8 ms·

This is honestly one of the first time I'm convinced in a technical sense to consider Firefox over Chrome. uBlock Origin feels as core to me to web browsing as

This is honestly one of the first time I'm convinced in a technical sense to consider Firefox over Chrome. uBlock Origin feels as core to me to web browsing as Saved Passwords and Incognito Mode. That uBlock Origin can work better is like the browser itself being better.

bilekas 5y ago
Firefox does seem to have really improved over the last few iterations, performance also when large numbers of tabs open. I cant find the link right now, but there was a nice timings done where Chrome was using less CPU at lower tab counts, but when it increased count, the CPU utilization was considerably higher than FF. I'll be giving it a fair shake for a few months.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Firefox recently rolled out an update that broke up the big GC passes into small GC passes. That contributed to a huge improvement in responsiveness.
  - bilekas 5y ago
    That might have been related to what I was reading, it looked impressive anyway, I did mean to go check out FF then, I guess now is the time !
  - sfink 5y ago
    That sounds great. But as someone who works on the Firefox GC team, I gotta say: what? Or more specifically, I'm wondering what change you could be referring to. We've had incremental GC for many years now, which does exactly what you describe. It's true that we keep splitting up more of the uninterruptible pieces into smaller chunks, but I don't recall any major change there recently. (I'm not very good at marketing, am I?) And according to telemetry, the incremental slices have been working quite well for most people, at least within the last dozen releases or so. We have a budget, and it's rare that we go over it. Not that I fully trust telemetry; if you have counterexamples please file a bug. (I'd love to have a nice set of scenarios that are problematic for the GC. Our telemetry errs strongly on the side of privacy, as it should, so I can't get URLs automatically.)
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      It might not have been that recent. Incremental GC was not new in the patch, what changed was the tuning. It happened some time in the last six months and was a huge improvement for the use case of realtime rendering. At the time I was comparing performance between release and nightly, and it was night and day.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      May I ask you about the “big picture” of how Firefox’s GC work? How does it compare to something like OpenJDK’s ZGC?
- solarkraft 5y ago
  I use Firefox out of principle and because of Sidebery, but WOW, Chromium is faster by a lot from my experience. That is fresh Chromium vs. configured and used Firefox, though.
  - scotu 5y ago
    thanks for getting Sidebery on my radar! I tried treestyletabs and unfortunately it felt somewhat disappointing given how much people seem to like it. At a first try Sidebery looks and feels more modern/slick! Might be what I was looking for!
- bennysomething 5y ago
  True but I've gone back to version 68 on Android. Latest versions don't work with s load of extensions I use. Old Reddit being one of them. And I don't care about cookies
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Yes, Firefox is pretty much unbeatable in performance per tab. I just installed the tab counter addon and it reports that I currently have >1500 tabs open in Firefox. I know from experience that if I run just a tenth of that in Chromium the whole system will basically lock up. And as pretty much every other more conventional browser is based on Chromium nowadays there's no alternative really unless I get a RAM upgrade.
  - diroussel 5y ago
    You can see the tab count without an addon. It's not pretty, but you can do it. Go to: about:telemetry#scalars-tab Then look at: browser.engagement.max_concurrent_tab_count
    - sfink 5y ago
      Ah, but if you use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stats/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stats/ then you can not only get the count, but also be able to mass-close large numbers of tabs (eg specific duplicate URLs, or everything for specific domains). A tab hoarder's best friend. (Pretty clever to use telemetry for this, though.)
voxic11 5y ago
Yeah, I want to point out that uBlock Origin is fully functional on mobile firefox which makes it by far the best browser on Android. Plus with firefox you can do fun things like disable the Wake Lock API on youtube so that you can listen to audiobooks or music with the screen off and ad-free.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- the_duke 5y ago
  My only complaint on mobile is that the UI for customizing settings is annoying, eg for allowing JavaScript. But that's the fault of Firefox. I'm always astonished how bad/slow the mobile web experience is without Ublock with JS blocked by default.
  - amluto 5y ago
    The desktop experience of clicking the drop down is not fantastic: no tooltips and no real explanation of what clicking the empty boxes does.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      yeah, it's the primary reason I still use the (undeveloped) uMatrix. ublock supposedly can do the same things, but umatrix has an amazing interface that's clear and straightforward while ublock is like one of those mobile first (but also only) websites
    - ukyrgf 5y ago
      And you have to actually click submenus to expand them, you don't just hover. And of course other menus like bookmarks open submenus when you hover, so it's a gamble every time.
- 725686 5y ago
  Is it? Last time I tried, here where a bunch of sites that just didn't work.
shmerl 5y ago
Never really got the appeal of Chrome. Firefox worked very well for me for years.
