week they broke mic audio. -.-
- novaRom 8y ago
  Yes, Google Flights refuses to work with Firefox and asks to switch to Chrome
  - hexane360 8y ago
    *on mobile For anyone confused.
- allengeorge 8y ago
  Bank of America claims Firefox is an “unsupported browser”, so, yeah :/
  - kroltan 8y ago
    You'll be surprised how well it works by just switching the user-agent. It's more of a "too lazy to make sure it works" than a "actually doesn't work and Chrome should be used" situation.
    - gutnor 8y ago
      Too lazy to test probably. If you support IE, Safari, Chrome both on the desktop and mobile, chances are that your site supports practically everything. Unfortunately, often giving the official thumbs up requires passing some test suite. If companies have gotten better with their development methodology, their testing methodology is still often "Take a bunch of guys in India and have then run through that extensive check list".
- wheaties 8y ago
  There are many job postings, payment forms(!?) and financial websites that only work properly in Firefox. The best part is, for job postings, it's a great "not going to work there" filter.
  - bshacklett 8y ago
    Don't be too quick to dismiss a workplace because of something like that. Teams that are hiring often have very little control over the initial process (e.g.: the site where jobs are posted), but may be doing amazing things and be great to work with.
- callahad 8y ago
  Google themselves launched or re-launched five Chrome-only sites last year (Hangouts, Meet, Adwords, Earth, and Allo). Six if you count the Google Advanced Protection Program. Google Flights began blocking Firefox for Android last week, and Google still serves a degraded Search experience to Firefox users on Android (but hey, no AMP). Despite well-meaning concern from the Chrome team, it's abundantly clear that Google's other product managers do not view interoperability with open, cross-browser standards as a requirement. And while many products eventually gain Firefox support, that support usually only comes months after launch, if at all. To wit, Earth was recently rebranded from "Earth on Web" to "Earth for Chrome," so who knows what's going to happen there.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    Which I find especially hilarious because there was a period from 2014-2017 when hangouts worked better for me and my colleagues in other browsers
  - eat_veggies 8y ago
    Allo works on Firefox now, but before, I used to set my user-agent to Chrome's and it'd work.
    - akoncius 8y ago
      it's not a definition of working when you need to cheat system in order to get it working.
      - Fuxy 8y ago
        If the system is cheating you it's only fair you cheat it back... but I get what you mean; most users won't even know to do that or would be interested in doing it. It's shady for Google to lie to their users especially when they imply its the browsers fault and not just their dev team being lazy gits and not validating that features work on Firefox. Because that's the only valid excuse I could come up with that would make sense as to why they don't support it beside being shady that is...
  - 8y ago
- vitro 8y ago
  Don't know if it is an issue of Firefox or Google just makes it slow, but viewing custom Google maps with few thousands of pins takes much longer time to parse and render in Firefox than in Chrome, where it feels almost instantaneous compared to Firefox.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Outside of the Google projects people have mentioned, I hardly ever see this. Well, I do see "doesn't work on IE" or "please dear god stop visiting with IE 6" pretty often, but I can hardly blame sites for that...
- ChristianBundy 8y ago
  I'm dealing with this now. We're working on a very complex map visualization with D3, and Firefox runs it choppy as hell. On the other hand, WebKit/Blink browsers (Chromium, GNU Web (Epiphany), others) run it buttery smooth. Given that everyone else on my team uses Chrome, I think we'll likely be sporting a "works best in Chrome" banner soon, especially as most people would be confused by "works best in WebKit/Blink".
  - bzbarsky 8y ago
    Are you in a position to file a Firefox bug with a link to a page showing the problem? If you can do that and tell me the bug report url, I'll take a look.
- richjdsmith 8y ago
  Just today I tried browsing Google Flights on (the latest version of) Firefox mobile and not only did it recommend getting a "browser upgrade", it would not let me use the site at all. Here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/2CCRVDf https://imgur.com/a/2CCRVDf
retSava 8y ago
yeah, performance-wise I can't complain :) I'm a compulsive tab hoarder with about 400 open (admittedly, have to enable the "don't load until focused"-setting) on a 5 yo laptop with lots of other stuff running. No problem at all.
- logicallee 8y ago
  (withdrawn)
  - detaro 8y ago
    I'm writing this from a 2016 Thinkpad with 508 open tabs in Chrome. works. (wouldn't work if turned off the ad-blocker, but why would I do that...) Firefox does it at least as well, just having both open is a bit much.
    - logicallee 8y ago
      (withdrawn)
      - keypress 8y ago
        I have a Chromium install without an ad blocker. And it takes one bad out of control page with a shitty advert, to down my entire machine. Something like: outlook.com. (Doesn't matter if I have 2 or 100 tabs if there is one bad apple.)
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - detaro 8y ago
        Opened up Firefox too and ctrl-tabbed around a bit to cause it to actually load some pages (hundreds of open tabs too, similar uBlock setup), and Windows reports Chrome 5.3 GB Firefox 4.2 GB I couldn't find a tally of where Windows applies its "memory compression" logic, to be honest I don't even know what exactly it does, but let's assume it's some background task and it did more to Chrome than to Firefox since Chrome had been running longer. So yes, Chrome needs noticeably more memory, and I prefer Firefox overall, but both can handle tons of tabs in my experience. Chrome also appears to be more responsive under pressure, I assume this is because it splits work into lots more processes than Firefox does, which is both probably a memory drain and a security benefit.
magicalbeans 8y ago
Firefox broke off backwards compatibility with massive amount of extensions - without them stock FF is quite shite and unusable. Not only that, some of the features of the old extensions are impossible to implement in the new extension engine.
- poutrathor 8y ago
