6 ms·

It's never been a better time to switch to Firefox

226 points by Hary06 3y ago

novia 3y ago
Did Firefox update at the end of the desktop browsing session instead of the beginning yet? If not, no, it's still not a good time to switch (back) to Firefox.
- weberer 3y ago
  Yeah, they changed it I don't know how many years ago. It now gives a little bubble in the navbar asking the user to restart at his or her leisure.
  - novia 3y ago
    Oh gosh, thank goodness. Firing up Firefox with a question burning in my brain to be answered only to be delayed by a browser update was the most annoying thing to me. I'll give them another shot.
superkuh 3y ago
Title needs "on mobile". For actual computers you should probably go further and switch to a user freedoms respecting Firefox fork. Mozilla stopped doing so in version 37 when they turned off the ability to users to install (or edit) extensions/add-ons without Mozilla's approval. It's only been downhill since in terms of removal of features to "protect users" and the addition of proprietary DRM.
- hagendaasalpine 3y ago
  you can still install .xpi files on desktop
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  You can opt into installing extensions directly from XPI files, in developer versions; it's just not the default. You can also disable DRM. I don't like that the web added DRM, but given its existence, if Firefox said "you can't watch Netflix / Prime Video / etc in Firefox", they'd lose even more market share than they already have.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Correct, you can't install unsigned (not approved by Mozilla) extensions/add-ons in the main Firefox release. You have to use insecure/crashy versions (developer*) or you can dig deep and find the unbranded builds of Firefox and manually download and unpack them for every single update (they have updates disabled). It's tedious but I do it. The ESR releases of FF main don't allow unsigned add-ons. You may be using a custom user freedom respecting build Debian specifically negotiated with Mozilla to allow in it's repositories? *The developer version is literally the alpha release, later renamed aurora, later named developer. It is not acceptable to use an alpha release as a main driver for security and stability reasons. You're right about disabling DRM though. That's not a deal breaker the way it's implemented.
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      Outdated information, sorry: some reports suggest that at one point they had disallowed it on standard builds but allowed it on ESR, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. So, yes, you have to use a developer version, or a packaged version. That said: What extensions, exactly, do you want to use on Firefox that aren't shipped on AMO? Other than the development of extensions themselves (for which it makes sense to use a developer version of Firefox), what is the use case?
      - superkuh 3y ago
        For me it's not so much about which extensions but my ability to edit the extensions to fit my needs. Little tweaks to change appearance or text or or some internal list the extension uses. I do this fairly regularly (maybe once a month?).
    - ArclightMat 3y ago
      > The developer version is literally the alpha release, later renamed aurora, later named developer. It is not acceptable to use an alpha release as a main driver for security and stability reasons. It hasn't been for a long time, Mozilla dropped the Aurora channel in 2017 and rebased Developer Edition off Beta [0]. And as far as I'm concerned, beta is as stable as mainline (on my phone, at least). > The ESR releases of FF main don't allow unsigned add-ons. You may be using a custom user freedom respecting build Debian specifically negotiated with Mozilla to allow in it's repositories? Official documentation says you can still load unsigned extensions on ESR, but you need to enable a flag in about:config first [1]. [0] https://venturebeat.com/business/mozilla-kills-firefox-aurora-channel-builds-will-move-directly-from-nightly-to-beta/ https://venturebeat.com/business/mozilla-kills-firefox-auror... [1] https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-and-distribution-overview/ https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-...
- mr_sturd 3y ago
  I switched over to IceRaven due to the extension lock out. The only extension I really needed outside of the Mozilla walled garden was to help getting past pay walls.
- jakeogh 3y ago
  Pocket killed it for me. I got tired of re-disabling it.
  - nisse72 3y ago
    You can add "DisablePocket": true (and many other things) to your policies.json file. In my case that file is a symlink to a single master copy I maintain outside of the FF installation folder. See https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/ https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/
    - jakeogh 3y ago
      How about a one-liner to disable it globally via /etc/firefox/policies? I encourage anyone reading this to try it. Good luck. I wrote a python wrapper to manage policies, and it's -deliberately- difficult and fragile. If I ever go back to the FF codebase, it will be a fork without pocket.
seeknotfind 3y ago
Firefox extensions on mobile are already a game changer. I switched a few months ago. The only downside so far: the way you manage/view downloads isn't so great/intuitive.
- ducktective 3y ago
  I wish Firefox mobile put tabs on the bottom of the screen so it's more accessible to switch back and forth. Also the two-column layout of tab viewer is a subpar experience IMO. edit: Thanks to the replies, I figured 1) You can put the address bar at the bottom of screen 2) You can swipe on address bar to traverse through the tabs and 3) You can change the tab viewer layout to list view. (Still, I wished there was an option to list tabs on the bottom like the way Chrome does in on Android.)
