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I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone). As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no dow

I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone). As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted it 4 years ago, Firefox gets a steady trickle of improvements and fixes. So a huge +1 to the last point. Firefox rules.

tasn 3y ago
I use Firefox on both Android and desktop. It's much better in many ways, and I love it. I do get compatibility issues sometimes, but I'm unsure whether it's because of all of the add-ons I use, or websites being buggy with Firefox.
- atoav 3y ago
  or because people develope for chrome and skip testing on other browsers.
- nathansherburn 3y ago
  I suspect it's your add-ons. I've been using Firefox mobile for years and I don't think I've ever had a site that worked better in Chrome. Caveats: Sometimes launching apps from the browser only works in Chrome and some demos of bleeding edge experimental Chrome features obviously don't work in Firefox.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    There are definitely sites that don't work in Firefox, although they are pretty far and few between. Mailgun is one of the worst offenders. when I mentioned to their support that auth among other things was broken in Firefox, their response was "use chrome"
    - djbusby 3y ago
      I heard "avoid mailgun"
      - freedomben 3y ago
        Yes that is good advice. I wouldn't use Mailgun again if I was starting from scratch today. The email sending infra is pretty solid, but their web UI is really fragile and routinely has outages. And of course, does not work in Firefox.
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    Here's an example that just got me: the Tesco mobile prepaid login has a hidden recapcha field that isn't filled in on Firefox mobile. It's rare, but happens enough I increasingly try and use chrome for multi step things that will be annoying or problems if they fail near the end, like government forms.
lrem 3y ago
Mozilla claims over 700 of their 750 employees work on Firefox. It's a bit harder to find out the number of people working on Chrome. The founding director remarks that there were 40 engineers working on Chrome mobile in https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-successful-teams-at-google-c06124959205 https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-success.... That's obviously just a slice of the whole team. Search results suggest a range of numbers between 23 and 500. There appears to be about 12k in the whole department building Chrome, Android and the other software shipped to users. From all that you can extrapolate that there likely isn't a huge disparity between number of engineers on both browsers.
- _chu1 3y ago
  I genuinely don't believe that 700 people work on Firefox because if that were true the quality would be much different and things would be done faster.
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    The main bottleneck to any parallel process is aggregation.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      I was just sitting here wondering how the logistics of coordinating the time of all of those developers worked.
- esskay 3y ago
  If there's 700 active developers on Firefox then they sure as hell must be having a great time "working" remotely. The development pace of Firefox is atrocious.
  - linker3000 3y ago
    'Compiling' https://xkcd.com/303/ https://xkcd.com/303/
jklinger410 3y ago
> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.
- post-it 3y ago
  I use Firefox containers as a replacement for Chrome profiles and I find them to be quite good. The Sidebery addon adds sidebar tab groups where each group can have a different default container, I use it to maintain different sets of sessions for personal and work stuff (GitHub, etc)
  - l72 3y ago
    Containers are really great. Even my non-technical spouse uses them (She isn't quite ready for the temporary containers add on yet though). However, there are some downsides to containers vs profiles, mainly that you can't have different settings. She is in grad school, and the online learning platform requires 3rd party cookies to work. With containers, this means enabling 3rd party cookies every where, which isn't good. I set her up a separate school profile that has a different theme. Only that profile has 3rd party cookies enabled, and she knows to only do school stuff in that profile. It is clunky to say the least, even with the profile extension. I'd really like to see better support for profile management!
  - jklinger410 3y ago
    I have profile specific extensions for work and personal. Containers is a half solution.
    - edoceo 3y ago
      I have a unique profile directory for each project -- in both Chrome and Firefox. I use a python script to wrap it -- so when I click links in a non-browser context that will launch the python wrapper, which prompts for the browser/profile combination. It's a extra click on launch -- and each profile needs to get configured (add uBO, etc). But I've got full isolation on those things.
nologic01 3y ago
> there is really no downside to Firefox The Dutch national TV (NPO) videos do not play on Firefox for Android [1]. They do play on Chrome for Android and they do play on the Linux desktop firefox. Not sure if its some hidden setting that I need to find or something for the firefox team to look into. Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why? Firefox on android is one of the few defence mechanisms we have. [1] https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/11-09-2023/POW_05465115 https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/11-09-2023/POW_05465115
- lock-the-spock 3y ago
  It might be that you turned off playing DRM materials
  - nologic01 3y ago
    Its allowed as a general setting. But digging deeper it seems that this site has somehow been placed on the exceptions list.
- ale42 3y ago
  > Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why? Because apps can collect more data... many apps are just spyware with some function on the top of it ;-)
- bjackman 3y ago
  Actually yeah this is something I'd forgotten about, that is indeed a downside to Firefox. I had this problem with the British Film Institute's streaming service. I emailed them about it, they replied "please try with Chrome on Windows PC" and I replied "no thanks, please send a refund, I will pirate the film instead". The other case where I ran into videos not playing was Twitter dot com. I tend not to click links into that site any more though.
data-ottawa 3y ago
Chrome Mobile is the largest reason I would not recommend an Android (specifically Pixel) device to friends or family. I bought one, and I found myself actively avoiding browsing the web on it. Even after installing Firefox you can’t get rid of the Google Chrome web search bar on the home screen, and in-app web views are Chrome, so you’re never really free from Chrome. I do understand the why of ads, and I’m okay with _some_ ads. On 99% of websites from a Google search you get a sticky top and/or bottom bar, and interstitial ads between paragraphs and they’re a little annoying but not so bad. But then on about 30% of search results one of those sticky ads is an autoplaying video, which means I can’t actually read the content (since 1/3 of my screen is video) and the “X” icon is 0.5mm wide so I can’t close it without clicking the video. Then there’s the email subscribe pop up on scroll, and after 15 seconds you get prompted to allow notifications for this website. Using the web without an ad blocker feels like you’re being attacked, it’s aggressive and stressful. I had hoped the ubiquity of ad blocking would result in advertisers going “hmmm, maybe we can drive fewer people to install these things by acting better”, but instead it’s been a race to who can exploit the smaller pool of users for clicks.
- ris58h 3y ago
  Firefox has a homescreen widget with a search bar. My web view browser is also Firefox. My phone isn't Pixel though.
- paholg 3y ago
  I've been using Android since the G1. I don't think I've ever had the search bar on the home screen for more than a couple minutes after getting a new phone. My in-app web views are also in Firefox. I'm pretty sure just changing the default browser changes this, though there may be a second setting I'm forgetting about. This is actually my main sticking point on refusing to try iOs. You can't even install Firefox on an iPhone, their "Firefox" is just a wrapper around Safari.
  - sphars 3y ago
    The search bar on the home screen referenced by OP is a Pixel launcher exclusive, which is the default installed launcher on Pixel devices. You can't remove it. You can install an third-party launcher however. You can also use a widget provided by a browser app to put a search bar on the homescreen (all major browsers have such an option). For the most part, my webviews are in FF (selected as my default browser), but it depends on what app launches the webview. Sometimes it defaults to Chrome.
samrus 3y ago
One of the upsides to Firefox is ricing it to fit your flow. I got vertical tabs like some other browsers have and its great. People on reddit do alot crazier stuff

