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I've never understood the criticism of Firefox on HN. I've been a happy user since 2004. I viewed chrome the same as IE. Owned by a big US tech company that on

I've never understood the criticism of Firefox on HN. I've been a happy user since 2004. I viewed chrome the same as IE. Owned by a big US tech company that only cares about one thing, and that one thing isn't you or me, only what your and my data/views are worth. As far as I'm concerned all criticism leveled at Firefox is neatly mitigated by the reality of what chrome is, spyware.

irrational 5y ago
Same here. I’ve been using Firefox exclusively since the Firebug days, both for development and personal use. It has worked fantastically for me. But I have real issues whenever I try to use Chrome. I think it mostly comes down to what you are used to.
3f3ufjfde 5y ago
Well, there are a large number of users for whom "all criticism leveled at Firefox" are/were not "neatly mitigated by the reality of what chrome is, spyware." For those people it's probably a combination of things which include Chrome's 'always works' factor (less of a problem these days), Firefox on mobile being trash for a long time (this has also shifted for the better), and most people not sharing your view of what spyware is.
d3nj4l 5y ago
At some level I understand when people on HN get mad at FF increasing the size of the tab bar and the occasional changes they make in the UI/UX. I've never had a major problem with them - it's been at most an hour of getting used to the new style, if at all - but I am honestly astounded by people who think it's a good reason to switch to Chrome. Cutting off your nose to spite your face?
- TAForObvReasons 5y ago
  Let's not pretend Mozilla is a saint or Firefox is close. Mozilla made a huge number of questionable moves over the years ("death by a thousand cuts") I personally felt that the 2014 introduction of in-browser ads (pitched as "user-enhancing") marked a huge shift. For others it was the deep integration of the proprietary Pocket extension. For still others it was the weird Mr Robot cross-promotion that was pushed via a side channel or the Cliqz in-browser tracking or the booking.com in-browser ads. At this point, it really feels like Mozilla and FF are "controlled opposition" / defense against anti-trust claims, and many of the naysayers would probably jump to a clean implementation that isn't bogged down by the lack of trust.
  - vord1080 5y ago
    Pocket isn't proprietary. The bundled extension is OSS and maintained in-tree. It's also not deeply integrated. You can turn it off or use artifact builds to create a custom Firefox with it completely gone, and nothing will break, because it's just a WebExtension.
    - TAForObvReasons 5y ago
      The controversy at the time was that it didn't need to be embedded in the browser and it was a proprietary blob. It literally took years to get to a point where the bundled parts were released as open source (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1343006 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1343006 ). Obviously there are legal concerns etc, but many of the critics would have been much happier if the extension were released as open source first rather than adding proprietary code to the browser
      - vord1080 5y ago
        For what technical reason would it be a proprietary blob? The Firefox frontend has been html/xul/css/js forever. Pocket would be implemented the same. I can't see why it would need to be a binary.
        dralley 5y ago
        Pocket was an acquisition, not something they had written themselves.
    - grey_earthling 5y ago
      The open source code is only useful when paired with a proprietary network service. When Mozilla bought Pocket, there already existed a competing open source self-hostable network service, Wallabag. Pocket is to Wallabag as Twitter is to Mastodon. My complaint was not that the code in Firefox was proprietary, but that it integrated with (and promoted) a proprietary network service, while there was a viable open source competitor. At the time, Mozilla's mission included the aim “to promote choice and innovation on the internet”, which this integration seemed to go against.
- josteink 5y ago
  > but I am honestly astounded by people who think it's a good reason to switch to Chrome Who says switching away from Firefox means you have to switch to Chrome, the Google-controlled browser? That seems like a false dichotomy to me.
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    Most others are Chromium based. But I see no reason to switch to Chrome when we have Chromium available in every Linux distribution and Brave for Windows/Mobile.
  - LarryDarrell 5y ago
    Who exerts the most control over Chromium? Google shareholders or the OSS community? How much Chromium development is done by people not employed by Google or now Microsoft? Brave/Edge/Vivaldi/Opera are all Google controlled browsers. Just because you can slap your own logo and build a sync system on top of Chromium does not mean they get to have any say in how Chromium consumes the Internet. Sure, less data gets sent directly to Google. But when Google says[1], Chromium will not allow you to completely block autoplaying videos, it takes years to for the clones add an option to block[2]. [1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/ [2] https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40377/option-to-disable-autoplay-video/31?lang=en-US&page=2 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40377/option-to-disable-auto...
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Is there really any alternative to Chrome (outside of the Apple ecosystem)? Vivaldi is Chrome, Edge is Chrome, Opera is Chrome, Brave is Chrome. Sure, technically they're Chromium, not Chrome, and probably you don't share your data with Google (though who can say for sure). But whichever you choose, you're still allowing Google to control the Web ecosystem, from web standards to ad blocking.