  - kawogi 3y ago
    you can swipe the address bar to switch between tabs. Better than nothing.
  - longstation 3y ago
    You can do that. It even asks you whether to put it at the bottom when you run Firefox (Android, not sure about iOS) the first time.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The biggest pain point with Android FF for me is that there's no way to get it to close all of the tabs when you close the application. I have to go through and close each tab one by one first. It's driving me up the wall.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Hit tabs, three dots, close all tabs. Slightly quicker than doing them one by one.
      - 3y ago
rootsu 3y ago
Wow, AndroidPolice has fallen so much since the acquisition.
frizlab 3y ago
I still have that old image from when I was a kid; it’s still relevant, though it was initially against IE… https://frostland.fr/adopt-firefox.jpg https://frostland.fr/adopt-firefox.jpg Ironically I’m using Safari (and I love it).
- ducktective 3y ago
  >Ironically I’m using Safari (and I love it). on iDevices?
  - frizlab 3y ago
    And on my Mac. Safari does not exist elsewhere anyway (anymore). I hope Kagi will succeed in bringing a credible alternative (Webkit) to chromium or Gecko on Windows/Linux, but it’ll take time even if they do it!
    - mholm 3y ago
      I really like Kagi Orion and hope it can succeed, but the keychain integration is still severely lacking, and also is my favorite advantage of safari. Maybe there are settings I'm missing, but migrating everything over to their keychain still has a substantially worse experience. No auto-filling, requires swapping all devices over to it, and seems much less aware of which password to suggest. It upsets me that Apple has Safari behind a usability moat like this, though someone has suggested that the recent mac/ios update has provided safari keychain access to third parties.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  I remember while there was a push to adopt Firefox, there was another reactionary push against "alternate browsers", most likely from web devs who were frustrated that they had to support something other than Internet Explorer. What an interesting time.
  - vehemenz 3y ago
    Now they will unironically push back against Safari for not using enough bleeding-edge APIs. The lesson here is that web developers only have their own interests in mind, and what they want isn't necessarily what's best for the web.
davidy123 3y ago
I use Kiwi Browser. It is an open source fork of Chrome for Android that allows installing any extension. This is better than Chrome, which allows no extensions, and Firefox, which will only offer 200 or so. It also has its own ad blocking built in. Open source ftw.
p1mrx 3y ago
I have Firefox 120 on Android, but I'm unable to search for my extension (IPvFoo) on the addons page. It works on Firefox Nightly 122, and previously worked when Nightly was at 120. Maybe the launch still requires a server-side change?
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Afaik on ff original you'll still not have full list of extensions, just a more extended list
seba_dos1 3y ago
The best time to switch to Firefox was many years ago. The second best time is now.
- twiceaday 3y ago
  This is such a bad saying. I guess all the people who switched this year should have waited until now, because now is a better time to switch?
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    The point of the saying is that it's a rolling "now".
  - rdlw 3y ago
    It's not a bad saying, proverbs don't have to be mathematically rigorous to be resonant and get a point across.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I switched when it was Phoenix. I stopped liking it some time around v2. Maybe late 1.x series, don’t remember. I left over a decade ago.
  - beej71 3y ago
    Well, probably they haven't changed it at all in the last 10 years, right?
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      Had to download it again just yesterday because I needed a certain plugin for piracy reasons. Couldn’t browse at all until I disabled ipv6 via flag in about:config. Other browsers on same system need no such fiddling. Still bloated with a bad UI and offering little I can’t get in almost any other browser, all of which qualities are sharply contrary to the ones that made me start using it in the first place. They’ve changed none of what made me stop liking it.
ravenstine 3y ago
I use Firefox at home and Chrome at work, and I can't imagine going back to Chrome or Chromium at home. Firefox in 2023 is in great shape as a piece of software. Firefox could do some relatively small things to push it ahead of Chrome in some areas. Bookmarks sorely need an overhaul. For instance, it'd be really nice if bookmarks could appear in a side-pane instead of a popup window, and allow the user to sort by chronological order. That would discourage me from keeping so many tabs open, which would be a good thing. Just having a dumping ground for interseting pages that I can easily access and search through would be a good thing. It would also be amazing if bookmarks, or something like bookmarks, could optionally capture and store the body text on the page for searching purposes or even personal archiving. Searching tabs through the URL bar is pretty much broken and has been for years. Actually, I'm not sure that ever really worked. If I begin typing something that matches the title of a tab I have open, it rarely ever shows up as a URL bar suggestion. WTF? Is it really that hard to traverse a small array of tab titles and do a regex? I don't get it. What about full-text search across all the pages I have open? Can't do that either, apparently. Then again, who would actually want to do that? /s Ok, sorry for the sarcasm. Sort of. I mean this in the most constructive way possible. If I get time again, maybe I'll eventually fix these things in Firefox, but for now I hope someone at Mozilla reads this and decides it's worth fixing.