37 ms·

Switching from Chrome to Firefox

568 points by nachtigall 7y ago

rahuldottech 7y ago
Firefox is great, and I've had an amazing experience on both mobile and desktop ever since I switched almost a year ago. I only wish that their password manager allowed you to import passwords in standard formats from other password managers.
- sm4rk0 7y ago
  You can try this 3rd party tool if your password manager supports exporting to CSV (or if you can convert the exported passwords to CSV): https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass And here are some hints about the CSV structure: https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass/pull/46/files https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass/pull/46/files
- kiwijamo 7y ago
  I find the Bitwarden extension is very good. The advantage of using an independent password store is that you can use it on other platforms. For example, Bitwarden provides iOS integration which provides autofill in both Safari and even within individual apps (which is a huge time-saver). In the future you may move to a different browser, and Bitwarden (or your independent password manager of choice) will most likely have an extension for that browser too so you can start using it straight away. I love Firefox but I honestly can't see any reason to lock myself into its password store.
bennyz 7y ago
I am still missing chrome-like profiles
- ypeter 7y ago
  Have you tried Multi-Account Containers? It’s not the same but for me it works (I want to be logged in with various accounts on the same website)
  - philshem 7y ago
    Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
  - ailideex 7y ago
    I actually prefer the multi-account containers to chrome's profile approach.
  - bennyz 7y ago
    Containers are nice and I use them, but unfortunately they are not enough since they are not synced and don't solve the bookmarks issue
  - jpalomaki 7y ago
    Multi-account containers is the reason why I'm using Firefox. Too bad it is just an extension and not a first-class feature. The settings are not synced with other Firefox settings. Somewhat annoying as there is lot of work to setup the container settings if you happen loose then.
- anfilt 7y ago
  Firefox does have support for multiple profiles. You just to need to set it up. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... Also if you want to prompt what profile to use every time you use firefox just add -P like this "firefox.exe -P" in your shortcut/softlink or script that starts firefox.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    It just doesn't have usable profile switching. Sounds like something a competent engineer should be able to implement in a week, yet users have been begging for it for a decade and it's still not there. This is the only thing that holds me on Chrome.
    - glandium 7y ago
      try about:profiles
      - dhimes 7y ago
        I think his point is that if you have to do about:profiles, then that's not usable for a lot of people. Having something that works like containers is a lot more usable: click, select profile.
        glandium 7y ago
        My point is that about:profiles improves upon -P. But cf. their other post, they're actually after containers, not profiles.
      - m0zg 7y ago
        See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Whereas in Chrome I _don't have to_ "try about:profiles". The very basic requirement for me is this: I want to completely separate my "work" internet from my "personal" internet, yet I also want to be able to easily switch between the two. Firefox makes this unnecessarily difficult and un-ergonomic.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Containers?
- windyzboy 7y ago
  I installed 2 Firefox apps at the same time in my Mac, one for work and one for personal. How to do that? First, install Firefox and in Applications, rename Firefox.app to My-personal-Firefox.app . Then, install Firefox again, it will be Firefox.app. Here is what I did with FirefoxNightly, but it's possible to do so with Firefox: https://imgur.com/a/Zy2iDkK https://imgur.com/a/Zy2iDkK (note: for more convenience, I have changed the app's icon)
_tkzm 7y ago
the custom search engines and the banning of dissenter extension is why i am still on chrome. ff failed me on technical and personal level with these. at least with chrome/google ... the devil you know.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Your answer to ff refusing to host an extension and forcing you to sideload it is to move to a platform that has continuous and proven censorship and surveillance track record? Doesn't make much sense to me.
  - hydgu 7y ago
    Chrome has continuous and proven censorship? I think they are more or less on the same page than Firefox: they have their curated "app store" and they inconvenience you if you try to bypass it. I would use Firefox if they actually were more open and free than Chrome. But if they are the same, just slower, then why would I want to support Mozilla?
- dfsdfklgjljg 7y ago
  At least ff supports sideloading, while chrome.. doesn't. And if you use ff ESR, you can also freely sideload unsigned addons.
dzink 7y ago
I have been using Firefox for a few months and I’ve noticed browsers on Windows are far slower than on Mac (despite much faster hardware). Is that normal / happening to you as well? Firefox on Windows seems noticeably slower than Chrome. (Any page from entering address to seeing content feels ridiculously slow) I still use it for privacy, but I wonder if there is something I could do to speed it up.
- Neil44 7y ago
  I read some similar comments recently and tried switching to Chrome, but did not find it any faster, even on YouTube and gmail. Maybe it’s machine and webpage specific.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  haven't really noticed it myself. if anything, i though video acceleration works a bit better on windows
- bboygravity 7y ago
  What I find mind blowing is that it takes gigabytes (of RAM and/or other local storage) to load a couple of websites. Regardless of which browser is used.
  - eloisant 7y ago
    What you call "a couple of websites" are actually full-blown applications. Your browser is more a virtual machine than a document reader. Also, applications tend to use RAM when it's available. Think of all the cache, typically that's why back is snappy (it doesn't re-render the page from scratch). Maybe it would make you feel good to see a lot of unused RAM, but since it's there, it's better to use it than not.
    - bboygravity 7y ago
      Well, maybe the point I'm trying to make is that they shouldn't be applications. Hackernews could take 100's of megabytes to load (like pretty much all of the other similar websites do). RAM, page file or otherwise. But it doesn't. It could be a complex application. But it isn't. And it shouldn't be. Also, I don't think having "too much RAM" is the issue on my 16 GB machine. I routinely have to just shut down the browser entirely to be able to properly do CAD work. Party like it's 1995. Even if these websites are "legit applications" for good reasons, putting the processing burden on the client is still a choice. There are efficient ways to leave most of the processing to the server. Example: https://www.phoenixframework.org/ https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Disclaimer: correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just an EE guy with shallow limited knowledge on web stuff.
clement_b 7y ago
I did that about a month ago, after more than 10 years with Chrome only. So far so good, apart from battery usage on Android. I sometimes feel it spirals when too many tabs are left open. Desktop, no problem. I have kept Chrome for my work stuff, because I want 100% efficiency / no delay due to my tech choices and I work on a SaaS tool primarily targeting Chrome. I still think Chrome is better when it comes to powering web apps, ahem, made by Google in particular. The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? It seems that other browsers like Brave are also quite good at dealing with privacy, so why Firefox and not Brave?
- feanaro 7y ago
  > The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Yes- so it's important that devs don't build primarily for Chrome. If we succumb to this temptation, then the demise of the web will be our fault. Consumers don't care. They are going to use the one that is most convenient to make work correctly.
  - eloisant 7y ago
    I also switched to Firefox a year ago or so, and I liked Chrome accounts better than Firefox containers. I ended up to using them at all and mixing everything, while on Chrome work and personal was cleanly separated.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    > Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. 1. all web engines are open source 2. we had multiple engines. it didn't work out, at all. user experience was thrown out the window, technologies weren't implemented, the web was massively fragmented. 3. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contributes to since it's better for everyone's experience.
mgninad 7y ago
I am on FF but i miss having one profile for work and one profile for personal use that i used to have with chrome.
- hashhar 7y ago
  If you want separate extensions as well, then goto about:profiles. If you want cookie separation, check out Multi Account Containers.
- jraph 7y ago
  You can use the profile manager. There is a way to do it from the graphical user interface (see the sibling comment), though I just run Firefox using firefox -p Maybe set a different theme / persona on each profile.
- hashhar 7y ago
  Or see below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911697
- matsdb 7y ago
  Firefox supports multiple profiles: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
- hyperdunc 7y ago
  You need the containers extension. It's better than Chrome profiles.
  - philshem 7y ago
    Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Firefox probably supported profiles before Chrome even existed. It always saved my life back in the days when you reinstalled the OS and you could just backup/copy over the entire directory of the profile. Personally I edit the Firefox shortcut to add -p at the end of the target to get the profile manager showing up every time I launch. I also use this when I spend a few weeks on a different machine at work: create a new profile, synchronize it with my account, then when I leave I nuke the entire profile.
dimator 7y ago
Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!" Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talking about the merits of the argument (I switched to Firefox), I'm just talking about how much of an echo chamber this is.
- notkaiho 7y ago
  Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Right closed garden ? How do so many chromium forks exist ? Google could have closed sourced it from the start.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Not really, since it’s based on (LGPL) WebKit code.
  - dimator 7y ago
    So we have to bring it up every few days? Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.
    - thinkingemote 7y ago
      Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in, they mask it as some sort of far left viewpoint that forces them to oppose Google at every opportunity. Google can solve world hunger and HN would still blame them for a "PR" stunt.
saykou 7y ago
I would like to use firefox yet it takes way more ram to run than chrome. so for me is a non issue.