  The new extension engine is from december 2015, so not really new. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/12/21/webextensions-in-firefox-45-2/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/12/21/webextensions-in-... The API is very close to Chrome, am I right ? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Po... Personally, I port my Chrome extension to a Firefox addons without much trouble, except for the stringent review process by a human developer which raised a lot my opinion of the firefox community.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    The new extension engine shipped to the general public as part of Firefox 57 in November 2017. While magicalbeans may be a bit hyperbolic in their criticism, as a web developer who uses all the major browsers, I am still annoyed every day by little things that are worse in Firefox since that time. It is a reasonable and valid criticism that many useful extensions were broken by the change and that a significant part of the functionality that was lost can't be reimplemented in the new system. The claims that the general reduction in functionality through loss of previous extensions would be a temporary problem and would be corrected as the new model evolved over subsequent versions have proven to be optimistic. It is also fair to say that claims of extensions being better contained and more stable in the new model have been exaggerated. I see far more problems caused by the smaller number of extensions I now use than I ever saw before, and I have done consistently ever since the change, through three more major versions of Firefox itself and several updates to most of the extensions. I appreciate the intent to make Firefox faster and more reliable and more secure. Surely no-one would argue that those aren't good things. But the fact is, a lot of stuff did get broken and hasn't been fixed, and for the class of users who valued Firefox for its customisability, it is a worse browser today than it was 9 months ago.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
A lot of people forget that the only browser used by most everyone was IE and that was stagnant and smelly as they come. Firefox nudged the web forward when it was introduced, and made quite a splash on its own by capturing about a fourth to a third of usage from IE, but a small company can't fend itself from Microsoft. It took Google and Chrome, later, to knock IE and Microsoft into its place with its big push forward. And that was a good thing. However, I regrettably find Google now pushing and pulling the rest of us harder than we want or need. Now that they are in the lead, they give the impression they are the writer of the scrolls. (In fact, a Google employee is the editor of HTML.) Now, one cannot complain too much. Google's leadership has done far more good for the web and we should be grateful, but too many developers are turning first to them for what to do and how to do things rather than seeing the whole forest.
- bjpbakker 8y ago
  > Google's leadership has done far more good for the web and we should be grateful Only time will tell. Personally I'm not that grateful to Google. Like you said, it all started out as a good thing - rather innocent. And of course it turned to "profit at all cost" soon after that. IMHO most people not quite understand the trade-offs involving technology choice. Large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple (in no particular order) take advantage of that in the interest of their stakeholders. Violating their user's freedom and privacy along the way.
  - jamiek88 8y ago
    Conflating freedom and privacy to lump them all in together is a bit unfair I feel. Apple for example is a privacy leader. Easier to secure their walled garden perhaps and they have their own pros and cons but they shouldn’t be in a set with google, Facebook and to a lesser extent, MS.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Mozilla too gets to write certain bits. WebAssembly is all Mozilla. I guess Google has more resources to invest in Chrome is the bigger difference.
bollockitis 8y ago
I switched to Firefox a week or so ago for the same reasons. My issue is that I can't make Firefox usable for me without a bunch of tweaks. For example, scrolling with the mouse wheel feels like scrolling through mud. I like smooth scrolling but the defaults are too slow. Font rendering is also janky unless I disable hardware acceleration, which is a real shame. On Chrome, I do nothing but add a home button to the toolbar and I'm done. I still haven't found the magical combination of settings that makes Firefox feel natural.
- ubercow13 8y ago
  There are lots of parameters in about:config to tweak scrolling (unlike in Chrome). Try searching for 'wheel'
  - vitro 8y ago
    My favorite is mousewheel.*.delta_multiplier_y - this way you can quickly scroll through long document by holding delta key modifier. Really handy!
agotterer 8y ago
The open source statement isn’t accurate because Chromium is open source. But I do agree that one company shouldn’t control the internet or browsing experience end to end. Although as far as pushing web standards and browsing Google has mostly been a good citizen. Let’s just pretend AMP wasn’t a thing.
- Spone 8y ago
  > The open source statement isn’t accurate because Chromium is open source. But Firefox is free software :)
- chupasaurus 8y ago
  Go get some Chromium Stable installation for Windows. Choose wisely, though [0]. [0]https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Win_x64/ https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-sn...
  - atVelocet 8y ago
    Or better use one of these: https://chromium.woolyss.com/ https://chromium.woolyss.com/ https://download-chromium.appspot.com/ https://download-chromium.appspot.com/
    - chupasaurus 8y ago
      These are not the official repos and they can contain some malicious code.
      - atVelocet 8y ago
        Just like any extension you are using.
        chupasaurus 8y ago
        You can uninstall or block extension, you can't uncompile RCE or trojan or whatever.
phyllostachys 8y ago
Indeed. "Firefox is back." - Well, from where I stand, it never left, nor I it.
afranchuk 8y ago
That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3. I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed much over the years). Maybe other usage patterns used to cause problems... Also worth noting I was always on Linux; maybe Windows/Mac versions weren't as good? When quantum came out, I didn't personally notice a big performance improvement in terms of user experience (though I don't doubt it's there, and I don't watch CPU/MEM constantly). I've seen these headlines and have just been thinking to myself "but it's always been good!"
- mkirklions 8y ago
  > I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I think this is because there is a marketing campaign for firefox at the moment. When it was front page reddit, the comments were overtly positive and any pro-chrome comments were downvoted to oblivion. Thinking there is a massive marketing campaign and thats why we are seeing it.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    Though there is undoubtedly a marketing campaign going on right now, there's nothing suggesting they're engaged in the kind of reddit manipulation you're describing.
