28 ms·

In 2024, please switch to Firefox

1776 points by Vinnl 3y ago

lcof 3y ago
If you use firefox, consider donating!
temon 3y ago
What do you think about ARC browser?
wly_cdgr 3y ago
[flagged]
ElongatedMusket 3y ago
The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me, I will switch. And I'll be bringing my entire family tree and friends along with me! What does everyone think about LibreWolf vs mainline FF? It reminds me of Waterfox: https://librewolf.net https://librewolf.net
- kvirani 3y ago
  Why re v3?
  - ranting-moth 3y ago
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    It nerfs adblockers so the current net convenience of using Chromium vs Firefox becomes a net inconvenience. Manifest v2 disablement day might as well be Firefox Switching Day.
- agilob 3y ago
  >The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me, Protest before if even happens by switching now, maybe?
- ranting-moth 3y ago
  Your loyalty is commendable. But we all forgive you if you make the switch now.
- thephotonsphere 3y ago
  #LibreWolf much more lightweight; bloat, telemetry removed.
- MrAlex94 3y ago
  Happy to chime in regarding LibreWolf and Waterfox, as it comes up alot in our support forums[1]: This question comes up every now and then, I'll base my currently updated reply starting with my previous response[2]: > Now, ignoring feature differences between all the forks out there, I'd like to present a different perspective and consideration that I think gets overlooked when comparing forks like Waterfox to other forks (if I am incorrect regarding Librewolf, someone please correct me). > Waterfox provides signed binaries for download. Librewolf (and most of the rest) do not. Checksum's are all well and good, but IMO, not enough. Code signing provides trust. > Librewolf does not provide auto-updates. There are 3rd party tools out there, but IMHO that brings in its own set of problems, and breaks the chain-of-trust. > The most important one that I believe, maybe apart from Pale Moon, only Waterfox does, is offers _accountability_. There is (and has been since 2012) a legal entity behind Waterfox. That used to be Waterfox Limited, then it was System1 and now BrowserWorks (the entity I control). Laws must be abided and the end user actually has an entity to hold accountable. GDPR, CCPA, the rest are things that _actually_ need to be followed. The other projects, who are you _really_ going to hold accountable if things go wrong? To me this is super important because a browser is used for sensitive information. It's just not worth the risk otherwise. This also goes hand in hand with the code signing. > Above all else, Waterfox has been around for 12 years > Don't get me wrong, things like EV code signing certs are a bit of a racket, and yeah you can jump in and code audit all those other forks too. But really, push comes to shove, they can just disappear into the aether. Separately, I'd say the end goals of each browser are different. Librewolf seems to aim for privacy on a rolling release. Tor and Mull will both target ESR (extended support releases, which is where Mozilla aim for my enterprise friendly releases of features being set and instead security/bug patches applied only). All of them will sacrifice compatibility for privacy/security. From my above comment, I'd go with Tor if you're willing to sacrifice speed, Mull if you want better speed but broken websites. After all a web browser probably accesses the most _sensitive_ data it can, I'd put my faith in a piece of a software run by a legal entity so you can have some legal recourse on matters. Waterfox's goal in terms of privacy is a usable web that still leans heavily to privacy but doesn't want to sacrifice the web experience for that to work. Waterfox has done a lot to reach that, from careful curation of preferences to supplemental infrastructure such as DNS over Oblivious HTTP (DoOH). These aren't just features that "might" help; there's real benefit to it. For example, users have reported being able to access censored websites when using Waterfox. In my opinion, I've reached Waterfox's goal perfectly here: privacy and web compatibility. Then, there's all the other "sugar" on top: - Customization - Reverting features removed by Mozilla but are genuinely useful/should've remained in Firefox. - Adding features when Mozilla is slow to do so (better JPEG-XL support for one). - The only fork that AFAIK that supports DRM content, for watching Netflix, Prime Video etc. Considering how difficult this was to achieve I doubt any will get support any time soon either. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/comment/kd0nhf3/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/comment/k... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/jqwuan8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/j...
- noman-land 3y ago
  Why wait until the final nail has been hammered before escaping your coffin?
- robertoandred 3y ago
  > LibreWolf Why are FOSS names always so bad...
closewith 3y ago
I use Firefox because it's the least bad option remaining, certainly not because I believe it's the last remaining ethical web browser. I have no confidence in Mozilla's ethics or mission, and no longer contribute directly or financially for that reason.
- squidbeak 3y ago
  I agree with the implicit point. From the ethics standpoint, regardless of what happens at the top, Mozilla's waywardness isn't reflected in the browser, unlike Google's web and user hostility with Chrome (manifest v3 etc).
hartator 3y ago
Maybe if they don’t align with Google agenda so much, I’ll switch. What’s the ethical of switching if Mozilla is just the non-profit arm of Google?
- jamesdwilson 3y ago
  Are they still receiving funds from Google?
  - tleilaxu 3y ago
    Around 86% of Firefox’s income is from Google, yes.
    - jamesdwilson 3y ago
      soo....yeah..
    - vinhill 3y ago
      Do you take the number from here? https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202... 86% of revenue of Mozilla corp are royalties, which encompasses any search engine that shares revenue with Firefox, not just Google. But the remaining 14% is not only revenue generated by Firefox, but also by e.g. Pocket. So from their financial statement, it's pretty hard to say what percentage of Firefox's revenue is derived from Google.
      - hartator 3y ago
        Isn’t Google the only one?
- matt123456789 3y ago
  Are you talking about the payment Mozilla receives for keeping Google the default search engine on Firefox? Just change it.
- 3y ago
jcalvinowens 3y ago
I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero. These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site was hopelessly broken on chrome.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The only site I've found behaves terribly in Firefox is LinkedIn. Weird pauses on page load that lock the whole browser (not just the tab) for like 5-10 seconds. No idea what they're doing to make this happen, but it's odd. Which is, well, fine, because LinkedIn is mostly a dumpster anyways.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    Any site that is on the edge of performance (often due to bad engineering, which you can blame on time constraints) will perform vastly better in Chromium.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      I don't much care, TBH. Having worked in the Chromium codebase before, I know what an absolutely mammoth amount of engineering hours goes into that. V8 on its own is a technological miracle. But all funded by a firehose of crazy privacy invading ad revenue. So. I'll live with the odd pause and a bit of battery drain. I gave Google 10 years of my life as an employee in exchange for $$, I'm not interested in giving them the rest of my life for free.
      - boringuser2 3y ago
        I get it, it's a nice story, but here's a nice little life-hack: What if you could take the benefits of the spending and jettison the side-effects? It's called Brave, they have their own ad blocker in the source code written in C, so it can't be hamstrung.
sgt 3y ago
> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data This is true for Google, etc, but definitely not for Apple. Not saying Apple is perfect in every way, but they actually have a track record for privacy protection.
- leosanchez 3y ago
  Firefox has ads doesn't it ? for the homepage links. (I am not complaining. long time firefox user)
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    Firefox’s default search engine is also Google Search, full of ads and spam.
    - ostensible 3y ago
      This is what pays their bills. Major source of income for Mozilla is Google paying to be default search engine
- AureliusDreamer 3y ago
  Brave runs on Chrome and has some of the highest privacy protections. I love Firefox, but just questioning if there aren’t good solutions available on Chrome. And while Apple may not have a business model as focused on selling data, they still have a growing ad business + weaker protections against fingerprinting and ad blocking
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    Brave’s internal ads and crypto weirdness are enough for me to be uncomfortable with it.
    - tejohnso 3y ago
      What internal ads? I see 0 ads while using brave because of its internal ad blocker. Crypto features are an easy toggle to disable. The toggle isn't hidden, doesn't re-enable itself, and isn't weird in any way.
ehwhwhwhahhwh 3y ago
[flagged]
ranting-moth 3y ago
If you keep feeding the Google monster you soon won't be able to browse the internet without a 3rd party attesting that your computer is worth browsing that site. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...
- Klonoar 3y ago
  This was reworked to be a more limited proposal specific for Android Webviews, IIRC. Fairly recently (last month)?
  - Drakim 3y ago
    And after that's normalized, then Google will enhance your user experience by bringing "Android Webview security" to Chrome on android, you know, it makes you really secure, it's really to help you keep safe. A few years down the road, a surprising amount of companies insist you can only use their product on those secure smartphone browsers because of it's enhanced security, so Google helps you out by adding a special "Android Secure Mode" to desktop Chrome.
    - graphe 3y ago
      Unreasonable and unsubstantiated expectations. Web sites want you to visit them, they have no reason to barrier you. Some sites I use still have http and if a site wanted you to visit it in a specific way they'd use an app. If the model is to make web sites less accessible for profit it would need a compelling reason to visit it in spite of the barriers. It will never happen.
      - Boltgolt 3y ago
        Websites want all the real visitors they can get, webapps are not quite as concerned with that. I remember the Microsoft Silverlight days
      - goku12 3y ago
jamiek88 3y ago
We all switched to Firefox back in the day because it was better. Better than IE, there was no chrome and safari was a joke. Entreaties and ‘trying to make Fetch (firefox) happen’ won’t work, evidently. How do we make Firefox obviously better? I’m core market for Firefox and just use Safari. Better battery life. And it’s just as good for privacy. At least that’s my impression. Is it wrong? If I don’t use it there’s very little chance people will change the defaults. Defaults are powerful.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Firefox + uBlock origin is far better than any other browser without UBO.
  - keymasta 3y ago
    I've been using Firefox for about as long as I can remember, and really don't notice sites not working. I do notice, however, that using any browser without UBO makes my eyes bleed in an unending agony of capitalist garbage. It's like using a browser and then putting sand in your eyeballs.
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    Mullvad browser
    - CuriousCosmic 3y ago
      That is quite literally Firefox + UBO. Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons. I don't mean this as a dig or anything but it's literally what they described.
      - hanniabu 3y ago
        > Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons. Yes, which is not Firefox with default settings
Zetobal 3y ago
Just let it die. We need something new or at least a CEO with a vision that is not steered by the tides of LinkedIn hype
- pjerem 3y ago
  The thing is we can hardly have something new. A new browser engine is an incredibly hard thing to program and historically they have always been financed by multi-millions (now billions) companies. Even Firefox via Google. If you want another engine that is not WebKit or Gecko and you want it open source, you are asking for something that the free software community failed to deliver for the last 30 years and that is harder to deliver everyday. If Firefox happens to die, we are basically stuck with a Webkit-only internet. We may have open source browsers but nobody is going to pay for the Gecko development (which is not just maintenance but keeping it up to date with the web specs) and nobody is going to pay for a new engine.
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    Just fork it. I don't have a problem with the tech I have a problem with the corp that governs it. Because in their last Annual Report they see the future of Mozilla in AI services...and that's not what's going to get usershare back.
    - pjerem 3y ago
      You can fork it but Google will still be the main maintainer but also the promoter of new APIs so your fork will be forced to either implement those new APIs or to accept their upstream changes. With multiple engines that have a big enough user base, you force the actors to negotiate standards. What will you do with your fork when Google will start to implement a replacement for HTML like they tried to do with Dart or AMP ? With enough competitors, Google is forced to make those unilateral evolutions backward compatible with what works everywhere. With only one engine they can force their new tech in the engine and bet on the fact that it will be integrated in the forks because it’s mostly one pull request away on GitHub. Maybe that would work if the fork somehow managed to evolve as fast as Google on Blink. But this literally means that you need Google’s kind of money amounts.
markx2 3y ago
Firefox user since before it was Firefox. Daily: Firefox with probably too many blockers, tampermonkey, umatrix, Stylus. I aggressively block any and every element on sites I visit regularly. You get no stats from me. Also daily: Firefox Developer Ed for frequently visited sites where I need to login and every site is in a container tab. Brave - my daily puzzle fix for Wordle, Wordiply, Travle, Tradle (no logins, clears data on exit). Edge, in Private mode, if and only if I cannot get a site to otherwise work. Also nextdns.io to block as much as I can including all Google, all facebook, all Automattic properties and more. While I'm sure some data is being collected I am very happy with how my internet looks.
- ausbah 3y ago
  do you have any other recs for firefox extensions?
  - markx2 3y ago
    Archive Page Bypass Paywalls Clean CSS Exfil Protection Decentraleyes DDG Privacy Essentials Ghostery NoScript Privacy Badger Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy Stylus Tampermonkey uBlock Origin uMatrix Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.
    - iso8859-1 3y ago
      So when you want to enable JavaScript, you have to click around in both uMatrix and NoScript?
      - markx2 3y ago
        I have to temp-trust some elements in NoScript, then look in uMatris for the specific items I'll set to green. That probably sounds like a hassle and I get that. But I've been doing it for so long it's the norm. If I need to unblock trackers in NS, I close the tab and go on my way. And every once in a while I'll factory reset both NS and uM. This probably sounds very tinfoil territory but as I've said I'm happy with my internet experience.
ramon156 3y ago
While i wholeheartedly agree, these aren't really reasons. Playing devil's advocate reveals nothing useful. "Its happened before" That's not an argument, in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt. On top of that, the internet was very different back then. "Its actually good" I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser? I'm very comfortable in my opera/edge/chrome browser and I'd have to change my workflow.
- Ukv 3y ago
  > "Its happened before" > That's not an argument It's a subheading to "2. Browser engine monopoly". The subsection's purpose is describing how bad things were during the IE monopoly to reinforce that it's something to be avoided. > in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt That would be agreeing with the article, unless I misunderstand what you mean. > On top of that, the internet was very different back then. In a way that now makes it harder for truly new competing engines to pop up due to increased complexity of the web. > I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser? The points made in the article are: * Increased privacy, opposed to willingly giving your data to an ad-tech company * Helps avoid a browser engine monopoly which would effectively let Google dictate web standards * It’s fast and has a nice user interface Onto which I'd add: * Content blockers work best on Firefox (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...), doubly so once Manifest V3 rolls out * Allows more customization of interface and home page * UX improvements, like the clutter-free reader mode, aren't vetoed to protect ad revenue as with Chrome (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467)
yevvy 3y ago
No
eyezick 3y ago
Eh, I tried unfortunately and it's not the same. Especially with video processing, my older Macbook Pro heats up very quickly when using Firefox vs Chrome. Firefox's history bar is still superior though
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nabaraj 3y ago
My family uses Apple's keypass for everything password. Is there an easy way to get passwords working like Safari? I currently do Search Passwords, Search website, Copy password, Paste in Firefox manually.
- pprotas 3y ago
  The easiest way to get the easy of use of Safari's password manager in a different browser would be to use a different password manager that works in other browsers. Common recommendations are 1Password (my personal favorite), BitWarden, etc. This might not fulfill your needs though, since it sounds like you'd like to use the Safari password manager in a different browser, which is not possible outside of the Chrome extension [0] that Apple provides. This means that it wouldn't work on Firefox. [0]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/icloud-wachtwoorden/pejdijmoenmkgeppbflobdenhhabjlaj?pli=1 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/icloud-wachtwoorden...
- kemayo 3y ago
  There is not, unfortunately. Apple has an extension for Chrome ("iCloud Passwords") that lets you use the keychain passwords there, but nothing for Firefox. It's less-restrictive than it used to be, since the extension used to only support Chrome on Windows, but they gave in back in July of this year and made it easier to use Chrome on Mac. Apparently, Firefox removed a bunch of password-related APIs back in Firefox 57 that broke some existing keychain extensions[1], so it might not be Apple's fault that they've not provided a Firefox extension. There's no progress on Firefox bugs related to making such an extension possible again, that I could see.[2] [1]: https://github.com/jfitzell/mozilla-keychain/issues/88 https://github.com/jfitzell/mozilla-keychain/issues/88 [2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212
throwaw12 3y ago
I am not going back to Firefox anytime soon after they kicked out Brendan Eich for his personal views. Whether we agree or not with his personal views, open source should not be influenced by political agenda, neither by wokeness
- vajrabum 3y ago
  Being publicly against same sex marriage is a business liability in San Francisco.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    at the time he made the donation, it was the majority opinion in California. He even said that he had changed his mind/opinion had evolved. But it wasn't enough
  - stronglikedan 3y ago
    They have customers all over the world. It was a bad business decision, regardless of the local liability. They could have just swept it under the rug like they do at almost every other company.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It was more than a personal view. He paid a lobbying campaign for a policy that is diametrically opposed to Mozilla's organisational views on diversity. A CEO should stand for the values their organisation represents.
1970-01-01 3y ago
>1. Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. Mozilla tracks and gives (sells?) unique information about every download to Google unless you choose to grab it from the FTP servers. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
- fburnaby 3y ago
  does that apply to installations from apt?
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    It does not. Those binaries are signed by your distribution and the same for everyone.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I'm honestly curious why they don't also track the FTP server downloads.
  - cies 3y ago
    My best guess: <1% so statistically not relevant.
- DHowett 3y ago
  > (sells?) An accusation like this would benefit from some evidence. By not offering any evidence, you get all the benefits of sowing doubt without having put in any of the work necessary to have an actual discussion about it.
  - 1970-01-01 3y ago
    Here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ Firefox by default also sends marketing campaign data to Adjust, our analytics vendor, which has its own privacy policy. Campaign data includes a Google advertising ID or Android ID, IP address, timestamp, country, language/locale, operating system, and app version. Smells like a sale, but by not using the word sell, they get all the benefits of sowing doubt without having put in any of the work necessary to have an actual problem about selling it.
thejosh 3y ago
I switched to Firefox earlier this year, having used Chrome since 2008/2009, previously having used Firefox. Mostly out of laziness. Can't believe how good Firefox is now, and how great it is on Android (addons, config). Being able to control anything on the browser is fantastic. Want to increase a certain UI elements font size just a tad? Sure! Want to tweak every aspect of the UI? sure! Want a myriad of config options, sure go ahead! Love the concept of Nightly, has worked great for me.
- atrettel 3y ago
  One UI feature that I love that Firefox lets you change is the scrollbars. I forget the precise settings, but I set them up so that they are always present and always big enough for me to see how far down a page I am (yes, like I'm using Windows 95!). That might only be something that matters to a few people, but the fact that it is customizable to that level is one of Firefox's greatest strengths.
  - plugin-baby 3y ago
    This sounds great, but for web developers I feel it’s a risky change if you want to see your sites as your users do.
    - atrettel 3y ago
      You raise a good point. Fortunately, I'm not a web developer but I will keep your point in mind in case I do any web development later. From a web development standpoint, the scrollbars do seem to be an ignored feature for a lot of web pages. Adding scrollbars actually fixes a lot of issues with some sites. For example, some sites often have a frame inside of another frame, and this reveals the scrollbars for both frames. If I were to use my mouse wheel, I might scroll down inner frame or the outer frame, and I wouldn't know which one would be activated until I try, but with the scrollbars on, I always know which one is which. This was a surprise benefit to this change.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
nullindividual 3y ago
If it weren’t for the unique to Firefox audio/video sync problem, I would.
utybo 3y ago
I'll switch to Firefox when they get proper vertical tabs like Edge's. I know Microsoft Edge has a really bad reputation, but damn it I can't live without its vertical tabs, and I can disable most of the idiotic AI crap. I know there are plugins, but they all feel quite hacky and are simply not as good.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar), plus I didn’t like MS stealing my data. Not a day goes by that I don’t strongly miss vertical tabs though.
  - utybo 3y ago
    > I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar) FYI you can disable it, along with most of the additional button things.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cdata 3y ago
Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful macro forces pushing us to that outcome. "Switch, please," calls to action are a noble but insufficient countermeasure.
- ethanwillis 3y ago
  Is that a common belief on the Google Chrome team?
  - cdata 3y ago
    You'll have to ask them. I left Chrome in an exasperated huff several years ago. The browser ecosystem as we know it is in a tenuous state. It is unhealthy for the web that Chromium has become so dominant. It is a symptom of this imbalance that users line up to defend Apple's choice to lock out other browser engines from iOS. This kind of popular user sentiment would have been unthinkable to me in the era when Firefox first rose up to fight back against the IE singularity. Yet, here we are.
- Simran-B 3y ago
  Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable. Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway. What annoys me the most, however, is that several things simply don't work in Firefox and the associated report is over a decade old, so with close to zero chances of ever getting addressed. Copying the content of a canvas element as an image to the clipboard is one of these things. In Chrome, this takes a right and a left click. Firefox didn't have such a basic feature last time I checked. There used to be a workaround, opening a blob URL in a new tab and then copy that, but this got broken later, I believe by a stricter security policy. Firefox is essentially the browser equivalent of Fairphone. It's the most ethical option but it inconveniences you left, right, and center.
Trasmatta 3y ago
How are the Firefox dev tools these days? I feel like every time I try to switch, the dev tooling has felt subpar compared to Chrome, and I don't like using one browser for regular use and one for development. It's been a couple years since I tried though.
- Zekio 3y ago
  for css they are best in class IMHO, especially the visualizations of flex and grid
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Not as good for networking and performance as chrome dev tools, but the visualizations for styling are notably better.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  About as good as Chrome in most areas, but the performance is poorer. They're serviceable.
Slackwise 3y ago
I use PWAs extensively and Firefox decided they won't bother to implement them, so that's going to be a no from me. Rather than wanting the web platform to be first class, they really want it to languish as a second-class citizen. Really sad, seeing as they also fired devs, and invested in "AI" instead.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Indeed: > Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks. [1] Any idea what Mozilla's motivation is here? (Apple's at least is easy to understand, even if you disagree.) [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Making_PWAs_installable#sites-as-apps https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
  - TheFuzzball 3y ago
    > Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks. That's not actually true, MDN needs updating. PWAs are installable as standalone apps since macOS Sonoma and Safari 17 - https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0/#:~:text=Web%20apps%20on%20Mac https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0....
  - fsflover 3y ago
    There are workarounds for using Firefox web apps: https://forums.puri.sm/t/firefox-web-apps/21499/ https://forums.puri.sm/t/firefox-web-apps/21499/
- charlesabarnes 3y ago
  I have tried to switch out of curiosity, but the lack of PWA support in addition to missing features like WebUSB really limits how useful the browser is to me.
  - 3y ago
JonathanBeuys 3y ago
I would like to, but Firefox behaves problematic in regard to auth urls like https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com 1: When you bookmark them, it shows the auth part when you hover the bookmark with the mouse. 2: When you open them from the command line firefox https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com And then ctrl+click links on the site, it opens the new tab and shows the auth part in the tab title as long as the link loads. It seems the "current url" in Firefox code is stored with the auth part, and it passes that part on to local links. These issues make it insecure to use auth urls because as soon as someone looks over your shoulder (or there is a camera like in many cafes), you are p0wned. I wish we had a better way to log into a website from the command line, like ssh keys. But for now, we are stuck with what we have. And Firefox makes it insecure to use it. So for now, I continue to use Chromium.
- pprotas 3y ago
  You save passwords in plain text (bookmarks) and then complain that people can read the plain text over your shoulder?
  - JonathanBeuys 3y ago
    Yes. The auth part should not be displayed when you hover over a bookmark. Chromium does not display it. In the end, every security mechanism is "plain text". Even ssh keys. When someone gains access to your ssh key, which is just an ascii string, they can log in as you.
    - pprotas 3y ago
      My SSH keys are protected with a password, on top of that I have a biometric lock (MacBook fingerprint reader) on my SSH keys. So they would only grant access to someone that 1. has access to my computer, 2. knows the password (which only I know) and 3. has my finger. Definitely more than just plain text! I strongly suggest looking into multi-factor authentication, or other modern authorization/security mechanisms if you want to see examples of security systems that are not just plain text. > Chromium does not display it. Security by obscurity is not ideal, although I can understand that the lack of this feature in Firefox hinders your usecase.
jack_riminton 3y ago
The article has good points but for the love of god please stop with the passive-aggressive "here's why you've been eating apples wrong all your life" headlines Maybe I should write a blog post titled "You're writing passive-aggressive articles wrong, read this to do better in 2024"
chakrihacker 3y ago
I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of putting their noses under some privacy violating company
chakrihacker 3y ago
I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of burning money on stuff that doesn’t matter
jmyeet 3y ago
I’ll switch to Firefox when they fire their overpaid CEO who keeps getting hefty pay raises despite Firefox losing market share and whose big idea for revenue is “AI services”.
- switch007 3y ago
  You have no issues with Google? Every exec is paid just right, every endeavour is pure and good?
  - kemayo 3y ago
    What tends to rub people the wrong way in situations like this is hypocrisy. Google hasn't claimed to be a virtuous nonprofit, so people accept it when they do shitty things. The Mozilla Foundation is an ideological nonprofit, so people hold it to a higher standard. This may or may not be productive, but it's how people tend to work. :D
    - switch007 3y ago
      I can appreciate that to an extent Though there’s hypocrisy in only critically analysing the actions of one party and giving the other a free pass too
ivanmontillam 3y ago
I've been a happy user of desktop and mobile Firefox for about ~3 years now. If you take the time to configure Firefox for Android to suit your needs and wants, it's a very formidable browser. I did it for ideological reasons. I don't want Chromium strong-arming web standards (I really do hope it's not too late for that). The only switch I've been unable to finish is the default search engine to something else. As much as Google's search results have become somewhat useless, sometimes DDG returns unrelated results. Bing as well. I've not yet tried Kagi.
jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y ago
[flagged]
- countrymile 3y ago
  Explaining why you find it better would be helpful
nashashmi 3y ago
Firefox needs bookmarkable containers. It is almost there ... Bookmarkable Containers are opening bookmarks in a specific container. And I don't like the hacked extension that implements this feature as a workaround using container sites.
