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Switch browser while you can. Firefox might not be perfect (or even getting slightly worse), but at least it's an alternative and I can easily say it's better t

Switch browser while you can. Firefox might not be perfect (or even getting slightly worse), but at least it's an alternative and I can easily say it's better than Chromium in most. At least ad blocking worka as it should.

prezjordan 6y ago
I ignored this advice for several years but ~6 months ago switched to Firefox cold turkey and don't miss Chrome one bit. Even when doing web development (I thought I'd miss chrome's CSS/HTML/JS inspector and devtools in general but Firefox's are the same if not better)
- CyberFoxar 6y ago
  I find the dev tools of firefox even better. The ability to see XHR request content/header/responses directly in the Javascript console has been invaluable to me. It annoys me that chrome's console does not have this. You can only see when a request is made, but you have to hop on the network tab to see the actual content.
Semaphor 6y ago
> (or even getting slightly worse) FWIW, it has only been getting better for me
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Yeah strong agree, apart from the mess up with Firefox on Android. Both at home and work, Firefox desktop (with uBlock Origin) has been a pretty frictionless tool in terms of my browsing experience these past years, across Linux, Windows, and Mac machines.
  - Mudface_72 6y ago
    Try firefox lite , you can get it on uptodown and apkmirror, its is not available in the play store for all regions.
    - Groxx 6y ago
      From a quick glance, this seems to be even further down the "messy" side of the firefox-on-android mess. I.e. its capabilities are even more restricted. Which is not to say it's not useful, and TIL - I didn't know they had released this, so thanks :) But I don't think it particularly applies to this thread.
      - Daho0n 6y ago
        What is the 'messy' problem with Firefox on Android? I have moved those I help with tech to Firefox. My mother for example. They don't know the difference between "the internet" and "Firefox" but so far they run Firefox with UBO with no problems (well not anything new that wasn't there with Chrome too but that is a old people Vs tech problem not unique to Firefox). Anything I need to know?
        Groxx 6y ago
        The messy problem is that you used to be able to run uBO with no problems on Firefox on Android. And most other extensions, with some obvious limitations (e.g. desktop-only UI extensions didn't work, some UIs weren't mobile-friendly, etc). Then they released a preview of a re-design which also broke all extensions. That's arguably fine for a preview, though a bit concerning. Many were raising alarms at this point. Then they released the re-design to the stable release, with still-broken extensions. This pretty unambiguously is "a mess", if not earlier. Then they released built-in support for a couple dozen Mozilla-selected extensions (uBO included, I believe). This is still a mess, and rightfully raises a few eyebrows. ... and we're still there now, after over a year of "this will be fixed soon". I believe you can install nightly + manually tweak config and still install other extensions, but Firefox for Android does not support extensions right now. That's A Problem™, and not a good sign for extension-longevity that it was ever allowed out of preview. It broadly implies extensions are very low on their priority list, which is concerning, as extensions have been the clear leaders on preserving privacy and user control in general. Browsers overwhelmingly follow popular extension behaviors, not the other way around - cripple extensions and you also cripple advancement and experimentation.
waheoo 6y ago
What? I switched a couple years ago, chrome is a mess whenever I'm forced to use it.
eplanit 6y ago
I have noticed a recent decline in the debugging features of FF -- downright buggy. View source shows a form I used 3 pages ago, not the form rendered. I now switch to chrome just for debugging.
- foepys 6y ago
  You don't deserve the downvotes. We are using mainly Firefox at work and sometimes, not often but sometimes, Firefox refuses to load the current file in the debugger. The only solution is to restart Firefox. I get why some are annoyed by this when they are in a debugging session. Although the last time it happened to me was one or two Firefox releases ago. Maybe it got fixed.
  - hosteur 6y ago
    Did you report the problem?
    - foepys 6y ago
      No because I cannot reproduce it. It just happened randomly in the past. As I don't like getting bug reports that boil down to "doesn't work", I don't create them myself.