dnpp123 7y ago
Am I the only one not able to switch from Chrome to Firefox because of performances issues (2yo laptop) ? According to : https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-70-chrome-78&num=5 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-... firefox still has some work to do....
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  I'm on an old laptop with a CPU graph on my top panel. It appears that Firefox uses more CPU than chromium and so I use Chromium when in battery power or when I forget my power cable! The other thing I dislike with new Firefox is the removal of the ability to change the size of the tabs and alter the window decorations so that they still take up valuable screen estate on smaller netbooks. Chromium isn't any better but does have the option to remove the window title bar.
sschueller 7y ago
Firefox is great but not so great is asking users to automatically use Cloudflair's DoH service. Let me pick which DoH I want to use.
- Iolaum 7y ago
  They are working on that and recently announced a partnership with nextDNS as a provider.
- Jallal 7y ago
  I may have misunderstood the issue, but you can choose the DoH provider you want to use (Menu > Options > General > Network Seetings > Enable DNS over HTTPS > Custom). Sure, a default has to be provided, but most of the people who will activate this option knows what they're doing, and which provider they want to use/avoid.
- kiwijamo 7y ago
  It hasn't asked me to, as you say, automatically use Cloudflare's DoH service. The default seems to have DoH disabled.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    It's not rolled out everywhere yet. AFAIK they only activate it for US users, and it may only be activated for a subset of those (not sure about that part).
    - kiwijamo 7y ago
      I am outside the US so that explains it, thank you.
- matsdb 7y ago
  In OpenBSD DoH is disabled by default [1] :-) [1] https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190911113856 https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190911113856
- 7y ago
LoSboccacc 7y ago
I'm using Firefox as primary browser since Chrome war on as blockers and it works fine for the most part but it's quite rough around the edges my biggest grows come from the omnibar, it still has a heck of a trouble guessing what's a search and what's a domain, the sorting out partial matches feels weird because bookmarks aren't prominent and there's no promotion of URLs entered Vs useless navigated toward and three default click action (append to bottom of the URL) might be fine if you are a developer but it's not for the most part what I want as a user. edit: thanks all for the suggestions edit2: imagine being so committed into a browser religion to downvote facts
- ysavir 7y ago
  I still keep a search bar separate from the address bar. I find it makes things much simpler. The address bar is where I can type in URLs and search through my bookmarks. The search bar is where I enter searches and can explore search history. I've never liked the idea of an "omnibar", and the dual setup has been a much better experience.
- zachwood 7y ago
  Instead of hitting `ctrl+l` hit `ctrl+k` (or cmd) and you get a naked search directly to your default search engine.
  - _Microft 7y ago
    Search keywords are super useful if one uses more than one search frequently. (I found tabbing to the correct engine in the search bar clumsy) I have short (mostly two letters, very few with three) search commands for Google, Bing, Amazon, en/de translation search, Duden (german dictionary) Wikipedia in german and english and gaming wikis for example.
- _Microft 7y ago
  There are some ways to refine the results in the Firefox adress bar, in case you already know what you are looking for. I mainly use * + and % : Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history. Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks. Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged. Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs. Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed. Add # to search for matches in page titles. Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs). Edit: it looks as if one can search for the input by prepending a ? to it. This will hide any other (local) results from the omnibar, giving easy keyboard access (by direction keys) to the list of search engines at the end of the list.
philshem 7y ago
For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature “multi-account containers” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- mendelmaleh 7y ago
  Or maybe don't... I relied too much on it, and lost quite some data. Too bad it had no sync capabilities, or even basic import/export for backing up.
  - zaphirplane 7y ago
    What type of data did you loose ? The addon seems to isolate cookies and storage by container
    - mendelmaleh 7y ago
      Yes... I had sessions in those containers, the cookies are the data I guess.
  - philshem 7y ago
    Can you explain? It’s a puzzling comment about containers
    - KaiserPro 7y ago
      There was/is a button that allowed you to clear your default container's entire session. I almost clicked that.
    - lawn 7y ago
      I've had problems where it loses my settings after update. They also don't sync between devices, making them quite cumbersome for me to use (you can copy the settings manually though). When it's all setup it works great though.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Firefox user here too! Chrome is on not my side, it's only to make sure Google increases their revenue.
ailideex 7y ago
I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux - both Fedora 31 and RHEL 8). In general I like FireFox more and prefer features like multi-account-containers so I'm quite sad to have to use chrome.
- tenant 7y ago
  I'm back using firefox full time since about 3 months and don't notice that at all. In fact I now struggle to remember why I ever moved to chrome in the first place, I know there were reasons but I can't remember what they were. Moving back was surprisingly painless. If I could find a similarly easy and good path out of gmail I'd be gone tomorrow.
  - kiwijamo 7y ago
    I recommend FastMail if you're willing to pay for your email services. They have an excellent import tool to help with migrating your email from Gmail.
    - RexM 7y ago
      I 2nd the Fastmail recommendation.
    - kevinkeller 7y ago
      There was some talk of privacy concerns with FastMail, due to Australian laws: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia#Assistance_and_Access_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia...
      - RandomBacon 7y ago
        Went it comes to governments spying on people, I weigh Fastmail the same as Gmail. Considering I find everything else about Fastmail better than Gmail, I am slowly making the switch (using my own domain names though so I could potentially switch again in the future).
SubZtep 7y ago
The main reason I switched to Firefox was an extension where I can see all of my tabs on a sidebar. I don't think it's possible with Chrome until they introduce sidebar pane. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
dfsdfklgjljg 7y ago
Loyal firefox user here. Never touched chrome unless I had to. The australis days were rough, but since quantum it's been feeling fast. It doesn't even feel obviously slower than chrome anymore.
hrgiger 7y ago
if someone has more details: I remember years ago that when I was digging FF source code I saw it was using chromium source code (not everywhere but for the CSS engine and extensions i think),that was the time servo was in consideration, is it still the case? I personally dont mind that I use both chromium + FF with some firewall rules but it always gave me impression that while FF using chromium source it does an advertise like completely different, isolated secure platform. Here is quick search just on "chrome" keyword on source code repo. https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/search?q=chrome&unscoped_q=chrome https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/search?q=chrome&unscope...
- EmilStenstrom 7y ago
  Searching for "chrome" like that likely gets matches for another kind of chrome. Firefox calls everything that's outside of the web page (navigation controls and so on) for the "browser chrome". So many of those hits are simply for other things.
- AshamedCaptain 7y ago
  Both the word Chrome and the Firefox codebase are a decade earlier than Google's Chrome. Google just reused the word either for the lulz or perhaps in order to create the confusion you seem to be manifesting.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  Chrome is Mozilla terminology pre existing the chrome browser There is even https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1248747 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1248747 to explain it in depth
  - hrgiger 7y ago
    Thanks for the link and light for my ignorance! it was interesting read, I didnt know that chrome was a term
- shrikant 7y ago
  No shared codebase (or even conspiracy!) here -- it's just referring to user interface elements. Definition: Chrome is the visual design elements that give users information about or commands to operate on the screen's content (as opposed to being part of that content). These design elements are provided by the underlying system — whether it be an operating system, a website, or an application — and surround the user's data. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/
keyP 7y ago
I switched to FF for my daily driver almost a year ago on my Windows machine and haven't looked back. Previously FF had too many performance issues but since each tab is run in a separate process, it's been just as good as Chrome (not so much on OSX however, I still use Chrome there). The other advantage of FF for me, besides Pocket, is that I can share and send pages with FF on Android which has support for ad-blockers. Last time I checked, Chrome didn't support extensions on Android.
- inetknght 7y ago
  I wish Pocket didn't come enabled by default. It's intrusive spyware. Edit: It's information leaks for advertisements. I switched from Chrome to Firefox to get away from advertisement empires. Having to manually disable Pocket to do that leaves a sour note.
  - angott 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, can you elaborate on that?
  - zachwood 7y ago
    > It's intrusive spyware. Please explain.
  - czechdeveloper 7y ago
    Pocket is owned by Mozilla, so if Pocket is spyware, Mozilla is making spyware. Does not sound right.
    - hydgu 7y ago
      Yeah, they would never do that. https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i... "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit" Ooops.
      - 7y ago
levani 7y ago
I switched from Chrome to Firefox on my old Macbook pro and overall it really feels faster and more responsive.
- update 7y ago
  Ah, I've been using firefox for web dev stuff on my old Macbook pro and I've noticed it's a lot faster than it was last year. Definitely considering making the plunge as speed has been the only thing that's held me back from switching to FF.
haunter 7y ago
I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
- foepys 7y ago
  Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.
  - prox 7y ago
    Is 1000 tabs open a replacement for bookmarks? I can’t imagine a workflow where having this many open would be advantageous.