- noman-land 3y ago
  Can't you do this by telling a container to auto open certain URLs?
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    Yes, but when it comes to links like outlook and gmail, where i want to keep separate work accounts and personal accounts.
    - noman-land 3y ago
      Makes sense. Good example.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Someone yesterday mentioned this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-c... As I understand it, that would allow you to add a bookmark for `ext+container:name=MyContainer&url=https://mozilla.org https://mozilla.org`, which would open mozilla.org in MyContainer.
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    Not a fail. It has the annoyance of after clicking the bookmark, it closes the tab I am in and opening a new tab. This cannot be reversed by ctrl+shift+t. I end up losing my history of the closed tab. Otherwise, it works.
hprotagonist 3y ago
I'm already switched over! I can't switch over any farther!
- layer8 3y ago
  If you’re not careful, you might wrap around to IE.
cultureulterior 3y ago
As soon as they bring back xul
bloopernova 3y ago
From yesterday's Firefox thread: Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it: Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc Containers keep sites separated nicely[2] Tree Style Tabs[3] uBlock Origin on Android[4] Open Source since 1998! Not based on Chromium [1] Be wary of sync on a fresh Linux install, it might sync the default bookmarks and merge them with your own. Not a huge deal but definitely an annoyance. [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers [3] Tree Style Tabs requires several extra steps to remove the tabs at the top of the window. You have to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true, then create a "chrome" (lol![5]) directory in your profile and add a userChrome.css file to it. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [4] uBlock Origin on mobile web makes a massive difference. You can even use the same rules that modify the style of the page you're viewing, such as setting HN to a dark mode via: news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white) [5] I'm aware that the Mozilla UI was called Chrome at one point, not sure if it still is.
- matthew-wegner 3y ago
  On [5]: It's not that Mozilla named their UI "Chrome", but that "chrome" is a graphical user interface word. For a browser it refers to the stuff around the web page content, but it's more general than browser use (you could refer to Blender's chrome around the 3D viewports to refer to its toolbars, etc). i.e. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome
  - layer8 3y ago
    I still hate Google for naming their browser Chrome for that reason. They made a perfectly good and useful UI term almost unusable. Ironically, the modern web also led to UI chrome being harder and harder to distinguish even in native applications.
    - takeda 3y ago
      Feels a bit Microsoft'y like for example "Word".
_zoltan_ 3y ago
I won't, thank you. I'm happy with Chrome. Yes, I also have YouTube premium.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  YouTube Premium works fine on Firefox.
wkat4242 3y ago
I'm still very happy with firefox. Not as much with Mozilla as an organisation though. They are losing focus. They're still playing the big corp game when at this stage in their marketshare decline they should focus much more on the grassroots movements of privacy. And their attempts at detaching from the big Google deal are minimal. A deal with mullvad that's not really interesting for example. I'd much rather see a paid premium sync or something. Or something like iCloud private relay for web (which is much better for privacy than a simple VPN like they're offering) But as a browser it's great. It offers some great features I didn't see anywhere else like the web containers which I can no longer do without. And the real full ublock origin, bypass paywalls etc.
xedrac 3y ago
I use Firefox exclusively, and I love the Rust language that took shape at Mozilla, but it makes me sad to see HN censor comments that point out Mozilla's despicable behavior when they fired Brandon Eich because he didn't espouse gay marriage.
- ebiester 3y ago
  He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom. And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things.
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    > He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom. > And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things. You seriously don't see the irony in this at all? Retaliation against someone for what they do in their personal lives is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom? Purporting to speak for an entire community without any authority or consent is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom? Workplace retaliation for private lawful activities should never occur. That seems like a principle that the GLB community should embrace.
    - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      Do you not know what protected statuses are? There's a reason those exist. There's a reason it's allowed to penalize someone for being bigoted but not for being gay. This is not a symmetrical/both-sides thing.
      - torstenvl 3y ago
        I can't quite tell if you're trying to discuss policy (which is currently being discussed in this thread) or the law. If you're trying to discuss the law, then your summary is both paradigmatically flawed (conflation of legislative versus constitutional protections, protected status versus suspect classification, etc.) and factually incorrect (being gay was not a protected class in 2008 in almost any jurisdiction, and making a political donation is not an action subject to the Civil Rights Act). If instead you're trying to discuss principles, then your explicit embrace of being unprincipled seems... odd. Principles always apply symmetrically and to both sides. That's what makes them principles.
nsagent 3y ago
As someone in the Apple ecosystem, Firefox is not a very compelling alternative. I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based) and I've tried switching on desktop as well. On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in. On top of that, it was simply a slower browser, both with DOM manipulation and Javascript. For example, when I made my latest research project (https://pl.aiwright.dev https://pl.aiwright.dev) Firefox would routinely struggle with the large complex graphs (over 100k nodes, though only a few hundred nodes attached to the DOM at any given time). Safari handles it with no issues whatsoever. I'm sure there are likely workarounds to speed things up on Firefox, but I don't have the time or energy for something like that since it's a research project, not an end-user facing product. Maybe you can make the argument that switching to Firefox will incentivize improvements, but so far that hasn't been my experience. I've now moved away from Firefox to things like Orion (which is still quite buggy, but useful enough). Safari seems to be getting better over time, with things like containers now and extensions like Userscripts [2]. [1]: https://pl.aiwright.dev https://pl.aiwright.dev [2]: https://github.com/quoid/userscripts https://github.com/quoid/userscripts
- petrusnonius 3y ago
  I use Waterfox on Mac and it is great. Safari is slow in comparison and the only thing that leads me to use it is integration with TouchID.
- thefourthchime 3y ago
  Same, it's simply easier to use Safari on my phone and Mac. The performance is fantastic, syncing is perfect, and switching between the two devices is effortless. If I used windows or Linux I would probably give it a try again.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    Not to mention on iOS your choices are really between Safari and Safari with a different skin.
mergy 3y ago
I still keep Firefox around and it's not horrible but have been very happy with the Chrome variant Vivaldi and some key extensions. Fast and not vanilla Chrome.
tnecniv 3y ago
The only reason I don’t is because, when I’m on my MacBook, I’m worried about sacrificing battery life by not using safari
TowerTall 3y ago
There is no support for touch screen navigation gestures in Firefox on Windows and that is the #1 reason why I cannot switch. I use the touchscreen on laptop while browsing every day. Touch screens on windows isn't something new. They became common around the time of the release of Windows 8 in 2012. There is a 6 year old feature request on bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443710 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443710
- the__alchemist 3y ago
  +1: They've been ignoring this one for years.
freedude 3y ago
I enjoy Firefox. Occassionally, I run into issues using it. I attribute this to bad website design as this often occurs with government, and large bureaucratic organizations.
hasty_pudding 3y ago
I have it on Firefox but it's a forced snap install so I can't download anything because snaps are sandboxed. I switched it at some point to the app version and uninstalled the snap. but it came back as a snap somehow!!!
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Canonical is another problem that should be dealt with. I haven't trusted them since they put Amazon spyware links in the start menu bar. Snaps are one of these strange antifeutures that somehow get forced on the users anyway.
geraldwhen 3y ago
Mozilla is a political organization. No thanks. I’ll stick to safari, chrome, and brave. I’ll drop chrome if it ever removes v2 extensions.
- throwawaysugar 3y ago
  [flagged]
mooreds 3y ago
Recommend doing this on mobile as well, if you are an android user. You get adblock and a URL bar near your keyboard. The price is that occasionally there are sites (approximately 2% in my anecdotal experience) that you'll have to use chrome for.
- SubiculumCode 3y ago
  I opt for firefox nightly on android, giving me a chance to contribute to their development roll outs.
- charles_f 3y ago
  My other grief on Android is that I often get the dead tab bug. Sometimes when you reopen a tab and try to navigate, the tab just ceases to function and you need to close it. Also they changed something in tab management, and it feels like nowadays I always have 40 tabs opened despite myself (which kinda defeats the purpose). Other than that, I never have issues loading any website, unless they're actively detecting the agent and telling you to use chrome.
- cpburns2009 3y ago
  Firefox is noticeably slower on Android than Chrome. That's where Brave really shines: as fast as Chrome with a built-in ad-blocker.
jccalhoun 3y ago
Firefox has been my main browser for a long time but I've also been a mutlibrowser user for a long time. Right now I'm typing this in firefox, chrome is in my second monitor running twitch, and I will be using edge for my work.
aloukissas 3y ago
Surprised nobody mentions this: Firefox DevTools are so, so much better than Chrome's, especially shining in two areas: (a) inspecting layouts with flex/grid; (b) inspecting websocket traffic. Been using FF for 10+ years, never looked back.
- pacomerh 3y ago
  What about performance insights? Chrome is pretty good at this
  - aloukissas 3y ago
    I've never used it tbh
pmarreck 3y ago
Already did a few years ago. My only current annoyances with it are that the NixOS search page is blank in it for some reason, at least on Nightly (https://search.nixos.org/packages https://search.nixos.org/packages) and that I can't access its password store on iOS. (iOS added Google Chrome password access from any app's GUI right around the time I switched from Chrome to Firefox... UGH)
dabber21 3y ago
Switched back last year and even use their services, even one pain one: firefox relay to mask my email
- dabber21 3y ago
  *paid
ugjka 3y ago
The only way I'm getting off Firefox would be if google actually makes the Web completely DRM'd and i can't do banking without chrome
Mystery-Machine 3y ago
No. Plus the browser engines argument is...meh. Webkit and Chromium are open source. Why not build on top of that? What's the added value of having more than one rendering engine? All the arguments are talking about major browsers. Why not mention other, non major browsers? Oh I know why, because those are actually pretty decent alternatives and you wouldn't want to have to explain why Firefox against those as your case would be weaker.
htk 3y ago
Maybe they wouldn't need people begging to use FF if Mozilla used its money exclusively for the browser and web initiatives, instead of political and ideological projects.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  What are some examples that have put you off?
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    All of them? Mozilla is even worse than the Wikipedia foundation. They are a one trick pony and should just focus on their one trick ...
gridder 3y ago
[flagged]
geenat 3y ago
I will when FF doesn't regularly lose my sessions. Thanks. Dunno how bugs like this continue to exist.
- pilaf 3y ago
  I've had a couple "scares" like that, i.e. an entire window full of open tabs disappearing (usually closing it by mistake), but normally they come back with just a Ctrl+Shift+T. Not saying that's what happened to you, just sharing my experience.
romanovcode 3y ago
I like Safari
mastercheif 3y ago
I would’ve considered switching to Firefox if they hadn’t shipped their Pocket “redesign” earlier this year. It’s one of the worst most user hostile updates I’ve seen from any app or website in my 20 years on the web. It’s completely broken, frankly. If you open a saved article and then switch apps, Pocket kicks you back to the Home Screen. Tapping the “view all” button—which should take you to your saved article list—brings you back to the article you were viewing. Awful awful awful.
- ahepp 3y ago
  Mozilla is still finding ways to antagonize its users with Pocket? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I stopped using Firefox when they started pushing Pocket so hard. Maybe I’m remembering too strongly, but my recollection is that when I complained about it I was told this is the future, you’re being a crank, and it’s totally normal for a third party exension collecting data to be baked into a browser that claims to support privacy and respect users. So I just started using Safari, and I’ve never been happier. Apple seems to at least know how to get out of its own way. And they seem at least a bit more credible on privacy than Chrome or frankly Firefox.
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. Because they offered a service that you were not interested you switched away and consider the less privacy friendly than a big corporation which runs one of the largest advertisement business in the world and tries to lock everyone into their ecosystem? Seriously, why do you hold Mozilla a nonprofit with a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, to a much higher standard than the largest corporations in the world with proven disregard (and profit motive to ignore it) for their users privacy?
    - ahepp 3y ago
      > In addition to the information that you provide to us when you register for a user account, we collect information about the URLs, titles and content of the web pages and other information you save to Pocket. The types of information we collect includes your browser type, device type, time zone, language, and other information related to the manner in which you access the Pocket Technologies. If you are on a mobile device, we collect the advertising identifiers provided by Apple on iOS and by Google on Android. [...] How is Safari less privacy friendly than that? As far as I know, Safari doesn't phone home with my reading list. If it did, that would be completely unacceptable to me. But maybe Apple can defend it by saying "well it's only what the most privacy friendly browser, Firefox, does"? > Seriously, why do you hold Mozilla a nonprofit with a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, to a much higher standard than the largest corporations in the world with proven disregard (and profit motive to ignore it) for their users privacy? Do they really have a proven history of putting privacy of their users first? Because to me, Pocket looks like a proven history that they will sell the opportunity to collect data from their users just like any other company. Even if Mozilla really did have a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, that would in fact be a reason to hold them to a higher standard. I expect more from people I think highly of, than people I know usually do bad things. It seems to me that Apple actually has less incentive to sell my data than Mozilla. I'm paying Apple for their device and their software, and if I don't like the way their software treats my data, I will stop paying them. Mozilla has no way to make money other than bundling software that collects data from their users (google search default, pocket). So who's really incentivized to ignore privacy concerns?
bbqbbqbbq 3y ago
I know it's Chromium-Based but I've been a very happy Arc Browser user all year
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
No, https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-... If you really care, there is LibreWolf https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
k310 3y ago
Just want to add: Despite its limited number of extensions, Safari has a great "reader" mode that other browsers with readability extensions can't come close to, in terms of zapping the crap, killing almost all nags and popups (sometimes, that's all you need to get past a nag-wall) and creating truly readable articles, savable as PDF. I also use Firefox and Opera, which are fine, and which have their own universes of extensions. Opera is chrome-compatible in this respect. Both have versions of ublock-origin.
- ls612 3y ago
  I’d take the uBO element zapper over Reader Mode any day. Some anti-Adblock scripts have figured out how to prevent you engaging reader mode.
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
I do use Firefox as my default browser (Linux). My only complaint is that from time to time they see the need to change the user interface and break compatibility with whatever CSS hacks you've had to use to get it the way you like (e.g. tab position). I wish they'd make UI layout/customization config-driven rather than relying on CSS, and commit to backwards compatibility of any such config.
born-jre 3y ago
Me, Very hardcore Firefox user for years, today looking at switching to arc browser becasue firefox is thrashing my system. one time. macos swap inscreased to 60gb where firefox was using 48gb. i have 16gb ram. :( also video freezes time to time ) it is probably one of my own about:config changes Though than firefox.
robblbobbl 3y ago
But even with Firefox your whole activity is being tracked. There is no privacy anymore. Your data is being collected massively to build a map to identify individuals. You can't protect yourself anymore from being a victim. This is so utterly bad that I even would recommend/advise to not use any computer or the Internet in total anymore.
cbarrick 3y ago
I switched to Firefox in 2019. But the recent UI changes through me off. I'm now on Vivaldi and loving it! Both macOS and Android.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mock-possum 3y ago
My main gripe with Firefox on Windows: You can’t drag a tab out of one window and hold it against the side of the screen to snap that tab there as a new window. Chrome lets you do that, and I use that feature all the time. I’ve mostly gotten used to everything else at this point.
dunfear 3y ago
[flagged]
ripvanwinkle 3y ago
For the Firefox fans here who care deeply about stemming its market share losses and keeping it viable consider this goal. Please switch at least one other person to Firefox - anyone from your friends, family, colleagues etc. I did this with my spouse last year
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
animanoir 3y ago
https://cdn.ponly.com/wp-content/uploads/No-Memes-15.jpg https://cdn.ponly.com/wp-content/uploads/No-Memes-15.jpg
daft_pink 3y ago
I think 2024 is going to be ruled by the Arc Browser when it is fully released for Windows. I use it on Mac and it's amazing, but as soon as it's available on Windows, I think people will start recommending it everywhere and everyone is going to start using it.
- cies 3y ago
  https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/
- vehemenz 3y ago
  At the end of the day, Arc is a Chromium browser with a novel UI paradigm. I used it as my daily driver for six months, but I concluded that whatever problem it solves isn't really worth solving. Rather, it doesn't offer enough of a difference to me to warrant switching from Safari or Chromium.
meibo 3y ago
In 2024, please fix tab tearing. Thanks!
tyjen 3y ago
Yep, I realized I was using Chrome out of nothing but habit and convivence. Made a concerted effort to switch to Firefox, Mullvad, and Tor.
torstenvl 3y ago
I use Firefox as my main browser. I love Firefox and I want it to succeed. However... a person who uses Firefox as their primary browser must generally still keep Chrome installed. A person who uses Chrome as their primary browser has no need to keep Firefox installed. Firefox should endeavor to fix that. First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string. That's how upstart web browsers have fought against sites breaking things for them for decades. Second, Firefox should endeavor to be as compatible as possible with Chrome with regard to the DOM and JS, being sneaky if it has to. I think O365 webmail is the first good place to start, since it's widely deployed. USG websites as well, like DFAS MyPay or Marine A-PES do not work well on it. Obviously, it's difficult for Firefox devs to test on these sites, but that's all the more reason to take bug reports seriously.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  > First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string. This leads to the larger issue of not knowing who your visitors actually are. If 75% of all Firefox installations spoof Chrome, then you won't know that they are actually FireFox users. This can drive adoption rates down as they stop caring about making things work on Firefox.
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    No. Fragmentation is not a feature of the web, and delusions about developers caring about Firefox and its ~2% of web traffic are not helpful. The way to make sites work on Firefox is to convince them to stop serving broken shit to Firefox. This is the way the web has always worked.
  - andrewaylett 3y ago
    It's already the case that companies using "Real User Metrics" will miss many Firefox users -- client-based monitoring is indistinguishable from client-based tracking (intent notwithstanding) with the result that if I need to disable three separate sets of protections (ETP, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin) before my browser will report my useage of my employer's website. Not everyone using Firefox will be quite so determined as I am, I'm sure. But it's still an issue that I try to raise with people who want to use browser statistics for anything. It's also worth noting that Firefox does spoof its user-agent in some circumstances, if you visit `about:compat` then you can see a list of sites that have user agent tweaks applied to them. See also: webcompat.com
aayala 3y ago
The Firefox Developer Edition rocks!!
squarefoot 3y ago
Dear Mozilla Foundation, in 2024 please act like you really want Firefox to be used by more people. Thanks.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  If it didn't change already then it likely never will.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
I am on Mac and while Safari is still much more snappy, more and more websites are a topping to work on Safari but work on Firefox. If only Mozilla thought just switching to making every release a major number release wasn’t most of the job done. Besides with every release something I had set just days back changes. And the experience doesn’t feel seamless at all. There are pages, popups with every release. So all this tells Mozilla learns nothing.
paul7986 3y ago
Used it religiously since 2002 when it was then called Mozilla.
happimess 3y ago
I switched (back) to Firefox a few years ago, and love it. My only complaint is that it forces me to restart the program occasionally, for updates. Does anyone know why this is done? Is it a technical necessity? Why can't I postpone it for a few hours?
manbash 3y ago
Firefox is my daily driver on my Ubuntu laptop, but for video streams and Google Meet (including virtual background[1]), I can see it still isn't utilizing my Intel GPU as much as Chromium (beta channel) does, so I split my usage between the two browsers to reduce the CPU usage for these specific cases. I've followed the basic recommendations (from e.g. Arch Linux wiki) but still getting less utilization with Firefox according to intel_gpu_top. [1] Well, at least virtual background works on Firefox now after their GSuite improvements.
kgwxd 3y ago
Unfortunately, no matter how evil Chromium gets, I just cannot switch to Firefox. I've been using it for 15 years already.
defensem3ch 3y ago
yes, i use firefox too and i love it. however i recently learned vivaldi has tab tiling and it's WAY better for me to use at work because i can see multiple tabs at once. wish firefox could implement this feature too
- emsign 3y ago
  Tab management in Vivaldi is excellent, it's the main reason I can't switch
- TheFreim 3y ago
  Vivaldi has been my browser for quite a while now, the customizability is great. Many of the features can be replicated through extensions, but the cohesive experience is unmatched. The bookmarks, window, and the (new) sessions are extremely useful and make tab management a breeze.
aayala 3y ago
I used Firefox as my primary browser until last 2 year (chrome was performing better). I will give a try again for sure (Debian and Mac user)
sepisoad 3y ago
i really like firefox to shine. but it’s very ugly and turns me off every time i use it. it's been around forever but the UI has never looked good, I’d argue that in recent years it’s gotten even uglier. recently i’ve been using duck duck go browser on macos, it’s literally my main browser for the past 6 months and I’m very happy with it’s simple and beautiful UI. i mentioned duck duck go browser because of multiple reason, first of all, there are many of us who are willing to ditch chrome, and a lot of us can live without all the goodies that come with chrome, a lot of us can live with a browser that is a bit slower than chrome, but i’m sure there are also a lot of us who cannot force themselves to deal with an ugly browser.
breischl 3y ago
I was using it, though I _think_ it was causing intermittent hangs and crashes on my Win 11 machine. It's hard to be sure, because it was so hard to repro, and could've been due to something else just interacting with FF badly. But it seems like Brave doesn't have the problem. Which is a shame, I'd like to use FF, and still do on other machines.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
It's a nice sentiment but Firefox' market share has dropped to 3%. It's going to take more than a blog post scolding readers about ethics to reverse that trend. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-201711-202311 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2017...
bad_user 3y ago
> "Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising" This is BS. Firefox is funded entirely by Google's Ads. Even if you donate to Mozilla, those donations won't be invested in Firefox. At this point, all 3 major browser engines are funded by ads. You may argue that Mozilla doesn't directly make money from advertising, but that's irrelevant because they'll never do anything to upset their cash cow. And Google can always kill Firefox by avoiding renewing their search deal, without much of a loss, as most Firefox users would switch to Google anyway, much like what users did when they tried switching to Yahoo as the default. --- UPDATE — A good reason to use Firefox is if it's simply better for you. For me, Firefox is better than Chromium-based alternatives because: + History sync is full and actually works; + DNS-Over-HTTPS works in parallel to corporate DNS (fallback to system); + Tree-style-tabs; + Bookmarks management; + Reader view (Android & desktop); + Great Ctrl+Tab; + Non-admin upgrades; + uBlock Origin; + Total Cookie Protection; + Android: multiple search engines; + Android: Open in app; + Android: Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, Cookie AutoDelete, other extensions; It also has some issues: - poor battery life on macOS, and I fear that Chromium currently has an edge there, even if both are worse than Safari; - problems when scrolling on Android, poor performance for certain websites (e.g., Mastodon, Twitter); - incompatibility with certain apps (e.g., Microsoft Teams), but in fairness, they've been investing in compatibility, see their recent work on Google Meetup; Firefox on Android has many issues, and the people denying it aren't doing it any favors. For me, the add-ons more than make up for it, it's my main browser, but I'm still uncomfortable recommending it to family. I hope Firefox continues to evolve and differentiate itself from Chrome because ideology isn't a good enough reason to prefer it over alternatives, not when Chromium is a thriving open-source project with multiple large companies contributing to it.
- wg0 3y ago
  That's another Lala land of obliviousness. Browser is a complex piece of software that needs effort. Users are not paying for it and those who will pay for itthen will probably require access to those users, for sure. Firefox is a dwindling piece of software and maybe they themselves should take some responsibility of where it is heading today. User adoption is merit driven and not mission or ideology driven. EDIT: Typos etc.
pmarreck 3y ago
Question regarding the Mac version: Is it more battery-consuming because its core on Mac is still Intel-machine-code-based and not ARM-based?
- wtallis 3y ago
  Firefox on ARM Macs runs as an ARM process, not an x86 process.
askonomm 3y ago
Nah, too many things break or are weird. I don't care if its because Google is a bad company and hates Firefox, I have no bone in this fight, I just want to browse the web without issues.
Snuupy 3y ago
I use librewolf，a Firefox fork, because of the things that corporate Mozilla keeps doing: from pocket to selling vpns and sponsored stories, they do enough user hostile things it ends up being a better experience on librewolf. On android I'm using iceraven.
izacus 3y ago
Will in 2024 Firefox finally start supporting desktop installation for PWA apps? I'm not going back to Electron crap for it.
havaloc 3y ago
Anyone else remember Mitchell Baker (Firefox CEO) calling for more than deplatforming? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
- froggertoaster 3y ago
  Yep, one of the many reasons I won't support the organization. At least capitalist/for-profit organizations are honest about who they are.
  - orthecreedence 3y ago
    Yeah, when I think of "honest" I think of Google... Granted, that statement by Mozilla left a sour taste in my mouth. I'd like my browser vendor to be content-neutral. I'll decide if something is bad or not for myself.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Zeratoss 3y ago
    How has firefox discriminated against you as a white male?
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      A lot of the money they make from Firefox usage gets spent not on Firefox or the web but on social justice activism, which is invariably exclusionary of ordinary European and American men. For example, they have an entire sub-fund devoted to nothing but ideological activism in Africa: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/awards/Africa-Mradi-IRL-Fund/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/awards/Africa... A typical project is something like funding a mobile app (note: not a website), specifically for African women to teach them how to plant potatoes. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/growing-skills-confidence-and-quality-potatoes-in-tanzania/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/growing-skills-confid... They don't help men - the app is exclusively given to women - because "The issue" is, as they put it, that "In Tanzania, older men are the primary decision-makers in households and local communities". They could fund things useful to everyone globally, or even things useful for the web specifically (radical), but they choose not to deliberately. Instead they fund content for competing platforms. That's because Mozilla is a generic left wing NGO that sees the Google/Firefox deal as merely a legacy endowment. Naive geeks use it and send them money, which enables them to divert funding to what they really care about. Edit: primarily -> a lot of, which changes nothing about the argument
