16 ms·

Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

• Dumblydorr 7y ago
  I use firefox on ubuntu and the performance is terrible. Its constantly crashing, tabs crash individually, it hangs, launching memory heavy websites seems to crash it most often. When I switched to chromium the performance got a lot better.
  • deepersprout 7y ago
    I use firefox on ubuntu as well and it works very nicely. Its RAM and CPU usage is negligible, sites load very fast, and the developer tools are awesome. I think something is wrong on your system.
    • mwill 7y ago
      Some anecdotal data in the other direction, I made a comment about my experience on linux 5 months ago [1], and my opinion is still roughly the same (Except the blank tab problem has gone away after a Firefox update at some point, which WAS the biggest annoyance I had, so my mood has improved considerably since I made that post), and I have since taken to using Arch on an XPS, stock Ubuntu on another (more modestly specced) machine, and have had similar experiences there too. That said I still use and prefer Firefox, but I also have to open up Chrome probably once every few weeks for various reasons, and it has occasional abhorrent behavior that I don't experience with any other program on the same machine. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20049553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20049553
    • acidburnNSA 7y ago
      Same for me. Been using Firefox in Ubuntu for years and it is lightning fast and extraordinarily stable.
  • zenhack 7y ago
    I was having a similar experience earlier this year, so I reluctantly did the same for a while. I got sick of chromium though, really missed reader mode for one thing, so I decided to put in some more effort to troubleshoot. For me what did it was switching to wayland (sway[1] specifically, from dwm on x11). Now it's a good step faster than chromium. I agree with the sibling comment; there's something wrong going on, what you're describing isn't firefox's baseline. [1]: https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/
    • ubercow13 7y ago
      Chromium has a reader mode but you have to enable it via a command line switch I think. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium/Tips_and_tricks#DOM_Distiller https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium/Tips_and_trick...
  • eitland 7y ago
    I see you are downvoted and I think that is wrong. It would however help a lot if you wrote in a style that made it clear that this was your personal experience. I'm using an Ubuntu based distro myself (KDE Neon) and have no problems.
    • lol768 7y ago
      > I see you are downvoted and I think that is wrong. I downvoted the comment. I'm just not sure it adds anything useful to the conversation when it's not representative of the vast, vast majority of experiences that users have. It sounds like an anecdotal, isolated issue. I didn't post a top-level comment to say I've been using Firefox for over a decade without it crashing because it's just not remarkable or interesting. I'd be more interested if some crash reports or BugZilla issues had been linked to substantiate the comment. For what it's worth, I'd have downvoted a comment made in the same vein regarding Chrome too.
      • Dumblydorr 7y ago
        So you downvoted me for sharing the fact that I have given firefox numerous chances and it has continued to not be what this thread promised? That's just hivemind in action, you're punishing someone for going against the HN grain. Besides, by downvoting those with issues, you're burying their comment away from others who may have similar issues or know the fix. Downvotes should be for trolls and shills and low effort memery, not for legitimate dissent.
        • lol768 7y ago
          I didn't downvote you for dissenting, and I explained this in my comment. But what can we take away from the anecdote? We don't know anything about your system's hardware components, we don't know if you're using X or Wayland, we don't know which versions of Firefox you tried. We've not seen any BugZilla reports or crash reports. We don't know what websites are problematic. I would have no problems with folks saying "on device X, I had issues where the Firefox would use 100% of a CPU core when I visited website Y. Here's my https://profiler.firefox.com/ https://profiler.firefox.com/ link, I reported it on BugZilla but the bug hasn't been fixed yet.". That's specific, useful anecdotal information that developers can follow up on and users can use to evaluate whether it's a deal breaker for them or not. Generic comments like "performance is terrible for me, I've tried multiple times" are just going to get replies from users who've had no problems at all.
  • swebs 7y ago
    It only crashes for me after it automatically updates. The devs set it to intentionally crash when you open a new tab. I don't know if that makes it better or worse really. Edit: Here's the related bugzilla report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1463960 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1463960
    • lol768 7y ago
      >The devs set it to intentionally crash when you open a new tab Is it intentional? It sounds like the distro's package manager is swapping out the binaries from underneath it whilst it's running. I have some sympathy for the devs here, because I suspect it doesn't happen with the built-in updater (which, let's face it, most users will be using) which probably swaps the binaries on next start-up and just invites the user to restart the browser.
      • swebs 7y ago
        >and just invites the user to restart the browser Chromium invites the user to restart. Firefox redirects every request to about:restartrequired
    • detaro 7y ago
      I mean, if you replace application components underneath the running application through a distro-update, it's not that surprising that this doesn't result in a stable state. All kinds of application will become unhappy when you do a upgrade on a running system.
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    Can you reproduce these issues with a fresh profile with no Addons installed or about:config changes?
• sesuximo 7y ago
  Firefox is okay overall but it's quite distracting. for example it often blocks apt-get with auto updates. it crashes once an hour
  • acidburnNSA 7y ago
    I personally have used it for years on linux and have never once experience the apt-get block. I also can't remember the last time it crashed.
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    I recommend getting Firefox from the package manager, not from Mozilla.
• Causality1 7y ago
  Distraction-free? Have they stopped filling the new tab page with revenue-generators like Pocket?
  • Tomte 7y ago
    Two clicks and it‘s gone forever. In the main GUI, not some about:config setting.
  • po1nter 7y ago
    This is my new tab page: https://imgur.com/TpSzOCZ https://imgur.com/TpSzOCZ Note that the search bar can also be removed. So yes, as distraction free as you want to make it.
    • drankula3 7y ago
      Defaults matter. And currently, Firefox fills their new tab page with spam and self-promotion by default.
      • dao- 7y ago
        > spam I don't think this fits the definition of spam. Many average Joe users happen to find those curated suggestions useful. Yes, user testing has been done. > Defaults matter. Yep. More advanced users also tend to be better positioned to opt out compared to average Joe opting in.
        • drankula3 7y ago
          Spam: unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as e-mails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places[1]. By that definition, it is spam. > user testing has been done User testing isn't flawless, and is what got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam
• jnet 7y ago
  I switched over to Firefox when I read that Chrome was limiting the functionality of ad block extensions and it's been a fantastic browser so far.
  • bootlooped 7y ago
    I'll switch back to Firefox the day that happens. I don't think it's a compelling reason until that day though.
    • integricho 7y ago
      That day is already here my friend.
      • ndzig 7y ago
        It is not, Manifest v3 hasn't been rolled out yet. It is in Canary already though. But it will take some time before it reaches stable.
        • wongarsu 7y ago
          With Manifest v3 in Canary it feels like there's no chance it won't reach stable in substantially the same form. Moving to Firefox now gives you a transition period where both browsers are viable.
          • ndzig 7y ago
            Of course, it will be stable, but we can still enjoy Chrome's snappiness in the meantime... that's my point
          • bootlooped 7y ago
            I didn't know it was in Canary. I used Firefox for several months earlier this year before going back to Chrome. Due to this, my transition back to it will be pretty quick and painless.
  • 7y ago
• alexis_fr 7y ago
  Let’s enumerate how Firefox is bugging the user to tell him they respect his privacy: - Each time one opens a tab, - Every week in my mailbox, - When opening any other website and their popup is here to tell me « You’re protected! » - When one opens a website and FF asks « Do you want to install this privacy extension? », pointing at the facebook jail or the container feature. - When suggesting to use Pocket or any new idea, Chrome succeeded by advertising in competitors’ browsers (through Google properties) for Chrome and making Chrome get out of the way... in Chrome. I’m not sure Firefox can succeed by bugging the user in their own browser. Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich.
  • swebs 7y ago
    >Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich. I have to admit this does make me not want to support the Mozilla foundation.
    • maxaf 7y ago
      It’s not reason enough to support Google instead.
      • swebs 7y ago
        Very true, Google can be much worse. I still use Firefox. But whenever Mozilla asks for donations, this is still in the back of my mind.
        • alexis_fr 7y ago
          I think Mozilla should have a stance about this, such as « We don’t exclude white males » or « We don’t exclude Christians ». It is an extremely difficult thing to say in 2019. The series Silicon Valley did an excellent parody of the IT scene’s position about Christians in S05E05, where a gay christian is outed by a founder, and everyone asks him to apologize for ruining his reputation. Not because he’s gay. Because he’s Christian. And there is no way I would donate to an organization that is so much anti-Christian that they consider their pro-life positions as criminal.
• asadkn 7y ago
  It's true. I have kept giving Firefox another chance over time but haven't been convinced. Recently, I tried Firefox again on Windows. And the experience is amazing indeed - faster, smoother, and with trackers blocking, very pleasant. And with strict protection, that's sort-of a builtin ad blocker. Something still feels off on MacOS even though the last version has been a massive improvement for MBP Retina.
  • neogodless 7y ago
    Anecdote: I use it everyday at work on a 2015 MBP Retina, now on Catalina. No problems! What feels off for you?
    • notamaan 7y ago
      Lack of media key control and pinch to zoom are the 2 that stop me from using Firefox (I use Brave instead)
      • aorth 7y ago
        Pinch to zoom is in beta for some time now. From a Firefox developer on /r/firefox¹: > You can turn it on by setting 'apz.allow_zooming' to true. It sort of works but has bugs. You can track the progress and report problems that you see here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1461360.* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1461360.* ¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bcebze/its_2019_when_will_firefox_support_smooth_pinch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bcebze/its_2019_wh...