    - rishav_sharan 7y ago
      sort of. I have 100-200 tabs in FF as well and i just use these open tabs like bookmarks.
    - jeltz 7y ago
      In my case yes. I do not like the UI for bookmarks and the UI for tabs is closer to what I would want for a bookmark UI.
- sam_goody 7y ago
  I am a heavy tab user as well (sometimes crawling above 500) and have found Firefox MUCH better than Chrome. Way, incomparably much better. Better memory and usability of computer (Chrome lugs and lags and my iMac and Macbook). Normal tabs instead of vanishingly small tabs. All my tabs on restart (Chrome has several times been unable to recover tabs on a restart over the past few years) and quick restart. And, though I don't use it, there is sidebar tabs for FF. I have 4GB ram on laptop. Curious why our experience differs. What platform are you on?
foxfired 7y ago
Having multiple small tutorials like these will make it easy for anyone who wants to move to Firefox. The more the merrier. That said, I still can't get used to Firefox. It's fine on desktop, and using profiles is not too much of a big deal for me. But on mobile, Firefox is not as intuitive as chrome is to me. On my phone I have Chrome, which I only ever use if a website fails on all other browsers, I have Brave as my daily driver, and Firefox because I want to make it my default. I just can't navigate as easily on Firefox as I can on Chromium browsers. An example, when I use HN, I open links on a new tab and I can swipe the header left or right to navigate from tab to tab. Easy breezy. On Firefox, I have to click on the tab menu, figure out where I am, and read titles to know where I am going. Every single time I forget, I end up clicking on many tabs before I find where I am going. Don't know if this feature in Firefox's pipeline, but that's the only thing stopping me from making the switch.
- mdibaiee 7y ago
  That's a good idea to propose to Mozilla for the new "Firefox Preview" which is a new version built from the ground up. They are open to innovations on that version and so far they already have made some experiments there. You might want to try it out and leave this idea as a feedback on the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...
- sundarurfriend 7y ago
  > That said, I still can't get used to Firefox. Ironic username, then.
- matsemann 7y ago
  Firefox for android supports addons, though, so can be customized to do anything. I can't believe people use Chrome om Android when you can have Fx with ad blocking! For your problem, I use an addon called "simple gesture" that allows me to add all kinds of gestures/actions.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Assuming it's https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gesture/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gestur...: any ideas why does it need to "access my data for all websites" and "access the clipboard"? Curiously the blurb recommends "Quick Gestures" which presumably is a different gesture addon.
psv1 7y ago
For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good. I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.
- earenndil 7y ago
  Or just ungoogled chromium. Brave is bizarre and terrible. The idea of trying to replace ad-tech as it currently exists is great, and I welcome any experimentation thereunto. That said, brave does it wrong, and I don't think it's a good idea to support that; even without using their ad-tech feature, it still gives them mind- and market-share, and propagates their ad system elsewhere.
- yalooze 7y ago
  Vivaldi is another Chrome fork with a strong focus on privacy. From the original creators of Opera.
  - computerfriend 7y ago
    Vivaldi is non-free and closed source.
- anon_alchemist 7y ago
  Brave blocks all ads and provides its own "ad platform" which basically means that they curate what ads you will see. I fail to see how their model could fix what is wrong with facebook or google.
  - psv1 7y ago
    Their ad model is what gets discussed every time Brave comes up and it's irrelevant to me - I block all ads myself regardless of the browser. My point is that if you switch ads off in Brave, you end up with a really good browsing experience, better than Chrome + adblock or Firefox + adblock.
r_singh 7y ago
I use Safari full-time and am pretty happy with it. Pinned tabs, the keyboard shortcuts, developer options, ghostery extension, I find everything pretty neat. Anyone else here feel the same?
- deepburner 7y ago
  I would use it since it's the native browser but last I checked it didn't have any proper ad blockers due to apple shenanigans. I would consider swapping back if I could use ublock origin.
  - baggachipz 7y ago
    This is the one reason I still use Firefox. They care less about privacy, but the inability of Safari to have a proper ad blocker is a deal-breaker.
  - dan1234 7y ago
    I use Adguard with Safari 13, which has a bit of a clunky startup but doesn't seem to affect performance once everything is running & does a decent enough job of blocking trackers/ads.
- rhlsthrm 7y ago
  I'm a full time Safari user. I love the "Share" button built in which lets me easily AirDrop and iMessage tabs I want to share between devices or with friends. It also feels faster on my MacBook and uses way less RAM. I open Chrome tabs only occasionally if I need specific extensions (Metamask for crypto stuff), run into webapps that simply work better on Chrome (Shopify for example), or to use the dev tools.
i2shar 7y ago
I switched to Firefox from Chrome a couple of months ago. The sole motivation was the fiasco that ensued after Google decided to mingle Chrome Sync login with accounts.google.com cookies - there is simply no way to sign in to Chrome Sync without creating browser cookies for the same account. I wanted the benefit of saving and syncing bookmarks and extensions across my chrome installations, but I did not want to be tracked across the web with my logged in Google identity and the Chrome changes for "Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar" made it impossible. It was time to move on from Chrome. And I have been very pleased with the new Firefox. Highly recommend it to everyone!
runn1ng 7y ago
Switching saved passwords (with the built in password managers) between Firefox, Chrome and Safari is a pain. I remember that in order to get my passwords from Chrome to Firefox on macOS, I needed to install a virtual machine with Windows, and log in to Chrome and Firefox there.
maple3142 7y ago
One of the reason why I haven't switch from Chrome to Firefox again is Join still don't have a Firefox extension: https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/ https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/ Another reason is I had switched to Firefox just after Firefox Quantum came out, and eventually switched back to Chrome because it didn't give me a good experience at that time. (buggy devtool, many unfamiliarity)
- perttir 7y ago
  The devtool is nice nowadays. It supports inspecting websocket messages, log events and has a multi-line support for console.
foray1010 7y ago
7. Remove Chrome and never look back.
butz 7y ago
Migrated to Firefox on my work PC after Chrome removed protocol display in URL bar and all flags to revert this change - that was the last straw.
jonny383 7y ago
Firefox has indeed come a huge way in the last two years. - It's multi-process architecture redesign _really_ improved performance (it's like using a whole new browser, honestly. If you haven't at least tried it, it's worth a shot). - Mozilla's commitment to privacy (I know in the eyes of some, their current commitment isn't enough) is the best option you have outside of Safari / macOS. - In version 71, battery drain on macOS is indeed largely improved - The multi-account containers, anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting are a breath of fresh air (yes, I know they are not perfect). I am satisfied that each time I sign on to YouTube, my recommended videos are just a bunch of random things. - Firefox looks like it will remain one of the only browsers that fully supports current ad-blocking technology. (Yes, I know about Brave, but that's besides the point). - The devtools section has seen a lot of attention that easily brings the experience on par with Chrome (in my experience). - Firefox on Android with AdBlock drastically speeds up browsing the internet on mobile devices. But, despite all of these good points, the browser still feels... clunky. Sure, the UI performance drastically improved since Quantum, but really, open a fresh Firefox window, browse to your favorite site and click around a little. Then, try the same thing with Chrome / Chromium / Edge. I don't know exactly what it is, but these other browsers just feel that little bit "smoother" or more "modern". Say what you will about Google and Chrome. But morals aside, in my opinion, there's no denying they built a world-leading software product that has vastly increased the perceived quality expectations of browser users. Note: I still remain a primary Firefox user. The eye-candy is nice, but for me it's not worth sacrificing all of the other pros of Firefox. EDIT: grammar
- beanaroo 7y ago
  The difference is quite noticeable for me when using Atlassian's Cloud products. May their framework is simply optimised for Chrome. I also really do hope Firefox gains hardware video acceleration on Linux some day.
- Izkata 7y ago
  > - The devtools section has seen a lot of attention that easily brings the experience on par with Chrome (in my experience). I regularly encounter things Firefox's devtools do that Chrome's don't, when trying to show something or other to a co-worker. Two I remember offhand: * Showing a specific log level in the console, such as "info" and not any of the others. This was years ago, but at least at the time Chrome had you pick from a dropdown and it would always also display the more important levels - for example, "info" included "warning" and "error" with no way to hide those. * A few weeks ago, with CSS Grid overlay, Chrome appeared to only show it when mousing over the element in the inspector. Firefox lets you click on the "grid" tag in the inspector to toggle the view, keeping it visible while manipulating the CSS. Note that I'm a full-time Firefox user so it is possible these things exist in Chrome, but like 3 or 4 full-time Chrome users also couldn't find such options.
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) - reasons why I'm not use Fox anymore.
- pnako 7y ago
  This tweet in particular is hilarious: https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858937700311040 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658589377003110...
- Zren 7y ago
  What does firefox say in the "decision log" for your pc in `about:support`? Is hardware acceleration enabled?
  - paulcarroty 7y ago
    Yeah.
newscracker 7y ago
In addition to telling others on HN the benefits of using Firefox and its extensions, please evangelize Firefox with the people you know (online and offline). That will make a bigger impact for everyone.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Or evangelize Chromium, which is faster and less buggy. Also better supported on Linux.
  - newscracker 7y ago
    Chromium dances to Google’s tunes. I don’t see any reason to use or support Chromium, especially with things like Manifest V3 coming in the future and disabling extensions like uBlock Origin. A fork of it that makes it very different from Chrome, perhaps. But not Chromium as is or Chrome.
