4 ms·

I’m disappointed to hear Firefox is deteriorating daily. I disagree about DDG’s search quality. I tried it for six months and that was not my experience. Event

I’m disappointed to hear Firefox is deteriorating daily. I disagree about DDG’s search quality. I tried it for six months and that was not my experience. Eventually went back to Google.

caslon 5y ago
Yeah, it's certainly unfortunate. It gets just a little worse with every single update. The last one removed compact mode, which was the only thing making the UI somewhat bearable on-screen. It is now terribly large and unappealing. What do you use a search engine for? Depending on your set of interests, turning off or on localization might have helped.
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  In the current build, there is an about:config setting to re-enable compact mode.
  - caslon 5y ago
    Yes, but they've expressed a desire to get rid of it in an upcoming update.
loup-vaillant 5y ago
I believe it depends on people. For some DuckDuckGo works perfectly, and they rarely go back to Google, if at all. For others it just does not work. This reminds me of the dream of displacing Microsoft Word. Can we make a better product? No we can't. Only Microsoft can, through upgrades. The competition is stuck with making the same thing, and therefore not better, or something different, which is always "worse" because people are used to Word. Also note that DuckDuckGo has a fundamental disadvantage: by not tailoring its searches to your history, it cannot possibly guess what you want to see as well as Google. Sure you're not trapped in your own search bubble, but you don't feel that. You only feel that the damn search engine can't find that website you are searching for for the fifth time already. Pro tip: to get back to a web site, type its URL, or use bookmarks. Somehow I've seen many professional programmers fail to do that. I give them a URL, and they type it on the freaking search bar. (The more modern version is failing to type or auto-complete an actual URL in the omni bar.)
Tijdreiziger 5y ago
FWIW, I've used Firefox on a daily basis for years, and I have no complaints about desktop Firefox. (Firefox Android does leave some things to be desired, but also functions just fine as a web browser.)

I’m disappointed to hear Firefox is deteriorating daily. I disagree about DDG’s search quality. I tried it for six months and that was not my experience. Eventually went back to Google.

caslon 5y ago

Yeah, it's certainly unfortunate. It gets just a little worse with every single update. The last one removed compact mode, which was the only thing making the UI somewhat bearable on-screen. It is now terribly large and unappealing. What do you use a search engine for? Depending on your set of interests, turning off or on localization might have helped.

dmitrygr 5y ago
In the current build, there is an about:config setting to re-enable compact mode.
- caslon 5y ago
  Yes, but they've expressed a desire to get rid of it in an upcoming update.

loup-vaillant 5y ago

I believe it depends on people. For some DuckDuckGo works perfectly, and they rarely go back to Google, if at all. For others it just does not work. This reminds me of the dream of displacing Microsoft Word. Can we make a better product? No we can't. Only Microsoft can, through upgrades. The competition is stuck with making the same thing, and therefore not better, or something different, which is always "worse" because people are used to Word. Also note that DuckDuckGo has a fundamental disadvantage: by not tailoring its searches to your history, it cannot possibly guess what you want to see as well as Google. Sure you're not trapped in your own search bubble, but you don't feel that. You only feel that the damn search engine can't find that website you are searching for for the fifth time already. Pro tip: to get back to a web site, type its URL, or use bookmarks. Somehow I've seen many professional programmers fail to do that. I give them a URL, and they type it on the freaking search bar. (The more modern version is failing to type or auto-complete an actual URL in the omni bar.)

Tijdreiziger 5y ago

FWIW, I've used Firefox on a daily basis for years, and I have no complaints about desktop Firefox. (Firefox Android does leave some things to be desired, but also functions just fine as a web browser.)