10 ms·

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assum

by zahma 4y ago

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.

ccmcarey 4y ago
I flip flop between Firefox and Chrome constantly and for as long as I can remember, Chrome has always just felt snappier
- 13of40 4y ago
  I have an older Surface tablet (that I recovered from a recycle bin, TBH) and I've been using Chrome on it, but I was annoyed by some of the latency and tried Firefox the other day. It had all the problems of Chrome, plus jittery scrolling and some extra random lags thrown in, so I noped right out of it. I've got nothing against Firefox as a concept, but it's apparently too hardware intensive for that scenario.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Are you sure it isn't the hardware? Perhaps there's a reason it was in the recycling bin. Not my experience whatsoever, even with "old Surface tablets".
dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
DevTools I think... although FF's are solid, Chrome's are just that much better.
avinassh 4y ago
Multiple profiles, so that I can keep personal and work related stuff separately. Firefox has containers, but it’s not really a first class support baked into the browser. For example, I use OneTab extension which lets you suspend tabs to save memory. This doesn’t work well unless you have profiles support. Even with containers, when I suspend a tab, when I unsuspend I would want it in the same tab group
mbrubeck 4y ago
I'm a longtime Mozilla contributor, so I’m probably biased toward Firefox, but there are still a few Chrome features that I wish Firefox had, like: - Easier to create and use multiple profiles (somewhat mitigated by Mozilla's multi-container add-on) - Google Translate integration
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lstamour 4y ago
  It’s not built-in, but you can get Google Translate browser extensions, and these are promoted on Firefox marketing pages. Also, there’s an offline translate extension being worked on in open source: https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-project-bergamot/ https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-pr...
  - kevincox 4y ago
    You can also make a bookmarklet that loads Google Translate into the page. It isn't quite as nice as the auto-detect in Chrome but very close. With the new offline translation support I actually prefer this setup as I can try the local translate first, then if the quality is bad or the language isn't supported I can make the decision if I want to upload the page to Google.
    - joveian 4y ago
      I use the Right Click Search addon, select text, and "search" with Google Translate. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-search/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-s...
- evulhotdog 4y ago
  The profiles is what gets me. I have a personal bad professional profile on my device and whenever clicking on a link, it will open the page in the latest chrome window (re: profile) that was last accessed and it works wonderfully. Firefox profiles are a completely different process/app/structure and it just really does not work gracefully in any scenario I’ve tried.
krolden 4y ago
Chrome works better with google crap, by design. That's about the only reason I ever use chromium.
- worik 4y ago
  I have to use laods of Google Crap at work. I use Firefox. It works OK. Is that why I think the Google docs are not very good? I am on a Mac (for work) so in reality I am using Safari it seems from what I have been reading!
  - anna_hope 4y ago
    On the Mac, Firefox is Firefox, with Quantum and all. It's iOS where Firefox, like every other third party browser, is mostly just reskinned Safari, because third party browser engines aren't allowed due to apps being restricted from running outside code.
system2 4y ago
If you are using gmail, syncing browsers with everything in them is very easy. I do feel like the extension library of chrome is also larger. FF is sluggish to open first time and if there is an update, god help you.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  Interesting..I can't even say I notice the update time..it happens but never stand in my way that I'd notice it..under 1 minute may be? Not sure to be honest. What's your experience here?
PossiblyKyle 4y ago
Its only killer feature to me is that websites are designed and tested with a Chromium-first attitude. As a regular FF user I might stumble upon a website that’s quite buggy or straight up doesn’t work, which forces me to use Chrome for that specific website. Other than that I don’t really feel like there’s anything, and Edge is currently a better Chrome than Chrome anyway. EDIT: and for the record, I’m still upset Microsoft didn’t choose FF and willingly increased Google’s grasp
- g3rv4 4y ago
  I built an extension[1] so that I could choose which sites are opened in Chrome... so that whenever I need to use Google Meet, it automatically opens it on Chrome. [1]: https://onchrome.gervas.io https://onchrome.gervas.io
  - coded 4y ago
    Thanks this sounds exactly what I need! Pretty much only use Chrome for Google Meet.
- CactusOnFire 4y ago
  I've been on team FF since the switch from IE like 20 years ago- I agree sometimes there is additional jank, but I also want to add that it is rare enough that it's been a non-issue 99.9% of the time. Even then, I expect some of it is the fact I use an obscene number of plug-ins to break most social media sites (to prevent overuse).
- Ericson2314 4y ago
  Yeah I'm still surprised MS did that too.
- abirch 4y ago
  Microsoft had a huge hit with VSCode. They like Blink/chromium.
  - amelius 4y ago
bufferoverflow 4y ago
There are a couple of features in Chrome that I use every day for web dev. 1) when the console is open, you can right-click on the reload page button and choose hard reload. 2) when inspecting CSS properties, you can change many of them by dragging them with the mouse left and right. That makes positioning elements so much easier than guessing and adjusting a dozen times.