    - lemeow 8y ago
      Agree - and I don't think the lead New York Times consumer technology reporter would have publicly documented all the reasons why he's switching back to Firefox unless he genuinely felt that way.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    They assumed that removing their last distinctions from chrome - the extensions that had become integral parts of the workflows of millions for up to a dozen years, and the lack of tab processes - would somehow get people to switch from chrome instead of to chrome in resentment. This was where the organization had fixed all of their hopes - once they got rid of extensions and got chrome's primary marked feature (on release), then they would stop hemorrhaging users, because now people could choose to have a browser that was almost exactly like chrome, just a little bit off, and a little bit slow on google-owned sites, but without google, and run by a non-profit. Since this had no effect, except causing an instant loss of a lot of users (one that hasn't been completely felt yet due to esr), and a slight bump in chrome's user numbers, there's no resort other than advertise heavily the benefits of not using google's browser, without mentioning google negatively because they generally rely on google for funding. So just weird platitudes about "freer people web standard access foundation" or something. Or talk about start-up times that no one cares about, and which don't make them distinctive from chrome. The immediate problem is the vast majority of people who are sympathetic to that branding were already firefox users, and at some point were turned off because firefox killed some plugin or other or it just stopped being updated, or because of some UI change which are now explicitly not mitigatable in quantum. The way firefox responded to those complaints (which is not materially, even once; when a meeting of firefox management has determined something is going to be done, it is going to be done, and exactly in that way) has assured that target audience that development by a non-profit is no more amenable to consumer desires than development by the largest, most predatory companies in the US. At least Microsoft and Google are big enough that user complaints catch fire in the mainstream media, and they're forced to respond to a critical audience. If firefox decides that they're going to take out the back button, because "in a modern internet, users shouldn't be moving backwards", you're just going to find a closed WONTFIX bug with 400 angry comments from users on it, and a few comments from Mozilla explaining how their user testing showed that people don't want a back button, the bug tracker isn't for general complaints, that the tone of the thread was very negative and regrettable, and that the thread was being closed for further comments. The real problem is that Firefox has 10x as many employees as it needs, and is just another corporate bureaucracy collapsing under its own weight. Should have been slim and user-focused, and instead of rhetoric about a "free people web standard internet brings people together", central and visible in every conflict regarding the internet and its architecture, and the distribution of knowledge in general. It used to be almost that, but I think the fight over h264 broke it. Now, the only reason it's alive is to keep the forces of antitrust from google's door. Their employees, whether intentionally or inadvertantly, also brigade message boards.
modzu 8y ago
absolutely this. one feature directly related to it is support for extensions. why can chrome run extensions on the desktop (ie ad blocker) but not on mobile? the answer should be obvious.
sli 8y ago
> ... and believe that Google should not control the web. I don't have a whole lot to add to this discussion that hasn't already been said except: I'm the frontend developer at my job, and my coworkers are slowly discovering that I'm not joking when I say that Chrome is the new IE, for reasons pertaining to this. One example that I think made a few of them realize what I mean when I say that was during that short time recently when Chrome Experiments worked in every browser except Chrome, and the reason why that was the case: a (shady, to me) built in whitelist.
MrStonedOne 8y ago
Usability is #1 People have different workflows and different priorities in that department, the best thing a browser could do to try and gain market share is keep their mind open to these differences and try and enable all of them. Something most browsers fail at to one degree or another. For example, I loved firefoxes two address bar approach over chrome's omnibar. I would set the default search on the address bar to route to google's browse by name (it auto selects showing a search results page or going to the first result (i'm feeling lucky) based on how confident it was that the first result was what the user wanted) and the default search on the search bar to google. If I wanted to go somewhere by name I'd type in the address bar, if I wanted to search for something and be sure i got a results page I could just type it in the search bar. I've used chrome for my daily driver despite loving firefox for one simple reason, and that's the Google Voice extension. It has a little number in the icon next to the address bar, that tells me how many unread voicemails or text messages or missed calls I have on my cell phone, its always visible in the window I have active on at least 1 monitor 99% of the time, and it's the primary way I keep track of incoming text messages as well as missed calls. I would be lost without this so despite firefox having a lot of features I prefer over chrome, chrome is still my daily driver because of one extension that firefox doesn't have last time I checked.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
phobosdeimos 8y ago
To be fair the industry is LITERALLY developing for Chrome and Safari first. Google won. Everything people hated MS for in the 90s Google has actually accomplished. Resistance is futile.
kqr 8y ago
> It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not because it is better, but because it is the right thing to do But then sometimes the free option is also, i.e. in addition, the better choice for other reasons as well. And those cases (e.g. Postgres, Darktable, etc.) are worth pointing out, because they may serve as gateway drugs to free software, for users that may not initially care for it because they associate it with invariably bad user experience. I have an article brewing on this, because I increasingly think it's important. When free software does not suck from an UX perspective, there is zero reason not to use it. That's a huge market.