froggertoaster 3y ago
I will never switch back to Firefox. Not until Mozilla as an organization fundamentally changes. They pretend to be the "good guys" but they're a very different organization than they were 20 years ago.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
Brave is more ethical. Firefox is just a vassal Google. And it is run by San Francisco bugmen.
wg0 3y ago
The main short coming in firefox for me is the ability to create different profiles for different use cases like one for personal and one for work etc. It is doable but is hidden behind special settings:/// etc sort of and switching between them also requires something similar.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Firefox Multi-Account Containers is far superior to multiple profiles, IMO.
  - laluneodyssee 3y ago
    They are not a like for like alternative. Profiles allow for greater separation of browsing personas: I can have a different set of passwords, extensions, bookmarks per persona I have like Work, Personal, Focus etc... And while Firefox does have profiles, its not a great user experience. Theres no quick switching, the UI to access it feels outdated, and in general as much as it pains me to say it, Google has done a great job at implementing it. I'm sure Firefox will get there, but as of right now its a sub-par experience.
  - cpressland 3y ago
    Multi Account Containers don’t sync with Firefox Sync. I assigned hundreds of websites to various containers only to lose them all when I rebuilt my Mac. Safari, Chrome, Edge all have this functionality and until Mozilla add this, Firefox is DOA for me.
EchoReflection 3y ago
I predominantly use Vivaldi, although I occasionally use FF as well. Mull and Fennec are good choices too, and in the past I used Bromite.
myko 3y ago
Chrome feels so much better to me, I can't imagine switching
avanai 3y ago
I’ve been using Firefox almost exclusively for years with two exceptions. The web dev tools in Chrome are really just better. And recently my work made the decision to only allow Chrome for security reasons. I’m annoyed about that but I understand why, it’s not necessarily that Chrome is more secure but the central management tools are stronger and if they were only going to support one, they picked the one more people use.
sspiff 3y ago
I've been using Firefox since it was still called Phoenix. It's amazing how we find ourselves in the same situation we did 20 years ago, at the mercy of a tech behemoth dominating how to access the Web, with the same Mozilla being the last man standing in the way of a true monopoly. I may have some reservations about decisions and actions from Mozilla these past few years, but they do what they must to survive, and still provide a net benefit to our world.
soundnote 3y ago
Nope. No thanks. First, Firefox literally makes their money from Google ads, and has Google search suggestions on by default. So much for privacy. Second, the Foundation. A bunch of people more interested in leftist activism than in building a aolid tool for the user. Or just trying to score coolness points by having a sneaker designer make time-limited themes - sorry, colorways with names like "Activist" and "Expressionist". But the politics. In "We need more than deplatforming", the organization in no uncertain terms said they were a-ok with others deciding what I should see on the Internet. Not okay, sorry. Why would I support an organization that hates me while the competition are doing things like allowing me to tune my own search results, or have options menus like Vivaldi's with more customization than is reasonable? And lastly, it's just not a great product. Security on Android is trash and there are no PWAs or tab groups among other things. There's just no case when I could use competition that's better and either doesn't hate me or can at least manage to not be emotionally incontinent with their hostility because the browser is what matters?
darklycan51 3y ago
Chrome became defacto because of techies and now techies are actively destroying the web by no longer swapping people to firefox, I guess it doesn't matter anymore, activism in general is dead, people just sit and let us all enter into a dystopia willingly. Cannot wait until unskippable ads even with "Premium" are a thing, just like cable, and our community will have been complicit in enabling it
aragonite 3y ago
Nowadays when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits? Usage of experimental Web APIs? Specific CSS properties? Deprecated features still supported by Chrome/Safari for backward compatibility? I ask because I'm wondering if it's possible for an extension/userjs to, if not polyfill, at least detect and warn users about attempts to use such features. Nowadays when a site doesn't appear to work correctly in Firefox I reopen it in Chrome, but this is a not-insignificant source of time-waste because about half of time I find either that the site is working as the developer intended, or that the site doesn't work in Chrome either. Having some overt indication (visible without having to open devtools) that unsupported browser features are being accessed could be very helpful here for reducing user uncertainty. Relatedly: I'm glad Firefox is planning to add support for IE's non-standard (but widely used ime) CSS zoom property: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936
- LegitShady 3y ago
  >when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits site written by google
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    no, not at all. Pretty much anything Google does works across all browsers. The most common culprit by far are local and regional sites. Local bank, doctor's office, random public website from the municipality, school homepage and so on. The few software developers they have on hand simply don't bother testing against Firefox any more so things just break and aren't fixed.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
I would but I don't want to support the Mozilla Foundation
- unstatusthequo 3y ago
  Why?
- superkuh 3y ago
  Maybe use the unbranded build of firefox? It has the great side effect of allowing you to actually edit and install extensions/add-ons without having to use Mozilla's security theater automated signing portal. When some rare website doesn't work in my daily driver freedoms-respecting browser I'll load up Mozilla Firefox unbranded to do what needs to be done then close it.
boramalper 3y ago
The Web is the single most successful application platform of our day and age: it’s free, open, and unencumbered, and it’s cross-platform, available on expensive iPhones to sub-$250 Android phones just the same. Let’s make sure it stays that way.
tssva 3y ago
If Firefox makes a New Year’s resolution to fix the horrible battery drain while streaming video on my laptop whether running on Windows or Linux, I’ll make a resolution to switch to it when it is fixed. This has been an issue for years so I’m not holding my breath. Yes I have tried it again recently and no I’m not going to play around with flags trying to get it working acceptably.
deleted 3y ago
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ctoth 3y ago
Right now I use Chrome because I use several PWAs. Chrome lets me install them and even gives me options to auto-start them when my system starts. Firefox doesn't seem to have equivalent functionality. Researching it some, it seems Firefox used to support this but removed it as part of Mozilla's continuous own-goal of ... whatever the heck they're doing.
- soundnote 3y ago
  Why use Chrome when Brave is pretty much the same but with better privacy?
esfandia 3y ago
I actually finally just switched to Chrome (I'm a long time Firefox user, all the way back to when it was called Firebird), because of this issue: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/microsoft-defender-reporting-trojan-html-phish-pz-threat-with/td-p/47331 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/microsoft-defende... Windows Defender flags things in the Firefox cache as a Trojan. It probably isn't, and it could also have something to do with uBlock Origin, but until that is resolved (I'm keeping an eye on the above link) I can't risk it.
- SubiculumCode 3y ago
  i haven't seen that at all. Perhaps a refresh, clean install after deleting the hidden app folders in home?
  - esfandia 3y ago
    I haven't done a re-install, but deleting the cache folder alone doesn't make it go away. Starting Firefox re-creates the folder obviously, and Defender gets triggered again.
gavinhoward 3y ago
I use Firefox, switched this year for the same reason. If I were rich, I would buy Mozilla, strip everything out but Firefox, and fund its development, even at a loss.
whatever1 3y ago
Need my icloud passwords
iscrewyou 3y ago
I got a new laptop and didn’t install Chrome. I don’t miss it at all. The only sites that are slow on Safari and Firefox are Google related. Go figure.
deleted 3y ago
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supermatou 3y ago
Here's a tip re. a nice built-in function: about:memory You can reclaim quite a lot of memory there when your Firefox seems laggy.
icemanind 3y ago
The Chrome web development tools are so much better than Firefox's
kn100 3y ago
I switched back to Firefox like 6 years ago and it's the input browser I use regularly. I do unfortunately have Chrome installed on all my machines too since once every couple of months I'll find some usually government website that only works properly in Chrome. Firefox for Android is excellent too, especially since you can have add-ons. Between my Adguard VM in my tailscale network and Firefox ublock, my phone is an ad free place. Other add-ons that make the mobile internet more tolerable: Google Search Fixer - Google give Firefox users a crappy old search UI. this extension forces the new nicer UI. Old Reddit redirect - just redirects all reddit links to old.reddit.com. this bypasses the age verification nonsense Reddit introduced given I refuse to have an account there these days. Video background play fix - this one just means any video you are watching in the browser will keep playing if you minimise the browser - some sites try to be helpful and pause the video. ClearURLS - removes all tracking junk from URLS - make sharing links less miserable Dark reader - essentially just a way to make any website dark mode.
binkHN 3y ago
I have. I recently switched from Windows to Linux (Windows 11 drove me to and I'm thankful) and Firefox was installed by default. As a result, I decided to give it a try and I'm happy I did; it's far better than the Firefox of yore and it tries to be more user friendly than the commercial browsers we have today. There are still sites that break in unexpected ways with Firefox, but it's now my daily driver.
andrewstuart 3y ago
Firefox is my main browser it’s great.
mattxxx 3y ago
Use Firefox if only to put up a decent fight against Chrome's massive play to control your data and the ad ecosystem.
bheadmaster 3y ago
For some reason, on my Windows 10 laptop that I use for music production (Ryzen 3500U, Vega 8), Firefox installed from Microsoft store takes 5-10 seconds to start, while Edge starts instantly. I always liked Firefox, both practically and ideologically, but the annoyance is so high I never use it from that particular laptop. If anyone knows the cause or a fix, please share.
- sannysanoff 3y ago
  cause: Edge browser is started when Windows boots up, it sits there started but invisible, first window open is fast. It adds up to your windows start time and memory consumption. solution: start firefox during windows startup, too. https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1085268 https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1085268 however to start it invisible and behave like Edge, it may take additional tweaks. of course, it costs extra startup time and memory. Also, you can switch off Edge boot-time startup, if you want.
nmeofthestate 3y ago
I switched to Firefox on android when Chrome removed the "open on new tab" menu item and then ignored everyone's complaints about it for a year. It's decent although it hangs for 10 seconds or so on first startup (the fault of adblock I suspect), and sometimes hangs for half a minute or so during usage. Still worth it for adblock though.
exe34 3y ago
Can Firefox allow me to kill individual tabs without closing them? It's my favourite feature on Chrome.
- mdaniel 3y ago
  Navigate to about:processes and click the X to your heart's content (it's also from Tools : Browser Tools : Task Manager )
  - exe34 3y ago
    Thank you! I do believe I'm ready to switch!
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… Add to that the non-macOS text handling, macOS-unlike font rendering, its insistence to not use the system-wide spell checker provided by the OS etc. It feels a bit rude at times. 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).
- bee_rider 3y ago
  If you are using Safari on Apple’s platform, you are already contributing to the user base of the browser that isn’t headed for monopoly. IMO, you are probably contributing better than us Firefox users; Safari remains large. I wonder if, like in Apps, Apple users are known to be more likely to pay for things…
- sillyalbatross 3y ago
  Also a macOS user and I don't use Firefox for the same exact reasons you listed, despite really wanting to. It just behaves very rudely on macOS and it seems like more and more they are stripping out features, for example in the latest update they removed macOS Vibrancy support, so now my toolbar can't have any transparency, which looks horrible. Not to mention they let that super noticeable bug with the system font not spacing correctly just linger for over two years. It's finally fixed but there is still a lot of weirdness with the way Firefox handles fonts on this platform and it's very obnoxious since macOS has best-in-class typography everywhere else. I'll rejoice on the day Safari gets a proper extensions API. I'd 100% make the move to it if I could just run RES.
izzydata 3y ago
Does anyone know of a way to replace the browser and search engine of the search bar at the bottom of an Android phone?
- SubiculumCode 3y ago
  Firefox provides a search widget
digitalsin 3y ago
The Mozilla CEO earned $6,903,089 in 2022 up from $5.6 million in 2021, while Firefox continues to lose market share. If you think Mozilla's priorities are tied to making Firefox the best browser on the Internet, at least in terms of privacy, freedom, and features, you're seriously blind.
Octabrain 3y ago
I've been using Firefox on the PC and phone for years now. I had the temptation a couple of years ago to use Chrome due to some issues I had on Linux (I don't remember what exactly) but then I concluded the obvious: using a browser made by a company that profits mainly on abusing user's privacy? Nah, I think I'm gonna pass.
flkiwi 3y ago
I would happily switch, but Firefox’s tabs are not sufficient for 2023. Vertical tabs are essential for me, and none of the Firefox plugin-based workarounds come anywhere close to Edge (and Brave). I prefer Firefox as a browser, but as a tool it’s growing more and more outdated.
vsskanth 3y ago
In 2024, font rendering in Firefox on Windows is quite bad compared to Chromium based browsers. You can see it a lot with Microsoft websites like outlook and azure devops. I tried, but switched back to Chrome (Ungoogled Chromium)
butterfi 3y ago
I’m online a lot and I go to a lot of different websites. I believe people when they say they’ve had issues with Firefox, but personally this is never been an issue I’ve only had to turn off ublock a few times over several years.
tqi 3y ago
> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data... nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. I think privacy activists need a more compelling "so what" than "it's better for privacy" to convince people it's worth switching. They seem to operate under the thesis that people were being duped, as opposed to having made a more or less concious choice to trade privacy for convenience, which maybe was true 10 years ago but feels antiquated today.
- goku12 3y ago
  At least my public interaction suggests the opposite - people aren't making these compromises willingly. They just don't know any better. No one chose to stay with Chrome after the problems were explained to them - especially not after showing them what browsing looks like with UBo on Firefox.
graphe 3y ago
The reason I switched to Firefox was for plugins. Then I switched to chrome when an update killed all my plugins and settings for them. Every time I tried Firefox it seems to do it again and again so I'm on ungoogled chromium until there's a good reason to switch. I used librewolf or iceweasel occasionally but there's not a good reason to switch since plugins don't delete themselves on chrome (as often).
orenlindsey 3y ago
I'll get downvoted for saying this but Safari isn't as bad as people say. The only reason I use chrome is for one singular extension for a single site (and they would release the extension on Safari if it didn't cost $100 a year to do so)
mukti 3y ago
I've used Firefox on desktop for years, even through some of the bad times. Today, FireFox is a really great experience and works well everywhere for me, except for some very specific use cases like internal company websites where some employees have deemed it "not suitable" for their web app (even when proven it works), and to use web apps that utilize APIs that I don't entirely like (namely, WebUSB - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB). But I keep a spare chromium around if I really need/want to use those apps. 99.9% of my browser use is Firefox. I think the bigger push should be to get people using FireFox mobile. In my experience, it is a much better, more customizable browser than Chrome. It works well with my browsing habits and general use of my phone (screen UI positioning, gestures, etc.). The most obvious benefit is the extension support, which makes browsing some mobile websites tolerable. Showing people the difference between browsing genius.com (lyrics website) with and without ads usually shocks them. At times on Chrome, the web page is completely unusable due to ads and pop ups.
sircastor 3y ago
I just read a bunch of comments yesterday [1] talking about Mozilla and its CEO putting little energy and money into Firefox. I am supportive of the sentiment but when Mozilla doesn't seem very committed to Firefox, it's hard to get onboard. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38795308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38795308
SubiculumCode 3y ago
Mozilla and me are tight. There's always a few complaints, but until there is another alternative that respects me I won't even consider changing to another browser. -written on Android Firefox Nightly 123.0a1
jlarocco 3y ago
I'm an on-and-off Firefox user, and I always find these pleas kind of lame. It's a good enough browser, but the other arguments aren't very convincing. It's a contradiction to claim Firefox is better at privacy when Mozilla makes most of its money by funneling people to Google's spyware network. Not only is it anti-privacy, the other side effects include things like only blocking "bad" trackers, not including ad-blocking/umatrix functionality by default, etc. And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference.
- internet2000 3y ago
  > And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference. I agree. The sooner Firefox goes away, the sooner people stop pretending we don't have a duopoly between Chrome and Safari already. From then, people need to work for Chromium improvements, perhaps consolidate in one good "ungoogled" fork. And let Safari be.
  - jlarocco 3y ago
    I don't necessarily want Firefox to go away, but as it stands right now it's not independent from Google and can't take a hard stance on privacy or web standards.
sedatk 3y ago
I want to use Firefox so badly yet they make it so hard: - Bookmark bar icons are not synced. So they’re the same gray blobs until I click on them one by one after connecting to VPNs they’re behind, and do that for every new installation. Not a problem with other browsers. - Google Docs & Sheets render terribly due to kerning problems on canvas with 150% zoom on a HiDPI display. The text becomes almost unreadable. This is a 6 year old bug on Bugzilla.
smileysteve 3y ago
Firefox for Android is a big ux improvement between adblock and dark eyes. There is one annoying rendering issue though
bradgessler 3y ago
I'm really getting tired of hearing the excuses from really smart people in tech sticking with Chrome. Yes, you will find a thousand excuses to not switch. Yes, you will find things that are worse (you will also find things that are better). Yes, things are different. Just suck it up and make the switch. You're smart. You'll adapt. We'll all be better for it.
- Seb-C 3y ago
  There are plenty of alternative browsers based on Chromium that are way better than Firefox, and I don't see any good reason to switch on it. I went away from Firefox a few years ago and am very happy about it. I also think that the "free web" arguments are bullshit. Blink is open source, so any wrongdoing from Google can be undone. An organization like Mozilla that is able to develop and maintain his own engine could achieve the same results by forking Blink. It would probably reduce the costs by more than 10, without any ethical compromise, resulting in a far better browser overall. If they wanted it, they could lead the way to bridge projects like ungoogled-chromium or the various attempts at reviving android extensions in a consistent and ethical fork. Probably even convince others like Vivaldi, Edge, Opera or even Apple to join the initiative.
xony 3y ago
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Leader2light 3y ago
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Leader2light 3y ago
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capl 3y ago
I have a couple of issues that keeps me using Safari. First off is the insane battery usage. It’s like 2x battery usage of Safari. Then it’s all the noise like Pocket, sign in this and register that. And then a very specific problem that has annoyed the crap out of me: extension windows close if Firefox loses focus! That means that using Bitwarden to do this: 1) open Bitwarden and find some login details 2) alt tab to the program you’re trying to sign in to 3) paste the username 4) alt tab back to Firefox/Bitwarden and there you go, the Bitwarden window was closed due to Firefox losing focus and you now have to open it again, search and find the credentials again and then paste the password 5) open Bitwarden a third time and search yet again for the OTP code… A huge pain in the ass that makes me want to use another browser just because of that.
- sigmonsays 3y ago
  for bitwarden, you can open it in your sidebar. but I admit, that is super annoying when opening bitwarden from the extension icon.
devwastaken 3y ago
Switching to Firefox is like asking python devs to not use CPython. Firefox in the current ecosystem is the least innovative or open tech. It is not modular, you can't use it for anything but Firefox. The technology is designed only for FF, you can't use it for your own purposes without metaphorically reaching in and pulling out wires. They don't have the resources or the engineers necessary to make technology. All they can do is try to play catch-up with their browser. This is why everyone else (not webkit) saw the writing and went chromium. If Firefox was the optimal browser everyone would have forked it instead. They would be using it in their own stacks.
ape4 3y ago
Lots of us are tech "influencers". Lets use that influence to spread Firefox.
Vicinity9635 3y ago
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jbverschoor 3y ago
I'll give it yet a another go...
vishkk 3y ago
Maybe Arc.
hhsectech 3y ago
I've used Firefox forever. I've tried for many years to convert people to it...but they can't live without "muh chrome".
21eleven 3y ago
I switched to Firefox as the default mobile browser on my android phone and the experience is excellent. I have not missed Chrome one bit.
porridgeraisin 3y ago
1. pwas 2. Filesystem and other APIs for extensions.
neonsunset 3y ago
Firefox on Windows and Safari on macOS. No developer should daily drive Chromium-based browsers today except when needed for ensuring correct behavior as a target.
DiabloD3 3y ago
People who use Chrome, or any Chrome-based browser, are inherently self-destructive and greatly confused. Chrome, and Chrome-based browsers, perform worse, are buggier on; especially on non-Nvidia drivers and especially on OSes other than Windows Have what is considered an ideal AMD+AMD Linux box? Chrome, nor any Chrome-based browser, is for you. For extra irony: Chrome on Android and Android Webview sucks on any Qualcomm-based phone. Firefox? Smooth, high performance, nearly bug-free. A lot of the sibling comments here tell insane stories like "I use Chrome because I once used a broken website." Fine, if a website goes out of its way to write HTML, CSS, or JS that is so non-standard and broken that it can't work on Firefox, then use Chrome for that website specifically; use Firefox for all the websites that actually are spec-compliant. Side rant: I don't even know how webdevs are getting this wrong. There aren't webdevs in the traditional sense anymore, just a bunch of kids that are using whatever popular bullshit framework is out today, banging out some flavorless souless crap so they can collect a paycheck like the rest of us. Like, they're using React + one of the popular React UI things (Next or MUI or whater), or they're using Tailwind + something for the JS, or any one of the popular combinations... guess what? THEY ALL WORK ON FIREFOX 100% OUT OF THE BOX. How are you screwing this up?! The work is already done for you! Stop going out of your way to break it!
dmix 3y ago
I use FF as daily but haven't been able to use any site with Cloudflare gating. I get agressive very slow loading captchas. But these same sites work fine in Chrome. I haven't figured out why but it's super annoying. I despise CF with a passion.
mark-r 3y ago
Until my Windows became unusable, I was using Chrome about 90% of the time and Firefox about 10%. Since then I've been trying to get along with Ubuntu Linux only, and it came with Firefox. Haven't even installed Chrome yet, and I don't think I will.
charcircuit 3y ago
>In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. ... This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web. What hindered development was Microsoft resting on their laurels thinking they won the browser war. Google on the other hand is continuing to invest resources into Chrome. As evidenced in the past if Google stopped investing into Chrome, and stopped taking community contributions to chromium eventually another better browser would come around to overthrow it.
ralphc 3y ago
Chrome is the only way to do Chromecasting, right?
thruway516 3y ago
This being HN, I'm really surprised no one has mentioned Brave. Brave is what Firefox was a few years ago (and what firefox claims to be but isn't) in terms of privacy and comes pre-loaded with an ad-blocker that uses the same list as ublock. It's also faster and less of a memory hog. I switched from firefox as main driver and haven't looked back. It is chromium based but I don't see this as a drawback. But this is 2023 and using a single browser is an artificial limitation (and makes no sense if you're a web developer) so I don't know why people make it sound like it has to be one or the other. It's not exactly like choosing an IDE. I pretty much use every browser except Edge.
- soundnote 3y ago
  People here have a major hateboner against Brave. Some of it is crypto, some of it is Eich, relatively little the product itself.
  - thruway516 3y ago
    Yeah, it does have all the crypto bloatware, but it doesn't force it on you so all of that can just be ignored. I actually think Brave (and maybe Safari) is the least opinionated browser in terms of features it forces on you and it's somewhat easy to turn off or ignore what you don't want. I might be deluding myself but it's always feels like the lightest browser that I use.
    - soundnote 3y ago
      It's so bloated: https://i.imgur.com/tuMGc3c.png https://i.imgur.com/tuMGc3c.png
- PUSH_AX 3y ago
  I do use it but I just wish crypto wasn’t baked in.
  - dave78 3y ago
    Agreed, though I recognize that they need income too to avoid Mozillas's problems, so I can tolerate some amount of them experimenting with revenue strategies. That said, I turned off the crypto stuff on day 1 and it has stayed off and I never even think about it anymore. Brave is great and I think more people should give it a shot.
beanjuiceII 3y ago
My main browser has been firefox for awhile now and I've been slowly migrating to chrome for performance reasons. firefox is just not good with memory in my experience over the last few years. I have to restart it a few times a week so my computer becomes usable again ;( i wish this wasn't the case because i don't really want to migrate
tarruda 3y ago
In 2023 I had to switch my work web browser to Brave because Slack decided to stop working on Firefox.
usernamed7 3y ago
I switched to waterfox after the whole ads-in-your-address-bar debacle.
maxlin 3y ago
> ethical browser > "we need more than deplatforming" No. Firefox single-handedly destroyed their reputation beyond belief with that article in my eyes. They are supposed to support the exact opposite instead of being evangelists for censorship, centralized control, lack of ownership. That Google pays their bills from them keeping Google as the default search engine isn't even as bad as that one article made them appear.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Wow, I just googled that[1] and it's absolutely shocking. I want no part of a browser vendor who thinks they should be in control of what is and isn't on the web. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
- deleted 3y ago
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milkglass 3y ago
FF is great! The only stopper for me to uninstall chrome is google meets. Background blur only works occasionally on FF but it has gotten a lot better this year.
tipsytoad 3y ago
Switched to Firefox a month or two ago, mostly for ublock origin on android, and unlimited history (seriously, why is this not the standard?) I've tried to like it but honestly it's been painful. MacOS Sonoma seems to have a hover bug, which has been unresolved through the last 3 bug fix updates. Performance is "fine" but seems to lag with many tabs open which was never an issue in chrome (this is on an M2 pro!) PDF reader also seems significantly slower as well. At this point I'm considering going back to chrome.
- xmprt 3y ago
  Unlimited history is nice but I hate how history works out of the box. I might be doing something wrong but ctrl+h pops up a sidebar which shows every single website visited today in no discernible order. I've learned about ctrl+shift+h which is better but even there, the UI is a bit lacking compared to what Chrome has out of the box. Is there anything I can do to improve this?
  - genevra 3y ago
    There's a filter at the top right if I remember right, change it to Last visited
- jhasse 3y ago
  Have you tried Brave?
shtack 3y ago
I tried so hard earlier this year to move back to FF from Chrome. I actually found the desktop experience great but the mobile app on iOS was so clunky, and I rely enough on sync, that I had to move back after a few months.
Bjorkbat 3y ago
Funny enough I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for well over a decade, but lately I've struggled to continue letting that remain the case just because of how badly managed Mozilla appears to be. The weird AI website builder thing they released was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. Besides my many objections to current AI, my bigger issue was that this demonstrated a general lack of focus and carelessness on their part.
- Boxxed 3y ago
  That seems like an odd reason to not use a browser, especially considering how the company that makes the dominant browser is also a mess.
  - Bjorkbat 3y ago