    - techntoke 7y ago
      Chrome never disabled uBlock Origin. They are making changes to an API and have been open to feedback to ensure adblockers continue to work. The whole propaganda campaign that Chrome was disabling ad-blockers was practically ran by Mozilla itself. I recall however, shortly after Mozilla forgot to renew their certificate and all my extensions in Firefox got disabled, and it took well over a day for a fix. Meanwhile, uBlock continued to work fine in Chromium.
unnouinceput 7y ago
Switched to Firefox a ~year ago from Chrome. uBlock Origins + Privacy Badger + NoScript does wonders. And on Firefox I love private containers, such a joy to be able to do multiple logins for same service.
thibran 7y ago
Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:preferences#privacy > Permission > Notification Settings > Block new requests - about:preferences#privacy > Firefox Data Collection and Use > disable - Set in about:config extensions.pocket.enabled to false - Install the addons: uBlock Origin, Gesturefy, Firefox Multi-Account Containers - I remove the home button - I remove the sidebar button - I reject every Firefox pop-up that wants me to enable Sync or whatever The result is a decent browser, which doesn't get in my way. But I can understand that those steps are too many for casual users and can understand why a lot of people don't like the Internet. I wouldn't like it too, if I had to use default browser settings without an ad-blocker.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Once upon a time, software would go through all of the configuration options and explain what they did. This would always happen on a new installation but good software also had a button to click to repeat the walkthrough. Ode to user-friendly software.
  - reagent_finder 7y ago
    That's not at all true, any and all wizards or configuration dialogues would go over a small subset of settings deemed 'important' by someone. There isn't a single program out there anywhere that has a walkthrough that goes through all configuration options. At least I don't believe one to exist, I would certainly be enthusiastic to be proven wrong! About:config in Firefox has 3930 lines. That would be a very, very, very long walkthrough :) I can see it now, "Okay, to use Firefox, you will now have to click 'next' 4000 times." Thanks.
    - Yoric 7y ago
      I remember installing Linux like that during the (early?) 90s. It took about two days of answering endless questions ("Do you want Klingon fonts?") I much prefer what we get nowadays.
Eli_P 7y ago
I found it interesting how Chrome and FF handle differently cpu-heavy code like this: arr = new ArrayBuffer(4) arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr) t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ; performance.now() - t0 On Windows it takes 2.5 secs even on old chrome versions, while it never finishes on the latest FF. The latter's call stack says firefox.exe!TargetNtUnmapViewOfSection(), xul.dll!get_stored_pointer. I wonder if that happens on other platforms? Update - on my Android: Chrome: 7.5 secs, forever on FF. Weird. If I say a var is typed it should work faster.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  Are you running that in a web page, or in the devtools console? I just tried running it in a web page, with the last line replaced by `console.log(performance.now() - t0);` and on my hardware it finishes in ~1.5 seconds in Firefox and ~2 seconds in Chrome. Similar if I run it in a devtools console like so: (function() { var arr = new ArrayBuffer(4) var arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr) t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ; })(); performance.now() - t0 and hence avoid the undeclared global variable accesses. If I run the original code in the devtools console, it is in fact quite slow in Firefox, because global variable access is slower in the devtools console there. So each get of `arrInt` takes a quite long time. That's https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345 and I suspect that's what you're running into here. The main moral is to not do performance testing in the console, because it's a _very_ different execution environment from actual web pages.
  - Eli_P 7y ago
    > in the devtools console Wow, you are right, thanks. Lesson learned.
acvny 7y ago
Sorry for the stupid question. But can anyone paste a link about why chrome is bad?
- hylaride 7y ago
  It’s a browser made by an advertising company. They’ve made a few decisions lately that have shown that fact (recent changes that have placed limits on third party ad blockers, for example). It’s also gotten more bloated lately. They’ve also forced the integration with google sync. If you sign into google anywhere (including using google to sign in to a third party website), it will sign chrome in as well.
  - acvny 7y ago
    Thanks. Yes automatic browser login when you login into gmail for example is very annoying.
izacus 7y ago
Question I can't find an answer for anywhere: are desktop PWAs supported by Firefox yet? As in, installing them as a desktop app with icon, notifications and everything that goes with it? What about chromecast support?
- techntoke 7y ago
  Did you try it out? No they aren't supported by Firefox. Chromium is much more innovative in this field.
woranl 7y ago
I would like to switch to Firefox too, but it just lacks some of the most key features. It cannot effectively create large blob from chunks through the use of Filesystem & FileWriter API. Yes, I can use IndexedDB for blob storage, but the time required to copy and paste chunks in/out of IndexedDB will grow exponentially for large blob. There is simply no other effective ways to build a large blob from chunks that can work in Firefox. This is why Firefox will always be slow on some modern web app. All other major browsers support Filesystem & FileWriter API: https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem
- kgwxd 7y ago
  What sites need that to run efficiently?
- techntoke 7y ago
  Also Firefox doesn't support installing PWA's to the desktop.
juliend2 7y ago
Not sure why, or if i'm the only one, but sometimes I have this problem with Firefox (latest) on Win10: When I open a new tab, there is a ~50% chance that the URL i'm querying won't ever connect. As if there was no internet. I tried to remove some open tabs (I have ~20 open tabs all the time) and it worked again. When it happens, opening a new tab on Chrome always works, though. I wasn't using a proxy and my internet connexion is pretty stable and fast. Restarting Firefox also helped, IIRC. But I never had such a problem with Chrome, when it was my main browser. Now, this happens every month or so with Firefox.
- frettchen 7y ago
  I have the same issue on openSUSE Leap 15 - it's not Windows specific. I've found that the number of tabs doesn't matter too much - if I copy the URL of the non-loading tab, close the tab, open a new one and paste the URL there, it will load around 9/10 times (if it doesn't, third time is always the charm). Drove me nuts enough that I switched to Brave for a bit as my main driver, but I've been experiencing some crashing from it recently and I miss my bookmark keywords, so I might go back.
  - juliend2 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. I will give other browsers a try as well.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
Firefox has bad performance for my use cases. It crashes around 50% of the time I open Gmail, and the other 50% of the time it crashes with any old tab. I know Gmail is bloated and less performant now but it's been my address for 15 years. Does Mozilla want me to deal with the constant crashes or abandon Firefox or abandon Gmail?
- 51Cards 7y ago
  Interesting, it has to be something specific to your use case or hardware. I have Firefox open 24/7, 150+ tabs (Panorama tab manager), 4 Gmail account tabs (2 personal, 2 work) always pinned open, and FF just never crashes for me. Since Quantum was released it has just been stable.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Interesting to hear your experience with Firefox. Speculatively, it sounds like there's something about your specific system configuration, i.e., other apps or hardware, that's interfering with proper functioning of FF. I've been using Firefox as the primary browser extensively, every day for a few years, and have never seen it crash. A few times I was running code with an infinite loop and managed to crash a tab process, but the rest of the app continued to run fine. That said, I can understand your frustration - but I hope you don't give up on Firefox. In my experience, the switch from Chrome didn't take much time/effort, and well worth it for the peace of mind, using software that respects the user.
ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago across all my devices. Got to say, I should have done it earlier.
- whatever_dude 7y ago
  Ditto. I waited a bit because I was afraid the change would be difficult, I'd be missing something, etc... in the end it was a super smooth transition. Now every time I see some new disastrous Chrome-related news I just nod and move on.
amelius 7y ago
I'm using Firefox 71.0 (64-bit) on Ubuntu, and password fields are completely broken! I've tried disabling add-ons, and running in private mode, nothing helps. The only thing that works is if I run in a different profile where there is no account "Sync".
- techntoke 7y ago
  Firefox on Linux is considered a second-class citizen compared to Chromium.
jcrben 7y ago
If only they had built-in keyboard shortcut customization.
dmje 7y ago
I dunno why Brave doesn't get more airtime. All the good things about Chrome, none of the creepy
- techntoke 7y ago
  Built on Chrome. Encourages ads. Company built by homophobic CEO. Sounds more creepy to me.
mikelyons 7y ago
One day after enabling 2-factor auth for AdWords, all google services started to give the "this browser is insecure" error and I was unable to log into _any_ google services in Chrome. Things worked fine in Firefox, so I switched over 100%. It's something I'd been considering for a while as Google appears to be getting more evil over time. Hardly had to do any configuration except installing adblocker and password manager. The only annoyance is that scrolling behavior is slightly different and less easy to control than in Chrome.
azinman2 7y ago
I tried to use Firefox on a new install of elementary OS with nvidia drivers installed. Full screen video was super choppy. I installed Chrome, and it was perfect. I don’t want to have to debug this.. I just want it to work, so yet again Firefox gets put on the back burner for me. Maybe one day...
tuan 7y ago
I tried to switch to Firefox, but it randomly freezes after my mac wakes up from sleep, so after a month or so I had to go back to Chrome.
stevenicr 7y ago
I have to use chrome on one device, and the only thing I like about it is that it will warn you when you try to download the same thing a second time - this would nice in firefox maybe.. saving web pages, or mp4 files - chrome will pop up with "again?" or something.
ryan8020 7y ago
I still try to get away from safari, so many things keep not working how I want them to. But I guess I'm just too locked in by using the keychain and nowadays apple pay.
Aperocky 7y ago
Switched when quantum came out and never looked back. No complaints.
f0rfun 7y ago
Can someone EIL5 what's so wrong about Chrome?

