15 ms·

Switching from Chrome to Firefox

269 points by fraencko 3y ago

zagrebian 3y ago
> I have used Chrome with a personal and a work profile, both of them tied to different Google accounts. You guys have two Google accounts? I didn’t know that this was even possible.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Firefox users don't use profiles, we use something much superior: multi-account containers.
- asicsp 3y ago
  I use both. Separate profile for a bunch of sites not used daily, and you also get separate bookmarks.
- luuurker 3y ago
  Firefox users don't use profiles because switching between them is a pain in the rear (at least on some platforms). Containers are nice, but you can't have different bookmarks, extensions, settings, etc. It's not a replacement for profiles.
  - jraph 3y ago
    We have about:profiles now, a convenient way to manage and launch profiles. No need for firefox -P anymore :-) (Though I still use it out of muscle memory. alt+F2 firefox -P is so quick to type.)
    - luuurker 3y ago
      We've had about:profiles for many years, but that UI is not for the average user. On macOS opening a new profile through that also opens the window in the background and may also mess up your Firefox icons in the dock, not to mention that you'll break your profiles if you make the mistake of opening a profile from a different FF version on your current FF (eg: stable profile on FF Developer can't be opened again by FF stable). We can use profiles, but it's not a good experience. On Chromium (and Chrome, Brave, etc), there's an icon at the top right corner. You click it, then select the profile and that's it. Fast, simple, user friendly. (Edit to add: I sometimes forget that the average HN user is different from the average computer user. They're used to click on things, not to type "firefox -P" :P )
      - _emacsomancer_ 3y ago
        There are extensions to make the UI friendlier, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
        luuurker 3y ago
        I've used that before. Props to the developer, but on top of the extension, we also have to install software for it to work. It also doesn't fix new profiles opening in the background and the messing up of dock icons, although this might only affect Mac users. The annoying thing for me is that Firefox already has a similar UI button that could easily be adapted to switch profiles. It even looks like Chrome's, but all it does it show you your Firefox/Mozilla account.
    - oxygen_crisis 3y ago
      There's nothing convenient about about:profiles. It's designed like their goal was to make the few buttons you want to use most the hardest to find. I'm not going to the profiles page to restart Firefox, show my profile directory in Finder/Explorer, Rename a profile, or Remove a profile. For some reason all those buttons get first placement. I have to scroll the page down to find the one and only button I want to click every single day.
  - ghusto 3y ago
    When I used Chrome, I had to use profiles because that's all it had. I used it to switch between personas. It wasn't great, precisely _because_ you had to set up everything like bookmarks and extensions again. Containers on the other hand, fit the use-case of personas perfectly. I can keep logins separate, keep a work / home session separation, etc. Best of all, I set up certain websites to always use a particular container, even when I'm currently browsing in a different container tab. I can't imagine going back to Chrome profiles.
- moribvndvs 3y ago
  Been using Firefox for a long time, absolutely did not know this was a thing :/
  - finnjohnsen2 3y ago
    Good for you for discovering it then. Never again a big tech cookie alive in your general browsing. Welcome to the flip side
- asciimov 3y ago
  This Firefox user does. Main account, one for testing (no extensions installed), one for work (with work extensions), one for nsfw content. Keeps everything nice a separate.
Dwedit 3y ago
Warning for people who use or install Firefox UI Fix on other people's computers: Mozilla occasionally breaks everything with new Firefox releases, and you can end up with a non-functional tabs bar until you reinstall the newest version of Firefox UI Fix. Not so much a problem if you're a techie, but a big problem for the non-techies you install it for.
- dblohm7 3y ago
  I don't think it's a good idea in general to install things that utilize unsupported functionality on other people's computers.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  I wish I heard this warning a while back. Firefox used to have a pretty Chrome-like tabs bar with curved trapezoid corners and a lighter highlight for the selected tab.Then one day they decided that's bad, made it all flat rectangles and inverted the color scheme. Someone on the UX team had to justify their existence I guess. So my muscle memory was telling me that the tab that is selected is not selected and I couldn't get anything done. Okay not a problem, set up some flags that revert the old scheme, done. A few months later, Mozilla breaks that functionality because fuck you. Okay still not a problem, find and install a custom theme that makes the task bar look normal again. Half a year later they release a new patch that breaks the custom theme by sliding the tabs bar roughly 50% up so it's being clipped by the fucking window. I no longer have any clue what file changes I made to mod in that custom theme so I'm stuck with a broken install of Firefox unless I nuke my profiles. Yaaaay. sigh In my probably decade+ of using it, Chrome has never been this annoying.
matsemann 3y ago
I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems". For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve. Never had problems with font rendering. The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different. I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox". Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996287
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Yep, there should be a mention of how TST is better on FF than on any other browser (especially Chrome).
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I agree with OP that the tone is needlessly negative, but while some people are super into TST, most of us don't care about it at all. I wouldn't say that any given article on Firefox "should" mention TST, because odds are the author won't be in the group that cares.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      In an article talking about the pros and cons of Chrome and FF, it would make sense to mention cult favorites like TST. I'm not sure where you get the notion that "most of us don't care about it at all" — perhaps you have more inside info than the rest of us? Regardless, I don't care about profiles or any of this other stuff, but I don't begrudge the author for mentioning things that aren't up my alley. In my mind, when I read a list-based article, I don't expect everything to be relevant to me.
pseudotrash 3y ago
I love Firefox. The only time I struggle it's because it is the only browser today that correctly implements CORS. This is a good thing. But it means broken middle boxes and MiTM enterprise tech (like Zscaler) should fix their stuff rather than pointing their smelly fingers at Firefox. Mozilla should up its game in educating the public that Edge and Chrome aren't following the standards correctly. This seems IMHO pretty important in a world where everything relies on the browser to sandbox things.
- sneak 3y ago
  The public doesn't care about those things and this would be a waste of time and money and brand attention span on the part of Mozilla. Ultimately we have already passed the point where the web is defined by what Chrome (and to a limited extent what MobileSafari) does.
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    You don’t need to convince the general public on these points, just a large enough subset (like nerds). This situation has happened before with Internet Explorer, and can be fixed again.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > it's because it is the only browser today that correctly implements CORS What's the difference in their CORS implementations? As far as I know all three major browser engines follow the modern spec.
  - BeefWellington 3y ago
    Firefox correctly implements the behaviour when CORS is not properly configured, rather than failing to "the old way".
    - jefftk 3y ago
