32 ms·

Switch from Chrome to Firefox

• kholethompson 7y ago
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• djsumdog 7y ago
  Firefox is back where it was back in like 2005, but instead of fighting IE/Microsoft, it's fighting Chrome/Google. Although now it has a bit more of a checkered record than it once did. Everything old is new again. I really wish Microsoft would open source the Edge/Titan engine. There can't possibly be any NSCA code in there they don't own the rights too anymore.
  • WorldMaker 7y ago
    At least Microsoft managed to open source the guts of Chakra before they shutdown Edge. V8 hegemony might be worse for the internet given Node and Electron than Chrome alone.
    • zamadatix 7y ago
      Is there an Electron backing that doesn't use Chromium?
      • WorldMaker 7y ago
        Unfortunately, not one I've seen get past "bare prototype" stage.
      • seabrookmx 7y ago
        I don't think so. There was a port of node that used Chakra instead of v8, but I don't think it's maintained. And this is only one piece of the puzzle.. Electron also relies Chromium itself for rendering so this would probably be a pretty sizable effort.
  • fencepost 7y ago
    I really wish that if Microsoft was going to abandon having their own engine that they'd gone to Mozilla instead.
    • dTal 7y ago
      No thanks. Keep Embrace, Extend, Extinguish away from my user agent.
      • teh_klev 7y ago
        Jeez not this trope(|tripe) again. It's boring and it's tedious. It's in the past. Under different management. Sure MS are no angels, but they seem to be doing far less harm these days than Google/Facebook et al.
        • BlueTemplar 7y ago
          Are you for real? See what has been happening to GitHub for the last year or so...
          • teh_klev 7y ago
            I'll bite, tell me (I already know they were acquired by Microsoft)....?
            • BlueTemplar 7y ago
              Do you think that Microsoft is just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? And that Open Source, but especially Libre Software, is going to be compatible with whatever they have in mind ?
              • CWuestefeld 7y ago
                You seem to be saying that an example of MS's evil is what they're doing to github. And what they're doing to github must be evil because they're MS. That's just circular reasoning, you've going to have to provide some concrete argument.
• cracauer 7y ago
  The situation follows the "mobile" (cellphone, tablet) situation where Chrome was just not providing an extension API that could be used to implement adblockers (or much else for that matter, e.g. Cookienukers). This is no surprise at all. Competitive pressure for "desktop" (non-crippled computers incl. Laptops) required providing suitable extension APIs, but the writing was on the wall for a long time. Some powerful people inside Google consider it theft to browse the web while blocking ads.
• rc_kas 7y ago
  Does anyone have a single thing that Chrome does that FF does not? For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone uses Chrome. But if anyone has information on Chrome that I do not, please let me know.
  • unsignedint 7y ago
    Here are ones I find useful myself: - TRR (Trusted Recursive Resolver -- e.g. DNS Over HTTPS) - Add-On supports on Android - Multi-Account Container (although this is more of Add-on)
    • mtgx 7y ago
      He was asking for the reverse -- what does Chrome offer extra?
      • unsignedint 7y ago
        Oops ;-) Well... I have that one, too... Chromecast.
        • rc_kas 7y ago
          I use the apple Screen Sharing
  • Barrin92 7y ago
    the 'tab to search' feature that lets you search websites directly from the searchbar. Apparently you can set up something similar in firefox but you have to do it for every site individually, which is too inconvenient for me. Also VAAPI support on linux, which firefox ironically treats like a second class citizen. Can't watch HD videos on youtube without my cpu melting on Firefox.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• deviantfero 7y ago
  The only reason I don't switch is that whenever Firefox has control of the webcam, I can't seem to be able to access the webcam with any other software, is this configurable? I work with webRTC a lot, so this is essential for me, I really want to switch
  • Bakary 7y ago
    What do you think of the approach of using Firefox for your personal life and Chrome for your work life?
    • deviantfero 7y ago
      I'm always doing web development with webrtc, having two browsers open simultanously? Not an option
• suyash 7y ago
  For Apple users (MacOS, iOS), I would suggest Safari over Firefox as FF is the most hacked browser and very unsafe. On the other hand, Safari syncs bookmarks, tabs on all your Apple devices very seamlessly.
  • athenot 7y ago
    I wouldn't call Firefox unsafe. But Safari's sync for bookmarks, passwords, tabs, handoff... is really the killer feature. I use Firefox as my "virgin" broswser for testing or when I need to manually override proxy settings for my own MitM purposes. But that's about it.
    • floatboth 7y ago
      Firefox's sync is better, because it's not tied to the Apple ecosystem :P
  • ipoopatwork 7y ago
    > very unsafe [citation needed]. Firefox has sync to all devices too.
  • iaml 7y ago
    Be warned though, ublock origin for safari is not official and hasn't been updated since april 2018.
• guuhv 7y ago
  Really tired of this Firefox spam. If you think ad blocking is so important then let usage share % speak by itself when Chrome removes ad blocking, if they actually do it.
  • astazangasta 7y ago
    Yes, god forbid people advocate their perspectives on technology in a technology discussion forum.
    • jackconnor 7y ago
      What opinion? It's just an ad by firefox to download firefox. Do you have an opinion why I should download this you want to share?
      • dictum 7y ago
        Short, flippant but hopefully concise answer: 1. Safari is only available for macOS and iOS. There's no widely available, up to date browser based on non-Blink WebKit, and it's unlikely there will be, as it's rather tied to Apple OS APIs. 2. Aside from Firefox, all browsers that are available for all major operating systems are based on Chromium/Blink, and consequently will inherit Google's architectural decisions, and on a sociopolitical level, enhance Google's domination of the Web.
        • astazangasta 7y ago
          3. Chrome is explicitly designed to track you on behalf of Google (e.g. https://www.worldtribune.com/big-brother-updated-google-chrome-tracks-users-without-asking/ https://www.worldtribune.com/big-brother-updated-google-chro...)
        • lern_too_spel 7y ago
          Ugh. Safari is garbage. So many bugs. So many missing features. A release process straight out of the 1990s. Firefox is the only serious alternative to Chrome.
• jackconnor 7y ago
  Why is this on here?
  • fghtr 7y ago
    Because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2
    • jackconnor 7y ago
      It just feels like an ad. No mention of that other article, and it's a REAL stretch to say that these are related. No more ad spam on Hacker News, it's one of the few good sites left.
      • judge2020 7y ago
        These aren't related whatsoever, but the timing of this submission is. I personally don't think it belongs on the front page just because of news regarding a competitor, the only discussion this link sparks is the same discussion that's already been had twice this week (20044430, 20050173).
• Hextinium 7y ago
  Am I missing something here? There is no article just a download link correct? I use Firefox exclusively because of the sidebar tab extension and will probably use it until Firefox dies a slow death.
  • gravy 7y ago
    Chrome's "Press Tab To Search" is way too useful for me to switch...
    • minikites 7y ago
      Use DuckDuckGo and their ! operators.
    • soulofmischief 7y ago
      Can't be bothered to hit Ctrl+K?
    • inyorgroove 7y ago
      Poking around for a few minutes, looks like search engines can only be added via addons? This feature is too much of a time save to switch.
    • tapoxi 7y ago
      In Firefox you can find the search field on a page, right click, and 'add a keyword for this search'. Then you can just type that keyword in the address bar, for instance 'wp searchtermhere' for wikipedia.
      • inyorgroove 7y ago
        That is great and all. Why do I have to type of the full keyword? tab completion on chrome is killer for this.
        • JoshMnem 7y ago
          There's a better way in Firefox. In Firefox, go to Preferences -> Search and click on "Add search bar in toolbar". Also uncheck "Show search suggestions in address bar results". Then ctrl-l will only autocomplete URLs and ctrl-k will search. Once you're in the search box, press TAB to cycle through your search providers. You can add additional search providers easily.
• Proven 7y ago
  ... or install Edge Dev in seconds and keep most of your Chrome extensions https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/welcome?channel=dev https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/welcome?channel=d...
  • Heliosmaster 7y ago
    Or Brave
  • dmit 7y ago
    One of the points brought up about the changes being made to content blocking in Chrome is that it was an engine change. So no, switching to Edge or Opera or whatever might not do anything to help. I'm guessing Brave is the one Blink-powered browser that is likely to become an exception.
    • pps 7y ago
      The built-in ad-blocker in Opera will go away too? https://www.opera.com/computer/features/ad-blocker https://www.opera.com/computer/features/ad-blocker
• o10449366 7y ago
  No thanks.
• Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  It would be nice if there was also something in place which allowed Firefox to detect when an addon like uBlock Origin is also available on Firefox, then suggest installing the Firefox version during the upgrade.
  • radamadah 7y ago
    I use Adblock Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/), and I also have AdBlock installed (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-f...), just in case the first one doesn't work. They are two of the most popular adblock plugins on Firefox. Or you could just use uBlock Origin on Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin)!
    • huy-nguyen 7y ago
      Please stop using AdBlock/AdBlockPlus. Use uBlock Origin instead.
      • throw0101a 7y ago
        How come? (I tend to use uMatrix.)
        • judge2020 7y ago
          See: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-496009417 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss... > eyeo GmbH (owner of Adblock Plus) is a business partner of Google (through its "Acceptable Ads" business plan), and its business share some the same key characteristics as the Google's ones above: > It gets revenues from the displaying of ads with those with which it has a contract (Google, Taboola, etc.) > It expressly names uBlock Origin as a risk factor to its business
        • darkpuma 7y ago
• marricks 7y ago
  Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anyways) have their switches to do so. It gives Google plausible deniability. —— To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn’t work: > And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video unless you license a proprietary DRM component called Widevine from Google. The API that connects to Widevine was standardized in 2017 by the World Wide Web Consortium, whose members narrowly voted down a proposal to change the membership rules for the W3C to require members not to abuse the DMCA to prevent DRM from becoming a tool to undermine competition. https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom.html https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....
  • bmurphy1976 7y ago
    Widevine works with Firefox. Why couldn't it with Chromium?
    • Eldt 7y ago
      I'm sure it could, but who would implement it?
      • bmurphy1976 7y ago
        The same people who were motivated enough to get it into Firefox?
      • magduf 7y ago
        Apparently someone has, because I was using Chromium on Linux to watch Netflix several years ago without any trouble (this was before Firefox got it working).
• Hamuko 7y ago
  Too bad it takes a lot more than "a few minutes" to get used to Firefox and all of its quirks. Like the fact that I can have like 20 tabs open at the same time before they start hiding themselves from me.
  • bliteben 7y ago
    I try to mostly use firefox, but there are some legit sites that do not work in firefox, youtube is probably the biggest offender with the seek very often not working properly. I can't help but wonder if it is because firefox is actually behind or if google is sabotaging them.
  • taneq 7y ago
    What quirks? Sounds like you just need more monitors...
    • Hamuko 7y ago
      I don't want to get "more monitors" just to use another browser.
      • fourier_mode 7y ago
        Looks like you are not making correct usage of tabs, your use-case calls for something like: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instapaper-tools/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instapaper-to...
        • Hamuko 7y ago
          "Just avoid holding it in that way." - Steve Jobs
          • taneq 7y ago
            Wow, yeah, that guy is just the poster child of being wrong about things, isn't he?
• sneak 7y ago
  Why is leaving the only recourse? Chromium is free software. Forking always remains an option.
  • darkpuma 7y ago
    Chromium is not Chrome. Switching from Chrome to Chromium is still leaving Chrome. Whether or not Chromium or Firefox are more to your liking is another matter, and whether or not switching to Chromium accomplishes what you want to accomplish by leaving Chrome is another matter.
    • ishan1121 7y ago
      Not really, think of Chromium as a developer version of chrome. It may be open source but it still maintained by Google. Only alternative shift to Firefox.