- stevewodil 5y ago
  Yeah I never really got the appeal of Firefox. Chrome worked very well for me for years.
  - HenryBemis 5y ago
    So does the tracking ;)
    - stevewodil 5y ago
      Personally I enjoy being tracked, it's why I got the Covid vaccine
  - timbit42 5y ago
    The appeal is not having Google tracking literally everything you do online.
  - Noughmad 5y ago
    Firefox is older than Chrome. Did you use IE before that or are you just that young?
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  Back when I first started using chrome it was the snappiest and had less memory usage than anything else on the block. Then I started to think about what kind of tracking google was doing with it, so I tried out firefox... which was just as snappy and just as memory efficient. Then I deleted chrome.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    I guess that performance gap didn't bother me at that point to switch to less privacy respecting browser and Firefox caught up well, so I never saw it as a problem.
Sunspark 5y ago
It's my regular browser for years. There's a lot of things it does well or differently. For example, one UI thing I appreciate about it is the ability to override a webpage's font type and size choice. Chromium browsers don't let you do that, you only get to pick if the website didn't pick for you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paxys 5y ago
I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. I also recently started using Firefox full-time on my work machine despite IT strongly mandating that all our tools only work on Chrome and everyone should use that. Have had zero problems (and we use every Google service under the sun).
- milesvp 5y ago
  I have to add my anecdata here as well. I’ve used firefox on *buntu for 8+ years as my primary browser, and have found I only need to open chrome ~1/mo for the rare case where I need chrome (and I suspect my issues may be more tied to linux than firefox specifically).
- karaterobot 5y ago
  > I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. Really? It happens to me all the time. I can't log into my U.S. Bank account in Firefox, I can't submit a delivery order on Doordash in Firefox, and (just this morning) I couldn't validate a credit reporting form in Firefox. Now, despite those and many other examples, I continue to use Firefox as my primary browser, because Chrome has bigger issues in my opinion. I don't blame FF for this, I blame the websites. I just think it sucks that places do not test in or support Firefox better.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Can't say about your bank, but I have used Doordash on Firefox regularly and never had any issues.
  - jamespullar 5y ago
    Is it possible you have an extension blocking scripts or redirects? I'm able to use Doordash just fine on Firefox.
    - karaterobot 5y ago
themgt 5y ago
Google intentionally crippling their own free, market-dominant browser in a way that just-so-happens to make ad-blocking difficult honestly reminds me of the Microsoft anti-trust case back in the late 90s. Google is an ad company doing embrace-extend-extinguish on other markets just to optimize selling your eyes/attention to advertisers.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Google's changes actually make a lot of sense. 99% of extensions out there should not be able to touch user data at all due to the simple fact they'd abuse this privilege. uBlock Origin just happens to be so incredibly important and trusted that an exception should be made for it.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Yet on Google's other large ecosystem (Android), they will happily let apps collect way more private data than this with zero limits in the name of user freedom. In both cases, they made the decision that best serves the company bottom line, nothing more.
ravenstine 5y ago
I think Firefox's shortcomings are overstated. Often they're actually Mozilla's rather than Firefox's. There are other things I consider superior about Firefox that Chrome has yet to implement: - Multi-account containers is a killer feature IMO. I have different containers for banking, Facebook, a container for every email, a container for every Google/YouTube account, and so forth. - The option to enable canvas permission prompts and canvas obfuscation. (though there are some arguments that those make you *more* trackable) - Autoplay blocking and permission prompt - Pop-out videos (aka picture-in-picture) are awesome and make it easy to keep videos on screen while browsing other tabs and apps. - Built-in anti-fingerprinting - Blocks tracking cookies by default I simply won't use a browser that doesn't have these things.
- JonTarg 5y ago
  I love FF. It's fantastic on macOS and the customization beats every single other browser out of the water. BUT, and I know this is controversial, and I know the foundation is not the same as those who manage the browser, after the events on the capitol they released and statements saying something like "deplatforming is not enough" and even though I asked several times, I could never get a confirmation from anyone within the Mozilla Foundation assuring me they would never use telemetry data to spy on "undesirables" or that they would never try to block content they deemed harmful. I get the situation is different, but my parents escaped from two civil wars in Central America in the 70s and the stories they told me about political persecution were scary enough to make me distrust organizations that don't seem to understand nuance when it comes to politics.
  - sfink 5y ago