      - kevingadd 6y ago
        When struggling with a persistent issue like this in FF devtools it can still be worth filing an issue on the bugzilla tracker. Worst case, it gets closed as not reproducible. In practice many of these issues will eventually get caught if enough people complain about them and someone manages to dig through all the reports and come up with theories about the issue. You may get a helpful reply from someone on the team with suggestions on how to troubleshoot it, like enabling specific logging flags or pulling some info out of the console. I've filed lots of bug reports against Firefox in the past and just because you don't have an isolated reproduction case for a devtools issue, that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.
  - 6y ago
alert0 6y ago
I switched to Firefox for container tabs a few years ago and love it.
why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
The only thing that keeps me using Chrome from time time is the in-place translation feature. If anything comparable was added to Firefox (which I mainly use), I would be more than happy to get rid of Chrome once and for all. And yes, I'm aware of the extensions that offer similar functionality, but unfortunately they still have some way to go before they can reach parity with Chrome translator.
- fomine3 6y ago
  In-place translating is the feature that really missed on other browsers. Edge also works well with Bing translate. I wish DeepL provides translate extension.
knalum 6y ago
Switched to Brave on mobile. Never looked back. You can see how many mb of data saved due to blocking of trackers.
- Mudface_72 6y ago
  Try firefox lite , get the apk from uptodiwn or apkmirror, because ff lite is region locked in the playstore.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    Dude wtf, not interested in your Watchtower or whatever.
InvOfSmallC 6y ago
Firefox Focus is the best.
bentcorner 6y ago
I stay on Firefox because of UBO and containers, but when I discovered tree-style tabs I'll likely never leave. Edge has an ok-ish implementation of vertical tabs but it still has a ways to go to match tree-style tabs.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  I've been a Tree Style Tab user for many years, but I have to confess I have a complicated relationship with this add-on. I've reached >600 tabs more than once. That's not only a feature.
  - qwertox 6y ago
    I used to use Tab Mix Plus on Firefox. Having three rows of tabs and the ability to scroll them vertically for more tabs was the absolute killer feature for me. I loved Firefox for this. Once Firefox moved to the per-process approach and removed the ability to hack the UI, I saw no more reason to stay on what was a terribly slow browser back then, compared to Chrome. Startup times of 10+ seconds and such shenanigans.
  - petepete 6y ago
    When you have more than (say) twenty, what does having a tab open give you that bookmarking the page doesn't?
    - unicornporn 6y ago
      I do well with Max Tabs set to 60 when researching something. Anything above that is just bad habits.
barbazoo 6y ago
What do I, as an end user, have to do to be protected? Is it sufficient to use Firefox with its default settings? Honestly I don't know and I think I should. I have uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, ClearURLs installed on Firefox, I'm running pi-hole at home, it's just so much.
- surround 6y ago
  Don't sweat it. All you really need is Firefox + uBlock Origin. And even without uBo, Firefox blocks some trackers by default. Privacy badger is largely useless ever since they got rid of heuristics. ClearURLs is useful, but you'd probably be fine without it. And pi-hole doesn't block anything that uBo doesn't in Firefox (but is still useful for applications outside of the browser). On the other hand, maybe you're like me and want to squeeze as much privacy out of your browser as you can, even if it means breaking some websites. If that's the case, check this website out. Just remember that the tweaks listed here are nice, but not entirely necessary. https://privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config https://privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    Thank you, I'll have a look!
  - HDMI_Cable 6y ago
    With uBO, I would also disable things like Third-Party Cookies. I also have No-Script, but that's mainly for making sites easier to load (Though it does block ad-tracking js-files, like uBO).
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Under Enhanced Tracking Protection, select the Strict option. Firefox also has native HTTPS-only and ESNI features.
prepend 6y ago