tasn 3y ago

I use Firefox on both Android and desktop. It's much better in many ways, and I love it. I do get compatibility issues sometimes, but I'm unsure whether it's because of all of the add-ons I use, or websites being buggy with Firefox.

atoav 3y ago
or because people develope for chrome and skip testing on other browsers.
nathansherburn 3y ago
I suspect it's your add-ons. I've been using Firefox mobile for years and I don't think I've ever had a site that worked better in Chrome. Caveats: Sometimes launching apps from the browser only works in Chrome and some demos of bleeding edge experimental Chrome features obviously don't work in Firefox.
- freedomben 3y ago
  There are definitely sites that don't work in Firefox, although they are pretty far and few between. Mailgun is one of the worst offenders. when I mentioned to their support that auth among other things was broken in Firefox, their response was "use chrome"
  - djbusby 3y ago
    I heard "avoid mailgun"
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Yes that is good advice. I wouldn't use Mailgun again if I was starting from scratch today. The email sending infra is pretty solid, but their web UI is really fragile and routinely has outages. And of course, does not work in Firefox.
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  Here's an example that just got me: the Tesco mobile prepaid login has a hidden recapcha field that isn't filled in on Firefox mobile. It's rare, but happens enough I increasingly try and use chrome for multi step things that will be annoying or problems if they fail near the end, like government forms.

lrem 3y ago

Mozilla claims over 700 of their 750 employees work on Firefox. It's a bit harder to find out the number of people working on Chrome. The founding director remarks that there were 40 engineers working on Chrome mobile in https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-successful-teams-at-google-c06124959205 https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-success.... That's obviously just a slice of the whole team. Search results suggest a range of numbers between 23 and 500. There appears to be about 12k in the whole department building Chrome, Android and the other software shipped to users. From all that you can extrapolate that there likely isn't a huge disparity between number of engineers on both browsers.