kiryin 5y ago
The criticism that people in these communities come up with is limited to button placement and pixel-to-pixel tab bar height, I wouldn't take any of it seriously. Especially in the current web browser climate, it's laughable. It's our moral obligation, as people with knowledge on the subject, to use Firefox. I've expressed my distaste for the way Mozilla is managed again and again, and I hate the stupid stuff they do from the bottom of my heart, but there simply is no other choice.
- MikusR 5y ago
  Completely covering up bookmark bar when clicked inside address bar is nothing? Limiting length of text in address bar is nothing? Removing icons from menus - so everything looks like gray mess is nothing? Firefox is full of these types of changes.
  - kiryin 5y ago
    Yes, they amount to absolutely nothing in this context. When you use Firefox, your bookmarks bar gets covered up while you're typing an URL. When using chrom(e|ium) or its plethora of derivatives, you're actively contributing to browser monoculture, sharing your browsing habits with a predatory corporation, and supporting anti-user changes such as the manifest v3 webextensions, which cripple content blockers and disempower you, us, the user. If the choice is difficult for you, I really don't know what to say.
    - megous 5y ago
      Firefox is shedding users left and right. If you want to complain about people who're staying with the browser and are just complaining about changes to the browser that make their life harder, I think you've picked the wrong group... Maybe go complain at people who have already left.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      My experience using Firefox for a long-ass time has been marred with seemingly arbitrary changes that have frustratingly broken my workflow, since way back when they redesigned the URL bar in Firefox 2 and complaints were met with an irreverent "sucks to be you I guess." It's made me reduce the amount of features I use in Firefox because I feel I can't trust the features will be there anymore or work the same in the next release. Often the benefits are small, and the changes seem to be for the sake of changing things rather than to bring tangible improvements. Workflow-breaking changes are incredibly frustrating for the user, and something a mature project should only do with extreme reluctance. Yet Firefox seems to do it haphazardly. I would honestly be happy to use a browser that looked and worked like Netscape 1.0 as long as it supported modern web standards and didn't keep moving buttons around.
deleted 5y ago
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tucosan 5y ago
I desperately want to use FF, but it has serious bugs that Mozilla ignored for years. I've lost my config multiple times due to a bug in session recovery. After having lost yet another session I moved back to Chrome.
deleted 5y ago
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finite_jest 5y ago
Well, we should remember that Mozilla is essentially funded by Google. [1] I think they are trying to remedy that a little bit by selling VPNs, but that's probably not gonna work. Brave is probably a better option if you want to "drop out". Unlike Firefox, it is not a dying browser, and it's monthly active users are increasing: https://brave.com/36m-mau/ https://brave.com/36m-mau/. They do have a cryptocurrency for relatively privacy-respecting ads thing (Brave Rewards), but you can easily opt out of that. (Also, we should not be puritans about this, developers have to eat too) It is still based on Chromium. But that's probably more of a plus for the typical user who cares more about websites working correctly than browser diversity. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m...
- vord1080 5y ago
  The compat story for Brave and Firefox is about the same. Tracking protections in Brave broke sites more often than Firefox when I used it for a few months, and there was a recent incident where iCloud was being blocked in Brave. And despite what a lot of people say, engine interop is only getting better thanks to initiatives like Compat2021. More sites work well under Gecko than ever before. Anyone remember IE6 era where Firefox needed bug-for-bug compatibility? It's been worse folks.
- leppr 5y ago
  Your only criticism of Firefox is that they get money from selling the default search engine spot to Google, but then your alternative recommendation is a browser that's fundamentally dependent on Google? The day Google stops open-sourcing Chromium or start delaying public releases, or when another privacy-busting oopsie slips in the open-source codebase and Brave devs miss it, Brave is done. They don't have the manpower or experience to develop an actual browser. The day Google stops buying Firefox's ad space, Mozilla has hundreds of alternative options for generating revenue.
  - finite_jest 5y ago
    That is not my only criticism, but it was the most relevant one. Also, the issue is not that they get money from Google, it is that it is almost all of their revenue. I think Brave has a fair chance of surviving without Google, though your point of their lack of manpower stands. I don't think Firefox will have many good options for generating revenue, given that they have lost 46 million users since 2018 [1] (while paying something like $2M to the chair [2]). And the only effort they made in that direction was is to become a VPN reseller [3]. [1]: https://www.techspot.com/news/90692-firefox-loses-46-million-users-three-years.html https://www.techspot.com/news/90692-firefox-loses-46-million... [2]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html [3]: https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/ https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/
is_true 5y ago
Mobile Firefox has ublock origin. That's a winner for me
- finite_jest 5y ago