      Huh? If I have a resource I serve without Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers, all three browser engines won't make it available in cross-origin contexts. [1] For example, here are a pair of pages which make a cross-origin fetch for a resource that either does (yes-cors) or does not (no-cors) opt into cross-origin resource sharing. In all three browsers yes-cors displays the contents of the resource, and no-cors (correctly) displays "error". https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/yes-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/yes-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/no-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/no-cors [1] With the exception of some standardized legacy cross-origin contexts like images, but then they all protect the contents in the same way.
neals 3y ago
I've always found the Firefox devtools be a little less 'quality of life' like. Just my opinion. Haven't used it in a few years. But for me, I just live in devtools, you know. As most of you here, probably. Opinions?
- noman-land 3y ago
  I always hear people say this, but they never give examples.
  - doix 3y ago
    The debugger and the source map loading are noticably slower. The DOM browser is slower as well and I get things shifting a few pixels up/down randomly in there. On the bright side, it keeps a running diff of the css changes you make. Super useful when you're trying to fix some stupid layout thing, get it working and then forget all the changes you made.
  - neals 3y ago
    Fair enough. I just started the latest version and must say, it has really improved. Quality of life probably means I have to look a bit more for where stuff is. And hey, they might have some stuff that Chrome doesn't have, right? So my first one is 'Chrome devtools has a little button to instantly switch to mobile view, where you simulate (more or less) the viewport of various mobile devices'. I don't see this in Firefox.
    - davidhaymond 3y ago
      It's called Responsive Design Mode, and it's the third button from the the right on the top bar. Even better, use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-M, which works even when devtools is closed.
      - cvladan 3y ago
        Chrome is inferior here in this area. Because you can activate mobile view in Firefox WITHOUT devtools opened, but in Chrome that's impossible. Lot of times I hated this at Chrome. Also, that shortcut in Firefox will immediately give you mobile view, and in Chrome not as you first need to type shortcut for Devtools.
jrm4 3y ago
Do people live in their browsers like that? I find it useful to keep both. 95% of the time I'm in Firefox, as one should be -- with all the good adblockers etc. And for the 5% unavoidable garbage of "things I must use/sign up for in life" that don't implement things properly, including Zoom, I keep Chrome around.
- LightHugger 3y ago
  Chrome is now scanning every file on your computer and sending back metadata to google unless you opt-out in the name of "we made our browser an antivirus too!" but nobody sane believes that stuff. At least use a different chromium based browser instead of chrome itself. Brave is a fine option.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    That feature was introduced in 2015 and they removed it already. https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodbye-to-chrome-cleanup.html https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodby...
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Good point, Linux guy here, I always use Chromium -- perhaps this is a Linux thing but I always forget that there's a difference.
- haunter 3y ago
  I'm the other way around with ungoogled-chromium but yeah I do the same.
- jeffhuys 3y ago
  If you or a random reader is on MacOS, try out Orion - a Safari fork that has support for both Chrome AND Firefox plug-ins. I can't stop using Safari... I know, I'm a dying breed, and people at work were (and still are) a bit weirded out by it, but if you're like me, Orion is a very nice alternative if you want "real" adblockers (and 10000s of other plugins) at your disposal!
Synaesthesia 3y ago
Install ublock origin and you're good to go. It's really quite a great browser, on Android, Linux and Windows I reckon it's the best. On Mac I still use safari for the performance and battery saving.
- Lio 3y ago
  It would be interesting to see performance figures for Firefox + uBlock Origin vs Chrome and all the advertising/tracking junk it has to drag down to render some well known sites. I'd bet the cost of all those network calls outweighs anything else in the rendering pipeline.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  On Linux you may also want to consider an alternative browser for performance and battery saving. The recent addition (Firefox 115 I believe) of hardware accelerated video decoding should make things better, but I'm still regularly seeing 50-90% CPU for a tab just playing a Youtube video that my Intel GPU should be decoding. I can tolerate that on desktop, but on my laptop I want to preserve battery life. I'm not sure why but Linux also seems slower in Firefox's benchmarks. My guess is that Mozilla is optimising for their most common users (and Linux users have a high probability of picking Firefox anyway). Hopefully more Windows features will make it into the Linux build soon.
- r00fus 3y ago
  FF is definitely my fave on Mac (containers/no history mode), but Safari isn't that much worse and I have almost zero problems with ads using Wipr content blocker.
Aissen 3y ago
What use is profile switching when one has Multi-Account Containers ?
- luuurker 3y ago
  Different bookmarks, extensions, settings, themes, and ability to sync all those to other machines. We just have to look at what profiles and containers do to understand that while useful, containers can't replace profiles.
  - ghusto 3y ago
    I've seen this pop up a few times in this post. What's the use case for different extensions etc.?
    - luuurker 3y ago
      Personal vs work profiles, for example. My work profile has uBlock Origin with stricter rules which would break some sites/tools I use for work. I also redirect Twitter to Nitter, use a different password manager, etc. For bookmarks, it's more a question of not wanting to have personal stuff together with work stuff. Then there's some settings that works on one profile but would cause issues (or annoyances) on the other. I also have a different theme for each profile, which stops me from doing personal stuff on sites with my work login (eg: searching on Google). I also have a profile that is just for the shittiest sites I sometimes find online. I'll have extensions to block the crap, archive pages, etc, which would slow down browsing or break most sites I use. On Chromium, I had one browser and 3 profiles. Then I decided to move to Firefox and since using profiles (especially switching/opening them, at least on Mac) is a pain, I use 3 different browsers (Firefox, Firefox Dev/Beta, Waterfox) as they all have their own profiles. Could I live with only one profile? Yes, but that would force me to compromise. Containers alone? I tried to use them, but stopped after searching for stuff on Google and YouTube on the container I had my work Google account logged in. Profiles + Containers are the best of both worlds in one plane.
      - 3y ago
eviks 3y ago
> couple of reasons why I considered the switch from Chrome to Firefox ... their rejection of JPEG XL and Is Firefox embracing JXL?
GrumpyNl 3y ago
Why the big panda at the top, i dont get it.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Someone decided that websites need "hero images" and all the default themes now have it, and if you're asked to load an image, you load an image (many people don't bother changing default themes).
- 51Cards 3y ago
  I suspect because it resembles the Firefox logo.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  A Firefox is a Chinese red panda.
- adastra22 3y ago
  That's a firefox.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
KingLancelot 3y ago
[dead]
samsquire 3y ago
I installed Firefox recently but I had to turn off "smooth scrolling" because it was jarring.
- jwrallie 3y ago
  It is mostly a personal preference, but you can try this fix if you are on Linux: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1148934/precise-scrolling-in-firefox https://askubuntu.com/questions/1148934/precise-scrolling-in...
daneel_w 3y ago
I'll throw this advice in as well, about Firefox' disk cache. Not related to Chrome but mainly as a generic way to make Firefox a bit snappier and less grindy/bloated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168625
bee_rider 3y ago
I wish people would stop mentioning benchmarks, even when Firefox is wins one. It is like evaluating bicycles based on their towing capacity. Any website that requires a high performance JavaScript implementation is already doing so much wrong that you should just leave.
veave 3y ago
It's your font rendering that looks weird, maybe you have a BGR monitor?