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  > it'd be really nice if bookmarks could appear in a side-pane instead of a popup window Ctrl+B on linux/windows or I guess Command+B does exactly this. > and allow the user to sort by chronological order This is possible in the main bookmarks window. There is a sort by last modified option which should do the trick. It would indeed be nice to have this option in the sidebar. The other features you mention are more appropriate for an extension. Edit: I just found out that you can open the bookmarks window in a tab by visiting chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml
ser1us 3y ago
Have not used Firefox for years and am interested in giving it another chance. Currently using Edge, I love the split screen and vertical tabs features. Also, I just realized, I have a lot of PWAs installed. Does Firefox support PWAs on the Desktop?
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  No PWA support unfortunately :( No split screen either. There are several extensions that provide vertical tabs
  - ser1us 3y ago
    Oh nooo. Honestly, I dont want to miss out on PWAs.Oh well, guess I have to wait and see and potentially switch to another Chromium based one. Time to figure out which ones will adobt the new manifest.
rdsubhas 3y ago
I'm all in on FF on desktop. The only thing stopping on mobile for last 4-5 years is Translations. Project Bergamot is incredibly successful, thanks again to Mozilla for investing in this! Open Translation is such an important thing, it's a game changer. It went from beta to addon to bring built into desktop Firefox since the latest release. No words can express the amount of gratitude for this. Now, just waiting for it to be enabled in android builds. Edit: Another not so highlighted feature of Firefox is: Mac always shows Chrome as "significantly consuming energy". But never for Firefox. I don't know what magic they did here. Edit 2: Don't get me started on the benefits of containers, profiles and temporary containers as a default.
- gpchelkin 3y ago
  I struggled so long with having to use Chrome for translations on Android until I found out that my favourite translating extension works with mobile Firefox just perfectly. See [3] on how to install it in Firefox Beta (maybe this method or even the extension itself is already available in Firefox Release). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-pagi... [2] https://github.com/FilipePS/Traduzir-paginas-web https://github.com/FilipePS/Traduzir-paginas-web [3] https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-now-supports-custom-add-on-collections/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-n...
Sloppy 3y ago
Haha, followed the link in Firefox but it was blocked because of my ad-blocker. Who has the time to track all the stuff Google collects about you? At least spread out the tracking by NOT using every Google app. They've become the single largest surveillance organization in history, dwarfing even China's government. Besides Firefox and Duckduckgo work so well I don't notice the difference. Next, dropping Gmail...
- ananth99 3y ago
  This. FF and DDG work so well together that I hardly notice any downsides moving to it. DDG is my default search engine now and I rarely use google for sports updates. That's it.
czottmann 3y ago
Hi, macOS user here. I know Firefox is great, and I'd love to use it (again), but Mozilla's decision to remove all user-facing, OS-level scripting capabilities from it (i.e., AppleScript) made me drop it a few years ago. Getting anything out of FF on macOS, locally, is a major pain in the ass, actually. Try to grab the current URL from the active tab… I think it's a super-solid browser that unfortunately doesn't give a shit about the platform it's running on. Irritatingly, it's fine with being a black box, so much more than the Chromiums are (for all their various faults).
- div72 3y ago
  Weird thought, but have you tried using Selenium? Seems like launching a browser tab with: from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Firefox() and navigating to duckduckgo.com: print(driver.current_url) # https://duckduckgo.com/ works.
  - czottmann 3y ago
    I have. (Web dev here.) I know it works but I don't want to set up all the things just to get some basic scripting capability. My point is that there is zero local API surface for interacting with the application. That's the reason why tools like Keyboard Maestro support Chromium-based browsers but not Firefox. Which, in return, doesn't help Firefox's popularity, because it's nigh impossible to work with it from other apps. Disclaimer: I am in a weird spot here, for I am serious about automation both as a consumer and as a software maker -- I write macOS automation tools myself, e.g. https://actions.work/browser-actions https://actions.work/browser-actions
- ssbash 3y ago
  I’ve also given up on using Firefox on macOS. I used to be a hard core fan, but Mozilla consistently ignores bugs. For example, years later Firefox still doesn’t support macOS password autofill api. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212
- krackers 3y ago