    I mean, mess is a bit subjective in Google's case. Sure, they tend to take on a lot of side-projects only to inevitably abandon them, and they did slip behind in the AI race, but there's a huge difference between "stagnant giant with way too much money" messy and "if our browser market share gets any lower government websites won't support our browser" messy.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Mozilla is badly managed[1], at least from the perspective of users and developers. Nobody outside of the executives can possibly say Mozilla is well managed with a straight face when they fire hundreds of developers and then turn around and pay their CEO /seven million fucking dollars/[2], all the while Firefox continues to slip further into irrelevance. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary... [2]: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990-ty22-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...
arcade79 3y ago
I switched to Firefox both at home and professionally in 2020. Previously, my web browsers have been (in chronological order): Netscape 3.X, Netscape 4, Opera, Phoenix, Konqueror, Firebird, Firefox, Chrome, and now back to Firefox. I have exactly one very negative thing to say about Firefox. It absolutely sucks on machines with spinning rust and no SSD. It's the only piece of software I have that literally takes more than 2 minutes to start. With disk-IO pegged at 100% during the entire startup period. I'm assuming it reads through the myriads of files it has stored on disk, and that this is rather slow due to seek-times on HDDs. However, this is the major point I have against Firefox.
- nateb2022 3y ago
  Having used some machines with older HDDs up until recently, I can definitely sympathize with you there. If you go to `about:config` and change `cache.disk.enable` and `browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl` to false, your cache will be stored solely in RAM and this should speed up your experience somewhat.
dawnerd 3y ago
Only issues I’ve run into since switching this month is just some weird jank from 1pass not always filling in forms. It’s been a while since I last used Firefox and I’m very pleased with how much it’s improved.
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insanitybit 3y ago
> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. Firefox makes almost all of their money from Google, so... > If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers Not sure what the point is here but if everyone is using Chromium/Webkit obviously this issue goes away too. And, oh, that's it. I thought this was going to have like... a list of reasons. This feels like a very odd post to be #1 on HN right now, it contains almost no information.
KronisLV 3y ago
I use Firefox as my default browser on my desktop and netbook (Windows/Linux), as well as my phone (Android), since the addons I want to use are available there and there's no Manifest v3 weirdness. The UI and performance are both okay (though content process limit is no longer exposed through the UI which isn't that nice when your netbook has like 4 GB of RAM), I quite enjoy the DevTools in particular, even more so than the ones in Chromium browsers. However, I got some Apple devices for development and it seems like Firefox on the desktop breaks access to some sites (Private Internet Access, the one that got bought out by Kape, either in OpenVPN or WireGuard mode, same issue), which was apparently a known issue last I tried figuring out what's up. So there, I kind of moved to Brave which seems pleasant for the most part. It's also honestly be nice if Windows let me get rid of Edge or replace it with Chromium/Brave as my secondary browser easily instead of sticking around as bloatware. Maybe that's just me hating on software nowadays in general (since it isn't always very nice to the user, for a variety of reasons), but Firefox is pretty great when it works!
- Aachen 3y ago
  I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? They ban any IP address using Firefox desktop? And somehow detect when the same person uses a VPN service?
  - KronisLV 3y ago
    > I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? When I checked, I think there were DNS resolution failures for some domains. This was regardless of whether PIA DNS or the existing DNS servers were used. It was also regardless of whether OpenVPN or WireGuard were used, or which VPN server was used - the only pre-requisite was that the VPN be active and Firefox be used on a MacBook in particular. It was very odd and hasn't ever happened on Windows/Linux with Firefox either, nor did happen on the MacBook with Brave afterwards either. I didn't care enough to dig into it, but some people had similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nhmpw/issue_using_pia_with_firefox_on_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nh... https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14ylzxi/connection_issues_with_firefox_on_macos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14yl... It seems that the suggested "fix" that worked for the other person is to disable IPv6 altogether: > This is a bug in Firefox, you can fix it by opening about:config in Firefox and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true Not like it makes me like Firefox any less, it's just odd that we get super random issues like that for relatively basic use cases (albeit maybe various VPN implementations aren't necessarily that common, who knows). Would be nice to live in a world where everything "just works", though.
furtive808 3y ago
I made sure all new computers at my work include Firefox. I also encourage staff to use adblockers.
kemiller 3y ago
Not until they do better in power draw. Safari or Orion for me until then.
CharlesW 3y ago
To Mozilla: In 2024, please switch to WebKit. Gecko had a good and honorable run, but no longer sparks joy. It's not a differentiator, which means that the resources you're applying to it are a waste of time and money. Please thank Gecko for serving its purpose in our lives and let it go, before its reputation gets worse. Firefox's market share has slipped so far that most web developers no longer test with it. Adopt and contribute to WebKit. Focus on things that matter.
- tslocum 3y ago
  Mentioning Gecko repeatedly without mentioning WebRender, the rendering engine that many users are using today in Firefox, and which will become the default/only rendering engine at some point in the future,[0] makes it seem that you have no idea about what you are speaking of. 0. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    Gecko is the browser engine. WebRender is a component of Gecko, specifically a GPU-based 2D rendering engine. It is not a browser engine.
    - tslocum 3y ago
      Yes, WebRender makes up the compositor portion of the browser rendering engine. A very large, critical portion of it. Thus, saying "Gecko had a good and honorable run" is disingenuous to the large-scale changes and progress the developers have made (and continue to make) on the rendering engine.
      - CharlesW 3y ago
        I think you think I hate Gecko. In fact, I've used it since it was NGLayout and think it's one of the most important pieces of software in computing history. I have deep respect for the world-class engineers working on WebRender and other Gecko components. I simply think that it's time has come. Remember that Mozilla itself once intended to replace Gecko with Servo. I have no doubt that WebRender is brilliant, but WebRender will not save Gecko, and Gecko will not save Firefox. If Firefox is worth saving — and I think that with hard choices, its decline can be reversed — then Gecko and its components are non-differentiating ballast that must be dropped if the balloon is to get over the mountain. IMHO, of course.
intellix 3y ago
as a frontend web developer there's a reason I use Chrome and bought an iPhone. It's so I see what my users are going to see
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xpressvideoz 3y ago
> the only remaining ethical web browser I hate associating ethics with technical debates. Chrome didn't win by being ethical, it won by being better. Plain words cannot save Firefox from losing its market share. I know battling against tech giants is hard, but appealing to ethics will only lead to hostility for some people.
- tomwheeler 3y ago
  I'd argue that it "won" (read: achieved the majority of market share) because it was relentlessly pushed by Google, the search engine with the majority of market share.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  What if the ethics come at a performance cost? Then you have to lead with what you value (and hope the market agrees)
- cycomanic 3y ago
  Chrome won by being unethical (and continuing to do so), for a while every time you visited some Google site you were bombarded with "switch to Chrome" banners. At the same time they often artificially slow down Firefox on Google sites (see e.g. the recent news about some code on YouTube)
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I never stopped using it. Firefox is great
kornork 3y ago
I switched to the Arc browser this year, and I love it. The best feature is that it auto-closes tabs. It makes having different spaces for work and personal browsing easy, and they are constantly adding convenience features. It runs on Chromium. I don't know how that intersects with the ethical and standards issues around Chrome.
numlock86 3y ago
What bothers me is that all their recent ad campaigns just revolve around the premise of "We are not Chrome", which really doesn't sell to me.
psyclobe 3y ago
I miss chrome cast.
gauravphoenix 3y ago
Is there a way to use Apple's keychain with FF?
deleted 3y ago
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teo_zero 3y ago
I recommend Firefox with zero additional plugins, but configure it to automatically clear the cookies when quitting. You can now click 'accept' to every insisting site, knowing that they will be soon forgotten.
_andrei_ 3y ago
Problem is it's not the best browser out there, Chromium is. I wanted to switch to Firefox many times, and while for regular websites it's ok, the performance in more complex web apps simply sucks. And the developer tools are dogsh* compared to Chromium's.
- gitaarik 3y ago
  The developer tools are pretty similar in my experience. I think it's maybe just that you're not used to it. And did you know that developer tools like this actually started in Firefox with the Firebug plugin? Firefox is not slower with more complex web apps, you either have a (site) specific problem or are not judging fairly. And even if you use Chromium, you are supporting Google's power position in browser technology influence. Which they use to push through web standard that benefit them, but not the users. Firefox has a more open ecosystem that is not focused on the benefit of one particular company.
ajkjk 3y ago
The list of bullshit Mozilla has tried to pull over the years weighs heavily, and although I have had plenty of complaints with Chrome's decisions also, Mozilla's strike me as much worse. Not interested until they completely disavow those strategies in a convincing way.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  We know they know we know. Google is evil but the uproar about Mozilla is about the fifth columners trying to wreck it. Like, our last hope with a consumer facing browser that has any hope of keeping up with Google spamming disfeutures into the web space.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    Well I don't know what you mean by fifth columners, this is just my own opinion but it's quite widespread because they really sold out people's trust. The thing, though, is that Mozilla is in the perfect spot to get better, any time they want. Which means I'm not personally letting off the hook. Whereas there's no point hoping for any change from Google.
alien_cat 3y ago
If you like customization, I recommend the Firefox fork Floorp. It's the only fork where you can hide the native horizontal tab bar and use a vertical tab instead. And instead of using Tree Style Tab, try Sidebery.
tomduncalf 3y ago
Thanks for the reminder, I will give it another go - the latest Chrome redesign looks bad to my eyes, and I’m on the fence about whether I enjoy Arc or not. I’m still forever grateful to FF for leading us out of the dark days of IE6
gunapologist99 3y ago
> switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in this article. Mozilla receives literally billions from Google[1] every year -- $26,000,000,000.00 in 2021 alone, with only 3% market share. That's a lot of zeros -- some startups might be rather happy to see an annual 26 billion funding round! Mozilla forced privacy-rejecting products like Pocket[2] into Firefox. Mozilla secretly-installed advertising extensions[3]. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus... 2. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-browser-is-a-privacy-nightmare-on-desktop-and-mobile/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-brows... 3. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... CORRECTION: a comment below correctly points out that Mozilla wasn't the only recipient of that $26B in 2021; it appears that Apple was the biggest payee.
- sevagh 3y ago
  I love Firefox and I hate Mozilla.
- NelsonMinar 3y ago
  That $26B is for paying all browsers, not Mozilla alone. Mozilla is not receiving literally billions from Google every year; a recent year was $450M. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go... It's still a lot of money, more than I suspect Firefox's market share would allow. It seems more like a payment to maintain a monopoly while keeping anti-trust concerns off of Google.
- causal 3y ago
  These attacks don't feel like they're being made in good faith. 1. This is patently false. If you read the article you linked you'll see that $26B is Google's total spend on being the default search engine across all platforms including Apple and Samsung devices. Apple gets $18B of that alone. Firefox is a much smaller share, and it's not clear at all why taking this money would be unethical in the first place. 2. Firefox is up-front about the fact they use Pocket to generate revenue, and make it simple to disable. 3. I agree that Firefox should have been more up-front about what gets installed when participating in studies, but it should be noted that Cliqz has since been removed, and this article is 6 years old.
netbioserror 3y ago
The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be. If Mozilla got their team to work supporting Blink and integrated it into Firefox, we'd probably all be better off.
- 38 3y ago
  Google is constantly inventing new JS APIs. Some websites adopt those, which then breaks the site for all other browsers. That's good enough reason for everyone to avoid Blink.
  - r3d0c 3y ago
    > Google is constantly inventing new JS APIs like what?
    - 38 3y ago
      http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/external/chromium/chrome/common/extensions/docs/experimental.html http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/e...
      - r3d0c 3y ago
        that's specific to chrome also it's weird argument "constantly inventing new js apis" so what? their usefulnesss should be determined in their own context, not by the fact that they're a js api; unless you're a child who wages weird programming language culture wars on the internet and thinks anything that isn't the language they use is inferior
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Mozilla could contribute to Blink, but that would not help it prevent Blink from adding e.g. Web Environment Integrity ("DRM for the web"), or other additions that are user-hostile. Being in control of an engine gives way more sway over that engine.
madballster 3y ago
I found Firefox to be much more response when operating lots of tabs and opening and closing tabs quickly with keyboard shortcuts on Windows. My direct comparison is Microsoft Edge (Chromium based) which is noticeably sluggish on CTRL-W and then trying to type a new address. Even after days of usage, my Firefox process might grow to 3-4gb of ram usage with no noticeable performance penalty.
tim333 3y ago
I might move for a slightly weird reason. I have Chrome and Firefox and tend to use whatever's the less annoying. Recently there's a weird glitch in Chrome that in Twitter that if you scroll down by hitting space it kind of slowly keeps scrolling. Doesn't happen in Firefox so there you go.
hankyone 3y ago
I gave it a fair shot but somehow I ended up with Edge as my full time browser… I am looking forward to Arc on Windows, it’s been nice on MacOS
spacechild1 3y ago
I have been using Firefox for more than 20 years and I am happy as ever.
bobajeff 3y ago
In the near future I will probably stop using the Web as much. I'm certain now that soon the Web will at best be about as open and user focused as Android and iOS are today.
billytetrud 3y ago
I got so tired of dealing with Google's AMP so I switched to Firefox just on mobile. It's fine, tho the url bar doesn't work as well as on chrome. Other than that I've gotten used to it well enough. I'm starting to hate everything Google does. All their products are steadily getting worse and worse as they get more bloated. I'll consider switching to Firefox on desktop.
cassepipe 3y ago
I wonder how is mozilla VPN business going. It was obvious to me that they should have gone into that business sooner as VPN are all about trust and they are one the few orgs committed to privacy so they can turn that trust into something valuable to them. But I am yet to see an ad for their VPN product while on the other hand I am bombarded by ads for SurfShark and NordVPN.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox. Calling Firefox, or rather Mozilla, ethical is like calling China a paragon of protecting human rights. So no, no thanks. Firefox can and should die, because Mozilla should die.
MrDresden 3y ago
Firefox is fantastic! Please try it out both if it would be your first time or if it has been years since the last time. Also, if you do any web development at all please make sure to test your code on Firefox. I keep having to phone up companies when their webpages don't work on Firefox and ask to talk to someone related to IT (yes, I do this and it does work). It is a bit of an awkward discussion when I'm told that their developers have tested the code on Chrome, and I point out that Firefox and Safari also exist.
wesapien 3y ago
We could have a great browser in Firefox but it's been infiltrated by the same corporate virus we see everywhere. They need to just stick to creating a browser first before other initiatives. They need to listen to their users.
rebhan 3y ago
My company's antivirus for some reason blocks "firefox.exe" . Is there an (updated) recompiled version somewhere with another application name ? Palemoon seems to be quite out of date.
ifightcrime 3y ago
I wish I could! I can’t until they have better account/profile switching. I use that on Chrome heavily for test users and debugging.
- oehpr 3y ago
  check out firefox containers. You can launch a specific container as a new tab with the hotkey "Ctrl+shift+#", depending on what you have set. I have ctrl+shift+1 for personal, 2 for work, 3 for banking. It's a super rapid way to run multiple contexts in the same window. Really recommend it.
jftuga 3y ago
I recently switched and then made an extension called FoxColorBox which allows you to change and customize browser Window colors. When you open a new window, it will have a distinct color. This can help you differentiate between home, work, and school. It can also be useful when working in development, staging and production environments. * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxcolorbox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxcolorbox/ * https://github.com/jftuga/foxcolorbox https://github.com/jftuga/foxcolorbox
kouru225 3y ago
I started using brave a few years ago and I just can’t really switch back tbh, but if I could I would switch back to firefox.
butz 3y ago
Not only switch, find a way to contribute too, as this is an open source project. One can start with something small, like translations, answering to questions on forums, or triaging bugs.
lmedinas 3y ago
I agree with everything the Author said and I do have Firefox installed for those reasons although my main Browser is Brave (Win/Linux) and Safari (Mac). Nowadays Firefox is as good as the Chromium alternatives, there is no doubt on that. The question is: What would it take for the majority of the Internet users (enterprise, users with low literacy, Developers, Powerusers, etc...) to switch to Firefox ? 15 years ago it was clear. Firefox was vastly superior to IE. Nowadays is not vastly superior to the competition, in fact, I cannot think of any major compelling reasons which would make all those groups of users to change. As for me, I used Firefox before it was Firefox or Mozilla and I do plan to join the cause and use Firefox in 2024.
josefritz 3y ago
I've been using Firefox since about 2008. I've never had a problem that switching to Chrome fixed, and only encountered a few old clunky sites and apps that were IE specific. Those sites are so old they're looking for the wrong user agent and don't work correctly in Edge either.
ZeroClickOk 3y ago
The killer feature that everyone is waiting for Firefox is... "chromium tab". If I can open a "chromium tab" inside of Firefox for some sites that work only on chromium browsers I swear I will not look back :)
Gareth321 3y ago
In 2024, please support translation on iOS. How can there be zero translation support for iPhones and iPads?
hodanli 3y ago
I use Firefox for everything. Chrome for the Google products except search. I have secondary Google account for Firefox.
max_ 3y ago
Firefox is clunky, slow and bloated on mobile. That is my deal breaker.
zwayhowder 3y ago
I wish Firefox would support faster profile switching. I consult and have multiple customers who all insist I use their Gmail or Outlook accounts, so I need about 6 profiles on the go. I can't use containers because it means I can't default, for example Google to my Personal container, which I want in my standard profile. Having to create shortcuts to load each profile or keep about:profiles open is frustrating compared to the Chrome experience. It's not enough to stop me using FF as my daily driver, but it is enough to stop my partner using it for theirs.
webworker 3y ago
In 2022, I switched from Firefox to Safari and haven't looked back. In 2024, I'll be staying put. Either I just don't go to them, or I have really good luck, because none of the sites I visit are "broken."
joduplessis 3y ago
In 2024, I'd like to not fry my battery when browsing a simple website. Thanks.
goofyreader 3y ago
I’m probably one of the few users in the Apple ecosystem that uses Firefox for desktop but safari for mobile. Was really into Firefox on both, but ended up switching to safari for mobile because it’s less hassle to use UI wise + more feature rich esp when mobile typing is slow. Definitely losing out on the whole syncing benefits. If Firefox mobile supported adblockers and other extensions I’d make the switch.
alexzeitler 3y ago
I switched to Firefox two years ago and never looked back. Don’t even have Chrome installed.
sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Firefox seems slow for me, Chrome is blazing fast.
cryptonector 3y ago
FF is great!
qwertyuiop_ 3y ago
Why are Mac users forgetting the hen laying the golden egg aka Safari. It has impressive performance on Mac OS. I just ran browserbench and Chrome and gang do not even come close to the performance. There are enough Mac OS deployed out there to make a dent in the Chrome monopoly.
huqedato 3y ago
I gave Firefox many chances during the past 5 years but every time had to switch back to Chrome/Edge because many sites I use are just optimised for Chrome. Sad but it's a fact.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
I will not. You can't beg me. You can't scare me into it. You just have to quit fucking up Firefox. I'll use Firefox forks. But I'm not using Mozilla® Firefox™. Period. They've treated me like they don't care if I choose it for the last time. If they want to quit pushing pocket, quit preaching to me about expressing myself via themes, quit resetting my configuration upon update, quit limiting the extensions I can use and pretending it's for my benefit, quit changing UX arbitrarily, and generally quit treating me like they don't care if I use their browser or not, I'll consider it. Trust is lost quickly and gained slowly. If it's any consolation, I won't use Edge, Chrome or Safari either.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
I hope that Firefox on iOS gains extensions soon. That's the main reason I still stick to Edge. It has AdBlock built-in and it syncs with my desktop.
shmolf 3y ago
I would have switched to Firefox a while ago as my primary, except that it doesn't support PWA features in the same way as Chrome. I use PWA apps regularly. Once that feature is available and capable, I'll gladly run to the Firefox team.
johnklos 3y ago
"...the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox" That's pretty rich. Firefox did irreparable harm when they decided to funnel all Americans' DNS lookups to an abusive, monopolistic, for-profit company, Cloudflare, WITHOUT ASKING. That's sleazy, and every network I manage now has the "use-application-dns.net" canary domain because of this. No matter how much people try to frame this as, "they're protecting you from your bad, evil ISP", they're doing things surreptitiously, without consent, without any reason to believe Cloudflare, who are happy to host spammers and scammers, is any less evil. "Privacy", my ass. Address this, Firefox people, and maybe I'll trust you a little.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
No. Please switch to a firefox spinoff. Mozilla can fuck off and die.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
I switched back to Firefox in 2016 when Google began hampering uBlock Origin. I have Chrome installed on my work PC for the one or two work-related sites that just won't work properly without pants-down mode. On personal equipment, I just use Firefox (on Linux). The sites that don't work properly are few an far between, and the usually don't work because they're waiting on a number of third-party tracker scripts to load, which I disallow.
wetpaws 3y ago
[dead]
lossolo 3y ago
It's a bad situation because of Mozilla management's incompetence, and the lack of alternatives to Firefox exacerbates the issue. Instead of investing in 'Ai' perhaps they should focus on a massive marketing campaign for their main product, which is what the majority of people here are primarily interested in.
mnming 3y ago
Long time firefox user, absolutely love it. My only grudge is that on Android some tab will just randomly go black and blank. This problem has been there for at least 1 year, I think it has something to do with os memory collection but I can't prove anything. And I still use chrome, because of the Chromecast.
AiTricky 3y ago
I couldn't tell you what the difference is between Chrome and Firefox. But that is the reason I was able to switch. I didn't get slowed down at all in the switch. And the reason I switched is because Google has been consistently suspicious about data. Plus, Mozilla seems to be better for the internet, and I want to show my support. There was a long time in between using either where I was using Brave. Actually, when I ditched Chrome like 7 years ago, I made Brave my default and installed Firefox developers edition. It took a couple years before my default swapped.
Gud 3y ago
There is no reason to use Chrome. It might be more performant, have a better UI, whatever, I don’t care. It is developed by Google, the number one enemy of the open web. Use Firefox. To be honest, I always felt a little dirty when using Chrome so I always ended up switching back to Firefox.
mito88 3y ago
for mobile, fennec is a great firefox alternative. https://www.devx.com/terms/fennec/ https://www.devx.com/terms/fennec/
tungah 3y ago
Done.
Oxodao 3y ago
Always used Firefox and always will while it lasts. But this year I found out that Google Maps is getting really broken to the point where I have to run chromium just to use it. Anyone having the same issue / knows how to fix this ? Pretty sure its just a case of Google wanting me to migrate but that won't happen. (While OSM and alternatives are probably quite good I'd like to keep using GMaps though)
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There's been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don't even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox." Firefox is not independent. It is financed by Google and all web search queries on Firefox go to Google by default. Mozilla has stated over and over that the web "must" have advertising. Sometimes advertising and privacy are incompatible. But to Mozilla, who is totally reliant on Google to survive, the two are _always_ compatible. "Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data." Where is this information coming from? The people who wrote Chrome for Google previously worked for Mozilla. The annual salary of the CEO of Mozilla is over $600 million. How is Mozilla making this money. Donations? Perhaps it is coming from sales of advertising services performed by their business partner, Google. Browser vendors do not need to "sell personal data" in order to profit. For example, Google, Apple and Microsoft can sell advertising services. Mozilla might be one of the few if only examples of a browser vendor selling personal data. Mozilla gets paid for sending search queries to Google.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Typo: s/600/6/ https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990-ty22-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...
sagarpatil 3y ago
I switched to firefox nighly in Android and I don't think I'm going back to Chrome. The amount of ads, tracking and the overall experience was getting out of hand.
Zuiii 3y ago
Gladly, provided that Mozilla gives me a way to install 1) my own custom web extensions and 2) custom default search engines on standard vanilla Firefox WITHOUT their involvement. Until then, I'll stay with browsers that actually respect my authority as the user thank you very much.
rubicks 3y ago
I've been using firefox exclusively for years. No, slack.com, I will not switch to chrome. Fix your "huddles" to support Firefox.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
I went librewolf and love it. Highly recommend everyone switch to a firefox variant.
metadigm 3y ago
Love to... Just allow customizable hotkeys. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idi-p/4979 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/id...
ChildOfChaos 3y ago
What a pointless post. I will use whatever browser I wish , thank you very much. Firefox is rubbish. I prefer Safari. I don't care about the 'monopoly' the free market allows us to decide which is best, why would I use an inferior browser just for that reason? It has very bad UI/UX very typical of open source/techy software. There are zero reasons to switch listed in this article.
onehair 3y ago
Ive tried many times in the last 10 years. Whenever I do, FireFox slows down after a few days. And then just has issues I've never seen on chrome before
amai 3y ago
No, everybody please switch to Chrome and then sue Google for creating a browser monopoly. Firefox and Mozilla are paid by Google only to prevent this from happening.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
eleumik 3y ago
This could convince some more people: Google settles $5 billion privacy lawsuit over tracking people using 'incognito mode' https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1222268415/google-settles-5-billion-privacy-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1222268415/google-settles-5-b...
juniperplant 3y ago
When they will support installing progressive web apps (PWA) like Chrome does, I'll consider it.
valval 3y ago
No thank you. I have absolutely no interest in it nor need for it. It’s your job to make me switch, and frankly I see zero reason to care. Chrome and Safari work fine.
dineshkumar_cs 3y ago
I use different browser with multiple profiles, so i've a clean history and separation of work. Though i love some basic features like searching tabs, it was very limiting wrt privacy/blocking. I've tried my best to adopt, the major issue was default color management and couldn't disable it. It keeps changing my display (brightens). I wish a browser releases a feature to consume less memory!
alexeiz 3y ago
The Mozilla foundation pays millions to its CEO [1] while reducing funding to Firefox development and Firefox market share is falling year after year, but hey, please switch to Firefox. Right. Let's face the reality: Firefox is dead and Mozilla itself is putting the final nail in the coffin. [1] https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-...
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]

