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I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox

by Lazare 7y ago

I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox (right after the Quantum project landed, and Firefox was meant to be a lot faster), but found FF to still be bloated, slow, and painful to use. A couple weeks ago I made another try to switch back to FF, and I have found the experience to be very pleasant this time; desktop FF on both Windows and MacOS are, for me, better than Chrome. I recommend others give Firefox a try. (There are a few reasons why you might want to: Privacy, fighting mono-culture, recent decisions by Google to neuter ad blocking addons, a general aversion to the power of the largest tech companies, just chasing the latest and fastest browser, a fondness for novelty or contrarianism. Some of those reasons may resonate; others may not, but if any of them do, give it a shot!)

edraferi 7y ago
I had the same experience. Switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago, tried and was disappointed by the initial Quantum release, tried Firefox again with the “Chrome is killing uBlock Origin” announcement, very pleased this time. My main gripe with Firefox at the moment is Sync. It just doesn’t sync everything you need. My Firefox profile is highly customized, with a lot of extensions that all have their own complex config. Sync will keep the actual extensions synced, but not their settings. You have to rely on manual import/export features provided by the extensions themselves. Some first party extensions (eg Containers) don’t even give you that option. You can get some of that by syncing your profile folder directly, but it’s very fragile. It hasn’t played nice with the generic folder syncing tools I’ve tried. I think this is painful because Firefox really encourages customization, and it’s really useful! I just don’t want to have to keep track of that customization on every device. I trust Firefox Sync’s security model and want to do more with it.
- auscompgeek 7y ago
  I believe extensions have to explicitly add support for synchronising settings. For example, uBlock Origin supports Firefox Sync: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage
  - edraferi 7y ago
    Cool, I’ll dig into this. Would be helpful if the Firefox store made it clear if extensions support this. Also, why do some first-party extensions ignore it?? Also: there are other things sync still misses, like config.
    - the_pwner224 7y ago
      For about:config, I put all my rules in a user.js file. Make that file in a synced folder (Dropbox, Nextcloud, Syncthing, etc.), go to your FF profile folder, and in there make a symlink to the actual synced user.js. http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file Alternatively every about:config option has a corresponding option that enables sync for it. But that gets messy with many options. https://superuser.com/questions/466291/firefox-sync-aboutconfig https://superuser.com/questions/466291/firefox-sync-aboutcon...
      - dngray 7y ago
        > For about:config, I put all my rules in a user.js file. Make that file in a synced folder (Dropbox, Nextcloud, Syncthing, etc.), go to your FF profile folder, and in there make a symlink to the actual synced user.js. That's exactly what I did, except I just forked the ghacks-user.js user.js file with the changes I needed I then made a desktop branch, and an android branch. https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-desktop https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-desktop https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-android https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-android The main reason I'll never use Chrome is because on Android that means no extensions whatsoever, meaning I'd have to give up uBlock and uMatrix. It's also why I wouldn't buy an iPhone (Firefox on iOS isn't allowed to have extensions). A user.js file can be deployed on Android https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/wiki/1.6-Firefox-Android https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/wiki/1.6-Fire... (I use the non-rooted instructions). On my desktop I have it hooked in with my bootstrap script. I use Yadm https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/ #!/usr/bin/env bash firefox() { local -n branches=$1 local b p d="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME"/firefox/ghacks-user.js for p in "${!branches[@]}" do b=${branches["$p"]} printf 'Configuring "%s" on "%s"\n' "$p" "$b" ln -sf "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME"/firefox/chrome/userChrome.css ~/.mozilla/firefox/"$p"/chrome/userChrome.css git --git-dir="$d/.git" --work-tree="$d" checkout "$b" && cp "$d/user.js" ~/.mozilla/firefox/"$p"/user.js done } The function takes in an array: firefox_data_path="mozilla/firefox.json" declare -A fx_profiles while read -r profile; read -r branch; do fx_profiles[$profile]=$branch done < <(jq -r '.[] | .profile, .branch' "$template_data_path/$firefox_data_path") firefox fx_profiles Which simply reads in a bunch of profiles and what branch they are supposed to be from a json file: [ { "profile": "user.default", "branch": "fx-desktop" } ]
- TheArcane 7y ago
  Oh I absolutely detested this as well. Containers is one of my favourite add-ons, and I have it highly customized. But I have to set it up everytime from scratch on a different computer - there's no sync even though Containers is from Mozilla themselves!
  - edraferi 7y ago
    Edit: replied to wrong comment Yeah this is exactly the problem.
    - TheArcane 7y ago