  You can install uBlock Origin on Brave and Chrome too. [1] It is works slightly better on Firefox though. [2] [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
  - lewiscollard 5y ago
    > You can install uBlock Origin on Brave and Chrome too. ...for now. Be aware that Chrome is going to stop supporting Manifest v2. This will make uBlock Origin stop working - not because the author doesn't want to support v3, but because it is not possible for uBlock Origin to work under the new extension API. If you like uBlock Origin, now would be a good time to get out of the habit of using Chrome.
  - bgaluszka 5y ago
    Not on mobile Chrome though which is what parent was writing about.
blendergeek 5y ago
My biggest criticism is that Mozilla removed the open-web RSS reader functionality and added a proprietary walled-garden Pocket read-it-later service. Are the two connected? I need to know.
- dralley 5y ago
  RSS and read-it-later are completely different things that serve completely different purposes, what kind of "connection" are you looking for?
jFriedensreich 5y ago
i love firefox as secondary browser (mainly some performance issues or minor hickups with certain kinds of web apps that rely on certain animations) and also donate regularly to mozilla, but the dev tools are the main pain point for me. nothing beats the usability of chrome dev tools and working in firefox always makes me feel limited in little ways i cant even point my finger to. in effect my own apps are optimized for chrome first and only improved for firefox as second step wich will then lead to the same small problems making other people use it as secondary browser.
- antihero 5y ago
  I use FF dev tools fine, I think it was just a case of getting used to them!
SimeVidas 5y ago
Simple explanation: Most people are uninformed and irrational.
- bryans 5y ago
  What an outrageously toxic and arrogant comment. There are many reasons to dislike Firefox. Just because you're not personally affected by those reasons, doesn't make people who are affected by them somehow mentally ill or lesser humans than you, your majesty.
  - SimeVidas 5y ago
    I didn’t say I’m not affected. I’m uninformed about most things, and I sometimes behave irrationally. I don’t see that as a problem. But it does explain why I make bad decisions. That’s all I’m saying. I guess I should have clarified that I didn’t mean my comment negatively.
  - Nicksil 5y ago
    >What an outrageously toxic and arrogant comment. There are many reasons to dislike Firefox. Just because you're not personally affected by those reasons, doesn't make people who are affected by them somehow mentally ill or lesser humans than you, your majesty. Saying someone is uninformed or irrational isn't the same as saying they're mentally ill or unintelligent. Your comment, however, does well to lend credence to their anecdote.
    - bryans 5y ago
      It's incredibly ironic that you're attempting to teach me a semantics lesson, when you've clearly never read the definitions for the words you're referencing. With one word, the OP implied that people who don't love absolutely everything about Firefox are both mentally unsound and incapable of reasoning. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrational https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrational (1): lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence (2): not endowed with reason or understanding Perhaps the next time you feel the need to jump into a conversation to teach someone a lesson, take a moment to consider that you might be the uninformed one, because it's a distinct possibility based on this anecdote.
smoldesu 5y ago
B-but you could be earning Brave Attention Tokens! Enable ads and you'll be collecting a whole $0.30 a month!
shadowgovt 5y ago
My criticism is simple: Firefox has like a 4% market share, but an entirely separate rendering engine from the other browsers. As a web developer, my job is already to chase down spec-violating implementation bugs in Safari, Chrome, and Edge. Having one more user agent out there does me no good; I'm disinterested in increasing my pain to support a 4% userbase. I'd rather browsing be the purview of one or two giant, well-regulated players than a thousand minorly-incompatible little flowers.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > I'd rather browsing be the purview of one or two giant, well-regulated players Key: well-regulated. These giants are anything but. And in the past several years Chrome basically said "I couldn't give two craps about Safari's or Firefox's opinion, we're going to ship our own APIs and call them web standards".
- iso1210 5y ago
  IE6 called from 2005 and wants its argument back
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    2021 is a rich era of multiple standards-compliant browsers, including Firefox. But if there's a bug where either a browser deviates from the standard or different browsers implement an ambiguity in the standard differently? Web developers will fix that bug in Chrome, Safari, and Edge before fixing it in Firefox. For almost every site, that's what the cost benefit analysis looks like. If my site doesn't work right on Chrome or Safari, that's my problem. If it doesn't work right on Firefox, that's Mozilla's problem.
- nchi3 5y ago
  You must be quite new to frontend development, right? It's really never been easier than today to do this. Edge uses chromium and IE isn't a thing anymore (for most devs), so it's basically 3 modern and regularly updated browser engines which are _very_ close to each other features-wise. Also, one of the biggest problems with Chrome has been that Google are breaking standards with it repetitively. If you're for well-regulated browsers, Chrome shouldn't be your browser of choice.
corobo 5y ago
