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I switched to Firefox this month. Had to, with everything that's going on in Chrome. After struggling to remember to use Firefox, I just signed out of all my ac
by dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
I switched to Firefox this month. Had to, with everything that's going on in Chrome. After struggling to remember to use Firefox, I just signed out of all my accounts in Chrome. Now I reach for Firefox much more naturally. Soon enough it should take.
Great to see the emphasis on DevTools in this release. DevTools have definitely much improved since I last tried, but they are still glitchy compared to Chrome. For example, I was using the JS debugger, and for some reason breakpoints wouldn't "hold"—after being stopped for some period of time (not long), the page would refresh. Also little things like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957, which I was able to report. It was frustrating. Had to go back to Chrome for development. Still, it was nice to see many features that Chrome doesn't have, like breakpoint logging, which is nice when you want to insert a log into third party code.
And as a browser from a non-dev perspective, it's great. Great to know this browser is all about privacy instead of just trying to provide the bare minimum to keep people on board. Great to have the Facebook Container.
Thank you Firefox!
- Topgamer7 7y agoYeah the debugger certainly still leaves some things to be desired. When using a fairly sizeable react project, I set a XHR breakpoint, it was triggered, then the whole tab became unresponsive (dev tools included)
- sefrost 7y agoThis happens to me a lot in the Chrome developer tools as well. Especially with hot reloading, so would love any advice to help with it. Chrome is the only application I ever have to force quit.
- dmitryminkovsky 7y agoHappens to me in Chrome too, specifically when I reload a page that's stopped at a breakpoint. Instead of force quitting the whole application, check out Window -> Task manager. There you can force quit just a single, specific tab without closing the whole application.
- neetodavid 7y agoThe chrome task manager (hotkey Shift+Esc) is good for killing tabs For large pages where source changes cause problems I will sometimes put logic inside conditional breakpoints. It's not great for huge changes (though you technically can put a lot of code in there) but for small things like quickly sanitizing null inputs it works fine.
- im3w1l 7y agoEverything that's going on?
- kaibee 7y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-ad-blockers-extensions-api/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-ad-blockers-extens...
- dmitryminkovsky 7y agoWell, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430. Bunch of other things too.
- duhi88 7y agoJust Google tracking everything you do in their browser, and preventing you from blocking other trackers.
- kaibee 7y agoYep, did the same thing. Took about two weeks to take.
- gadabout 7y agoSame experience for me. One huge upside is how great the Firefox mobile browser is (as an Android phone user; unsure for iOS). Having uBlock + Dark Reader on my phone has felt like a god-send.
- StavrosK 7y agoThanks for the Dark Reader suggestion, I was looking for exactly that on mobile.
- berelig 7y agoUnfortunately Firefox on iOS doesn't have access to content blockers and can't install its own ad-blockers.
- tokamak-teapot 7y agoInstall Firefox Focus. You can set it as a content blocker for Safari!
- tartoran 7y agoIphone user here. I actually don't bother installing FF on my Iphone because Safari isn't bad at all.
- codewithcheese 7y agoyes this. uBlock on Android mobile has become my main reason not to buy any new iOS devices.
- komali2 7y agoFavorite thing about firefox devtools is in the network tab you can right-click a network request and just resend it as-is. Don't think you can do that in chrome.
- techindex 7y agoYou can - right click and press "Replay XHR", which will resend the request as is.
- actionscripted 7y agoYou can replay XHR in Chrome, but in Firefox you can edit/resend any request (XHR, image, et al.)
- munk-a 7y agoEditing the request isn't as accessible though and I often need to tweak requests.
- agumonkey 7y ago99% of the time I don't miss chrome. Google brand has faded in my mind. TBH chrome still has an edge (slightly slicker, slightly leaner). But it's not worth it.
- wayneftw 7y agoMS Edge now has an edge over Chrome too - it’s even leaner, lighter and faster. If they would just release it for Linux already I’d be using it everywhere.
- rafaelvasco 7y agoYeah, new Edgium is just as slick as Chrome was when it started. I'm now using only Edgium exclusively; Super fast; No lagging anywhere. Super smooth scrolling etc; I hope it stays like that;
- bigato 7y agoYou may like Iridium - it’s chromium with all the google stuff removed.