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  The settings provided do indicate that Firefox has picked a different default subpixel layout than what the monitor has. This can be because of a bug in autodetection but it can also happen when you orient your monitor vertically, which many people do with secondary monitors. Assuming the author has set up ClearType right on their computer, I believe this may be a Firefox bug. ClearType on Windows should take care of this stuff already.
sinuhe69 3y ago
Something I didn't find mentioning is increasing the number of parallel connections in Firefox. When I inspect the network and responses of FF, I often find connections were "blocked" (for several hundreds ms). Thus, increasing the number of persistent connections to a server will unblock those connections and allow the website to render much faster. Go to about:config and change: network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server from the default value of 6 to 24 or 32. Experimental results for a website: (time until finish loading) No of Conns Prime Cache w/o Cache 6 (default) 25 s 257 s 12 21 s 212 s 18 18 s 190 s 24 15 s 147 s
- cvladan 3y ago
  Woow. thanks. Will test ASAP
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  This setting is a classic in the "tweak Firefox" blog posts. Increasing connection count will make HTTP 1.1 websites faster, but they'll also cause random rate limiting errors if you increase the value too much. How high you should set this value is up to you, but it's one of the first things you should reset when websites start acting weird in Firefox but not in other browsers.
  - nlunbeck 3y ago
    This is good to know -- I primarily use FF and couldn't narrow down why my site was bugging out but running fine on other browsers. Glad its not a compatibility issue.
- janc_ 3y ago
  Some web servers might throttle or block you for opening too many parallel connections within a short time, so be careful not to overdo that...
- Sardtok 3y ago
  The default in Chrome is 4 IIRC.
spieglt 3y ago
Biggest features that keep me on Firefox: decent search (whole word, match case) and proxy settings
- DieBruderBauer 3y ago
  Biggest feature for me? Ability to disable efficiency mode which is - by default - on in Windows 11 and which cripples my plethora of open tabs.
nathias 3y ago
use containers,install vimium, treestyletab, darkreader and hack the UX to customize everything
datadrivenangel 3y ago
Firefox has actual browsing history! You can search your real browser history unlike chrome, which allows you to search your google web history, which does not contain all websites.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  What do you mean doesn't contain all websites?
rho4 3y ago
I still find it very confusing that the active tab does not 'extend' to the content, but is separated by a shadow. I often mistake the inactive tab for the active one, because it's background is almost closer to the content.
- jackbrookes 3y ago
  Agree, if anyone knows themes that make this better I'd love to know
  - AndroidKitKat 3y ago
    Highly suggest checking out Firefox-UI-Fix [1]. I use it everywhere I use Firefox, and it makes the browser usable. [1] - https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
freedude 3y ago
"A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, Manifest v3, Googles’s WebDRM plans, their rejection of JPEG XL and the omnipresence of Chromium-based browsers nowadays – Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and some others are basically the same programs in different clothes." He hits the nail on the head. Why support the fascist empire when you can support those making it better. That said, if you really wanted a privacy focused browser then the Bromine, Waterfox, Opera, DuckDuckGo and Tempest browsers should all be investigated.
hospitalJail 3y ago
I havent been able to uninstall Chrome. Everyone makes sure they test their website for Chrome. Firefox/Safari just don't have devs testing on them. I currently have Firefox for most things, but I seemingly always have chromium open to check to see if a website isnt behaving correctly. What a terrible time for computing. Chrome is in total control of web. Nvidia + M$ have complete control of high performance computing, and M$ sucks. Apple captures tons of attention and time with their marketing but has low quality products.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  What power does MS have over high performance computing? Perhaps some fields use Windows specific applications, but most high performance computing I see uses Linux by default, with WSL for the Windows equivalent. I use Chrome as a fallback too when the measures I've taken to protect my privacy break websites I can't get around, but in most cases websites just work in my experience. Almost all of the issues I run into are caused by addons messing with websites, like content blockers.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Nvidia has CUDA. CUDA is basically all that matters right now. Sure there is some half effort from Nvidia to support Linux, but you can do 1 google search to realize Nivida and Linux do not play together nicely.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      CUDA and Linux work just fine together. Nvidia GPU drivers and Linux (especially mobile Linux) are a bigger problem, but on desktop Nvidia works fine (just don't enable Wayland) and on mobile it works fine as long as you have an integrated GPU to actually render to your screen. I don't think I've ever had trouble getting CUDA to run. It seems to be the only thing Nvidia cares about making work reliably on Linux.
donatj 3y ago
> I like Chrome’s download bar at the bottom of the screen, as I need to download and handle many files for work. The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it Is there a way to re-enable this in chrome? It’s been replaced with the dreaded Firefox downloads butt Next to the address bar.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  chrome://flags/#download-bubble disable it.
  - hbn 3y ago
    Thank you, came here looking for this. It seems like over the past few years Chrome has gotten more comfortable with shoving stuff into the top right section, with icons just popping in and out based on context. I used to have muscle memory for my extensions there, and now from right to left there's a kebab settings overflow button, a profile switcher icon (I don't even use profiles), a reading list button (again, not using that), an extensions overflow puzzle piece icon, and finally my extensions. I always have to think twice before clicking anything up there. Now having the download button that's only sometimes there is one more thing to throw me off. I couldn't even figure out what would make it disappear. I'd clear the downloads list and it's still there.
- jmholla 3y ago
  > The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it You can also keep it visible in Firefox. Right click the menu bar, click Customize, right click the downloads button, then unclick the hide when empty button.
hk__2 3y ago
> A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, […], their rejection of JPEG XL The part about JPEG XL seems strange, given that the article linked in the blog post says Mozilla too is rejecting JPEG XL: > Mozilla's Martin Thomson wrote that while JPEG XL "offers some potential advantages," it wasn't "performing enough better than its closest competitors (like AV1F) to justify addition on that basis alone." Could someone maybe clarify this point?
JJMcJ 3y ago
Now if FF would just fix the galloping memory usage - not that Chrome is much better.
asciimov 3y ago
My Profiles tips: 1. You can have multiple profile sessions running at the same time. 2. It is best to theme your alt profiles with a different color so you don't confuse them. For example, green one is for one profile and the red one another. 3. "firefox -p 'profile-name'" launches directly into a profile 4. "firefox -p 'profile-name' -private-window" launches a profile in a private window 5. I use keybindings on linux to auto launch different profiles. As for why you should consider multiple profiles. It gives you the ability to separate concerns. I use a main account, one for work, one for testing stuff, another that has no extensions, and one for anything NSFW. Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests.
- folkrav 3y ago
  I use Mozilla's Container Tabs extension for most of this. Unless you specifically want to keep settings/extensions/etc in specific, separate profiles, they're a good in-between solution. In my case, having a single FF instance is desirable as I would juggle between too many profiles which would need similar extensions for completely switching profiles and windows to be a good experience.
  - asciimov 3y ago