      • finalfantasia 7y ago
        Firefox just gained the ability to use Mac’s hardware media keys to control media playback in the latest beta/developer edition (71 right now): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1575995 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1575995
    • bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
      Scrolling doesn’t elastically over scroll; it just hits a hard stop at the page boundaries
• tyingq 7y ago
  Is Chrome still planning on rolling out manifest v3, which kills uBlock Origin? I imagine that would boost Firefox growth. Edit: Answering my own question...yup, it's in canary as of November 1st. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins-testing-extension-manifest-v3-in-chrome-canary/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins...
  • vbezhenar 7y ago
    Are there definite plans for uBlock Origin not to support new blocking API?
    • tyingq 7y ago
      I believe so: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-456179825 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss... And: https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1134127701583904770?s=20 https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1134127701583904770?s=20
      • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Unless you're on AD: > The blocking version of the Web Request API remains available for managed extensions because of the deep integrations that enterprises may have between their software suites and Chrome. Guess that leaves corporate Mac and Linux users in the lurch.
        • wincy 7y ago
          I’m pretty sure my org uses managed extensions. I’m on a Mac and I get “some settings are managed by your organization” or whatever, and we’ve installed at least one chrome extension from a local domain site.
      • lewiscollard 7y ago
        To expand on your comment a little: The new API means uBlock Origin cannot do useful things that it does now. gorhill/Raymond is not refusing to implement a new API, he is refusing to nerf uBlock Origin. That's a stance I like very much. And it is good news for Firefox for sure, since the roughly 30% (last I checked) of users that use privacy-enhancing extensions are being handed a very good incentive to switch.
• qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  I love the capability for encrypted SNI with Cloudfare’s DNS service.
• egze 7y ago
  I recently ditched both Chrome and Firefox. Now super happy with Safari.
  • acomjean 7y ago
    I used to use safari on Mac when on battery. It used seems more battery saving. I also use it at work when plugged in as my “personal browser” (email/banks etc). work web browsing is Firefox and chrome (for testing) The new firefox is better at power management but since I’m on a Linux laptop it’s now Firefox (no safari on Linux).
    • my123 7y ago
      Gnome Web/Epiphany uses the same browser engine as Safari in case you want to use it there.
  • drakenot 7y ago
    I never thought I would say this, but I'm actually really looking forward to the new Chromium based Edge browser. They have announced they will be releasing builds for Linux recently. They also are weighing their options with the Manifest v3 changes. If Microsoft wanted to steal a bunch of users from Chrome, this seems like an easy "win". Don't support / force the Manifest v3 changes and win a bunch of goodwill from people who are able to use uBlock Origin style adblockers. I know this has implications with extension compatibility but won't this just mean that the new Edge browser supports a super-set of extensions when compared to Chrome?
  • vehemenz 7y ago
    How do you get by without extensions? The extension "store" (now part of the App Store) isn't searchable, and among the available extensions, which are very few, most are junkware.
    • barrowclift 7y ago
      Not OP, but my use cases don't really require "traditional" extensions; 1Blocker and the Instapaper button are all I really need and want for day to day browsing, so improved extension support on other browsers doesn't add any value for me.
• lovelearning 7y ago
  I've been happy with everything about Firefox (on Xubuntu) from many years now. But when they released Quantum, the thing that bothered me a bit was not any feature or performance, but them removing curvy tabs for rectangular ones. Rather shallow of me, but we all have our UI quirks :). Luckily, Firefox UI is very customizable and somebody had already put in the effort [1] to provide curvy tabs. Just had to download it, change the RGB() values therein, and got back my preferred green curvy tabs. Just a silly thing, but might give somebody one more reason to switch to Firefox. [1]: https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis
  • speg 7y ago
    Not silly at all. I tried getting back into Firefox on macOS after Quantum but it still didn’t sit well with me. I just felt slightly out of place. Fast forward to last week and I happened to try it again and it looked real nice! The UI seemed smoother and less jarring than before. Plus the icon was new and slick. Not sure when those changes landed but just the look and feel give me more confidence in its solidness.
    • Ntrails 7y ago
      Never in my life has a slick new icon been a positive factor when assessing software. I just do not get it.
  • el_programmador 7y ago
    Similar thing with me except I stuck up with them even with Quantum until that fiasco with SSL certs happened and all extensions came to a halt. I'll never be able to trust a browser which does such a thing to its users.
    • prophesi 7y ago
      A bug which they rolled out a fix for in, what, a few hours?
      • 7y ago
• Waterluvian 7y ago
  About once a week Firefox bans me from opening new tabs until I reboot it for an update. It promises to return my existing tabs but it never has. For this reason I don't trust it when I'm doing meaningful work.
  • ubercow13 7y ago
    Sometimes I open Chrome, not after any kind of abnormal force-close, and it says something like “your browser profile was corrupt and has been permanently deleted”. Which browser is good for meaningful work?
    • Waterluvian 7y ago
      Whichever one works best for you.
  • alpaca128 7y ago
    That's interesting, I've never had issues getting old sessions back. You could try recovering it via "History > Recently closed windows", it should be there usually.
    • Waterluvian 7y ago
      You can probably blame the web apps Im using for not saving state... But honestly I shouldn't be banned from opening tabs until I reboot the browser.
      • johnc1231 7y ago
        I've never had this happen personally. What OS is this? I use Firefox on OSX installed through Homebrew, so I have to manually update it with brew. Firefox has never asked me to update.
        • Waterluvian 7y ago
          Ubuntu bionic. Latest default Firefox without any special enterprise stuff or whatnot.
• eternalny1 7y ago
  I've been a Firefox user since Phoenix/Firebird, but I did switch to Chrome when it first came out, then back to Firefox when Google started being the opposite of "not evil". One quip on this website, why is the text limited to such a small column? I thought it had gutters that my adblock was blocking but it doesn't. The image is literally twice the width of the text. The first row of text only fits "We're living in the Google Chrome" ... and that's it.
  • acidburnNSA 7y ago
    In Firefox, if you don't like the layout of a site, you can try "reading mode" and it will reformat it. Its the little document-like icon towards the top right of the address bar.
• lordnacho 7y ago
  I can confirm the macos version has had its performance issues fixed. Runs perfectly fine on my 2015 mbp, with several real time tabs and dozens of other tabs. It's also nice to use tree style tabs to manage them all, plus you can reclaim the space for the tabs at the top with some css. I couldn't find anything matching this in chrome in terms of stability and ease of use.
• anthk 7y ago
  I have gopher for that, much better.
  • catalogia 7y ago
    What sort of gopher<->web proxy are you using to post here?
• isarat 7y ago
  I always had given Firefox another choice, but throws me out of websites, unoptimized websites and font issues etc. stopping me from using it. I really wish Firefox tighten up their game.
  • lol768 7y ago
    >but throws me out of websites, unoptimized websites and font issues etc. stopping me from using it Do you have examples of these? It's helpful to report them to the webcompat web-bugs repository as you discover them - e.g. https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/36955 https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/36955 - https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ has more information on the project.
• ayoisaiah 7y ago
  My experience with Firefox in the last few months have not been good. I encounter so much input lag when typing in the address bar, usually after opening a few tabs. In general, the UI is not responsive as I'd like so I'm using Brave right now where those issues are non-existent
  • pistoriusp 7y ago
    This is exactly my main gripe. The address bar lags and I can't help but feel like everything's slow after that initial interaction.
• Dragory 7y ago
  I switched back to Firefox (after using Chrome for a long time) back when Quantum launched and have stuck with it since. Initially I fell back to Chrome every now and then for the devtools, but I haven't felt the need to do that for a good while now. Works really well for my use cases at least.
  • treebornfrog 7y ago
    I also did this, quantum is leaps and bounds ahead of chrome (no pun intended) in terms of being clean and feeling more solid. Also not a RAM hog.
  • iscrewyou 7y ago
    I’ve said this in many other similar threads and I’ll say it here again. Google services suck in Firefox. And that’s why I first went back to chrome after switching to Firefox. And then it clicked, chrome is just an app for google services for me. Want to use google maps? Chrome. Want to browse the web? Firefox. Chrome is literally a google app now. I love using Firefox for everything and I’ve mentally transitioned to using it completely (sans google services). It’s a great mental exercise and I love the fact that I’ve been able to abandon chrome this way. I feel happy using Firefox now. And all the data google has on me now is so biased because they only get my usage for their own services.
    • 51Cards 7y ago
      What features of google maps aren't working in Firefox? I use maps constantly and never have an issue. In fact I use the whole suite of Google apps daily (mail, calendar, YouTube, maps, photos, keep, drive, office suite, etc) without issue.
      • iscrewyou 7y ago
        Google maps zooming is horrendous. Loading of the maps is bad when you zoom in and out. YouTube doesn’t load as fast on Firefox. Gmail is sometimes slow. Those are two big ones. So I have google signed out on Firefox and use chrome as simply the gateway to all things google.
• testerhn 7y ago
  the password management[1] and GCP support (likely Google doing something non-standard) was lacking last I tried. I hope it got better. [1] I use a password manager, but avoid browser add-ons or extensions to limit the surface I expose my manager such as on work machines. Besides there being the occasional exploit targeting those browser add-ons or extensions. What do you all do?