568 points by nachtigall 7y ago

Firefox is great, and I've had an amazing experience on both mobile and desktop ever since I switched almost a year ago. I only wish that their password manager allowed you to import passwords in standard formats from other password managers.

sm4rk0 7y ago
You can try this 3rd party tool if your password manager supports exporting to CSV (or if you can convert the exported passwords to CSV): https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass And here are some hints about the CSV structure: https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass/pull/46/files https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass/pull/46/files
kiwijamo 7y ago
I find the Bitwarden extension is very good. The advantage of using an independent password store is that you can use it on other platforms. For example, Bitwarden provides iOS integration which provides autofill in both Safari and even within individual apps (which is a huge time-saver). In the future you may move to a different browser, and Bitwarden (or your independent password manager of choice) will most likely have an extension for that browser too so you can start using it straight away. I love Firefox but I honestly can't see any reason to lock myself into its password store.

bennyz 7y ago

I am still missing chrome-like profiles

ypeter 7y ago
Have you tried Multi-Account Containers? It’s not the same but for me it works (I want to be logged in with various accounts on the same website)
- philshem 7y ago
  Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- ailideex 7y ago
  I actually prefer the multi-account containers to chrome's profile approach.
- bennyz 7y ago
  Containers are nice and I use them, but unfortunately they are not enough since they are not synced and don't solve the bookmarks issue
- jpalomaki 7y ago
  Multi-account containers is the reason why I'm using Firefox. Too bad it is just an extension and not a first-class feature. The settings are not synced with other Firefox settings. Somewhat annoying as there is lot of work to setup the container settings if you happen loose then.
anfilt 7y ago
Firefox does have support for multiple profiles. You just to need to set it up. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... Also if you want to prompt what profile to use every time you use firefox just add -P like this "firefox.exe -P" in your shortcut/softlink or script that starts firefox.
- m0zg 7y ago
  It just doesn't have usable profile switching. Sounds like something a competent engineer should be able to implement in a week, yet users have been begging for it for a decade and it's still not there. This is the only thing that holds me on Chrome.
  - glandium 7y ago
    try about:profiles
    - dhimes 7y ago
      I think his point is that if you have to do about:profiles, then that's not usable for a lot of people. Having something that works like containers is a lot more usable: click, select profile.
      - glandium 7y ago
        My point is that about:profiles improves upon -P. But cf. their other post, they're actually after containers, not profiles.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Whereas in Chrome I _don't have to_ "try about:profiles". The very basic requirement for me is this: I want to completely separate my "work" internet from my "personal" internet, yet I also want to be able to easily switch between the two. Firefox makes this unnecessarily difficult and un-ergonomic.
andrepd 7y ago
Containers?
windyzboy 7y ago
I installed 2 Firefox apps at the same time in my Mac, one for work and one for personal. How to do that? First, install Firefox and in Applications, rename Firefox.app to My-personal-Firefox.app . Then, install Firefox again, it will be Firefox.app. Here is what I did with FirefoxNightly, but it's possible to do so with Firefox: https://imgur.com/a/Zy2iDkK https://imgur.com/a/Zy2iDkK (note: for more convenience, I have changed the app's icon)

_tkzm 7y ago

the custom search engines and the banning of dissenter extension is why i am still on chrome. ff failed me on technical and personal level with these. at least with chrome/google ... the devil you know.

andrepd 7y ago
Your answer to ff refusing to host an extension and forcing you to sideload it is to move to a platform that has continuous and proven censorship and surveillance track record? Doesn't make much sense to me.
- hydgu 7y ago
  Chrome has continuous and proven censorship? I think they are more or less on the same page than Firefox: they have their curated "app store" and they inconvenience you if you try to bypass it. I would use Firefox if they actually were more open and free than Chrome. But if they are the same, just slower, then why would I want to support Mozilla?
dfsdfklgjljg 7y ago
At least ff supports sideloading, while chrome.. doesn't. And if you use ff ESR, you can also freely sideload unsigned addons.

dzink 7y ago

I have been using Firefox for a few months and I’ve noticed browsers on Windows are far slower than on Mac (despite much faster hardware). Is that normal / happening to you as well? Firefox on Windows seems noticeably slower than Chrome. (Any page from entering address to seeing content feels ridiculously slow) I still use it for privacy, but I wonder if there is something I could do to speed it up.

Neil44 7y ago
I read some similar comments recently and tried switching to Chrome, but did not find it any faster, even on YouTube and gmail. Maybe it’s machine and webpage specific.
guitarbill 7y ago
haven't really noticed it myself. if anything, i though video acceleration works a bit better on windows
bboygravity 7y ago
What I find mind blowing is that it takes gigabytes (of RAM and/or other local storage) to load a couple of websites. Regardless of which browser is used.
- eloisant 7y ago
  What you call "a couple of websites" are actually full-blown applications. Your browser is more a virtual machine than a document reader. Also, applications tend to use RAM when it's available. Think of all the cache, typically that's why back is snappy (it doesn't re-render the page from scratch). Maybe it would make you feel good to see a lot of unused RAM, but since it's there, it's better to use it than not.
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    Well, maybe the point I'm trying to make is that they shouldn't be applications. Hackernews could take 100's of megabytes to load (like pretty much all of the other similar websites do). RAM, page file or otherwise. But it doesn't. It could be a complex application. But it isn't. And it shouldn't be. Also, I don't think having "too much RAM" is the issue on my 16 GB machine. I routinely have to just shut down the browser entirely to be able to properly do CAD work. Party like it's 1995. Even if these websites are "legit applications" for good reasons, putting the processing burden on the client is still a choice. There are efficient ways to leave most of the processing to the server. Example: https://www.phoenixframework.org/ https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Disclaimer: correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just an EE guy with shallow limited knowledge on web stuff.

clement_b 7y ago

I did that about a month ago, after more than 10 years with Chrome only. So far so good, apart from battery usage on Android. I sometimes feel it spirals when too many tabs are left open. Desktop, no problem. I have kept Chrome for my work stuff, because I want 100% efficiency / no delay due to my tech choices and I work on a SaaS tool primarily targeting Chrome. I still think Chrome is better when it comes to powering web apps, ahem, made by Google in particular. The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? It seems that other browsers like Brave are also quite good at dealing with privacy, so why Firefox and not Brave?

feanaro 7y ago
> The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.
- dhimes 7y ago
  Yes- so it's important that devs don't build primarily for Chrome. If we succumb to this temptation, then the demise of the web will be our fault. Consumers don't care. They are going to use the one that is most convenient to make work correctly.
- eloisant 7y ago
  I also switched to Firefox a year ago or so, and I liked Chrome accounts better than Firefox containers. I ended up to using them at all and mixing everything, while on Chrome work and personal was cleanly separated.
- kmlx 7y ago
  > Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. 1. all web engines are open source 2. we had multiple engines. it didn't work out, at all. user experience was thrown out the window, technologies weren't implemented, the web was massively fragmented. 3. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contributes to since it's better for everyone's experience.

mgninad 7y ago

I am on FF but i miss having one profile for work and one profile for personal use that i used to have with chrome.

hashhar 7y ago
If you want separate extensions as well, then goto about:profiles. If you want cookie separation, check out Multi Account Containers.
jraph 7y ago
You can use the profile manager. There is a way to do it from the graphical user interface (see the sibling comment), though I just run Firefox using firefox -p Maybe set a different theme / persona on each profile.
hashhar 7y ago
Or see below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911697
matsdb 7y ago
Firefox supports multiple profiles: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
hyperdunc 7y ago
You need the containers extension. It's better than Chrome profiles.
- philshem 7y ago
  Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
jobigoud 7y ago
Firefox probably supported profiles before Chrome even existed. It always saved my life back in the days when you reinstalled the OS and you could just backup/copy over the entire directory of the profile. Personally I edit the Firefox shortcut to add -p at the end of the target to get the profile manager showing up every time I launch. I also use this when I spend a few weeks on a different machine at work: create a new profile, synchronize it with my account, then when I leave I nuke the entire profile.

dimator 7y ago

Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!" Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talking about the merits of the argument (I switched to Firefox), I'm just talking about how much of an echo chamber this is.

notkaiho 7y ago
Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Right closed garden ? How do so many chromium forks exist ? Google could have closed sourced it from the start.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Not really, since it’s based on (LGPL) WebKit code.
- dimator 7y ago
  So we have to bring it up every few days? Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.
mav3rick 7y ago
Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in, they mask it as some sort of far left viewpoint that forces them to oppose Google at every opportunity. Google can solve world hunger and HN would still blame them for a "PR" stunt.

saykou 7y ago

I would like to use firefox yet it takes way more ram to run than chrome. so for me is a non issue.

dnpp123 7y ago

Am I the only one not able to switch from Chrome to Firefox because of performances issues (2yo laptop) ? According to : https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-70-chrome-78&num=5 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-... firefox still has some work to do....

thinkingemote 7y ago
I'm on an old laptop with a CPU graph on my top panel. It appears that Firefox uses more CPU than chromium and so I use Chromium when in battery power or when I forget my power cable! The other thing I dislike with new Firefox is the removal of the ability to change the size of the tabs and alter the window decorations so that they still take up valuable screen estate on smaller netbooks. Chromium isn't any better but does have the option to remove the window title bar.

sschueller 7y ago

Firefox is great but not so great is asking users to automatically use Cloudflair's DoH service. Let me pick which DoH I want to use.