      I think you meant to reply to a different comment. I was lamenting the lack of sync support for the Multi-account Containers add-on.
  - OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
    There is a containers sync add on, not from Mozilla. Doesn't always work.
- dtroode 7y ago
  Yes. Sync isn't so good. Now I am going to create a list of FF minuses
  - edraferi 7y ago
    I’d be interested to see an analysis of how it compares to Chrome sync. I don’t think Chrome necessarily has a better solution for extension preference syncing, but I only missed it once I went all-in on Firefox containers.
    - dtroode 7y ago
      Don't have analytics. Just my experience with bookmarks and passwords is better with Chrome
  - TheArcane 7y ago
    Post it to /r/firefox when you're done!
- thomasfedb 7y ago
  You can sync your custom prefs, by creating a 'services.sync.prefs.sync.[pref name]' preference set to true for each pref you want to sync. Cumbersome, but probably automatable.
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
  There is a container sync add on. I my opinion it should be built into the browser.
zamalek 7y ago
I've been on FF since quantum (Windows and Android), and I've been mighty impressed by the continual improvements. Some websites just don't work on FF, so I have a chrome installation. Even a bare-bones (only 1Password and uBlock O) Chrome feels much slower than FF. Page loads in FF are near-imperceptible, but Chrome has blatantly obvious page-blanks during loading. It really has come a long way, and I'm really looking forward to servo.
PatrolX 7y ago
Firefox 67 is switchworthy. I've used nothing but Chrome since forever and I've never been a fan of FF until 67 came out, it's definitely worthy of trying it out for a week. I haven't used Chrome since FF 67 and I'm not missing it.
- Lazare 7y ago
  Yes, FF 67 does seem to be a whole new beast.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    I've used Firefox since practically forever. I haven't noticed any major changes in recent versions. Except for when they briefly broke all the plugins.
nullwasamistake 7y ago
Firefox is great now, especially on mobile. Having all my desktop extensions on mobile is worth it alone. I've also done some rough measurements that Firefox uses about 1/3 the battery life of chrome at idle with my normal "work" tabs open. This is on both Android and MacOs. On some sites FF is slower, but these tend to be Google properties or giant Enterprise shitshow behemoths (jira)
esalman 7y ago
Containers and privacy are the main reasons I'm hooked to Firefox now. Maybe chrome will get containers too, but there's no point if they are tracking users across containers. But as they are on par in terms of performance I see no reason to switch back to chrome.
- mkl 7y ago
  Are container tabs reliably preserved across restarts and upgrades now? They're a great idea, but I tried them out a while ago and soon lost a bunch of stuff.
  - esalman 7y ago
    Yes, they are preserved and it works great.
Mikeb85 7y ago
Firefox is fast, not noticeably faster though as Chrome seems to be a bit more aggressive with caching, and Chrome has better UI. I also prefer Chrome's autocomplete and search bar. Firefox is good, maybe even technically better these days, but Chrome is still more pleasant to use.
- ray_z 7y ago
  > Chrome has better UI if you are talking about buttons next to the address bar, like the home button, then you can customize that area and let it look nearly identical to Chrome.
  - GrayShade 7y ago
    With CSS you can even have tiny tabs like Chrome.
chapium 7y ago
Edge Canary is line the best of both worlds. Nice speed and decent ui.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
The funny thing is a lot of what makes Chrome seem faster are subtle hacks. They show an empty window while it all loads so does Firefox now. Firefox used to only show the window once everything rendered. Firefox was a lot faster at rendering web pages from my experience before they changed this. I am sure theres other subtle changes out there. I remember after Quantum pages would render HTML so fast and asynchronously the CSS hadnt loaded just yet. Then a split second would occur where the CSS would kick in and the page would be styled.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Is progressive rendering really a "hack" at this point? I mean everything you said is correct, just feels like at this point progressive rendering is the web-norm and lacking it is lacking a basic piece of functionality.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    It's not entirely a hack, but it's a perception trick that makes Chrome seem faster despite it not rendering as quickly as FF.
chank 7y ago
This kind of post comes up every few weeks here on HN. I also revisit FF every once in a while, last time being when all the news went about Chrome possibly breaking ad-blockers. Chromes UX is still better than FF, IMO.
- irrational 7y ago
  I think this is just what you are accustomed to. I use FF as my main browser. Anytime I use Chrome it drives me nuts because the UX sucks. But, the truth is that Chrome's UX probably doesn't really suck, I'm just not accustomed to it.
  - chank 7y ago
    I can see that in a lot of cases. Accustomed, sure. I consider myself pretty adaptable, but still prefer Chromes UX over FF. If FF could be tuned easily to act "exactly" like Chrome, that might ease the transition for a lot of people. Honestly though, I also hate the way FF draws it's windows and widgets. It still feels like it has that just barely out of the 90's UI vibe to me. So aside from how it set's itself up by default for things, I also find it quite an eye sore. Opinions may vary.