    I certainly can't offer any official word, but telemetry doesn't have enough data to spy on anyone, and the privacy policy spells this out pretty clearly. And if something snuck in, it's all open source and I imagine people would raise a big stink pretty quickly (whatever their political leanings were). I remember that post, and I think you're mischaracterizing it. The point wasn't that "deplatforming is a good start, but we need to go even farther"; it was "deplatforming is not the right solution, we need something better". As for trying to block harmful content -- Mozilla is already doing that, all the time, so you're certainly not going to get any promise there. Firefox blocks malware, sites with expired/mismatching certificates, things on the (un)safe browsing list, 3rd party cookies in some configurations, etc. Whether any of those constitute censorship is up for you to decide. Right now, it feels fine to me, but I agree that there's reason for concern. All the browsers have all the mechanisms necessary for censorship, and there's no way to crisply define "harmful".
atomicnumber3 5y ago
I just recently (few months ago) switched over to FF from Chrom(e|ium). What pushed me was Google, on short notice, revoking all Sync API keys from all Linux distros, and I'll be damned if I'm going to use software that's as important as my browser from a source like the AUR. The AUR is great mind you, and for a small number of things I accept the risks and burdens that come with using it (auditing the PKGBUILDs on updates etc), but for browser software I just won't on principle. I want that from my distro's packagers. It's been fine so far. The biggest annoyance is that Firefox on iOS struggles a lot with form autofilling, and I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all. You'd think this would be a minor annoyance (don't most sites save your payments methods?) but it's honestly been a big issue. So many sites are so broken on mobile that I actually can't create an account from mobile, and barely function well enough to get through the guest checkout flow. Examples: Jersey Mike's (sub sandwich shop), and another local deli place that's too local for me to name without letting everyone know I live in a cornfield.
- simfree 5y ago
  From whar I have experienced Chrome and Chromium act differently FYI. I would discourage lumping them as one in the same.
- maccam94 5y ago
  Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox, it's Webkit with a Firefox skin (because Apple won't allow any other web engines on iOS).
- Yoofie 5y ago
  > I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all I would consider this a feature, not a bug.
teawrecks 5y ago
Interesting, I haven't run into any issues using ff over chrome for the past several years. It's way more common for my partner who uses chrome to have an issue that they avoid by opening ff.
tomc1985 5y ago
It amazes me that a consensus seems to have formed around this conclusion that Firefox is technically inferior. I have always been using it and it has always been a fantastic browser relatively free of Google's icy tendrils. The technical issues that people bring up about it are usually nonexistent for me, and while I am troubled at its direction it remains an unusually solid and reliable workhorse given the stakes involved and the size of its userbase
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  On a PC I don't have any issues with firefox. On mobile I do. I also am still pissed that they killed almost all the extensions for firefox on mobile.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Well, in js performance it is unfortunately behind in some benchmarks as far as I know. And some major non-standard website refuses to run under firefox, like teams unfortunately (definitely the fault of Microsoft) So I am an FF user by ideology, but sometimes do use Chromium (basically only to not have to run electron).
  - kiwijamo 5y ago
    I am certain that I've used Teams in Firefox? I regularly use other 365 webapps as well with no problems (apart from troubles that are also present in every other browsers).
    - kaba0 5y ago
      I think joining a meeting itself is what doesn’t work (for me at least) under linux. I can log in and use other features.
      - kiwijamo 5y ago
        Ah I see. My employer uses teams quite heavily for its other features but we use Zoom for meetings.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
I've been on Firefox since I switched away from Opera year and years ago and I don't know any technical reason I would use any other browser - not even mentioning the other spyware reasons. What technically do you find missing in FF?
tkiolp4 5y ago
It may sound dumb, but the only reason I don’t use FF is because of its UI. Somehow I think Chrome (and Safari) “look better” and make browsing more enjoyable. And this comes from a “techie” that knows exactly why, objectively, FF is probably better than Chrome in terms of privacy. Can’t Mozilla “just copy” the look and feel of Chrome or Safari while keeping FF’s internals untouched?
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I have the opposite view: Google feels so obsessed with pushing Google branding on Chrome users that the UI seems to constantly be suffering because of it. Apart from a recent discussion to remove the densest UI view, Firefox has generally provided a better, more user-oriented UI than Google.
- iaml 5y ago
  They have a 'proton' redesign landing soon-ish parts of which you can enable via about:config options on dev/nightly that cleans things up a bit.
- AegirLeet 5y ago
  You can customize the UI using CSS. Look up userChrome.css.
grayrest 5y ago
If you do switch, check out the temporary containers addon. It makes use of the Firefox containers tech to provide the anti-tracking benefits of incognito but maintains history and isn't detected by websites as incognito mode.
fastball 5y ago
I like Brave's adblocking better than uBlock Origin anyway. Saying this as a former uBlock Origin fanatic.

