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It started with an older version. Logging into Google automatically linked your Google account to the settings page. At least in the last version, clearing you

It started with an older version. Logging into Google automatically linked your Google account to the settings page. At least in the last version, clearing your private data (ctrl-shift-delete) no longer deleted Google cookies. To completely log out required manually digging into the advanced settings and then rebooting the browser. Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox.

beckler 8y ago
I completely switched whenever FF quantum was released to stable. The experience is amazing. I will say I think chrome dev tools are better though.
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  I tend to reach for Firefox's dev tools (or a node REPL) more often these days. Firefox has a much better CSS editor. I will run some dev tools in Chromium but avoid it for browsing. Once I saw that my account was linked to Chrome/Chromium without my permission, I cleared everything out of Chrome and stopped using it as a secondary browser. My secondary browser is now a separate Firefox profile: alias ff='firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote &'
  - danShumway 8y ago
    The big feature I'm waiting on in Firefox is live reloading/editing for scripts. It's a huge advantage to be able to pause a script in Chrome, edit the source code, and have those changes injected back into the script. Chrome will even rewind the stack if I edit a line behind where the script currently is. I use Firefox for all of my personal browsing and for some of my development. But I really miss that feature. Edit: that and making it easier to debug Node from Firefox. It's still kind of a pain in that area.
  - evolve2k 8y ago
    Which Node REPL would you recommend?
    - JoshMnem 8y ago
      I use the standard one.[1] Open a terminal and type `node` to start it or run a script with Node's debugger[2] and drop into a REPL from there. I sometimes use Slimux[3] to send code snippets from Vim to a REPL in another tmux[4] pane. [1] https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html [2] https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html [3] https://github.com/epeli/slimux https://github.com/epeli/slimux [4] https://medium.com/actualize-network/a-minimalist-guide-to-tmux-13675fb160fa https://medium.com/actualize-network/a-minimalist-guide-to-t...
- amelius 8y ago
  Also, last time I checked the Firefox UI uses more screen real estate, leaving a little less space for the content. The difference with chrome is small, but clearly noticeable. If Mozilla fixes this, then they have an additional user ;)
  - ivanfon 8y ago
    Perhaps setting the UI density to “compact” will help? I like minimal UI, but Chrome’s feels a bit too minimal. I think Firefox on compact is a perfect balance.
    - scns 8y ago
      Thank you very much, learned something new. I removed the Title bar too, makes ff more compact than chromium.
    - wyclif 8y ago
      I also completely overlooked that setting, even though I had changed many others away from the defaults. Thanks for pointing it out!
    - llao 8y ago
      For everyone looking: Hamburger menu -> Customise -> at the bottom Density -> Compact. Thanks!
  - JoshMnem 8y ago
    If you haven't seen it, you can put dev tools in its own window.
  - foobarchu 8y ago
    I've got an instance of both Chrome and Firefox open on MacOS right now, and the UI's use exactly the same amount of space. The navigation bar on Firefox is a little thicker than Chrome, but it's made up for with a slightly thinner tab bar (since FF tabs don't have the blank space above to make them look like physical folder tabs). Not sure if this holds in Linux or Windows. EDIT: In fact I just noticed that Chrome was outdated. After upgrading it to the latest build, it uses more screen real estate for the UI than FF Quantum's latest build. The difference is even more pronounced if you have bookbar bars turned on.
- ivanfon 8y ago
  To be honest, I've come to much prefer FF's devtools. You might want to take a look at [Firefox Developer Edition](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/), it adds quite a few nice features that are helpful for development. [This article](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/new-in-firefox-61-developer-edition/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/new-in-firefox-61-develope...) is a bit old, but a good look at the type of stuff that it adds.
- flamtap 8y ago
  The only reason I use chrome is the easy debugger hookup for VSCode. If anyone has any tips on how to get that running with FF, I'm all ears!
  - smt88 8y ago
    This probably won't be a satisfying answer to you, but I've found VS Code and WebStorm to be roughly equivalent in terms of features (although I never have been able to leave WebStorm because of a few features that others would probably consider "bloat"). Debugging in Firefox works great! https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript-in-firefox.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript...
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    I got it working together really fast (like 3 minutes) last time, but earlier this summer it took me 30 minutes or more and before that I couldn't get it working. Of course now it just seems obvious and I cannot understand what I did earlier.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  I've found the dev tools to be equivalent for most things but each has a couple features the other doesn't. I'm often switching between the two when debugging complex issues. In general I find the UI for manipulating CSS and the DOM easier in Firefox. The Javascript Debugger in Chrome tends to work a little better when jumping in and out of 3rd party libraries, Firefox will just give up trying to break in your code and just dump errors in the console. Meh... as long as it's not Safari Dev Tools I'm happy.
- menzoic 8y ago
  Use a separate Chromium installation for dev tools