Iolaum 7y ago
They are working on that and recently announced a partnership with nextDNS as a provider.
Jallal 7y ago
I may have misunderstood the issue, but you can choose the DoH provider you want to use (Menu > Options > General > Network Seetings > Enable DNS over HTTPS > Custom). Sure, a default has to be provided, but most of the people who will activate this option knows what they're doing, and which provider they want to use/avoid.
kiwijamo 7y ago
It hasn't asked me to, as you say, automatically use Cloudflare's DoH service. The default seems to have DoH disabled.
- majewsky 7y ago
  It's not rolled out everywhere yet. AFAIK they only activate it for US users, and it may only be activated for a subset of those (not sure about that part).
  - kiwijamo 7y ago
    I am outside the US so that explains it, thank you.
matsdb 7y ago
In OpenBSD DoH is disabled by default [1] :-) [1] https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190911113856 https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190911113856
7y ago

LoSboccacc 7y ago

I'm using Firefox as primary browser since Chrome war on as blockers and it works fine for the most part but it's quite rough around the edges my biggest grows come from the omnibar, it still has a heck of a trouble guessing what's a search and what's a domain, the sorting out partial matches feels weird because bookmarks aren't prominent and there's no promotion of URLs entered Vs useless navigated toward and three default click action (append to bottom of the URL) might be fine if you are a developer but it's not for the most part what I want as a user. edit: thanks all for the suggestions edit2: imagine being so committed into a browser religion to downvote facts

ysavir 7y ago
I still keep a search bar separate from the address bar. I find it makes things much simpler. The address bar is where I can type in URLs and search through my bookmarks. The search bar is where I enter searches and can explore search history. I've never liked the idea of an "omnibar", and the dual setup has been a much better experience.
zachwood 7y ago
Instead of hitting `ctrl+l` hit `ctrl+k` (or cmd) and you get a naked search directly to your default search engine.
- _Microft 7y ago
  Search keywords are super useful if one uses more than one search frequently. (I found tabbing to the correct engine in the search bar clumsy) I have short (mostly two letters, very few with three) search commands for Google, Bing, Amazon, en/de translation search, Duden (german dictionary) Wikipedia in german and english and gaming wikis for example.
_Microft 7y ago
There are some ways to refine the results in the Firefox adress bar, in case you already know what you are looking for. I mainly use * + and % : Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history. Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks. Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged. Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs. Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed. Add # to search for matches in page titles. Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs). Edit: it looks as if one can search for the input by prepending a ? to it. This will hide any other (local) results from the omnibar, giving easy keyboard access (by direction keys) to the list of search engines at the end of the list.

philshem 7y ago

For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature “multi-account containers” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

mendelmaleh 7y ago
Or maybe don't... I relied too much on it, and lost quite some data. Too bad it had no sync capabilities, or even basic import/export for backing up.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  What type of data did you loose ? The addon seems to isolate cookies and storage by container
  - mendelmaleh 7y ago
    Yes... I had sessions in those containers, the cookies are the data I guess.
- philshem 7y ago
  Can you explain? It’s a puzzling comment about containers
  - KaiserPro 7y ago
    There was/is a button that allowed you to clear your default container's entire session. I almost clicked that.
  - lawn 7y ago
    I've had problems where it loses my settings after update. They also don't sync between devices, making them quite cumbersome for me to use (you can copy the settings manually though). When it's all setup it works great though.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

Firefox user here too! Chrome is on not my side, it's only to make sure Google increases their revenue.

ailideex 7y ago

I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux - both Fedora 31 and RHEL 8). In general I like FireFox more and prefer features like multi-account-containers so I'm quite sad to have to use chrome.

tenant 7y ago
I'm back using firefox full time since about 3 months and don't notice that at all. In fact I now struggle to remember why I ever moved to chrome in the first place, I know there were reasons but I can't remember what they were. Moving back was surprisingly painless. If I could find a similarly easy and good path out of gmail I'd be gone tomorrow.
- kiwijamo 7y ago
  I recommend FastMail if you're willing to pay for your email services. They have an excellent import tool to help with migrating your email from Gmail.
  - RexM 7y ago
    I 2nd the Fastmail recommendation.
  - kevinkeller 7y ago
    There was some talk of privacy concerns with FastMail, due to Australian laws: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia#Assistance_and_Access_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia...
    - RandomBacon 7y ago
      Went it comes to governments spying on people, I weigh Fastmail the same as Gmail. Considering I find everything else about Fastmail better than Gmail, I am slowly making the switch (using my own domain names though so I could potentially switch again in the future).

SubZtep 7y ago

The main reason I switched to Firefox was an extension where I can see all of my tabs on a sidebar. I don't think it's possible with Chrome until they introduce sidebar pane. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

dfsdfklgjljg 7y ago

Loyal firefox user here. Never touched chrome unless I had to. The australis days were rough, but since quantum it's been feeling fast. It doesn't even feel obviously slower than chrome anymore.

hrgiger 7y ago

if someone has more details: I remember years ago that when I was digging FF source code I saw it was using chromium source code (not everywhere but for the CSS engine and extensions i think),that was the time servo was in consideration, is it still the case? I personally dont mind that I use both chromium + FF with some firewall rules but it always gave me impression that while FF using chromium source it does an advertise like completely different, isolated secure platform. Here is quick search just on "chrome" keyword on source code repo. https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/search?q=chrome&unscoped_q=chrome https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/search?q=chrome&unscope...

EmilStenstrom 7y ago
Searching for "chrome" like that likely gets matches for another kind of chrome. Firefox calls everything that's outside of the web page (navigation controls and so on) for the "browser chrome". So many of those hits are simply for other things.
AshamedCaptain 7y ago
Both the word Chrome and the Firefox codebase are a decade earlier than Google's Chrome. Google just reused the word either for the lulz or perhaps in order to create the confusion you seem to be manifesting.
zaphirplane 7y ago
Chrome is Mozilla terminology pre existing the chrome browser There is even https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1248747 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1248747 to explain it in depth
- hrgiger 7y ago
  Thanks for the link and light for my ignorance! it was interesting read, I didnt know that chrome was a term
shrikant 7y ago
No shared codebase (or even conspiracy!) here -- it's just referring to user interface elements. Definition: Chrome is the visual design elements that give users information about or commands to operate on the screen's content (as opposed to being part of that content). These design elements are provided by the underlying system — whether it be an operating system, a website, or an application — and surround the user's data. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/

keyP 7y ago

I switched to FF for my daily driver almost a year ago on my Windows machine and haven't looked back. Previously FF had too many performance issues but since each tab is run in a separate process, it's been just as good as Chrome (not so much on OSX however, I still use Chrome there). The other advantage of FF for me, besides Pocket, is that I can share and send pages with FF on Android which has support for ad-blockers. Last time I checked, Chrome didn't support extensions on Android.

inetknght 7y ago
I wish Pocket didn't come enabled by default. It's intrusive spyware. Edit: It's information leaks for advertisements. I switched from Chrome to Firefox to get away from advertisement empires. Having to manually disable Pocket to do that leaves a sour note.
- angott 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, can you elaborate on that?
- zachwood 7y ago
  > It's intrusive spyware. Please explain.
- czechdeveloper 7y ago
  Pocket is owned by Mozilla, so if Pocket is spyware, Mozilla is making spyware. Does not sound right.
  - hydgu 7y ago
    Yeah, they would never do that. https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i... "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit" Ooops.
    - 7y ago

levani 7y ago

I switched from Chrome to Firefox on my old Macbook pro and overall it really feels faster and more responsive.

update 7y ago
Ah, I've been using firefox for web dev stuff on my old Macbook pro and I've noticed it's a lot faster than it was last year. Definitely considering making the plunge as speed has been the only thing that's held me back from switching to FF.

haunter 7y ago

I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

foepys 7y ago
Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.
- prox 7y ago
  Is 1000 tabs open a replacement for bookmarks? I can’t imagine a workflow where having this many open would be advantageous.
  - rishav_sharan 7y ago
    sort of. I have 100-200 tabs in FF as well and i just use these open tabs like bookmarks.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    In my case yes. I do not like the UI for bookmarks and the UI for tabs is closer to what I would want for a bookmark UI.
sam_goody 7y ago
I am a heavy tab user as well (sometimes crawling above 500) and have found Firefox MUCH better than Chrome. Way, incomparably much better. Better memory and usability of computer (Chrome lugs and lags and my iMac and Macbook). Normal tabs instead of vanishingly small tabs. All my tabs on restart (Chrome has several times been unable to recover tabs on a restart over the past few years) and quick restart. And, though I don't use it, there is sidebar tabs for FF. I have 4GB ram on laptop. Curious why our experience differs. What platform are you on?