    I use container tabs in my main profile as well, as like you, I'd have too many profiles if I didn't. My profile use is about big concerns and work modes. For example my work profile has some developer plugins, separate password managers, bookmarks, and snippets. Doing so keeps everything nice and removed from my home life.
- planede 3y ago
  > Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests. Umm, I keep NSFW stuff off my work computer. I'm not really comfortable with less separation than this.
  - 3y ago
erichdongubler 3y ago
RE: profiles: pro tip: you can use `about:profiles`.
TechPlasma 3y ago
I recently switched over and am quite happy with Firefox all in all. My only gripe is the loss of Tab Groups (I'm a tab hoarder) and I haven't been able to find a decent replacement.
- Liquix 3y ago
  Tree Style Tab is incredible for grouping and nesting tabs. Heavily used by tab hoarders https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Criminal not to mention this. You install TST, and then you remove the strip of tabs across the top. Much cleaner look and basically you have all your bookmarks all there, forever. Mostly as unloaded tabs of course but they're one click away in the tree somewhere.
  - jlokier 3y ago
    Unfortunately, as a tab hoarder myself, I had to remove Tree Style Tabs when I figured out it was the single reason Firefox was taking about 1 second after clicking to do actions like open a new tab or switch tab, and generally higher than ideal CPU usage. When I disabled it, everything got so much faster, it was like getting a new browser. So I switched to Sidebery, which seemed much faster at first and I still have it enabled sometimes. But after a while and many tests to be sure, I found Sidebery was the single reason Firefox was taking an extra 10GB or more RAM. Just today, I opened about ten Hacker News tabs for an afternoon's read, and the RAM usage crept up from 18GB to 28GB. These are text-only sites as you know, and like most people I didn't read the articles only the HN comments :-) So that's a lot of unexplained RAM. I disabled Sidebery in that window and the memory usage crept back down to 18GB. (If I launch Telegam in a Firefox window with Sidebery enabled it goes up to 67GB then crashes as my SSD is too full for that much swap!). If Sidebery is disabled all along, the memory usage doesn't creep up like that. These are figures reported by iStat Menus on macOS on my laptop. The swapping induced by the higher RAM usage caused scrolling to be extremely janky, as well as editing in forms and text boxes. So unfortunately for me, to have a reasonable browsing experience, I found I can't use either of the good tab-sidebar extensions Tree Style Tabs or Sidebery with Firefox at the moment, each for a different reason. I haven't seen other people reporting these issues, and each one took me a while to recognise. Therefore I asume these issues are related in some way to the total numbe of tabs and/or windows I have and that most people aren't affected (enough to matter), or those affected haven't found the cause. There are some tab group extensions, but I found Simple Tab Groups lost hundreds of my tabs several times, with no indication that it had lost them (they just weren't there when I went to find them later), so I stopped using it.
whalesalad 3y ago
Don't forget to install Dark Reader! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ This makes old reddit, HN, and google cloud console all dark mode friendly and it really "just works"
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Nice tips. I would add: embrace tab containers (https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/utiliser-conteneurs-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/utiliser-conteneurs-firefo...), especially if you love chrome profiles. They do half of what profiles do: they isolate cache, cookies, sessions, etc. But they do so in a very light manner and fast manner. The UI is better too. So for things that don't need getting different settings or extensions and so on, containers are the way to go.
WallyFunk 3y ago
> Firefox’ built-in profile switcher is far worse than Chrome’s. To open it, you need to start Firefox with the -p parameter. You can also just go to `about:profiles` in the address bar, without having to launch Firefox with the -p switch. I even have `about:profiles` as my homepage so when I launch Firefox, I then decide which profile I will be using.
adithyassekhar 3y ago
You can't go back a page using both Alt (+ Left Arrow) keys on Firefox. Only with the left Alt key, which is super uncomfortable.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  AltGr (the right alt key) essentially translates to ctrl+alt on Windows and some Linux configurations. It also acts as a compose key on some configurations, making it quite unreliable for navigation as the system IME may intercept the key before sending it through. You can rebind it back to a normal alt key at the operating system level if you don't care about the AltGr functionality, that'll probably fix a whole bunch of unexpected problems you may be having in other programs. I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest. What's it likely to break? I don't have anything bound to that combo by default.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      I forgot what exactly broke, but I do remember assigning something to my ctrl+alt+left/right keys and finding out that various applications (and I think maybe the rich text edit field?) got very confused.
- phs2501 3y ago
  Is this an AltGr thing? On my (US, in Linux) keyboard right-alt-left-arrow works fine, and I'm pretty sure I do the same thing in Windows (again, US keyboard layout).
bad_alloc 3y ago
A major issue I have with firefox is that it loses my pinnend tabs if i close browser windows in the wrong oder. Is there a way to keep them always?
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I use File > Quit to close my browser and all of my windows restore just fine. If Firefox doesn't restore all your windows on startup, try hitting ctrl+shift+n, that should reopen the last (non-private) window you closed. In my experience this works across sessions, as long as you don't erase the browser history.
cvladan 3y ago
Nobody mentioned "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" Firefox option that is almost impossible to replicate on Chrome even with extensions. And there is huge user need for this option as there are bunch of Chrome extension for this, mostly using external executables to achieve this.
jwells89 3y ago
I have a considerable number of tweaks I apply to my Firefox installs, too and the process is a little cumbersome. I wonder if it would be a reasonable task to set up an “opinionated” fork of Firefox with all the changes being UI/UX-related and keep it up to date with mainline… that would make fresh installs more effortless and allow improvements that aren’t practical with regular Firefox.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Sounds like Librewolf, which is Firefox with the Mozilla privacy invasions reduced and mitigated.
sfortis 3y ago
I switched to Firefox about a year ago mostly for containers, plugin enabled android app and my increasing dislike for Google. Never regretted it!
koito17 3y ago
The font rendering problem is very interesting to me because I have always found Firefox to use the same font rendering as the rest of my system, meanwhile Chrome has this universally thin and conspicuous font rendering across all systems I have attempted using it on. I currently use Mac OS and I see no difference between text rendered on Firefox and text rendered in other Mac OS applications, but there is a world of difference between Chrome and anything else. So if I had to make a bold claim without evidence, I would guess Firefox uses the OS default font rendering (i.e. it will be as bad the rest of your OS), meanwhile Chrome's font rendering is universally bad (i.e. it does not follow what your OS uses, on any platform, and if you don't like it, then there's not much you can do).
- matsemann 3y ago
  I agree. While Chrome's rendering may make the fonts more "elegant" and almost seem to be higher resolution/softer somehow, they are also harder to read and have less contrast.
ptman 3y ago
firefox needs direct donations: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money-to-the-firefox-development-team-directly/idi-p/198 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money...
steakscience 3y ago
The irony is Chrome feels less advertise-y than Firefox with its Pocket integration, Amazon suggestions, and god knows what else
hamdouni 3y ago
This part makes me smile : I am not a tab hoarder, I almost never have more than **15** of them open at the same time.
tlhunter 3y ago
I was so annoyed when Firefox got rid of the Proton tab style. Glad to see I can turn it back on!