1776 points by Vinnl 3y ago

lcof 3y ago

If you use firefox, consider donating!

temon 3y ago

What do you think about ARC browser?

wly_cdgr 3y ago

[flagged]

ElongatedMusket 3y ago

The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me, I will switch. And I'll be bringing my entire family tree and friends along with me! What does everyone think about LibreWolf vs mainline FF? It reminds me of Waterfox: https://librewolf.net https://librewolf.net

kvirani 3y ago
Why re v3?
- ranting-moth 3y ago
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...
- zarzavat 3y ago
  It nerfs adblockers so the current net convenience of using Chromium vs Firefox becomes a net inconvenience. Manifest v2 disablement day might as well be Firefox Switching Day.
agilob 3y ago
>The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me, Protest before if even happens by switching now, maybe?
ranting-moth 3y ago
Your loyalty is commendable. But we all forgive you if you make the switch now.
thephotonsphere 3y ago
#LibreWolf much more lightweight; bloat, telemetry removed.
MrAlex94 3y ago
Happy to chime in regarding LibreWolf and Waterfox, as it comes up alot in our support forums[1]: This question comes up every now and then, I'll base my currently updated reply starting with my previous response[2]: > Now, ignoring feature differences between all the forks out there, I'd like to present a different perspective and consideration that I think gets overlooked when comparing forks like Waterfox to other forks (if I am incorrect regarding Librewolf, someone please correct me). > Waterfox provides signed binaries for download. Librewolf (and most of the rest) do not. Checksum's are all well and good, but IMO, not enough. Code signing provides trust. > Librewolf does not provide auto-updates. There are 3rd party tools out there, but IMHO that brings in its own set of problems, and breaks the chain-of-trust. > The most important one that I believe, maybe apart from Pale Moon, only Waterfox does, is offers _accountability_. There is (and has been since 2012) a legal entity behind Waterfox. That used to be Waterfox Limited, then it was System1 and now BrowserWorks (the entity I control). Laws must be abided and the end user actually has an entity to hold accountable. GDPR, CCPA, the rest are things that _actually_ need to be followed. The other projects, who are you _really_ going to hold accountable if things go wrong? To me this is super important because a browser is used for sensitive information. It's just not worth the risk otherwise. This also goes hand in hand with the code signing. > Above all else, Waterfox has been around for 12 years > Don't get me wrong, things like EV code signing certs are a bit of a racket, and yeah you can jump in and code audit all those other forks too. But really, push comes to shove, they can just disappear into the aether. Separately, I'd say the end goals of each browser are different. Librewolf seems to aim for privacy on a rolling release. Tor and Mull will both target ESR (extended support releases, which is where Mozilla aim for my enterprise friendly releases of features being set and instead security/bug patches applied only). All of them will sacrifice compatibility for privacy/security. From my above comment, I'd go with Tor if you're willing to sacrifice speed, Mull if you want better speed but broken websites. After all a web browser probably accesses the most _sensitive_ data it can, I'd put my faith in a piece of a software run by a legal entity so you can have some legal recourse on matters. Waterfox's goal in terms of privacy is a usable web that still leans heavily to privacy but doesn't want to sacrifice the web experience for that to work. Waterfox has done a lot to reach that, from careful curation of preferences to supplemental infrastructure such as DNS over Oblivious HTTP (DoOH). These aren't just features that "might" help; there's real benefit to it. For example, users have reported being able to access censored websites when using Waterfox. In my opinion, I've reached Waterfox's goal perfectly here: privacy and web compatibility. Then, there's all the other "sugar" on top: - Customization - Reverting features removed by Mozilla but are genuinely useful/should've remained in Firefox. - Adding features when Mozilla is slow to do so (better JPEG-XL support for one). - The only fork that AFAIK that supports DRM content, for watching Netflix, Prime Video etc. Considering how difficult this was to achieve I doubt any will get support any time soon either. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/comment/kd0nhf3/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/comment/k... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/jqwuan8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/j...
noman-land 3y ago
Why wait until the final nail has been hammered before escaping your coffin?
robertoandred 3y ago
> LibreWolf Why are FOSS names always so bad...