      • darkpuma 7y ago
        You can change Chromium but you cannot change Chrome. The majority of Chrome is Chromium, but there are parts of Chrome that are not Chromium. Particularly the branding. Furthermore if you're actually forking Chromium like suggested and taking it in another direction to assuage any grievances you might have with Chrome, then you have certainly "left Chrome". I was not recommending that anybody switch from Chrome to Chromium. Personally I do not find that Chromium fixes what I consider broken about Chrome, which is what I was alluding to when I said "whether or not switching to Chromium accomplishes what you want to accomplish by leaving Chrome is another matter." The negative reaction I received for that post makes me think people believe I was recommending Chromium. I do not; I recommend Firefox.
  • bliteben 7y ago
    Go is free software too
  • adfm 7y ago
    Here's a good explanation... https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom.html https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....
• intothev01d 7y ago
  I switched a couple of months ago because Chrome is just a bloated piece of garbage. One of my favorite features in Firefox is containers, which I used to have different users for in Chrome. Maybe Chrome has something similar now but it's one of the things I liked when I switched over. Haven't had any issues so far, glad I did
  • sbov 7y ago
    I love Firefox's containers, but AFAIK you can't sync your settings. Makes reinstalling a major pain.
    • Dylan16807 7y ago
      On the other hand Firefox actually lets you move your profile folder from one computer to another without throwing up a panic flag and resetting everything.
    • DavideNL 7y ago
      "Currently, add-on sync leaves setting synchronization to the individual add-on. If an add-on has support for syncing settings, they will be synced. If not, they won't. For now, if an add-on doesn't preserve settings during Sync, you should contact the add-on's author and request Sync support." https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync
  • josteink 7y ago
    > One of my favorite features in Firefox is containers Container tabs are great. Combined with Tree Style Tabs and Containerise addons, you have something unbeatable in both terms of security, privacy and user friendliness.
    • select-all 7y ago
      Wow thanks! I've been looking for something like Containerise, but for Chrome for a while. Didn't know it already exists in FF.
  • 7y ago
• brento 7y ago
  I think link forgot to mention a step 4. Step 4: Spend weeks getting used to new shortcuts, finding equivalent extensions/plugins and getting used to their dev tools.
  • thegabez 7y ago
    Same, the only thing stopping me from switching is the hassle of porting a custom chrome extension to firefox.
    • josteink 7y ago
      Custom extensions are the easiest: Firefox loads the exact same unpacked extensions Chrome does. Both follow the WebExtensions-standard, so there’s not really much to “port”, if anything.
      • ihuman 7y ago
        With newer versions of firefox you can only temporarily load unpacked extensions. You need to re-add them if you relaunch firefox. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/02/22/removing-support-unpacked-extensions/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/02/22/removing-support-...
  • taneq 7y ago
    Does it really take you weeks to get used to a new environment? WEEKS? That kind of thing bugs me for a few hours, maybe a couple of days.
    • happytoexplain 7y ago
      I'd say "weeks" is somewhat quick. You may have biased expectations of interface size and/or the ability of users to internalize it.
    • lucb1e 7y ago
      If you don't take more than a few hours to get used to a completely different browser, editor, desktop/mobile OS, etc., you probably just didn't use all its features. I know that I still had Firefox reflexes after I had been using Chrome for a few weeks (this was a few years ago when Mozilla made some poor decisions, I tried voting with my feet).
• throwayEngineer 7y ago
  Is this a coordinated ad campaign for Firefox? I find it odd how there will be Google Hate, and unanimous Firefox support. I guess I'm looking to hear from users who actually removed Google from their life and are happy. Chrome is only 1 of the Google products I've used.
  • Heliosmaster 7y ago
    This is probably a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430
  • dictum 7y ago
    > I find it odd how there will be Google Hate, and unanimous Firefox support. You can choose to not pick a side on a two-candidate election. The most voted-for candidate will still be elected. (Even when you factor in indirect systems like an electoral college, someone will be elected.)
  • nsilvestri 7y ago
    Google is an ad company that profits off of users' personal information. Mozilla has demonstrated itself to be privacy oriented. HN users are generally privacy oriented. It's not surprising there is a big push to use Firefox, especially with the increasing Chromium usage.
  • function_seven 7y ago
    I starting switching away from Google over the last year. The biggest step was moving off my Gmail account, and the trigger for that was the UI terribleness of Gmail. That took a few hours of updating every account I have with my new address. Password manager really helped with this. I've never been much of a Chrome user. A few years ago, Chrome was unusable for me on my 2GB work machine, and was a battery-killer on my own laptop. So I stuck with Firefox at work, Safari at home. DDG is a great search engine. I can't remember the last time I used the "!g" operator, and got any results better than the DDG ones. The one product I still use Google for is maps, and only when I want to see a good street view or areal photo. For mobile, Apple Maps does just fine. For simple directions on the desktop, OSM works great. I'm totally happy. 10 years ago, Google was putting things out there that weren't possible with other services. Their mapping was tremendously better than MapQuest, their email was so much nicer than Hotmail, etc. But now they're bloated and slow. Everything seems to lag as you watch the UI components slowly appear on the screen. And the alternatives today for each product (search, maps, email, browser) are all very much competent.
• mastrsushi 7y ago
  Can someone remind me what will happen to all the chromium derivatives that support ad block? Will Google restrict their functionality? If Firefox and Safari are the last browsers to support ad block, then they totally stand a chance.
  • taneq 7y ago
    The changes which impede ad blocking are in Chromium, not in the commercial Chrome fork. And Google will continue to force anti-ad-blocking, pro-tracking changes into Chromium until they reach their ultimate Shrodinger's Privacy-Friendly Browser which exists in a superposition of "showing few ads" and "allowing all tracking."
    • sp332 7y ago
      It's in the "Enterprise" Chrome fork. I don't think they charge money for it.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    At least Brave and Vivaldi both use the Chrome Web Store, which presumably will no longer allow such extensions. So either they'll have to build their own alternative, or change the browser to allow out-of-store installation, and the extension author(s) will have to support that. So it's possible, but not immediate.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    Chrome didn't remove ad-block entirely, they deprecated an API that allows direct control; extensions now have to load filters into the browser itself, which will do the blocking. Safari actually did the same recently[1], so it's not an alternative if you dislike this move by Chrome. The only difference seems to be the limit of rules (30k for Chrome vs 50k for Safari, whereas some lists used by uBO have over 75k). [1] https://adguard.com/en/blog/legacy-safari-extensions.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/legacy-safari-extensions.html
    • lotsofpulp 7y ago
• pcl 7y ago
  Does anyone have a good impression about how Firefox's energy consumption compares to Safari's?
  • TimTheTinker 7y ago
    Safari’s is superior, definitely. No problem with using Safari if that’s your priority.
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    Safari is best (on macOS). Edge is also best (but on Windows). Usually the browser designed by the authors of the platform you run it on, will be best for power consumption, sometimes significantly so.
• stdclass 7y ago
  I tried switching to Firefox so many times but have to go back to Chrome for performance reasons. There is still an open problem on Retina Macbooks with scaled resolution where the performance drops like 10x over non-scaled versions.
  • TimTheTinker 7y ago
    I’ve been using Firefox (quantum) on my 2016 retina MBP for years and haven’t ever noticed any performance issues.
• bithavoc 7y ago
  I've been using Safari on Mac for months, I only open Google Chrome when React Native debugger launches it. I'm not sure how hard it would be for the RN team to switch to another browser such as Firefox or the new Edge so I can uninstall Google Chrome from my computer.
  • satysin 7y ago
    I want to use Firefox on my Mac but it just feels so out of place. Are you using any extensions to get a more true macOS feel? While Chrome isn't perfect it doesn't feel anywhere near as "multi-platform" as Firefox does.
    • asdff 7y ago
      I made my view compact as possible, removed bookmark toolbar, etc. Pretty native looking now aside from tabs on top.
      • satysin 7y ago
        But what about things like pinch zoom, elastic scrolling and such? I know there are some extensions but all that ones I have tried (the top 5 that come up in search) are all janky. While not a deal breaker it would be nice to have a more native macOS feeling version of Firefox but I guess Mozilla have other things to work on.
• soulofmischief 7y ago
  I hope so because almost every bug I run into during webdev is Chrome, and usually I'm told it's intended behavior or a WONTFIX. With the way Google tries to strongarm standards and at the same time defy them, it's the modern Internet Explorer and it's a PITA to develop for.
  • dclowd9901 7y ago
    What the heck bugs are you running into that surface as a result of chrome being chrome? I’m no google fan but I find chrome to be far and away the most stable and enjoyable browser to debug with.
    • chinhodado 7y ago
      One that's particularly annoying to me a while ago was you cannot drag and drop elements from an iframe to another iframe from another domain. IIRC it was only an issue in Chrome.
      • dthedev 7y ago
        To be fair, you can't blame them for disallowing things like that. Protection against cross-site scripting, I'm sure.
        • chinhodado 7y ago
          I just don't see a realistic attack vector with cross-origin drag-n-drop.
          • jonny_eh 7y ago
            Anything cross-origin is a potential XSS attack.
          • eganist 7y ago
            This one's actually pretty easy: clickjacking. Imagine permitting cross-origin drag-n-drop and a page is clickjacked: the user may end up dragging a sensitive item in the clickjacked page into an invisible iframe with a drop point layered on top of whatever target the user thinks they're dropping data into, and the end result would be that data intended for one endpoint, in this case the endpoint that was clickjacked, is sent to another. It'd be a nontrivial attack to mount, but as you posed the challenge, I can see it done as part of e.g. a phish where a site like dropbox is iframed in a clickjacking attack (assuming they haven't mitigated it). I can sketch (literally) what the dom might physically look like if it helps convey the attack I have in mind more effectively.
• diafygi 7y ago
  For years I have been working with my mom to get her to be suspicious of any pop-ups in her browser. Many times she has texted me a photo asking if some pop-up update box was legit (almost always a shady ad). When she got her new computer, I set up Firefox in a fairly locked down state: uBlock Origin, third-party cookies disabled, and clear all cookies and history when firefox closes. It's been amazing. With the ad-blocker she almost never texts me now with suspicious stuff. Also, it was super easy to teach her that if she ever gets into a situation that feels shady, just close the browser and open it up again. Starting from a clean slate every time in a well protected browser makes her feel a lot safer because she knows that if things get scary, she can just close the window and start over. Having to log in every time hasn't turned out to be that much of an inconvenience either. See actually feels safer because of it. It makes perfect logical sense to her that the website ask her to login every time. "My bank asks me for my ID every time I go in to deposit a check, so of course it makes sense to ask for my password every time I open my browser and visit the website." Anyway, my takeaway is that Firefox + uBlock Origin for parents is really a wonderful thing.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• mushufasa 7y ago
  I saw a comment on a previous thread say that WebRender will fix the unacceptable performance on retina MBPs. FF 67 released webrender to stable, but only for Windows 10 per the release notes. Will WebRender fix the CPU taxing problem, and will that be released for macOS in a subsequent release?
  • pimeys 7y ago
    You can try it yourself: about:config gfx.webrender.all -> true restart browser
  • pps 7y ago
    Fix for that is scheduled for june 2019 https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1 https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1 (I'm just waiting for this too, I don't know anything more about it, I hope they will really ship this on time)
• suyash 7y ago
  Switch to Safari instead if you're on Mac, if you care about privacy and security: https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...
  • dictum 7y ago
    I like Safari, but its extension system is even more restrictive. Something like uBlock Origin cannot be implemented anymore. It's an Apple tradition — if you like what's in the box, great, but you won't be able to customize it much later.
