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I try switching from Chrome to Firefox at least once a year, but the UI design keeps me firmly entrenched as a Chrome user.

tech2 7y ago
Interestingly I try Chrome once every which and go right back to Firefox for exactly the same reason. I find the Chrome UI intolerable. Tiny tabs, inflexible GUI, less interesting extensions, etc. I also tend to use _many_ tabs (grouped by topic I'm working on) so maybe I'm a bit of an unusual case.
- Insanity 7y ago
  It is probably a quite subjective thing. I use Firefox as main browser but test things in Chrome. Neither UI really bothers me, but I prefer Firefox for ideological reasons. The dev tools in chrome are better though imo.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    I feel like Firefox's Dev Tools are better in so many small ways at the fundamentals it's really sad every time someone says they prefer Chrome Dev Tools. (Plus, Firefox's Dev Tools inherited from Firebug and at least from that sort of continuity perspective arguably are the most mature Dev Tools codebase.) A lot of the reason so many people seem to like Chrome Dev Tools better seems to be exactly the sort of "Works best in IE6" mentality that so many devs only spend time testing in Chrome and customizing Chrome Dev Tools how they like and making sure Chrome Dev Tools work right that it just becomes inertia that that is what they like better. Little tweaks to sourcemap generation options, for instance, can be all it takes to get Firefox Dev Tools working just as well as Chrome for code debugging, but so many devs work in Chrome only that the defaults in so many places are accidentally so Chrome-centric. Similar goes for all the Chrome-only Dev Tools extensions. At this point even the Dev Tools Extension Models are close enough between Chrome and Firefox that it mostly just needs more people using Firefox for development to catch up on extensions.
    - Insanity 7y ago
      Could well be. I do very little web development, and I used chrome back in the days when that was my fulltime job. It might be more of a case of familiarity rather than them actually being better. :)
    - dhimes 7y ago
      One thing I think Chrome is better at is emulating CSS media, so we can check layouts when printing, for example. I don't even see how to do that in Firefox.
- vimslayer 7y ago
  I'm the opposite with tabs, I try to keep them as minimal and just away as much as possible. Thankfully ff is pretty customizable so my setup is fine now, but the default top bar felt just gigantic and distracting coming from Chrome.
  - tech2 7y ago
    I have window title bar, minimal location bar, and tree style tabs (collapsible/hideable). The UI is about as minimal as it can get :)
JoshTriplett 7y ago
What aspect of the Firefox UI bothers you?
- mbreese 7y ago
  I’m in the middle of trying this exercise now. Some of the differences are just getting used to new design. For me the most jarring thing is how Firefox’s omnibar works. It isn’t good at showing me the sites I’m looking for after typing just a few characters. Instead, it shows absolutely every page I’ve recently visited at one of those sites. Another design thing is the amount of information on the default new page has a ton more info than I’m used to seeing (or really want to see). Hence a question I posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20167192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20167192 On iOS, I keep trying to pull to refresh pages, but in Firefox it’s a specific button. But this is something that I could get used to.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    > For me the most jarring thing is how Firefox’s omnibar works. It isn’t good at showing me the sites I’m looking for after typing just a few characters. Instead, it shows absolutely every page I’ve recently visited at one of those sites. Interesting! I think this may be a case where, over time, as you use a search mechanism, you get used to the kinds of searches that work well with that mechanism. I've had similarly frustrating experiences with Chrome's address bar, which I'm not used to using. Firefox has a concept of "frecency", a metric that combines frequency of visit and recency of visit to determine what you're most likely to want based on what you typed. (It also gives some preference to the starts of words/domains, and some other heuristics.) However, I can easily believe that before Firefox has enough information, typing at it would produce suboptimal results. That's something worth reporting as a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Address%20Bar https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&c... . Please feel free to use any of the text above to help describe the issue, if it helps. > Another design thing is the amount of information on the default new page has a ton more info than I’m used to seeing (or really want to see). Complete agreement. I disable the new tab page on desktop, as I really just want a blank page. (On mobile, I find the default new tab page more useful and usable.)
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Not sure how legit this is, I'm with another commenter, I don't care for the Chrome UI but maybe this might help: https://gist.github.com/tjespe/aeb514aaff6f4ca4d97afe476e360766 https://gist.github.com/tjespe/aeb514aaff6f4ca4d97afe476e360... Looks like somebody updated the Firefox Quantum UI to look more like Chrome.
- OnlyOneCannolo 7y ago
  Interesting, but it requires adding a file to your machine. I'm constantly on different machines. Being able to log in, get all my info and settings, and then log out leaving the machine in its original state is invaluable to me.
rb666 7y ago
I felt the same but honestly you get used to it in a couple days. I'm never going back!
jboles 7y ago
I used to use Firefox but it blew chunks at doing intranet authentication. Auth prompts for days. I had to use an extension that loaded an IE browser pane so that I wouldn’t spend half my work day typing my password. I hope they have improved.
- saxonww 7y ago
  This is and isn't an issue. By default, intranet authentication (spnego) is disabled in Firefox. There are numerous guides explaining how to turn it on, and it takes all of a couple of minutes to set up correctly after which point it just works. FWIW IE has this problem too, in that by default it only enables negotiation for unqualified hostnames. If you want people to use an FQDN, you have to go add that FQDN to a list buried behind a couple of advanced dialogs.
Jach 7y ago
Have you tried customizing the UI? Last time I tried out-of-the-box Firefox it disgusted me pretty quickly due to how Chrome-like it was, but that's because I never liked the default Chrome UI. In any case I bring up customization since while I've never left Firefox, their last good out-of-the-box UI was like Firefox 1.4 or maybe 2. Firefox is incredibly customizable though (even if less so now) and so it looks and feels how I prefer which no other browser duplicates out of the box (not even Firefox) and no other browser even makes possible. I guess I'm a "power user" for wanting to fit the tool to my hands rather than my hands to the tool, and Firefox is the only browser that spares a thought for me.
- jazoom 7y ago
  Even extensions in Firefox can't customise the page you see when you open the browser! I used a "new tab" extension, but for some reason Firefox doesn't treat the first tab you open as a "new tab"(1). I quickly noticed heaps of annoyances like that when I recently tried to switch to Firefox. 1. I'm pretty sure there is an issue for this in their tracker but they don't seem to think it's important enough to fix.
  - eitland 7y ago
    It used to be in settings. You could typically choose between something like: - restore pages from last time - start page (input url) - default new page chrome
    - jazoom 7y ago
      Thank you. Unfortunately I've moved on to Vivaldi (happily). If your solution works I didn't find it, nor did any internet searching help me to find it.

