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> I'd be glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions that y'all might want to share. I'm sure others will be sharing it as I type this comment as w

by Vinnl 4y ago

> I'd be glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions that y'all might want to share. I'm sure others will be sharing it as I type this comment as well, but for many HN readers, Multi-Account Containers [1] are bound to be a godsend. Easily log in to different accounts for any website, in different tabs. Great feature that's not available in other browsers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-conta...

Vinnl 4y ago
And some more tips: - Translate web pages locally, without sending any data to remote servers: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translation... - Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ - If you're in the EU: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/ - If you use RSS: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feed-preview/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feed-preview/ And I assume you've already got uBlock Origin. And as others mentioned, try also using Firefox as your mobile browser, so you can send tabs from one to the other, which is pretty neat.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  In addition: - SponsorBlock - Automatically tag and skip portions of youtube videos, such as sponsors, intros, recaps, and others. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ - Firefox Relay - Automatically create up to 5 (for free, more if paying for it) email addresses that redirect to your actual address, to avoid giving your private address to everyone. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-relay/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-relay...
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    Ha, thanks for sharing Firefox Relay - I actually work on that, so I was a bit hesitant about sharing it. I'll add that "paying for it" is €1 a month for unlimited email addresses.
    - 3np 4y ago
      Not a paying customer but if there was a way to sign up and pay anonymously (crypto and/or cash via mail), I'd be banging on the door even at a significant markup.
      - xp84 4y ago
        Is something like privacy dot com (virtual card numbers) not anonymous enough? I kinda don’t wanna know what you’re doing with these email addresses
        lostoldsession 4y ago
        There are a lot of people who just want privacy wherever they can get it. It's not necessarily something nefarious, but the result of the question "Does this person need to know who I am? No. Therefore there is nothing to gain and only something to lose by telling them."
        zedadex 4y ago
        For me it's more like "Do I want to waste time dredging this info back up in case they ever get breached", to which the answer is almost always "No".
  - rrishi 4y ago
    Those are some really interesting extensions you've suggested. I'll be sure to keep Relay in the back of my mind, I haven't had need of it yet. Though I do have requirement for SponsorBlock avid watcher of YT that I am, I am a little hesitant to add SponsorBlock as I am not quite sure how it would work flawlessly without some really complicated algorithms potentially involving ML work. I am curious to know if in your experience it has ever erred and automatically skipped portions it wasn't supposed to ? Or any other type of errors ?
    - godshatter 4y ago
      It's crowdsourced. The downside to that is that less popular videos may not have the sponsor information skipped, although you do have the ability to post start and end timestamps for videos that don't have it in place yet.
    - setuids 4y ago
      From my understanding SponsorBlock doesn't use any ML stuff, but is simply a database that allows other users to submit what they think is a sponsor (or other annoyance). I've found it to sometimes not get all sponsors (especially for more niche videos), and the self-promotion sections are usually too agressive (but they can be disabled). I'd say give it a go honestly
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      Yeah, the word "automatically" does a lot of heavy lifting there. But like others said, it's crowsourced. You watch a video, tag it, done. There's some anti abuse tools, like tags done by new users being served not all the time and tested by other users before it's trusted. I have never seen bad section tagging over the past two years.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  > Translate web pages locally This is a good start for a but what I'm looking for is Local Full Text Search of every page in my history. It shouldn't be hard to automatically maintain a text index of the pages I've browsed so that I can search them by keyword without bookmarking everything. Maybe it's just me but chronological history is useless beyond a few days.
  - bmn__ 4y ago
    https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/falcon_extension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/falcon_extension/ Why don't you just search the add-ons? This would have taken less time than to formulate your post.
    - speed_spread 4y ago
      I did, and never found this. Thanks. You could have just pasted the URL. When someone here asks a well-formulated question I assume they've done their research first.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  This is one of those moments where I realize other folks on HN have almost exactly the same Firefox setup as me. Nice list of add-on recommendations! I would add in a couple more, for anyone tempted to switch away from Chrome or Safari: - Redirector: https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Very helpful for redirecting "new" reddit to old.reddit.com, AMP links to normal links, Twitter to Nitter, etc. - RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhancement-suite/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhanc... Provides built-in image preview and lots of other subtle goodies for old.reddit.com. I have a very hard time browsing reddit without it! - Sponsorblock for Youtube: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ If you watch any amount of YouTube on channels with lots of sponsors, this is a great way to keep your sanity. Works just like sponsor skipping in the Overcast podcast client.
  - savingsPossible 4y ago
    Would you share your redirector redirections list? (Sorry for the lazyness :P)
    - bmn__ 4y ago
      Use libredirect instead, it comes with a prodigious amount of configured redirections. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641069
  - rofrol 4y ago
    nice, also these - https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... - https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/android/addon/onetab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/android/addon/onetab/ - stylish - kill sticky