closewith 3y ago

I use Firefox because it's the least bad option remaining, certainly not because I believe it's the last remaining ethical web browser. I have no confidence in Mozilla's ethics or mission, and no longer contribute directly or financially for that reason.

squidbeak 3y ago
I agree with the implicit point. From the ethics standpoint, regardless of what happens at the top, Mozilla's waywardness isn't reflected in the browser, unlike Google's web and user hostility with Chrome (manifest v3 etc).

hartator 3y ago

Maybe if they don’t align with Google agenda so much, I’ll switch. What’s the ethical of switching if Mozilla is just the non-profit arm of Google?

jamesdwilson 3y ago
Are they still receiving funds from Google?
- tleilaxu 3y ago
  Around 86% of Firefox’s income is from Google, yes.
  - jamesdwilson 3y ago
    soo....yeah..
  - vinhill 3y ago
    Do you take the number from here? https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202... 86% of revenue of Mozilla corp are royalties, which encompasses any search engine that shares revenue with Firefox, not just Google. But the remaining 14% is not only revenue generated by Firefox, but also by e.g. Pocket. So from their financial statement, it's pretty hard to say what percentage of Firefox's revenue is derived from Google.
    - hartator 3y ago
      Isn’t Google the only one?
matt123456789 3y ago
Are you talking about the payment Mozilla receives for keeping Google the default search engine on Firefox? Just change it.
3y ago

jcalvinowens 3y ago

I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero. These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site was hopelessly broken on chrome.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The only site I've found behaves terribly in Firefox is LinkedIn. Weird pauses on page load that lock the whole browser (not just the tab) for like 5-10 seconds. No idea what they're doing to make this happen, but it's odd. Which is, well, fine, because LinkedIn is mostly a dumpster anyways.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Any site that is on the edge of performance (often due to bad engineering, which you can blame on time constraints) will perform vastly better in Chromium.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    I don't much care, TBH. Having worked in the Chromium codebase before, I know what an absolutely mammoth amount of engineering hours goes into that. V8 on its own is a technological miracle. But all funded by a firehose of crazy privacy invading ad revenue. So. I'll live with the odd pause and a bit of battery drain. I gave Google 10 years of my life as an employee in exchange for $$, I'm not interested in giving them the rest of my life for free.
    - boringuser2 3y ago
      I get it, it's a nice story, but here's a nice little life-hack: What if you could take the benefits of the spending and jettison the side-effects? It's called Brave, they have their own ad blocker in the source code written in C, so it can't be hamstrung.

sgt 3y ago

> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data This is true for Google, etc, but definitely not for Apple. Not saying Apple is perfect in every way, but they actually have a track record for privacy protection.

leosanchez 3y ago
Firefox has ads doesn't it ? for the homepage links. (I am not complaining. long time firefox user)
- speedgoose 3y ago
  Firefox’s default search engine is also Google Search, full of ads and spam.
  - ostensible 3y ago
    This is what pays their bills. Major source of income for Mozilla is Google paying to be default search engine
AureliusDreamer 3y ago
Brave runs on Chrome and has some of the highest privacy protections. I love Firefox, but just questioning if there aren’t good solutions available on Chrome. And while Apple may not have a business model as focused on selling data, they still have a growing ad business + weaker protections against fingerprinting and ad blocking
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Brave’s internal ads and crypto weirdness are enough for me to be uncomfortable with it.
  - tejohnso 3y ago
    What internal ads? I see 0 ads while using brave because of its internal ad blocker. Crypto features are an easy toggle to disable. The toggle isn't hidden, doesn't re-enable itself, and isn't weird in any way.

ehwhwhwhahhwh 3y ago

[flagged]

ranting-moth 3y ago

If you keep feeding the Google monster you soon won't be able to browse the internet without a 3rd party attesting that your computer is worth browsing that site. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...

Klonoar 3y ago
This was reworked to be a more limited proposal specific for Android Webviews, IIRC. Fairly recently (last month)?
- Drakim 3y ago
  And after that's normalized, then Google will enhance your user experience by bringing "Android Webview security" to Chrome on android, you know, it makes you really secure, it's really to help you keep safe. A few years down the road, a surprising amount of companies insist you can only use their product on those secure smartphone browsers because of it's enhanced security, so Google helps you out by adding a special "Android Secure Mode" to desktop Chrome.
  - graphe 3y ago
    Unreasonable and unsubstantiated expectations. Web sites want you to visit them, they have no reason to barrier you. Some sites I use still have http and if a site wanted you to visit it in a specific way they'd use an app. If the model is to make web sites less accessible for profit it would need a compelling reason to visit it in spite of the barriers. It will never happen.
    - Boltgolt 3y ago
      Websites want all the real visitors they can get, webapps are not quite as concerned with that. I remember the Microsoft Silverlight days
    - goku12 3y ago

jamiek88 3y ago

We all switched to Firefox back in the day because it was better. Better than IE, there was no chrome and safari was a joke. Entreaties and ‘trying to make Fetch (firefox) happen’ won’t work, evidently. How do we make Firefox obviously better? I’m core market for Firefox and just use Safari. Better battery life. And it’s just as good for privacy. At least that’s my impression. Is it wrong? If I don’t use it there’s very little chance people will change the defaults. Defaults are powerful.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Firefox + uBlock origin is far better than any other browser without UBO.
- keymasta 3y ago
  I've been using Firefox for about as long as I can remember, and really don't notice sites not working. I do notice, however, that using any browser without UBO makes my eyes bleed in an unending agony of capitalist garbage. It's like using a browser and then putting sand in your eyeballs.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Mullvad browser
  - CuriousCosmic 3y ago
    That is quite literally Firefox + UBO. Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons. I don't mean this as a dig or anything but it's literally what they described.
    - hanniabu 3y ago
      > Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons. Yes, which is not Firefox with default settings

Zetobal 3y ago

Just let it die. We need something new or at least a CEO with a vision that is not steered by the tides of LinkedIn hype

pjerem 3y ago
The thing is we can hardly have something new. A new browser engine is an incredibly hard thing to program and historically they have always been financed by multi-millions (now billions) companies. Even Firefox via Google. If you want another engine that is not WebKit or Gecko and you want it open source, you are asking for something that the free software community failed to deliver for the last 30 years and that is harder to deliver everyday. If Firefox happens to die, we are basically stuck with a Webkit-only internet. We may have open source browsers but nobody is going to pay for the Gecko development (which is not just maintenance but keeping it up to date with the web specs) and nobody is going to pay for a new engine.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Just fork it. I don't have a problem with the tech I have a problem with the corp that governs it. Because in their last Annual Report they see the future of Mozilla in AI services...and that's not what's going to get usershare back.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    You can fork it but Google will still be the main maintainer but also the promoter of new APIs so your fork will be forced to either implement those new APIs or to accept their upstream changes. With multiple engines that have a big enough user base, you force the actors to negotiate standards. What will you do with your fork when Google will start to implement a replacement for HTML like they tried to do with Dart or AMP ? With enough competitors, Google is forced to make those unilateral evolutions backward compatible with what works everywhere. With only one engine they can force their new tech in the engine and bet on the fact that it will be integrated in the forks because it’s mostly one pull request away on GitHub. Maybe that would work if the fork somehow managed to evolve as fast as Google on Blink. But this literally means that you need Google’s kind of money amounts.

markx2 3y ago

Firefox user since before it was Firefox. Daily: Firefox with probably too many blockers, tampermonkey, umatrix, Stylus. I aggressively block any and every element on sites I visit regularly. You get no stats from me. Also daily: Firefox Developer Ed for frequently visited sites where I need to login and every site is in a container tab. Brave - my daily puzzle fix for Wordle, Wordiply, Travle, Tradle (no logins, clears data on exit). Edge, in Private mode, if and only if I cannot get a site to otherwise work. Also nextdns.io to block as much as I can including all Google, all facebook, all Automattic properties and more. While I'm sure some data is being collected I am very happy with how my internet looks.

ausbah 3y ago
do you have any other recs for firefox extensions?
- markx2 3y ago
  Archive Page Bypass Paywalls Clean CSS Exfil Protection Decentraleyes DDG Privacy Essentials Ghostery NoScript Privacy Badger Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy Stylus Tampermonkey uBlock Origin uMatrix Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.
  - iso8859-1 3y ago
    So when you want to enable JavaScript, you have to click around in both uMatrix and NoScript?
    - markx2 3y ago
      I have to temp-trust some elements in NoScript, then look in uMatris for the specific items I'll set to green. That probably sounds like a hassle and I get that. But I've been doing it for so long it's the norm. If I need to unblock trackers in NS, I close the tab and go on my way. And every once in a while I'll factory reset both NS and uM. This probably sounds very tinfoil territory but as I've said I'm happy with my internet experience.

ramon156 3y ago

While i wholeheartedly agree, these aren't really reasons. Playing devil's advocate reveals nothing useful. "Its happened before" That's not an argument, in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt. On top of that, the internet was very different back then. "Its actually good" I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser? I'm very comfortable in my opera/edge/chrome browser and I'd have to change my workflow.

Ukv 3y ago
> "Its happened before" > That's not an argument It's a subheading to "2. Browser engine monopoly". The subsection's purpose is describing how bad things were during the IE monopoly to reinforce that it's something to be avoided. > in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt That would be agreeing with the article, unless I misunderstand what you mean. > On top of that, the internet was very different back then. In a way that now makes it harder for truly new competing engines to pop up due to increased complexity of the web. > I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser? The points made in the article are: * Increased privacy, opposed to willingly giving your data to an ad-tech company * Helps avoid a browser engine monopoly which would effectively let Google dictate web standards * It’s fast and has a nice user interface Onto which I'd add: * Content blockers work best on Firefox (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...), doubly so once Manifest V3 rolls out * Allows more customization of interface and home page * UX improvements, like the clutter-free reader mode, aren't vetoed to protect ad revenue as with Chrome (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467)

yevvy 3y ago

eyezick 3y ago

Eh, I tried unfortunately and it's not the same. Especially with video processing, my older Macbook Pro heats up very quickly when using Firefox vs Chrome. Firefox's history bar is still superior though

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nabaraj 3y ago

My family uses Apple's keypass for everything password. Is there an easy way to get passwords working like Safari? I currently do Search Passwords, Search website, Copy password, Paste in Firefox manually.

pprotas 3y ago
The easiest way to get the easy of use of Safari's password manager in a different browser would be to use a different password manager that works in other browsers. Common recommendations are 1Password (my personal favorite), BitWarden, etc. This might not fulfill your needs though, since it sounds like you'd like to use the Safari password manager in a different browser, which is not possible outside of the Chrome extension [0] that Apple provides. This means that it wouldn't work on Firefox. [0]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/icloud-wachtwoorden/pejdijmoenmkgeppbflobdenhhabjlaj?pli=1 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/icloud-wachtwoorden...
kemayo 3y ago
There is not, unfortunately. Apple has an extension for Chrome ("iCloud Passwords") that lets you use the keychain passwords there, but nothing for Firefox. It's less-restrictive than it used to be, since the extension used to only support Chrome on Windows, but they gave in back in July of this year and made it easier to use Chrome on Mac. Apparently, Firefox removed a bunch of password-related APIs back in Firefox 57 that broke some existing keychain extensions[1], so it might not be Apple's fault that they've not provided a Firefox extension. There's no progress on Firefox bugs related to making such an extension possible again, that I could see.[2] [1]: https://github.com/jfitzell/mozilla-keychain/issues/88 https://github.com/jfitzell/mozilla-keychain/issues/88 [2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212

throwaw12 3y ago

I am not going back to Firefox anytime soon after they kicked out Brendan Eich for his personal views. Whether we agree or not with his personal views, open source should not be influenced by political agenda, neither by wokeness

vajrabum 3y ago
Being publicly against same sex marriage is a business liability in San Francisco.
- freedomben 3y ago
  at the time he made the donation, it was the majority opinion in California. He even said that he had changed his mind/opinion had evolved. But it wasn't enough
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  They have customers all over the world. It was a bad business decision, regardless of the local liability. They could have just swept it under the rug like they do at almost every other company.
wkat4242 3y ago
It was more than a personal view. He paid a lobbying campaign for a policy that is diametrically opposed to Mozilla's organisational views on diversity. A CEO should stand for the values their organisation represents.

1970-01-01 3y ago

>1. Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. Mozilla tracks and gives (sells?) unique information about every download to Google unless you choose to grab it from the FTP servers. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...

fburnaby 3y ago
does that apply to installations from apt?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It does not. Those binaries are signed by your distribution and the same for everyone.
aidenn0 3y ago
I'm honestly curious why they don't also track the FTP server downloads.
- cies 3y ago
  My best guess: <1% so statistically not relevant.
DHowett 3y ago
> (sells?) An accusation like this would benefit from some evidence. By not offering any evidence, you get all the benefits of sowing doubt without having put in any of the work necessary to have an actual discussion about it.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ Firefox by default also sends marketing campaign data to Adjust, our analytics vendor, which has its own privacy policy. Campaign data includes a Google advertising ID or Android ID, IP address, timestamp, country, language/locale, operating system, and app version. Smells like a sale, but by not using the word sell, they get all the benefits of sowing doubt without having put in any of the work necessary to have an actual problem about selling it.

thejosh 3y ago

I switched to Firefox earlier this year, having used Chrome since 2008/2009, previously having used Firefox. Mostly out of laziness. Can't believe how good Firefox is now, and how great it is on Android (addons, config). Being able to control anything on the browser is fantastic. Want to increase a certain UI elements font size just a tad? Sure! Want to tweak every aspect of the UI? sure! Want a myriad of config options, sure go ahead! Love the concept of Nightly, has worked great for me.

atrettel 3y ago
One UI feature that I love that Firefox lets you change is the scrollbars. I forget the precise settings, but I set them up so that they are always present and always big enough for me to see how far down a page I am (yes, like I'm using Windows 95!). That might only be something that matters to a few people, but the fact that it is customizable to that level is one of Firefox's greatest strengths.
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  This sounds great, but for web developers I feel it’s a risky change if you want to see your sites as your users do.
  - atrettel 3y ago
    You raise a good point. Fortunately, I'm not a web developer but I will keep your point in mind in case I do any web development later. From a web development standpoint, the scrollbars do seem to be an ignored feature for a lot of web pages. Adding scrollbars actually fixes a lot of issues with some sites. For example, some sites often have a frame inside of another frame, and this reveals the scrollbars for both frames. If I were to use my mouse wheel, I might scroll down inner frame or the outer frame, and I wouldn't know which one would be activated until I try, but with the scrollbars on, I always know which one is which. This was a surprise benefit to this change.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

nullindividual 3y ago

If it weren’t for the unique to Firefox audio/video sync problem, I would.

utybo 3y ago

I'll switch to Firefox when they get proper vertical tabs like Edge's. I know Microsoft Edge has a really bad reputation, but damn it I can't live without its vertical tabs, and I can disable most of the idiotic AI crap. I know there are plugins, but they all feel quite hacky and are simply not as good.

TheCleric 3y ago
I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar), plus I didn’t like MS stealing my data. Not a day goes by that I don’t strongly miss vertical tabs though.
- utybo 3y ago
  > I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar) FYI you can disable it, along with most of the additional button things.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cdata 3y ago

Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful macro forces pushing us to that outcome. "Switch, please," calls to action are a noble but insufficient countermeasure.

ethanwillis 3y ago
Is that a common belief on the Google Chrome team?
- cdata 3y ago
  You'll have to ask them. I left Chrome in an exasperated huff several years ago. The browser ecosystem as we know it is in a tenuous state. It is unhealthy for the web that Chromium has become so dominant. It is a symptom of this imbalance that users line up to defend Apple's choice to lock out other browser engines from iOS. This kind of popular user sentiment would have been unthinkable to me in the era when Firefox first rose up to fight back against the IE singularity. Yet, here we are.
Simran-B 3y ago
Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable. Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway. What annoys me the most, however, is that several things simply don't work in Firefox and the associated report is over a decade old, so with close to zero chances of ever getting addressed. Copying the content of a canvas element as an image to the clipboard is one of these things. In Chrome, this takes a right and a left click. Firefox didn't have such a basic feature last time I checked. There used to be a workaround, opening a blob URL in a new tab and then copy that, but this got broken later, I believe by a stricter security policy. Firefox is essentially the browser equivalent of Fairphone. It's the most ethical option but it inconveniences you left, right, and center.

Trasmatta 3y ago

How are the Firefox dev tools these days? I feel like every time I try to switch, the dev tooling has felt subpar compared to Chrome, and I don't like using one browser for regular use and one for development. It's been a couple years since I tried though.

Zekio 3y ago
for css they are best in class IMHO, especially the visualizations of flex and grid
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Not as good for networking and performance as chrome dev tools, but the visualizations for styling are notably better.
vehemenz 3y ago
About as good as Chrome in most areas, but the performance is poorer. They're serviceable.

Slackwise 3y ago

I use PWAs extensively and Firefox decided they won't bother to implement them, so that's going to be a no from me. Rather than wanting the web platform to be first class, they really want it to languish as a second-class citizen. Really sad, seeing as they also fired devs, and invested in "AI" instead.

crazygringo 3y ago
Indeed: > Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks. [1] Any idea what Mozilla's motivation is here? (Apple's at least is easy to understand, even if you disagree.) [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Making_PWAs_installable#sites-as-apps https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
- TheFuzzball 3y ago
  > Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks. That's not actually true, MDN needs updating. PWAs are installable as standalone apps since macOS Sonoma and Safari 17 - https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0/#:~:text=Web%20apps%20on%20Mac https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0....
- fsflover 3y ago
  There are workarounds for using Firefox web apps: https://forums.puri.sm/t/firefox-web-apps/21499/ https://forums.puri.sm/t/firefox-web-apps/21499/
charlesabarnes 3y ago
I have tried to switch out of curiosity, but the lack of PWA support in addition to missing features like WebUSB really limits how useful the browser is to me.
- 3y ago

JonathanBeuys 3y ago

I would like to, but Firefox behaves problematic in regard to auth urls like https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com 1: When you bookmark them, it shows the auth part when you hover the bookmark with the mouse. 2: When you open them from the command line firefox https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com And then ctrl+click links on the site, it opens the new tab and shows the auth part in the tab title as long as the link loads. It seems the "current url" in Firefox code is stored with the auth part, and it passes that part on to local links. These issues make it insecure to use auth urls because as soon as someone looks over your shoulder (or there is a camera like in many cafes), you are p0wned. I wish we had a better way to log into a website from the command line, like ssh keys. But for now, we are stuck with what we have. And Firefox makes it insecure to use it. So for now, I continue to use Chromium.

pprotas 3y ago
You save passwords in plain text (bookmarks) and then complain that people can read the plain text over your shoulder?
- JonathanBeuys 3y ago
  Yes. The auth part should not be displayed when you hover over a bookmark. Chromium does not display it. In the end, every security mechanism is "plain text". Even ssh keys. When someone gains access to your ssh key, which is just an ascii string, they can log in as you.
  - pprotas 3y ago
    My SSH keys are protected with a password, on top of that I have a biometric lock (MacBook fingerprint reader) on my SSH keys. So they would only grant access to someone that 1. has access to my computer, 2. knows the password (which only I know) and 3. has my finger. Definitely more than just plain text! I strongly suggest looking into multi-factor authentication, or other modern authorization/security mechanisms if you want to see examples of security systems that are not just plain text. > Chromium does not display it. Security by obscurity is not ideal, although I can understand that the lack of this feature in Firefox hinders your usecase.

jack_riminton 3y ago

The article has good points but for the love of god please stop with the passive-aggressive "here's why you've been eating apples wrong all your life" headlines Maybe I should write a blog post titled "You're writing passive-aggressive articles wrong, read this to do better in 2024"

chakrihacker 3y ago

I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of putting their noses under some privacy violating company

chakrihacker 3y ago

I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of burning money on stuff that doesn’t matter

jmyeet 3y ago

I’ll switch to Firefox when they fire their overpaid CEO who keeps getting hefty pay raises despite Firefox losing market share and whose big idea for revenue is “AI services”.