269 points by fraencko 3y ago

> I have used Chrome with a personal and a work profile, both of them tied to different Google accounts. You guys have two Google accounts? I didn’t know that this was even possible.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Firefox users don't use profiles, we use something much superior: multi-account containers.

asicsp 3y ago
I use both. Separate profile for a bunch of sites not used daily, and you also get separate bookmarks.
luuurker 3y ago
Firefox users don't use profiles because switching between them is a pain in the rear (at least on some platforms). Containers are nice, but you can't have different bookmarks, extensions, settings, etc. It's not a replacement for profiles.
- jraph 3y ago
  We have about:profiles now, a convenient way to manage and launch profiles. No need for firefox -P anymore :-) (Though I still use it out of muscle memory. alt+F2 firefox -P is so quick to type.)
  - luuurker 3y ago
    We've had about:profiles for many years, but that UI is not for the average user. On macOS opening a new profile through that also opens the window in the background and may also mess up your Firefox icons in the dock, not to mention that you'll break your profiles if you make the mistake of opening a profile from a different FF version on your current FF (eg: stable profile on FF Developer can't be opened again by FF stable). We can use profiles, but it's not a good experience. On Chromium (and Chrome, Brave, etc), there's an icon at the top right corner. You click it, then select the profile and that's it. Fast, simple, user friendly. (Edit to add: I sometimes forget that the average HN user is different from the average computer user. They're used to click on things, not to type "firefox -P" :P )
    - _emacsomancer_ 3y ago
      There are extensions to make the UI friendlier, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
      - luuurker 3y ago
        I've used that before. Props to the developer, but on top of the extension, we also have to install software for it to work. It also doesn't fix new profiles opening in the background and the messing up of dock icons, although this might only affect Mac users. The annoying thing for me is that Firefox already has a similar UI button that could easily be adapted to switch profiles. It even looks like Chrome's, but all it does it show you your Firefox/Mozilla account.
  - oxygen_crisis 3y ago
    There's nothing convenient about about:profiles. It's designed like their goal was to make the few buttons you want to use most the hardest to find. I'm not going to the profiles page to restart Firefox, show my profile directory in Finder/Explorer, Rename a profile, or Remove a profile. For some reason all those buttons get first placement. I have to scroll the page down to find the one and only button I want to click every single day.
- ghusto 3y ago
  When I used Chrome, I had to use profiles because that's all it had. I used it to switch between personas. It wasn't great, precisely _because_ you had to set up everything like bookmarks and extensions again. Containers on the other hand, fit the use-case of personas perfectly. I can keep logins separate, keep a work / home session separation, etc. Best of all, I set up certain websites to always use a particular container, even when I'm currently browsing in a different container tab. I can't imagine going back to Chrome profiles.
moribvndvs 3y ago
Been using Firefox for a long time, absolutely did not know this was a thing :/
- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  Good for you for discovering it then. Never again a big tech cookie alive in your general browsing. Welcome to the flip side
asciimov 3y ago
This Firefox user does. Main account, one for testing (no extensions installed), one for work (with work extensions), one for nsfw content. Keeps everything nice a separate.

Dwedit 3y ago

Warning for people who use or install Firefox UI Fix on other people's computers: Mozilla occasionally breaks everything with new Firefox releases, and you can end up with a non-functional tabs bar until you reinstall the newest version of Firefox UI Fix. Not so much a problem if you're a techie, but a big problem for the non-techies you install it for.

dblohm7 3y ago
I don't think it's a good idea in general to install things that utilize unsupported functionality on other people's computers.
moffkalast 3y ago
I wish I heard this warning a while back. Firefox used to have a pretty Chrome-like tabs bar with curved trapezoid corners and a lighter highlight for the selected tab.Then one day they decided that's bad, made it all flat rectangles and inverted the color scheme. Someone on the UX team had to justify their existence I guess. So my muscle memory was telling me that the tab that is selected is not selected and I couldn't get anything done. Okay not a problem, set up some flags that revert the old scheme, done. A few months later, Mozilla breaks that functionality because fuck you. Okay still not a problem, find and install a custom theme that makes the task bar look normal again. Half a year later they release a new patch that breaks the custom theme by sliding the tabs bar roughly 50% up so it's being clipped by the fucking window. I no longer have any clue what file changes I made to mod in that custom theme so I'm stuck with a broken install of Firefox unless I nuke my profiles. Yaaaay. sigh In my probably decade+ of using it, Chrome has never been this annoying.

matsemann 3y ago

I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems". For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve. Never had problems with font rendering. The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different. I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox". Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996287

gnicholas 3y ago
Yep, there should be a mention of how TST is better on FF than on any other browser (especially Chrome).
- lolinder 3y ago
  I agree with OP that the tone is needlessly negative, but while some people are super into TST, most of us don't care about it at all. I wouldn't say that any given article on Firefox "should" mention TST, because odds are the author won't be in the group that cares.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    In an article talking about the pros and cons of Chrome and FF, it would make sense to mention cult favorites like TST. I'm not sure where you get the notion that "most of us don't care about it at all" — perhaps you have more inside info than the rest of us? Regardless, I don't care about profiles or any of this other stuff, but I don't begrudge the author for mentioning things that aren't up my alley. In my mind, when I read a list-based article, I don't expect everything to be relevant to me.

pseudotrash 3y ago

I love Firefox. The only time I struggle it's because it is the only browser today that correctly implements CORS. This is a good thing. But it means broken middle boxes and MiTM enterprise tech (like Zscaler) should fix their stuff rather than pointing their smelly fingers at Firefox. Mozilla should up its game in educating the public that Edge and Chrome aren't following the standards correctly. This seems IMHO pretty important in a world where everything relies on the browser to sandbox things.

sneak 3y ago
The public doesn't care about those things and this would be a waste of time and money and brand attention span on the part of Mozilla. Ultimately we have already passed the point where the web is defined by what Chrome (and to a limited extent what MobileSafari) does.
- thejohnconway 3y ago
  You don’t need to convince the general public on these points, just a large enough subset (like nerds). This situation has happened before with Internet Explorer, and can be fixed again.
jefftk 3y ago
> it's because it is the only browser today that correctly implements CORS What's the difference in their CORS implementations? As far as I know all three major browser engines follow the modern spec.
- BeefWellington 3y ago
  Firefox correctly implements the behaviour when CORS is not properly configured, rather than failing to "the old way".
  - jefftk 3y ago
    Huh? If I have a resource I serve without Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers, all three browser engines won't make it available in cross-origin contexts. [1] For example, here are a pair of pages which make a cross-origin fetch for a resource that either does (yes-cors) or does not (no-cors) opt into cross-origin resource sharing. In all three browsers yes-cors displays the contents of the resource, and no-cors (correctly) displays "error". https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/yes-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/yes-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/no-cors https://www.kingfisherband.com/test/no-cors [1] With the exception of some standardized legacy cross-origin contexts like images, but then they all protect the contents in the same way.