tech2 7y ago

Interestingly I try Chrome once every which and go right back to Firefox for exactly the same reason. I find the Chrome UI intolerable. Tiny tabs, inflexible GUI, less interesting extensions, etc. I also tend to use _many_ tabs (grouped by topic I'm working on) so maybe I'm a bit of an unusual case.

Insanity 7y ago
It is probably a quite subjective thing. I use Firefox as main browser but test things in Chrome. Neither UI really bothers me, but I prefer Firefox for ideological reasons. The dev tools in chrome are better though imo.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  I feel like Firefox's Dev Tools are better in so many small ways at the fundamentals it's really sad every time someone says they prefer Chrome Dev Tools. (Plus, Firefox's Dev Tools inherited from Firebug and at least from that sort of continuity perspective arguably are the most mature Dev Tools codebase.) A lot of the reason so many people seem to like Chrome Dev Tools better seems to be exactly the sort of "Works best in IE6" mentality that so many devs only spend time testing in Chrome and customizing Chrome Dev Tools how they like and making sure Chrome Dev Tools work right that it just becomes inertia that that is what they like better. Little tweaks to sourcemap generation options, for instance, can be all it takes to get Firefox Dev Tools working just as well as Chrome for code debugging, but so many devs work in Chrome only that the defaults in so many places are accidentally so Chrome-centric. Similar goes for all the Chrome-only Dev Tools extensions. At this point even the Dev Tools Extension Models are close enough between Chrome and Firefox that it mostly just needs more people using Firefox for development to catch up on extensions.
  - Insanity 7y ago
    Could well be. I do very little web development, and I used chrome back in the days when that was my fulltime job. It might be more of a case of familiarity rather than them actually being better. :)
  - dhimes 7y ago
    One thing I think Chrome is better at is emulating CSS media, so we can check layouts when printing, for example. I don't even see how to do that in Firefox.
vimslayer 7y ago
I'm the opposite with tabs, I try to keep them as minimal and just away as much as possible. Thankfully ff is pretty customizable so my setup is fine now, but the default top bar felt just gigantic and distracting coming from Chrome.
- tech2 7y ago
  I have window title bar, minimal location bar, and tree style tabs (collapsible/hideable). The UI is about as minimal as it can get :)