- mishafb 4y ago
  1. You mean ctrl-shift-r?
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    Ctrl F5, no?
- louhike 4y ago
  You can drag CSS properties in Firefox too.
- 6510 4y ago
  Its in the ff dev tools settings. If the tools are open it reloads everything.
nytesky 4y ago
Multiple profiles in parallel. Does Firefox support that yet??
- nytesky 4y ago
  I know they have containers but maybe I’m using wrong as it’s cumbersome.
- Yaina 4y ago
  So...there are profiles (about:profiles) and you can run them in parallel. But it's not really feature meant for consumers as it is in Chrome.
- thayne 4y ago
  Yes. But launching them isn't as easy as in chrome. Depending on what you are using them for, firefox containers might be sufficient.
- jcynix 4y ago
  Multiple profiles in parallel? Sure, you can start multiple instances of Firefox in parallel from the command line and use them with different profiles. I do that (on a Mac) regularly. Works under Windows too, IIRC.
  - cpeterso 4y ago
    You don’t need to use command line options to open new profiles in Firefox. Just open the about:profiles page.
- Zardoz84 4y ago
  you have containers that are better that parallel profiles
  - celsoazevedo 4y ago
    A few months ago I tried to go back to Firefox and used containers a lot. It works fine, but sometimes I'd pick the wrong container, defeating the point of using containers (eg: using Google Search for personal stuff while logged in to a work Google Account). Containers are useful and we can do interesting things with them (eg: temporary containers), but they don't replace profiles. With a profile I don't have to mix personal bookmarks with work bookmarks, I can use different extensions/settings, a different theme so I don't use the wrong profile by mistake, etc.
Spooky23 4y ago
Firefox has traditionally given a Bronx cheer to IT making it more difficult to manage updates and configuration. Maybe it’s changed but I wrote them off years ago as a result.
- easton 4y ago
  They added good GPO support a year or two ago AFAIK. And if you can send a config file to your Mac/Linux boxes it can be easily managed there too.
- PascLeRasc 4y ago
  Some of us find Firefox incredibly useful for this reason. When my company's intranet site is down you can't open a new tab on Edge without it crashing trying to get there.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  As a Brit, I've never heard the term "Bronx cheer" before, looked it up and now love it.
raydev 4y ago
> Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on history a lot. My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my personal history with boring work stuff. I assume Firefox probably offers account syncing, but there's no reason to switch at this point. They lost me more than a decade ago, I loved Chrome's out-of-the-box interface. It made Firefox seem ancient and cluttered with all the unnecessary buttons, and massive borders and tabs consuming precious screen space. edit: And I'm now reading that Firefox supports multiple browser contexts but requires some effort. No thanks.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- potatototoo99 4y ago
  Yikes. What if they ban your Google account? They have no customer support to speak of.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    Yell on them on Twitter and hope you start trending.
    - behringer 4y ago
      Ask for support on hn when a Google post trends.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    You get account support with Google One or a Google Workspace subscription. There are other support avenues as well. Account bans do happen but for the most part it appears that when it does, that the person who got banned doesn't share the full story and people are more than happy to jump on the Google hate train. Google is a successful company and it annoys a lot of people that others don't have the same hate that they do.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
I use FF, but I have at times had to switch to Chrome for extended periods of time when performance of FF was bad after a particular release - maybe about 9-10 years ago? I think a lot of people experienced the same thing at the time, moved off and never moved back.
- mh- 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I know several folks who got retina MacBooks when that was new (2012 or so?) and had to switch off of Firefox. For a while it didn't render correctly, and then once it did the performance made it unusable for daily driving.
- worik 4y ago
  I am a faithful user of FF. It was difficult about a decade ago. The performance was not great. Over the past few years it has gotten much better. Out of sight better. Is it the Rust project? I do not know. But I no longer have to suffer nobly, FF is just better
- 2143 4y ago
  After they came out with Firefox quantum (version 57/58 onwards), performance has improved. Give it a try.
AlexSW 4y ago
For me, it's simply the grouping of tabs. I use both, but if I ever want to keep my tabs organised (which is often) I cannot use Firefox.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Really? There are extensions for that sort of thing. Your extension list can even be synchronized across devices. Tree Style Tab, for example, allows control over how new tabs are opened in relation to existing tabs if you don't like FF defaults. Even if you don't like the tree view, you get a UI that adds settings for how your tabs should open and stay grouped.
canistel 4y ago
I would say that it is the other way around. Firefox provides essential functionalities that are altogether missing in Chrome:- 1. dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled - Enable copy paste 2. dom.event.contextmenu.enabled - Always enable context menu (right-click) 3. First party isolation.