> I've never understood the criticism of Firefox on HN My only real criticism is that they keep making dumbass moves like putting ads in the address bar instead of trying to ask for money Do a pro plan for silly people like me who would pay for a promise of no ads. Do an enterprise version of Firefox that hooks in to Active Directory or whatever for syncing Just get lost with the ad plays haha
- antihero 5y ago
  What on earth version of Firefox are you using that has ads?!
  - corobo 5y ago
    The latest version mate https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947
chakkepolja 5y ago
But chrome's security and performance is miles better than firefox. The organization that overpays managerial people, fired technical talent, and funnels donations into political causes instead of browser development is not much better either.
- account-5 5y ago
  It sounds like you could level that second paragraph at Google too. Personally I take my security and privacy over performance any day. Firefox by default better protects my privacy, and it customisable where it doesn't. Add to this uMatrix, uBlock and disabling JavaScript I'm good for security. I don't care much about negligible performance stats. I notice little difference, especially with the above mentioned add-ons/settings. The websites they break I don't care much about or allow on a whitelist basis. Bad as Mozilla is I trust it more than Google, especially in regards to this thread and others currently floating on the front-page.
  - chakkepolja 5y ago
    The moment UBO doesn't work on chrome, I will switch. But say what you want about their privacy practices, Google is as strong as it can get on security front.
- vord1080 5y ago
  > But chrome's security and performance is miles better than firefox. Not really. Maybe ~6 years ago but they've made insane progress. Full site isolation is rolling out now and the performance is great. Definitely faster than Chrome on my laptop.
EastOfTruth 5y ago
The "new" Firefox Mobile is a joke... they blocked thousands of extensions... Now only about 12 extensions total are available. I still use Firefox mobile v68.11.0esr even if unsupported.
- account-5 5y ago
  Yeah, I was pissed when they did that. Though, excepting uMatrix, it has all the extensions I use daily.
  - EastOfTruth 5y ago
    I use about 15 extensions... less then half are available. Over the years Mozilla has removed many features from Firefox that I was using but this one has me looking at alternate browsers.
    - EastOfTruth 5y ago
      Also... their excuse for removing features over the years was the presence of extensions... I think that they get too much money from Google.
- funkydolphin 5y ago
  yeah right, I use iceraven which has a lot of extensions than firefox, including i dont care about cookies, check it in fdroid...https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
odiroot 5y ago
Firefox, very annoyingly, still doesn't support WebMIDI. I know it's a very niche use case but still. I normally use Firefox but have to pull up Chromium just for that one feature.
- vord1080 5y ago
  You can turn on WebMidi by setting dom.webmidi.enabled to true in about:config, though that isn't a default so it's still a very valid criticism sadly.
  - odiroot 5y ago
    No way, it actually worked. Thank you!
wellthisisgreat 5y ago
I would love to switch to FF but the persona tabs in Chrome are just too convenient. I have a persona for Work, for Personal and Neither (spammy stuff of things I don’t want to get indexed recommendation engines etc). Is there a way to replicate it on FF?
- account-5 5y ago
  You can do that in two ways. Profiles and containers.
- kfprt 5y ago
  FF has container tabs which are infinitely superior to Chrome's.
  - baggy_trough 5y ago
    I've used both and for me personally the Chome ones map better onto my brain.
  - wellthisisgreat 5y ago
    Thank you, can you please elaborate - superior in what ways? The Chrome profiles work really well for me but I’d love to learn about the alternative. Using Chrome is a bit of a guilt trip at this point.
- cpeterso 5y ago
  You can manage and launch multiple Firefox user profiles using Firefox’s about:profiles page, though that UI is clunkier than Chrome’s. Mozilla’s “Multiple Account Containers” extension can automate some of this. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
tyingq 5y ago
Are you counting criticism of Mozilla (the company) as criticism of Firefox? I see more of the former on HN.
wetpaws 5y ago
Devtools for FF are still, sadly, subpar.
- account-5 5y ago
  What's missing or subpar? I'm not a webdev but is firefox developer edition any good?
  - wetpaws 5y ago
    It's a too long list of small but numerous issues. No single thing to pick, more like a systemic problem. (Debugging on FF is especially problematic) FF used to be really good about 10 years ago with creation of firebug extension, it basically created a concept of modern browser devtools, but Mozilla stuck in the past and did not evolve ever since.
bryans 5y ago
There is plenty of legitimate criticism of Firefox in its handling of web standards. For example, they've effectively ended development and support for PWAs on desktop, which would have blown up the future of desktop PWA development (a crucial functionality of the web, as far as most are concerned) if Firefox held a significant portion of the market. The FF contributors make so many decisions that are just plain nonsensical and harmful to the progression of the web, as do Safari and Opera -- especially those two. And while nobody should ever trust Google's bastardization of Chromium, they and the Chromium contributors are really the only people pushing the web forward, while everyone else is desperately trying to pump the breaks on new APIs, for reasons nobody can explain. Reading a bug tracker thread for any of them is like surviving a 1980s BBS discussion between tape storage format elitists. Even when they're correct, they're all wrong because they're not thinking ahead, and we all lose because of it.
bikcrit 5y ago
Isn't all social media pretty much spyware.