neals 3y ago

I've always found the Firefox devtools be a little less 'quality of life' like. Just my opinion. Haven't used it in a few years. But for me, I just live in devtools, you know. As most of you here, probably. Opinions?

noman-land 3y ago
I always hear people say this, but they never give examples.
- doix 3y ago
  The debugger and the source map loading are noticably slower. The DOM browser is slower as well and I get things shifting a few pixels up/down randomly in there. On the bright side, it keeps a running diff of the css changes you make. Super useful when you're trying to fix some stupid layout thing, get it working and then forget all the changes you made.
- neals 3y ago
  Fair enough. I just started the latest version and must say, it has really improved. Quality of life probably means I have to look a bit more for where stuff is. And hey, they might have some stuff that Chrome doesn't have, right? So my first one is 'Chrome devtools has a little button to instantly switch to mobile view, where you simulate (more or less) the viewport of various mobile devices'. I don't see this in Firefox.
  - davidhaymond 3y ago
    It's called Responsive Design Mode, and it's the third button from the the right on the top bar. Even better, use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-M, which works even when devtools is closed.
    - cvladan 3y ago
      Chrome is inferior here in this area. Because you can activate mobile view in Firefox WITHOUT devtools opened, but in Chrome that's impossible. Lot of times I hated this at Chrome. Also, that shortcut in Firefox will immediately give you mobile view, and in Chrome not as you first need to type shortcut for Devtools.

jrm4 3y ago

Do people live in their browsers like that? I find it useful to keep both. 95% of the time I'm in Firefox, as one should be -- with all the good adblockers etc. And for the 5% unavoidable garbage of "things I must use/sign up for in life" that don't implement things properly, including Zoom, I keep Chrome around.

LightHugger 3y ago
Chrome is now scanning every file on your computer and sending back metadata to google unless you opt-out in the name of "we made our browser an antivirus too!" but nobody sane believes that stuff. At least use a different chromium based browser instead of chrome itself. Brave is a fine option.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  That feature was introduced in 2015 and they removed it already. https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodbye-to-chrome-cleanup.html https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodby...
- jrm4 3y ago
  Good point, Linux guy here, I always use Chromium -- perhaps this is a Linux thing but I always forget that there's a difference.
haunter 3y ago
I'm the other way around with ungoogled-chromium but yeah I do the same.
jeffhuys 3y ago
If you or a random reader is on MacOS, try out Orion - a Safari fork that has support for both Chrome AND Firefox plug-ins. I can't stop using Safari... I know, I'm a dying breed, and people at work were (and still are) a bit weirded out by it, but if you're like me, Orion is a very nice alternative if you want "real" adblockers (and 10000s of other plugins) at your disposal!

Synaesthesia 3y ago

Install ublock origin and you're good to go. It's really quite a great browser, on Android, Linux and Windows I reckon it's the best. On Mac I still use safari for the performance and battery saving.

Lio 3y ago
It would be interesting to see performance figures for Firefox + uBlock Origin vs Chrome and all the advertising/tracking junk it has to drag down to render some well known sites. I'd bet the cost of all those network calls outweighs anything else in the rendering pipeline.
jeroenhd 3y ago
On Linux you may also want to consider an alternative browser for performance and battery saving. The recent addition (Firefox 115 I believe) of hardware accelerated video decoding should make things better, but I'm still regularly seeing 50-90% CPU for a tab just playing a Youtube video that my Intel GPU should be decoding. I can tolerate that on desktop, but on my laptop I want to preserve battery life. I'm not sure why but Linux also seems slower in Firefox's benchmarks. My guess is that Mozilla is optimising for their most common users (and Linux users have a high probability of picking Firefox anyway). Hopefully more Windows features will make it into the Linux build soon.
r00fus 3y ago
FF is definitely my fave on Mac (containers/no history mode), but Safari isn't that much worse and I have almost zero problems with ads using Wipr content blocker.

Aissen 3y ago

What use is profile switching when one has Multi-Account Containers ?

luuurker 3y ago
Different bookmarks, extensions, settings, themes, and ability to sync all those to other machines. We just have to look at what profiles and containers do to understand that while useful, containers can't replace profiles.
- ghusto 3y ago
  I've seen this pop up a few times in this post. What's the use case for different extensions etc.?
  - luuurker 3y ago
    Personal vs work profiles, for example. My work profile has uBlock Origin with stricter rules which would break some sites/tools I use for work. I also redirect Twitter to Nitter, use a different password manager, etc. For bookmarks, it's more a question of not wanting to have personal stuff together with work stuff. Then there's some settings that works on one profile but would cause issues (or annoyances) on the other. I also have a different theme for each profile, which stops me from doing personal stuff on sites with my work login (eg: searching on Google). I also have a profile that is just for the shittiest sites I sometimes find online. I'll have extensions to block the crap, archive pages, etc, which would slow down browsing or break most sites I use. On Chromium, I had one browser and 3 profiles. Then I decided to move to Firefox and since using profiles (especially switching/opening them, at least on Mac) is a pain, I use 3 different browsers (Firefox, Firefox Dev/Beta, Waterfox) as they all have their own profiles. Could I live with only one profile? Yes, but that would force me to compromise. Containers alone? I tried to use them, but stopped after searching for stuff on Google and YouTube on the container I had my work Google account logged in. Profiles + Containers are the best of both worlds in one plane.
    - 3y ago

eviks 3y ago

> couple of reasons why I considered the switch from Chrome to Firefox ... their rejection of JPEG XL and Is Firefox embracing JXL?

GrumpyNl 3y ago

Why the big panda at the top, i dont get it.

bombcar 3y ago
Someone decided that websites need "hero images" and all the default themes now have it, and if you're asked to load an image, you load an image (many people don't bother changing default themes).
51Cards 3y ago
I suspect because it resembles the Firefox logo.
doublerabbit 3y ago
A Firefox is a Chinese red panda.
adastra22 3y ago
That's a firefox.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

KingLancelot 3y ago

[dead]

samsquire 3y ago

I installed Firefox recently but I had to turn off "smooth scrolling" because it was jarring.

jwrallie 3y ago
It is mostly a personal preference, but you can try this fix if you are on Linux: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1148934/precise-scrolling-in-firefox https://askubuntu.com/questions/1148934/precise-scrolling-in...

daneel_w 3y ago

I'll throw this advice in as well, about Firefox' disk cache. Not related to Chrome but mainly as a generic way to make Firefox a bit snappier and less grindy/bloated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168625

bee_rider 3y ago

I wish people would stop mentioning benchmarks, even when Firefox is wins one. It is like evaluating bicycles based on their towing capacity. Any website that requires a high performance JavaScript implementation is already doing so much wrong that you should just leave.

veave 3y ago

It's your font rendering that looks weird, maybe you have a BGR monitor?

jeroenhd 3y ago
The settings provided do indicate that Firefox has picked a different default subpixel layout than what the monitor has. This can be because of a bug in autodetection but it can also happen when you orient your monitor vertically, which many people do with secondary monitors. Assuming the author has set up ClearType right on their computer, I believe this may be a Firefox bug. ClearType on Windows should take care of this stuff already.