I only use Chrome for Google stuff and everything else is split across Brave, Safari, Edge, and Firefox.
55555 6y ago
What's the most frictionless page language translation plugin?
sneak 6y ago
The security sandboxing of Chromium-based browsers is sadly unmatched, however.
julianlam 6y ago
I'm a huge proponent of Firefox on desktop, but the new Firefox on mobile is just awful awful awful. I've switched to Vivaldi and it's just much snappier and doesn't have the papercuts FF mobile is currently struggling through. Total rewrites are cool, but they're real rough around the edges at first.
- Mudface_72 6y ago
  Try firefox lite, get it on uptodown or apkmirror. Its has a region lock an the ppay store.
- Mudface_72 6y ago
  Try firefox lite on android, you can dl the apk on uptodown or apkmirror, its region locked in the playstore.
- CivBase 6y ago
  > I'm a huge proponent of Firefox on desktop, but the new Firefox on mobile is just awful awful awful. I strongly disagree. There are certainly issues, many of which are a result of the recent redesign, but I still find it a much better experience than Chrome on mobile and I think calling it "awful" is hyperbolic. Here are some examples of why I think FF > Chrome on mobile: Firefox mobile supports extensions which I consider necessary at this point, such as uBlock Origin. I can put the address bar at the bottom, where my fingers are. The reader features makes many websites much easier to read - particularly on mobile. Chrome defaults to opening things in tab groups now, which I find to be much more finicky to use than normal tabs. Bookmarks are for saving pages long-term, not tabs.
- vharuck 6y ago
  I'm with you. I preferred the previous version of Firefox on Android. Since switching to the new version: - I've noticed it crashes much more. - It still doesn't support all the extensions I used to have, like uMatrix. - All my bookmarks disappeared when it updated to the new version. I know syncing bookmarks would've let me recover, but I didn't realize it'd happen on the first place. And it seems like an easy problem to Amos even if a user didn't sync.
tinus_hn 6y ago
It’s a fine browser and it is really important to make sure the landscape is not dominated by one engine.
qwertox 6y ago
Please educate me: I am a Chrome user and I do rely on browser syncing my tabs and some passwords. I know that Firefox also has a syncing feature ("Sign into Firefox", "Continue to Firefox Sync"). My problem is that I don't trust Mozilla's ability to keep this data secure. I believe that sooner or later they are going to get hacked, and that data will leak. The same might happen to Google, but I also believe that no other company has the degree of expertise of Google to protect that data. Am I wrong in this assumption? Does Firefox Sync end-to-end encrypt the data, without knowing the key, like Google's Sync Passphrase feature? What are your experiences with Firefox Sync? Does it work just as good as Chrome's, or even better?
- foobiter 6y ago
  why do you trust google to do it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chillydawg 6y ago
  it's encrypted, they store the blob and ship it to any browser that auths correctly. sync works just fine.
- klondike_ 6y ago
  You can actually self host Firefox Sync on your own server if you want.
- DenseComet 6y ago
  I've had a pretty good experience with Firefox Sync, although I don't use it for passwords. Firefox Sync has E2E encryption to ensure that Mozilla doesn't have the ability to view any of your data. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
- Ayesh 6y ago
  Tl;Dr: Extremely satisfied and using on three devices. The sync server is open source and free, so you can host an instance yourself if you'd like. Firefox accounts have 2FA support, and passwords are end to end synced anyway, so even if your Firefox account is compromised, nobody can recover data without the key. For about a decade in the working, there were zero breaches in mozilla AFAIK. I use Firefox sync in my Windows laptop, Firefox on Android beta. There is also an app called Lockwise that can work as a standalone app and a password fill feature for other apps as well.
theshrike79 6y ago
I use Safari as my primary browser on MacOS, Chrome is only used for the developer mode. Dunno if it's better than the one in Firefox, but it's the one I know =)
sedatk 6y ago
Is FLOC going to be integrated into Chromium or is it just going to be a Chrome feature?
- foobiter 6y ago
  the intention is to make it a web standard, so the end goal is to put it in all browsers
smt1 6y ago
Also consider, for example, Brave. https://brave.com/why-brave-disables-floc/ https://brave.com/why-brave-disables-floc/