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      I was surprised to see your comment, in Safari, directly below the uBlock Origin icon. It seems to be working fine for me. Do you have more details on what you mean?
      • asd 7y ago
        Legacy Safari extensions will no longer be supported. Scroll down to "Safari Extensions". https://webkit.org/blog/8825/release-notes-for-safari-technology-preview-80/ https://webkit.org/blog/8825/release-notes-for-safari-techno...
        • pwinnski 7y ago
          Today I learned something new. Thank you.
  • seabrookmx 7y ago
    And if you want more broken websites, sure. Safari is the new IE when it comes to bugs and standards compliance. Here's an example that broke many many sites that use OAuth2 Auth Code Flow for login (including the main UI portal my company provides clients): https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194906 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194906 This was also an issue in iOS, and since Apple doesn't let any other browsers actually use their own rendering engine on that platform (they're just wrappers around Safari's guts) this was broken for all iPhone users no matter the browser. I avoid using iDevices for this reason alone.
• maxwellito 7y ago
  Does it mean that passwords are stored in clear? If not, how other browsers manage to import this data? Sorry if the question is silly
  • 0az 7y ago
    Passwords are generally stored in the system keyring, or in some system-provided secure storage. I am 95% sure Firefox just reads this. (It's also possible to CSV export from Chrome's password manager. I used this to import everything into BitWarden.)
    • maxwellito 7y ago
      Thanks for the explanation! So, any software running on my computer can access it without my permission?
    • jrochkind1 7y ago
      Chrome MacOS used to store passwords in the MacOS keychain, but stopped. (Not sure if they are stored securely now, but they do not seem to be stored using OS functionality). Are you positive (not just assuming, cause it would amke sense) FF MacOS still uses the MacOS keychain? Cause that's a plus if so.
• marquis-chacha 7y ago
  I tried to switch just now, looks like uMatrix doesn't work in Firefox? That's a blocker for me... I've spent a lot of time creating a ruleset on uMatrix, not looking to try recreating that.
  • jmisavage 7y ago
    There is an add-on called uMatrix for FF. I haven't tried it so I cn't tell you if it works or not. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/
    • marquis-chacha 7y ago
      Sorry I was unclear, uMatrix still exists, and I used to use it on Firefox, but now I get a message: uMatrix could not be verified for use in Firefox and has been disabled.
      • ajnin 7y ago
        It's working for me, make sure you have the latest Firefox version, there was a bug a few days ago which broke addon-on signature verification.
        • marquis-chacha 7y ago
          That was it. Used to Firefox autoupdating, but didn't this time for some reason.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        Works fine here. You're on current FFx?
        • marquis-chacha 7y ago
          That was it. Used to Firefox autoupdating, but didn't this time for some reason.
• bin0 7y ago
  Random, only slightly-related question: has any one used suckless' surf? I've seen it recommended by the hyper-minimalist nuts, but am more looking into it so I can tweak it easily. I figure it would be a lot easier than trying to slog through webkit, gecko, servo, blink, etc. as it is so much simpler.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Surf is good at what it does. You might also consider uzbl.
  • majewsky 7y ago
    > slog through webkit Isn't surf based on WebKit?
• Taylor_OD 7y ago
  My issue is extensions. Firefox will never have all the extensions I use on Chrome. I want to switch. I use firefox on my mobile. But I cant do it on my desktops.
  • spiznnx 7y ago
    Firefox supports nearly the same web-extensions API as Chrome. Often porting to firefox means a couple of tweaks are necessary on the part of the author, but try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-... and see if maybe the extension you want is already usable.
    • penguin_booze 7y ago
      From a developer perspective, I'd say bit modern as well. For example, FF extension APIs use Promises, which are relatively pleasant to deal with than callbacks that Chrome uses.
    • xeromal 7y ago
      How cool is this! Thanks for sharing
  • floatboth 7y ago
    You can install Chrome extensions as-is and 99% of the time they just work. There was a helper addon for fetching from the chrome store: https://github.com/Noitidart/Chrome-Store-Foxified https://github.com/Noitidart/Chrome-Store-Foxified — temporarily needs an older firefox copy to work. But you can always repack manually.
  • reificator 7y ago
    That seems odd given that they use the same APIs. I switched about a month or two ago. That involved moving at least 10+ extensions with no issue, and all of them even have the same UI. What extensions in particular are you missing?
• mattfrommars 7y ago
  I like to switch from Chrome to Firefox but only thing keeping me with Chrome is its superior web development tool. One my the dev here recommends us to use Chrome because of its better Javascript debugger - something to do with the output in the web console takes you to the corresponding Javascript line & instance where it is invoked on the web page. I am not entirely sure what it is. Whatever it is, its not in Firefox.
  • WorldMaker 7y ago
    The "magic" is Source Maps. Firefox supports Source Maps just fine, it's just pickier about their formats. It was supposed to be a standard and all the browsers supported it (Edge and Firefox have had support for as long as Chrome has). Chrome allowed some Source Map formats that didn't exactly follow the standards/specs, and a bunch of tools started using Chrome-only Source Maps by default accidentally because so many devs were using Chrome. If you use webpack or similar tools check the various format options for Source Maps until you find one that works in non-Chrome browsers.
    • worble 7y ago
      How strange, this is the first I've heard of this. I've never had to touch source maps config in my webpack and it's always shown fine in Firefox. Is it just specific circumstances/specific code patterns that have source map problems in Firefox? Or is it when it's transpiling from TypeScript or JSX or something?
      • WorldMaker 7y ago
        From what I've investigated so far, webpack likes to use the webpack:// pseudo-protocol for file references in most of its Source Map modes, including its defaults, and from what I've seen that seems to be the single biggest issue of cross-browser Source Map compatibility in the webpack ecosystem (other ecosystems have different problems). Chrome seems to be able to figure things out from the pseudo-protocol in just about all cases, but Edge and Firefox seem to be confused more often than not. In some cases it looks like Chrome takes extra efforts to find physical files on disk from bad URLs, and in other cases Chrome does more with virtual file structures included in the same bundles (the webpack:// pseudo-URLs often point to other "sections" of the same JS bundle) creating a virtual file tree from them that looks close enough to the on-disk file tree as to seem effectively the same to many developers.
• roryrjb 7y ago
  As of Firefox 67, it is actually very fast and performant for me on Linux. Every time I have tried Firefox Quantum it has been noticeably slower than Chrome. I really want to use Firefox because Google is basically evil and I'm trying to migrate from every service I have with them; slowly but surely; but I used Hangouts Meet the other day with work and it was very very unstable. Of course I don't blame Firefox for this, I blame Google, but this is literally the only thing that is stopping me from migrating.
  • penguin_booze 7y ago
    Agreed. There was a noticeable performance improvement in FF67. FF does crash on me at times. Notably, most of those had been while I was on Gmail. Oh my, do I suspect something?
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    > As of Firefox 67, it is actually very fast (You probably meant 57, when quantum was introduced (alongside breaking the entire add-on ecosystem).) I noticed no speed difference whatsoever when I upgraded from Firefox 55 to 66 a few weeks ago. The difference between 55 and 66 is that a bunch of useful add-ons are gone, some of them are no longer possible due to missing APIs, and I had to find alternatives for most that were rewritten (and spend time reconfiguring everything). In the end, the design didn't really change after I removed the tab bar on top, and speed is also about the same. Which is fine for me, I never understood the slowness complaints, but I guess I typically work on relatively high end laptops (well, this particular one was only 700 euros and is now 1 year old, it's not terribly high end, but I think I got good value on this one and it's probably more than what most people spend... though maybe not HN people... yeah, I don't know where the slowness complaints come from).
    • roryrjb 7y ago
      No I mean 67. I tried every version of Firefox from 57 to 67 and only 67, the latest release feels "as fast" as Chrome.
      • 7y ago
• ipoopatwork 7y ago
  I switched a few months ago after the forced login debacle. I thought it'd be long to get adjusted, but it was very fast.
• ethanpil 7y ago
  I wish MIcrosoft would have worked off Firefox for the new Edge instead of Chrome. Just doesn't make sense why they would feed into a direct competitor. Bagging Edge off Firefox would have made it a real option for me as well as creating an opportunity now with all the ad blocking stuff going down...
  • bshacklett 7y ago
    On the plus side, we now have another large player working on Chromium, which may help prevent Google from forcing design decisions which benefit them alone.
    • ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
      This is going to become massively important. As Brave gains market share and Microsoft Edge becomes the defacto browser on Windows machines, Google Chrome could easily become the new IE6 if Blink strays too far down the path on upstream compatibility.
    • ethanpil 7y ago
      This is a great point. I wonder if one day either it will force them apart again, or present problems of collusion...
  • ebertucc 7y ago
    I'm just going to copy pattpass' response to a similar comment here, because the decision to use Chromium makes more sense with this context: What benefit does Microsoft have by using Mozilla instead? Earnest question. Electron, the software framework VSCode uses, runs on Chromium. Github maintained and developed the framework and they are currently owned by Microsoft. If Microsoft contributes to Chromium and improves performance they benefit in a lot of places: their new browser is improved(Edge Chromium), their own framework(Electron), and their own product (VSCode).
  • DiseasedBadger 7y ago
    I hope Microsoft manages to out-Microsoft Google's Microsofting of the web. A pox in every pot!
• dpedu 7y ago
  I'd love to switch but the technique of having one browser import another's bookmarks, settings, and autofill just isn't good enough anymore. I have no fewer than 28 extensions installed on my Chrome installation and while not all of them are enabled all the time I do use them regularly. For me, the "cost" of switching to Firefox is, for each of these extensions, finding and vetting a firefox-compatible replacement.
  • cityzen 7y ago
    Surprise! Chrome extensions work on Firefox! This was a big one for me as well, namely Tab Wrangler. https://www.howtogeek.com/346981/how-to-install-any-chrome-extension-in-firefox/ https://www.howtogeek.com/346981/how-to-install-any-chrome-e... I can't recall if I used that Chrome Store Foxified but I do know that i'm using all of my chrome extensions and firefox and don't miss chrome at all.
    • dpedu 7y ago
      Interesting, I didn't know about this. I'll have to give it a try!
    • ihuman 7y ago
      If you use that method, don't they uninstall themselves if you relaunch firefox?
      • cityzen 7y ago
        How do you mean? My firefox extensions work just like chrome. If I quit firefox or restart my computer they're still all there.
• JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  I should have left Chrome when they started that force sign in to Chrome shit. This latest stuff is the final impetus I need to switch.
• mrbonner 7y ago
  I've been back to FF since Quantum release and like the new experience so far. Occasionally, I have to use Chrome since some of the internal websites at work don't work with Firefox. I always get those errors related to cross-site scripting issue like this: "Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://internal-xxxxxxx https://internal-xxxxxxx. (Reason: CORS header ‘Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ missing)." Does anybody know what kind of knob I have to turn on/off in FF to make this disappear?
• nmca 7y ago
  Firefox mobile + ublock origin is dreamy :)
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    + sync for the lazy!
• cremp 7y ago
  Has anyone actually Wireshark'ed a machine with just Chrome running? I ask because I keep reading about how Google is bad because of their business, but I haven't seen an actual pcap, or any reporting for that matter, on what Google actually sends back home. If you have, or know of a place that has done that, I'd be interested to read about it. Until then, Chrome, and Firefox are just more tools in my arsenal; and people trying to get me to ditch one, just because they dont like it, is just outright dumb.