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  I love tree style tabs and I really want to encourage people to set it up and really customize their user stylesheet to make the best use of it. I have removed all traces of the original tab bar at the top and the three primary window buttons (close, restore, minimize) giving me back lots of that precious vertical space. Their GitHub has a ton of CSS snippets to help you with customization. I'd also be happy to share my user CSS file.
  - bundie 4y ago
    Please do.
  - sanjayen 4y ago
    @DangitBobby please share your user CSS file
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
  >- Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ This is the biggest reason why Chrome sucks - they have no workable version of vertical tabs. Reasons why horizontal tabs are clearly inferior: 1. Screens (generally) have way more horizontal space than vertical and you read webpages vertically. I already have an OS top bar and a browser top bar taking some of this valuable vertical space. 2. Most webpages have predefined right and left margins, so vertical tabs don't take away from the visible space of the page. 3. The size of the tab header is critical for being able to read the name of the tab. I have my vertical tabs set to 30 characters. If I had horizontal tabs with 30 characters, I could fit maybe 6 tabs on the screen at once. 4. Ease of having many more concurrently open tabs. I easily have 38 tabs open and visible without scrolling. 8 of those are pinned tabs which take up the space of one tab. I use 6 different windows (which are category titled using the Titler extension). That is 228 tabs open at once and very easily accessible and readable. (of course I use Total Suspender to keep them from taking too many resources) All this said, Firefox still sucks because vertical should be the default or at least a simple toggle. As it is, you have to trust some extension and then you have to jump through obnoxious hoops just to get the damn horizontal tabs turned off. And yes, there are some other browsers that have vertical tabs built in, but I am not touching Edge or Opera as they are from dubious companies. I also think that Brave is working on it, but they seem dubious as well. Now to my complaints about Sidebery (which is superior to Tree Style Tabs). Sidebery has tree style as well, but I turn it off as it undermines the value of #3 above. It has panels, which are goofy and, while you don't have to use them, you still lose a tab worth of space for it. You also lose an even larger tab space to the Sidebery title (which is a menu and an X that aren't necessary. Sidebery doesn't work well with the Titler extension - when you want to move a tab to another window, it doesn't show you the title.
  - odinho 4y ago
    I used to work on the Opera browser. I quit when it got sold to China. Also wanted to do that, since most people as well as main Oslo HQ was fired from Poland a year earlier. Opera was very much a not-dubious company. But that is what it has turned in to. -- I use Firefox as my main work-browser, and have for a long time, and the last few years I've used Vivaldi as my main personal browser. I find it easier to just have separate browsers rather than do anything more advanced for context. :)
- SanchoPanda 4y ago
  Feed-preview is so helpful, thank you!
- culi 4y ago
  feed preview seemed to break my browser since I have a ton of tabs open all the time. Not sure why the extension causes this, but just a head's up Firefox has a really great json viewer that I prefer even over my IDE, but it's one weakness is it's lack of XML support which Chrome does have :/
- abareplace 4y ago
  Consent-o-matic does not work on most websites; you still have to click the consent banners manually. Try https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
kirimita 4y ago
I'd love to be able to enable DRM for a single container. Until then, I have to continue with profiles.
alexelcu 4y ago
You're right, but for a counter-point versus Chromium, multi-account containers are worse for security compared with profiles… This matters when you can't 100% trust your browser session, or the installed extensions. Did you ever load https://my.1password.com https://my.1password.com in your browser? How do you feel about it? Do you trust your installed extensions to not take a peak? I don't. Chrome solves this elegantly via profiles. Even more, you can install websites as “apps”, with a shortcut that gets indexed by the OS, and Chrome remembers the profile. I simply type “1Password Online” or “Banking” and my Chromium opens a new window in my “Private” profile that has no extensions installed. Firefox dropped the ball on both PWA shortcuts, and on profiles. Even for using multiple accounts, I feel like Chromium profiles are a better solution. For example, my workplace has very strict security requirements, and when looking at company documents it's not cool to provide access to extensions like LanguageTool or Grammarly. I'd be in trouble. And Chromium always had finer grained permissions for extensions, like activating or deactivating them per website.
- II2II 4y ago
  Wouldn't Firefox's profiles accomplish the same thing? (Yes, I understand they are difficult to access but they are still there.) That said, containers are a handy tool for people who want to access multiple accounts without the trouble of setting up individual profiles. Keep in mind, if you're only trying to access a personal and work Google account you probably don't want to spend time setting up a separate profile for each then keeping the settings synchronized.
  - alexelcu 4y ago
    Yes, but Firefox's profiles are very hard to use (apart from keeping multiple Firefox channels installed, e.g., stable, beta), I tried, and I couldn't. Starting a profile is difficult, and also switching between windows, since the OS sees profiles as different apps. It's probably not hard to fix, but Mozilla has had other priorities.
    - godshatter 4y ago
      Just open about:profiles. You can create new ones, remove old ones, set which one is the default and can open them in a new browser. I use this all the time to open a browser as a new SSO functional user without having to log out. I don't know why they don't add this somewhere in the menus and I don't know why you can't bookmark about:profiles, but this works well for me as it is.
smiley1437 4y ago
Holy crap thank you! I have to log into multiple Microsoft365 tenants and it drove me crazy with the amount of signing OUT I needed to do when switching accounts, to the point where my crappy workaround was to use different browsers for each account (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, etc) but I started to run out of different browsers. This multi-account container extension is a godsend
- gabrielsroka 4y ago
  Chrome supports multiple user profiles. I assume Edge and Brave do too.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Or you can start them pointing to a completely different user-profile-directory. I do that, no chance for one to leak into the others.
    - Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
      Or you can just use FF containers - which is 99% less work.
      - djbusby 4y ago
        Yea, but those came about after I'd built the wrapper for quickly launching different profiles of either Chrome or FF. FF containers are more work than the 2 clicks I do now, powered by some Python I wrote like 15 years ago (with minor maintenance).
        overtomanu 4y ago
        you still have to switch through browser windows right? with containers it is just a tab click and you can put related tabs for a particular topic in a single window
  - briffle 4y ago
jhanschoo 4y ago
Caveat: there is still no first-party support for resetting the cache or the cookies in a per-container fashion. https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/303 https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...
- jdlshore 4y ago
  Cookie AutoDelete is my go-to for deleting cookies.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I can't imagine browsing the web without MAC and Temporary Containers. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... It's sort of like everything opens in a private browsing window, except the stuff I've whitelisted.
- waz0wski 4y ago
  One more extension related to container management - https://github.com/kintesh/containerise https://github.com/kintesh/containerise This lets you set regex/wildcard to contain subdomain or redirect happy sites into a single container
rrishi 4y ago
Oh that's definitely a use case that had arisen in my workflow. I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks!
dedsm 4y ago
Multi account containers + Temporary Containers [1] + I don't care about cookies [2] are an awesome combination I use, I have ~10 fixed containers and for almost everything it's a new container that lives as long as the tab is open. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
- illiac786 4y ago
  Why do you need a container for almost everything? It's it for privacy reasons? If yes, what do containers offer which is not already provided by the total cookie protection feature?
  - simongray 4y ago
    Would love to know this too! It's a bit confusing the amount of options available.
nashashmi 4y ago
Hate to be a black cloud, but as much as I love containers, my containers and their settings often disappeared. I can no longer remember exactly why. it may be if i disabled containers and then re-enabled them. (Containers may be a source of glitches so disabling is to help with troubleshooting.) getpocket.com needs to be logged in via container 0. if you put getpocket to a personal container, and don't login to getpocket from container 0, then firefox's save to pocket feature does not work. i cannot save bookmarks to automatically open in set containers (personal gmail to open in one container, work gmail to open in another container, etc.). Otherwise, containers is something i miss and i have used workarounds to implement the same with MS Edge.
- 28304283409234 4y ago
  Why not start firefox with the -P flag for troubleshooting? And keep your default Profile using containers.
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    Not sure what the flag does but your context tells me another profile without my extensions is established. The problem is I am trying to figure out which extension is causing the problem. So enabling and disabling each one is supposed to be a procedure. Regardless, enabling/disabling should not cause losing settings.
- overtomanu 4y ago
  instead of bookmarking if are fine using another extension, then use "Session Boss" to save and restore sessions
- yoasif_ 4y ago
  > i cannot save bookmarks to automatically open in set containers (personal gmail to open in one container, work gmail to open in another container, etc.). Sure you can: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-bookmarks/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-boo...
alexjplant 4y ago
I wrote about my favorites here [1]. I make an active effort to sculpt my online experience into something useful rather than intellectually draining; every time I fire up an unconfigured browser instance on a new machine I'm taken aback at how much I lean on various extensions and configurations to make the web usable. [1] https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-productivity/ https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-produ...
xwowsersx 4y ago
One thing I haven't figured out with container tabs: say I'm currently in one of the container tabs and I want cmd + T to open a new container tab. This doesn't work by default, AFAICT...instead it opens a regular non-container tab. How can I make it so that I get a new tab for the same container I'm currently on. Right now, I have to either go to File > new container tab or right-click the tab and click "new tab"..but I don't like using the mouse.
- erainey 4y ago
  cmd + shift + <number> You can configure 10 different tabs in extensions settings
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Control + Shift + a number key should open a tab in a specific container. You can map containers to specific number keys in the addon settings.
  - xwowsersx 4y ago
    Oh awesome, thank you!
space_debris 4y ago
I never understood the concept of Multi-Account Containers. I would guess it makes sense when one hardly closes the browser (and clears the cache) and has dozens of tabs open? What is a standard use case (home/work)? I simply use Temporary Containers to isolate tabs (or different domains) and login to websites either by hand or via KeepassXC's browser integration. No per-container setup needed, every tab just lives briefly in its own little container.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  There are lots of different use cases. 1. Further defense in depth against common XSS attacks: if you only ever log into banking sites in a Banking container, then some random ad-sprung malware trying to access your bank in any other container will never find a logged in banking session to hijack (no matter how good your bank thinks they are at XSS protection and auto-timeouts). 2. Isolating tracking cookies from major ad companies. This reduces cross-correlation between/among them. I have separate containers at this point for all of: Google account usage, Twitter account usage, Facebook account usage, and Amazon account usage. The amount of targeted advertising I see decreases every time I sequester one of these major accounts into its own container. The trade-off is the increase in ReCaptchas needed and the increase in advertising companies complaining I must be using an "ad blocker". (I don't have any ad blocker extension installed, just this strategy of isolating major cookies to specific containers and Firefox built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection.)