  • vbezhenar 7y ago
    I'm using KeePass, also avoiding any plugins. Most websites remember my credentials, so I don't need to log in every day and it's not a big hassle to press few more keys.
• ss2003 7y ago
  I used to use FF exclusively until the last update. After that it doesn't fully load some websites like Slack. I poked around to try and figure what is the problem, but in the end it was just easier for me to switch to Brave.
• jaredcwhite 7y ago
  If you're on a Mac with wide color gamut, here's a trick to improve Firefox's rendering so colors aren't oversaturated: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250461#c28 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250461#c28
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    For those testing this, open Safari and Firefox to HN and compare the shade of orange in the header. In Safari it’ll be the correct dull sRGB orange as shown to PC users decades ago when HN picked that color. In Firefox it may be blindingly saturated and bright. If it is, and you prefer Firefox to apply ICC color correction to match Safari, set gfx.color_management.mode to 1 in about:config and restart. There is an upcoming color standard change that will allow web developers to specify wide gamut CSS colors. Right now, they cannot. The current draft of that spec declares that all #aabbcc web colors are not wide color by default, unless specified by the designer. If that is kept in the final release, Firefox will eventually comply and this option will no longer be required.
• bambax 7y ago
  I made the switch from Chrome to Firefox about 3 weeks ago. It's a little bizarre at first but you get used to it. No autoplay is really nice. Being unable to use two dictionaries at once for spell checking is super annoying, but it's a detail. All in all it works quite well, and if uBlock Origin has to leave Chrome, the switch is a no-brainer.
• mplanchard 7y ago
  Since these threads always wind up with lots of top-level comments from people providing anecdotal complaints about how [browser under discussion] crashes all the time on their computer, or eats up all the RAM, or whatever, I just wanted to add a similarly anecdotal top-level comment with my own, positive experience. I have been using FF Nightly and FF Dev Edition on both my work and home machines (MacOS and Arch Linux) for years, using the former for personal browsing and the latter for work. I generally only restart the browser when there are updates, and I’ve maybe had two or three restarts in all that time where I lost my tabs. Even rebooting the computer, I usually get a window asking if I want to restore my tabs, which works with no fuss. On the rare occasions that doesn’t happen, I’ve been able to “restore previous session” from the history menu. I have generally beefy machines, but I’ve never had personally noticeable issues with performance since Quantum was released. I usually have somewhere between five and fifty tabs open in each browser. The only crashes I’ve seen that I remember have been when I was playing with WebRender settings in about:config, and happened whenever I was scrolling in a particularly large Confluence document. Also, occasionally my strict third party settings will make a login or other functionality break, in which case it’s easy to relax the settings just for that page. FF integrates very well with 1Password, which is my password manager of choice. I use FF Mobile on iOS, and while it is a bit rougher on battery life than safari, having all my history and bookmarks synced is worth it. Anyway, my experience is definitely not everyone’s, and I don’t doubt that some people have strange and frustrating issues with the browser. That being said, I suspect experiences like mine are more common than comments on threads like this suggest.
  • bhauer 7y ago
    I too have virtually no experience with any modern browsers crashing in the ways often reported here. And I'm at least a "power user," using browsers for consumption and web development throughout the day. Dozens or hundreds of tabs—no problem. Developer tools open all the time. No modern browser even breaks a sweat. I just happen to favor Firefox because I like its speed, look & feel, user interface quirks (versus the quirks of the other browsers), and options for customization. Notably, I use proper workstations both at home and in the office. I suppose it's possible the popularity of using laptops as developer "workstations" may be underlying much of the grievance we often see here.
• GetOutOfBed 7y ago
  I really really want to use Firefox but I am still annoyed by the relative slowness compared to Chrome. For me it is noticeable slower both when it comes to basic functionality such as opening new tabs, but also when it comes to the dev tools. When I want to use the dev tools I launch Chrome and use it from there just because I know it will be a more pleasant experience.
• darkwater 7y ago
  Personally, I had never left Firefox even when Chrome was faster/leaner. But I'm happy all these "switch to Firefox" posts over the Internet
• vcavallo 7y ago
  for all those here who want a chrome-like experience (including dev tools) but with easy tracker blocking out of the box may I remind you about Brave browser?
• dkersten 7y ago
  I switched back to Firefox early in the summer. I tried to do it earlier in the year but I had some problems where it locked up my system every now and again (apparently some kind IPC bug or something) but its been fixed and I've had no problems in the past few months. I'm pretty happy with Firefox.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• npmaile 7y ago
  I've been using Firefox developer edition for a couple of months now and think it's great.
• paulcarroty 7y ago
  Stop sending my data to Google (https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...) and make Firefox fast on Linux (minimum as Chrome) - reason't why I'm not use Fox anymore.
  • jwalton 7y ago
    What are you using instead, then?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • Naac 7y ago
    off topic, is it common to twitter this way? Wouldn't a blog post be more efficient than multiple tweets ( that are meant to be read independently? )
    • icelancer 7y ago
      Yes, it is common. Yes, it would be easier to blog. But people do not click external links anymore. People being non-HN users. It's easy to say "Just go to the blog!" but people don't like navigating away from their Twitter app (often they're on mobile) to do that, for whatever reason. I agree 100% with blogging more but the views just are not there.
  • thenewnewguy 7y ago
    They removed GA from the startup pages, and you can go straight from those to the telemetry settings (it even prompts you to do so on first launch iirc).
• dguo 7y ago
  The post briefly mentions multi-account containers[1]. I have loved using them and regard them as a killer feature for Firefox. Very few websites support account switching. Google is probably the best example, and even then, I don't really want to log in to both my personal and work Gmail within the same session. But containers effectively and cleanly enable multiple sessions for all websites. Like tabs so many years ago, it's the kind of feature that seems obvious in retrospect. I can't think of a hard technical reason why we couldn't have had container tabs a long time ago. I hope mobile and desktop OSes will one day implement the same feature for apps/programs. Whoever was involved in coming up with the idea and with implementing it, thank you! [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
  • bitexploder 7y ago
    I literally run my browser in containers to achieve this. I still trust that more than letting the browser manage it. I call it ultra-private mode :)
    • qplex 7y ago
      A poor mans container (at least under unix-alikes) is simply running the program as another user with 'su' or 'sudo'.
      • Hitton 7y ago
        That's too complicated. Use profiles for same result without having to use another user. firefox -new-instance -P
        • edoceo 7y ago
          I do this so frequently that I wrapped FF (and chrome) with a PyGTK starter, each profile with an icon. Less clicks to launch a new session of my preferred flavor
          • 7y ago
• x3haloed 7y ago
  I tried for a while. The experience was just too sloppy for me. I got fed up and switched to Chromium Edge. I hate the Pocket integration and other crap they try to shove down your throat. And at work, the lack of integrated Windows authentication was a deal breaker. Plus, Chromium's UI is a lot tamer, cleaner, and focused.
  • whamlastxmas 7y ago
    I disabled pocket a single time and haven't had to see it since
    • x3haloed 7y ago
      Yeah, but they keep trying to shove other monetization schemes down our throats.
• ivanstegic 7y ago
  Why is it that there is never any mention of Chrome’s profile switcher? It exists in FF but is so cumbersome to use that I just don’t. I spend time in both browsers but if I could use profiles easily on FF I’d just uninstall Chrome.
  • ivanstegic 7y ago
    OK, so the feature I have been using in Chrome (Profiles) and that I thought I was missing in FF, won't ever exist in FF. Because, Multi-Account Containers (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...). I guess I just needed to know that this was a thing and that it had another name. Going to try to now totally forego Chrome. Thanks for the discussion under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21498452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21498452 that made me realize this was a thing.
• andremendes 7y ago
  I've been exclusively using Firefox for browsing and developing for a few years now and I've never thought of looking back. The customization and privacy features plus the possibility of having multiple profiles / accounts side by side in the same window are now a must-have for me.
  • purple_ducks 7y ago
    It feels like the people who make Firefox dev tools don't use it to develop. Prime example every dev has: clear all data from site for fresh start. 1 button in Chrome - Clear site data. Meanwhile in Firefox, enjoy clicking through, checking & deleting from a minimum of at least 5 sections.
    • dbrgn 7y ago
      Open history (ctrl+H), right click on page entry, choose "forget data about this site" (wording might be slightly different).
      • purple_ducks 7y ago
        That also deletes the url & any other urls from domain from history, not just the site data.
• Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  Does firefox really need giving it a chance? I have switched to it 2 years ago on all my devices and was happy with it ever since. Not looking back to Chrome. Major points of what I like in Firefox: - passwords sync between devices nicely and securely, Google no longer knows them - more reliable tab sync than in Chrome - it just looks better The only thing I miss from mobile Chrome is a persistent icon to force close private tabs.
• Proven 7y ago
  How about those busybodies stop forcing me to restart FF every time they update it? It's extremely distracting and makes me very agitated.
• michalu 7y ago
  I'm using Firefox on Mac and I got used to it somehow especially after energy efficiency improvemnts but the main reason was that I had issues using Google Drive on Safari + discontinued support from uBlock ... I like it but I still wish to go back to Safari for user experience ... I can't believe Firefox has been around for so long and they haven'tyet firgured out basic stuff like moving pointer up to switch tab brings out the main panel that covers the tabs ... other stuff like open image in new window, get definitions of words etc. I miss those a lot.