• dbg31415 7y ago
  Yes, I want to switch... but I have something like 25 plugins and many of them don't have corresponding plugins on Firefox. For example, when I press Apple + Shift + C, I copy the URL and save it as markup. I want this functionality in Firefox -- it's not good if I can't keyboard shortcut. Also... and this one is a bit more painful... we use Lighthouse for a lot of testing. Contractually, it's an easy thing to build in, "We'll meet scores of at least 85 on Lighthouse for accessibility..." and I can't run that out of Chrome. Any similar tool suggestions? I found a lot, but I haven't found suitable replacements for: * Lighthouse - Chrome Web Store || https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdconlkpinefehnmjammfjpmpbjk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdc... * Create Link - Chrome Web Store || https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghdmnkfdbncmnmlkkglmnnhagajbm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghd... (need to have keyboard shortcut and export link to MarkDown for easier pasting into GitHub issues). Also... I'd love a good replacement for Xmarks. If Firefox wrote a plugin for Chrome that lets me keep my bookmarks from Firefox sync in sync with Chrome I would be happy. I have to have multiple browsers... and I miss how easy Xmarks made it to go between them.
• iscrewyou 7y ago
  Chrome is now my mail, calendar, and maps app. It took me a good month to psychologically pivot myself into thinking this way but it’s worked. Everything else is on Firefox now.
• gsempe 7y ago
  This page does not make clear how to switch back if the user get anything wrong by switching to Firefox. That is probably the biggest blocker right now.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • codingdave 7y ago
    Just open Chrome. 'Switching' doesn't stop Chrome from working, it just imports the Chrome data so you don't have to re-create bookmarks, etc.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• mh-cx 7y ago
  What some probably consider a privacy nightmare is a Chrome feature I like very much: It syncs all my history, bookmarks and passwords across devices via my Google account. That's especially convenient whenever I get a new device. Is there something comparable for Firefox?
  • mcstafford 7y ago
    Yes * https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/ * https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/sync https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/sync
    • techntoke 7y ago
      Firefox sync needs a well-maintained Docker image.
      • matthew-wegner 7y ago
        And iOS support for a self-hosted sync server :(
  • thehoff 7y ago
    Firefox does have sync and it supposedly does all that. I use Firefox but don't use sync. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    It would have taken you less long to duck/google that than to type that comment, so I feel like I'm missing your point. Did you mean to emphasize that you don't mind sharing data with Google, or was it really just asking about if firefox sync exists?
    • 7y ago
• billysielu 7y ago
  I did switch to Firefox and then they broke all extensions so I switched back. Chrome just works better.
  • rc_kas 7y ago
    That was a major upgrade to Firefox. Most extensions have since done the fixes needed to handle the upgrade.
    • techntoke 7y ago
      No, Firefox forgot to renew their certificates and it broke all extensions.
      • rc_kas 7y ago
        Oh yeah, that was a separate instance. I did forget about that.
• jwr 7y ago
  I don't understand why Mac users use Chrome. Safari seems to be out of fashion: people just assume that it should not be used for some reason, even though it is actually a great browser. I use Safari for both my own browsing and for development (a fairly large ClojureScript application), and it is by far the best browser on the platform by all measures (speed first and foremost). The only place where Safari falls short is 3D CAD programs (like OnShape), where Chrome is faster and better.
  • rifung 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I work for Google I actually really liked Safari when I used it. The issue for me is just that I don't only use OS X and like having my stuff synced across devices. If I had an iPhone I would probably be very happy with Safari.
  • iamjustlooking 7y ago
    Safari seems lacking in the browser extensions department.
    • kossae 7y ago
      This is probably the only reason I don't use Safari on macOS. Especially since their new extension API came out, most of the (few) extensions I was even able to find are now manual-install pains.
  • javagram 7y ago
    Safari redesigned their dev tools at some point a long time ago and made the interface (IMO) terrible. Until they did that I used to use it a lot more. Safari is a great browser if you don’t need the most cutting edge features or extensibility though, and I believe it’s also the best optimized for battery life.
    • shados 7y ago
      I legit can't even use the Safari tools even if I try. I have no idea how its supposed to work...the idea is not just terrible. It makes absolutely no sense and I have to google stuff to figure out how to use it every time I do.
• lordnacho 7y ago
  I tried to do this, and I had to switch back. My setup is that I have loads of tabs open, with a vertical tab manager on the side. And FF has a pretty nice extension for that, plus you can take back some screen space by removing the top tabs using some css. Anyway, when I have the same tabs and extensions in FF as in Chrome, the FF CPU usage is huge. I tried several things from the web, but nothing helped. Now I'm back on Chrome, which is less nice looking and less convenient, but the CPU usage is barely anything.
  • yoklov 7y ago
    I think this is mainly an issue on macOS if you use a vertical sidebar, having to do with supporting it's translucency. I think there's away to turn this off too, but I don't remember how, sorry.
    • lordnacho 7y ago
      Where did you hear about the translucency hint? https://xkcd.com/979/ https://xkcd.com/979/ Not trying to turn HN into a bug hunting board, but I found this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 Might be useful to someone.
  • ccffph 7y ago
    I use an MBP 15" 2017 with 16g ram, 300+ tabs open as I type, with tree style tabs on firefox. No issues. I would complain about ram usage, but there is certainly no high cpu usage from vertical tabs.
    • lordnacho 7y ago
      Are any of your tabs gmail? I think that's the main culprit, but I'm not sure it's the only one. Slack as well.
• calferreira 7y ago
  Still there's one thing that Firefox can beat, Chrome dev tools are just the best, period.
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    As someone who uses Firefox 98% of the time, every time I open the Chromium dev tools I'm just lost. Could it be personal?
    • calferreira 7y ago
      Different people, different tastes :)
• rajesh-s 7y ago
  This feels like the time GitHub was acquired by Microsoft and people started migrating to GitLab!
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• holoduke 7y ago
  It would be awesome to create somekind of quide on how to switch from the Google ecosystem to something different. Mail, browser, agenda, drive, photos etc. I would seriously pay 50 bucks per month to have something different without bullshit companies like Google behind it.
  • japanoise 7y ago
    If you're willing to pay, that really helps. There are countless mail services that are way better than gmail while also not spying on you.
  • dddw 7y ago
    50 bucks? yeah that's about doable. run your own cloud with owncloud/seafile. (owncloud added bonus is calendar ) get email service in a privacy tight country (switzerland).
  • javagram 7y ago
    Just pay for office 365 or iCloud, either of them offer all the services you listed. And for much cheaper than $50/month. I pay for G Suite personally, I have nothing against google except that I knew their free gmail account doesn’t have support and I wanted to be able to contact someone if I ever had a problem with my mail. Edit: or if you really just want to avoid big companies, https://puri.sm/posts/purisms-librem-one-suite-of-privacy-protecting-no-track-apps-and-services-surges-past-initial-crowdfunding-goal-after-two-weeks/ https://puri.sm/posts/purisms-librem-one-suite-of-privacy-pr...
  • asdff 7y ago
    Not the most active sub but useful: https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/ https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/
  • severine 7y ago
    There exists and org like that, it's called Framasoft: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/
• SilasX 7y ago
  Um, Firefox does the same sorts of thing. A) Want to use unsigned addons to play around, or tweak your existing ones[1]? Nope, even if you allow them in about:config, you can't; you have to use a special development version and update it separately. B) Want to customize your keyboard shortcuts? Sorry, that's not safe, you have to use a crippled API that won't take effect until a given page loads. C) Want to control your setup? Sorry, their "studies" feature is owned by the marketing team and can make arbitrary changes to the app on the fly, all the way up to its cryptographic infrastructure! (As we learned in the recent add-on mishap [2].) I use Firefox, but they're not obviously better on these matters. [1] Like, I don't know, if you made a big deal about underprivileged groups getting into coding, and actually wanted to take the concept seriously rather than just get some photogenic token to write hello-world for a photo op. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826827
  • DaveWalk 7y ago
    You raise very good points. The shortcuts thing has made me miserable for years. Surely the coders of Mozilla appreciate a good set of shortcuts, like in whatever IDE they write their code in!
    • neilsimp1 7y ago
      It kinda drives me nuts that Ctrl+num changes to that tab number on Windows, but on Linux, it is Alt+num.
      • 333c 7y ago
        Cmd+nun on Mac :)
  • mook 7y ago
    Didn't Mozilla promise to publish a post-mortem on the add-on thing two weeks ago? Did that ever happen? Not the CTO post during the issue; the follow up that was supposed to be more technical.
• scotu 7y ago
  I switched back to firefox little before the quantum release because I was around when we had Internet Explorer 6 (and the many years of fallout from it). What's your excuse for using chrome?
• darepublic 7y ago
  Dunno if it's just me but one thing preventing me from switching is my preference for the chrome dev tools. To me they are just head and shoulders easier to use than the firefox or safari versions.
• benol 7y ago
  Firefox Beta is at 68 now and still not way to set the default zoom...
• hu3 7y ago
  When will uBlock Origin stop working on Chrome? Is there an estimate date? I'd appreciate if someone could tell me.
  • ehsankia 7y ago
    Most people here already dislike Google and Chrome, and are just looking for an excuse to promote Firefox. Realistically, I honestly don't see a world where there is no way to block ads on Chrome. Right now, it's not clear what the final thing will look like, so if I was you I'd just wait. We probably won't know for sure for months or a year.
• midnitewarrior 7y ago
  Switch from Chrome to Brave
• bloopernova 7y ago
  I switched to Firefox about a month ago. Initially I ran into problems because I took on too much at once, I tried enabling uMatrix at the same time as I switched over. Once I removed uMatrix I was doing much better, and I'm saving it for another month or two. Several features of Firefox are real killer apps for me. Adding a taxonomy to my bookmarks has really helped as I've moved more heavily into org-mode. I've started adding a couple of tags to every bookmark I save, that really helps with organization and recall. Beyond tags, the container tabs feature has been pretty amazing. Being able to sign into multiple Office 365 accounts is great, plus the obvious use case of "keep those few times I use facebook in their own special sandbox". I've donated a few bucks to Mozilla, and I recommend everyone do that. Google seems to rapidly be heading towards 1990s Microsoft territory, with the added "bonus" of discarding apps that they lose interest in.
• ilovecaching 7y ago
  Firefox still has the same issues as Chrome on my MBP, namely it uses a lot more battery than Safari. It seems as though Chrome has been keeping a small performance edge over FF as well, but they are so close now it makes sense to use FF to support the brand. One HUGE issue over Chrome is that many websites break for me due to broken JS that was only tested on Chrome, including internal sites for work. Ugh. The visuals of FF including their website are beautiful. Wish they would put that same design team on Rust, which has a website made by a clown now.
• jrochkind1 7y ago
  If you forked Chrome, how hard would it be to change it do DRM'd video however Firefox does? I'm not saying forking Chrome would be easy, it's complicated software, I think it would require a lot of labor to keep it competitive over the long term, which is the real barrier. But I'm not sure if the DRM is an insurmountable barrier, Firefox plays that same video somehow, it should be at least theoretically possible to get a forked Chrome to do it the same way?
  • granos 7y ago
    I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that FF licenses Widevine.
  • jjoonathan 7y ago
    > however Firefox does You mean stuttering and jerky? I imagine that's a result of not using Google's preferred codec DRM voodoo -- and copying it will just spread the misery, not make it better :(
  • nostalgk 7y ago
    Mozilla uses Google Widevine as well, I believe. The path forward is to license Widevine from Google, and they've already shut down other FOSS projects by refusing to give them licenses.
    • rocqua 7y ago
      How far does the DMCA reach in europe? It feels like we need some reverse engineering of widevine.
      • holtalanm 7y ago
        an open-source implementation of DRM that is compatible with widevine would be a step in the right direction.