by Lazare 7y ago

edraferi 7y ago

I had the same experience. Switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago, tried and was disappointed by the initial Quantum release, tried Firefox again with the “Chrome is killing uBlock Origin” announcement, very pleased this time. My main gripe with Firefox at the moment is Sync. It just doesn’t sync everything you need. My Firefox profile is highly customized, with a lot of extensions that all have their own complex config. Sync will keep the actual extensions synced, but not their settings. You have to rely on manual import/export features provided by the extensions themselves. Some first party extensions (eg Containers) don’t even give you that option. You can get some of that by syncing your profile folder directly, but it’s very fragile. It hasn’t played nice with the generic folder syncing tools I’ve tried. I think this is painful because Firefox really encourages customization, and it’s really useful! I just don’t want to have to keep track of that customization on every device. I trust Firefox Sync’s security model and want to do more with it.

auscompgeek 7y ago
I believe extensions have to explicitly add support for synchronising settings. For example, uBlock Origin supports Firefox Sync: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage
- edraferi 7y ago
  Cool, I’ll dig into this. Would be helpful if the Firefox store made it clear if extensions support this. Also, why do some first-party extensions ignore it?? Also: there are other things sync still misses, like config.
  - the_pwner224 7y ago
    For about:config, I put all my rules in a user.js file. Make that file in a synced folder (Dropbox, Nextcloud, Syncthing, etc.), go to your FF profile folder, and in there make a symlink to the actual synced user.js. http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file Alternatively every about:config option has a corresponding option that enables sync for it. But that gets messy with many options. https://superuser.com/questions/466291/firefox-sync-aboutconfig https://superuser.com/questions/466291/firefox-sync-aboutcon...
    - dngray 7y ago
      > For about:config, I put all my rules in a user.js file. Make that file in a synced folder (Dropbox, Nextcloud, Syncthing, etc.), go to your FF profile folder, and in there make a symlink to the actual synced user.js. That's exactly what I did, except I just forked the ghacks-user.js user.js file with the changes I needed I then made a desktop branch, and an android branch. https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-desktop https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-desktop https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-android https://github.com/dngray/ghacks-user.js/tree/fx-android The main reason I'll never use Chrome is because on Android that means no extensions whatsoever, meaning I'd have to give up uBlock and uMatrix. It's also why I wouldn't buy an iPhone (Firefox on iOS isn't allowed to have extensions). A user.js file can be deployed on Android https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/wiki/1.6-Firefox-Android https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/wiki/1.6-Fire... (I use the non-rooted instructions). On my desktop I have it hooked in with my bootstrap script. I use Yadm https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/ #!/usr/bin/env bash firefox() { local -n branches=$1 local b p d="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME"/firefox/ghacks-user.js for p in "${!branches[@]}" do b=${branches["$p"]} printf 'Configuring "%s" on "%s"\n' "$p" "$b" ln -sf "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME"/firefox/chrome/userChrome.css ~/.mozilla/firefox/"$p"/chrome/userChrome.css git --git-dir="$d/.git" --work-tree="$d" checkout "$b" && cp "$d/user.js" ~/.mozilla/firefox/"$p"/user.js done } The function takes in an array: firefox_data_path="mozilla/firefox.json" declare -A fx_profiles while read -r profile; read -r branch; do fx_profiles[$profile]=$branch done < <(jq -r '.[] | .profile, .branch' "$template_data_path/$firefox_data_path") firefox fx_profiles Which simply reads in a bunch of profiles and what branch they are supposed to be from a json file: [ { "profile": "user.default", "branch": "fx-desktop" } ]
TheArcane 7y ago
Oh I absolutely detested this as well. Containers is one of my favourite add-ons, and I have it highly customized. But I have to set it up everytime from scratch on a different computer - there's no sync even though Containers is from Mozilla themselves!
- edraferi 7y ago
  Edit: replied to wrong comment Yeah this is exactly the problem.
  - TheArcane 7y ago
    I think you meant to reply to a different comment. I was lamenting the lack of sync support for the Multi-account Containers add-on.
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
  There is a containers sync add on, not from Mozilla. Doesn't always work.
dtroode 7y ago
Yes. Sync isn't so good. Now I am going to create a list of FF minuses
- edraferi 7y ago
  I’d be interested to see an analysis of how it compares to Chrome sync. I don’t think Chrome necessarily has a better solution for extension preference syncing, but I only missed it once I went all-in on Firefox containers.
  - dtroode 7y ago
    Don't have analytics. Just my experience with bookmarks and passwords is better with Chrome
- TheArcane 7y ago
  Post it to /r/firefox when you're done!
thomasfedb 7y ago
You can sync your custom prefs, by creating a 'services.sync.prefs.sync.[pref name]' preference set to true for each pref you want to sync. Cumbersome, but probably automatable.
OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
There is a container sync add on. I my opinion it should be built into the browser.