  +1 everything about firefox on macos just screams non-native. And I'm not just talking about minor things like context menus not behaving natively (maybe this was fixed recently, don't remember). There's major stuff that would seem to be trivial to implement that they just haven't bothered doing, like making sure the computer doesn't go to sleep when downloading files [1]. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825914
tedunangst 3y ago
If switching today is better than yesterday, then by induction switching tomorrow will be better than today.
slaymaker1907 3y ago
I'd switch if they would support the File System Access API. It's a really convenient API and IMO as someone who has worked with it extensively, is very secure. It supposedly has privacy concerns, but I think it would primarily be used for FOSS and hobby projects since Bigco likes to store all the data on their servers anyways, that's a feature and not a bug for them. In fact, I think it would be a security/privacy improvement since it would encourage storing data locally (privacy) and is way more secure than asking users to install a native app (which has access to pretty much everything on the device and not just the directory/file a user gives it access to).
- Andrews54757 3y ago
  This! It is frustrating that web apps like draw.io can't save to file directly using Firefox. It gets old having to save a new file every time you make a change. Beyond that, the File System API would also allow for streamed downloads directly from the web-app. This would allow for web-apps to generate large download files without having to store a copy on a database (external server or IndexedDB), which is a privacy improvement. The only way to do this now is by using convoluted techniques to essentially do a MITM to a fake endpoint [1]. [1] https://github.com/jimmywarting/StreamSaver.js https://github.com/jimmywarting/StreamSaver.js
- squigz 3y ago
  > It supposedly has privacy concerns, but I think it would primarily be used for FOSS and hobby projects since Bigco likes to store all the data on their servers anyways Privacy concerns don't only apply for entities of a particular size
jakubmazanec 3y ago
Started using Firefox when it was still Phoenix, never stopped. Few years ago when they made Quantum, Firefox is awesome performance-wise: I can have hundreds of tabs open (with +- 50-90 always active), with no crashing (before Quantum, Firefox needed restarting once in a while). Chrome simply cannot handle that and consumes so much RAM.
sbbr 3y ago
Aside from all other advantages I'm on Firefox because can't live without MRU ctrl-tab tabs management. Chrome will never implement this, and plugins for different keys are not an option.
ta45654777 3y ago
With the 'Delete Data on Quit' option enabled on Firefox mobile, this used to adequately clear (or seemed to) any state for Youtube.com. Some time over the last few months this seems to have changed - I have to now go to Settings > Delete All Browsing Data (or similar) to effectively get Youtube.com to forget everything. Not sure what has changed there...
m-p-3 3y ago
uBlock Origin, which is also available on Firefox for Android is also more than an adblocker when you add some additional filters It can clean URL parameters for privacy reason https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt It can also bypass some soft-paywalls https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt as well as blocking those annoying cookie banners, chatbot widgets, etc
beezlewax 3y ago
I'm all in on Firefox mobile and desktop except for switching to chrome when some odd site doesn't work. No issues generally and it's been years.
childintime 3y ago
My biggest gripe with FF on Android is closing tabs, especially private tabs. Even though it puts up a notification to close all private tabs, it still takes like 7 clicks, or more, before looking at the last normal tab again. If you have or had private tabs open, FF will ironically advertise that to the max, because of how clumsy it handles them.
ochronus 3y ago
Now if only it had native tab grouping (and vertical tabs, sigh)... all the extensions supporting this are quirky, with subpar UI. I know it sounds nitpicky, but if I spend a lot of hours staring at a piece of software, I want it to be at least not displeasing.
moltar 3y ago
Good thing I don’t need to switch, because I’ve been using it since moving off of IE back in mid 2000s :D There was a bit of turbulence in our relationship when I strayed to Chrome for a brief moment because of the XUL extension deprecation. I was really pissed off because many great extensions stopped working. But then I was back in a month, because chrome is just unbearable.
rowanG077 3y ago
Que Firefox breaking on 16K paged systems.
kristianp 3y ago
I switched away from FF recently. On ubuntu 22.04, was irritated by the fortnightly snap update messages. Decided to switch to the ppa version instead. The ppa version had a "gmpopenh264" plugin has crashed problem on many sites. Switched back to Chrome. I don't have time for those hassles and the gmpopenh264 crash didn't have a googleable solution. Due to the snap being the default installation on ubuntu, not enough users were on the ppa version to get even serious crashing problems fixed.
porridgeraisin 3y ago
Things other browsers have these days like split screen, all kinds of tabs and bookmark groupings honestly don't matter too much to me... I just want PWAs and some of the (available in extensions as well) APIs like filesystem api. I'd switch in a heartbeat.
obruchez 3y ago
I'd gladly switch from Chrome to Firefox, but tab groups are what's preventing me to do so. :( I can't work without them.
gridder 3y ago
*Brave
dude187 3y ago
Glad I never stopped using it