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  The biggest feature holding me back from using Firefox is the inability to drag multiple tabs at once. I often "split" a chrome browser window into two this way, or combine two chrome windows into one.
  - modernerd 8y ago
    This extension lets you split multiple tabs from a window to a new one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-... It's not as pretty or intuitive as Chrome's “shift-click and drag” approach, but it works well enough.
  - GrayShade 8y ago
    In Nightly you can, using CTRL to select them. It's still a little buggy, though.
    - dwaltrip 8y ago
      Oh cool. Thanks for the tip! Hopefully they polish it up and get it out.
- zmw 8y ago
  I keep hearing how awesome FF quantum is. I always have a copy of FirefoxDeveloperEdition for the occasional compatibility testing, and I keep coming back to it over the last few months, the last time being yesterday, but it just feels as sluggish as ever, whereas Chrome just feels snappier until there are hundreds of open tabs. Am I using it wrong? Also, Firefox tabs are as ugly as ever (lots of thick lines), and the search bar drop down is cluttered as hell. I thought I’d hate the Chrome 69 tab style, but I got over it in a couple of hours; whereas for Firefox I simply can’t.
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    This is my experience as well. I really wanted Firefox to be a replacement for Chrome but it’s so much more sluggish that it’s not even a comparison.
  - nl 8y ago
    Chrome does seem faster and better to me too. Nevertheless I switched to Firefox some years ago (and I’m quite a Google fan). It is good enough for heavy use.
  - JoshMnem 8y ago
    Try using a large blocklist[1] in your hosts file and installing umatrix[2] and/or ublock origin[3] to block garbage scripts from loading. I don't know if that will help, but that's what I'm doing and Firefox is as fast or faster than Chrome. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+blocklists https://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+blocklists [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
    - zmw 8y ago
      I confess that I have uMatrix in Chrome but not FF, but I do use pihole, and it’s not really a third party scripts problem, FF feels slower on perfectly clean sites.
baxtr 8y ago
Intuitively, I use chrome only for non google pages and FF for google services. Is that a good approach?
redm 8y ago
I agree, sadly its never that simple. I tried diligently (all in) to use Quantum when it came out, for over a month. It just wasn't stable/fast enough when running a larger number of tabs. I'm hopeful it will get there soon and I can ditch Chrome but its just not there for me, yet.
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  You might want to try it again. I have over 80 Firefox tabs open in multiple windows, multiple containers, and two Firefox profiles. It's still extremely fast.
  - dagenix 8y ago
    Last time I tried Firefox, a few months ago, tab switching was painfully slow as compared to Chrome. I intend to give it another chance soon, though.
    - cerberusss 8y ago
      What about a hardware upgrade?
      - dagenix 8y ago
        Lol - no. My computer isn't that old. Chrome switches tabs instantly. Firefox doesn't. I'm not going to buy a new computer to find out if Firefox will then switch tabs faster. Also, I've read similar complaints from others. Maybe it's faster now - I dunno. When Firefox's tab switching is faster, I'll give switching another go.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    Are you using any plugins to achieve this number of open tabs and and still have good performance?
    - JoshMnem 8y ago
DavideNL 8y ago
Alternatively, Brave browser seems to Un-Google their Chromium based browser: https://brave.com/download-dev/ https://brave.com/download-dev/ "Brave Core will arrive in beta form in late September and in major release form most of the way through October" https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-ad-blocking-browser-gets-chrome-extensions-with-major-new-version/ https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-ad-blocking-browser-gets-chr...
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  I'm avoiding Chrome-based browsers as much as possible. I don't think monocultures are a good idea.
- bubblethink 8y ago
  I tend not to install browsers and other important software from the internet. Is this packaged by any major distro ? What are the blockers ? Non-free bits, analytics etc. ? Honestly, I wouldn't pick a browswer unless it's packaged by fedora/debian.
  - whyagaindavid 8y ago
    To dump this privacy setting json https://gist.github.com/meets2tarun/2161e544f4c458c2f07641cafbdd186d https://gist.github.com/meets2tarun/2161e544f4c458c2f07641ca... to your system. https://www.chromium.org/administrators https://www.chromium.org/administrators All solved. It survives updates/reinstalls.
some_account 8y ago
> Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox. This has been true for a many years now but I still see tech people ignoring it completely. I no longer believe tech people are very intelligent. They are easily lured into whatever good looking tech comes along and will sacrifice their privacy at the drop of a hat.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Tech people were never very intelligent. By definition, they were (and are) informed/educated in one specific discipline, but that has no correlation whatsoever with being intelligent. This is true regardless of the discipline. You can meet astoundingly stupid heart surgeons, astrophysics PhDs, etc.
  - ci5er 8y ago
    "Yes, it's true: I am a rocket scientist" often quothe one of the stupidest persons I have had the opportunity to meet on this ball of dirt, because he had a PhD in aerospace engineering. That said - he was good looking, had a reasonably good sense of humor and knew where the good parties were - so he could be forgiven this small vanity.
aasasd 8y ago
Yup, it's quite old, likely two years or more. And notably, Chromium also has this feature, at least if you enabled the sync previously.