  • octosphere 7y ago
    > other stuff like open image in new window Well you can open an image in a new tab by holding down control as you click the 'view image' button. Right click on any image and hold control.
• csdreamer7 7y ago
  I have always been a heavy user of Firefox, even in the pre-Quantum days. My main reason was that Chrome would sync my bookmarks out of order and I am a heavy bookmarks sync user. I gave Chrome multiple tries for bookmark syncing and yet they would sync them out of order (can't believe I am the only heavy bookmark user on Chrome who cares) so I just stuck with FF. Then the privacy concerns happened and I stopped trying Chrome. Then Quantum happened and now FF is the lighter, faster browser. I had no real reason to use Chrome except browser compatibility and a few dev tools. Then ublock origins is getting blocked and now I am recommending people to switch to Firefox. I do like the seamless and easy to use multiple profiles that Chrome has. Makes it very nice to isolate your tasks. If I am not logged into reddit or HN I waste less time and less cognitive overhead. FF technically has them but I hate how I have to open a prelaunch dialog to use them.
  • kompakt 7y ago
    Another heavy bookmarks user / hoarder here. I have around 30k bookmarks, so much bookmarks that Firefox freezes for a few seconds when I click on bookmarks menu bar item, because it tries to load them all within that drop down menu. I keep bookmarks sidebar permanently open without any slowdowns. I've been using Firefox from its very beginnings so I can tell you I've tried switching to Chrome and Safari a few times over the years. Every time I tried to import bookmarks to other browsers they would simply crap out, while Firefox handled them without breaking a sweat. Of course I continue to use FF for many other reasons but, at least at first, good and fast bookmarks management kept me using Firefox. Lastly, if anyone knows a way to prevent Firefox to show all bookmarks in drop-down menu, let me know :)
  • bzbarsky 7y ago
    Loading "about:profiles" lets you use profiles without the prelaunch dialog. It's not amazing UI; it's there basically to support debugging scenarios, but it does work.
• jangid 7y ago
  I am on macOS. For browsing and managing bookmarks, I used to stick to Safari and for development work I was using Chrome. After Quantum, never used Safari and Chrome. I tried FF just to check if it works any better. For few days, I was using all three browsers. But now, sticking to FF only since last may be six months. Containers is really nice feature. Nothing matches FF Containers. I miss containers on iOS though. I am sure they will be launched soon.
• pcr910303 7y ago
  As I have already said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026626 : Firefox really should take care of it's native interface, it feels like a cross-platform app, and while it does have some worthy features to consider, for me it's too non-mac (and in that aspect, it really doesn't look like an Window/Linux app either) for someone using Safari to migrate.
  • bhauer 7y ago
    > it really doesn't look like an Window/Linux app either) I guess this is a subjective matter because to my eye, it looks fantastic on Windows, matching the Windows 10 dark theme very well. The active tab highlight looks like the open app highlights in my top-docked Windows taskbar. And the Firefox Container color-bars look great below that. Its sharp edges are a match for the sharp look of Windows. To me, Chrome is the browser that doesn't look right on Windows. Its over-use of curved lines looks anachronistic, as if it's from the 2000s.
    • floatingatoll 7y ago
      On Mac it remains very apparent that most UI is constructed by Firefox rather than macOS native.
    • ken 7y ago
      On the Mac, at least, it's painfully obvious that nothing matches. The look is a little off, but the behavior is way off. The scrolling doesn't work the same as native scrolling, nor do the context menus, the toolbars, the tabs, or the keyboard shortcuts. You can't do anything in Firefox without being reminded that you're using an app which is not like any other app on your Mac. It seems they've been struggling to get more Mac developers for a long time. Unfortunately, their toolchain is so foreign to Mac developers, too, that people don't want to learn it. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.
      • temac 7y ago
        This problem is easily solved on Windows by having no two programs looking the same :D (even those made by Microsoft and even those actually part of Windows)
• jknz 7y ago
  I am as happy as I could get with Firefox except for the native tab-switching Among opened tabs. Tab search is done by typing % in the address bar followed by a keyword to search among opened tabs. - Ctr+L to get in the address bar - Shift+6 to type % - space, - type your keywords. My fingers, especially the pinky just cannot do this, particularly switching between Ctrl and Shift. Also, you have to release Shift otherwise the space doesn’t get typed. Please, please come up with an easier finger gymnastics to use this native feature.
  • mintplant 7y ago
    Not exactly what you're looking for, but you might be interested in [0]. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab_search/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab_search/
  • dbrgn 7y ago
    With the Vimium extension you can type "t" to search open tabs. (And you can follow links with "f".)
  • simion314 7y ago
    A solution that works for me in all application is remapping keyboard, there are no major keyboard shortcuts I use that use Alt so what I did is this - remap Left Alt to Ctrl - remap Windows/Meta btn to Alt - I also set CapsLock as Esc So all my shortcuts, in apps, DE and IDE are suiper comfortable for me though this could suck if you have to work on a different person computer.
• photonios 7y ago
  This post actually made me switch to Firefox. The set up process was very smooth. Importing all my settings from Chrome just worked. I feel safer already. Is it just me or does the scrolling feel a bit different in Firefox? I am running Firefox on a Macbook from 2019 using the touch pad. Thanks OP!
  • Scarbutt 7y ago
    Yeah, scrolling is still pretty bad, and high cpu usage in youtube/twitch.
  • markosaric 7y ago
    Very happy to see your message, thank you! When I saw Firefox so low on the browser market share list (4% only), my intention was to write something that may get a person or two to give it a chance. It deserves it as it brings so much value. Thank you again.
    • jeena 7y ago
      I was also kind of shocked about how low that number is because most of my family and friends use Firefox, but most probably I live in a self inflicted bubble because I tell everyone to use Firefox instead when I see that they don't.
• pmoriarty 7y ago
  Firefox is agonizingly slow for me on an otherwise idle system, on my old, slow (2 core, 1.5 GHz) laptop, with only 8 tabs open. It takes about 30 seconds to load a web page, and I'm using an ad blocker (uBlock Origin) and also block unnecessary Javascript (via uMatrix). I have some other blockers too: Decentraleyes and CanvasBlocker, along with some other extensions like Stylus, Tree Style Tab, and Multi Account Containers which might slow things down as well.
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    Note that each third-party content blocker you listed slows down page load speed by a fraction of a second on fancy multi-core desktops. That slowdown may be more significant in your case.
• OrgNet 7y ago
  I've been using Firefox since the beginning... even when it used to be a lot slower then Chrome. I didn't like the updating service that Google installed on my computer that was always running in the background... do they still do that?
• Slashbot 7y ago
  Used to be a major advocate of Firefox as power user for almost 10years after switching from Maxthon/MyIE2 as the previous best browser. Now I just use https://Vivaldi.com https://Vivaldi.com ... far more customisation and features than Firefox. Even includes some of the power addons Firefox used to have as good addons... before it became the complete noob dog shit like it is now. Seriously Mozilla can go fuck themselves (I mean they already are, they lobotomised there browser into a crappy chrome clone in all but engine backend) maybe I should make a website like majrko.fyi competently trashing every aspect of Firefox. I can't even stand it (it pales in comparison to what it could be with the previous addon system) and it's new stupid slide menu system is just a big fucking waste of time designed by idiots who haven't a clue about good workflow. And the complete lack of customisation and features compared to Vivaldi is joke (or even what Firefox used to be capable of..so sad) At this point vanilla Chrome is just basic google garbage, but I wouldn't goto Firefox because of it's so called privacy aspects.. I'd goto Vivaldi instead for the features.. Privacy is dead.
• octosphere 7y ago
  I read somewhere that Chrome will be adding DoH (DNS over HTTPS) and I'm not sure if it's some experimental flag you toggle. I imagine they will be using 8.8.8.8 (which supports DoH). So now you are sending all your personal data to Google instead of Cloudflare :o But you can always use another DoH provider if you dislike Google or Cloudflare[0] I imagine any browser worth its salt will eventually switch over to DoH as the default as time goes on, as it's a great feature even though it doesn't honor the /hosts file or honor pi-hole[1] configured routers, it's still a great feature to have. [0] https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/DNS-over-HTTPS https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/DNS-over-HTTPS [1] https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/
  • bhauer 7y ago
    Since you can configure which DoH server your browser uses, I would guess Pi-Hole is going to implement (or already has) a DoH server of its own that will use configurable upstream DoH.
  • kodablah 7y ago
    > I imagine they will be using 8.8.8.8 [...] now you are sending all your personal data to Google You shouldn't guess/imagine something and then build your opinion on it. IIRC, Chrome will continue to use your configured nameservers and only use DoH if it's in a whitelist of known implementers.
  • josteink 7y ago
    > I imagine any browser worth its salt will eventually switch over to DoH as the default as time goes on Any browser which wants to be banned by AD group-policies in big organisations, sure.
• huzaifaahmed 7y ago
  What do you guys think about Brave? I use it and I think it's actually better that firefox in terms of speed and other features.