226 points by Hary06 3y ago

Did Firefox update at the end of the desktop browsing session instead of the beginning yet? If not, no, it's still not a good time to switch (back) to Firefox.

weberer 3y ago
Yeah, they changed it I don't know how many years ago. It now gives a little bubble in the navbar asking the user to restart at his or her leisure.
- novia 3y ago
  Oh gosh, thank goodness. Firing up Firefox with a question burning in my brain to be answered only to be delayed by a browser update was the most annoying thing to me. I'll give them another shot.

superkuh 3y ago

Title needs "on mobile". For actual computers you should probably go further and switch to a user freedoms respecting Firefox fork. Mozilla stopped doing so in version 37 when they turned off the ability to users to install (or edit) extensions/add-ons without Mozilla's approval. It's only been downhill since in terms of removal of features to "protect users" and the addition of proprietary DRM.

hagendaasalpine 3y ago
you can still install .xpi files on desktop
JoshTriplett 3y ago
You can opt into installing extensions directly from XPI files, in developer versions; it's just not the default. You can also disable DRM. I don't like that the web added DRM, but given its existence, if Firefox said "you can't watch Netflix / Prime Video / etc in Firefox", they'd lose even more market share than they already have.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Correct, you can't install unsigned (not approved by Mozilla) extensions/add-ons in the main Firefox release. You have to use insecure/crashy versions (developer*) or you can dig deep and find the unbranded builds of Firefox and manually download and unpack them for every single update (they have updates disabled). It's tedious but I do it. The ESR releases of FF main don't allow unsigned add-ons. You may be using a custom user freedom respecting build Debian specifically negotiated with Mozilla to allow in it's repositories? *The developer version is literally the alpha release, later renamed aurora, later named developer. It is not acceptable to use an alpha release as a main driver for security and stability reasons. You're right about disabling DRM though. That's not a deal breaker the way it's implemented.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    Outdated information, sorry: some reports suggest that at one point they had disallowed it on standard builds but allowed it on ESR, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. So, yes, you have to use a developer version, or a packaged version. That said: What extensions, exactly, do you want to use on Firefox that aren't shipped on AMO? Other than the development of extensions themselves (for which it makes sense to use a developer version of Firefox), what is the use case?
    - superkuh 3y ago
      For me it's not so much about which extensions but my ability to edit the extensions to fit my needs. Little tweaks to change appearance or text or or some internal list the extension uses. I do this fairly regularly (maybe once a month?).
  - ArclightMat 3y ago
    > The developer version is literally the alpha release, later renamed aurora, later named developer. It is not acceptable to use an alpha release as a main driver for security and stability reasons. It hasn't been for a long time, Mozilla dropped the Aurora channel in 2017 and rebased Developer Edition off Beta [0]. And as far as I'm concerned, beta is as stable as mainline (on my phone, at least). > The ESR releases of FF main don't allow unsigned add-ons. You may be using a custom user freedom respecting build Debian specifically negotiated with Mozilla to allow in it's repositories? Official documentation says you can still load unsigned extensions on ESR, but you need to enable a flag in about:config first [1]. [0] https://venturebeat.com/business/mozilla-kills-firefox-aurora-channel-builds-will-move-directly-from-nightly-to-beta/ https://venturebeat.com/business/mozilla-kills-firefox-auror... [1] https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-and-distribution-overview/ https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/signing-...
mr_sturd 3y ago
I switched over to IceRaven due to the extension lock out. The only extension I really needed outside of the Mozilla walled garden was to help getting past pay walls.
jakeogh 3y ago
Pocket killed it for me. I got tired of re-disabling it.
- nisse72 3y ago
  You can add "DisablePocket": true (and many other things) to your policies.json file. In my case that file is a symlink to a single master copy I maintain outside of the FF installation folder. See https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/ https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/
  - jakeogh 3y ago
    How about a one-liner to disable it globally via /etc/firefox/policies? I encourage anyone reading this to try it. Good luck. I wrote a python wrapper to manage policies, and it's -deliberately- difficult and fragile. If I ever go back to the FF codebase, it will be a fork without pocket.

seeknotfind 3y ago

Firefox extensions on mobile are already a game changer. I switched a few months ago. The only downside so far: the way you manage/view downloads isn't so great/intuitive.