kees99 8y ago

> website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.

latexr 8y ago
Not only is it still a thing, Google itself is a major culprit of it. Seems like every new experiment they release is “best viewed” in — or worse, “requires” — Google Chrome.
- Rovanion 8y ago
  Not just experiments. Neither Google Hangouts nor Meet worked in Firefox until the 22nd of May this year.
  - lambda 8y ago
    Oh, wow, Hangouts and Meet are working in Firefox now? I've been keeping Chrome running just for that for a couple of years, will be glad to stop having to do that.
  - novaRom 8y ago
    Google Flights is still not working in Firefox
    - baobrain 8y ago
      What is not working? I have been using google flights to book trips for months without issues now. The only google services I've had some trouble with firefox are hangouts, and even that is fixed.
      - callahad 8y ago
        Try it on Android, where Google controls more of the market, and has less incentive for interop. You get a door slammed in your face: https://twitter.com/andrewhobden/status/1007668509826928640 https://twitter.com/andrewhobden/status/1007668509826928640 Great response from Alex Russell, but it's clear that the sentiments of the Chrome team aren't translating into policy elsewhere in Google, or we wouldn't be dealing with something like this every few months.
        baobrain 8y ago
        Oh wow, I never noticed this before, this must be a recent thing...Thanks!
  - pmontra 8y ago
    Meet didn't even work in Chrome on Ubuntu 16.04 last time I checked. A customer of mine that went all Google talked about going back to Skype, which fixed most problems in the last months (with the obvious exception of the uselessly sparse layout.)
  - JshWright 8y ago
    Meet works now? I knew about hangouts, but Meet was still not working last I checked. That would be fantastic if that was the case. EDIT: So it does! The last reason I was keeping Chrome as my default (so Meet calendar invite links would work) is gone.
  - swasheck 8y ago
    I've found that "work" in this case is still even a stretch. With it being the only application that I have open, with one tab on Firefox, these sites (but especially Inbox) cause my zBook to sound like it's mining Bitcoin or running SETI analysis.
- GusRuss89 8y ago
  Well yeah, if it's an experiment that demonstrates a feature that Firefox doesn't support then of course it will be best viewed in Chrome. Experiments shouldn't count here.
  - forgottenpass 8y ago
    As soon as "experiment" stops meaning "soft launch" we can stop counting them.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  It's quite a good filter, they can get user feedback with less risk of negative reviews.
- hellojason 8y ago
  Google Optimize requires both Chrome and a browser extension (which isn’t available for any other browser) to work.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
Well, "best viewed in IE" was the thing till 2010 or so. The Chrome version I have never seen except on sites experimenting with advanced features unavailable elsewhere.
zeptomu 8y ago
Unfortunately, yes, e.g. Google Earth: https://www.google.com/earth/ https://www.google.com/earth/
scaryclam 8y ago
Yep. You can't use google hangouts without chrome. I've seen other websites (non-google) doing the same. Chrome is the new IE it seems :(
- filomeno 8y ago
  Well, at least this new IE is open-source, cross-platform, and way better than that browser which reached a 90% usage peak some time ago. Joking aside, I've never really known the difference between Google Talk, Hangouts, etc, but I regularly chat with my contacts from the Gmail website, using Firefox, without any problem so far.
- krallja 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17364039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17364039 says Hangouts’ usable in firefox once more.
  - phyzome 8y ago
    I can tell you that it's pretty touch and go. They don't even support screensharing in Chromium, did you know that? Meet did start to work in latest Firefox recently, and then this week they broke mic audio. -.-
novaRom 8y ago
Yes, Google Flights refuses to work with Firefox and asks to switch to Chrome
- hexane360 8y ago
  *on mobile For anyone confused.
allengeorge 8y ago
Bank of America claims Firefox is an “unsupported browser”, so, yeah :/