  • Nextgrid 7y ago
    The problem of Brave is that at heart it's still from an advertising company, no matter how nice they come across. Advertising is inherently at odds with productivity (ads waste your time) and potentially privacy (for better ad targeting), so I wouldn't recommend it. Under the hood it's just a reskinned Chromium so the battery life & performance concerns remain.
    • joemaller1 7y ago
      This and other accusations against Brave came up in the last Firefox thread too. Can you provide a link?
      • Nextgrid 7y ago
        If you check out Brave’s own website or Wikipedia page their whole model is to block ads and replace them with their own advertising network based on a crypto currency which allows you to earn it while you browse and see their ads. They are an advertising company at heart.
    • remir 7y ago
      By default, Brave blocks ads and their ads platform is disabled. As for Chromium's performance, I think it'll improve over time as MS started using it for their Edge browser and are committed to improve performance and battery life.
    • justsee 7y ago
      Actually because Brave aggressively and efficiently blocks ads and trackers by default it has a much better battery & performance profile. They've blogged about this in detail. One recent post was : https://brave.com/accurately-predicting-ad-blocker-savings/ https://brave.com/accurately-predicting-ad-blocker-savings/. Stating that they're simply an advertising company misses a significant amount of innovative work they're doing in-browser too. They're building a new business model and infrastructure that is diametrically opposed to the current surveillance capitalism model, and this infrastructure can replace donations, sponsorship, advertising and subscription models in a way that reduces transaction friction significantly, and could very likely challenge a significant number of powerful incumbents.
• neiman 7y ago
  A question for HN readers that use Chrome: why did you choose that? The readers here seems like the ideal crowd of Firefox users.
  • hu3 7y ago
    Better energy efficiency Superior video playback Allows 2 simultaneous dictionaries Doesn't show ads when I open a new tab Pinch to zoom They haven't forgotten to renew certificates so far Smooth Gmail Never crashed on my machine vs Firefox used to crash once a day Superior dev tools Doesn't cause high cpu usage in some sites like Twitch ----- I'll revisit my options when/if Chrome breaks uBlock Origin on stable
    • neiman 7y ago
      Thank you for the reply, I guess it's a matter of usage/machine, since I have none of the issues you mentioned.
    • hollerith 7y ago
      I switched from Firefox to Chrome right after I discovered that malware on Firefox had changed so many about:config settings that I couldn't untangle my own changes to about:config from the changed made by the malware. That and my having seen repeated assertion by HN user tptacek that Chrome's security team is the second best in the industry (behind only the iOS security team). Well, that and the lack of any signs that Mozilla management was prioritizing improving Firefox's resistance to malware. (Mozilla's interest in using Rust I saw as a positive sign, but not particularly directly relevant to the question.) At the time, one of Mozilla's priorities was introducing a new mobile OS.
  • mda 7y ago
    - Still faster and snappier. - Better track record of security, better security architecture overall. (Firefox is getting better, but not there yet) - Very smooth account sync across devices and platforms. - Credit card payments with Google pay is very convenient. - Good spell checker - Good Google integration overall. - Development tools - Crashes are very rare.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Medicalidiot 7y ago
  I wish Firefox worked well with MacOS, but even with the newest version, which was intended to fix battery issues and such, it still is vastly inferior to Chrome. Pinch to zoom still does not natively work in Firefox. Battery life still sucks compared to Chrome. Video performance lags behind, even on non-Youtube sites. I wish Firefox was significantly closer, but I still find myself limited by it at the moment.
  • whalesalad 7y ago
    If you think it’s inferior to Chrome – give Safari a shot. I use it all the time now because it’s so incredibly energy efficient. It also feels faster on the butt dyno in many ways than Chrome.
    • kkarakk 7y ago
      Using safari on macos feels like using edge on windows. you know there are supposed to be some advantages to doing so but the whole thing feels clunky and outdated comparatively
• thkim 7y ago
  I gave Firefox a try yesterday. It crashed four times in a day. I'm switching back to Chrome for peace of mind. Chrome hogs memory but I'd rather suffer memory than irritating browsing experience.
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    Were you on a fresh Firefox profile without any about:config changes? If not, try that: you may have options set that are overriding defaults, where the defaults don’t crash but your custom choices do. Did you try Release or Nightly/Developer?
• tzs 7y ago
  I've used Firefox as my main browser on my Mac for quite a while. I use Chrome when working on my company's web stuff, because I like its developer tools better and its handling of multiple profiles is a lot better [1]. There is one thing that threatens now and then to move me to Chrome. Here is a sample of that thing: prosecutable subtractive tunable epicycle inductor subparagraphs transactional micropayments blacksmithing inductor solvability verifier ethicist tradable tradeable auditable splitter surveil responder commenter. Firefox tells me that all of those words are spelled wrong. Chrome, Safari, and on Windows Edge all know that most or all of them are spelled right. It just gets tiring to regularly be commenting somewhere and get distracted by Firefox falsely claiming some word is misspelled, disrupting my train of thought as I have to go look it up to verify that I am in fact spelling it right. Everything else I type text into manages to spell check orders of magnitude better than Firefox. [1] Yes, I know about Firefox's multi-account containers. Great if all you are trying to do is keep yourself logged in to a couple different accounts at the same site. If you want to have separate bookmarks, extensions, and history too, you need to use profiles. Firefox has them, but Chrome does them better.
  • SubiculumCode 7y ago
    I agree that the dictionary needs to be expanded; It constantly annoys me.
    • ken 7y ago
      I would say the problem here is that Firefox needs to use the system spell checker. They can't just "expand" it. It needs to support per-user custom dictionaries. That's the same complaint I have, BTW, with every part of Firefox. If it's part of the UI, I don't want them to try to do better. I want them to just use the built-in one.
  • yoasif_ 7y ago
    Went ahead and filed it for you: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499593#c408 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499593#c408
• hollerith 7y ago
  OK, Firefox experts: which desktop OS does Firefox run best on? And which desktop OS has the largest usage share among the developers of Firefox? (I want to know because I am undecided on which OS I will be using in the future. By "run best" I mean the fewest bugs and the fewest instances of behavior that would surprise an ordinary user.)
  • microcolonel 7y ago
    Windows, by a long shot.
  • verisimilidude 7y ago
    (This is probably subjective, and I don't consider myself and expert.) I think Firefox feels best on Gnome-based Linux desktops: Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. Windows 10 is also a fine target for Firefox; I never encounter any problems there. I hear some features are missing on touchscreen laptops: gestures, etc. I could be wrong. Firefox has always had a little bit of funkiness on the Mac. Little UI things, battery killing performance issues, and so on. YMMV. But I still used Firefox on the Mac as my default for many years, and it was fine.
    • dronestriker 7y ago
      >Gnome-based How unfortunate.
• thegreatpeter 7y ago
  I’ve been using Firefox primarily for about a year now and don’t plan on switching back any time soon. The web feels faster and their Devtools browser has a lot of baked in features Try it!
• pier25 7y ago
  I switched to FF a couple of weeks ago and I'm loving it. Completely blocking autoplay on videos and preventing Facebook from stalking you feels great. My only major gripe is that FF is terrible if you write in more than 1 language.
• Hitton 7y ago
  Reasons I use Firefox instead of Chrome: better customizability (both about:config and interface - for instance allows me to move tab bar under urlbar, it's more complicated than it used to be though), allows autoscroll on Linux without having to resort to buggy extension, allows to disable calls to Google/Mozilla/Cloudflare..., and finally has generally more powerful addons (even though it's worse than XUL based ones)
  • jeena 7y ago
    My reasons: 1. I feel I can trust Mozilla much more than I can trust Google. 2. I can run my own sync server for passwords, bookmarks, etc.
• shultays 7y ago
  I have been using firefox... forever now and only thing I miss is translate functionality chrome has. I searched for some extensions but they were opening a new window for translation which does not compare to google's inlined translation. Any suggestions?
  • markosaric 7y ago
    I miss that too but the good news is that it is coming thanks to the EU funding[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21321430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21321430
• zelphirkalt 7y ago
  People, who choose Chrome (not even Chromium) over Firefox for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns, are simply not the target group of Firefox developers, because they do not care about privacy enhancing features. To sacrifice ones rights to gain tiny speed improvements or often only the feeling of being faster – It is simply a laughable trade-off to make. Many people and even institutions of education, which should know better, choose to do so apparently. If one is concerned about privacy and data being sent to Google using FF, well, there is always IceCat. Managed by the people, who stand most firmly for your rights in computing and software. GNU. It is also quite well known, that Chromium and Chrome are memory hogs. One OS process per tab? Really? I've also not read anything about improvements on that front in the last many months, while at least with Quantum the FF developers aim to keep memory usage low and cores optimally used - at least in their pitch. I think Chromium has a long way to go, before it gets close to low memory usage for many tabs scenarios. As a tab hoarder and curious person, memory usage patterns like the one of Chromium are not acceptable. I am sitting on 238 tabs in IceCat right now and 33% of my 8GB RAM are in use, with several other applications, including one electron based open at the same time. No problem whatsoever to have my browser and multiple other memory intensive applications open. The same seems infeasible with Chromium and its forks. I've seen it with double of my RAM and much less tabs on a co-worker's machine. Chrome just ate all of his RAM. I cannot remember, whether it crashed then, or he had to close the browser, to continue to work. Both are quite disruptive for getting things done. I think FF devs have done a great job with Quantum. Unfortunately one cannot always trust Mozilla entirely (see some cases of "studies" and the money they get from Google), although they often do great work and enhance online privacy. For me it seems the better option to stay behind a shield of people, who take privacy and user rights very seriously and remove telemetry and similar things from FF and use the outcome of that.