beckler 8y ago

I completely switched whenever FF quantum was released to stable. The experience is amazing. I will say I think chrome dev tools are better though.

JoshMnem 8y ago
I tend to reach for Firefox's dev tools (or a node REPL) more often these days. Firefox has a much better CSS editor. I will run some dev tools in Chromium but avoid it for browsing. Once I saw that my account was linked to Chrome/Chromium without my permission, I cleared everything out of Chrome and stopped using it as a secondary browser. My secondary browser is now a separate Firefox profile: alias ff='firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote &'
- danShumway 8y ago
  The big feature I'm waiting on in Firefox is live reloading/editing for scripts. It's a huge advantage to be able to pause a script in Chrome, edit the source code, and have those changes injected back into the script. Chrome will even rewind the stack if I edit a line behind where the script currently is. I use Firefox for all of my personal browsing and for some of my development. But I really miss that feature. Edit: that and making it easier to debug Node from Firefox. It's still kind of a pain in that area.
- evolve2k 8y ago
  Which Node REPL would you recommend?
  - JoshMnem 8y ago
    I use the standard one.[1] Open a terminal and type `node` to start it or run a script with Node's debugger[2] and drop into a REPL from there. I sometimes use Slimux[3] to send code snippets from Vim to a REPL in another tmux[4] pane. [1] https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html [2] https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html [3] https://github.com/epeli/slimux https://github.com/epeli/slimux [4] https://medium.com/actualize-network/a-minimalist-guide-to-tmux-13675fb160fa https://medium.com/actualize-network/a-minimalist-guide-to-t...
amelius 8y ago
Also, last time I checked the Firefox UI uses more screen real estate, leaving a little less space for the content. The difference with chrome is small, but clearly noticeable. If Mozilla fixes this, then they have an additional user ;)
- ivanfon 8y ago
  Perhaps setting the UI density to “compact” will help? I like minimal UI, but Chrome’s feels a bit too minimal. I think Firefox on compact is a perfect balance.
  - scns 8y ago
    Thank you very much, learned something new. I removed the Title bar too, makes ff more compact than chromium.
  - wyclif 8y ago
    I also completely overlooked that setting, even though I had changed many others away from the defaults. Thanks for pointing it out!
  - llao 8y ago
    For everyone looking: Hamburger menu -> Customise -> at the bottom Density -> Compact. Thanks!
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  If you haven't seen it, you can put dev tools in its own window.
- foobarchu 8y ago
  I've got an instance of both Chrome and Firefox open on MacOS right now, and the UI's use exactly the same amount of space. The navigation bar on Firefox is a little thicker than Chrome, but it's made up for with a slightly thinner tab bar (since FF tabs don't have the blank space above to make them look like physical folder tabs). Not sure if this holds in Linux or Windows. EDIT: In fact I just noticed that Chrome was outdated. After upgrading it to the latest build, it uses more screen real estate for the UI than FF Quantum's latest build. The difference is even more pronounced if you have bookbar bars turned on.
ivanfon 8y ago
To be honest, I've come to much prefer FF's devtools. You might want to take a look at [Firefox Developer Edition](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/), it adds quite a few nice features that are helpful for development. [This article](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/new-in-firefox-61-developer-edition/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/new-in-firefox-61-develope...) is a bit old, but a good look at the type of stuff that it adds.
