4 ms·

I made this switch about 12-ish months ago when the writing was on the wall about ad-blocking and ... something about auto-creating a "chrome account" something

by rsync 7y ago

I made this switch about 12-ish months ago when the writing was on the wall about ad-blocking and ... something about auto-creating a "chrome account" something something ... I've been fairly disappointed in the lack of flexibility that firefox provides and the real lack of maturity (and even usability) of the containers feature. I think I expected the move to firefox to bring with it a lot more flexibility and a richer set of configurations and customizations and this really isn't the case. Instead, my firefox experience has been surprisingly restrictive. Unless, of course, I am willing to install a bunch of add-ons, all of which come with the obligatory "access all of your data" and are from just some random dude on the net. Some specific issues: - I want to define a "home page" BUT I also want both new tabs and new windows to open with a blank page. You cannot do this. As soon as you set both new tab and new window to "blank page", the fn+opt+leftarrow shortcut ceases to do anything. - I want to use containers. Containers are only tabs. That makes no sense. The very first thing you want to do with a container, after learning what containers are, is open a Window and have all future tabs in that window inherit the container that that Window is. This is the basic use-case of the container feature and it doesn't exist. Instead, every use of container is mouse-mouse-mouse-click-click-click (since there is no key shortcut for them) and then open a tab for a single use. We should be making container windows and using key shortcuts to open tabs in those windows. - I can't force-title a firefox Window - it just gets the title of the currently open tab. All manner of interesting Window management can be done, outside of firefox, if you can lock the Window title. I could create 6-8 ffox Windows, just like I create 6-8 spaces in GNU Screen, and quickly hotkey between them ... I see no way to do this. - The fixation on tabs is, itself, a bit weird ... I don't think either a window-centric nor a tab-centric workflow should be favored - they should be equally developed and enabled.

DHPersonal 7y ago
Even worse, the Containers don't sync, so they have to be remade for every device. I really like the idea of the Container extension, but it needs a lot of work from Mozilla to be something I could recommend to others.
- netfl0 7y ago
  Have you made a feature request? It’s likely this is already on the roadmap.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Firefox was dumbed down when they ditched XUL and followed Chrome's lead. Hopefully they will see the light and add more power to the extensions than Google will ever let Chrome have. Still waiting for a non-hacky way to hide the tab bar.
- netfl0 7y ago
  I agree, though I think the reasoning was security unfortunately. They were likely trying to address legitimate issues with some large portion of the user base.
  - mook 7y ago
    I think it was more for code maintainability; they started feeling like any change they made would affect some popular add-on or other. Which was probably true, and I feel was an advantage for using Firefox…
    - BuckRogers 7y ago
      My thought at the time, and still what I believe a large part of the reasoning is- many of those old extensions were largely unmaintained. So when Mozilla did break them, that group of users would cry out and the maintainers could potentially direct that anger towards Firefox. He who makes the change gets the blame in software. WebExtensions also had the Chrome interop advantage, so more actively maintained extensions would be brought over, especially well-supported AAA extensions. As a result, it wasn't a net loss and longterm definitely a gain. Mozilla for their part did say they would work with folks to poke additional holes in the WebExtensions API that would be Firefox-only, for extensions that had enough outcry behind them. I'm pleased with where Firefox is today, but I never felt it was behind enough on performance and definitely never enough on features to leave.
netfl0 7y ago
Chrome doesn’t even have a containers feature to improve in the direction you’d like.
- x1798DE 7y ago
  I find it easier to compartmentalize my browsing with Chrome profiles than with Firefox tabs. I was really disappointed with the container tabs feature because it seemed like it was designed to do what I already do with Chrome profiles, but it ended up being essentially unusable.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  FWIW I segment by browsing with Chrome/Brave "profiles" and it's great. I can open a profile with no open windows from the Ctrl + Shift + m menu (along with guest windows), and context menus in all profiles then get an option to open a link in any open profile. The profiles are represented clearly on the filesystem, and can be copied.
Corrado 7y ago
I mostly agree with these complaints. Containers are the thing that both excited me and disappointed me the most about Firefox. I envisioned a world where I could open a couple of different browser windows and have all the tabs share a container. This would be great for things like working in multiple Google accounts, or multiple AWS accounts. However I found that containers are not very easy to use and I still don't know exactly how they work or which extension I should be using to make them do what I think they should do. My advice to Firefox would be to get containers working in a easy to explain fashion and the world will beat a path to your door. I'm already using containers to limit Facebook's access to my world; it should be just as easy to use the same power for everything.
- BuckRogers 7y ago
  You're absolutely correct. It's also true that you have to play around a bit with the container addons to get it functioning as you'd expect, but please believe that you're not alone out there on how you want it to work. For example, my vision of containers was built out with the Containerise extension. A version of that needs to be built into Firefox. To do what you're asking, I haven't looked for addons to do it, but you'd probably have to do it manually. Open a window, then open a container and spawn everything else out from there. Assigning a container to a browser window sounds entirely plausible, useful, and I like it. There's only a few real use cases for containers that make sense or are useful and that's a new one (to me). If Mozilla did that and duplicated Containerise, they'd have yet-another killer feature. I think Mozilla's biggest problem must be management or bureaucracy, because they have a lot of relatively low-hanging fruit like this just waiting.
- yoasif_ 7y ago
  > I envisioned a world where I could open a couple of different browser windows and have all the tabs share a container. This would be great for things like working in multiple Google accounts, or multiple AWS accounts. Sounds like you want https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sticky-window-conta...
sorenjan 7y ago
I know you said you have reservations against installing add-ons, but that's really the best way to add features that aren't widely used. Modularity is flexibility. Set custom window title: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-titlebar-text/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-titleb... All future tabs in a window keep the same container as the first: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window... Both have links to their Github page if you want to look at the code and see what they do with their data permissions. I don't know what "fn+opt+leftarrow" is a shortcut to. I haven't used a home page in years, I save my tabs between sessions and use bookmarks and the built in search bar.
zncoder 7y ago
Agree with the mouse-click part. I made this addon to make container a little bit easier to use, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/confiner/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/confiner/. Every page is opened in an ephemeral container. But you can easily make the container for a specific site persistent.