        • BlueTemplar 7y ago
• BuckRogers 7y ago
  I never left! I've been using Firefox nonstop since 2002. For the most part, I was a Netscape Navigator user prior though had nothing against IE and sometimes used it. Since Firefox was 'Phoenix', I've stuck with it and only randomly (once every few years) checked in on Chrome. I never really did care for it, and can't say I've ever had any issues with Firefox, even in the supposed dark ages. It has been impacted with Google's use of the Shadow DOM v0 API, and probably Mozilla's own mistakes, but I never felt it was "slow". To roll out the welcome mat for any new or returning users, I have some general suggestions. Consider the following extensions: Containerise; Decentraleyes; HTTPS Everywhere; Livemarks; Privacy Badger; Redirect AMP to HTML; uBlock Origin. For privacy settings: set custom privacy settings to block trackers 'in all windows', block cookies from all unvisited websites, block cryptominers and fingerprinters. Of course enable 'Do Not Track'. Then block all new permission requests for location, web cam etc. Lean towards whitelisting sites that you do want these settings, as stringent privacy settings like this can in rare instances, break sites. The only example I've ran into is during NCAA March Madness and the site used to watch the games, but you may find others. Random bits: I'd also suggest enabling the dedicated search bar for quick DDG bang updates. I also give Mozilla some information so my preferences can be added to the collective as to not be removed at some point down the road. Yes to 'Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla', 'Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations' and 'Allow Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf'. Can't say I suggest Firefox Studies though, that's one thing Mozilla rubbed me the wrong way with. With all of that and your own further customization to make it yours, you should be a happy Firefox user. :)
• reilly3000 7y ago
  That page is just missing one critical thing: 4. Migrate my extensions. It would be great if they developed a graph mapping Chrome extensions to Mozilla equivalents. Then the user could confirm installation of the ones with 1:1 parity, like LastPass, allow users to select similar extensions, or skip installing an equivalent. There are some Chrome-Exclusive extensions that keep me hooked. That and Firefox’s Storage inspector is terrible, there isn’t a native way to clear localstorage during development.
  • everetm 7y ago
    To be honest all 11 of the extensions I used day on chrome are available and working on Firefox in 2019 compared to a few years back.
  • CWuestefeld 7y ago
    My difficulty is in the other direction. In FF I really rely on TreeStyleTab, and there's no decent alternative in Chrome.
  • house9-2 7y ago
    Have you checked out Brave browser? Fork of Chrome and most if not all Google extensions work. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
    • simias 7y ago
      Once again, switching to a fork of Chrome doesn't really help anything, unless you believe that the Brave devs have the will and manpower to actually maintain a hard form of Chromium that would re-enable and maintain features disabled upstream in the long term. It's like ditching Facebook for Instagram.
    • sound1 7y ago
      Last time I checked Brave looked awful on 4k screen on linux Kde, may be 6 months back. Have they fixed it? I wanted to like it so much but no luck :-(
• zubspace 7y ago
  Is there a good, crossplatform, embedable browser as an alternative to cef? As far as i know there's gecko which is outdated and servo ain't there yet...
• Mistri 7y ago
  I have 6 profiles that I like to keep separate, and the only browser that supports seamless switching in the toolbar is Chrome. That's the only reason I continue to use it. If Firefox were to implement this, I'd immediately switch. I know there's addons that try to simluate what Chrome does, but they just aren't as easy to use and don't do exactly what I want.
  • wmab 7y ago
    Have you looked into Containers to see if this will work as you want profiles to? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
    • Mistri 7y ago
      I have. It simply sorts tabs by profile, rather than sorting whole windows. Think about it this way: I want to have 6 separate instances of Firefox running at the same time, where I can seamlessly switch between them. Each instance has its own theme, bookmarks, cookies, etc. Firefox can do this, but it's not intuitive and it opens 6 different Firefox apps on my Mac, so it isn't easy to distinguish between each profile. On Chrome, I simply click the person switcher at the top right and I can switch between sessions very easily.
• rudolph9 7y ago
  Already made the switch. My workflow has hardly changed at all.
  • jmondi 7y ago
    For me it was hard to train myself to stop using Chrome and start using Firefox. A few months ago I created an alfred workflow to help train quick `⌘ + space` users to use Firefox. https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-firefox-instead-of-chrome https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-fire...
• numbers 7y ago
  I've been happily using Firefox for about 2-3 months now. The main difference I've noticed is how easy it is to get the same experience and in some cases a better experience on Firefox just but taking 15-30 minutes to set it up. Chrome was my browser for almost all of the 2010s and now I'm happy to say I'm not stuck with it.
• gabrielc 7y ago
  Firefox is the right choice.
• sorryforthethro 7y ago
  [Deleted]
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
    • teddyfrozevelt 7y ago
      What makes you think it isn't getting any use?
  • JoshTriplett 7y ago
    Firefox's sign-in uses client-side crypto to ensure that your data is only accessible to you, not Mozilla.
  • dang 7y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052893 and marked it off-topic.
• bluescrn 7y ago
  While Firefox is pretty great, be under no illusion that it’s a utopia of openness. It’s plugins are signed and quite tightly controlled. They banned the controversial ‘Dissenter’ plug-in seemingly for political reasons, and recently had the expired certificate ‘oops’ that rendered all plugins unusable for a day or so (without fiddly workarounds) They too could well bend to corporate pressures to limit ad-blocking, they already have the tech that could be used to block widespread use of ad blockers?
  • ajudson 7y ago
    Did they block it, or just ban it from their store? I thought people could still install it themselves.
    • bluescrn 7y ago
      The expired cert weekend gave me the impression that using unsigned plugins, while possible for dev purposes, is quite a pain, and therefore being banned from the ‘store’ would pretty much mean banned from mainstream (non-dev, non-forked) releases of Firefox? I may be wrong, though?
    • blisterpeanuts 7y ago
      It's banned from their store, and as of April, at least, it can only be loaded as a temporary add-on and must be manually reactivated each time Firefox is started.
• deleted 7y ago
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• wmock 7y ago
  I would switch off of Chrome if Firefox has better developer tools. Unfortunately, as a developer, Chrome's developer experience is just significantly better.
  • brink 7y ago
    Use Firefox for everything but work.
• mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  Firefox UI is absolute shit. Takes ages to figure out what the fucking buttons do because who needs labels?! Chromes is no better, just speaks to the current situation and lack of UX professionals on the dev teams.
• BinaryIdiot 7y ago
  Ugh. Look, I used to use Chrome as my primary browser but I switched to Firefox like a year ago. I tried really, really hard to stay with Firefox. But it just doesn't work as well as Chrome. I get that it's not entirely Firefox's fault. Sometimes it is (for instance when things crash in Firefox it almost always crashes my entire browser, Chrome never crashes that way). But it's hard to tell a user to go use another browser when everyone is testing and using Chrome. It's IE6 all over again just in different ways. Perhaps I'll try a chronium fork. Sure it's not as good of a move but maybe I'll have better luck with issues. I'll likely try Firefox again to see if things are better (I usually use Firefox for some things at work anyway).
  • MrOwen 7y ago
    A lot of responses I see on any Firefox HN post talk about bugs/issues which have [mostly] been addressed by Mozilla. This includes separate processes per tab which came out just a few versions ago. The problem is that these issues have been resolved more recently vs a year or more ago. It seems many people tried switching to FF long time ago when those outstanding issues were still there so many didn't left up switching because the bugs put a bad taste in their mouth. At this point in 2019, from my perspective, FF and Chrome are functionally the same at this point so there's really no reason to continue using Chrome.
    • BinaryIdiot 7y ago
      You seem to have not really read my comment, made some assumptions and created some straw-men. I'm not entirely sure why. As I mentioned before I switched entirely to Firefox about a year ago. I only switched back fairly recently (Firefox shipped separate processes _years_ ago). I also continue to use Firefox daily at work. It still isn't as good, as much as I hate to say it. Some issues have gotten better but not all. They are still not equivalent (especially in web dev tooling) and many sites, like YouTube, still have weird issues in Firefox (full screen mode on my Surface Pro 4 still doesn't work right; it's like it switches to a weird software renderer). Chrome just _always_ works. And I hate to say it, too.
• rigorman 7y ago
  Controversial question from someone not as informed on the state of current as most here: Anyone thinking of switching to a browser that doesn't have any script-interpretation ability? (Text-only or html/css only?) What options are currently out there?
  • pixelrevision 7y ago
    Firefox works just open about:config and turn off javascript. Sadly you will quickly find most of the modern internet breaks under these circumstances.
• coding123 7y ago
  Good timing
• rkangel 7y ago
  What is the actual performance story these days? Last time I tried Firefox (soon after they were making a fuss about Quantum) I was fairly disappointed. I'm including performance of the Android browser here (because they work in concert as far as I'm concerned). Also, what pain am I going to hit with DRM and online video? I use the usual suspects - Amazon, Netflix, Youtube.
  • dymk 7y ago
    I've been disappointed with Firefox on MacOS. I tried it for months, but it constantly crashed on me, especially when using multiple monitors, and was super laggy and jittery compared to what I was used to. I gave up and went back to Chrome, which has been as performant as ever.
    • FlyingAvatar 7y ago
      I think you mean you're disappointed with Firefox on macOS? If so, my experience has been the same, though I have been sticking with it for now. I often find I have to close out Firefox and restore my session to stop it from churning so hard my fans spin. This is particularly true after it has been running for a while or after resuming from suspend.
      • dymk 7y ago
        Sorry yes, corrected that typo.
  • ProAm 7y ago
    FF is fast on the desktop but still very slow on android. Im not sure what the difference is, but Ive switched to using a chrome fork on android and FFon my desktop and am pretty pleased. Why do you say they work in concert?
    • glaurung_ 7y ago
      I'd guess he wants to be able to sync bookmarks/passwords/etc across platforms. It's nice being able to find something on my phone and then pull it up later on my desktop using synced bookmarks or Firefox's "send tab to device" functionality. I will say when I first started using Firefox on mobile it did seem slower, but the ability to use extensions like ublock has always made up for it. I think speed has gotten a bit better lately, but there's still room for improvement there.
• brightball 7y ago
  I want to, but the simple behavior issues of the LastPass extension force me to use Chrome just for it. I don’t know if its LastPass or a limitation of Firefox that’s causing it, but it’s enough of a headache for how often I use LastPass that it prevents me from switching browsers. Is there an alternative to LastPass that has a better user experience on Firefox? If so I’ll try it. EDIT: I'll test out Bitwarden.
  • neogodless 7y ago
    This actually happened to me. Maybe a year or so ago, I started to switch, but I wasn't having much luck with LastPass, especially on my Android phone. But then maybe 6 months ago I switched to BitWarden and found I was able to switch to Firefox on Windows and Android. There were still some early teething pains but by now it's almost always a good experience.
  • jdhawk 7y ago
    BitWarden Unfortunately - my company is standardized on LastPass, so it makes it extra difficult
    • brightball 7y ago
      I’m making the switch now and everything seems good so far.
  • Zizizizz 7y ago
    Bitwarden?
  • lavezzi 7y ago
    Dashlane maybe?
• jmondi 7y ago
  A few months ago I created an alfred workflow to help train quick `⌘ + space` users to use Firefox. https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-firefox-instead-of-chrome https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-fire...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• submeta 7y ago
  I tried to switch two years ago, but back then Firefox was very resource hungry on my MBP so I stick to Safari. Chrome - with Google‘s approach to privacy - was no option at all, even if their browser was magnitudes better (which it was not; the differences are marginal in my perception). A few months ago I tried FF again. This time I was amazed. No CPU spikes. Super fast startup. - I cannot explicitly express my arguments and my sentiment, but my gut feeling says that Google‘s approach to privacy is totally wrong. So I don‘t want to touch any of their products. That‘s why I migrated my emails to fastmail.com, am using duckduckgo.com instead of Google.com, switched to Firefox from Chrome, to Dropbox from Google Docs. Abandoned Google Photos.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
  • deleted 7y ago
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• chrischen 7y ago
  People have this idea that Chrome is the fastest browser... is this even true anymore?