switch007 3y ago
You have no issues with Google? Every exec is paid just right, every endeavour is pure and good?
- kemayo 3y ago
  What tends to rub people the wrong way in situations like this is hypocrisy. Google hasn't claimed to be a virtuous nonprofit, so people accept it when they do shitty things. The Mozilla Foundation is an ideological nonprofit, so people hold it to a higher standard. This may or may not be productive, but it's how people tend to work. :D
  - switch007 3y ago
    I can appreciate that to an extent Though there’s hypocrisy in only critically analysing the actions of one party and giving the other a free pass too

ivanmontillam 3y ago

I've been a happy user of desktop and mobile Firefox for about ~3 years now. If you take the time to configure Firefox for Android to suit your needs and wants, it's a very formidable browser. I did it for ideological reasons. I don't want Chromium strong-arming web standards (I really do hope it's not too late for that). The only switch I've been unable to finish is the default search engine to something else. As much as Google's search results have become somewhat useless, sometimes DDG returns unrelated results. Bing as well. I've not yet tried Kagi.

jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y ago

[flagged]

countrymile 3y ago
Explaining why you find it better would be helpful

nashashmi 3y ago

Firefox needs bookmarkable containers. It is almost there ... Bookmarkable Containers are opening bookmarks in a specific container. And I don't like the hacked extension that implements this feature as a workaround using container sites.

noman-land 3y ago
Can't you do this by telling a container to auto open certain URLs?
- nashashmi 3y ago
  Yes, but when it comes to links like outlook and gmail, where i want to keep separate work accounts and personal accounts.
  - noman-land 3y ago
    Makes sense. Good example.
Vinnl 3y ago
Someone yesterday mentioned this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-c... As I understand it, that would allow you to add a bookmark for `ext+container:name=MyContainer&url=https://mozilla.org https://mozilla.org`, which would open mozilla.org in MyContainer.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  Not a fail. It has the annoyance of after clicking the bookmark, it closes the tab I am in and opening a new tab. This cannot be reversed by ctrl+shift+t. I end up losing my history of the closed tab. Otherwise, it works.

hprotagonist 3y ago

I'm already switched over! I can't switch over any farther!

layer8 3y ago
If you’re not careful, you might wrap around to IE.

cultureulterior 3y ago

As soon as they bring back xul

bloopernova 3y ago

From yesterday's Firefox thread: Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it: Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc Containers keep sites separated nicely[2] Tree Style Tabs[3] uBlock Origin on Android[4] Open Source since 1998! Not based on Chromium [1] Be wary of sync on a fresh Linux install, it might sync the default bookmarks and merge them with your own. Not a huge deal but definitely an annoyance. [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers [3] Tree Style Tabs requires several extra steps to remove the tabs at the top of the window. You have to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true, then create a "chrome" (lol![5]) directory in your profile and add a userChrome.css file to it. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [4] uBlock Origin on mobile web makes a massive difference. You can even use the same rules that modify the style of the page you're viewing, such as setting HN to a dark mode via: news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white) [5] I'm aware that the Mozilla UI was called Chrome at one point, not sure if it still is.

matthew-wegner 3y ago
On [5]: It's not that Mozilla named their UI "Chrome", but that "chrome" is a graphical user interface word. For a browser it refers to the stuff around the web page content, but it's more general than browser use (you could refer to Blender's chrome around the 3D viewports to refer to its toolbars, etc). i.e. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome
- layer8 3y ago
  I still hate Google for naming their browser Chrome for that reason. They made a perfectly good and useful UI term almost unusable. Ironically, the modern web also led to UI chrome being harder and harder to distinguish even in native applications.
  - takeda 3y ago
    Feels a bit Microsoft'y like for example "Word".

_zoltan_ 3y ago

I won't, thank you. I'm happy with Chrome. Yes, I also have YouTube premium.

p1mrx 3y ago
YouTube Premium works fine on Firefox.

wkat4242 3y ago

I'm still very happy with firefox. Not as much with Mozilla as an organisation though. They are losing focus. They're still playing the big corp game when at this stage in their marketshare decline they should focus much more on the grassroots movements of privacy. And their attempts at detaching from the big Google deal are minimal. A deal with mullvad that's not really interesting for example. I'd much rather see a paid premium sync or something. Or something like iCloud private relay for web (which is much better for privacy than a simple VPN like they're offering) But as a browser it's great. It offers some great features I didn't see anywhere else like the web containers which I can no longer do without. And the real full ublock origin, bypass paywalls etc.

xedrac 3y ago

I use Firefox exclusively, and I love the Rust language that took shape at Mozilla, but it makes me sad to see HN censor comments that point out Mozilla's despicable behavior when they fired Brandon Eich because he didn't espouse gay marriage.

ebiester 3y ago
He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom. And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  > He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom. > And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things. You seriously don't see the irony in this at all? Retaliation against someone for what they do in their personal lives is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom? Purporting to speak for an entire community without any authority or consent is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom? Workplace retaliation for private lawful activities should never occur. That seems like a principle that the GLB community should embrace.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    Do you not know what protected statuses are? There's a reason those exist. There's a reason it's allowed to penalize someone for being bigoted but not for being gay. This is not a symmetrical/both-sides thing.
    - torstenvl 3y ago
      I can't quite tell if you're trying to discuss policy (which is currently being discussed in this thread) or the law. If you're trying to discuss the law, then your summary is both paradigmatically flawed (conflation of legislative versus constitutional protections, protected status versus suspect classification, etc.) and factually incorrect (being gay was not a protected class in 2008 in almost any jurisdiction, and making a political donation is not an action subject to the Civil Rights Act). If instead you're trying to discuss principles, then your explicit embrace of being unprincipled seems... odd. Principles always apply symmetrically and to both sides. That's what makes them principles.

nsagent 3y ago

As someone in the Apple ecosystem, Firefox is not a very compelling alternative. I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based) and I've tried switching on desktop as well. On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in. On top of that, it was simply a slower browser, both with DOM manipulation and Javascript. For example, when I made my latest research project (https://pl.aiwright.dev https://pl.aiwright.dev) Firefox would routinely struggle with the large complex graphs (over 100k nodes, though only a few hundred nodes attached to the DOM at any given time). Safari handles it with no issues whatsoever. I'm sure there are likely workarounds to speed things up on Firefox, but I don't have the time or energy for something like that since it's a research project, not an end-user facing product. Maybe you can make the argument that switching to Firefox will incentivize improvements, but so far that hasn't been my experience. I've now moved away from Firefox to things like Orion (which is still quite buggy, but useful enough). Safari seems to be getting better over time, with things like containers now and extensions like Userscripts [2]. [1]: https://pl.aiwright.dev https://pl.aiwright.dev [2]: https://github.com/quoid/userscripts https://github.com/quoid/userscripts

petrusnonius 3y ago
I use Waterfox on Mac and it is great. Safari is slow in comparison and the only thing that leads me to use it is integration with TouchID.
thefourthchime 3y ago
Same, it's simply easier to use Safari on my phone and Mac. The performance is fantastic, syncing is perfect, and switching between the two devices is effortless. If I used windows or Linux I would probably give it a try again.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Not to mention on iOS your choices are really between Safari and Safari with a different skin.

mergy 3y ago

I still keep Firefox around and it's not horrible but have been very happy with the Chrome variant Vivaldi and some key extensions. Fast and not vanilla Chrome.

tnecniv 3y ago

The only reason I don’t is because, when I’m on my MacBook, I’m worried about sacrificing battery life by not using safari

TowerTall 3y ago

There is no support for touch screen navigation gestures in Firefox on Windows and that is the #1 reason why I cannot switch. I use the touchscreen on laptop while browsing every day. Touch screens on windows isn't something new. They became common around the time of the release of Windows 8 in 2012. There is a 6 year old feature request on bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443710 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443710

the__alchemist 3y ago
+1: They've been ignoring this one for years.

freedude 3y ago

I enjoy Firefox. Occassionally, I run into issues using it. I attribute this to bad website design as this often occurs with government, and large bureaucratic organizations.

hasty_pudding 3y ago

I have it on Firefox but it's a forced snap install so I can't download anything because snaps are sandboxed. I switched it at some point to the app version and uninstalled the snap. but it came back as a snap somehow!!!

rightbyte 3y ago
Canonical is another problem that should be dealt with. I haven't trusted them since they put Amazon spyware links in the start menu bar. Snaps are one of these strange antifeutures that somehow get forced on the users anyway.

geraldwhen 3y ago

Mozilla is a political organization. No thanks. I’ll stick to safari, chrome, and brave. I’ll drop chrome if it ever removes v2 extensions.

throwawaysugar 3y ago
[flagged]

mooreds 3y ago

Recommend doing this on mobile as well, if you are an android user. You get adblock and a URL bar near your keyboard. The price is that occasionally there are sites (approximately 2% in my anecdotal experience) that you'll have to use chrome for.

SubiculumCode 3y ago
I opt for firefox nightly on android, giving me a chance to contribute to their development roll outs.
charles_f 3y ago
My other grief on Android is that I often get the dead tab bug. Sometimes when you reopen a tab and try to navigate, the tab just ceases to function and you need to close it. Also they changed something in tab management, and it feels like nowadays I always have 40 tabs opened despite myself (which kinda defeats the purpose). Other than that, I never have issues loading any website, unless they're actively detecting the agent and telling you to use chrome.
cpburns2009 3y ago
Firefox is noticeably slower on Android than Chrome. That's where Brave really shines: as fast as Chrome with a built-in ad-blocker.

jccalhoun 3y ago

Firefox has been my main browser for a long time but I've also been a mutlibrowser user for a long time. Right now I'm typing this in firefox, chrome is in my second monitor running twitch, and I will be using edge for my work.

aloukissas 3y ago

Surprised nobody mentions this: Firefox DevTools are so, so much better than Chrome's, especially shining in two areas: (a) inspecting layouts with flex/grid; (b) inspecting websocket traffic. Been using FF for 10+ years, never looked back.

pacomerh 3y ago
What about performance insights? Chrome is pretty good at this
- aloukissas 3y ago
  I've never used it tbh

pmarreck 3y ago

Already did a few years ago. My only current annoyances with it are that the NixOS search page is blank in it for some reason, at least on Nightly (https://search.nixos.org/packages https://search.nixos.org/packages) and that I can't access its password store on iOS. (iOS added Google Chrome password access from any app's GUI right around the time I switched from Chrome to Firefox... UGH)

dabber21 3y ago

Switched back last year and even use their services, even one pain one: firefox relay to mask my email

dabber21 3y ago
*paid

ugjka 3y ago

The only way I'm getting off Firefox would be if google actually makes the Web completely DRM'd and i can't do banking without chrome

Mystery-Machine 3y ago

No. Plus the browser engines argument is...meh. Webkit and Chromium are open source. Why not build on top of that? What's the added value of having more than one rendering engine? All the arguments are talking about major browsers. Why not mention other, non major browsers? Oh I know why, because those are actually pretty decent alternatives and you wouldn't want to have to explain why Firefox against those as your case would be weaker.

htk 3y ago

Maybe they wouldn't need people begging to use FF if Mozilla used its money exclusively for the browser and web initiatives, instead of political and ideological projects.

mock-possum 3y ago
What are some examples that have put you off?
- rightbyte 3y ago
  All of them? Mozilla is even worse than the Wikipedia foundation. They are a one trick pony and should just focus on their one trick ...

gridder 3y ago

[flagged]

geenat 3y ago

I will when FF doesn't regularly lose my sessions. Thanks. Dunno how bugs like this continue to exist.

pilaf 3y ago
I've had a couple "scares" like that, i.e. an entire window full of open tabs disappearing (usually closing it by mistake), but normally they come back with just a Ctrl+Shift+T. Not saying that's what happened to you, just sharing my experience.

romanovcode 3y ago

I like Safari

mastercheif 3y ago

I would’ve considered switching to Firefox if they hadn’t shipped their Pocket “redesign” earlier this year. It’s one of the worst most user hostile updates I’ve seen from any app or website in my 20 years on the web. It’s completely broken, frankly. If you open a saved article and then switch apps, Pocket kicks you back to the Home Screen. Tapping the “view all” button—which should take you to your saved article list—brings you back to the article you were viewing. Awful awful awful.

ahepp 3y ago
Mozilla is still finding ways to antagonize its users with Pocket? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I stopped using Firefox when they started pushing Pocket so hard. Maybe I’m remembering too strongly, but my recollection is that when I complained about it I was told this is the future, you’re being a crank, and it’s totally normal for a third party exension collecting data to be baked into a browser that claims to support privacy and respect users. So I just started using Safari, and I’ve never been happier. Apple seems to at least know how to get out of its own way. And they seem at least a bit more credible on privacy than Chrome or frankly Firefox.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. Because they offered a service that you were not interested you switched away and consider the less privacy friendly than a big corporation which runs one of the largest advertisement business in the world and tries to lock everyone into their ecosystem? Seriously, why do you hold Mozilla a nonprofit with a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, to a much higher standard than the largest corporations in the world with proven disregard (and profit motive to ignore it) for their users privacy?
  - ahepp 3y ago
    > In addition to the information that you provide to us when you register for a user account, we collect information about the URLs, titles and content of the web pages and other information you save to Pocket. The types of information we collect includes your browser type, device type, time zone, language, and other information related to the manner in which you access the Pocket Technologies. If you are on a mobile device, we collect the advertising identifiers provided by Apple on iOS and by Google on Android. [...] How is Safari less privacy friendly than that? As far as I know, Safari doesn't phone home with my reading list. If it did, that would be completely unacceptable to me. But maybe Apple can defend it by saying "well it's only what the most privacy friendly browser, Firefox, does"? > Seriously, why do you hold Mozilla a nonprofit with a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, to a much higher standard than the largest corporations in the world with proven disregard (and profit motive to ignore it) for their users privacy? Do they really have a proven history of putting privacy of their users first? Because to me, Pocket looks like a proven history that they will sell the opportunity to collect data from their users just like any other company. Even if Mozilla really did have a proven history of putting privacy of their users first, that would in fact be a reason to hold them to a higher standard. I expect more from people I think highly of, than people I know usually do bad things. It seems to me that Apple actually has less incentive to sell my data than Mozilla. I'm paying Apple for their device and their software, and if I don't like the way their software treats my data, I will stop paying them. Mozilla has no way to make money other than bundling software that collects data from their users (google search default, pocket). So who's really incentivized to ignore privacy concerns?

bbqbbqbbq 3y ago

I know it's Chromium-Based but I've been a very happy Arc Browser user all year

WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago

No, https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-... If you really care, there is LibreWolf https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/

k310 3y ago

Just want to add: Despite its limited number of extensions, Safari has a great "reader" mode that other browsers with readability extensions can't come close to, in terms of zapping the crap, killing almost all nags and popups (sometimes, that's all you need to get past a nag-wall) and creating truly readable articles, savable as PDF. I also use Firefox and Opera, which are fine, and which have their own universes of extensions. Opera is chrome-compatible in this respect. Both have versions of ublock-origin.

ls612 3y ago
I’d take the uBO element zapper over Reader Mode any day. Some anti-Adblock scripts have figured out how to prevent you engaging reader mode.

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

I do use Firefox as my default browser (Linux). My only complaint is that from time to time they see the need to change the user interface and break compatibility with whatever CSS hacks you've had to use to get it the way you like (e.g. tab position). I wish they'd make UI layout/customization config-driven rather than relying on CSS, and commit to backwards compatibility of any such config.

born-jre 3y ago

Me, Very hardcore Firefox user for years, today looking at switching to arc browser becasue firefox is thrashing my system. one time. macos swap inscreased to 60gb where firefox was using 48gb. i have 16gb ram. :( also video freezes time to time ) it is probably one of my own about:config changes Though than firefox.

robblbobbl 3y ago

But even with Firefox your whole activity is being tracked. There is no privacy anymore. Your data is being collected massively to build a map to identify individuals. You can't protect yourself anymore from being a victim. This is so utterly bad that I even would recommend/advise to not use any computer or the Internet in total anymore.

cbarrick 3y ago

I switched to Firefox in 2019. But the recent UI changes through me off. I'm now on Vivaldi and loving it! Both macOS and Android.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mock-possum 3y ago

My main gripe with Firefox on Windows: You can’t drag a tab out of one window and hold it against the side of the screen to snap that tab there as a new window. Chrome lets you do that, and I use that feature all the time. I’ve mostly gotten used to everything else at this point.

dunfear 3y ago

[flagged]

ripvanwinkle 3y ago

For the Firefox fans here who care deeply about stemming its market share losses and keeping it viable consider this goal. Please switch at least one other person to Firefox - anyone from your friends, family, colleagues etc. I did this with my spouse last year

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

animanoir 3y ago

https://cdn.ponly.com/wp-content/uploads/No-Memes-15.jpg https://cdn.ponly.com/wp-content/uploads/No-Memes-15.jpg

daft_pink 3y ago

I think 2024 is going to be ruled by the Arc Browser when it is fully released for Windows. I use it on Mac and it's amazing, but as soon as it's available on Windows, I think people will start recommending it everywhere and everyone is going to start using it.

cies 3y ago
https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/
vehemenz 3y ago
At the end of the day, Arc is a Chromium browser with a novel UI paradigm. I used it as my daily driver for six months, but I concluded that whatever problem it solves isn't really worth solving. Rather, it doesn't offer enough of a difference to me to warrant switching from Safari or Chromium.

meibo 3y ago

In 2024, please fix tab tearing. Thanks!

tyjen 3y ago

Yep, I realized I was using Chrome out of nothing but habit and convivence. Made a concerted effort to switch to Firefox, Mullvad, and Tor.

torstenvl 3y ago

I use Firefox as my main browser. I love Firefox and I want it to succeed. However... a person who uses Firefox as their primary browser must generally still keep Chrome installed. A person who uses Chrome as their primary browser has no need to keep Firefox installed. Firefox should endeavor to fix that. First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string. That's how upstart web browsers have fought against sites breaking things for them for decades. Second, Firefox should endeavor to be as compatible as possible with Chrome with regard to the DOM and JS, being sneaky if it has to. I think O365 webmail is the first good place to start, since it's widely deployed. USG websites as well, like DFAS MyPay or Marine A-PES do not work well on it. Obviously, it's difficult for Firefox devs to test on these sites, but that's all the more reason to take bug reports seriously.

deafpolygon 3y ago
> First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string. This leads to the larger issue of not knowing who your visitors actually are. If 75% of all Firefox installations spoof Chrome, then you won't know that they are actually FireFox users. This can drive adoption rates down as they stop caring about making things work on Firefox.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  No. Fragmentation is not a feature of the web, and delusions about developers caring about Firefox and its ~2% of web traffic are not helpful. The way to make sites work on Firefox is to convince them to stop serving broken shit to Firefox. This is the way the web has always worked.
- andrewaylett 3y ago
  It's already the case that companies using "Real User Metrics" will miss many Firefox users -- client-based monitoring is indistinguishable from client-based tracking (intent notwithstanding) with the result that if I need to disable three separate sets of protections (ETP, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin) before my browser will report my useage of my employer's website. Not everyone using Firefox will be quite so determined as I am, I'm sure. But it's still an issue that I try to raise with people who want to use browser statistics for anything. It's also worth noting that Firefox does spoof its user-agent in some circumstances, if you visit `about:compat` then you can see a list of sites that have user agent tweaks applied to them. See also: webcompat.com

aayala 3y ago

The Firefox Developer Edition rocks!!

squarefoot 3y ago

Dear Mozilla Foundation, in 2024 please act like you really want Firefox to be used by more people. Thanks.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
If it didn't change already then it likely never will.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

I am on Mac and while Safari is still much more snappy, more and more websites are a topping to work on Safari but work on Firefox. If only Mozilla thought just switching to making every release a major number release wasn’t most of the job done. Besides with every release something I had set just days back changes. And the experience doesn’t feel seamless at all. There are pages, popups with every release. So all this tells Mozilla learns nothing.

paul7986 3y ago

Used it religiously since 2002 when it was then called Mozilla.

happimess 3y ago

I switched (back) to Firefox a few years ago, and love it. My only complaint is that it forces me to restart the program occasionally, for updates. Does anyone know why this is done? Is it a technical necessity? Why can't I postpone it for a few hours?

manbash 3y ago

Firefox is my daily driver on my Ubuntu laptop, but for video streams and Google Meet (including virtual background[1]), I can see it still isn't utilizing my Intel GPU as much as Chromium (beta channel) does, so I split my usage between the two browsers to reduce the CPU usage for these specific cases. I've followed the basic recommendations (from e.g. Arch Linux wiki) but still getting less utilization with Firefox according to intel_gpu_top. [1] Well, at least virtual background works on Firefox now after their GSuite improvements.

kgwxd 3y ago

Unfortunately, no matter how evil Chromium gets, I just cannot switch to Firefox. I've been using it for 15 years already.

defensem3ch 3y ago

yes, i use firefox too and i love it. however i recently learned vivaldi has tab tiling and it's WAY better for me to use at work because i can see multiple tabs at once. wish firefox could implement this feature too

emsign 3y ago
Tab management in Vivaldi is excellent, it's the main reason I can't switch
TheFreim 3y ago
Vivaldi has been my browser for quite a while now, the customizability is great. Many of the features can be replicated through extensions, but the cohesive experience is unmatched. The bookmarks, window, and the (new) sessions are extremely useful and make tab management a breeze.