irrational 5y ago

Same here. I’ve been using Firefox exclusively since the Firebug days, both for development and personal use. It has worked fantastically for me. But I have real issues whenever I try to use Chrome. I think it mostly comes down to what you are used to.

3f3ufjfde 5y ago

Well, there are a large number of users for whom "all criticism leveled at Firefox" are/were not "neatly mitigated by the reality of what chrome is, spyware." For those people it's probably a combination of things which include Chrome's 'always works' factor (less of a problem these days), Firefox on mobile being trash for a long time (this has also shifted for the better), and most people not sharing your view of what spyware is.

d3nj4l 5y ago

At some level I understand when people on HN get mad at FF increasing the size of the tab bar and the occasional changes they make in the UI/UX. I've never had a major problem with them - it's been at most an hour of getting used to the new style, if at all - but I am honestly astounded by people who think it's a good reason to switch to Chrome. Cutting off your nose to spite your face?

TAForObvReasons 5y ago
Let's not pretend Mozilla is a saint or Firefox is close. Mozilla made a huge number of questionable moves over the years ("death by a thousand cuts") I personally felt that the 2014 introduction of in-browser ads (pitched as "user-enhancing") marked a huge shift. For others it was the deep integration of the proprietary Pocket extension. For still others it was the weird Mr Robot cross-promotion that was pushed via a side channel or the Cliqz in-browser tracking or the booking.com in-browser ads. At this point, it really feels like Mozilla and FF are "controlled opposition" / defense against anti-trust claims, and many of the naysayers would probably jump to a clean implementation that isn't bogged down by the lack of trust.
- vord1080 5y ago
  Pocket isn't proprietary. The bundled extension is OSS and maintained in-tree. It's also not deeply integrated. You can turn it off or use artifact builds to create a custom Firefox with it completely gone, and nothing will break, because it's just a WebExtension.
  - TAForObvReasons 5y ago
    The controversy at the time was that it didn't need to be embedded in the browser and it was a proprietary blob. It literally took years to get to a point where the bundled parts were released as open source (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1343006 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1343006 ). Obviously there are legal concerns etc, but many of the critics would have been much happier if the extension were released as open source first rather than adding proprietary code to the browser
    - vord1080 5y ago
      For what technical reason would it be a proprietary blob? The Firefox frontend has been html/xul/css/js forever. Pocket would be implemented the same. I can't see why it would need to be a binary.
      - dralley 5y ago
        Pocket was an acquisition, not something they had written themselves.
  - grey_earthling 5y ago
    The open source code is only useful when paired with a proprietary network service. When Mozilla bought Pocket, there already existed a competing open source self-hostable network service, Wallabag. Pocket is to Wallabag as Twitter is to Mastodon. My complaint was not that the code in Firefox was proprietary, but that it integrated with (and promoted) a proprietary network service, while there was a viable open source competitor. At the time, Mozilla's mission included the aim “to promote choice and innovation on the internet”, which this integration seemed to go against.
josteink 5y ago
> but I am honestly astounded by people who think it's a good reason to switch to Chrome Who says switching away from Firefox means you have to switch to Chrome, the Google-controlled browser? That seems like a false dichotomy to me.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  Most others are Chromium based. But I see no reason to switch to Chrome when we have Chromium available in every Linux distribution and Brave for Windows/Mobile.
- LarryDarrell 5y ago
  Who exerts the most control over Chromium? Google shareholders or the OSS community? How much Chromium development is done by people not employed by Google or now Microsoft? Brave/Edge/Vivaldi/Opera are all Google controlled browsers. Just because you can slap your own logo and build a sync system on top of Chromium does not mean they get to have any say in how Chromium consumes the Internet. Sure, less data gets sent directly to Google. But when Google says[1], Chromium will not allow you to completely block autoplaying videos, it takes years to for the clones add an option to block[2]. [1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/ [2] https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40377/option-to-disable-autoplay-video/31?lang=en-US&page=2 https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40377/option-to-disable-auto...
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Is there really any alternative to Chrome (outside of the Apple ecosystem)? Vivaldi is Chrome, Edge is Chrome, Opera is Chrome, Brave is Chrome. Sure, technically they're Chromium, not Chrome, and probably you don't share your data with Google (though who can say for sure). But whichever you choose, you're still allowing Google to control the Web ecosystem, from web standards to ad blocking.

kiryin 5y ago

The criticism that people in these communities come up with is limited to button placement and pixel-to-pixel tab bar height, I wouldn't take any of it seriously. Especially in the current web browser climate, it's laughable. It's our moral obligation, as people with knowledge on the subject, to use Firefox. I've expressed my distaste for the way Mozilla is managed again and again, and I hate the stupid stuff they do from the bottom of my heart, but there simply is no other choice.