zamalek 7y ago

I've been on FF since quantum (Windows and Android), and I've been mighty impressed by the continual improvements. Some websites just don't work on FF, so I have a chrome installation. Even a bare-bones (only 1Password and uBlock O) Chrome feels much slower than FF. Page loads in FF are near-imperceptible, but Chrome has blatantly obvious page-blanks during loading. It really has come a long way, and I'm really looking forward to servo.

PatrolX 7y ago

Firefox 67 is switchworthy. I've used nothing but Chrome since forever and I've never been a fan of FF until 67 came out, it's definitely worthy of trying it out for a week. I haven't used Chrome since FF 67 and I'm not missing it.

Lazare 7y ago
Yes, FF 67 does seem to be a whole new beast.
- incompatible 7y ago
  I've used Firefox since practically forever. I haven't noticed any major changes in recent versions. Except for when they briefly broke all the plugins.

nullwasamistake 7y ago

Firefox is great now, especially on mobile. Having all my desktop extensions on mobile is worth it alone. I've also done some rough measurements that Firefox uses about 1/3 the battery life of chrome at idle with my normal "work" tabs open. This is on both Android and MacOs. On some sites FF is slower, but these tend to be Google properties or giant Enterprise shitshow behemoths (jira)

esalman 7y ago

Containers and privacy are the main reasons I'm hooked to Firefox now. Maybe chrome will get containers too, but there's no point if they are tracking users across containers. But as they are on par in terms of performance I see no reason to switch back to chrome.

mkl 7y ago
Are container tabs reliably preserved across restarts and upgrades now? They're a great idea, but I tried them out a while ago and soon lost a bunch of stuff.
- esalman 7y ago
  Yes, they are preserved and it works great.

Mikeb85 7y ago

Firefox is fast, not noticeably faster though as Chrome seems to be a bit more aggressive with caching, and Chrome has better UI. I also prefer Chrome's autocomplete and search bar. Firefox is good, maybe even technically better these days, but Chrome is still more pleasant to use.

ray_z 7y ago
> Chrome has better UI if you are talking about buttons next to the address bar, like the home button, then you can customize that area and let it look nearly identical to Chrome.
- GrayShade 7y ago
  With CSS you can even have tiny tabs like Chrome.

chapium 7y ago

Edge Canary is line the best of both worlds. Nice speed and decent ui.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

The funny thing is a lot of what makes Chrome seem faster are subtle hacks. They show an empty window while it all loads so does Firefox now. Firefox used to only show the window once everything rendered. Firefox was a lot faster at rendering web pages from my experience before they changed this. I am sure theres other subtle changes out there. I remember after Quantum pages would render HTML so fast and asynchronously the CSS hadnt loaded just yet. Then a split second would occur where the CSS would kick in and the page would be styled.

Someone1234 7y ago
Is progressive rendering really a "hack" at this point? I mean everything you said is correct, just feels like at this point progressive rendering is the web-norm and lacking it is lacking a basic piece of functionality.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  It's not entirely a hack, but it's a perception trick that makes Chrome seem faster despite it not rendering as quickly as FF.

chank 7y ago

This kind of post comes up every few weeks here on HN. I also revisit FF every once in a while, last time being when all the news went about Chrome possibly breaking ad-blockers. Chromes UX is still better than FF, IMO.

irrational 7y ago
I think this is just what you are accustomed to. I use FF as my main browser. Anytime I use Chrome it drives me nuts because the UX sucks. But, the truth is that Chrome's UX probably doesn't really suck, I'm just not accustomed to it.
- chank 7y ago
  I can see that in a lot of cases. Accustomed, sure. I consider myself pretty adaptable, but still prefer Chromes UX over FF. If FF could be tuned easily to act "exactly" like Chrome, that might ease the transition for a lot of people. Honestly though, I also hate the way FF draws it's windows and widgets. It still feels like it has that just barely out of the 90's UI vibe to me. So aside from how it set's itself up by default for things, I also find it quite an eye sore. Opinions may vary.