JoshTriplett 7y ago

What aspect of the Firefox UI bothers you?

mbreese 7y ago
I’m in the middle of trying this exercise now. Some of the differences are just getting used to new design. For me the most jarring thing is how Firefox’s omnibar works. It isn’t good at showing me the sites I’m looking for after typing just a few characters. Instead, it shows absolutely every page I’ve recently visited at one of those sites. Another design thing is the amount of information on the default new page has a ton more info than I’m used to seeing (or really want to see). Hence a question I posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20167192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20167192 On iOS, I keep trying to pull to refresh pages, but in Firefox it’s a specific button. But this is something that I could get used to.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  > For me the most jarring thing is how Firefox’s omnibar works. It isn’t good at showing me the sites I’m looking for after typing just a few characters. Instead, it shows absolutely every page I’ve recently visited at one of those sites. Interesting! I think this may be a case where, over time, as you use a search mechanism, you get used to the kinds of searches that work well with that mechanism. I've had similarly frustrating experiences with Chrome's address bar, which I'm not used to using. Firefox has a concept of "frecency", a metric that combines frequency of visit and recency of visit to determine what you're most likely to want based on what you typed. (It also gives some preference to the starts of words/domains, and some other heuristics.) However, I can easily believe that before Firefox has enough information, typing at it would produce suboptimal results. That's something worth reporting as a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Address%20Bar https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&c... . Please feel free to use any of the text above to help describe the issue, if it helps. > Another design thing is the amount of information on the default new page has a ton more info than I’m used to seeing (or really want to see). Complete agreement. I disable the new tab page on desktop, as I really just want a blank page. (On mobile, I find the default new tab page more useful and usable.)

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Not sure how legit this is, I'm with another commenter, I don't care for the Chrome UI but maybe this might help: https://gist.github.com/tjespe/aeb514aaff6f4ca4d97afe476e360766 https://gist.github.com/tjespe/aeb514aaff6f4ca4d97afe476e360... Looks like somebody updated the Firefox Quantum UI to look more like Chrome.

OnlyOneCannolo 7y ago
Interesting, but it requires adding a file to your machine. I'm constantly on different machines. Being able to log in, get all my info and settings, and then log out leaving the machine in its original state is invaluable to me.

rb666 7y ago

I felt the same but honestly you get used to it in a couple days. I'm never going back!

jboles 7y ago

I used to use Firefox but it blew chunks at doing intranet authentication. Auth prompts for days. I had to use an extension that loaded an IE browser pane so that I wouldn’t spend half my work day typing my password. I hope they have improved.

saxonww 7y ago
This is and isn't an issue. By default, intranet authentication (spnego) is disabled in Firefox. There are numerous guides explaining how to turn it on, and it takes all of a couple of minutes to set up correctly after which point it just works. FWIW IE has this problem too, in that by default it only enables negotiation for unqualified hostnames. If you want people to use an FQDN, you have to go add that FQDN to a list buried behind a couple of advanced dialogs.

Jach 7y ago

Have you tried customizing the UI? Last time I tried out-of-the-box Firefox it disgusted me pretty quickly due to how Chrome-like it was, but that's because I never liked the default Chrome UI. In any case I bring up customization since while I've never left Firefox, their last good out-of-the-box UI was like Firefox 1.4 or maybe 2. Firefox is incredibly customizable though (even if less so now) and so it looks and feels how I prefer which no other browser duplicates out of the box (not even Firefox) and no other browser even makes possible. I guess I'm a "power user" for wanting to fit the tool to my hands rather than my hands to the tool, and Firefox is the only browser that spares a thought for me.

jazoom 7y ago
Even extensions in Firefox can't customise the page you see when you open the browser! I used a "new tab" extension, but for some reason Firefox doesn't treat the first tab you open as a "new tab"(1). I quickly noticed heaps of annoyances like that when I recently tried to switch to Firefox. 1. I'm pretty sure there is an issue for this in their tracker but they don't seem to think it's important enough to fix.
- eitland 7y ago
  It used to be in settings. You could typically choose between something like: - restore pages from last time - start page (input url) - default new page chrome
  - jazoom 7y ago
    Thank you. Unfortunately I've moved on to Vivaldi (happily). If your solution works I didn't find it, nor did any internet searching help me to find it.