petronio 4y ago
Chrome has support for casting to Chromecasts. While not enough reason to daily drive Chrome, it does come in handy for the random video player that doesn't natively support it.
bgro 4y ago
Those experienced with web dev around here will tell you Chrome is the main (or only) browser tested with most websites these days. Some things might be slow or broken in Firefox. One example situation that comes to mind is you can't scroll to the bottom of the page on some sites in Firefox due to terrible spaghetti layout design, so the submit button is not normally reachable. Or it loads under a banner and becomes unclickable. There's also some sites that seem to actively make things worse on purpose or refuse to load even if they otherwise do work. I think YouTube was noted for doing this a few years ago. In other areas, small company sites may claim Firefox just doesn't work on their site. Sometimes prompted because an ancient version once was broken and the browser entry list was never updated, or they simply forgot to account for it in the grouping of "Internet Explorer or Other." I see this more often than I would like.
- behringer 4y ago
  I only had one site in recent memory that failed to load. I put in a call to the support line and they fixed it. Tbh this whole idea that the web is broken on ff is not true, tho it is true some web assembly apps fail to work properly in my experience. I challenge anyone here to give an actual useful site that fails to work properly in ff.
  - bit_logic 4y ago
    A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge) This is just the most recent example I remember, unfortunately there have been enough at this point that if I'm doing anything important (such as filling and submitting some important form), I do it in Chrome because I don't want it to silently break in FF and cause other issues with invalid or corrupt data submitted to the service.
    - lol768 4y ago
      > A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge) I can't reproduce this in FF 104.
spurgu 4y ago
Not exactly "killer" but the ability to customize the keyboard shortcut to focus the URL bar (to Cmd+D) is what keeps me from switching to Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168
- kevincox 4y ago
  I would pay $100 for fully customizable keyboard shortcuts in Firefox. Especially if they were Vim-like or could bind arbitrary JavaScript to a key. I miss vimperator so much.
more_corn 4y ago
Chrome profiles. I need a distinct browser environment for each of my clients.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Firefox supports multiple profiles, though the UI is not as streamlined as Chrome’s. In Firefox, open about:profiles to create and open new profile windows.
  - teh_klev 4y ago
    The Firefox implementation is clunky. If they fixed that then I'd readily switch to FF.
Yiin 4y ago
I personally dislike Firefox for its annoying "Looking for updates" pop-up whenever I open the browser. That 3 second stop generated more dislike from me for Firefox than bad privacy policies of Chrome ever could.
- minitech 4y ago
  I’ve never seen or heard of that. Is this recent? Anyone have a screenshot?
bit_logic 4y ago
Firefox had the chance to remain relevant when it still had some significant market share and if they had gone all in on ad blocking (basically something like merge ublock origin directly into Firefox). Unfortunately, since most of their revenue is from Google, it could never happen due to conflict of interest.
- abirch 4y ago
  Do you think major websites that are funded by ads would simply block Firefox with merged ad blocker?
  - bit_logic 4y ago
    At this point, probably, but in the past when FF had 30% market share? It would've at least forced a serious discussion in the industry on what are acceptable ads. Or maybe it would've been the impetus for a working microtransaction system built into the browser. Instead, they did nothing with their influence.
puchatek 4y ago
There's a potentially a killer feature of Firefox that justifies its use over Chrome: it seems to be impossible to prevent youtube ads from playing on Chrome while in Firefox just having ABP installed does the trick. (this claim is based on rather limited testing so please correct me if I'm wrong)
porker 4y ago
Start typing a Web address, hit tab and search that website. In Chrome it works reliably for me; in Firefox it works for a small subset of the sites that work in Chrome.
neurostimulant 4y ago
The killer features is the developer tools panel. It's so packed with features it might as well be an IDE. I use Firefox on all my devices for personal browsing, but I still use Chrome for webdev works.
- isaacaggrey 4y ago
  What web dev tools do you find valuable that Chrome has over Firefox?
christophilus 4y ago
Video playback is janky for me in Firefox on Linux on some sites (like IGN), but not on Brave. Actually, now that I mention it, I bet I haven’t installed a codec or something.
- throwawaycuriou 4y ago
  Happened to me too starting a few weeks ago. What solved it was to turn off Bluetooth, and prevent from activating on start.
bobajeff 4y ago
I happen to really like the UI of Chrome over Firefox. To me the add bookmark dialog is very clunky in Firefox. Also, I prefer in the in-tab bookmark manager of Chrome over the 'Library' Window Firefox opens. Also as far as making extensions go I like how in chrome you can use dev-tools-protocol within extensions as you can you cool things like intercept the body of a response with it. That being said I'm really wanting a better browser but for me Firefox is not it.
nec4b 4y ago
Among others, serial port API is missing.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Gmail offline support. This is why there's Thunderbird.