flamtap 8y ago
The only reason I use chrome is the easy debugger hookup for VSCode. If anyone has any tips on how to get that running with FF, I'm all ears!
- smt88 8y ago
  This probably won't be a satisfying answer to you, but I've found VS Code and WebStorm to be roughly equivalent in terms of features (although I never have been able to leave WebStorm because of a few features that others would probably consider "bloat"). Debugging in Firefox works great! https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript-in-firefox.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/debugging-javascript...
- reitanqild 8y ago
  I got it working together really fast (like 3 minutes) last time, but earlier this summer it took me 30 minutes or more and before that I couldn't get it working. Of course now it just seems obvious and I cannot understand what I did earlier.
cptskippy 8y ago
I've found the dev tools to be equivalent for most things but each has a couple features the other doesn't. I'm often switching between the two when debugging complex issues. In general I find the UI for manipulating CSS and the DOM easier in Firefox. The Javascript Debugger in Chrome tends to work a little better when jumping in and out of 3rd party libraries, Firefox will just give up trying to break in your code and just dump errors in the console. Meh... as long as it's not Safari Dev Tools I'm happy.
menzoic 8y ago
Use a separate Chromium installation for dev tools
dwaltrip 8y ago
The biggest feature holding me back from using Firefox is the inability to drag multiple tabs at once. I often "split" a chrome browser window into two this way, or combine two chrome windows into one.
- modernerd 8y ago
  This extension lets you split multiple tabs from a window to a new one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-... It's not as pretty or intuitive as Chrome's “shift-click and drag” approach, but it works well enough.
- GrayShade 8y ago
  In Nightly you can, using CTRL to select them. It's still a little buggy, though.
  - dwaltrip 8y ago
    Oh cool. Thanks for the tip! Hopefully they polish it up and get it out.
zmw 8y ago
I keep hearing how awesome FF quantum is. I always have a copy of FirefoxDeveloperEdition for the occasional compatibility testing, and I keep coming back to it over the last few months, the last time being yesterday, but it just feels as sluggish as ever, whereas Chrome just feels snappier until there are hundreds of open tabs. Am I using it wrong? Also, Firefox tabs are as ugly as ever (lots of thick lines), and the search bar drop down is cluttered as hell. I thought I’d hate the Chrome 69 tab style, but I got over it in a couple of hours; whereas for Firefox I simply can’t.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  This is my experience as well. I really wanted Firefox to be a replacement for Chrome but it’s so much more sluggish that it’s not even a comparison.
- nl 8y ago
  Chrome does seem faster and better to me too. Nevertheless I switched to Firefox some years ago (and I’m quite a Google fan). It is good enough for heavy use.
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  Try using a large blocklist[1] in your hosts file and installing umatrix[2] and/or ublock origin[3] to block garbage scripts from loading. I don't know if that will help, but that's what I'm doing and Firefox is as fast or faster than Chrome. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+blocklists https://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+blocklists [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
  - zmw 8y ago
    I confess that I have uMatrix in Chrome but not FF, but I do use pihole, and it’s not really a third party scripts problem, FF feels slower on perfectly clean sites.