by rsync 7y ago

DHPersonal 7y ago

Even worse, the Containers don't sync, so they have to be remade for every device. I really like the idea of the Container extension, but it needs a lot of work from Mozilla to be something I could recommend to others.

netfl0 7y ago
Have you made a feature request? It’s likely this is already on the roadmap.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Firefox was dumbed down when they ditched XUL and followed Chrome's lead. Hopefully they will see the light and add more power to the extensions than Google will ever let Chrome have. Still waiting for a non-hacky way to hide the tab bar.

netfl0 7y ago
I agree, though I think the reasoning was security unfortunately. They were likely trying to address legitimate issues with some large portion of the user base.
- mook 7y ago
  I think it was more for code maintainability; they started feeling like any change they made would affect some popular add-on or other. Which was probably true, and I feel was an advantage for using Firefox…
  - BuckRogers 7y ago
    My thought at the time, and still what I believe a large part of the reasoning is- many of those old extensions were largely unmaintained. So when Mozilla did break them, that group of users would cry out and the maintainers could potentially direct that anger towards Firefox. He who makes the change gets the blame in software. WebExtensions also had the Chrome interop advantage, so more actively maintained extensions would be brought over, especially well-supported AAA extensions. As a result, it wasn't a net loss and longterm definitely a gain. Mozilla for their part did say they would work with folks to poke additional holes in the WebExtensions API that would be Firefox-only, for extensions that had enough outcry behind them. I'm pleased with where Firefox is today, but I never felt it was behind enough on performance and definitely never enough on features to leave.

netfl0 7y ago

Chrome doesn’t even have a containers feature to improve in the direction you’d like.

x1798DE 7y ago
I find it easier to compartmentalize my browsing with Chrome profiles than with Firefox tabs. I was really disappointed with the container tabs feature because it seemed like it was designed to do what I already do with Chrome profiles, but it ended up being essentially unusable.
microcolonel 7y ago
FWIW I segment by browsing with Chrome/Brave "profiles" and it's great. I can open a profile with no open windows from the Ctrl + Shift + m menu (along with guest windows), and context menus in all profiles then get an option to open a link in any open profile. The profiles are represented clearly on the filesystem, and can be copied.

Corrado 7y ago

I mostly agree with these complaints. Containers are the thing that both excited me and disappointed me the most about Firefox. I envisioned a world where I could open a couple of different browser windows and have all the tabs share a container. This would be great for things like working in multiple Google accounts, or multiple AWS accounts. However I found that containers are not very easy to use and I still don't know exactly how they work or which extension I should be using to make them do what I think they should do. My advice to Firefox would be to get containers working in a easy to explain fashion and the world will beat a path to your door. I'm already using containers to limit Facebook's access to my world; it should be just as easy to use the same power for everything.

BuckRogers 7y ago
You're absolutely correct. It's also true that you have to play around a bit with the container addons to get it functioning as you'd expect, but please believe that you're not alone out there on how you want it to work. For example, my vision of containers was built out with the Containerise extension. A version of that needs to be built into Firefox. To do what you're asking, I haven't looked for addons to do it, but you'd probably have to do it manually. Open a window, then open a container and spawn everything else out from there. Assigning a container to a browser window sounds entirely plausible, useful, and I like it. There's only a few real use cases for containers that make sense or are useful and that's a new one (to me). If Mozilla did that and duplicated Containerise, they'd have yet-another killer feature. I think Mozilla's biggest problem must be management or bureaucracy, because they have a lot of relatively low-hanging fruit like this just waiting.
yoasif_ 7y ago
> I envisioned a world where I could open a couple of different browser windows and have all the tabs share a container. This would be great for things like working in multiple Google accounts, or multiple AWS accounts. Sounds like you want https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sticky-window-conta...

sorenjan 7y ago

I know you said you have reservations against installing add-ons, but that's really the best way to add features that aren't widely used. Modularity is flexibility. Set custom window title: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-titlebar-text/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-titleb... All future tabs in a window keep the same container as the first: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window... Both have links to their Github page if you want to look at the code and see what they do with their data permissions. I don't know what "fn+opt+leftarrow" is a shortcut to. I haven't used a home page in years, I save my tabs between sessions and use bookmarks and the built in search bar.

zncoder 7y ago

Agree with the mouse-click part. I made this addon to make container a little bit easier to use, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/confiner/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/confiner/. Every page is opened in an ephemeral container. But you can easily make the container for a specific site persistent.