by zahma 4y ago

ccmcarey 4y ago

I flip flop between Firefox and Chrome constantly and for as long as I can remember, Chrome has always just felt snappier

13of40 4y ago
I have an older Surface tablet (that I recovered from a recycle bin, TBH) and I've been using Chrome on it, but I was annoyed by some of the latency and tried Firefox the other day. It had all the problems of Chrome, plus jittery scrolling and some extra random lags thrown in, so I noped right out of it. I've got nothing against Firefox as a concept, but it's apparently too hardware intensive for that scenario.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Are you sure it isn't the hardware? Perhaps there's a reason it was in the recycling bin. Not my experience whatsoever, even with "old Surface tablets".

dmitryminkovsky 4y ago

DevTools I think... although FF's are solid, Chrome's are just that much better.

avinassh 4y ago

Multiple profiles, so that I can keep personal and work related stuff separately. Firefox has containers, but it’s not really a first class support baked into the browser. For example, I use OneTab extension which lets you suspend tabs to save memory. This doesn’t work well unless you have profiles support. Even with containers, when I suspend a tab, when I unsuspend I would want it in the same tab group

mbrubeck 4y ago

I'm a longtime Mozilla contributor, so I’m probably biased toward Firefox, but there are still a few Chrome features that I wish Firefox had, like: - Easier to create and use multiple profiles (somewhat mitigated by Mozilla's multi-container add-on) - Google Translate integration

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lstamour 4y ago
It’s not built-in, but you can get Google Translate browser extensions, and these are promoted on Firefox marketing pages. Also, there’s an offline translate extension being worked on in open source: https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-project-bergamot/ https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-pr...
- kevincox 4y ago
  You can also make a bookmarklet that loads Google Translate into the page. It isn't quite as nice as the auto-detect in Chrome but very close. With the new offline translation support I actually prefer this setup as I can try the local translate first, then if the quality is bad or the language isn't supported I can make the decision if I want to upload the page to Google.
  - joveian 4y ago
    I use the Right Click Search addon, select text, and "search" with Google Translate. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-search/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-s...
evulhotdog 4y ago
The profiles is what gets me. I have a personal bad professional profile on my device and whenever clicking on a link, it will open the page in the latest chrome window (re: profile) that was last accessed and it works wonderfully. Firefox profiles are a completely different process/app/structure and it just really does not work gracefully in any scenario I’ve tried.