- kroltan 8y ago
  You'll be surprised how well it works by just switching the user-agent. It's more of a "too lazy to make sure it works" than a "actually doesn't work and Chrome should be used" situation.
  - gutnor 8y ago
    Too lazy to test probably. If you support IE, Safari, Chrome both on the desktop and mobile, chances are that your site supports practically everything. Unfortunately, often giving the official thumbs up requires passing some test suite. If companies have gotten better with their development methodology, their testing methodology is still often "Take a bunch of guys in India and have then run through that extensive check list".
wheaties 8y ago
There are many job postings, payment forms(!?) and financial websites that only work properly in Firefox. The best part is, for job postings, it's a great "not going to work there" filter.
- bshacklett 8y ago
  Don't be too quick to dismiss a workplace because of something like that. Teams that are hiring often have very little control over the initial process (e.g.: the site where jobs are posted), but may be doing amazing things and be great to work with.
callahad 8y ago
Google themselves launched or re-launched five Chrome-only sites last year (Hangouts, Meet, Adwords, Earth, and Allo). Six if you count the Google Advanced Protection Program. Google Flights began blocking Firefox for Android last week, and Google still serves a degraded Search experience to Firefox users on Android (but hey, no AMP). Despite well-meaning concern from the Chrome team, it's abundantly clear that Google's other product managers do not view interoperability with open, cross-browser standards as a requirement. And while many products eventually gain Firefox support, that support usually only comes months after launch, if at all. To wit, Earth was recently rebranded from "Earth on Web" to "Earth for Chrome," so who knows what's going to happen there.
- ameister14 8y ago
  Which I find especially hilarious because there was a period from 2014-2017 when hangouts worked better for me and my colleagues in other browsers
- eat_veggies 8y ago
  Allo works on Firefox now, but before, I used to set my user-agent to Chrome's and it'd work.
  - akoncius 8y ago
    it's not a definition of working when you need to cheat system in order to get it working.
    - Fuxy 8y ago
      If the system is cheating you it's only fair you cheat it back... but I get what you mean; most users won't even know to do that or would be interested in doing it. It's shady for Google to lie to their users especially when they imply its the browsers fault and not just their dev team being lazy gits and not validating that features work on Firefox. Because that's the only valid excuse I could come up with that would make sense as to why they don't support it beside being shady that is...
- 8y ago
vitro 8y ago
Don't know if it is an issue of Firefox or Google just makes it slow, but viewing custom Google maps with few thousands of pins takes much longer time to parse and render in Firefox than in Chrome, where it feels almost instantaneous compared to Firefox.
Bartweiss 8y ago
Outside of the Google projects people have mentioned, I hardly ever see this. Well, I do see "doesn't work on IE" or "please dear god stop visiting with IE 6" pretty often, but I can hardly blame sites for that...
ChristianBundy 8y ago
I'm dealing with this now. We're working on a very complex map visualization with D3, and Firefox runs it choppy as hell. On the other hand, WebKit/Blink browsers (Chromium, GNU Web (Epiphany), others) run it buttery smooth. Given that everyone else on my team uses Chrome, I think we'll likely be sporting a "works best in Chrome" banner soon, especially as most people would be confused by "works best in WebKit/Blink".
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  Are you in a position to file a Firefox bug with a link to a page showing the problem? If you can do that and tell me the bug report url, I'll take a look.
richjdsmith 8y ago
Just today I tried browsing Google Flights on (the latest version of) Firefox mobile and not only did it recommend getting a "browser upgrade", it would not let me use the site at all. Here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/2CCRVDf https://imgur.com/a/2CCRVDf