by Vinnl 4y ago

Vinnl 4y ago

And some more tips: - Translate web pages locally, without sending any data to remote servers: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/firefox-translation... - Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ - If you're in the EU: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/ - If you use RSS: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feed-preview/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feed-preview/ And I assume you've already got uBlock Origin. And as others mentioned, try also using Firefox as your mobile browser, so you can send tabs from one to the other, which is pretty neat.

ohgodplsno 4y ago
In addition: - SponsorBlock - Automatically tag and skip portions of youtube videos, such as sponsors, intros, recaps, and others. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ - Firefox Relay - Automatically create up to 5 (for free, more if paying for it) email addresses that redirect to your actual address, to avoid giving your private address to everyone. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-relay/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-relay...
- Vinnl 4y ago
  Ha, thanks for sharing Firefox Relay - I actually work on that, so I was a bit hesitant about sharing it. I'll add that "paying for it" is €1 a month for unlimited email addresses.
  - 3np 4y ago
    Not a paying customer but if there was a way to sign up and pay anonymously (crypto and/or cash via mail), I'd be banging on the door even at a significant markup.
    - xp84 4y ago
      Is something like privacy dot com (virtual card numbers) not anonymous enough? I kinda don’t wanna know what you’re doing with these email addresses
      - lostoldsession 4y ago
        There are a lot of people who just want privacy wherever they can get it. It's not necessarily something nefarious, but the result of the question "Does this person need to know who I am? No. Therefore there is nothing to gain and only something to lose by telling them."
        zedadex 4y ago
        For me it's more like "Do I want to waste time dredging this info back up in case they ever get breached", to which the answer is almost always "No".
- rrishi 4y ago
  Those are some really interesting extensions you've suggested. I'll be sure to keep Relay in the back of my mind, I haven't had need of it yet. Though I do have requirement for SponsorBlock avid watcher of YT that I am, I am a little hesitant to add SponsorBlock as I am not quite sure how it would work flawlessly without some really complicated algorithms potentially involving ML work. I am curious to know if in your experience it has ever erred and automatically skipped portions it wasn't supposed to ? Or any other type of errors ?
  - godshatter 4y ago
    It's crowdsourced. The downside to that is that less popular videos may not have the sponsor information skipped, although you do have the ability to post start and end timestamps for videos that don't have it in place yet.
  - setuids 4y ago
    From my understanding SponsorBlock doesn't use any ML stuff, but is simply a database that allows other users to submit what they think is a sponsor (or other annoyance). I've found it to sometimes not get all sponsors (especially for more niche videos), and the self-promotion sections are usually too agressive (but they can be disabled). I'd say give it a go honestly
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Yeah, the word "automatically" does a lot of heavy lifting there. But like others said, it's crowsourced. You watch a video, tag it, done. There's some anti abuse tools, like tags done by new users being served not all the time and tested by other users before it's trusted. I have never seen bad section tagging over the past two years.
speed_spread 4y ago
> Translate web pages locally This is a good start for a but what I'm looking for is Local Full Text Search of every page in my history. It shouldn't be hard to automatically maintain a text index of the pages I've browsed so that I can search them by keyword without bookmarking everything. Maybe it's just me but chronological history is useless beyond a few days.
- bmn__ 4y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/falcon_extension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/falcon_extension/ Why don't you just search the add-ons? This would have taken less time than to formulate your post.
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    I did, and never found this. Thanks. You could have just pasted the URL. When someone here asks a well-formulated question I assume they've done their research first.
vanilla_nut 4y ago