• truth_seeker 7y ago
  I switched to Brave browser last year and I never regretted my decision.
  • techntoke 7y ago
    Brave is based on Chromium.
    • truth_seeker 7y ago
      So what ? It gives me optimum performance Desktop and Mobile. On my Mac its upto 2 times faster and in my android phone it's upto 4 times faster.
      • techntoke 7y ago
        Using Brave will provide no benefit regarding the extension changes you are mentioning, unless Brave forks and stays on an older version of Chromium. Where are you seeing speed enhancements? When it comes to loading pages, or in task manager?
        • truth_seeker 7y ago
          Yes. Page loading is faster in Brave It's even more faster in case if site is full of ads and internet connection is slow.
• bogomipz 7y ago
  I'm curious if anyone knows of a means of transferring over saved Session Buddy sessions from Chrome to something comparable in Firefox.
• techrich 7y ago
  Firefox was lost to me when they removed the dissenter plugin from their plugins site. Using the dissenter browser now. It’s fast and it works great.
• kadendogthing 7y ago
  Ironically, this should be a great gateway for Microsoft to heavily invest in a completely open browser. It would ruin Google's decade long plan.
• PascLeRasc 7y ago
  I really want to switch to Firefox. I don't need it to be better-performing than Chrome on my work PC or Safari on my home machine - I want to support free software. But Firefox's text just looks bad, like really bad. On both a retina Mac screen and 24" 1080p monitors on Windows at work, the fonts look pixelated and blurry, like there's something around the edges of the characters. Contrast seems off too, much lower than Chrome or Safari presents text, which makes it hard to read. PDFs in the browser are especially awful to look at. Has anyone else had this experience and found a fix?
  • asadotzler 7y ago
    Can you share some screenshots? IMO, text looks somewhat better in Firefox than in other browsers.
    • sound1 7y ago
      Same thoughts! Firefox is MUCH better at font rendering in my experience. (Also MUCH faster with uBlock Origin and uMatrix)
    • PascLeRasc 7y ago
      Here's an example: https://imgur.com/a/fWRwTf7 https://imgur.com/a/fWRwTf7 Chrome is on the left, Firefox is on the right. In my opinion, Firefox's text looks terrible.
• dheera 7y ago
  I'd like to add that Firefox on mobile supports plug-ins, and Chrome on mobile does not. This means that you can run an adblocker, or other UI tweaks of your liking, on mobile, where ads hurt (both the UI and UX) the most.
• supergirl 7y ago
  add translation to firefox and then I'll switch
• quadrangle 7y ago
  The one hope we have is if enough savvy users not only switch but convince all their network of friends and family to switch as well. DO IT!
• allanbreyes 7y ago
  I didn't see this mentioned, but for a bit more customization, check out Firefox Profilemaker, a tool to "help you to create a Firefox profile with the defaults you like": https://ffprofile.com https://ffprofile.com
• CWuestefeld 7y ago
  I really like my Chromebook, but also would really prefer Firefox. Even with Crostini, there doesn't seem to be a good way to get an official FF build onto the chromebook. Or am I missing something?
• stronglikedan 7y ago
  If I could just get it to start up as reliably as Chrome, I would. Instead, I have to hope I won't get the "black window" on startup, where I have to play a cat and mouse game of killing the process and restarting it until it works. I do use FF for some things, like HN, but unfortunately, I must use Chrome when I just need things to work right away on the first try.
• pnathan 7y ago
  I use cloud profiles heavily. All bookmarks, history, plugins. However, if ads get re-enabled for Chrome, then I am definitely going to have to figure out how to port myself back to Firefox. Very, very, very, annoying.
• johncoltrane 7y ago
  Let's talk again when https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 is fixed.
  • pps 7y ago
    In their roadmap it's scheduled for june 2019 https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1 https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1
    • johncoltrane 7y ago
      We will see. Thank you for the link.
• d1ffuz0r 7y ago
  You can use adguard to go around google's changes in browser api
• pinkflounder 7y ago
  Switch to Brave.
  • techntoke 7y ago
    Brave is based on Chromium.
• burtonator 7y ago
  What they ALSO need to implement is differential sync... so if you continue to accidentally use Google Chrome then Firefox can just snarf in change for you.
• csharpminor 7y ago
  > Firefox imports your bookmarks, autofills, passwords and preferences from Chrome. I can't for the life of me figure out how to do this. I went to File > Import from another browser... and got a dialog that only allowed me to select "Cookies, Browsing History, or Bookmarks". No mention of autofills or passwords. Am I missing something here?
• Endy 7y ago
  I suggest that we instead switch to Pale Moon. Whatever you might feel about Moonchild, the browser is solid and reliable. All it really could benefit from would be a wider add-on dev community.
  • Bakary 7y ago
    What would be the benefit of doing this?
    • Endy 7y ago
      I'm on mobile, so it's not going to be as verbose as usual. In no particular order: Moving away from large corps, breaking up the homogeny of the web, keeping XUL alive, having a browser focused on the end UX rather than the UI and the corp needs, and having add-ons that can actually affect the browser - not the little playground Google thinks will be profitable.
      • Bakary 7y ago
        I understand perfectly the need to switch from Chrome, as I've only ever used Firefox. What I meant was to understand the difference between Firefox and this browser (other than the point of breaking up homogeneity, which I agree is a great thing overall)
        • Endy 7y ago
          Pale Moon uses XUL, not WebExtentions, and provides (subjective) a better browser UX. Only major concern for mass adoption is that it doesn't support DRM content.
• indysigners 7y ago
  I switched only a few weeks ago and am not looking back!
• nycticorax 7y ago
  Does Firefox have an equivalent of Chrome's [...] > More tools > Create shortcut... these days? With an option like Chrome's 'Open as Window' checkbox? I would love to give up Chrome, but that's a really important piece of functionality for me. I hugely prefer webapps that mostly act like normal apps in my desktop environment. I want then to show up in the window list, have their own icon, be alt-tabbable, etc.
• nine_k 7y ago
  On top of uBlock Origin / uMatrix, some of the other Firefox's trump cards to me are: * Tree Style Tab: makes tabs much more manageable, no parallel in Chrome. If you open dozens of tabs, after using this, you can only pity the traditional tab management [1]. * Containers and container tabs: it's a bit like having separate Chrome profiles for separate contexts, but you can also have them as tabs in the same window. * Sync / sign-in server that is open source and that you can run on your own if you choose. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
  • bastih 7y ago
    Container tabs have made my life much easier, as I'm managing a number of Amazon accounts, and being able to do that side-by-side is a life-saver.
    • ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
      You can do the same thing with Profiles in Chromium-based browsers, without having to add an extension.
      • johnny22 7y ago
        firefox has profiles too. Profiles aren't the same as containers tabs though. They are also built in, not addons.
        • ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
          Correct. Firefox's profiles are not the same as Chromium. What benefit do the Firefox containers have that Chromium profiles are missing?
          • nine_k 7y ago
            Mostly, you can't have different profiles in the tabs of the same window in Chrome, and you can have different containers in the tabs of the same window in Firefox. E.g. you can run your email tab in the default container, and a bank app in a separate "money" container next to it. Or you can run one gmail (or outlook, etc) account in one tab, and an another gmail (or outlook, etc) account in another tab next to it.
• m0zg 7y ago
  Would love to, but can't, for one simple reason: I like to keep my work and personal profiles completely separated and frequently need to switch between the two. Firefox has profiles, but does not have a low-friction profile switcher. This is why every time I try it I'm back to Chrome a few days later.
• betaby 7y ago
  Firefox experience on Linux is lackluster. No hardware acceleration, neither on opensource video drivers, nor on proprietary(Nvidia and AMD). On the same hardware on Win10 Firefox experience is definitely better.
  • mattlondon 7y ago
    I've not found it to be an issue on Linux - seems to be about as performant as Chrome for me. The only wrinkle was when I tried to watch Netflix the first time I had to click a button to let me watch DRM'd Netflix streams.
    • betaby 7y ago
      HW accelerated video do work in Chrome/Chromium on Linux, while does not in Firefox, thus visibly loading the CPU and CPU fan on laptop. There is a visible tearing while quickly scrolling in Firefox, while no such problem with Chrome.
      • jabedude 7y ago
        I'll have to try to reproduce this. I've never noticed it. Is it only with Netflix or when viewing any video?
        • betaby 7y ago
          Youtube, Coursera videos.
        • techntoke 7y ago
          Works in Chromium, but not Firefox: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration#Application_support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_accelera...
  • cbdumas 7y ago
    I haven't found the lack of GPU page rendering to be much of an issue, what problems do you experience because of it? Only difference I can see personally is marginally smoother scrolling. I have however found the lack of hardware accelerated video decoding to be a HUGE bummer, watching youtube absolutely destroys my laptops battery life. That is also a problem in Chrome though as far as I know.
• wbl 7y ago
  Passwords didn't work for me in mac, but you should switch now while you have the choice.
• gonational 7y ago
  Firefox banned Dissenter[1], a plug-in that did nothing nefarious - only enables browser users of the plug-in to chat / comment with each other about webpages. They did this for political reasons. Regardless of what kind of trash talk takes place on Dissenter, the point is that nobody is forced to use it. My point: neither Google nor Mozilla should be trusted and both seek to be your totalitarian Internet overlord. 1. https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36490/firefox-and-chrome-banned-dissenter https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36490/firefox-and-chrome-ban...
  • jackewiehose 7y ago
    But it looks like they didn't "ban" it, they just don't want to host it on their store [1]. As long as they don't refuse to sign these "problematic" add-ons, this is fine (although it's worrying that they are able to do so because of this signing-required-crap). [1]: https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-free-speech-commenting-plugin-dissenter-from-its-extensions-gallery https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-f...
    • the_jeremy 7y ago
      At least one extension maintainer (yappy, a pushbullet alternative) says that they are unable to sign their extension because of the 3rd party library they use, so while they have both firefox and chrome extensions, only the chrome one works.
      • jackewiehose 7y ago
        That would be very disappointing from mozilla! I only found a support-thread from yappy in 2016 but if this is still up-to-date there should be an outrage on HN's frontpage. I also made a simple, private(!) extension before I learned about the signing-requirement and that it won't work without uploading it. So I canceled my career as an extension-writer and just went to bed angry. They really fucked this up (without even mentioning the "armag-addon").
  • DiseasedBadger 7y ago
• sam0x17 7y ago
  I finally made the switch a few months ago. I have no regrets. I used to use Firefox back in the windows XP days before chrome even existed, but since Chrome came out I've been sort of stuck in it largely because the gsuite integration and the fact that I am part of 7 different google organizations that I have to juggle. What killed chrome for me is the gradually failing linux support. Had a persistent bug on all my linux machines with chrome (and chromium) would only update the view if the mouse is moving. I actually put up with that for a few months before I switched to FF.
• k__ 7y ago
  Waiting for Firefox on Android and macOS to become usable here :/
• bovermyer 7y ago
  I like Chrome. I also like Firefox. I choose, now, to use Chrome. I respect the decision of others to use something else.
• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  I happily use Google services inside a separate Firefox container. I do have Chrome installed on one of my laptops but haven't used it for a long while. Anyway, I am not a hater on Google, I appreciate their open contribution to deep learning tools and I happily pay for GCP, Play books and movies, and I use gmail as a backup email. But for me, Firefox is just such a better experience than Chrome. It is also a good idea to have a diverse ecology for Internet infrastructure, tools, and platforms. More choices are better.
• ryanolsonx 7y ago
  Do you guys use Firefox's password manager? Or something else?