retSava 8y ago

yeah, performance-wise I can't complain :) I'm a compulsive tab hoarder with about 400 open (admittedly, have to enable the "don't load until focused"-setting) on a 5 yo laptop with lots of other stuff running. No problem at all.

logicallee 8y ago
(withdrawn)
- detaro 8y ago
  I'm writing this from a 2016 Thinkpad with 508 open tabs in Chrome. works. (wouldn't work if turned off the ad-blocker, but why would I do that...) Firefox does it at least as well, just having both open is a bit much.
  - logicallee 8y ago
    (withdrawn)
    - keypress 8y ago
      I have a Chromium install without an ad blocker. And it takes one bad out of control page with a shitty advert, to down my entire machine. Something like: outlook.com. (Doesn't matter if I have 2 or 100 tabs if there is one bad apple.)
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - detaro 8y ago
      Opened up Firefox too and ctrl-tabbed around a bit to cause it to actually load some pages (hundreds of open tabs too, similar uBlock setup), and Windows reports Chrome 5.3 GB Firefox 4.2 GB I couldn't find a tally of where Windows applies its "memory compression" logic, to be honest I don't even know what exactly it does, but let's assume it's some background task and it did more to Chrome than to Firefox since Chrome had been running longer. So yes, Chrome needs noticeably more memory, and I prefer Firefox overall, but both can handle tons of tabs in my experience. Chrome also appears to be more responsive under pressure, I assume this is because it splits work into lots more processes than Firefox does, which is both probably a memory drain and a security benefit.

magicalbeans 8y ago

Firefox broke off backwards compatibility with massive amount of extensions - without them stock FF is quite shite and unusable. Not only that, some of the features of the old extensions are impossible to implement in the new extension engine.

poutrathor 8y ago
The new extension engine is from december 2015, so not really new. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/12/21/webextensions-in-firefox-45-2/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/12/21/webextensions-in-... The API is very close to Chrome, am I right ? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Po... Personally, I port my Chrome extension to a Firefox addons without much trouble, except for the stringent review process by a human developer which raised a lot my opinion of the firefox community.
- Silhouette 8y ago
  The new extension engine shipped to the general public as part of Firefox 57 in November 2017. While magicalbeans may be a bit hyperbolic in their criticism, as a web developer who uses all the major browsers, I am still annoyed every day by little things that are worse in Firefox since that time. It is a reasonable and valid criticism that many useful extensions were broken by the change and that a significant part of the functionality that was lost can't be reimplemented in the new system. The claims that the general reduction in functionality through loss of previous extensions would be a temporary problem and would be corrected as the new model evolved over subsequent versions have proven to be optimistic. It is also fair to say that claims of extensions being better contained and more stable in the new model have been exaggerated. I see far more problems caused by the smaller number of extensions I now use than I ever saw before, and I have done consistently ever since the change, through three more major versions of Firefox itself and several updates to most of the extensions. I appreciate the intent to make Firefox faster and more reliable and more secure. Surely no-one would argue that those aren't good things. But the fact is, a lot of stuff did get broken and hasn't been fixed, and for the class of users who valued Firefox for its customisability, it is a worse browser today than it was 9 months ago.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