This is one of those moments where I realize other folks on HN have almost exactly the same Firefox setup as me. Nice list of add-on recommendations! I would add in a couple more, for anyone tempted to switch away from Chrome or Safari: - Redirector: https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Very helpful for redirecting "new" reddit to old.reddit.com, AMP links to normal links, Twitter to Nitter, etc. - RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhancement-suite/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhanc... Provides built-in image preview and lots of other subtle goodies for old.reddit.com. I have a very hard time browsing reddit without it! - Sponsorblock for Youtube: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ If you watch any amount of YouTube on channels with lots of sponsors, this is a great way to keep your sanity. Works just like sponsor skipping in the Overcast podcast client.
- savingsPossible 4y ago
  Would you share your redirector redirections list? (Sorry for the lazyness :P)
  - bmn__ 4y ago
    Use libredirect instead, it comes with a prodigious amount of configured redirections. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641069
- rofrol 4y ago
  nice, also these - https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... - https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/android/addon/onetab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/android/addon/onetab/ - stylish - kill sticky
DangitBobby 4y ago
I love tree style tabs and I really want to encourage people to set it up and really customize their user stylesheet to make the best use of it. I have removed all traces of the original tab bar at the top and the three primary window buttons (close, restore, minimize) giving me back lots of that precious vertical space. Their GitHub has a ton of CSS snippets to help you with customization. I'd also be happy to share my user CSS file.
- bundie 4y ago
  Please do.
- sanjayen 4y ago
  @DangitBobby please share your user CSS file
wintermutestwin 4y ago
>- Vertical/tree-style tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery/ This is the biggest reason why Chrome sucks - they have no workable version of vertical tabs. Reasons why horizontal tabs are clearly inferior: 1. Screens (generally) have way more horizontal space than vertical and you read webpages vertically. I already have an OS top bar and a browser top bar taking some of this valuable vertical space. 2. Most webpages have predefined right and left margins, so vertical tabs don't take away from the visible space of the page. 3. The size of the tab header is critical for being able to read the name of the tab. I have my vertical tabs set to 30 characters. If I had horizontal tabs with 30 characters, I could fit maybe 6 tabs on the screen at once. 4. Ease of having many more concurrently open tabs. I easily have 38 tabs open and visible without scrolling. 8 of those are pinned tabs which take up the space of one tab. I use 6 different windows (which are category titled using the Titler extension). That is 228 tabs open at once and very easily accessible and readable. (of course I use Total Suspender to keep them from taking too many resources) All this said, Firefox still sucks because vertical should be the default or at least a simple toggle. As it is, you have to trust some extension and then you have to jump through obnoxious hoops just to get the damn horizontal tabs turned off. And yes, there are some other browsers that have vertical tabs built in, but I am not touching Edge or Opera as they are from dubious companies. I also think that Brave is working on it, but they seem dubious as well. Now to my complaints about Sidebery (which is superior to Tree Style Tabs). Sidebery has tree style as well, but I turn it off as it undermines the value of #3 above. It has panels, which are goofy and, while you don't have to use them, you still lose a tab worth of space for it. You also lose an even larger tab space to the Sidebery title (which is a menu and an X that aren't necessary. Sidebery doesn't work well with the Titler extension - when you want to move a tab to another window, it doesn't show you the title.
- odinho 4y ago
  I used to work on the Opera browser. I quit when it got sold to China. Also wanted to do that, since most people as well as main Oslo HQ was fired from Poland a year earlier. Opera was very much a not-dubious company. But that is what it has turned in to. -- I use Firefox as my main work-browser, and have for a long time, and the last few years I've used Vivaldi as my main personal browser. I find it easier to just have separate browsers rather than do anything more advanced for context. :)
SanchoPanda 4y ago
Feed-preview is so helpful, thank you!
culi 4y ago
feed preview seemed to break my browser since I have a ton of tabs open all the time. Not sure why the extension causes this, but just a head's up Firefox has a really great json viewer that I prefer even over my IDE, but it's one weakness is it's lack of XML support which Chrome does have :/
abareplace 4y ago
Consent-o-matic does not work on most websites; you still have to click the consent banners manually. Try https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