bilekas 5y ago

Firefox does seem to have really improved over the last few iterations, performance also when large numbers of tabs open. I cant find the link right now, but there was a nice timings done where Chrome was using less CPU at lower tab counts, but when it increased count, the CPU utilization was considerably higher than FF. I'll be giving it a fair shake for a few months.

whatshisface 5y ago
Firefox recently rolled out an update that broke up the big GC passes into small GC passes. That contributed to a huge improvement in responsiveness.
- bilekas 5y ago
  That might have been related to what I was reading, it looked impressive anyway, I did mean to go check out FF then, I guess now is the time !
- sfink 5y ago
  That sounds great. But as someone who works on the Firefox GC team, I gotta say: what? Or more specifically, I'm wondering what change you could be referring to. We've had incremental GC for many years now, which does exactly what you describe. It's true that we keep splitting up more of the uninterruptible pieces into smaller chunks, but I don't recall any major change there recently. (I'm not very good at marketing, am I?) And according to telemetry, the incremental slices have been working quite well for most people, at least within the last dozen releases or so. We have a budget, and it's rare that we go over it. Not that I fully trust telemetry; if you have counterexamples please file a bug. (I'd love to have a nice set of scenarios that are problematic for the GC. Our telemetry errs strongly on the side of privacy, as it should, so I can't get URLs automatically.)
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    It might not have been that recent. Incremental GC was not new in the patch, what changed was the tuning. It happened some time in the last six months and was a huge improvement for the use case of realtime rendering. At the time I was comparing performance between release and nightly, and it was night and day.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    May I ask you about the “big picture” of how Firefox’s GC work? How does it compare to something like OpenJDK’s ZGC?
solarkraft 5y ago
I use Firefox out of principle and because of Sidebery, but WOW, Chromium is faster by a lot from my experience. That is fresh Chromium vs. configured and used Firefox, though.
- scotu 5y ago
  thanks for getting Sidebery on my radar! I tried treestyletabs and unfortunately it felt somewhat disappointing given how much people seem to like it. At a first try Sidebery looks and feels more modern/slick! Might be what I was looking for!
bennysomething 5y ago
True but I've gone back to version 68 on Android. Latest versions don't work with s load of extensions I use. Old Reddit being one of them. And I don't care about cookies
alpaca128 5y ago
Yes, Firefox is pretty much unbeatable in performance per tab. I just installed the tab counter addon and it reports that I currently have >1500 tabs open in Firefox. I know from experience that if I run just a tenth of that in Chromium the whole system will basically lock up. And as pretty much every other more conventional browser is based on Chromium nowadays there's no alternative really unless I get a RAM upgrade.
- diroussel 5y ago
  You can see the tab count without an addon. It's not pretty, but you can do it. Go to: about:telemetry#scalars-tab Then look at: browser.engagement.max_concurrent_tab_count
  - sfink 5y ago
    Ah, but if you use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stats/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stats/ then you can not only get the count, but also be able to mass-close large numbers of tabs (eg specific duplicate URLs, or everything for specific domains). A tab hoarder's best friend. (Pretty clever to use telemetry for this, though.)