A lot of people forget that the only browser used by most everyone was IE and that was stagnant and smelly as they come. Firefox nudged the web forward when it was introduced, and made quite a splash on its own by capturing about a fourth to a third of usage from IE, but a small company can't fend itself from Microsoft. It took Google and Chrome, later, to knock IE and Microsoft into its place with its big push forward. And that was a good thing. However, I regrettably find Google now pushing and pulling the rest of us harder than we want or need. Now that they are in the lead, they give the impression they are the writer of the scrolls. (In fact, a Google employee is the editor of HTML.) Now, one cannot complain too much. Google's leadership has done far more good for the web and we should be grateful, but too many developers are turning first to them for what to do and how to do things rather than seeing the whole forest.

bjpbakker 8y ago
> Google's leadership has done far more good for the web and we should be grateful Only time will tell. Personally I'm not that grateful to Google. Like you said, it all started out as a good thing - rather innocent. And of course it turned to "profit at all cost" soon after that. IMHO most people not quite understand the trade-offs involving technology choice. Large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple (in no particular order) take advantage of that in the interest of their stakeholders. Violating their user's freedom and privacy along the way.
- jamiek88 8y ago
  Conflating freedom and privacy to lump them all in together is a bit unfair I feel. Apple for example is a privacy leader. Easier to secure their walled garden perhaps and they have their own pros and cons but they shouldn’t be in a set with google, Facebook and to a lesser extent, MS.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Mozilla too gets to write certain bits. WebAssembly is all Mozilla. I guess Google has more resources to invest in Chrome is the bigger difference.

bollockitis 8y ago

I switched to Firefox a week or so ago for the same reasons. My issue is that I can't make Firefox usable for me without a bunch of tweaks. For example, scrolling with the mouse wheel feels like scrolling through mud. I like smooth scrolling but the defaults are too slow. Font rendering is also janky unless I disable hardware acceleration, which is a real shame. On Chrome, I do nothing but add a home button to the toolbar and I'm done. I still haven't found the magical combination of settings that makes Firefox feel natural.

ubercow13 8y ago
There are lots of parameters in about:config to tweak scrolling (unlike in Chrome). Try searching for 'wheel'
- vitro 8y ago
  My favorite is mousewheel.*.delta_multiplier_y - this way you can quickly scroll through long document by holding delta key modifier. Really handy!

agotterer 8y ago

The open source statement isn’t accurate because Chromium is open source. But I do agree that one company shouldn’t control the internet or browsing experience end to end. Although as far as pushing web standards and browsing Google has mostly been a good citizen. Let’s just pretend AMP wasn’t a thing.

Spone 8y ago
> The open source statement isn’t accurate because Chromium is open source. But Firefox is free software :)
chupasaurus 8y ago
Go get some Chromium Stable installation for Windows. Choose wisely, though [0]. [0]https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Win_x64/ https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-sn...
- atVelocet 8y ago
  Or better use one of these: https://chromium.woolyss.com/ https://chromium.woolyss.com/ https://download-chromium.appspot.com/ https://download-chromium.appspot.com/
  - chupasaurus 8y ago
    These are not the official repos and they can contain some malicious code.
    - atVelocet 8y ago
      Just like any extension you are using.
      - chupasaurus 8y ago
        You can uninstall or block extension, you can't uncompile RCE or trojan or whatever.

phyllostachys 8y ago

Indeed. "Firefox is back." - Well, from where I stand, it never left, nor I it.

afranchuk 8y ago

That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3. I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed much over the years). Maybe other usage patterns used to cause problems... Also worth noting I was always on Linux; maybe Windows/Mac versions weren't as good? When quantum came out, I didn't personally notice a big performance improvement in terms of user experience (though I don't doubt it's there, and I don't watch CPU/MEM constantly). I've seen these headlines and have just been thinking to myself "but it's always been good!"