prezjordan 6y ago

I ignored this advice for several years but ~6 months ago switched to Firefox cold turkey and don't miss Chrome one bit. Even when doing web development (I thought I'd miss chrome's CSS/HTML/JS inspector and devtools in general but Firefox's are the same if not better)

CyberFoxar 6y ago
I find the dev tools of firefox even better. The ability to see XHR request content/header/responses directly in the Javascript console has been invaluable to me. It annoys me that chrome's console does not have this. You can only see when a request is made, but you have to hop on the network tab to see the actual content.

Semaphor 6y ago

> (or even getting slightly worse) FWIW, it has only been getting better for me

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
Yeah strong agree, apart from the mess up with Firefox on Android. Both at home and work, Firefox desktop (with uBlock Origin) has been a pretty frictionless tool in terms of my browsing experience these past years, across Linux, Windows, and Mac machines.
- Mudface_72 6y ago
  Try firefox lite , you can get it on uptodown and apkmirror, its is not available in the play store for all regions.
  - Groxx 6y ago
    From a quick glance, this seems to be even further down the "messy" side of the firefox-on-android mess. I.e. its capabilities are even more restricted. Which is not to say it's not useful, and TIL - I didn't know they had released this, so thanks :) But I don't think it particularly applies to this thread.
    - Daho0n 6y ago
      What is the 'messy' problem with Firefox on Android? I have moved those I help with tech to Firefox. My mother for example. They don't know the difference between "the internet" and "Firefox" but so far they run Firefox with UBO with no problems (well not anything new that wasn't there with Chrome too but that is a old people Vs tech problem not unique to Firefox). Anything I need to know?
      - Groxx 6y ago
        The messy problem is that you used to be able to run uBO with no problems on Firefox on Android. And most other extensions, with some obvious limitations (e.g. desktop-only UI extensions didn't work, some UIs weren't mobile-friendly, etc). Then they released a preview of a re-design which also broke all extensions. That's arguably fine for a preview, though a bit concerning. Many were raising alarms at this point. Then they released the re-design to the stable release, with still-broken extensions. This pretty unambiguously is "a mess", if not earlier. Then they released built-in support for a couple dozen Mozilla-selected extensions (uBO included, I believe). This is still a mess, and rightfully raises a few eyebrows. ... and we're still there now, after over a year of "this will be fixed soon". I believe you can install nightly + manually tweak config and still install other extensions, but Firefox for Android does not support extensions right now. That's A Problem™, and not a good sign for extension-longevity that it was ever allowed out of preview. It broadly implies extensions are very low on their priority list, which is concerning, as extensions have been the clear leaders on preserving privacy and user control in general. Browsers overwhelmingly follow popular extension behaviors, not the other way around - cripple extensions and you also cripple advancement and experimentation.

waheoo 6y ago

What? I switched a couple years ago, chrome is a mess whenever I'm forced to use it.

eplanit 6y ago

I have noticed a recent decline in the debugging features of FF -- downright buggy. View source shows a form I used 3 pages ago, not the form rendered. I now switch to chrome just for debugging.

foepys 6y ago
You don't deserve the downvotes. We are using mainly Firefox at work and sometimes, not often but sometimes, Firefox refuses to load the current file in the debugger. The only solution is to restart Firefox. I get why some are annoyed by this when they are in a debugging session. Although the last time it happened to me was one or two Firefox releases ago. Maybe it got fixed.
- hosteur 6y ago
  Did you report the problem?
  - foepys 6y ago
    No because I cannot reproduce it. It just happened randomly in the past. As I don't like getting bug reports that boil down to "doesn't work", I don't create them myself.
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      When struggling with a persistent issue like this in FF devtools it can still be worth filing an issue on the bugzilla tracker. Worst case, it gets closed as not reproducible. In practice many of these issues will eventually get caught if enough people complain about them and someone manages to dig through all the reports and come up with theories about the issue. You may get a helpful reply from someone on the team with suggestions on how to troubleshoot it, like enabling specific logging flags or pulling some info out of the console. I've filed lots of bug reports against Firefox in the past and just because you don't have an isolated reproduction case for a devtools issue, that doesn't mean it can't be fixed.
- 6y ago

alert0 6y ago

I switched to Firefox for container tabs a few years ago and love it.