baxtr 8y ago

Intuitively, I use chrome only for non google pages and FF for google services. Is that a good approach?

redm 8y ago

I agree, sadly its never that simple. I tried diligently (all in) to use Quantum when it came out, for over a month. It just wasn't stable/fast enough when running a larger number of tabs. I'm hopeful it will get there soon and I can ditch Chrome but its just not there for me, yet.

JoshMnem 8y ago
You might want to try it again. I have over 80 Firefox tabs open in multiple windows, multiple containers, and two Firefox profiles. It's still extremely fast.
- dagenix 8y ago
  Last time I tried Firefox, a few months ago, tab switching was painfully slow as compared to Chrome. I intend to give it another chance soon, though.
  - cerberusss 8y ago
    What about a hardware upgrade?
    - dagenix 8y ago
      Lol - no. My computer isn't that old. Chrome switches tabs instantly. Firefox doesn't. I'm not going to buy a new computer to find out if Firefox will then switch tabs faster. Also, I've read similar complaints from others. Maybe it's faster now - I dunno. When Firefox's tab switching is faster, I'll give switching another go.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  Are you using any plugins to achieve this number of open tabs and and still have good performance?
  - JoshMnem 8y ago

DavideNL 8y ago

Alternatively, Brave browser seems to Un-Google their Chromium based browser: https://brave.com/download-dev/ https://brave.com/download-dev/ "Brave Core will arrive in beta form in late September and in major release form most of the way through October" https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-ad-blocking-browser-gets-chrome-extensions-with-major-new-version/ https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-ad-blocking-browser-gets-chr...

JoshMnem 8y ago
I'm avoiding Chrome-based browsers as much as possible. I don't think monocultures are a good idea.
bubblethink 8y ago
I tend not to install browsers and other important software from the internet. Is this packaged by any major distro ? What are the blockers ? Non-free bits, analytics etc. ? Honestly, I wouldn't pick a browswer unless it's packaged by fedora/debian.
- whyagaindavid 8y ago
  To dump this privacy setting json https://gist.github.com/meets2tarun/2161e544f4c458c2f07641cafbdd186d https://gist.github.com/meets2tarun/2161e544f4c458c2f07641ca... to your system. https://www.chromium.org/administrators https://www.chromium.org/administrators All solved. It survives updates/reinstalls.

some_account 8y ago

> Google fundamentally doesn't respect user privacy, and people should use Firefox. This has been true for a many years now but I still see tech people ignoring it completely. I no longer believe tech people are very intelligent. They are easily lured into whatever good looking tech comes along and will sacrifice their privacy at the drop of a hat.

GuiA 8y ago
Tech people were never very intelligent. By definition, they were (and are) informed/educated in one specific discipline, but that has no correlation whatsoever with being intelligent. This is true regardless of the discipline. You can meet astoundingly stupid heart surgeons, astrophysics PhDs, etc.
- ci5er 8y ago
  "Yes, it's true: I am a rocket scientist" often quothe one of the stupidest persons I have had the opportunity to meet on this ball of dirt, because he had a PhD in aerospace engineering. That said - he was good looking, had a reasonably good sense of humor and knew where the good parties were - so he could be forgiven this small vanity.

aasasd 8y ago

Yup, it's quite old, likely two years or more. And notably, Chromium also has this feature, at least if you enabled the sync previously.