sinuhe69 3y ago

Something I didn't find mentioning is increasing the number of parallel connections in Firefox. When I inspect the network and responses of FF, I often find connections were "blocked" (for several hundreds ms). Thus, increasing the number of persistent connections to a server will unblock those connections and allow the website to render much faster. Go to about:config and change: network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server from the default value of 6 to 24 or 32. Experimental results for a website: (time until finish loading) No of Conns Prime Cache w/o Cache 6 (default) 25 s 257 s 12 21 s 212 s 18 18 s 190 s 24 15 s 147 s

cvladan 3y ago
Woow. thanks. Will test ASAP
jeroenhd 3y ago
This setting is a classic in the "tweak Firefox" blog posts. Increasing connection count will make HTTP 1.1 websites faster, but they'll also cause random rate limiting errors if you increase the value too much. How high you should set this value is up to you, but it's one of the first things you should reset when websites start acting weird in Firefox but not in other browsers.
- nlunbeck 3y ago
  This is good to know -- I primarily use FF and couldn't narrow down why my site was bugging out but running fine on other browsers. Glad its not a compatibility issue.
janc_ 3y ago
Some web servers might throttle or block you for opening too many parallel connections within a short time, so be careful not to overdo that...
Sardtok 3y ago
The default in Chrome is 4 IIRC.

spieglt 3y ago

Biggest features that keep me on Firefox: decent search (whole word, match case) and proxy settings

DieBruderBauer 3y ago
Biggest feature for me? Ability to disable efficiency mode which is - by default - on in Windows 11 and which cripples my plethora of open tabs.

nathias 3y ago

use containers,install vimium, treestyletab, darkreader and hack the UX to customize everything

datadrivenangel 3y ago

Firefox has actual browsing history! You can search your real browser history unlike chrome, which allows you to search your google web history, which does not contain all websites.

crazygringo 3y ago
What do you mean doesn't contain all websites?

rho4 3y ago

I still find it very confusing that the active tab does not 'extend' to the content, but is separated by a shadow. I often mistake the inactive tab for the active one, because it's background is almost closer to the content.

jackbrookes 3y ago
Agree, if anyone knows themes that make this better I'd love to know
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  Highly suggest checking out Firefox-UI-Fix [1]. I use it everywhere I use Firefox, and it makes the browser usable. [1] - https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

freedude 3y ago

"A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, Manifest v3, Googles’s WebDRM plans, their rejection of JPEG XL and the omnipresence of Chromium-based browsers nowadays – Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and some others are basically the same programs in different clothes." He hits the nail on the head. Why support the fascist empire when you can support those making it better. That said, if you really wanted a privacy focused browser then the Bromine, Waterfox, Opera, DuckDuckGo and Tempest browsers should all be investigated.

hospitalJail 3y ago

I havent been able to uninstall Chrome. Everyone makes sure they test their website for Chrome. Firefox/Safari just don't have devs testing on them. I currently have Firefox for most things, but I seemingly always have chromium open to check to see if a website isnt behaving correctly. What a terrible time for computing. Chrome is in total control of web. Nvidia + M$ have complete control of high performance computing, and M$ sucks. Apple captures tons of attention and time with their marketing but has low quality products.

jeroenhd 3y ago
What power does MS have over high performance computing? Perhaps some fields use Windows specific applications, but most high performance computing I see uses Linux by default, with WSL for the Windows equivalent. I use Chrome as a fallback too when the measures I've taken to protect my privacy break websites I can't get around, but in most cases websites just work in my experience. Almost all of the issues I run into are caused by addons messing with websites, like content blockers.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Nvidia has CUDA. CUDA is basically all that matters right now. Sure there is some half effort from Nvidia to support Linux, but you can do 1 google search to realize Nivida and Linux do not play together nicely.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    CUDA and Linux work just fine together. Nvidia GPU drivers and Linux (especially mobile Linux) are a bigger problem, but on desktop Nvidia works fine (just don't enable Wayland) and on mobile it works fine as long as you have an integrated GPU to actually render to your screen. I don't think I've ever had trouble getting CUDA to run. It seems to be the only thing Nvidia cares about making work reliably on Linux.

donatj 3y ago

> I like Chrome’s download bar at the bottom of the screen, as I need to download and handle many files for work. The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it Is there a way to re-enable this in chrome? It’s been replaced with the dreaded Firefox downloads butt Next to the address bar.

jeffbee 3y ago
chrome://flags/#download-bubble disable it.
- hbn 3y ago
  Thank you, came here looking for this. It seems like over the past few years Chrome has gotten more comfortable with shoving stuff into the top right section, with icons just popping in and out based on context. I used to have muscle memory for my extensions there, and now from right to left there's a kebab settings overflow button, a profile switcher icon (I don't even use profiles), a reading list button (again, not using that), an extensions overflow puzzle piece icon, and finally my extensions. I always have to think twice before clicking anything up there. Now having the download button that's only sometimes there is one more thing to throw me off. I couldn't even figure out what would make it disappear. I'd clear the downloads list and it's still there.
jmholla 3y ago
> The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it You can also keep it visible in Firefox. Right click the menu bar, click Customize, right click the downloads button, then unclick the hide when empty button.

hk__2 3y ago

> A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, […], their rejection of JPEG XL The part about JPEG XL seems strange, given that the article linked in the blog post says Mozilla too is rejecting JPEG XL: > Mozilla's Martin Thomson wrote that while JPEG XL "offers some potential advantages," it wasn't "performing enough better than its closest competitors (like AV1F) to justify addition on that basis alone." Could someone maybe clarify this point?

JJMcJ 3y ago

Now if FF would just fix the galloping memory usage - not that Chrome is much better.

asciimov 3y ago

My Profiles tips: 1. You can have multiple profile sessions running at the same time. 2. It is best to theme your alt profiles with a different color so you don't confuse them. For example, green one is for one profile and the red one another. 3. "firefox -p 'profile-name'" launches directly into a profile 4. "firefox -p 'profile-name' -private-window" launches a profile in a private window 5. I use keybindings on linux to auto launch different profiles. As for why you should consider multiple profiles. It gives you the ability to separate concerns. I use a main account, one for work, one for testing stuff, another that has no extensions, and one for anything NSFW. Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests.

folkrav 3y ago
I use Mozilla's Container Tabs extension for most of this. Unless you specifically want to keep settings/extensions/etc in specific, separate profiles, they're a good in-between solution. In my case, having a single FF instance is desirable as I would juggle between too many profiles which would need similar extensions for completely switching profiles and windows to be a good experience.
- asciimov 3y ago
  I use container tabs in my main profile as well, as like you, I'd have too many profiles if I didn't. My profile use is about big concerns and work modes. For example my work profile has some developer plugins, separate password managers, bookmarks, and snippets. Doing so keeps everything nice and removed from my home life.
planede 3y ago
> Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests. Umm, I keep NSFW stuff off my work computer. I'm not really comfortable with less separation than this.
- 3y ago

erichdongubler 3y ago

RE: profiles: pro tip: you can use `about:profiles`.