MikusR 5y ago
Completely covering up bookmark bar when clicked inside address bar is nothing? Limiting length of text in address bar is nothing? Removing icons from menus - so everything looks like gray mess is nothing? Firefox is full of these types of changes.
- kiryin 5y ago
  Yes, they amount to absolutely nothing in this context. When you use Firefox, your bookmarks bar gets covered up while you're typing an URL. When using chrom(e|ium) or its plethora of derivatives, you're actively contributing to browser monoculture, sharing your browsing habits with a predatory corporation, and supporting anti-user changes such as the manifest v3 webextensions, which cripple content blockers and disempower you, us, the user. If the choice is difficult for you, I really don't know what to say.
  - megous 5y ago
    Firefox is shedding users left and right. If you want to complain about people who're staying with the browser and are just complaining about changes to the browser that make their life harder, I think you've picked the wrong group... Maybe go complain at people who have already left.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    My experience using Firefox for a long-ass time has been marred with seemingly arbitrary changes that have frustratingly broken my workflow, since way back when they redesigned the URL bar in Firefox 2 and complaints were met with an irreverent "sucks to be you I guess." It's made me reduce the amount of features I use in Firefox because I feel I can't trust the features will be there anymore or work the same in the next release. Often the benefits are small, and the changes seem to be for the sake of changing things rather than to bring tangible improvements. Workflow-breaking changes are incredibly frustrating for the user, and something a mature project should only do with extreme reluctance. Yet Firefox seems to do it haphazardly. I would honestly be happy to use a browser that looked and worked like Netscape 1.0 as long as it supported modern web standards and didn't keep moving buttons around.

deleted 5y ago

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tucosan 5y ago

I desperately want to use FF, but it has serious bugs that Mozilla ignored for years. I've lost my config multiple times due to a bug in session recovery. After having lost yet another session I moved back to Chrome.

deleted 5y ago

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finite_jest 5y ago

Well, we should remember that Mozilla is essentially funded by Google. [1] I think they are trying to remedy that a little bit by selling VPNs, but that's probably not gonna work. Brave is probably a better option if you want to "drop out". Unlike Firefox, it is not a dying browser, and it's monthly active users are increasing: https://brave.com/36m-mau/ https://brave.com/36m-mau/. They do have a cryptocurrency for relatively privacy-respecting ads thing (Brave Rewards), but you can easily opt out of that. (Also, we should not be puritans about this, developers have to eat too) It is still based on Chromium. But that's probably more of a plus for the typical user who cares more about websites working correctly than browser diversity. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m...

vord1080 5y ago
The compat story for Brave and Firefox is about the same. Tracking protections in Brave broke sites more often than Firefox when I used it for a few months, and there was a recent incident where iCloud was being blocked in Brave. And despite what a lot of people say, engine interop is only getting better thanks to initiatives like Compat2021. More sites work well under Gecko than ever before. Anyone remember IE6 era where Firefox needed bug-for-bug compatibility? It's been worse folks.
leppr 5y ago
Your only criticism of Firefox is that they get money from selling the default search engine spot to Google, but then your alternative recommendation is a browser that's fundamentally dependent on Google? The day Google stops open-sourcing Chromium or start delaying public releases, or when another privacy-busting oopsie slips in the open-source codebase and Brave devs miss it, Brave is done. They don't have the manpower or experience to develop an actual browser. The day Google stops buying Firefox's ad space, Mozilla has hundreds of alternative options for generating revenue.
- finite_jest 5y ago
  That is not my only criticism, but it was the most relevant one. Also, the issue is not that they get money from Google, it is that it is almost all of their revenue. I think Brave has a fair chance of surviving without Google, though your point of their lack of manpower stands. I don't think Firefox will have many good options for generating revenue, given that they have lost 46 million users since 2018 [1] (while paying something like $2M to the chair [2]). And the only effort they made in that direction was is to become a VPN reseller [3]. [1]: https://www.techspot.com/news/90692-firefox-loses-46-million-users-three-years.html https://www.techspot.com/news/90692-firefox-loses-46-million... [2]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html [3]: https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/ https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/

is_true 5y ago

Mobile Firefox has ublock origin. That's a winner for me

finite_jest 5y ago
You can install uBlock Origin on Brave and Chrome too. [1] It is works slightly better on Firefox though. [2] [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- lewiscollard 5y ago
  > You can install uBlock Origin on Brave and Chrome too. ...for now. Be aware that Chrome is going to stop supporting Manifest v2. This will make uBlock Origin stop working - not because the author doesn't want to support v3, but because it is not possible for uBlock Origin to work under the new extension API. If you like uBlock Origin, now would be a good time to get out of the habit of using Chrome.
- bgaluszka 5y ago
  Not on mobile Chrome though which is what parent was writing about.