why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago

The only thing that keeps me using Chrome from time time is the in-place translation feature. If anything comparable was added to Firefox (which I mainly use), I would be more than happy to get rid of Chrome once and for all. And yes, I'm aware of the extensions that offer similar functionality, but unfortunately they still have some way to go before they can reach parity with Chrome translator.

fomine3 6y ago
In-place translating is the feature that really missed on other browsers. Edge also works well with Bing translate. I wish DeepL provides translate extension.

knalum 6y ago

Switched to Brave on mobile. Never looked back. You can see how many mb of data saved due to blocking of trackers.

Mudface_72 6y ago
Try firefox lite , get the apk from uptodiwn or apkmirror, because ff lite is region locked in the playstore.
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  Dude wtf, not interested in your Watchtower or whatever.

InvOfSmallC 6y ago

Firefox Focus is the best.

bentcorner 6y ago

I stay on Firefox because of UBO and containers, but when I discovered tree-style tabs I'll likely never leave. Edge has an ok-ish implementation of vertical tabs but it still has a ways to go to match tree-style tabs.

unicornporn 6y ago
I've been a Tree Style Tab user for many years, but I have to confess I have a complicated relationship with this add-on. I've reached >600 tabs more than once. That's not only a feature.
- qwertox 6y ago
  I used to use Tab Mix Plus on Firefox. Having three rows of tabs and the ability to scroll them vertically for more tabs was the absolute killer feature for me. I loved Firefox for this. Once Firefox moved to the per-process approach and removed the ability to hack the UI, I saw no more reason to stay on what was a terribly slow browser back then, compared to Chrome. Startup times of 10+ seconds and such shenanigans.
- petepete 6y ago
  When you have more than (say) twenty, what does having a tab open give you that bookmarking the page doesn't?
  - unicornporn 6y ago
    I do well with Max Tabs set to 60 when researching something. Anything above that is just bad habits.

barbazoo 6y ago

What do I, as an end user, have to do to be protected? Is it sufficient to use Firefox with its default settings? Honestly I don't know and I think I should. I have uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, ClearURLs installed on Firefox, I'm running pi-hole at home, it's just so much.

surround 6y ago
Don't sweat it. All you really need is Firefox + uBlock Origin. And even without uBo, Firefox blocks some trackers by default. Privacy badger is largely useless ever since they got rid of heuristics. ClearURLs is useful, but you'd probably be fine without it. And pi-hole doesn't block anything that uBo doesn't in Firefox (but is still useful for applications outside of the browser). On the other hand, maybe you're like me and want to squeeze as much privacy out of your browser as you can, even if it means breaking some websites. If that's the case, check this website out. Just remember that the tweaks listed here are nice, but not entirely necessary. https://privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config https://privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config
- barbazoo 6y ago
  Thank you, I'll have a look!
- HDMI_Cable 6y ago
  With uBO, I would also disable things like Third-Party Cookies. I also have No-Script, but that's mainly for making sites easier to load (Though it does block ad-tracking js-files, like uBO).
heavyset_go 6y ago
Under Enhanced Tracking Protection, select the Strict option. Firefox also has native HTTPS-only and ESNI features.

prepend 6y ago

I only use Chrome for Google stuff and everything else is split across Brave, Safari, Edge, and Firefox.