ducktective 3y ago
I wish Firefox mobile put tabs on the bottom of the screen so it's more accessible to switch back and forth. Also the two-column layout of tab viewer is a subpar experience IMO. edit: Thanks to the replies, I figured 1) You can put the address bar at the bottom of screen 2) You can swipe on address bar to traverse through the tabs and 3) You can change the tab viewer layout to list view. (Still, I wished there was an option to list tabs on the bottom like the way Chrome does in on Android.)
- kawogi 3y ago
  you can swipe the address bar to switch between tabs. Better than nothing.
- longstation 3y ago
  You can do that. It even asks you whether to put it at the bottom when you run Firefox (Android, not sure about iOS) the first time.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The biggest pain point with Android FF for me is that there's no way to get it to close all of the tabs when you close the application. I have to go through and close each tab one by one first. It's driving me up the wall.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Hit tabs, three dots, close all tabs. Slightly quicker than doing them one by one.
    - 3y ago

rootsu 3y ago

Wow, AndroidPolice has fallen so much since the acquisition.

frizlab 3y ago

I still have that old image from when I was a kid; it’s still relevant, though it was initially against IE… https://frostland.fr/adopt-firefox.jpg https://frostland.fr/adopt-firefox.jpg Ironically I’m using Safari (and I love it).

ducktective 3y ago
>Ironically I’m using Safari (and I love it). on iDevices?
- frizlab 3y ago
  And on my Mac. Safari does not exist elsewhere anyway (anymore). I hope Kagi will succeed in bringing a credible alternative (Webkit) to chromium or Gecko on Windows/Linux, but it’ll take time even if they do it!
  - mholm 3y ago
    I really like Kagi Orion and hope it can succeed, but the keychain integration is still severely lacking, and also is my favorite advantage of safari. Maybe there are settings I'm missing, but migrating everything over to their keychain still has a substantially worse experience. No auto-filling, requires swapping all devices over to it, and seems much less aware of which password to suggest. It upsets me that Apple has Safari behind a usability moat like this, though someone has suggested that the recent mac/ios update has provided safari keychain access to third parties.
lapetitejort 3y ago
I remember while there was a push to adopt Firefox, there was another reactionary push against "alternate browsers", most likely from web devs who were frustrated that they had to support something other than Internet Explorer. What an interesting time.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  Now they will unironically push back against Safari for not using enough bleeding-edge APIs. The lesson here is that web developers only have their own interests in mind, and what they want isn't necessarily what's best for the web.

davidy123 3y ago

I use Kiwi Browser. It is an open source fork of Chrome for Android that allows installing any extension. This is better than Chrome, which allows no extensions, and Firefox, which will only offer 200 or so. It also has its own ad blocking built in. Open source ftw.

p1mrx 3y ago

I have Firefox 120 on Android, but I'm unable to search for my extension (IPvFoo) on the addons page. It works on Firefox Nightly 122, and previously worked when Nightly was at 120. Maybe the launch still requires a server-side change?

Moldoteck 3y ago
Afaik on ff original you'll still not have full list of extensions, just a more extended list

seba_dos1 3y ago

The best time to switch to Firefox was many years ago. The second best time is now.

twiceaday 3y ago
This is such a bad saying. I guess all the people who switched this year should have waited until now, because now is a better time to switch?
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  The point of the saying is that it's a rolling "now".
- rdlw 3y ago
  It's not a bad saying, proverbs don't have to be mathematically rigorous to be resonant and get a point across.
hotnfresh 3y ago
I switched when it was Phoenix. I stopped liking it some time around v2. Maybe late 1.x series, don’t remember. I left over a decade ago.
- beej71 3y ago
  Well, probably they haven't changed it at all in the last 10 years, right?
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    Had to download it again just yesterday because I needed a certain plugin for piracy reasons. Couldn’t browse at all until I disabled ipv6 via flag in about:config. Other browsers on same system need no such fiddling. Still bloated with a bad UI and offering little I can’t get in almost any other browser, all of which qualities are sharply contrary to the ones that made me start using it in the first place. They’ve changed none of what made me stop liking it.

ravenstine 3y ago

I use Firefox at home and Chrome at work, and I can't imagine going back to Chrome or Chromium at home. Firefox in 2023 is in great shape as a piece of software. Firefox could do some relatively small things to push it ahead of Chrome in some areas. Bookmarks sorely need an overhaul. For instance, it'd be really nice if bookmarks could appear in a side-pane instead of a popup window, and allow the user to sort by chronological order. That would discourage me from keeping so many tabs open, which would be a good thing. Just having a dumping ground for interseting pages that I can easily access and search through would be a good thing. It would also be amazing if bookmarks, or something like bookmarks, could optionally capture and store the body text on the page for searching purposes or even personal archiving. Searching tabs through the URL bar is pretty much broken and has been for years. Actually, I'm not sure that ever really worked. If I begin typing something that matches the title of a tab I have open, it rarely ever shows up as a URL bar suggestion. WTF? Is it really that hard to traverse a small array of tab titles and do a regex? I don't get it. What about full-text search across all the pages I have open? Can't do that either, apparently. Then again, who would actually want to do that? /s Ok, sorry for the sarcasm. Sort of. I mean this in the most constructive way possible. If I get time again, maybe I'll eventually fix these things in Firefox, but for now I hope someone at Mozilla reads this and decides it's worth fixing.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago
> it'd be really nice if bookmarks could appear in a side-pane instead of a popup window Ctrl+B on linux/windows or I guess Command+B does exactly this. > and allow the user to sort by chronological order This is possible in the main bookmarks window. There is a sort by last modified option which should do the trick. It would indeed be nice to have this option in the sidebar. The other features you mention are more appropriate for an extension. Edit: I just found out that you can open the bookmarks window in a tab by visiting chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml

ser1us 3y ago

Have not used Firefox for years and am interested in giving it another chance. Currently using Edge, I love the split screen and vertical tabs features. Also, I just realized, I have a lot of PWAs installed. Does Firefox support PWAs on the Desktop?

Georgelemental 3y ago
No PWA support unfortunately :( No split screen either. There are several extensions that provide vertical tabs
- ser1us 3y ago
  Oh nooo. Honestly, I dont want to miss out on PWAs.Oh well, guess I have to wait and see and potentially switch to another Chromium based one. Time to figure out which ones will adobt the new manifest.

rdsubhas 3y ago

I'm all in on FF on desktop. The only thing stopping on mobile for last 4-5 years is Translations. Project Bergamot is incredibly successful, thanks again to Mozilla for investing in this! Open Translation is such an important thing, it's a game changer. It went from beta to addon to bring built into desktop Firefox since the latest release. No words can express the amount of gratitude for this. Now, just waiting for it to be enabled in android builds. Edit: Another not so highlighted feature of Firefox is: Mac always shows Chrome as "significantly consuming energy". But never for Firefox. I don't know what magic they did here. Edit 2: Don't get me started on the benefits of containers, profiles and temporary containers as a default.

gpchelkin 3y ago
I struggled so long with having to use Chrome for translations on Android until I found out that my favourite translating extension works with mobile Firefox just perfectly. See [3] on how to install it in Firefox Beta (maybe this method or even the extension itself is already available in Firefox Release). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-pagi... [2] https://github.com/FilipePS/Traduzir-paginas-web https://github.com/FilipePS/Traduzir-paginas-web [3] https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-now-supports-custom-add-on-collections/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-n...

Sloppy 3y ago

Haha, followed the link in Firefox but it was blocked because of my ad-blocker. Who has the time to track all the stuff Google collects about you? At least spread out the tracking by NOT using every Google app. They've become the single largest surveillance organization in history, dwarfing even China's government. Besides Firefox and Duckduckgo work so well I don't notice the difference. Next, dropping Gmail...

ananth99 3y ago
This. FF and DDG work so well together that I hardly notice any downsides moving to it. DDG is my default search engine now and I rarely use google for sports updates. That's it.

czottmann 3y ago

Hi, macOS user here. I know Firefox is great, and I'd love to use it (again), but Mozilla's decision to remove all user-facing, OS-level scripting capabilities from it (i.e., AppleScript) made me drop it a few years ago. Getting anything out of FF on macOS, locally, is a major pain in the ass, actually. Try to grab the current URL from the active tab… I think it's a super-solid browser that unfortunately doesn't give a shit about the platform it's running on. Irritatingly, it's fine with being a black box, so much more than the Chromiums are (for all their various faults).

div72 3y ago
Weird thought, but have you tried using Selenium? Seems like launching a browser tab with: from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Firefox() and navigating to duckduckgo.com: print(driver.current_url) # https://duckduckgo.com/ works.
- czottmann 3y ago
  I have. (Web dev here.) I know it works but I don't want to set up all the things just to get some basic scripting capability. My point is that there is zero local API surface for interacting with the application. That's the reason why tools like Keyboard Maestro support Chromium-based browsers but not Firefox. Which, in return, doesn't help Firefox's popularity, because it's nigh impossible to work with it from other apps. Disclaimer: I am in a weird spot here, for I am serious about automation both as a consumer and as a software maker -- I write macOS automation tools myself, e.g. https://actions.work/browser-actions https://actions.work/browser-actions
ssbash 3y ago
I’ve also given up on using Firefox on macOS. I used to be a hard core fan, but Mozilla consistently ignores bugs. For example, years later Firefox still doesn’t support macOS password autofill api. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212
krackers 3y ago
+1 everything about firefox on macos just screams non-native. And I'm not just talking about minor things like context menus not behaving natively (maybe this was fixed recently, don't remember). There's major stuff that would seem to be trivial to implement that they just haven't bothered doing, like making sure the computer doesn't go to sleep when downloading files [1]. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825914

tedunangst 3y ago

If switching today is better than yesterday, then by induction switching tomorrow will be better than today.