blendergeek 5y ago

My biggest criticism is that Mozilla removed the open-web RSS reader functionality and added a proprietary walled-garden Pocket read-it-later service. Are the two connected? I need to know.

dralley 5y ago
RSS and read-it-later are completely different things that serve completely different purposes, what kind of "connection" are you looking for?

jFriedensreich 5y ago

i love firefox as secondary browser (mainly some performance issues or minor hickups with certain kinds of web apps that rely on certain animations) and also donate regularly to mozilla, but the dev tools are the main pain point for me. nothing beats the usability of chrome dev tools and working in firefox always makes me feel limited in little ways i cant even point my finger to. in effect my own apps are optimized for chrome first and only improved for firefox as second step wich will then lead to the same small problems making other people use it as secondary browser.

antihero 5y ago
I use FF dev tools fine, I think it was just a case of getting used to them!

SimeVidas 5y ago

Simple explanation: Most people are uninformed and irrational.

bryans 5y ago
What an outrageously toxic and arrogant comment. There are many reasons to dislike Firefox. Just because you're not personally affected by those reasons, doesn't make people who are affected by them somehow mentally ill or lesser humans than you, your majesty.
- SimeVidas 5y ago
  I didn’t say I’m not affected. I’m uninformed about most things, and I sometimes behave irrationally. I don’t see that as a problem. But it does explain why I make bad decisions. That’s all I’m saying. I guess I should have clarified that I didn’t mean my comment negatively.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >What an outrageously toxic and arrogant comment. There are many reasons to dislike Firefox. Just because you're not personally affected by those reasons, doesn't make people who are affected by them somehow mentally ill or lesser humans than you, your majesty. Saying someone is uninformed or irrational isn't the same as saying they're mentally ill or unintelligent. Your comment, however, does well to lend credence to their anecdote.
  - bryans 5y ago
    It's incredibly ironic that you're attempting to teach me a semantics lesson, when you've clearly never read the definitions for the words you're referencing. With one word, the OP implied that people who don't love absolutely everything about Firefox are both mentally unsound and incapable of reasoning. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrational https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrational (1): lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence (2): not endowed with reason or understanding Perhaps the next time you feel the need to jump into a conversation to teach someone a lesson, take a moment to consider that you might be the uninformed one, because it's a distinct possibility based on this anecdote.

smoldesu 5y ago

B-but you could be earning Brave Attention Tokens! Enable ads and you'll be collecting a whole $0.30 a month!

shadowgovt 5y ago

My criticism is simple: Firefox has like a 4% market share, but an entirely separate rendering engine from the other browsers. As a web developer, my job is already to chase down spec-violating implementation bugs in Safari, Chrome, and Edge. Having one more user agent out there does me no good; I'm disinterested in increasing my pain to support a 4% userbase. I'd rather browsing be the purview of one or two giant, well-regulated players than a thousand minorly-incompatible little flowers.

dmitriid 5y ago
> I'd rather browsing be the purview of one or two giant, well-regulated players Key: well-regulated. These giants are anything but. And in the past several years Chrome basically said "I couldn't give two craps about Safari's or Firefox's opinion, we're going to ship our own APIs and call them web standards".
iso1210 5y ago
IE6 called from 2005 and wants its argument back
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  2021 is a rich era of multiple standards-compliant browsers, including Firefox. But if there's a bug where either a browser deviates from the standard or different browsers implement an ambiguity in the standard differently? Web developers will fix that bug in Chrome, Safari, and Edge before fixing it in Firefox. For almost every site, that's what the cost benefit analysis looks like. If my site doesn't work right on Chrome or Safari, that's my problem. If it doesn't work right on Firefox, that's Mozilla's problem.
nchi3 5y ago
You must be quite new to frontend development, right? It's really never been easier than today to do this. Edge uses chromium and IE isn't a thing anymore (for most devs), so it's basically 3 modern and regularly updated browser engines which are _very_ close to each other features-wise. Also, one of the biggest problems with Chrome has been that Google are breaking standards with it repetitively. If you're for well-regulated browsers, Chrome shouldn't be your browser of choice.

corobo 5y ago

> I've never understood the criticism of Firefox on HN My only real criticism is that they keep making dumbass moves like putting ads in the address bar instead of trying to ask for money Do a pro plan for silly people like me who would pay for a promise of no ads. Do an enterprise version of Firefox that hooks in to Active Directory or whatever for syncing Just get lost with the ad plays haha

antihero 5y ago
What on earth version of Firefox are you using that has ads?!
- corobo 5y ago
  The latest version mate https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947

chakkepolja 5y ago

But chrome's security and performance is miles better than firefox. The organization that overpays managerial people, fired technical talent, and funnels donations into political causes instead of browser development is not much better either.