voxic11 5y ago

Yeah, I want to point out that uBlock Origin is fully functional on mobile firefox which makes it by far the best browser on Android. Plus with firefox you can do fun things like disable the Wake Lock API on youtube so that you can listen to audiobooks or music with the screen off and ad-free.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
the_duke 5y ago
My only complaint on mobile is that the UI for customizing settings is annoying, eg for allowing JavaScript. But that's the fault of Firefox. I'm always astonished how bad/slow the mobile web experience is without Ublock with JS blocked by default.
- amluto 5y ago
  The desktop experience of clicking the drop down is not fantastic: no tooltips and no real explanation of what clicking the empty boxes does.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    yeah, it's the primary reason I still use the (undeveloped) uMatrix. ublock supposedly can do the same things, but umatrix has an amazing interface that's clear and straightforward while ublock is like one of those mobile first (but also only) websites
  - ukyrgf 5y ago
    And you have to actually click submenus to expand them, you don't just hover. And of course other menus like bookmarks open submenus when you hover, so it's a gamble every time.
725686 5y ago
Is it? Last time I tried, here where a bunch of sites that just didn't work.

shmerl 5y ago

Never really got the appeal of Chrome. Firefox worked very well for me for years.

stevewodil 5y ago
Yeah I never really got the appeal of Firefox. Chrome worked very well for me for years.
- HenryBemis 5y ago
  So does the tracking ;)
  - stevewodil 5y ago
    Personally I enjoy being tracked, it's why I got the Covid vaccine
- timbit42 5y ago
  The appeal is not having Google tracking literally everything you do online.
- Noughmad 5y ago
  Firefox is older than Chrome. Did you use IE before that or are you just that young?
sleepybrett 5y ago
Back when I first started using chrome it was the snappiest and had less memory usage than anything else on the block. Then I started to think about what kind of tracking google was doing with it, so I tried out firefox... which was just as snappy and just as memory efficient. Then I deleted chrome.
- shmerl 5y ago
  I guess that performance gap didn't bother me at that point to switch to less privacy respecting browser and Firefox caught up well, so I never saw it as a problem.