mkirklions 8y ago
> I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I think this is because there is a marketing campaign for firefox at the moment. When it was front page reddit, the comments were overtly positive and any pro-chrome comments were downvoted to oblivion. Thinking there is a massive marketing campaign and thats why we are seeing it.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  Though there is undoubtedly a marketing campaign going on right now, there's nothing suggesting they're engaged in the kind of reddit manipulation you're describing.
  - lemeow 8y ago
    Agree - and I don't think the lead New York Times consumer technology reporter would have publicly documented all the reasons why he's switching back to Firefox unless he genuinely felt that way.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  They assumed that removing their last distinctions from chrome - the extensions that had become integral parts of the workflows of millions for up to a dozen years, and the lack of tab processes - would somehow get people to switch from chrome instead of to chrome in resentment. This was where the organization had fixed all of their hopes - once they got rid of extensions and got chrome's primary marked feature (on release), then they would stop hemorrhaging users, because now people could choose to have a browser that was almost exactly like chrome, just a little bit off, and a little bit slow on google-owned sites, but without google, and run by a non-profit. Since this had no effect, except causing an instant loss of a lot of users (one that hasn't been completely felt yet due to esr), and a slight bump in chrome's user numbers, there's no resort other than advertise heavily the benefits of not using google's browser, without mentioning google negatively because they generally rely on google for funding. So just weird platitudes about "freer people web standard access foundation" or something. Or talk about start-up times that no one cares about, and which don't make them distinctive from chrome. The immediate problem is the vast majority of people who are sympathetic to that branding were already firefox users, and at some point were turned off because firefox killed some plugin or other or it just stopped being updated, or because of some UI change which are now explicitly not mitigatable in quantum. The way firefox responded to those complaints (which is not materially, even once; when a meeting of firefox management has determined something is going to be done, it is going to be done, and exactly in that way) has assured that target audience that development by a non-profit is no more amenable to consumer desires than development by the largest, most predatory companies in the US. At least Microsoft and Google are big enough that user complaints catch fire in the mainstream media, and they're forced to respond to a critical audience. If firefox decides that they're going to take out the back button, because "in a modern internet, users shouldn't be moving backwards", you're just going to find a closed WONTFIX bug with 400 angry comments from users on it, and a few comments from Mozilla explaining how their user testing showed that people don't want a back button, the bug tracker isn't for general complaints, that the tone of the thread was very negative and regrettable, and that the thread was being closed for further comments. The real problem is that Firefox has 10x as many employees as it needs, and is just another corporate bureaucracy collapsing under its own weight. Should have been slim and user-focused, and instead of rhetoric about a "free people web standard internet brings people together", central and visible in every conflict regarding the internet and its architecture, and the distribution of knowledge in general. It used to be almost that, but I think the fight over h264 broke it. Now, the only reason it's alive is to keep the forces of antitrust from google's door. Their employees, whether intentionally or inadvertantly, also brigade message boards.

modzu 8y ago

absolutely this. one feature directly related to it is support for extensions. why can chrome run extensions on the desktop (ie ad blocker) but not on mobile? the answer should be obvious.

sli 8y ago

> ... and believe that Google should not control the web. I don't have a whole lot to add to this discussion that hasn't already been said except: I'm the frontend developer at my job, and my coworkers are slowly discovering that I'm not joking when I say that Chrome is the new IE, for reasons pertaining to this. One example that I think made a few of them realize what I mean when I say that was during that short time recently when Chrome Experiments worked in every browser except Chrome, and the reason why that was the case: a (shady, to me) built in whitelist.

MrStonedOne 8y ago

Usability is #1 People have different workflows and different priorities in that department, the best thing a browser could do to try and gain market share is keep their mind open to these differences and try and enable all of them. Something most browsers fail at to one degree or another. For example, I loved firefoxes two address bar approach over chrome's omnibar. I would set the default search on the address bar to route to google's browse by name (it auto selects showing a search results page or going to the first result (i'm feeling lucky) based on how confident it was that the first result was what the user wanted) and the default search on the search bar to google. If I wanted to go somewhere by name I'd type in the address bar, if I wanted to search for something and be sure i got a results page I could just type it in the search bar. I've used chrome for my daily driver despite loving firefox for one simple reason, and that's the Google Voice extension. It has a little number in the icon next to the address bar, that tells me how many unread voicemails or text messages or missed calls I have on my cell phone, its always visible in the window I have active on at least 1 monitor 99% of the time, and it's the primary way I keep track of incoming text messages as well as missed calls. I would be lost without this so despite firefox having a lot of features I prefer over chrome, chrome is still my daily driver because of one extension that firefox doesn't have last time I checked.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

phobosdeimos 8y ago

To be fair the industry is LITERALLY developing for Chrome and Safari first. Google won. Everything people hated MS for in the 90s Google has actually accomplished. Resistance is futile.

kqr 8y ago

> It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not because it is better, but because it is the right thing to do But then sometimes the free option is also, i.e. in addition, the better choice for other reasons as well. And those cases (e.g. Postgres, Darktable, etc.) are worth pointing out, because they may serve as gateway drugs to free software, for users that may not initially care for it because they associate it with invariably bad user experience. I have an article brewing on this, because I increasingly think it's important. When free software does not suck from an UX perspective, there is zero reason not to use it. That's a huge market.