kirimita 4y ago

I'd love to be able to enable DRM for a single container. Until then, I have to continue with profiles.

alexelcu 4y ago

You're right, but for a counter-point versus Chromium, multi-account containers are worse for security compared with profiles… This matters when you can't 100% trust your browser session, or the installed extensions. Did you ever load https://my.1password.com https://my.1password.com in your browser? How do you feel about it? Do you trust your installed extensions to not take a peak? I don't. Chrome solves this elegantly via profiles. Even more, you can install websites as “apps”, with a shortcut that gets indexed by the OS, and Chrome remembers the profile. I simply type “1Password Online” or “Banking” and my Chromium opens a new window in my “Private” profile that has no extensions installed. Firefox dropped the ball on both PWA shortcuts, and on profiles. Even for using multiple accounts, I feel like Chromium profiles are a better solution. For example, my workplace has very strict security requirements, and when looking at company documents it's not cool to provide access to extensions like LanguageTool or Grammarly. I'd be in trouble. And Chromium always had finer grained permissions for extensions, like activating or deactivating them per website.

II2II 4y ago
Wouldn't Firefox's profiles accomplish the same thing? (Yes, I understand they are difficult to access but they are still there.) That said, containers are a handy tool for people who want to access multiple accounts without the trouble of setting up individual profiles. Keep in mind, if you're only trying to access a personal and work Google account you probably don't want to spend time setting up a separate profile for each then keeping the settings synchronized.
- alexelcu 4y ago
  Yes, but Firefox's profiles are very hard to use (apart from keeping multiple Firefox channels installed, e.g., stable, beta), I tried, and I couldn't. Starting a profile is difficult, and also switching between windows, since the OS sees profiles as different apps. It's probably not hard to fix, but Mozilla has had other priorities.
  - godshatter 4y ago
    Just open about:profiles. You can create new ones, remove old ones, set which one is the default and can open them in a new browser. I use this all the time to open a browser as a new SSO functional user without having to log out. I don't know why they don't add this somewhere in the menus and I don't know why you can't bookmark about:profiles, but this works well for me as it is.

smiley1437 4y ago

Holy crap thank you! I have to log into multiple Microsoft365 tenants and it drove me crazy with the amount of signing OUT I needed to do when switching accounts, to the point where my crappy workaround was to use different browsers for each account (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, etc) but I started to run out of different browsers. This multi-account container extension is a godsend

gabrielsroka 4y ago
Chrome supports multiple user profiles. I assume Edge and Brave do too.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Or you can start them pointing to a completely different user-profile-directory. I do that, no chance for one to leak into the others.
  - Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
    Or you can just use FF containers - which is 99% less work.
    - djbusby 4y ago
      Yea, but those came about after I'd built the wrapper for quickly launching different profiles of either Chrome or FF. FF containers are more work than the 2 clicks I do now, powered by some Python I wrote like 15 years ago (with minor maintenance).
      - overtomanu 4y ago
        you still have to switch through browser windows right? with containers it is just a tab click and you can put related tabs for a particular topic in a single window
- briffle 4y ago

jhanschoo 4y ago

Caveat: there is still no first-party support for resetting the cache or the cookies in a per-container fashion. https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/303 https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...