Sunspark 5y ago

It's my regular browser for years. There's a lot of things it does well or differently. For example, one UI thing I appreciate about it is the ability to override a webpage's font type and size choice. Chromium browsers don't let you do that, you only get to pick if the website didn't pick for you.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

paxys 5y ago

I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. I also recently started using Firefox full-time on my work machine despite IT strongly mandating that all our tools only work on Chrome and everyone should use that. Have had zero problems (and we use every Google service under the sun).

milesvp 5y ago
I have to add my anecdata here as well. I’ve used firefox on *buntu for 8+ years as my primary browser, and have found I only need to open chrome ~1/mo for the rare case where I need chrome (and I suspect my issues may be more tied to linux than firefox specifically).
karaterobot 5y ago
> I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. Really? It happens to me all the time. I can't log into my U.S. Bank account in Firefox, I can't submit a delivery order on Doordash in Firefox, and (just this morning) I couldn't validate a credit reporting form in Firefox. Now, despite those and many other examples, I continue to use Firefox as my primary browser, because Chrome has bigger issues in my opinion. I don't blame FF for this, I blame the websites. I just think it sucks that places do not test in or support Firefox better.
- paxys 5y ago
  Can't say about your bank, but I have used Doordash on Firefox regularly and never had any issues.
- jamespullar 5y ago
  Is it possible you have an extension blocking scripts or redirects? I'm able to use Doordash just fine on Firefox.
  - karaterobot 5y ago

themgt 5y ago

Google intentionally crippling their own free, market-dominant browser in a way that just-so-happens to make ad-blocking difficult honestly reminds me of the Microsoft anti-trust case back in the late 90s. Google is an ad company doing embrace-extend-extinguish on other markets just to optimize selling your eyes/attention to advertisers.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Google's changes actually make a lot of sense. 99% of extensions out there should not be able to touch user data at all due to the simple fact they'd abuse this privilege. uBlock Origin just happens to be so incredibly important and trusted that an exception should be made for it.
- paxys 5y ago
  Yet on Google's other large ecosystem (Android), they will happily let apps collect way more private data than this with zero limits in the name of user freedom. In both cases, they made the decision that best serves the company bottom line, nothing more.

ravenstine 5y ago

I think Firefox's shortcomings are overstated. Often they're actually Mozilla's rather than Firefox's. There are other things I consider superior about Firefox that Chrome has yet to implement: - Multi-account containers is a killer feature IMO. I have different containers for banking, Facebook, a container for every email, a container for every Google/YouTube account, and so forth. - The option to enable canvas permission prompts and canvas obfuscation. (though there are some arguments that those make you *more* trackable) - Autoplay blocking and permission prompt - Pop-out videos (aka picture-in-picture) are awesome and make it easy to keep videos on screen while browsing other tabs and apps. - Built-in anti-fingerprinting - Blocks tracking cookies by default I simply won't use a browser that doesn't have these things.

JonTarg 5y ago
I love FF. It's fantastic on macOS and the customization beats every single other browser out of the water. BUT, and I know this is controversial, and I know the foundation is not the same as those who manage the browser, after the events on the capitol they released and statements saying something like "deplatforming is not enough" and even though I asked several times, I could never get a confirmation from anyone within the Mozilla Foundation assuring me they would never use telemetry data to spy on "undesirables" or that they would never try to block content they deemed harmful. I get the situation is different, but my parents escaped from two civil wars in Central America in the 70s and the stories they told me about political persecution were scary enough to make me distrust organizations that don't seem to understand nuance when it comes to politics.
- sfink 5y ago
  I certainly can't offer any official word, but telemetry doesn't have enough data to spy on anyone, and the privacy policy spells this out pretty clearly. And if something snuck in, it's all open source and I imagine people would raise a big stink pretty quickly (whatever their political leanings were). I remember that post, and I think you're mischaracterizing it. The point wasn't that "deplatforming is a good start, but we need to go even farther"; it was "deplatforming is not the right solution, we need something better". As for trying to block harmful content -- Mozilla is already doing that, all the time, so you're certainly not going to get any promise there. Firefox blocks malware, sites with expired/mismatching certificates, things on the (un)safe browsing list, 3rd party cookies in some configurations, etc. Whether any of those constitute censorship is up for you to decide. Right now, it feels fine to me, but I agree that there's reason for concern. All the browsers have all the mechanisms necessary for censorship, and there's no way to crisply define "harmful".