  • mattlondon 7y ago
    I personally use Firefox's sync to save passwords across devices, but most passwords I store in a normal lastpass/1password/etc service. It comes in very handy to have a non-browser-based password store for when you are out and about and dont have access to on of your own laptops/desktops but do have your phone handly (where you can look up the passwords)
  • techntoke 7y ago
    Look into Browserpass.. Or Enpass, or if you still want free then Bitwarden.
• p0nce 7y ago
  I've never switched to Chrome from Firefox. I don't really care that it's 10% faster, when Chrome is wielded as a weapon against freedom.
• dang 7y ago
  Major, recent, related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562
• HeavyStorm 7y ago
  Thanks but no thanks. There isn't enough functional parity for me - although I'm certainly an outlier - so I've attempted the switch and went back to chrome. One of the issues is that I spend a lot time writing in English and then a lot in Portuguese. Chrome can spell check both and ff needs me to tell which language I'm using.
• appleflaxen 7y ago
  What I want is a "canned" installer for firefox that has all my preferences saved. Sync is ok, but I'd rather not even give that information to Mozilla. Instead, give me an installation package that will allow me to provide a config file next to it, and the ability to automatically create the config file from an existing install. I want search engines, home pages, and plug-ins way more than I need my bookmarks.
  • sfink 7y ago
    You're not giving anything to Mozilla. It's end to end encrypted. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
• bgentry 7y ago
  I actually just gave this another try. First thing I did was see if WebAuthn/U2F support finally works well with Google services, which it now does! Second thing I did was try to open a private window using the universal macOS shortcut of Cmd+Shift+N. Nothing happened, because Firefox decided to use Cmd+Shift+P unlike all other browsers. No problem, this is a macOS app, I’ll just change the keyboard shortcut in system preferences and I’ll be good to go. Except after doing that, Firefox doesn’t actually respect the remapped shortcut (an issue which has existed for 11 years). And the baked in color management is not correct for a macOS app, and the right click menus are not Mac-like and don’t respect dark mode. I thought it was time to make the switch, but the reality is that Firefox is still an even poorer macOS app than Chrome. Fix that and I’ll switch tomorrow, as I really want to ditch Chrome!
  • Bonooru 7y ago
    Cmd+Shift+N reopens the last closed window
    • bgentry 7y ago
      Funny, that (also non-standard) keyboard shortcut is not shown in the menu anywhere and thus can't easily be remapped using the standard macOS keyboard preferences. I don't know if my Cmd+Shift+N private window remapping is failing due to the conflict, or if it's Firefox just not knowing about the remapping. But either way, it appears I can't easily remap Firefox's reopen last closed window to Cmd+Shift+T like other macOS browsers use.
  • ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
    Why do you want to switch from Chrome? There are other alternatives that might fit the bill.
• ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
  Brave Browser seems to do everything I normally would use Chrome for, with none of the issues that caused me to leave Firefox in the first place. FF performance is improved, but still lagging, especially on Mobile.
• TylerE 7y ago
  What's up with Firefox's font rendering? It seems pretty bad. Here is this HN thread in both for comparison (On Win10) https://i.imgur.com/ZDVoWXI.png https://i.imgur.com/ZDVoWXI.png Notice how the Firefox sample seems bolder, but with uneven letter weight and generally a higher line height. It's not good for readability. Kerning is a bit iffy also.
• aloer 7y ago
  I tried Firefox coming from chrome. Two things were dealbreakers for me 1) I’m a heavy window/tab user. 300+ tabs across 10+ windows is normal. I have not been able to recreate the same tab bar overflow behavior as in chrome, default ff will keep tabs at fixed width and scroll horizontally, making it impossible to see how many tabs there are in the window. Changing css helps but there are still enough problems with small width tabs not showing favicons, always showing (and overlapping) close tab button etc. 2) performance when switching videos e.g. on yt to full screen and back is terrible. Latest MacBook, external uwqhd screen, took upwards of 3 seconds every single time from pressing f to having the video show. Might not sound like a lot but it adds up. If everything else is fast this will just feel extra slow
  • b3n 7y ago
    With 300 tabs why do you want your tab bar horizontal? Doesn't it make more sense to have your tabs in a vertical sidebar so you can easily see them and scroll through them, like you can do in Firefox?
    • aloer 7y ago
      I’ve tried it but found it too aesthetically displeasing when using a MacBook to not have a page centered if it’s supposed to be centered. It’s like the entire system is made to be used in a symmetrical way and I break it because of tabs. Doesn’t feel right Hiding the bar defeats its purpose and with small icons I can fit more tabs horizontally without scrolling than vertically with tree tabs. Another reason would be if dev tools are open and they already take away half the horizontal space So usually I have tabs in one window related to a single project or topic until they overflow (chrome will never scroll the bar. If it doesn’t fit the tab icons are simply invisible) at which point I just split in two windows that stay in the same Mac space for that project/topic
    • dom96 7y ago
      Yeah, this is actually one of the main reasons I use Firefox instead of Chrome. I really dislike Chrome's tab minimizing behaviour, not every website has a clearly distinguishable favicon and even if it did, I often have multiple tabs from the same website open.
• macspoofing 7y ago
  Here's the secret: Make Firefox faster than Chrome. I'll switch. I'll push Firefox on all my customers, my family, my friends, everybody.
• Reason077 7y ago
  > "Switch from Chrome to Firefox" Yes. Good advice.
• dror 7y ago
  It is so clear to me that we need to support and promote mozilla and Firefox. They're not perfect, but they, wikipedia, eff, archive.org (who else?) are such an important part of the Internet guardianship in the face of the monopolies, that it's our duty to support them. Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • atomi 7y ago
    I would switch today if Mozilla added tab completed search in the address bar that Chrome pioneered. It's very intuitive and difficult to give up.
    • jotaf 7y ago
      You have tab completion in the search bar (Ctrl+K)! Personally I disable the cloud-based suggestions and rely only on my local history.
    • feanaro 7y ago
      I hope I don't sound crass, but how much is this feature going to matter to you once Google locks up the web?
      • mda 7y ago
        Hysteria of HN is hilarious.
        • feanaro 7y ago
          What is your argument? It is clearly happening and it is not surprising given Google's business incentives. It's slow enough that there is a large chance of many falling for it, which is what makes it so dangerous.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• naasking 7y ago
  Google had said they wanted revise the way advertising and tracking is done on the web to address the many issues with the current train wreck. I would be more open to sticking with Chrome if they had done that first before breaking ad blockers. Ad-driven content should be a viable business model, but the way it's currently done is simply unacceptable, and Google shouldn't crack down on people's conscientious objections via ad-blockers without providing a viable alternative.
• xvf22 7y ago
  Already switched to Firefox and couldn't be happier.
  • chronogram 7y ago
    Same! Had Developer edition installed for testing, but switched fully today (Uninstalled Developer, installed Nightly). The fonts look nice, it's got wayland support on my Linux partition (on Fedora), and it's just really pleasant!
    • orhmeh09 7y ago
      If you’re switching to full time use or Firefox, I cannot recommend going with Nightly; developer edition is a good choice.
      • chronogram 7y ago
        Ah how come? It's being great to me so far! Back before the Chrome days, '00s and early '10s, every geek like me used to use Nightly, so I went with that.
      • the_pwner224 7y ago
        I've been using Nightly as my normal browser for two years with absolutely no issues.
    • xvf22 7y ago
      Got a new laptop and that in addition to Google's evergrowing awfulness prompted the switch. Was pleasantly surprised that my u2f tokens worked as expected.
    • the_pwner224 7y ago
      > The fonts look nice I noticed this too in FF on Linux, I inspect elemented and for some reason a huge number of websites were using Nimbus Sans as the font... Later when I eventually used someone's Windows install I realized that Nimbus was only being used on my computer... Wtf? It's a font developed long ago by some famous font foundry, and a subset covering common characters was made free and included in Linux printer drivers. It is visually very similar to Helvetica/San Francisco. I installed GNU FreeFont (probably available in your distro's repos) which looks the exact same but covers many more characters than Nimbus. In Firefox I went to the font config settings, set FreeSans/FreeSerif as the default fonts, and unchecked the option to allow websites to specify custom fonts. Just don't disable the checkbox to download web fonts, or icon fonts with various icons/glyphs will show as boxes. It's truly beautiful - every once in a while I see some text and just stop reading and stare at it for a few seconds. On the rare occasion when I go to a website about fonts I use another browser to be able to see their CSS-specified fonts.
• newnewpdro 7y ago
  While you're at it, stop using Google products altogether. This cycle will only repeat itself, Google is an advertising company. If you work for this company, please quit and ply your talents somewhere less motivated to exploit people.
• an4rchy 7y ago
  I tend to use both and keep switching between home/work but it just feels like FF is still not as snappy in terms of performance (could just be my perception -- no actual data on this one). I think the Manifest V3 change on ad-blocking is probably a big win for FF and will likely make many people switch over to FF permanently.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• DiseasedBadger 7y ago
  Qt: PLEASE go back to WebKit. QtWebEngine will never be safe. I will just never use it. It's Chrome, and Chrome is Google. And Google is evil.
• meerita 7y ago
  I switched Firefox today, after so many years on Chrome. One of the reasons I found valid to use Chrome it was having the browsing history on my phone, but now i felt i really don't care that much. I value more to be controlling all privacy and not eating that many cookies, scripts.
  • BenElgar 7y ago
    Try Firefox for mobile. As a bonus you'll get add-ons as well so you can block ads. https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/mobile/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/mobile/
• ElijahLynn 7y ago
  Can also switch to https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/, based on Chromium, with native ad blocking at the lowest level, fast.
  • objektif 7y ago
    Shouldnt we instead promote the major competitor with sufficient funding so that people are more likely to stick with for longer term?
    • ElijahLynn 7y ago
      No, _we_ don't have to align on this and people can have more than one choice. Brave is open source and is trying to fix the web.
• jasonhansel 7y ago
  Today in 90s reboots, Chrome is becoming the new IE6.
• snake117 7y ago
  I have been using Firefox as my default browser for as long as I can remember and after the release of Quantum I have loved using Firefox even more. I still have Chrome for cross-browser testing and the occasional website that loads correctly on Chrome, but not Firefox (for whatever reason). However, this occurs very rarely. A big thank you to Mozilla. Keep up the great work!
• gzimhelshani 7y ago
  I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHROME'S
  • techntoke 7y ago
    And if they supported hardware accelerated video on Linux like Chromium on many distros.
• gzimhelshani 7y ago
  I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHOME'S
• chiefalchemist 7y ago
  I would use FF more (and GC less) if FF supported multiple users the way GC does. I have a Chrome instance for each project/client. That has its own bookmarks, history, password manager, etc. Everything is silo'ed and therefore neatly organized.
• benfrain 7y ago
  Firefox is a great browser. However, the reason I end up back on Chrome is because neither iOS or Android have Firefox as the default browser. Sadly, as a front-end focused dev life is easier to build stuff out for Chrome and to a lesser extent, Safari because you know that’s the rendering engine the vast majority of your users will see. I’d happily opt for Safari, as I respect Safaris ethos (privacy, speed, battery perf etc) but their dev tools are lacking so many basic features. Bugs like this don’t help: https://mobile.twitter.com/benfrain/status/1131142392386641921 https://mobile.twitter.com/benfrain/status/11311423923866419...
• a13n 7y ago
  Support localhost subdomains (http://foo.localhost:8080 http://foo.localhost:8080) like Chrome does and I'll consider it!
• atishay811 7y ago
  I remember we used to have "IE Tab" for websites which were so bad that they needed IE and failed otherwise. I think Firefox needs a "Chrome Tab" which runs some website in chromium for the really bad offenders.