jdlshore 4y ago
Cookie AutoDelete is my go-to for deleting cookies.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

I can't imagine browsing the web without MAC and Temporary Containers. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... It's sort of like everything opens in a private browsing window, except the stuff I've whitelisted.

waz0wski 4y ago
One more extension related to container management - https://github.com/kintesh/containerise https://github.com/kintesh/containerise This lets you set regex/wildcard to contain subdomain or redirect happy sites into a single container

rrishi 4y ago

Oh that's definitely a use case that had arisen in my workflow. I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks!

dedsm 4y ago

Multi account containers + Temporary Containers [1] + I don't care about cookies [2] are an awesome combination I use, I have ~10 fixed containers and for almost everything it's a new container that lives as long as the tab is open. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

illiac786 4y ago
Why do you need a container for almost everything? It's it for privacy reasons? If yes, what do containers offer which is not already provided by the total cookie protection feature?
- simongray 4y ago
  Would love to know this too! It's a bit confusing the amount of options available.

nashashmi 4y ago

Hate to be a black cloud, but as much as I love containers, my containers and their settings often disappeared. I can no longer remember exactly why. it may be if i disabled containers and then re-enabled them. (Containers may be a source of glitches so disabling is to help with troubleshooting.) getpocket.com needs to be logged in via container 0. if you put getpocket to a personal container, and don't login to getpocket from container 0, then firefox's save to pocket feature does not work. i cannot save bookmarks to automatically open in set containers (personal gmail to open in one container, work gmail to open in another container, etc.). Otherwise, containers is something i miss and i have used workarounds to implement the same with MS Edge.

28304283409234 4y ago
Why not start firefox with the -P flag for troubleshooting? And keep your default Profile using containers.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  Not sure what the flag does but your context tells me another profile without my extensions is established. The problem is I am trying to figure out which extension is causing the problem. So enabling and disabling each one is supposed to be a procedure. Regardless, enabling/disabling should not cause losing settings.
overtomanu 4y ago
instead of bookmarking if are fine using another extension, then use "Session Boss" to save and restore sessions
yoasif_ 4y ago
> i cannot save bookmarks to automatically open in set containers (personal gmail to open in one container, work gmail to open in another container, etc.). Sure you can: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-bookmarks/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-boo...

alexjplant 4y ago

I wrote about my favorites here [1]. I make an active effort to sculpt my online experience into something useful rather than intellectually draining; every time I fire up an unconfigured browser instance on a new machine I'm taken aback at how much I lean on various extensions and configurations to make the web usable. [1] https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-productivity/ https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-produ...

xwowsersx 4y ago

One thing I haven't figured out with container tabs: say I'm currently in one of the container tabs and I want cmd + T to open a new container tab. This doesn't work by default, AFAICT...instead it opens a regular non-container tab. How can I make it so that I get a new tab for the same container I'm currently on. Right now, I have to either go to File > new container tab or right-click the tab and click "new tab"..but I don't like using the mouse.

erainey 4y ago
cmd + shift + <number> You can configure 10 different tabs in extensions settings
jeroenhd 4y ago
Control + Shift + a number key should open a tab in a specific container. You can map containers to specific number keys in the addon settings.
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  Oh awesome, thank you!

space_debris 4y ago

I never understood the concept of Multi-Account Containers. I would guess it makes sense when one hardly closes the browser (and clears the cache) and has dozens of tabs open? What is a standard use case (home/work)? I simply use Temporary Containers to isolate tabs (or different domains) and login to websites either by hand or via KeepassXC's browser integration. No per-container setup needed, every tab just lives briefly in its own little container.

WorldMaker 4y ago
There are lots of different use cases. 1. Further defense in depth against common XSS attacks: if you only ever log into banking sites in a Banking container, then some random ad-sprung malware trying to access your bank in any other container will never find a logged in banking session to hijack (no matter how good your bank thinks they are at XSS protection and auto-timeouts). 2. Isolating tracking cookies from major ad companies. This reduces cross-correlation between/among them. I have separate containers at this point for all of: Google account usage, Twitter account usage, Facebook account usage, and Amazon account usage. The amount of targeted advertising I see decreases every time I sequester one of these major accounts into its own container. The trade-off is the increase in ReCaptchas needed and the increase in advertising companies complaining I must be using an "ad blocker". (I don't have any ad blocker extension installed, just this strategy of isolating major cookies to specific containers and Firefox built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection.)