  • microcolonel 7y ago
    > ...for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns... That is false and defamatory. Chromium is noticeably faster than Firefox on a large swath of popular websites and web applications, the majority of which Google does not control; particularly on resource-constrained devices, and on Linux. Memory usage comparisons on different machines with different pages and different other applications running are beyond meaningless. Chromium will use less memory if you don't have much, and it will use more if you have memory to spare; I'm sure Firefox will do some similar things.
• microcolonel 7y ago
  No, you make it function properly before I consider “[giving] it a chance”. Firefox is ridden with decade-old compliance bugs, and is generally a pain to write applications and documents for. That's just part of why web applications and documents work worse in Firefox than they do in Chromium. Mozilla should derive from Chromium, if they want to actually deliver a web browser worth choosing. They can even fight their small battles with niche concerns more efficiently this way; but alas they will choose to make their users suffer needlessly for the scintilla of a principle of “implementation diversity”, which in practice just means “Firefox workarounds”.
  • catalogia 7y ago
    Create a browser monoculture just to satisfy webdevs who are too lazy or shitty at their job to support two(2)! whole browsers? Yeah no. If Mozilla made Firefox another chromium-derivative, it would become pointless to me. If you want to use a chromium browser, you have plenty of other options. Firefox is an option for the rest of us.
    • microcolonel 7y ago
      > Create a browser monoculture just to satisfy webdevs who are too lazy or shitty at their job to support two(2)! I don't see why you have to be so nasty. I'm not lazy, nor bad at my job. Firefox has unique failures in standard compliance and the function of APIs. It's not just a matter of "supporting two browsers", it's a matter of working around the unique deficiencies of Firefox, for which there rarely exist equivalents in Chromium. For example, for the longest time, getBoundingClientRect and getBBox do not work properly for elements inside an SVG. Still today Firefox misuses 1/60 unit fixpoint numbers for SVG geometry, which means that if you scale a <use> element larger than the geometry in the <defs>, it will be positioned incorrectly and/or misshapen; they could keep their fixpoints and still implement SVG correctly, but they instead just leave the bugs. There is little evidence that this follows any performance necessity, as Chromium and IE manage to render SVGs on the CPU considerably faster than Firefox does, while using floats in this role; Firefox barely runs properly on no-FPU computers anyway. So shame on you for casting aspersions on web developers for not supporting this unpopular, IE-quality Netscape fork as easily as they support Chromium.
• RavinduL 7y ago
  The only thing that keeps me from moving back to Firefox is the lack of support for precision touchpads---a feature present in Chromium-based browsers, Edge UWP, and even Internet Explorer! Several issues have been opened on Bugzilla in this regard [1][2], none of which have been resolved to date. [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1564022 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1564022 [2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=890878 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=890878
• everybodyknows 7y ago
  T-mobile's login page last month dropped Firefox support -- returned a cryptic complaint about "agent ID". There is actually something we can do to make T-mo reconsider: Call up one of their agents and play the naive user reporting the problem. Then voice a complaint when told that "the site supports Chrome and Safari". These calls get logged as an expense, presumably charged to the earlier policy decision to drop FF.
  • Fej 7y ago
    It works fine for me. Firefox for Android (Fennec) with uBlock Origin. What exactly is broken?
• pknerd 7y ago
  Alright, I am ready to resume using Firefox if it does not eat up memory as Google Chrome does on macOS.
• gtyras2mrs 7y ago
  Does anyone know of a working Picture-in-Picture plugin for Firefox? Safari and Chrome both have working PiP - which still keeps me switching back to them when I want to play something in the background.
  • po1nter 7y ago
    I'm on the Firefox Developer Edition and it supports this natively. You can see how it works here https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture-for-videos-in-firefox-69/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture...
    • gtyras2mrs 7y ago
      I remember reading it back in August - however I should have mentioned that I specifically needed this for MacOS. Does it work for MacOS? The post indicates that it's limited to Windows. On my Windows desktop, I already use Firefox as I have multiple monitors - so PiP wasn't much of a concern. However it's a feature that I sorely miss on the small screen of my Macbook Air.
• evacchi 7y ago
  if there is one little thing I miss in Firefox, is Desktop PWA support. Apart from that, I've been using it instead of Chrome for quite a few years, and it's greatly improved. Can't see any reason to switch back.
• thsowers 7y ago
  Nit: This article recommends StartPage as a search engine "without all that tracking and profiling", but quite recently StartPage was acquired by System1, an advertising company[0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577
• hinkley 7y ago
  I just wish mobile Firefox had more flexibility. I never stopped using desktop but mobile has been languishing on my tablet until the last iOS update totally broke safari (click and hold loading the anchor, and some dns glitch that means hacker news and two other sites are the only thing that works for hours at a time)
• zelly 7y ago
  Either Brave or plain Chromium is the obvious choice. Privacy is not a technical challenge--it's just a switch that's trivial to turn off. I can either: - Install Chromium from a community-maintained package manager on any platform: apt (even on Raspbian), choco, brew, AUR, ports - Install a Chromium fork like Brave - Download a nightly Chromium build from https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-sn... (and optionally copy Google API keys from a community package like Ubuntu's) - Compile it from source (and optionally copy Google API keys from a community package like Ubuntu's). You are free to tinker and harden as much as you want, but it will cost you several days worth of electricity and your time. #define google.com 127.0.0.1 But even with compiling Chromium, you'd still save more electricity than having Mozilla Firefox open all day. You won't deal with losing all your work because of a segfault somewhere in a behemoth from the 90s that ships all its new features as JavaScript (on SpiderMonkey!) addons. This push for Firefox as a privacy browser is a nothingburger. Privacy can be switched on overnight; good software development takes years.
  • stephenr 7y ago
    Suggesting a chrome based browser as a way to save energy is truly ironic.
• paulie_a 7y ago
  Dumb question. Can I transfer my bookmarks and more importantly my passwords easily. Also does Firefox support 2fa?
• no_gravity 7y ago
  The main reason I often use Chromium instead of Firefox is that it starts up faster. I even wrote a oneliner to see if it is just an illusion: http://www.gibney.de/browser_startup_speed http://www.gibney.de/browser_startup_speed As can be seen in the tests, it is mainly about the startup time after a reboot. Where Chromium is way faster. Not sure what the reason. Maybe Chromium actively caches something right during the boot? Or maybe it uses less dependencies?
  • toastal 7y ago
    How often do you realistically launch the browser? I do once per session and it's only closed to update, so I don't really care about this number. I'm sure most do similarly.
• 2ion 7y ago
  The only drawback I have with FF nowadays is history management. I have enabled 'infinite history' (do not delete old history, ever) so I can keep a journal of what I've visited when. The history, as large as it might turn out, is just a few MB of an sqlite3 database (places.sql) -- problematic is the management of it using the Firefox UI. Searching is laggy and deletion of swaths of entries is impossible as it makes the history manager UI hang for many minutes or even hours (=essentially I always kill Firefox when I do this by mistake). I suspect the GUI constructs a view of the sqlite db using single GUI objects tied to single DB entries and therefore has maximum overhead. Editing the places.sql file directly via the sqlite3 CLI (with Firefox shut down) is a matter of (milli)seconds at best. If I had the resources to compile FF in reasonable time I would give developing the patch a shot myself, but browser development is not an option with my current hardware, and I do not have a build server set up. PS. The fact that Chrome does not support tagged bookmarks is another nail for its coffin. Makes it impossible to organize 10000s of bookmarks, and search on them.
  • maaaats 7y ago
    At least Firefox gives proper suggestions from history when typing in addresses. Chrome is way off, as if it wants you to search in google instead.
    • codedokode 7y ago
      Yes, I also notice that I often don't have to go to Google because the page I need is in the dropdown. Suggestions in FF work awesome.
    • patrickmcnamara 7y ago
      If I enter "gov.ie" in Chrome, it will search for it rather than going to the address. So annoying.
    • paulintrognon 7y ago
      That's the main reason I've always stuck with Firefox. I use the address bar as a way to quickly access my history instead of using bookmarks, and it has worked so well for me so far.
• franczesko 7y ago
  Unfortunately, mobile experience is not that good. Once it will be as good as in Brave, I will consider transitioning.
• heydonovan 7y ago
  It took forever, but I finally made the switch a month or two ago. Firefox Quantum had promised to fix performance issues on the MacBook Pro, but tons of users (myself included) were complaining of CPU or RAM spiking, making it unusable. I'm trying to find the article, but they switched something, maybe the way windows are drawn, and all those issues are now gone. There was also the bug where the top of the tab bar would have these little random glitches, and that has been fixed as well. There isn't anything for me to complain about anymore. Good job Mozilla!
• mrandish 7y ago
  With recent improvements, Firefox is absolutely the best overall browser experience on desktops and at least at parity on mobile. The transition a couple of years ago to the new plug-in standard was a bit rough and I switched to Chrome for a while but Firefox has it sorted now.