krolden 4y ago

Chrome works better with google crap, by design. That's about the only reason I ever use chromium.

worik 4y ago
I have to use laods of Google Crap at work. I use Firefox. It works OK. Is that why I think the Google docs are not very good? I am on a Mac (for work) so in reality I am using Safari it seems from what I have been reading!
- anna_hope 4y ago
  On the Mac, Firefox is Firefox, with Quantum and all. It's iOS where Firefox, like every other third party browser, is mostly just reskinned Safari, because third party browser engines aren't allowed due to apps being restricted from running outside code.

system2 4y ago

If you are using gmail, syncing browsers with everything in them is very easy. I do feel like the extension library of chrome is also larger. FF is sluggish to open first time and if there is an update, god help you.

CoolCold 4y ago
Interesting..I can't even say I notice the update time..it happens but never stand in my way that I'd notice it..under 1 minute may be? Not sure to be honest. What's your experience here?

PossiblyKyle 4y ago

Its only killer feature to me is that websites are designed and tested with a Chromium-first attitude. As a regular FF user I might stumble upon a website that’s quite buggy or straight up doesn’t work, which forces me to use Chrome for that specific website. Other than that I don’t really feel like there’s anything, and Edge is currently a better Chrome than Chrome anyway. EDIT: and for the record, I’m still upset Microsoft didn’t choose FF and willingly increased Google’s grasp

g3rv4 4y ago
I built an extension[1] so that I could choose which sites are opened in Chrome... so that whenever I need to use Google Meet, it automatically opens it on Chrome. [1]: https://onchrome.gervas.io https://onchrome.gervas.io
- coded 4y ago
  Thanks this sounds exactly what I need! Pretty much only use Chrome for Google Meet.
CactusOnFire 4y ago
I've been on team FF since the switch from IE like 20 years ago- I agree sometimes there is additional jank, but I also want to add that it is rare enough that it's been a non-issue 99.9% of the time. Even then, I expect some of it is the fact I use an obscene number of plug-ins to break most social media sites (to prevent overuse).
Ericson2314 4y ago
Yeah I'm still surprised MS did that too.
abirch 4y ago
Microsoft had a huge hit with VSCode. They like Blink/chromium.
- amelius 4y ago

bufferoverflow 4y ago

There are a couple of features in Chrome that I use every day for web dev. 1) when the console is open, you can right-click on the reload page button and choose hard reload. 2) when inspecting CSS properties, you can change many of them by dragging them with the mouse left and right. That makes positioning elements so much easier than guessing and adjusting a dozen times.

mishafb 4y ago
1. You mean ctrl-shift-r?
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  Ctrl F5, no?
louhike 4y ago
You can drag CSS properties in Firefox too.
6510 4y ago
Its in the ff dev tools settings. If the tools are open it reloads everything.

nytesky 4y ago

Multiple profiles in parallel. Does Firefox support that yet??

nytesky 4y ago
I know they have containers but maybe I’m using wrong as it’s cumbersome.
Yaina 4y ago
So...there are profiles (about:profiles) and you can run them in parallel. But it's not really feature meant for consumers as it is in Chrome.
thayne 4y ago
Yes. But launching them isn't as easy as in chrome. Depending on what you are using them for, firefox containers might be sufficient.
jcynix 4y ago
Multiple profiles in parallel? Sure, you can start multiple instances of Firefox in parallel from the command line and use them with different profiles. I do that (on a Mac) regularly. Works under Windows too, IIRC.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  You don’t need to use command line options to open new profiles in Firefox. Just open the about:profiles page.
Zardoz84 4y ago
you have containers that are better that parallel profiles
- celsoazevedo 4y ago
  A few months ago I tried to go back to Firefox and used containers a lot. It works fine, but sometimes I'd pick the wrong container, defeating the point of using containers (eg: using Google Search for personal stuff while logged in to a work Google Account). Containers are useful and we can do interesting things with them (eg: temporary containers), but they don't replace profiles. With a profile I don't have to mix personal bookmarks with work bookmarks, I can use different extensions/settings, a different theme so I don't use the wrong profile by mistake, etc.