55555 6y ago

What's the most frictionless page language translation plugin?

sneak 6y ago

The security sandboxing of Chromium-based browsers is sadly unmatched, however.

julianlam 6y ago

I'm a huge proponent of Firefox on desktop, but the new Firefox on mobile is just awful awful awful. I've switched to Vivaldi and it's just much snappier and doesn't have the papercuts FF mobile is currently struggling through. Total rewrites are cool, but they're real rough around the edges at first.

Mudface_72 6y ago
Try firefox lite, get it on uptodown or apkmirror. Its has a region lock an the ppay store.
Mudface_72 6y ago
Try firefox lite on android, you can dl the apk on uptodown or apkmirror, its region locked in the playstore.
CivBase 6y ago
> I'm a huge proponent of Firefox on desktop, but the new Firefox on mobile is just awful awful awful. I strongly disagree. There are certainly issues, many of which are a result of the recent redesign, but I still find it a much better experience than Chrome on mobile and I think calling it "awful" is hyperbolic. Here are some examples of why I think FF > Chrome on mobile: Firefox mobile supports extensions which I consider necessary at this point, such as uBlock Origin. I can put the address bar at the bottom, where my fingers are. The reader features makes many websites much easier to read - particularly on mobile. Chrome defaults to opening things in tab groups now, which I find to be much more finicky to use than normal tabs. Bookmarks are for saving pages long-term, not tabs.
vharuck 6y ago
I'm with you. I preferred the previous version of Firefox on Android. Since switching to the new version: - I've noticed it crashes much more. - It still doesn't support all the extensions I used to have, like uMatrix. - All my bookmarks disappeared when it updated to the new version. I know syncing bookmarks would've let me recover, but I didn't realize it'd happen on the first place. And it seems like an easy problem to Amos even if a user didn't sync.

tinus_hn 6y ago

It’s a fine browser and it is really important to make sure the landscape is not dominated by one engine.

qwertox 6y ago

Please educate me: I am a Chrome user and I do rely on browser syncing my tabs and some passwords. I know that Firefox also has a syncing feature ("Sign into Firefox", "Continue to Firefox Sync"). My problem is that I don't trust Mozilla's ability to keep this data secure. I believe that sooner or later they are going to get hacked, and that data will leak. The same might happen to Google, but I also believe that no other company has the degree of expertise of Google to protect that data. Am I wrong in this assumption? Does Firefox Sync end-to-end encrypt the data, without knowing the key, like Google's Sync Passphrase feature? What are your experiences with Firefox Sync? Does it work just as good as Chrome's, or even better?

foobiter 6y ago
why do you trust google to do it?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chillydawg 6y ago
it's encrypted, they store the blob and ship it to any browser that auths correctly. sync works just fine.
klondike_ 6y ago
You can actually self host Firefox Sync on your own server if you want.
DenseComet 6y ago
I've had a pretty good experience with Firefox Sync, although I don't use it for passwords. Firefox Sync has E2E encryption to ensure that Mozilla doesn't have the ability to view any of your data. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
Ayesh 6y ago
Tl;Dr: Extremely satisfied and using on three devices. The sync server is open source and free, so you can host an instance yourself if you'd like. Firefox accounts have 2FA support, and passwords are end to end synced anyway, so even if your Firefox account is compromised, nobody can recover data without the key. For about a decade in the working, there were zero breaches in mozilla AFAIK. I use Firefox sync in my Windows laptop, Firefox on Android beta. There is also an app called Lockwise that can work as a standalone app and a password fill feature for other apps as well.

theshrike79 6y ago

I use Safari as my primary browser on MacOS, Chrome is only used for the developer mode. Dunno if it's better than the one in Firefox, but it's the one I know =)

sedatk 6y ago

Is FLOC going to be integrated into Chromium or is it just going to be a Chrome feature?

foobiter 6y ago
the intention is to make it a web standard, so the end goal is to put it in all browsers

smt1 6y ago

Also consider, for example, Brave. https://brave.com/why-brave-disables-floc/ https://brave.com/why-brave-disables-floc/