• jedberg 7y ago
  I switched to FireFox about a year ago. Containers is a killer feature. But the container UX is still not perfect. Only recently did they fix it so you can log into a site via Facebook or Google. But my biggest issue is power management. On my Mac, when I run Firefox, the fans spin at around 3K at all times and the load is moderate at all times. When I turn off Firefox and switch to Chrome or Safari, the fans spin at 2K. Firefox is just a huge resource drain when it runs on Mac. Which is too bad because it's my favorite browser feature-wise.
  • bondolo 7y ago
    Did it not get better with FF 70 for you? They switched the rendering to use a better API on MacOS: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...
    • jedberg 7y ago
      It did actually get a bit better with 70 so I'm still giving it a chance.
• myth_buster 7y ago
  I'm surprised by the lack of focus on mobile in that post. Most of the third world leaped the desktop stage and are coming online using mobile. Primarily due to cost factor but also the additional infrastructure (telephone line, router, dongle etc) and maintenance (dirt/dust on keyboards) you need for a desktop. And imho, this trend will catch up in the first world countries specially with newer generations. Hence I would think focusing on mobile would be the best strategy for FF to gain market share. Additionally mobile users are more sensitive to data usage. A lot of data is consumed by downloading tracking scripts and serving rich content ads. Currently there are no viable alternatives as we can't install uBlock or other extension for Mobile browser. If these features ships out of the box, I'm pretty sure it would increase adoption purely by word-of-mouth. The case I can think of when this strategy would not work is if users on mobile are spending most of their time on individual apps (Google assistant, Siri, Fb/Instagram/Twitter mobile app) and not on browser. Which brings me to the state of Firefox mobile app. Firefox's mobile market share [0] is non -existent compared to desktop [1], which was at 32% at one point in time. I may be a minority here (HN/US), as I do most of my browsing on the phone. (I use desktop only for searching of technical implementation/issues. Primarily because this way I'm aware of the cost and duration that I've been browsing as I would have to reach for my phone and divert my attention away from desktop.) I tried to switch to Firefox mobile app on android but it felt like a desktop app jammed into a mobile viewport. A lot of space is devoted to the tab and address bar. A lot of sites that I navigate to, renders a desktop page instead of triggering a mobile layout as they do if I were to access it through Chrome. All of this results in a bad UX. IMHO, focusing on Firefox mobile app's performance, privacy and usability will help grow adoption of Firefox overall, specially in the environment where discussion on privacy are becoming increasingly mainstream. 0: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldwide/#monthly-200901-201910 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world... 1: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-201910 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
  • remir 7y ago
    That's a very important point: Firefox missed the boat on mobile and Mozilla would need a miracle to increase its marketshare. I personally use Brave on mobile which is great since it natively blocks ads and allow me to use Youtube with the screen turned off. On desktop I use Firefox since I prefer it's interface and the container feature.
• algorithm_dk 7y ago
  I want to use Firefox, and I would if it provided a faster internet experience, which it doesn't on Linux (compared to Brave/Chromium/Chrome). The devtools in Firefox lack basic features that have been requested for years. Too bad that these are the only viable options.
  • bzbarsky 7y ago
    Which basic devtools features are you missing, if I might ask?
    • algorithm_dk 7y ago
      simple things, like being able change the order of the columns in the network tab
      • bzbarsky 7y ago
        I just checked the bug database, and this has never been filed as an issue, for what it's worth. The closest to it was the offhand mention in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1509560 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1509560 which otherwise focused on column resizing. I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595961 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595961 just now to track this, but I have a hard time reconciling this specific example with the "requested for years" characterization in the original comment... If you are able to file issues you run into, that would be much appreciated; people can't fix problems they're not aware of.
• grappler 7y ago
  Other than multi-account containers, already discussed in the top comments here, another killer firefox extension that I think is largely undiscovered is SessionSync. I searched for a while for a decent way to deal with the "too many tabs" problem and SessionSync is where I've landed, so far anyway. SessionSync doesn't ask you to set up an account anywhere new - it just saves tabs as bookmarks into a 'SessionSync' folder in your firefox bookmarks menu, which are then synced automatically with the rest of your firefox profile data, to any other computers or phones synced with the same profile. Even if you decided to stop using SessionSync, you'd still have access to everything using Firefox's usual bookmarks interface. It basically gives you some options that I think firefox was missing, to save and restore whole sets of tabs to ordered lists in bookmark folders rather than dealing with urls individually. I have no affiliation with SessionSync; just wanted to mention it as one thing I really like in the firefox ecosystem. It has rough edges (e.g. no 'undo' if you save over the wrong folder accidentally, and sometimes weirdly changes the order of tabs on save), but it's the best tool I've found so far to do this sort of thing. Please let me know if you're using something as good or better though :)
• ngenstyle 7y ago
  Echoing the sentiment for Brave Browser as well. It's been great as a faster alternative to Chrome so far. Haven't actually used Brave Rewards, but it's nice that it at least offers some remuneration for personalized ads. Despite years of trying to use Firefox as my default browser, as a direct alternative to Chrome, it's never been as performant and almost always somehow clunky and reminiscent of 2000's browser bloat. I did reinstall Firefox very recently and was surprised that it was even faster than Brave Browser for non-cached page loads. However, for some benign reason I cannot resize browser windows at all using Firefox, and it seems I'm far from alone after searching for solutions online. At least there's more browser parity now in 2019/2020 onwards.
• robbrown451 7y ago
  My biggest gripe with Firefox is that it doesn't support MIDIAccess. So any web app that works with an electronic piano, doesn't work. They've been saying they are working on it for years. Works in Chrome, Brave, Opera, Edge, etc. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MIDIAccess https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MIDIAccess https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897 It's actually pretty bizarre since the basic functionality (hit a note on the piano, send it to the web page that is listening for such events) is so trivial, compared to the vast majority of features.
  • robin_reala 7y ago
    The source you linked to has the spec created by a Google engineer and in working draft. All the browsers you mention are based on Chromium so will automatically inherit this functionality. I’m not saying it’s not something useful to implement, but it usually takes some time and a stable specification before other browse manufacturers want to implement non-mainstream functionality.
    • robbrown451 7y ago
      Yes well it's been in working draft for about 7 years, and I'm pretty sure the holdup on finalizing the draft is on the Mozilla side. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58
      • boomlinde 7y ago
        Reminds me of the audio API mess. If you want to stream arbitrary sample data to an output you can either use ScriptProcessorNode (simple API, well supported but deprecated) or AudioWorkletNode (over-engineered API, largely unsupported and experimental). The stall in that case seems caused by the overly ambitious design of the Web Audio API altogether. It's utterly useless for audio processing or synthesis except when using the aforementioned APIs because it mandates a bunch of underspecified high level concepts. Just let me fill a buffer with floats for the speakers and read a buffer of floats for the mic. That's literally all I need, and literally the only way you can build, say, a compressor and have full control of its characteristics. When researching the best option I found this, so I'm not alone in thinking this: https://blog.mecheye.net/2017/09/i-dont-know-who-the-web-audio-api-is-designed-for/ https://blog.mecheye.net/2017/09/i-dont-know-who-the-web-aud...
• lcall 7y ago
  I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power with Google, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chrome derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception list or temporary exception, and easy to manage it without a mouse once the tab is open; separately, I do change the search engine also, and create search keywords), and 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know), 4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties, more than what Firefox has done (ie, the security track record of each, frequency of major holes over, say, the last 1-3 years). I don't really know but I'm glad they try. Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).
• flaxton 7y ago
  +1 for the Brave browser. And Chrome plugins work on it too!
• Havoc 7y ago
  I've taken to using both. FF -> main browser with Noscript & and clear cookies on close. Which cripples some website, but is fine for most browsing. Chrome -> For when priority is site working not privacy. e.g. airline checkin, banking, email etc. Plus obv all the usual pihole etc. Currently the best compromise I've managed on blocking sketchy stuff while not going full stallman email myself articles.
• jotm 7y ago
  Never had a major problem with Firefox, used it since v2.something, along with Opera, then Chrome, which fell by due to lack of add-ons and stability. There was a point where I almost started using Chrome due to performance, but the Google powered suggestions, lack of some add-ons, and small tabs when opening a lot of them (can't believe people still put up with that, it's just a bunch of tabs with X on them, how do you live?!) kept me on Firefox. Long may it live!
• indymike 7y ago
  I switched to Firefox when Chrome stopped working with drag-and-drop for files. It's a PITA to use tools like Google Drive without working drag and drop. Since then, I've been pleasantly surprised by Firefox Developer Edition's dev tools, and compatibility. So much innovation has been driven by the browser... hats off to Mozilla for persevering in being option b for so long.