Spooky23 4y ago

Firefox has traditionally given a Bronx cheer to IT making it more difficult to manage updates and configuration. Maybe it’s changed but I wrote them off years ago as a result.

easton 4y ago
They added good GPO support a year or two ago AFAIK. And if you can send a config file to your Mac/Linux boxes it can be easily managed there too.
PascLeRasc 4y ago
Some of us find Firefox incredibly useful for this reason. When my company's intranet site is down you can't open a new tab on Edge without it crashing trying to get there.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
As a Brit, I've never heard the term "Bronx cheer" before, looked it up and now love it.

raydev 4y ago

> Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on history a lot. My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my personal history with boring work stuff. I assume Firefox probably offers account syncing, but there's no reason to switch at this point. They lost me more than a decade ago, I loved Chrome's out-of-the-box interface. It made Firefox seem ancient and cluttered with all the unnecessary buttons, and massive borders and tabs consuming precious screen space. edit: And I'm now reading that Firefox supports multiple browser contexts but requires some effort. No thanks.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
potatototoo99 4y ago
Yikes. What if they ban your Google account? They have no customer support to speak of.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  Yell on them on Twitter and hope you start trending.
  - behringer 4y ago
    Ask for support on hn when a Google post trends.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  You get account support with Google One or a Google Workspace subscription. There are other support avenues as well. Account bans do happen but for the most part it appears that when it does, that the person who got banned doesn't share the full story and people are more than happy to jump on the Google hate train. Google is a successful company and it annoys a lot of people that others don't have the same hate that they do.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

I use FF, but I have at times had to switch to Chrome for extended periods of time when performance of FF was bad after a particular release - maybe about 9-10 years ago? I think a lot of people experienced the same thing at the time, moved off and never moved back.

mh- 4y ago
Anecdotally, I know several folks who got retina MacBooks when that was new (2012 or so?) and had to switch off of Firefox. For a while it didn't render correctly, and then once it did the performance made it unusable for daily driving.
worik 4y ago
I am a faithful user of FF. It was difficult about a decade ago. The performance was not great. Over the past few years it has gotten much better. Out of sight better. Is it the Rust project? I do not know. But I no longer have to suffer nobly, FF is just better
2143 4y ago
After they came out with Firefox quantum (version 57/58 onwards), performance has improved. Give it a try.

AlexSW 4y ago

For me, it's simply the grouping of tabs. I use both, but if I ever want to keep my tabs organised (which is often) I cannot use Firefox.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
Really? There are extensions for that sort of thing. Your extension list can even be synchronized across devices. Tree Style Tab, for example, allows control over how new tabs are opened in relation to existing tabs if you don't like FF defaults. Even if you don't like the tree view, you get a UI that adds settings for how your tabs should open and stay grouped.

canistel 4y ago

I would say that it is the other way around. Firefox provides essential functionalities that are altogether missing in Chrome:- 1. dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled - Enable copy paste 2. dom.event.contextmenu.enabled - Always enable context menu (right-click) 3. First party isolation.

petronio 4y ago

Chrome has support for casting to Chromecasts. While not enough reason to daily drive Chrome, it does come in handy for the random video player that doesn't natively support it.

bgro 4y ago

Those experienced with web dev around here will tell you Chrome is the main (or only) browser tested with most websites these days. Some things might be slow or broken in Firefox. One example situation that comes to mind is you can't scroll to the bottom of the page on some sites in Firefox due to terrible spaghetti layout design, so the submit button is not normally reachable. Or it loads under a banner and becomes unclickable. There's also some sites that seem to actively make things worse on purpose or refuse to load even if they otherwise do work. I think YouTube was noted for doing this a few years ago. In other areas, small company sites may claim Firefox just doesn't work on their site. Sometimes prompted because an ancient version once was broken and the browser entry list was never updated, or they simply forgot to account for it in the grouping of "Internet Explorer or Other." I see this more often than I would like.

