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I got back to firefox 3 or 4 years ago on mac and it's truely excelent. The only chokepoint were occasional Google properties, the same way Safari chokes on th

I got back to firefox 3 or 4 years ago on mac and it's truely excelent. The only chokepoint were occasional Google properties, the same way Safari chokes on them, so I ended up compartimenting them in Chrome. Otherwise it has been pleasant to use. I also use it on android, but surprisingly it was really hard to use on Windows tablets. It performs well enough as a mouse and keyboard browser, but touch support is too accurate and mechanical to be useful. An example: on HN the upvote arrow is a really small target and clicking everywhere else should result in either nothing or opening the link next to the arrow. Chrome "fuzzies" the click area to include the upvote arrow even if I click completely on the left of it. Firefox will accurately send the click to text part left of the arrow, making it crazy hard to hit the upvote button. Firefox is technically accurate, but the extra "magic" on Chrome's side is really helpful as a user. Performance wise I think it's already on the right track, from there I hope we can get UX improvements as well. Touch optimizations on the desktop feels like a hard nut to crack, but it would be so nice.

deleted 3y ago
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WorldMaker 3y ago
Firefox has some about:config variables to tweak the touch support. The out of box behaviors should definitely be improved, and maybe even a real settings panel would be nice instead of just about:config hidden things.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Thanks! I actually tried it a while ago but completely forgot about it. The touch radius can be expanded and adjusted but the behavior really comes down to "should it let the user set a caret at any text position", and fuzzing the touch radius will still let the user hit a plain text target and select it, where Chrome (and mobile firefox, coms to think of it) won't let you. For instance on HN's comment link bar ("WorldMaker 5 hours ago | parent | context | flag | on: Firefox finally outperforming Google Chrome in S...") I can set a text selection carret on the "|" between "parent" and "context" in firefox with a touch radius of 32 mm, largely touching both "parent" and "context" links. I am actually getting motivated into looking deeper into this and see what they did to have the mobile version work differently.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

WorldMaker 3y ago

Firefox has some about:config variables to tweak the touch support. The out of box behaviors should definitely be improved, and maybe even a real settings panel would be nice instead of just about:config hidden things.

makeitdouble 3y ago
Thanks! I actually tried it a while ago but completely forgot about it. The touch radius can be expanded and adjusted but the behavior really comes down to "should it let the user set a caret at any text position", and fuzzing the touch radius will still let the user hit a plain text target and select it, where Chrome (and mobile firefox, coms to think of it) won't let you. For instance on HN's comment link bar ("WorldMaker 5 hours ago | parent | context | flag | on: Firefox finally outperforming Google Chrome in S...") I can set a text selection carret on the "|" between "parent" and "context" in firefox with a touch radius of 32 mm, largely touching both "parent" and "context" links. I am actually getting motivated into looking deeper into this and see what they did to have the mobile version work differently.