- Drdrdrq 7y agoIsn't chromium itself chrome with all the google stuff removed?
- CameronNemo 7y agohttps://github.com/iridium-browser/tracker/wiki/Differences-between-Iridium-and-Chromium https://github.com/iridium-browser/tracker/wiki/Differences-...
- stOneskull 7y agoi feel a bit guilty using windows and edge these days. like i'm betraying my principles. but it's just so easy and i have to prioritize stress to what matters.
- 7y ago
- dyingkneepad 7y agoSince you brought up logging out and in, remember that Firefox Containers are very useful for things you wanna let logged in all the time (e.g., Facebook, maybe Google) so their tracking gets a little worse because your cookies are more isolated.
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y agoMy preferred anti-tracking setup is Firefox with the Multi-Account Containers and the Temporary Containers addons (and uBlock Origin of course.) Multi-Account Contaners lets me set up permanent containers for (groups of) sites I want to stay logged in to. I check the "always open this site in <container name>" box. Temporary Containers is set up to open new sites (on middle / control click) in new, temporary containers. These containers work like private browsing windows, but store their data for 10 minutes after being closed. So undo close tab works, history works, but each new site is in its own container. And 10 minutes after its closed (or when the browser as a whole closes) all the cookies get deleted.
- SpaceManNabs 7y agoDon't forget Facebook Container
- brianzelip 7y agoDon’t forget Privacy Badger. Thanks EFF!
- wostusername 7y agoI ran Privacy Badger for a while, but I have never actually seen it do anything. Not sure I messed up something, or if it was due to me already having an aggressive block list on uBlock Origin that left PB with nothing to do.
- stubish 7y agoYes, uBlock Origin leaves little (anything?) for Privacy Badger to do.
- johne20 7y agoOne thing I did to help it "make it stick" when I made the switch was I made a FF Color theme that matches chrome's colors. https://color.firefox.com/?theme=XQAAAAIWAQAAAAAAAABBKYhm849SCia2CaaEGccwS-xNKliFvrJIcAF6ENY3kBjKL2oHo45W2-O_9zhT1cCHfmpw_aHlUQcNiqRlig5VDhRh6gkD53NpQtD-8MX0nXoMuM9PB1MZjK2Bexr0QY-Kl2vGdYdPfP71IdlUbJS5ejOwgR-1aA4n9W1cO_AnrVJxIQDGL3SGBywfCoRw0wSwNIM8CzUDKgDS4LoRfc5TP4Il-UP_2yM8oA https://color.firefox.com/?theme=XQAAAAIWAQAAAAAAAABBKYhm849...
- pca 7y agoSame, except I used Chrome's classic colours: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/familiar-blue/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/familiar-blue... The only thing I'm really missing is how easily you can set up and switch between different profiles in Chrome.
- nine_k 7y agoThere used to be an extension that made profile handling aboutvas easy as in Chrome.
- digitarald 7y agoFirefox member here – thanks a lot for reporting those bugs! Thanks to detailed reports Debugger could improve and glitches should become more and more a rarity.
- dmitryminkovsky 7y agoYou're welcome. Thanks a lot for your work on Firefox! Wish I could have reported the breakpoint page refresh bug, but I wasn't sure how I could possibly isolate/replicate or describe beyond what I described above. And that's probably not very useful? The small one I linked was easy to describe and replicate. Anyway, reporting bugs to Firefox definitely seems worth the time spent because it means having a browser that doesn't exist solely to benefit Google. Long live the World Wide Web! PS. Really like so many other DevTools details I didn't mention in my post above. For example, the '...', 'scroll' and 'flex' indicators/toggles: https://imgur.com/a/yIlhDcJ https://imgur.com/a/yIlhDcJ. Also the console reverse-search with Ctrl-R. And many others.
- underthensun 7y agoSomething I have noticied about Firefox team, it's reporting bugs to them do actually means something. They do put effort to solve them.