TechPlasma 3y ago

I recently switched over and am quite happy with Firefox all in all. My only gripe is the loss of Tab Groups (I'm a tab hoarder) and I haven't been able to find a decent replacement.

Liquix 3y ago
Tree Style Tab is incredible for grouping and nesting tabs. Heavily used by tab hoarders https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Criminal not to mention this. You install TST, and then you remove the strip of tabs across the top. Much cleaner look and basically you have all your bookmarks all there, forever. Mostly as unloaded tabs of course but they're one click away in the tree somewhere.
- jlokier 3y ago
  Unfortunately, as a tab hoarder myself, I had to remove Tree Style Tabs when I figured out it was the single reason Firefox was taking about 1 second after clicking to do actions like open a new tab or switch tab, and generally higher than ideal CPU usage. When I disabled it, everything got so much faster, it was like getting a new browser. So I switched to Sidebery, which seemed much faster at first and I still have it enabled sometimes. But after a while and many tests to be sure, I found Sidebery was the single reason Firefox was taking an extra 10GB or more RAM. Just today, I opened about ten Hacker News tabs for an afternoon's read, and the RAM usage crept up from 18GB to 28GB. These are text-only sites as you know, and like most people I didn't read the articles only the HN comments :-) So that's a lot of unexplained RAM. I disabled Sidebery in that window and the memory usage crept back down to 18GB. (If I launch Telegam in a Firefox window with Sidebery enabled it goes up to 67GB then crashes as my SSD is too full for that much swap!). If Sidebery is disabled all along, the memory usage doesn't creep up like that. These are figures reported by iStat Menus on macOS on my laptop. The swapping induced by the higher RAM usage caused scrolling to be extremely janky, as well as editing in forms and text boxes. So unfortunately for me, to have a reasonable browsing experience, I found I can't use either of the good tab-sidebar extensions Tree Style Tabs or Sidebery with Firefox at the moment, each for a different reason. I haven't seen other people reporting these issues, and each one took me a while to recognise. Therefore I asume these issues are related in some way to the total numbe of tabs and/or windows I have and that most people aren't affected (enough to matter), or those affected haven't found the cause. There are some tab group extensions, but I found Simple Tab Groups lost hundreds of my tabs several times, with no indication that it had lost them (they just weren't there when I went to find them later), so I stopped using it.

whalesalad 3y ago

Don't forget to install Dark Reader! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ This makes old reddit, HN, and google cloud console all dark mode friendly and it really "just works"

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Nice tips. I would add: embrace tab containers (https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/utiliser-conteneurs-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/utiliser-conteneurs-firefo...), especially if you love chrome profiles. They do half of what profiles do: they isolate cache, cookies, sessions, etc. But they do so in a very light manner and fast manner. The UI is better too. So for things that don't need getting different settings or extensions and so on, containers are the way to go.

WallyFunk 3y ago

> Firefox’ built-in profile switcher is far worse than Chrome’s. To open it, you need to start Firefox with the -p parameter. You can also just go to `about:profiles` in the address bar, without having to launch Firefox with the -p switch. I even have `about:profiles` as my homepage so when I launch Firefox, I then decide which profile I will be using.

adithyassekhar 3y ago

You can't go back a page using both Alt (+ Left Arrow) keys on Firefox. Only with the left Alt key, which is super uncomfortable.

jeroenhd 3y ago
AltGr (the right alt key) essentially translates to ctrl+alt on Windows and some Linux configurations. It also acts as a compose key on some configurations, making it quite unreliable for navigation as the system IME may intercept the key before sending it through. You can rebind it back to a normal alt key at the operating system level if you don't care about the AltGr functionality, that'll probably fix a whole bunch of unexpected problems you may be having in other programs. I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest. What's it likely to break? I don't have anything bound to that combo by default.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I forgot what exactly broke, but I do remember assigning something to my ctrl+alt+left/right keys and finding out that various applications (and I think maybe the rich text edit field?) got very confused.
phs2501 3y ago
Is this an AltGr thing? On my (US, in Linux) keyboard right-alt-left-arrow works fine, and I'm pretty sure I do the same thing in Windows (again, US keyboard layout).

bad_alloc 3y ago

A major issue I have with firefox is that it loses my pinnend tabs if i close browser windows in the wrong oder. Is there a way to keep them always?

jeroenhd 3y ago
I use File > Quit to close my browser and all of my windows restore just fine. If Firefox doesn't restore all your windows on startup, try hitting ctrl+shift+n, that should reopen the last (non-private) window you closed. In my experience this works across sessions, as long as you don't erase the browser history.

cvladan 3y ago

Nobody mentioned "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" Firefox option that is almost impossible to replicate on Chrome even with extensions. And there is huge user need for this option as there are bunch of Chrome extension for this, mostly using external executables to achieve this.

jwells89 3y ago

I have a considerable number of tweaks I apply to my Firefox installs, too and the process is a little cumbersome. I wonder if it would be a reasonable task to set up an “opinionated” fork of Firefox with all the changes being UI/UX-related and keep it up to date with mainline… that would make fresh installs more effortless and allow improvements that aren’t practical with regular Firefox.

intelVISA 3y ago
Sounds like Librewolf, which is Firefox with the Mozilla privacy invasions reduced and mitigated.

sfortis 3y ago

I switched to Firefox about a year ago mostly for containers, plugin enabled android app and my increasing dislike for Google. Never regretted it!

koito17 3y ago

The font rendering problem is very interesting to me because I have always found Firefox to use the same font rendering as the rest of my system, meanwhile Chrome has this universally thin and conspicuous font rendering across all systems I have attempted using it on. I currently use Mac OS and I see no difference between text rendered on Firefox and text rendered in other Mac OS applications, but there is a world of difference between Chrome and anything else. So if I had to make a bold claim without evidence, I would guess Firefox uses the OS default font rendering (i.e. it will be as bad the rest of your OS), meanwhile Chrome's font rendering is universally bad (i.e. it does not follow what your OS uses, on any platform, and if you don't like it, then there's not much you can do).

matsemann 3y ago
I agree. While Chrome's rendering may make the fonts more "elegant" and almost seem to be higher resolution/softer somehow, they are also harder to read and have less contrast.

ptman 3y ago

firefox needs direct donations: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money-to-the-firefox-development-team-directly/idi-p/198 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money...

steakscience 3y ago

The irony is Chrome feels less advertise-y than Firefox with its Pocket integration, Amazon suggestions, and god knows what else

hamdouni 3y ago

This part makes me smile : I am not a tab hoarder, I almost never have more than **15** of them open at the same time.

tlhunter 3y ago

I was so annoyed when Firefox got rid of the Proton tab style. Glad to see I can turn it back on!