slaymaker1907 3y ago

I'd switch if they would support the File System Access API. It's a really convenient API and IMO as someone who has worked with it extensively, is very secure. It supposedly has privacy concerns, but I think it would primarily be used for FOSS and hobby projects since Bigco likes to store all the data on their servers anyways, that's a feature and not a bug for them. In fact, I think it would be a security/privacy improvement since it would encourage storing data locally (privacy) and is way more secure than asking users to install a native app (which has access to pretty much everything on the device and not just the directory/file a user gives it access to).

Andrews54757 3y ago
This! It is frustrating that web apps like draw.io can't save to file directly using Firefox. It gets old having to save a new file every time you make a change. Beyond that, the File System API would also allow for streamed downloads directly from the web-app. This would allow for web-apps to generate large download files without having to store a copy on a database (external server or IndexedDB), which is a privacy improvement. The only way to do this now is by using convoluted techniques to essentially do a MITM to a fake endpoint [1]. [1] https://github.com/jimmywarting/StreamSaver.js https://github.com/jimmywarting/StreamSaver.js
squigz 3y ago
> It supposedly has privacy concerns, but I think it would primarily be used for FOSS and hobby projects since Bigco likes to store all the data on their servers anyways Privacy concerns don't only apply for entities of a particular size

jakubmazanec 3y ago

Started using Firefox when it was still Phoenix, never stopped. Few years ago when they made Quantum, Firefox is awesome performance-wise: I can have hundreds of tabs open (with +- 50-90 always active), with no crashing (before Quantum, Firefox needed restarting once in a while). Chrome simply cannot handle that and consumes so much RAM.

sbbr 3y ago

Aside from all other advantages I'm on Firefox because can't live without MRU ctrl-tab tabs management. Chrome will never implement this, and plugins for different keys are not an option.

ta45654777 3y ago

With the 'Delete Data on Quit' option enabled on Firefox mobile, this used to adequately clear (or seemed to) any state for Youtube.com. Some time over the last few months this seems to have changed - I have to now go to Settings > Delete All Browsing Data (or similar) to effectively get Youtube.com to forget everything. Not sure what has changed there...

m-p-3 3y ago

uBlock Origin, which is also available on Firefox for Android is also more than an adblocker when you add some additional filters It can clean URL parameters for privacy reason https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt It can also bypass some soft-paywalls https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt as well as blocking those annoying cookie banners, chatbot widgets, etc

beezlewax 3y ago

I'm all in on Firefox mobile and desktop except for switching to chrome when some odd site doesn't work. No issues generally and it's been years.

childintime 3y ago

My biggest gripe with FF on Android is closing tabs, especially private tabs. Even though it puts up a notification to close all private tabs, it still takes like 7 clicks, or more, before looking at the last normal tab again. If you have or had private tabs open, FF will ironically advertise that to the max, because of how clumsy it handles them.

ochronus 3y ago

Now if only it had native tab grouping (and vertical tabs, sigh)... all the extensions supporting this are quirky, with subpar UI. I know it sounds nitpicky, but if I spend a lot of hours staring at a piece of software, I want it to be at least not displeasing.

moltar 3y ago

Good thing I don’t need to switch, because I’ve been using it since moving off of IE back in mid 2000s :D There was a bit of turbulence in our relationship when I strayed to Chrome for a brief moment because of the XUL extension deprecation. I was really pissed off because many great extensions stopped working. But then I was back in a month, because chrome is just unbearable.

rowanG077 3y ago

Que Firefox breaking on 16K paged systems.

kristianp 3y ago

I switched away from FF recently. On ubuntu 22.04, was irritated by the fortnightly snap update messages. Decided to switch to the ppa version instead. The ppa version had a "gmpopenh264" plugin has crashed problem on many sites. Switched back to Chrome. I don't have time for those hassles and the gmpopenh264 crash didn't have a googleable solution. Due to the snap being the default installation on ubuntu, not enough users were on the ppa version to get even serious crashing problems fixed.

porridgeraisin 3y ago

Things other browsers have these days like split screen, all kinds of tabs and bookmark groupings honestly don't matter too much to me... I just want PWAs and some of the (available in extensions as well) APIs like filesystem api. I'd switch in a heartbeat.

obruchez 3y ago

I'd gladly switch from Chrome to Firefox, but tab groups are what's preventing me to do so. :( I can't work without them.

gridder 3y ago

*Brave

dude187 3y ago

Glad I never stopped using it