_chu1 3y ago
I genuinely don't believe that 700 people work on Firefox because if that were true the quality would be much different and things would be done faster.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  The main bottleneck to any parallel process is aggregation.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I was just sitting here wondering how the logistics of coordinating the time of all of those developers worked.
esskay 3y ago
If there's 700 active developers on Firefox then they sure as hell must be having a great time "working" remotely. The development pace of Firefox is atrocious.
- linker3000 3y ago
  'Compiling' https://xkcd.com/303/ https://xkcd.com/303/

jklinger410 3y ago

> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.

post-it 3y ago
I use Firefox containers as a replacement for Chrome profiles and I find them to be quite good. The Sidebery addon adds sidebar tab groups where each group can have a different default container, I use it to maintain different sets of sessions for personal and work stuff (GitHub, etc)
- l72 3y ago
  Containers are really great. Even my non-technical spouse uses them (She isn't quite ready for the temporary containers add on yet though). However, there are some downsides to containers vs profiles, mainly that you can't have different settings. She is in grad school, and the online learning platform requires 3rd party cookies to work. With containers, this means enabling 3rd party cookies every where, which isn't good. I set her up a separate school profile that has a different theme. Only that profile has 3rd party cookies enabled, and she knows to only do school stuff in that profile. It is clunky to say the least, even with the profile extension. I'd really like to see better support for profile management!
- jklinger410 3y ago
  I have profile specific extensions for work and personal. Containers is a half solution.
  - edoceo 3y ago
    I have a unique profile directory for each project -- in both Chrome and Firefox. I use a python script to wrap it -- so when I click links in a non-browser context that will launch the python wrapper, which prompts for the browser/profile combination. It's a extra click on launch -- and each profile needs to get configured (add uBO, etc). But I've got full isolation on those things.

nologic01 3y ago

> there is really no downside to Firefox The Dutch national TV (NPO) videos do not play on Firefox for Android [1]. They do play on Chrome for Android and they do play on the Linux desktop firefox. Not sure if its some hidden setting that I need to find or something for the firefox team to look into. Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why? Firefox on android is one of the few defence mechanisms we have. [1] https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/11-09-2023/POW_05465115 https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/11-09-2023/POW_05465115

lock-the-spock 3y ago
It might be that you turned off playing DRM materials
- nologic01 3y ago
  Its allowed as a general setting. But digging deeper it seems that this site has somehow been placed on the exceptions list.
ale42 3y ago
> Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why? Because apps can collect more data... many apps are just spyware with some function on the top of it ;-)
bjackman 3y ago
Actually yeah this is something I'd forgotten about, that is indeed a downside to Firefox. I had this problem with the British Film Institute's streaming service. I emailed them about it, they replied "please try with Chrome on Windows PC" and I replied "no thanks, please send a refund, I will pirate the film instead". The other case where I ran into videos not playing was Twitter dot com. I tend not to click links into that site any more though.

data-ottawa 3y ago

Chrome Mobile is the largest reason I would not recommend an Android (specifically Pixel) device to friends or family. I bought one, and I found myself actively avoiding browsing the web on it. Even after installing Firefox you can’t get rid of the Google Chrome web search bar on the home screen, and in-app web views are Chrome, so you’re never really free from Chrome. I do understand the why of ads, and I’m okay with _some_ ads. On 99% of websites from a Google search you get a sticky top and/or bottom bar, and interstitial ads between paragraphs and they’re a little annoying but not so bad. But then on about 30% of search results one of those sticky ads is an autoplaying video, which means I can’t actually read the content (since 1/3 of my screen is video) and the “X” icon is 0.5mm wide so I can’t close it without clicking the video. Then there’s the email subscribe pop up on scroll, and after 15 seconds you get prompted to allow notifications for this website. Using the web without an ad blocker feels like you’re being attacked, it’s aggressive and stressful. I had hoped the ubiquity of ad blocking would result in advertisers going “hmmm, maybe we can drive fewer people to install these things by acting better”, but instead it’s been a race to who can exploit the smaller pool of users for clicks.

ris58h 3y ago
Firefox has a homescreen widget with a search bar. My web view browser is also Firefox. My phone isn't Pixel though.
paholg 3y ago
I've been using Android since the G1. I don't think I've ever had the search bar on the home screen for more than a couple minutes after getting a new phone. My in-app web views are also in Firefox. I'm pretty sure just changing the default browser changes this, though there may be a second setting I'm forgetting about. This is actually my main sticking point on refusing to try iOs. You can't even install Firefox on an iPhone, their "Firefox" is just a wrapper around Safari.
- sphars 3y ago
  The search bar on the home screen referenced by OP is a Pixel launcher exclusive, which is the default installed launcher on Pixel devices. You can't remove it. You can install an third-party launcher however. You can also use a widget provided by a browser app to put a search bar on the homescreen (all major browsers have such an option). For the most part, my webviews are in FF (selected as my default browser), but it depends on what app launches the webview. Sometimes it defaults to Chrome.

samrus 3y ago

One of the upsides to Firefox is ricing it to fit your flow. I got vertical tabs like some other browsers have and its great. People on reddit do alot crazier stuff