foxfired 7y ago

Having multiple small tutorials like these will make it easy for anyone who wants to move to Firefox. The more the merrier. That said, I still can't get used to Firefox. It's fine on desktop, and using profiles is not too much of a big deal for me. But on mobile, Firefox is not as intuitive as chrome is to me. On my phone I have Chrome, which I only ever use if a website fails on all other browsers, I have Brave as my daily driver, and Firefox because I want to make it my default. I just can't navigate as easily on Firefox as I can on Chromium browsers. An example, when I use HN, I open links on a new tab and I can swipe the header left or right to navigate from tab to tab. Easy breezy. On Firefox, I have to click on the tab menu, figure out where I am, and read titles to know where I am going. Every single time I forget, I end up clicking on many tabs before I find where I am going. Don't know if this feature in Firefox's pipeline, but that's the only thing stopping me from making the switch.

mdibaiee 7y ago
That's a good idea to propose to Mozilla for the new "Firefox Preview" which is a new version built from the ground up. They are open to innovations on that version and so far they already have made some experiments there. You might want to try it out and leave this idea as a feedback on the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...
sundarurfriend 7y ago
> That said, I still can't get used to Firefox. Ironic username, then.
matsemann 7y ago
Firefox for android supports addons, though, so can be customized to do anything. I can't believe people use Chrome om Android when you can have Fx with ad blocking! For your problem, I use an addon called "simple gesture" that allows me to add all kinds of gestures/actions.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Assuming it's https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gesture/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gestur...: any ideas why does it need to "access my data for all websites" and "access the clipboard"? Curiously the blurb recommends "Quick Gestures" which presumably is a different gesture addon.

psv1 7y ago

For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good. I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.

earenndil 7y ago
Or just ungoogled chromium. Brave is bizarre and terrible. The idea of trying to replace ad-tech as it currently exists is great, and I welcome any experimentation thereunto. That said, brave does it wrong, and I don't think it's a good idea to support that; even without using their ad-tech feature, it still gives them mind- and market-share, and propagates their ad system elsewhere.
yalooze 7y ago
Vivaldi is another Chrome fork with a strong focus on privacy. From the original creators of Opera.
- computerfriend 7y ago
  Vivaldi is non-free and closed source.
anon_alchemist 7y ago
Brave blocks all ads and provides its own "ad platform" which basically means that they curate what ads you will see. I fail to see how their model could fix what is wrong with facebook or google.
- psv1 7y ago
  Their ad model is what gets discussed every time Brave comes up and it's irrelevant to me - I block all ads myself regardless of the browser. My point is that if you switch ads off in Brave, you end up with a really good browsing experience, better than Chrome + adblock or Firefox + adblock.

r_singh 7y ago

I use Safari full-time and am pretty happy with it. Pinned tabs, the keyboard shortcuts, developer options, ghostery extension, I find everything pretty neat. Anyone else here feel the same?

deepburner 7y ago
I would use it since it's the native browser but last I checked it didn't have any proper ad blockers due to apple shenanigans. I would consider swapping back if I could use ublock origin.
- baggachipz 7y ago
  This is the one reason I still use Firefox. They care less about privacy, but the inability of Safari to have a proper ad blocker is a deal-breaker.
- dan1234 7y ago
  I use Adguard with Safari 13, which has a bit of a clunky startup but doesn't seem to affect performance once everything is running & does a decent enough job of blocking trackers/ads.
rhlsthrm 7y ago
I'm a full time Safari user. I love the "Share" button built in which lets me easily AirDrop and iMessage tabs I want to share between devices or with friends. It also feels faster on my MacBook and uses way less RAM. I open Chrome tabs only occasionally if I need specific extensions (Metamask for crypto stuff), run into webapps that simply work better on Chrome (Shopify for example), or to use the dev tools.

i2shar 7y ago

I switched to Firefox from Chrome a couple of months ago. The sole motivation was the fiasco that ensued after Google decided to mingle Chrome Sync login with accounts.google.com cookies - there is simply no way to sign in to Chrome Sync without creating browser cookies for the same account. I wanted the benefit of saving and syncing bookmarks and extensions across my chrome installations, but I did not want to be tracked across the web with my logged in Google identity and the Chrome changes for "Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar" made it impossible. It was time to move on from Chrome. And I have been very pleased with the new Firefox. Highly recommend it to everyone!

runn1ng 7y ago

Switching saved passwords (with the built in password managers) between Firefox, Chrome and Safari is a pain. I remember that in order to get my passwords from Chrome to Firefox on macOS, I needed to install a virtual machine with Windows, and log in to Chrome and Firefox there.

maple3142 7y ago

One of the reason why I haven't switch from Chrome to Firefox again is Join still don't have a Firefox extension: https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/ https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/ Another reason is I had switched to Firefox just after Firefox Quantum came out, and eventually switched back to Chrome because it didn't give me a good experience at that time. (buggy devtool, many unfamiliarity)

perttir 7y ago
The devtool is nice nowadays. It supports inspecting websocket messages, log events and has a multi-line support for console.

foray1010 7y ago

7. Remove Chrome and never look back.

butz 7y ago

Migrated to Firefox on my work PC after Chrome removed protocol display in URL bar and all flags to revert this change - that was the last straw.

jonny383 7y ago

Firefox has indeed come a huge way in the last two years. - It's multi-process architecture redesign _really_ improved performance (it's like using a whole new browser, honestly. If you haven't at least tried it, it's worth a shot). - Mozilla's commitment to privacy (I know in the eyes of some, their current commitment isn't enough) is the best option you have outside of Safari / macOS. - In version 71, battery drain on macOS is indeed largely improved - The multi-account containers, anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting are a breath of fresh air (yes, I know they are not perfect). I am satisfied that each time I sign on to YouTube, my recommended videos are just a bunch of random things. - Firefox looks like it will remain one of the only browsers that fully supports current ad-blocking technology. (Yes, I know about Brave, but that's besides the point). - The devtools section has seen a lot of attention that easily brings the experience on par with Chrome (in my experience). - Firefox on Android with AdBlock drastically speeds up browsing the internet on mobile devices. But, despite all of these good points, the browser still feels... clunky. Sure, the UI performance drastically improved since Quantum, but really, open a fresh Firefox window, browse to your favorite site and click around a little. Then, try the same thing with Chrome / Chromium / Edge. I don't know exactly what it is, but these other browsers just feel that little bit "smoother" or more "modern". Say what you will about Google and Chrome. But morals aside, in my opinion, there's no denying they built a world-leading software product that has vastly increased the perceived quality expectations of browser users. Note: I still remain a primary Firefox user. The eye-candy is nice, but for me it's not worth sacrificing all of the other pros of Firefox. EDIT: grammar

beanaroo 7y ago
The difference is quite noticeable for me when using Atlassian's Cloud products. May their framework is simply optimised for Chrome. I also really do hope Firefox gains hardware video acceleration on Linux some day.
Izkata 7y ago
> - The devtools section has seen a lot of attention that easily brings the experience on par with Chrome (in my experience). I regularly encounter things Firefox's devtools do that Chrome's don't, when trying to show something or other to a co-worker. Two I remember offhand: * Showing a specific log level in the console, such as "info" and not any of the others. This was years ago, but at least at the time Chrome had you pick from a dropdown and it would always also display the more important levels - for example, "info" included "warning" and "error" with no way to hide those. * A few weeks ago, with CSS Grid overlay, Chrome appeared to only show it when mousing over the element in the inspector. Firefox lets you click on the "grid" tag in the inspector to toggle the view, keeping it visible while manipulating the CSS. Note that I'm a full-time Firefox user so it is possible these things exist in Chrome, but like 3 or 4 full-time Chrome users also couldn't find such options.