account-5 5y ago
It sounds like you could level that second paragraph at Google too. Personally I take my security and privacy over performance any day. Firefox by default better protects my privacy, and it customisable where it doesn't. Add to this uMatrix, uBlock and disabling JavaScript I'm good for security. I don't care much about negligible performance stats. I notice little difference, especially with the above mentioned add-ons/settings. The websites they break I don't care much about or allow on a whitelist basis. Bad as Mozilla is I trust it more than Google, especially in regards to this thread and others currently floating on the front-page.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  The moment UBO doesn't work on chrome, I will switch. But say what you want about their privacy practices, Google is as strong as it can get on security front.
vord1080 5y ago
> But chrome's security and performance is miles better than firefox. Not really. Maybe ~6 years ago but they've made insane progress. Full site isolation is rolling out now and the performance is great. Definitely faster than Chrome on my laptop.

EastOfTruth 5y ago

The "new" Firefox Mobile is a joke... they blocked thousands of extensions... Now only about 12 extensions total are available. I still use Firefox mobile v68.11.0esr even if unsupported.

account-5 5y ago
Yeah, I was pissed when they did that. Though, excepting uMatrix, it has all the extensions I use daily.
- EastOfTruth 5y ago
  I use about 15 extensions... less then half are available. Over the years Mozilla has removed many features from Firefox that I was using but this one has me looking at alternate browsers.
  - EastOfTruth 5y ago
    Also... their excuse for removing features over the years was the presence of extensions... I think that they get too much money from Google.
funkydolphin 5y ago
yeah right, I use iceraven which has a lot of extensions than firefox, including i dont care about cookies, check it in fdroid...https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

odiroot 5y ago

Firefox, very annoyingly, still doesn't support WebMIDI. I know it's a very niche use case but still. I normally use Firefox but have to pull up Chromium just for that one feature.

vord1080 5y ago
You can turn on WebMidi by setting dom.webmidi.enabled to true in about:config, though that isn't a default so it's still a very valid criticism sadly.
- odiroot 5y ago
  No way, it actually worked. Thank you!

wellthisisgreat 5y ago

I would love to switch to FF but the persona tabs in Chrome are just too convenient. I have a persona for Work, for Personal and Neither (spammy stuff of things I don’t want to get indexed recommendation engines etc). Is there a way to replicate it on FF?

account-5 5y ago
You can do that in two ways. Profiles and containers.
kfprt 5y ago
FF has container tabs which are infinitely superior to Chrome's.
- baggy_trough 5y ago
  I've used both and for me personally the Chome ones map better onto my brain.
- wellthisisgreat 5y ago
  Thank you, can you please elaborate - superior in what ways? The Chrome profiles work really well for me but I’d love to learn about the alternative. Using Chrome is a bit of a guilt trip at this point.
cpeterso 5y ago
You can manage and launch multiple Firefox user profiles using Firefox’s about:profiles page, though that UI is clunkier than Chrome’s. Mozilla’s “Multiple Account Containers” extension can automate some of this. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

tyingq 5y ago

Are you counting criticism of Mozilla (the company) as criticism of Firefox? I see more of the former on HN.

wetpaws 5y ago

Devtools for FF are still, sadly, subpar.

account-5 5y ago
What's missing or subpar? I'm not a webdev but is firefox developer edition any good?
- wetpaws 5y ago
  It's a too long list of small but numerous issues. No single thing to pick, more like a systemic problem. (Debugging on FF is especially problematic) FF used to be really good about 10 years ago with creation of firebug extension, it basically created a concept of modern browser devtools, but Mozilla stuck in the past and did not evolve ever since.

bryans 5y ago

There is plenty of legitimate criticism of Firefox in its handling of web standards. For example, they've effectively ended development and support for PWAs on desktop, which would have blown up the future of desktop PWA development (a crucial functionality of the web, as far as most are concerned) if Firefox held a significant portion of the market. The FF contributors make so many decisions that are just plain nonsensical and harmful to the progression of the web, as do Safari and Opera -- especially those two. And while nobody should ever trust Google's bastardization of Chromium, they and the Chromium contributors are really the only people pushing the web forward, while everyone else is desperately trying to pump the breaks on new APIs, for reasons nobody can explain. Reading a bug tracker thread for any of them is like surviving a 1980s BBS discussion between tape storage format elitists. Even when they're correct, they're all wrong because they're not thinking ahead, and we all lose because of it.

bikcrit 5y ago

Isn't all social media pretty much spyware.