behringer 4y ago
I only had one site in recent memory that failed to load. I put in a call to the support line and they fixed it. Tbh this whole idea that the web is broken on ff is not true, tho it is true some web assembly apps fail to work properly in my experience. I challenge anyone here to give an actual useful site that fails to work properly in ff.
- bit_logic 4y ago
  A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge) This is just the most recent example I remember, unfortunately there have been enough at this point that if I'm doing anything important (such as filling and submitting some important form), I do it in Chrome because I don't want it to silently break in FF and cause other issues with invalid or corrupt data submitted to the service.
  - lol768 4y ago
    > A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge) I can't reproduce this in FF 104.

spurgu 4y ago

Not exactly "killer" but the ability to customize the keyboard shortcut to focus the URL bar (to Cmd+D) is what keeps me from switching to Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168

kevincox 4y ago
I would pay $100 for fully customizable keyboard shortcuts in Firefox. Especially if they were Vim-like or could bind arbitrary JavaScript to a key. I miss vimperator so much.

more_corn 4y ago

Chrome profiles. I need a distinct browser environment for each of my clients.

cpeterso 4y ago
Firefox supports multiple profiles, though the UI is not as streamlined as Chrome’s. In Firefox, open about:profiles to create and open new profile windows.
- teh_klev 4y ago
  The Firefox implementation is clunky. If they fixed that then I'd readily switch to FF.

Yiin 4y ago

I personally dislike Firefox for its annoying "Looking for updates" pop-up whenever I open the browser. That 3 second stop generated more dislike from me for Firefox than bad privacy policies of Chrome ever could.

minitech 4y ago
I’ve never seen or heard of that. Is this recent? Anyone have a screenshot?

bit_logic 4y ago

Firefox had the chance to remain relevant when it still had some significant market share and if they had gone all in on ad blocking (basically something like merge ublock origin directly into Firefox). Unfortunately, since most of their revenue is from Google, it could never happen due to conflict of interest.

abirch 4y ago
Do you think major websites that are funded by ads would simply block Firefox with merged ad blocker?
- bit_logic 4y ago
  At this point, probably, but in the past when FF had 30% market share? It would've at least forced a serious discussion in the industry on what are acceptable ads. Or maybe it would've been the impetus for a working microtransaction system built into the browser. Instead, they did nothing with their influence.

puchatek 4y ago

There's a potentially a killer feature of Firefox that justifies its use over Chrome: it seems to be impossible to prevent youtube ads from playing on Chrome while in Firefox just having ABP installed does the trick. (this claim is based on rather limited testing so please correct me if I'm wrong)

porker 4y ago

Start typing a Web address, hit tab and search that website. In Chrome it works reliably for me; in Firefox it works for a small subset of the sites that work in Chrome.

neurostimulant 4y ago

The killer features is the developer tools panel. It's so packed with features it might as well be an IDE. I use Firefox on all my devices for personal browsing, but I still use Chrome for webdev works.

isaacaggrey 4y ago
What web dev tools do you find valuable that Chrome has over Firefox?

christophilus 4y ago

Video playback is janky for me in Firefox on Linux on some sites (like IGN), but not on Brave. Actually, now that I mention it, I bet I haven’t installed a codec or something.

throwawaycuriou 4y ago
Happened to me too starting a few weeks ago. What solved it was to turn off Bluetooth, and prevent from activating on start.

bobajeff 4y ago

I happen to really like the UI of Chrome over Firefox. To me the add bookmark dialog is very clunky in Firefox. Also, I prefer in the in-tab bookmark manager of Chrome over the 'Library' Window Firefox opens. Also as far as making extensions go I like how in chrome you can use dev-tools-protocol within extensions as you can you cool things like intercept the body of a response with it. That being said I'm really wanting a better browser but for me Firefox is not it.

nec4b 4y ago

Among others, serial port API is missing.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

Gmail offline support. This is why there's Thunderbird.