• hilbert42 7y ago
  There's no way I'll use Mozilla's stock-standard Firefox. Why would I when: 1. When Mozilla has forced us to use WebRTC, it kowtowed to this line out of fright of the likes of Google et al. Well tough, by Mozilla nuking important differences that differentiate Firefox from other browsers I may as well use Chrome (its user-base is bigger anyway and most of Firefox's users have already deserted to Chrome for probably this reason). Moreover, Mozilla's inclusion of WebRTC in Firefox broke everything (it's a case of damn the user—which is something Mozilla is truly expert at). 2. Use Firefox and one's plugins have a functional lifetime similar to that of free neutron (for those not in the know, that ain't very long)! I cannot think of another software product on the planet whose developers have managed to nuke so much supporting code (add-ons etc.) as Mozilla done with Firefox. Over the years, add-on after add on—literally many thousands of them have been made redundant and obsolete by Mozilla changing the code base so as to break compatibility. 'Compatibility' is a word totally unknown to Mozilla's developers. The lack of version compatibility in Firefox can only be described as truly monumental; with Mozilla, it’s a case of damn both users as well as the independent developers who develop plug-ins/add-ons—clearly all the valuable time they've wasted chasing Mozilla's headless, ever-fickle development methods doesn't mean a thing to Mozilla. 3. Programmers are and have always been notorious for developing programs the way they want them rather than what the users want or need. However, at Mozilla this waywardness has reached new heights, there it seems Mozilla's programmers can do what they damn well want without question or impunity (or without referral to the Firefox user base despite Mozilla's many pretensions to the contrary). For example, in Firefox the move to the Australis interface without a fallback option to use the old interface showed a blatant disregard for its many users. With actions like that, it's no wonder that Firefox's user base is in free-fall! 4. Many other deliberately introduced annoyances only back up my previous point. For example, the deliberate removal of the JavaScript on/off toggle from Firefox was nothing other than an act of authoritarian programming vandalism. Just because Mozilla's programmers believe JavaScript is the orgasmic nirvana of the programming language world, they shouldn't straitjacket those of us who live a freer, better and much, much faster web existence without it. As this JavaScript on/off switch only affects those of us who do not use JavaScript, then its removal can only be considered as authoritarian bastardry. It's bad enough that we've already lost the internet to the corporate giants—likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft, et al without the so-called independents like Mozilla also slavishly towing the party line. 5. The same goes for the embedded DRM code within Firefox. Yes, let those users who believe in a proprietary internet use it but do so by way of a downloadable plugin/add-on. The proprietary DRM code should not be embedded within the primary open source Firefox code base for a very good reason becasue it demonstrates to those who wish to make the web their very own proprietary domain—Google, Netflix, et al—that they have actually won/succeeded. 6. The longstanding failure of Mozilla to provide many important features in Firefox default code—features that many users want and consider essential—has meant that users have to resort to many plugins/add-ons to try and rectify Firefox's many limitations and shortcomings. For example, let's start way back [this isn't a new problem, Mozilla has 'form' going back decades]: Internet Explorer always had several ways of saving a web page: normal HTML 'save page complete' and the MHTML (mime) format which saved the web page to a single file (.MHT extension). Not only did Mozilla never introduce a feature that would allow a web page to be saved to a single 'zipped'/concatenated file (as in Internet Explorer) but also it never bothered to embed the Mozilla Archive Format (.MAFF/MAF extension) in Firefox either, thus users of that very useful format had to rely on plugins written by others. For many, myself included, this nobbled Firefox was operationally inferior to even horrible Internet Explorer! Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. It's yet another example of Mozilla programmers doing what they want/telling users to go take a jump. [If you don't realize why a single file web page archive is better than the multi-file HTML approach and or why the single-file save should be embedded in the base code then I'm sorry, that explanation will just have to wait.] What's more, to add insult to injury, Mozilla blatant pushing of WebRTC and WebExtensions into Firefox killed the ability of the Mozilla Archive Format to work in its latest versions so MAF's developers have now abandoned its development altogether. To put it bluntly, Mozilla has a damn hide to treat us users just like shit. Clearly, Mozilla doesn't give an iota about how this disrupts users (for example, I've thousands of MAF files that I view regularly but which I now cannot view in the latest versions of Firefox). [Please don't send me feedback on this. I know the MAF format is essentially a ZIP file and thus said files can be converted. This is not the main issue, which is that Mozilla's careless actions have likely resulted in many thousands of people around the world having to expend millions of tedious hours resolving an 'unnecessary' problem—it's wasted human effort that should never have been expended. As I see it, Mozilla is far from being alone here; Microsoft and many others are also past masters at it. When considered globally, the huge collective loss of human time and effort because programmers program for themselves first with users' considerations coming in a poor second is a serious problem across the software industry and that's why I and many others consider it unacceptable for the industry to define itself as "software engineering". The term "engineering" used in this context is an affront to true engineers/true engineering. As a person who programs myself—even with my blinkered and biased eyes—comparing the maturity of other engineering endeavors (say chemical engineering for instance) to that of the software industry is akin to comparing a mature adult to that of an undisciplined child that's still running around helter-skelter in short pants. The gross examples I've already mentioned here are proof enough (look around you and you'll easily find thousands more). QED!] Just from my own experience, I've found that there are literally dozens of other essential features still missing from Firefox some 20 years on after its initial development. That's why I don't believe Firefox is a serious product, nor do I believe its developers take the product sufficiently seriously to ever make it a great product. 7. Moving on: let's for a moment look at the unfinished and ragged edges in Firefox. There are many but I've only time to mention two. First is the decade-plus long and quirky bug where a CTRL-C on some highlighted web page text will not take, that's to say when one attempts to paste the text into another program there's nothing there. It's not as if Mozilla is unaware of this bug as it's been mentioned dozens of times over many years. Right, it's a damn annoying bug for users but Mozilla considers it too trivial to fix (it's another example of Mozilla's 'damn the user' attitude). Yet another is the truly primitive/archaic state of Firefox's web page printing routine. I could just about write a thesis on this issues but I'll make only two points (a) it's been in this dysfunctional state for going on two decades and Mozilla has still done nothing about it; and, (b) the problems are large and many (for example the way Firefox fails to properly handle an image that spans over a page break—it prints half on one page and half on the other). For me, the people at Mozilla, despite all their beat-up rhetoric about Firefox's glossy features, just haven't delivered the necessary (utilitarian) goods let alone any enticing gloss. Just because these issues are harder to spot or live under the surface doesn't make them any less important. The fact that Firefox has so many unresolved issues that still remain on Mozilla's books (or more likely have never even made it here), are key reasons why Firefox's ratings are free-fall. Therefore, you may well ask what to I do for a browser if Firefox is so bad. The answer is that I use the Pale Moon browser. Pale Moon is far from perfect but unlike Mozilla, its developers and users alike think similarly to me—that is users needs come before programmers' egos.
• buboard 7y ago
  Firefox needs to work on solutions that help webmasters, not just the users. Some of these choices may affect the revenue of websites negatively without providing a better alternative, so you might not see developers being happy to suggest firefox. Brave is at least trying to bring new models to the world. Firefox is not.
• garbagetier666 7y ago
  There's nothing 'calm' or 'distraction-free' about the obnoxious toolbar animations: https://i.imgur.com/N6v30Sa.gif https://i.imgur.com/N6v30Sa.gif . Which just happen over and over and over and over again as you navigate from page to page. Do you really need a blue animated progress bar flash signifying the page has loaded? Does the refresh and stop icon need to have a half second long animation every single time it switches between the two? Does the throbber need to oscillate back and forth like a pendulum used to induce hypnosis? Worst part is it requires some userchrome.css patch to fix that awful throbber animation, not easily in the normal settings area.
• johnmorrison 7y ago
  Does anybody know how to remove the forward/backward arrow buttons in Firefox for windows? I love how customizable the UI is, and they allow you to remove the reload and home button by default, but other things like the forward/backward button and search bar are fixed to the toolbar.
• neighbour 7y ago
  I use Firefox on both my work and personal computers with macOS. Very happy with it. Only major gripe is no picture-in-picture like Safari which is a great feature.
• swilliamsio 7y ago
  For mobile, I switched to Firefox which was a fantastic decision. Firefox on mobile is as fast as Chrome whilst allowing the much needed adblock and darkmode plugins. I'm hesitant to do the switch on desktop right now because, last time I checked, Firefox was slower than Chrome. However, the day I see ads on Chrome will be the day I am forced to make that switch. I do not need my browser experienced tainted by the slowing and frustrating appearance of ads nor do I want my mind subject to the so often poisonous online marketing.
  • awful_waffle 7y ago
    While I worked there, I heard about user studies Mozilla performed comparing Chrome and FF. It turned out that with all branding stripped, users found FF to be faster - but as soon as it became 'Chrome' vs 'Firefox', users always chose Chrome. I recall they actually faked browser UI's (i.e. made FF look like Chrome and vice versa) to test if it was about branding - and it was. The reason I bring this up is I assume a lot of folk are in that bucket. Chrome was on top for a long time, and I think people are hesitant to switch to FF, despite the effort Mozilla has put into revamping/rewriting their browser. (Also, I find it interesting that you only have a quarrel with Google tracking you (via Chrome) if you _see_ the ads. They're still collecting data whether or not you see the end result.)
• ryuukk_ 7y ago
  journalists are liars benchmarks doesn't like, and they proved that Chrome and Chromium are both superior and faster to Firefox
• mgalgs 7y ago
  I've ditched Chrome completely in favor of Firefox (desktop and mobile). I've been surprised about Firefox's speed, but not in a good way... After all the hype I've been seeing about Firefox getting faster I've been disappointed by how sluggish it feels on my system (Linux, 20 CPUs, 32GB RAM -- yes, this is my personal dev machine :D). Chrome is still faster, but I'm sticking to FF because I believe in their mission.