atomicnumber3 5y ago

I just recently (few months ago) switched over to FF from Chrom(e|ium). What pushed me was Google, on short notice, revoking all Sync API keys from all Linux distros, and I'll be damned if I'm going to use software that's as important as my browser from a source like the AUR. The AUR is great mind you, and for a small number of things I accept the risks and burdens that come with using it (auditing the PKGBUILDs on updates etc), but for browser software I just won't on principle. I want that from my distro's packagers. It's been fine so far. The biggest annoyance is that Firefox on iOS struggles a lot with form autofilling, and I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all. You'd think this would be a minor annoyance (don't most sites save your payments methods?) but it's honestly been a big issue. So many sites are so broken on mobile that I actually can't create an account from mobile, and barely function well enough to get through the guest checkout flow. Examples: Jersey Mike's (sub sandwich shop), and another local deli place that's too local for me to name without letting everyone know I live in a cornfield.

simfree 5y ago
From whar I have experienced Chrome and Chromium act differently FYI. I would discourage lumping them as one in the same.
maccam94 5y ago
Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox, it's Webkit with a Firefox skin (because Apple won't allow any other web engines on iOS).
Yoofie 5y ago
> I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all I would consider this a feature, not a bug.

teawrecks 5y ago

Interesting, I haven't run into any issues using ff over chrome for the past several years. It's way more common for my partner who uses chrome to have an issue that they avoid by opening ff.

tomc1985 5y ago

It amazes me that a consensus seems to have formed around this conclusion that Firefox is technically inferior. I have always been using it and it has always been a fantastic browser relatively free of Google's icy tendrils. The technical issues that people bring up about it are usually nonexistent for me, and while I am troubled at its direction it remains an unusually solid and reliable workhorse given the stakes involved and the size of its userbase

Enginerrrd 5y ago
On a PC I don't have any issues with firefox. On mobile I do. I also am still pissed that they killed almost all the extensions for firefox on mobile.
kaba0 5y ago
Well, in js performance it is unfortunately behind in some benchmarks as far as I know. And some major non-standard website refuses to run under firefox, like teams unfortunately (definitely the fault of Microsoft) So I am an FF user by ideology, but sometimes do use Chromium (basically only to not have to run electron).
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  I am certain that I've used Teams in Firefox? I regularly use other 365 webapps as well with no problems (apart from troubles that are also present in every other browsers).
  - kaba0 5y ago
    I think joining a meeting itself is what doesn’t work (for me at least) under linux. I can log in and use other features.
    - kiwijamo 5y ago
      Ah I see. My employer uses teams quite heavily for its other features but we use Zoom for meetings.

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

I've been on Firefox since I switched away from Opera year and years ago and I don't know any technical reason I would use any other browser - not even mentioning the other spyware reasons. What technically do you find missing in FF?

tkiolp4 5y ago

It may sound dumb, but the only reason I don’t use FF is because of its UI. Somehow I think Chrome (and Safari) “look better” and make browsing more enjoyable. And this comes from a “techie” that knows exactly why, objectively, FF is probably better than Chrome in terms of privacy. Can’t Mozilla “just copy” the look and feel of Chrome or Safari while keeping FF’s internals untouched?

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I have the opposite view: Google feels so obsessed with pushing Google branding on Chrome users that the UI seems to constantly be suffering because of it. Apart from a recent discussion to remove the densest UI view, Firefox has generally provided a better, more user-oriented UI than Google.
iaml 5y ago
They have a 'proton' redesign landing soon-ish parts of which you can enable via about:config options on dev/nightly that cleans things up a bit.
AegirLeet 5y ago
You can customize the UI using CSS. Look up userChrome.css.

grayrest 5y ago

If you do switch, check out the temporary containers addon. It makes use of the Firefox containers tech to provide the anti-tracking benefits of incognito but maintains history and isn't detected by websites as incognito mode.

fastball 5y ago

I like Brave's adblocking better than uBlock Origin anyway. Saying this as a former uBlock Origin fanatic.