- cocoggu 7y agoThanks for your work on Firefox! I feel more comfortable with Firefox Devtools overall, but I keep using Chrome for debugging for one single reason : Firefox can't handle extensive log. I'm working on code where sometimes infinite loops occurs. When I want to investigate on these loops, I cannot use any breakpoints because it's using the same route than it used 10 000 times before, so I usually log a lot of data, then manually kill the Chrome tab and I can still run through 1 million console lines smoothly. Really hope Firefox will be able to handle that one day.
- digitarald 7y agoThat is on our list for sure and some fixes have landed in 74 and 75. More to do for sure, but these issues are a priority in our performance program. > then manually kill the Chrome tab and I can still run through 1 million console lines smoothly How does that work with DevTools – closing the tab and reading logs?
- underthensun 7y agoI'm still on honeymoon with Brave browser. Let's see how long it's going to last. So far, so good.
- xkemp 7y agoAh, the self-anointed "Brave" browser, that believes what humanity really needs is a middleman between publishers and readers, skimming off the ad revenue.
- chrysoprace 7y agoBrave ads are entirely opt-in. By default it only blocks ads in the same way that Firefox's tracking protection does.
- RedComet 7y agoThat's no longer true. I seem to have been opted in to ads on the new tab screen recently.
- zelly 7y agoIt's Chrome with everything that people want from Firefox (privacy features). I use it too. Brendan Eich did it again.
- floriol 7y agoI still don't see what's to like on brave. It's basically chrome with ublock origin and https anywhere and like maybe one or two more privacy-oriented extension - why is there a need for a different browser, like why isn't that only an extension? Also, once chrome disables adblockers I doubt they would have the manpower to fork chromium.
- Latty 7y agoThe flex/grid stuff in Firefox's dev tools is really nice.
- samsepi0l 7y agoThey fixed the performance issues recently on MacOS too, well worth trying to switch again if anyone previously had a poor experience.
- philjohn 7y agoI had to ditch chrome because it performed abysmally, tried to use Safari but just couldn't get used to it, so went back to Firefox and was very pleasantly surprised ... great Mac OS experience.
- kristofferR 7y agoThat has to be a joke, zooming barely works on macOS (and has to be enabled using an about:config flag). It's decent if you just use an old fashioned mouse though and not a magic trackpad.
- AsyncAwait 7y agoPerhaps your experience not only isn't universal, but the magic trackpad may not be all that magical after all.
- philjohn 7y agoTrue - zooming is an abomination compared to Safari ... but I don't zoom that often, so of course, YMMV.
- jorvi 7y agoThey have in theory, but the fix isn't working for a lot of people, and Firefox continues murdering their battery. Firefox devs are aware but AFAIK their attention is focused elsewhere at the moment. Quite sad, because of all the people I got to switch to Firefox, all but one that experiences this issue has switched back to Chromium. Privacy and fighting browser hegemony is great, but stark few people are willing to sacrifice nearly half their battery life for it.
- mnm1 7y agoFF dev tools are on par or even better (IMO) than Chrome, but the last few versions, it seems they have changed/dropped sourcemap support so it doesn't work at all. I went back to FF a couple years ago, but now I'm disappointed that the dev tools are not working properly and will go back for dev purposes only. I hope FF gets it working. I'd file a bug, but 'sourcemap support not working' isn't exactly all that helpful. Anyway, it doesn't work on any of my apps and works fine in Chrome. I hope they fix it at some point as I think their dev tools are generally better than Chrome (esp. the console).
- digitarald 7y agoFirefox dev here – do you have an example page? We worked a lot on source maps, so things should have improved but maybe you hit a regression.
- eyegor 7y agoIf you're interested in dev tools, I can't recommend eval villain enough. It only works on Firefox, but it helps a lot with identifying xss vulnerabilities. https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actually-easy-with-eval-villain https://www.hurricanelabs.com/blog/making-easy-dom-xss-actua...
- dmitryminkovsky 7y agoThank you! I'll check that out.
- tomc1985 7y agoHow much of it is a struggle to "remember how to use Firefox"? It's a web browser. You type your stuff into an address bar and go...
- ZeikJT 7y agoBreakpoint logging sounds like just using conditional breakpoints with a console.log wrapper around the expression, which you can do today. Not saying it's better or worse, but if you need that functionality in Chrome there's your solution :)