• kuon 7y ago
  I see a lot of people here complaining about firefox performances and other things/bugs. But we are on hacker news. Many devs are here. Firefox needs us, we need a strong alternative. Instead of complaining, we need to participate to the open source effort.
  • sfink 7y ago
    Sure. Though as a firefox developer, I also appreciate those bugs and reports of performance problems! A good bug report with solid reproduction steps can often be more useful than a mediocre patch.
• gsich 7y ago
  If Google kicks adblockers, Chrome will be dead within a year.
• NeoBasilisk 7y ago
  I've been using Firefox since 2005. When Chrome came out, I tried it, said "ok," and kept using Firefox.
• spacesuitman2 7y ago
  Been using it since a few months, mainly because it can stop autoplaying all audio/video and no login nagging.
• electrotype 7y ago
  Right-Click + "Customize..." FTW!
• y2kenny 7y ago
  Are there anything that help with switching existing session? (I have like 400 tabs opened in 60+ windows.)
  • depressedpanda 7y ago
    It's still going to be a hassle, but you should be able to do it fairly easily with the OneTab plugin and its import/export functionality. The plug-in exists for both browsers and I've moved sessions that way before.
• mancuso5 7y ago
  other ethical alternatives have been compiled here: https://ethical.net/resources/ https://ethical.net/resources/
• daniel_iversen 7y ago
  I've switched from Chrome to Brave.. It's fast, clean, "seems" more minimalist, it's got good default privacy features (blocks tracking and stuff), It's based on Chromium and you can use all your Chrome extensions etc. The only thing I had to do to make sure I stuck with it was delete Chrome so I don't accidentally out of habit or muscle memory start Chrome.. it's worked beautifully and it's the best browser I've ever used I think. (bonus: they also have a cool way that you can pay your favorite websites - it's not super now because it's mostly crypto currency but soon if you can subscribe via credit card that would be nice).
• the_jeremy 7y ago
  I will say I love firefox containers, they are surprisingly simple to set and forget and have it "just work". My least favorite parts of firefox (switched last weekend) are: Dark mode. Dark Reader from Chrome is dead slow on Firefox, and none of the 5 others I've tried from Reddit/HN recommendations come close to its usability on Chrome. Extension / config syncing. I want the same settings and extensions on my mobile device as my desktop, but it seems like only some configuration settings are able to sync, and add-ons/extensions don't sync between mobile and desktop. I know it's on purpose, but I'd like the option to choose.
• Sag0Sag0 7y ago
  The one thing i really need before i switch to firefox is vivaldi style stackable tabs. Does anyone know if there is any way to get stackable tabs in firefox?
• Justsignedup 7y ago
  To note, firefox quantum is a game changer. Worth switching to on that alone. Overall once firefox did process isolation, chrome had no more reason to exist.
• terrycody 7y ago
  I will tell my story. I use Chrome for years, but recently a new update(I dunno the exact version) lags my laptop so much that it can not even used normally, everything delay several seconds, I spend several days and finally found out its the Chrome did this to my computer.Note: I am using an old laptop, but its still solid. So I have to reinstall Chrome, I have no choice. Then I give firefox a try, to my surprise, with just a few of clicks, all my bookmarks and cookies are all ported to firefox seamlessly, very comfortable feature I'd say. So yeah, if you are using old PC like me, u may feel lags when using new Chrome browser, and I suggest u to switch to Firefox, I DOES work!
• pensatoio 7y ago
  I almost switched a few months ago but didn't because Chrome just felt smoother, but I'm sorry, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Firefox supports every extension I care about. I'm a convert.
• PatrolX 7y ago
  Very impressed with FF 67, I've stopped using Chrome. The sync between devices is very well done.
• okko12 7y ago
  hater news
• okko12 7y ago
  firefox is rubbish
• kpremote 7y ago
  In case Firefox developers read this, Can you please make the popped up bookmark dialog box much much bigger? Please! When clicking the star icon at the end of the address bar, the bookmark dialog box pops up. But it is too small! It only shows very few folders and choices. In order to locate a desired bookmark folder, people have to click and scroll many times. The whole dialog box is $^%&*& too small! Please make it bigger to show much more folders! Like three times bigger! Chrome has the same problem. Firefox can do better! Also, please make the last used bookmark folder as the default folder at the next time when the bookmark dislog box opens, because people often bookmark many related/similar pages consecutively in one short period of time. Thank you. I love Firefox.
  • Ayesh 7y ago
    Did you try with userChrome.css? It won't help with the last used ookmark folder, but I think it will help with the bookmark popup.
    • kpremote 7y ago
      thanks for the tip.
• runn1ng 7y ago
  Try to move passwords from Chrome to Firefox on Mac. The easiest solution is to install Windows in VirtualBox and do it there, with Firefox Sync on.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sudhirkhanger 7y ago
  Some of the current issues I face with Firefox. They are mostly UI/UX-choices that are personal to me. * No global zoom by default which also remembers per-page zoom changes. * Bookmarking is overly cluttered with with other other, toolbar, menu, etc. * Skype Web doesn't work on Firefox. * User profiles which are as easily accessible as in Chrome.
  • sfink 7y ago
    At least for the last, try container tabs. They seem to be generally regarded as superior (in convenience) to Chrome's profiles.
• soheil 7y ago
  A few things that still make me not love FF: - Going full screen on Youtube takes longer than Chrome at least on OS X and there is a momentarily black screen. - Moving the cursor to the top of a full screen video in Chrome brings down the OS X menu bar this is useful if you want to check the time/date/other menu bar activity, in FF nothing happens when moving the mouse to the top of the screen in full screen mode. - When a page requests to send web notifications FF basically pretty much blocks the entire browser until you answer whether you want to allow the notification or not, this is very annoying if you visit many sites for the first time that ask for notification permission, which apparently a lot of them nowadays do, making it more apparent now that I switched to FF from Chrome. There might be settings you can change to fix these, but even if that's the case not having them set as default makes me question whether I made the right choice making the switch.
• bitwize 7y ago
  Think I'll stick to PaleMoon, at least until Mozilla rethinks their policy on requiring PulseAudio.
• AbitofAsum 7y ago
  So.. i switched yesterday and the Firefox app downloaded 1.5gb by itself overnight.. no idea why it was using so much data.. had to uninstall it..
• kdamken 7y ago
  Sure, as soon as its dev tools aren’t complete garbage.
• Synaesthesia 7y ago
  There’s one annoyance I have with Firefox right now and it’s the search bar. When I type the start of a frequently visited site then instead of jumping to that site it googles my half-word. Very annoying and different to Safari or Chrome.
• Vijayenthiran 7y ago
  I use Firefox on mac. One feature that is missing in Firefox is that it cannot do a smooth pan zoom like Safari or Chrome. Hope Firefox developer fix this in future release.
• rhaksw 7y ago
  Is it okay for Firefox to maintain a manually curated list of sites it deems to be trackers [1]? Why is reddit on this list and not, say, Gab? This breaks a site I built called reVddit [2], and after discussing with Mozilla devs [3], I'm unable to come up with a solution that doesn't significantly alter user experience and maintenance costs. I find it ironic because the intent of reVddit is to increase transparency, one of Firefox's key principles. I'd love to hear ideas if anyone has any insight into any of this. [1] https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protection/blob/master/services.json https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti... [2] https://revddit.com https://revddit.com [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84EzrwWp0/t3cgc7H-AgAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84Ezrw...
• innocentoldguy 7y ago
  I don't really like Mozilla as an organization. I don't like Google either. Recently, I've started using the Brave browser (https://brave.com https://brave.com). So far, I like it quite well. I like Brave's concept of Shields, which block ad-trackers. I also think one of the more interesting concepts in Brave is the Rewards ad-revenue-sharing program. I haven't turned it on yet, so I don't know how well it works (if at all) but I find the idea interesting and outside the box when considering the major browser players. The developer tools in Brave are exactly what you would expect. Brave has worked well for me so far, so I'll continue with it for the time being.
• humility 7y ago
  I seriously don't understand why people have been gravitating towards Chrome for years despite Google being synonymous with surveillance, even on Linux. Google chrome is the fifth most popular download on Arch User Repository[1]. Alternatives like ungoogled chromium exist, but aren't as powerful/stable as the real thing, so why not use Firefox. Call me overly optimistic, but augmenting the firefox/mozilla community with participating/privacy conscious users can only lead to good down the line. 1. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/
  • mda 7y ago
    Fwiw, I don't see it as surveillance, it is trusting your data with them, might seem similar but a little bit different. Google in general a very good steward of private data if not the best. They don't sell it and provide tools to manage it So far I find it an acceptable bargain. As for Chrome, the latest announcement is a bit troublesome, but i still find it better than alternatives.
• Ayesh 7y ago
  I never Switched to Chrome in the first place. It felt like an uphill battle sometimes when Firefox deprecated the old add-on APIs, which made add-ons like CTR die. However, in the past few years, Firefox has been improving left and right, with it's Rust components, containers in core, and it's new dialect in design. The recent improvements alone should convince someone to switch. The reason why I stayed with Firefox is because Chrome is from, well, Google. It boggles my mind to see someone praising a browser that is from a an advertiser. They never put ads on the browser (I'm looking at you, Opera), but systematically did a lot to track it's users and make money out of it. You can clearly see the difference in motivation when Firefox removing a whole API of add-ons vs Google removing one particular API feature.
• anoplus 7y ago
  How much of Firefox success depends on donations? I have seen successful crowd-funding projects where the budget is always transparent and communicated to the public. I am certain this motivates the masses to donate. Wouldn't it be better for Mozilla to make their funding fully transparent, to attract the masses?
  • Springtime 7y ago
    From what I've seen of their recent revenue the overwhelming majority (95%) comes from royalties received from search engine companies (Google, etc), while only a fraction (~1%) comes from donations.
• brody182 7y ago
  switch from firefox to Brave :)
• xtrimsky1234 7y ago
  I love Firefox's features, but I've tried it for a week and I just have a too big loss of performance. My 2017 Macbook pro with 8gb of RAM just doesn't cut it. The browser is something I use +6 hours per week, I can't handle it being laggy. When I try it a little bit it seems fine, but after using Firefox for a week going to Chrome seemed like a relief in terms of performance. I'm missing some cool features from Firefox like containers, but performance is more important.
• papito 7y ago
  Why? After trying Opera many times in the past, now that it's using Chromium and supports the plugins, I am now a die-hard fan.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  I did it. I switched from Chrome to Firefox this week. Problem was that I broke my advice I give to all my friends/customers : "reinstall Windows at least every 6 months". And I had Windows for the past 2 years watching it becoming more and more bloated, with more and more quirks. At the same time I had Chrome. Sure, I had Firefox in the past too, but was slower then Chrome. For reasons unknown to me it seemed Firefox loved flash, and I was watching in Task Manager how Flash component of Firefox was growing more and more in memory until it ate all of it and required me to restart Firefox entirely. Which I hate it to do that. Hence why I used Chrome instead. With ad blockers and DuckDuckGo as default engine. But once I've reinstalled Windows I was like "OK, time to see Firefox again". Let me tell you brothers and sisters, it was a blessing to see Firefox having the same speed as Chrome, and no bloating. Sure, for each tab opened it alos creates a firefox.exe in task manager, but so does Chrome. I can live with that. Now all I need is to move my entire productions from Windows to Linux and I'll be really free. But that's gonna be at least an order of magnitude harder then switching from one browser to another.
• chucksmash 7y ago
  Just throwing it out there, this post is currently at 3239 and needs 151 votes to move to the seventh highest rank in HN history and 154 votes to move to the sixth highest rank. As long as we're saying how we really feel, we should +1 to move it up the ladder.