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) - reasons why I'm not use Fox anymore.

pnako 7y ago
This tweet in particular is hilarious: https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858937700311040 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658589377003110...
Zren 7y ago
What does firefox say in the "decision log" for your pc in `about:support`? Is hardware acceleration enabled?
- paulcarroty 7y ago
  Yeah.

newscracker 7y ago

In addition to telling others on HN the benefits of using Firefox and its extensions, please evangelize Firefox with the people you know (online and offline). That will make a bigger impact for everyone.

techntoke 7y ago
Or evangelize Chromium, which is faster and less buggy. Also better supported on Linux.
- newscracker 7y ago
  Chromium dances to Google’s tunes. I don’t see any reason to use or support Chromium, especially with things like Manifest V3 coming in the future and disabling extensions like uBlock Origin. A fork of it that makes it very different from Chrome, perhaps. But not Chromium as is or Chrome.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Chrome never disabled uBlock Origin. They are making changes to an API and have been open to feedback to ensure adblockers continue to work. The whole propaganda campaign that Chrome was disabling ad-blockers was practically ran by Mozilla itself. I recall however, shortly after Mozilla forgot to renew their certificate and all my extensions in Firefox got disabled, and it took well over a day for a fix. Meanwhile, uBlock continued to work fine in Chromium.

unnouinceput 7y ago

Switched to Firefox a ~year ago from Chrome. uBlock Origins + Privacy Badger + NoScript does wonders. And on Firefox I love private containers, such a joy to be able to do multiple logins for same service.

thibran 7y ago

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:preferences#privacy > Permission > Notification Settings > Block new requests - about:preferences#privacy > Firefox Data Collection and Use > disable - Set in about:config extensions.pocket.enabled to false - Install the addons: uBlock Origin, Gesturefy, Firefox Multi-Account Containers - I remove the home button - I remove the sidebar button - I reject every Firefox pop-up that wants me to enable Sync or whatever The result is a decent browser, which doesn't get in my way. But I can understand that those steps are too many for casual users and can understand why a lot of people don't like the Internet. I wouldn't like it too, if I had to use default browser settings without an ad-blocker.

inetknght 7y ago
Once upon a time, software would go through all of the configuration options and explain what they did. This would always happen on a new installation but good software also had a button to click to repeat the walkthrough. Ode to user-friendly software.
- reagent_finder 7y ago
  That's not at all true, any and all wizards or configuration dialogues would go over a small subset of settings deemed 'important' by someone. There isn't a single program out there anywhere that has a walkthrough that goes through all configuration options. At least I don't believe one to exist, I would certainly be enthusiastic to be proven wrong! About:config in Firefox has 3930 lines. That would be a very, very, very long walkthrough :) I can see it now, "Okay, to use Firefox, you will now have to click 'next' 4000 times." Thanks.
  - Yoric 7y ago
    I remember installing Linux like that during the (early?) 90s. It took about two days of answering endless questions ("Do you want Klingon fonts?") I much prefer what we get nowadays.

Eli_P 7y ago

I found it interesting how Chrome and FF handle differently cpu-heavy code like this: arr = new ArrayBuffer(4) arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr) t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ; performance.now() - t0 On Windows it takes 2.5 secs even on old chrome versions, while it never finishes on the latest FF. The latter's call stack says firefox.exe!TargetNtUnmapViewOfSection(), xul.dll!get_stored_pointer. I wonder if that happens on other platforms? Update - on my Android: Chrome: 7.5 secs, forever on FF. Weird. If I say a var is typed it should work faster.

bzbarsky 7y ago
Are you running that in a web page, or in the devtools console? I just tried running it in a web page, with the last line replaced by `console.log(performance.now() - t0);` and on my hardware it finishes in ~1.5 seconds in Firefox and ~2 seconds in Chrome. Similar if I run it in a devtools console like so: (function() { var arr = new ArrayBuffer(4) var arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr) t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ; })(); performance.now() - t0 and hence avoid the undeclared global variable accesses. If I run the original code in the devtools console, it is in fact quite slow in Firefox, because global variable access is slower in the devtools console there. So each get of `arrInt` takes a quite long time. That's https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345 and I suspect that's what you're running into here. The main moral is to not do performance testing in the console, because it's a _very_ different execution environment from actual web pages.
- Eli_P 7y ago
  > in the devtools console Wow, you are right, thanks. Lesson learned.

acvny 7y ago

Sorry for the stupid question. But can anyone paste a link about why chrome is bad?

hylaride 7y ago
It’s a browser made by an advertising company. They’ve made a few decisions lately that have shown that fact (recent changes that have placed limits on third party ad blockers, for example). It’s also gotten more bloated lately. They’ve also forced the integration with google sync. If you sign into google anywhere (including using google to sign in to a third party website), it will sign chrome in as well.
- acvny 7y ago
  Thanks. Yes automatic browser login when you login into gmail for example is very annoying.

izacus 7y ago

Question I can't find an answer for anywhere: are desktop PWAs supported by Firefox yet? As in, installing them as a desktop app with icon, notifications and everything that goes with it? What about chromecast support?

techntoke 7y ago
Did you try it out? No they aren't supported by Firefox. Chromium is much more innovative in this field.

woranl 7y ago

I would like to switch to Firefox too, but it just lacks some of the most key features. It cannot effectively create large blob from chunks through the use of Filesystem & FileWriter API. Yes, I can use IndexedDB for blob storage, but the time required to copy and paste chunks in/out of IndexedDB will grow exponentially for large blob. There is simply no other effective ways to build a large blob from chunks that can work in Firefox. This is why Firefox will always be slow on some modern web app. All other major browsers support Filesystem & FileWriter API: https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem

kgwxd 7y ago
What sites need that to run efficiently?
techntoke 7y ago
Also Firefox doesn't support installing PWA's to the desktop.

juliend2 7y ago

Not sure why, or if i'm the only one, but sometimes I have this problem with Firefox (latest) on Win10: When I open a new tab, there is a ~50% chance that the URL i'm querying won't ever connect. As if there was no internet. I tried to remove some open tabs (I have ~20 open tabs all the time) and it worked again. When it happens, opening a new tab on Chrome always works, though. I wasn't using a proxy and my internet connexion is pretty stable and fast. Restarting Firefox also helped, IIRC. But I never had such a problem with Chrome, when it was my main browser. Now, this happens every month or so with Firefox.

frettchen 7y ago
I have the same issue on openSUSE Leap 15 - it's not Windows specific. I've found that the number of tabs doesn't matter too much - if I copy the URL of the non-loading tab, close the tab, open a new one and paste the URL there, it will load around 9/10 times (if it doesn't, third time is always the charm). Drove me nuts enough that I switched to Brave for a bit as my main driver, but I've been experiencing some crashing from it recently and I miss my bookmark keywords, so I might go back.
- juliend2 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I will give other browsers a try as well.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

Firefox has bad performance for my use cases. It crashes around 50% of the time I open Gmail, and the other 50% of the time it crashes with any old tab. I know Gmail is bloated and less performant now but it's been my address for 15 years. Does Mozilla want me to deal with the constant crashes or abandon Firefox or abandon Gmail?

51Cards 7y ago
Interesting, it has to be something specific to your use case or hardware. I have Firefox open 24/7, 150+ tabs (Panorama tab manager), 4 Gmail account tabs (2 personal, 2 work) always pinned open, and FF just never crashes for me. Since Quantum was released it has just been stable.
lioeters 7y ago
Interesting to hear your experience with Firefox. Speculatively, it sounds like there's something about your specific system configuration, i.e., other apps or hardware, that's interfering with proper functioning of FF. I've been using Firefox as the primary browser extensively, every day for a few years, and have never seen it crash. A few times I was running code with an infinite loop and managed to crash a tab process, but the rest of the app continued to run fine. That said, I can understand your frustration - but I hope you don't give up on Firefox. In my experience, the switch from Chrome didn't take much time/effort, and well worth it for the peace of mind, using software that respects the user.

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago

I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago across all my devices. Got to say, I should have done it earlier.

whatever_dude 7y ago
Ditto. I waited a bit because I was afraid the change would be difficult, I'd be missing something, etc... in the end it was a super smooth transition. Now every time I see some new disastrous Chrome-related news I just nod and move on.

amelius 7y ago

I'm using Firefox 71.0 (64-bit) on Ubuntu, and password fields are completely broken! I've tried disabling add-ons, and running in private mode, nothing helps. The only thing that works is if I run in a different profile where there is no account "Sync".

techntoke 7y ago
Firefox on Linux is considered a second-class citizen compared to Chromium.

jcrben 7y ago

If only they had built-in keyboard shortcut customization.

dmje 7y ago

I dunno why Brave doesn't get more airtime. All the good things about Chrome, none of the creepy

techntoke 7y ago
Built on Chrome. Encourages ads. Company built by homophobic CEO. Sounds more creepy to me.

mikelyons 7y ago

One day after enabling 2-factor auth for AdWords, all google services started to give the "this browser is insecure" error and I was unable to log into _any_ google services in Chrome. Things worked fine in Firefox, so I switched over 100%. It's something I'd been considering for a while as Google appears to be getting more evil over time. Hardly had to do any configuration except installing adblocker and password manager. The only annoyance is that scrolling behavior is slightly different and less easy to control than in Chrome.

azinman2 7y ago

I tried to use Firefox on a new install of elementary OS with nvidia drivers installed. Full screen video was super choppy. I installed Chrome, and it was perfect. I don’t want to have to debug this.. I just want it to work, so yet again Firefox gets put on the back burner for me. Maybe one day...

tuan 7y ago

I tried to switch to Firefox, but it randomly freezes after my mac wakes up from sleep, so after a month or so I had to go back to Chrome.

stevenicr 7y ago

I have to use chrome on one device, and the only thing I like about it is that it will warn you when you try to download the same thing a second time - this would nice in firefox maybe.. saving web pages, or mp4 files - chrome will pop up with "again?" or something.

ryan8020 7y ago

I still try to get away from safari, so many things keep not working how I want them to. But I guess I'm just too locked in by using the keychain and nowadays apple pay.

Aperocky 7y ago

Switched when quantum came out and never looked back. No complaints.

f0rfun 7y ago

Can someone EIL5 what's so wrong about Chrome?