aayala 3y ago

I used Firefox as my primary browser until last 2 year (chrome was performing better). I will give a try again for sure (Debian and Mac user)

sepisoad 3y ago

i really like firefox to shine. but it’s very ugly and turns me off every time i use it. it's been around forever but the UI has never looked good, I’d argue that in recent years it’s gotten even uglier. recently i’ve been using duck duck go browser on macos, it’s literally my main browser for the past 6 months and I’m very happy with it’s simple and beautiful UI. i mentioned duck duck go browser because of multiple reason, first of all, there are many of us who are willing to ditch chrome, and a lot of us can live without all the goodies that come with chrome, a lot of us can live with a browser that is a bit slower than chrome, but i’m sure there are also a lot of us who cannot force themselves to deal with an ugly browser.

breischl 3y ago

I was using it, though I _think_ it was causing intermittent hangs and crashes on my Win 11 machine. It's hard to be sure, because it was so hard to repro, and could've been due to something else just interacting with FF badly. But it seems like Brave doesn't have the problem. Which is a shame, I'd like to use FF, and still do on other machines.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

It's a nice sentiment but Firefox' market share has dropped to 3%. It's going to take more than a blog post scolding readers about ethics to reverse that trend. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-201711-202311 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2017...

bad_user 3y ago

> "Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising" This is BS. Firefox is funded entirely by Google's Ads. Even if you donate to Mozilla, those donations won't be invested in Firefox. At this point, all 3 major browser engines are funded by ads. You may argue that Mozilla doesn't directly make money from advertising, but that's irrelevant because they'll never do anything to upset their cash cow. And Google can always kill Firefox by avoiding renewing their search deal, without much of a loss, as most Firefox users would switch to Google anyway, much like what users did when they tried switching to Yahoo as the default. --- UPDATE — A good reason to use Firefox is if it's simply better for you. For me, Firefox is better than Chromium-based alternatives because: + History sync is full and actually works; + DNS-Over-HTTPS works in parallel to corporate DNS (fallback to system); + Tree-style-tabs; + Bookmarks management; + Reader view (Android & desktop); + Great Ctrl+Tab; + Non-admin upgrades; + uBlock Origin; + Total Cookie Protection; + Android: multiple search engines; + Android: Open in app; + Android: Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, Cookie AutoDelete, other extensions; It also has some issues: - poor battery life on macOS, and I fear that Chromium currently has an edge there, even if both are worse than Safari; - problems when scrolling on Android, poor performance for certain websites (e.g., Mastodon, Twitter); - incompatibility with certain apps (e.g., Microsoft Teams), but in fairness, they've been investing in compatibility, see their recent work on Google Meetup; Firefox on Android has many issues, and the people denying it aren't doing it any favors. For me, the add-ons more than make up for it, it's my main browser, but I'm still uncomfortable recommending it to family. I hope Firefox continues to evolve and differentiate itself from Chrome because ideology isn't a good enough reason to prefer it over alternatives, not when Chromium is a thriving open-source project with multiple large companies contributing to it.

wg0 3y ago
That's another Lala land of obliviousness. Browser is a complex piece of software that needs effort. Users are not paying for it and those who will pay for itthen will probably require access to those users, for sure. Firefox is a dwindling piece of software and maybe they themselves should take some responsibility of where it is heading today. User adoption is merit driven and not mission or ideology driven. EDIT: Typos etc.

pmarreck 3y ago

Question regarding the Mac version: Is it more battery-consuming because its core on Mac is still Intel-machine-code-based and not ARM-based?

wtallis 3y ago
Firefox on ARM Macs runs as an ARM process, not an x86 process.

askonomm 3y ago

Nah, too many things break or are weird. I don't care if its because Google is a bad company and hates Firefox, I have no bone in this fight, I just want to browse the web without issues.

Snuupy 3y ago

I use librewolf，a Firefox fork, because of the things that corporate Mozilla keeps doing: from pocket to selling vpns and sponsored stories, they do enough user hostile things it ends up being a better experience on librewolf. On android I'm using iceraven.

izacus 3y ago

Will in 2024 Firefox finally start supporting desktop installation for PWA apps? I'm not going back to Electron crap for it.

havaloc 3y ago

Anyone else remember Mitchell Baker (Firefox CEO) calling for more than deplatforming? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

froggertoaster 3y ago
Yep, one of the many reasons I won't support the organization. At least capitalist/for-profit organizations are honest about who they are.
- orthecreedence 3y ago
  Yeah, when I think of "honest" I think of Google... Granted, that statement by Mozilla left a sour taste in my mouth. I'd like my browser vendor to be content-neutral. I'll decide if something is bad or not for myself.
nvm0n2 3y ago
[flagged]
- Zeratoss 3y ago
  How has firefox discriminated against you as a white male?
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    A lot of the money they make from Firefox usage gets spent not on Firefox or the web but on social justice activism, which is invariably exclusionary of ordinary European and American men. For example, they have an entire sub-fund devoted to nothing but ideological activism in Africa: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/awards/Africa-Mradi-IRL-Fund/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/awards/Africa... A typical project is something like funding a mobile app (note: not a website), specifically for African women to teach them how to plant potatoes. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/growing-skills-confidence-and-quality-potatoes-in-tanzania/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/growing-skills-confid... They don't help men - the app is exclusively given to women - because "The issue" is, as they put it, that "In Tanzania, older men are the primary decision-makers in households and local communities". They could fund things useful to everyone globally, or even things useful for the web specifically (radical), but they choose not to deliberately. Instead they fund content for competing platforms. That's because Mozilla is a generic left wing NGO that sees the Google/Firefox deal as merely a legacy endowment. Naive geeks use it and send them money, which enables them to divert funding to what they really care about. Edit: primarily -> a lot of, which changes nothing about the argument

froggertoaster 3y ago

I will never switch back to Firefox. Not until Mozilla as an organization fundamentally changes. They pretend to be the "good guys" but they're a very different organization than they were 20 years ago.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

Brave is more ethical. Firefox is just a vassal Google. And it is run by San Francisco bugmen.

wg0 3y ago

The main short coming in firefox for me is the ability to create different profiles for different use cases like one for personal and one for work etc. It is doable but is hidden behind special settings:/// etc sort of and switching between them also requires something similar.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Firefox Multi-Account Containers is far superior to multiple profiles, IMO.
- laluneodyssee 3y ago
  They are not a like for like alternative. Profiles allow for greater separation of browsing personas: I can have a different set of passwords, extensions, bookmarks per persona I have like Work, Personal, Focus etc... And while Firefox does have profiles, its not a great user experience. Theres no quick switching, the UI to access it feels outdated, and in general as much as it pains me to say it, Google has done a great job at implementing it. I'm sure Firefox will get there, but as of right now its a sub-par experience.
- cpressland 3y ago
  Multi Account Containers don’t sync with Firefox Sync. I assigned hundreds of websites to various containers only to lose them all when I rebuilt my Mac. Safari, Chrome, Edge all have this functionality and until Mozilla add this, Firefox is DOA for me.

EchoReflection 3y ago

I predominantly use Vivaldi, although I occasionally use FF as well. Mull and Fennec are good choices too, and in the past I used Bromite.

myko 3y ago

Chrome feels so much better to me, I can't imagine switching

avanai 3y ago

I’ve been using Firefox almost exclusively for years with two exceptions. The web dev tools in Chrome are really just better. And recently my work made the decision to only allow Chrome for security reasons. I’m annoyed about that but I understand why, it’s not necessarily that Chrome is more secure but the central management tools are stronger and if they were only going to support one, they picked the one more people use.

sspiff 3y ago

I've been using Firefox since it was still called Phoenix. It's amazing how we find ourselves in the same situation we did 20 years ago, at the mercy of a tech behemoth dominating how to access the Web, with the same Mozilla being the last man standing in the way of a true monopoly. I may have some reservations about decisions and actions from Mozilla these past few years, but they do what they must to survive, and still provide a net benefit to our world.

soundnote 3y ago

Nope. No thanks. First, Firefox literally makes their money from Google ads, and has Google search suggestions on by default. So much for privacy. Second, the Foundation. A bunch of people more interested in leftist activism than in building a aolid tool for the user. Or just trying to score coolness points by having a sneaker designer make time-limited themes - sorry, colorways with names like "Activist" and "Expressionist". But the politics. In "We need more than deplatforming", the organization in no uncertain terms said they were a-ok with others deciding what I should see on the Internet. Not okay, sorry. Why would I support an organization that hates me while the competition are doing things like allowing me to tune my own search results, or have options menus like Vivaldi's with more customization than is reasonable? And lastly, it's just not a great product. Security on Android is trash and there are no PWAs or tab groups among other things. There's just no case when I could use competition that's better and either doesn't hate me or can at least manage to not be emotionally incontinent with their hostility because the browser is what matters?

darklycan51 3y ago

Chrome became defacto because of techies and now techies are actively destroying the web by no longer swapping people to firefox, I guess it doesn't matter anymore, activism in general is dead, people just sit and let us all enter into a dystopia willingly. Cannot wait until unskippable ads even with "Premium" are a thing, just like cable, and our community will have been complicit in enabling it

aragonite 3y ago

Nowadays when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits? Usage of experimental Web APIs? Specific CSS properties? Deprecated features still supported by Chrome/Safari for backward compatibility? I ask because I'm wondering if it's possible for an extension/userjs to, if not polyfill, at least detect and warn users about attempts to use such features. Nowadays when a site doesn't appear to work correctly in Firefox I reopen it in Chrome, but this is a not-insignificant source of time-waste because about half of time I find either that the site is working as the developer intended, or that the site doesn't work in Chrome either. Having some overt indication (visible without having to open devtools) that unsupported browser features are being accessed could be very helpful here for reducing user uncertainty. Relatedly: I'm glad Firefox is planning to add support for IE's non-standard (but widely used ime) CSS zoom property: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936

LegitShady 3y ago
>when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits site written by google
- Barrin92 3y ago
  no, not at all. Pretty much anything Google does works across all browsers. The most common culprit by far are local and regional sites. Local bank, doctor's office, random public website from the municipality, school homepage and so on. The few software developers they have on hand simply don't bother testing against Firefox any more so things just break and aren't fixed.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

I would but I don't want to support the Mozilla Foundation

unstatusthequo 3y ago
Why?
superkuh 3y ago
Maybe use the unbranded build of firefox? It has the great side effect of allowing you to actually edit and install extensions/add-ons without having to use Mozilla's security theater automated signing portal. When some rare website doesn't work in my daily driver freedoms-respecting browser I'll load up Mozilla Firefox unbranded to do what needs to be done then close it.

boramalper 3y ago

The Web is the single most successful application platform of our day and age: it’s free, open, and unencumbered, and it’s cross-platform, available on expensive iPhones to sub-$250 Android phones just the same. Let’s make sure it stays that way.

tssva 3y ago

If Firefox makes a New Year’s resolution to fix the horrible battery drain while streaming video on my laptop whether running on Windows or Linux, I’ll make a resolution to switch to it when it is fixed. This has been an issue for years so I’m not holding my breath. Yes I have tried it again recently and no I’m not going to play around with flags trying to get it working acceptably.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ctoth 3y ago

Right now I use Chrome because I use several PWAs. Chrome lets me install them and even gives me options to auto-start them when my system starts. Firefox doesn't seem to have equivalent functionality. Researching it some, it seems Firefox used to support this but removed it as part of Mozilla's continuous own-goal of ... whatever the heck they're doing.

soundnote 3y ago
Why use Chrome when Brave is pretty much the same but with better privacy?

esfandia 3y ago

I actually finally just switched to Chrome (I'm a long time Firefox user, all the way back to when it was called Firebird), because of this issue: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/microsoft-defender-reporting-trojan-html-phish-pz-threat-with/td-p/47331 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/microsoft-defende... Windows Defender flags things in the Firefox cache as a Trojan. It probably isn't, and it could also have something to do with uBlock Origin, but until that is resolved (I'm keeping an eye on the above link) I can't risk it.

SubiculumCode 3y ago
i haven't seen that at all. Perhaps a refresh, clean install after deleting the hidden app folders in home?
- esfandia 3y ago
  I haven't done a re-install, but deleting the cache folder alone doesn't make it go away. Starting Firefox re-creates the folder obviously, and Defender gets triggered again.

gavinhoward 3y ago

I use Firefox, switched this year for the same reason. If I were rich, I would buy Mozilla, strip everything out but Firefox, and fund its development, even at a loss.

whatever1 3y ago

Need my icloud passwords

iscrewyou 3y ago

I got a new laptop and didn’t install Chrome. I don’t miss it at all. The only sites that are slow on Safari and Firefox are Google related. Go figure.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

supermatou 3y ago

Here's a tip re. a nice built-in function: about:memory You can reclaim quite a lot of memory there when your Firefox seems laggy.

icemanind 3y ago

The Chrome web development tools are so much better than Firefox's

kn100 3y ago

I switched back to Firefox like 6 years ago and it's the input browser I use regularly. I do unfortunately have Chrome installed on all my machines too since once every couple of months I'll find some usually government website that only works properly in Chrome. Firefox for Android is excellent too, especially since you can have add-ons. Between my Adguard VM in my tailscale network and Firefox ublock, my phone is an ad free place. Other add-ons that make the mobile internet more tolerable: Google Search Fixer - Google give Firefox users a crappy old search UI. this extension forces the new nicer UI. Old Reddit redirect - just redirects all reddit links to old.reddit.com. this bypasses the age verification nonsense Reddit introduced given I refuse to have an account there these days. Video background play fix - this one just means any video you are watching in the browser will keep playing if you minimise the browser - some sites try to be helpful and pause the video. ClearURLS - removes all tracking junk from URLS - make sharing links less miserable Dark reader - essentially just a way to make any website dark mode.

binkHN 3y ago

I have. I recently switched from Windows to Linux (Windows 11 drove me to and I'm thankful) and Firefox was installed by default. As a result, I decided to give it a try and I'm happy I did; it's far better than the Firefox of yore and it tries to be more user friendly than the commercial browsers we have today. There are still sites that break in unexpected ways with Firefox, but it's now my daily driver.

andrewstuart 3y ago

Firefox is my main browser it’s great.

mattxxx 3y ago

Use Firefox if only to put up a decent fight against Chrome's massive play to control your data and the ad ecosystem.

bheadmaster 3y ago

For some reason, on my Windows 10 laptop that I use for music production (Ryzen 3500U, Vega 8), Firefox installed from Microsoft store takes 5-10 seconds to start, while Edge starts instantly. I always liked Firefox, both practically and ideologically, but the annoyance is so high I never use it from that particular laptop. If anyone knows the cause or a fix, please share.

sannysanoff 3y ago
cause: Edge browser is started when Windows boots up, it sits there started but invisible, first window open is fast. It adds up to your windows start time and memory consumption. solution: start firefox during windows startup, too. https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1085268 https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1085268 however to start it invisible and behave like Edge, it may take additional tweaks. of course, it costs extra startup time and memory. Also, you can switch off Edge boot-time startup, if you want.

nmeofthestate 3y ago

I switched to Firefox on android when Chrome removed the "open on new tab" menu item and then ignored everyone's complaints about it for a year. It's decent although it hangs for 10 seconds or so on first startup (the fault of adblock I suspect), and sometimes hangs for half a minute or so during usage. Still worth it for adblock though.

exe34 3y ago

Can Firefox allow me to kill individual tabs without closing them? It's my favourite feature on Chrome.

mdaniel 3y ago
Navigate to about:processes and click the X to your heart's content (it's also from Tools : Browser Tools : Task Manager )
- exe34 3y ago
  Thank you! I do believe I'm ready to switch!

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… Add to that the non-macOS text handling, macOS-unlike font rendering, its insistence to not use the system-wide spell checker provided by the OS etc. It feels a bit rude at times. 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).

bee_rider 3y ago
If you are using Safari on Apple’s platform, you are already contributing to the user base of the browser that isn’t headed for monopoly. IMO, you are probably contributing better than us Firefox users; Safari remains large. I wonder if, like in Apps, Apple users are known to be more likely to pay for things…
sillyalbatross 3y ago
Also a macOS user and I don't use Firefox for the same exact reasons you listed, despite really wanting to. It just behaves very rudely on macOS and it seems like more and more they are stripping out features, for example in the latest update they removed macOS Vibrancy support, so now my toolbar can't have any transparency, which looks horrible. Not to mention they let that super noticeable bug with the system font not spacing correctly just linger for over two years. It's finally fixed but there is still a lot of weirdness with the way Firefox handles fonts on this platform and it's very obnoxious since macOS has best-in-class typography everywhere else. I'll rejoice on the day Safari gets a proper extensions API. I'd 100% make the move to it if I could just run RES.

izzydata 3y ago

Does anyone know of a way to replace the browser and search engine of the search bar at the bottom of an Android phone?

SubiculumCode 3y ago
Firefox provides a search widget

digitalsin 3y ago

The Mozilla CEO earned $6,903,089 in 2022 up from $5.6 million in 2021, while Firefox continues to lose market share. If you think Mozilla's priorities are tied to making Firefox the best browser on the Internet, at least in terms of privacy, freedom, and features, you're seriously blind.

Octabrain 3y ago

I've been using Firefox on the PC and phone for years now. I had the temptation a couple of years ago to use Chrome due to some issues I had on Linux (I don't remember what exactly) but then I concluded the obvious: using a browser made by a company that profits mainly on abusing user's privacy? Nah, I think I'm gonna pass.

flkiwi 3y ago

I would happily switch, but Firefox’s tabs are not sufficient for 2023. Vertical tabs are essential for me, and none of the Firefox plugin-based workarounds come anywhere close to Edge (and Brave). I prefer Firefox as a browser, but as a tool it’s growing more and more outdated.

vsskanth 3y ago

In 2024, font rendering in Firefox on Windows is quite bad compared to Chromium based browsers. You can see it a lot with Microsoft websites like outlook and azure devops. I tried, but switched back to Chrome (Ungoogled Chromium)

butterfi 3y ago

I’m online a lot and I go to a lot of different websites. I believe people when they say they’ve had issues with Firefox, but personally this is never been an issue I’ve only had to turn off ublock a few times over several years.

tqi 3y ago

> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data... nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. I think privacy activists need a more compelling "so what" than "it's better for privacy" to convince people it's worth switching. They seem to operate under the thesis that people were being duped, as opposed to having made a more or less concious choice to trade privacy for convenience, which maybe was true 10 years ago but feels antiquated today.

goku12 3y ago
At least my public interaction suggests the opposite - people aren't making these compromises willingly. They just don't know any better. No one chose to stay with Chrome after the problems were explained to them - especially not after showing them what browsing looks like with UBo on Firefox.

graphe 3y ago

The reason I switched to Firefox was for plugins. Then I switched to chrome when an update killed all my plugins and settings for them. Every time I tried Firefox it seems to do it again and again so I'm on ungoogled chromium until there's a good reason to switch. I used librewolf or iceweasel occasionally but there's not a good reason to switch since plugins don't delete themselves on chrome (as often).

orenlindsey 3y ago

I'll get downvoted for saying this but Safari isn't as bad as people say. The only reason I use chrome is for one singular extension for a single site (and they would release the extension on Safari if it didn't cost $100 a year to do so)

mukti 3y ago

I've used Firefox on desktop for years, even through some of the bad times. Today, FireFox is a really great experience and works well everywhere for me, except for some very specific use cases like internal company websites where some employees have deemed it "not suitable" for their web app (even when proven it works), and to use web apps that utilize APIs that I don't entirely like (namely, WebUSB - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB). But I keep a spare chromium around if I really need/want to use those apps. 99.9% of my browser use is Firefox. I think the bigger push should be to get people using FireFox mobile. In my experience, it is a much better, more customizable browser than Chrome. It works well with my browsing habits and general use of my phone (screen UI positioning, gestures, etc.). The most obvious benefit is the extension support, which makes browsing some mobile websites tolerable. Showing people the difference between browsing genius.com (lyrics website) with and without ads usually shocks them. At times on Chrome, the web page is completely unusable due to ads and pop ups.

sircastor 3y ago

I just read a bunch of comments yesterday [1] talking about Mozilla and its CEO putting little energy and money into Firefox. I am supportive of the sentiment but when Mozilla doesn't seem very committed to Firefox, it's hard to get onboard. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38795308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38795308

SubiculumCode 3y ago

Mozilla and me are tight. There's always a few complaints, but until there is another alternative that respects me I won't even consider changing to another browser. -written on Android Firefox Nightly 123.0a1

jlarocco 3y ago

I'm an on-and-off Firefox user, and I always find these pleas kind of lame. It's a good enough browser, but the other arguments aren't very convincing. It's a contradiction to claim Firefox is better at privacy when Mozilla makes most of its money by funneling people to Google's spyware network. Not only is it anti-privacy, the other side effects include things like only blocking "bad" trackers, not including ad-blocking/umatrix functionality by default, etc. And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference.

internet2000 3y ago
> And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference. I agree. The sooner Firefox goes away, the sooner people stop pretending we don't have a duopoly between Chrome and Safari already. From then, people need to work for Chromium improvements, perhaps consolidate in one good "ungoogled" fork. And let Safari be.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  I don't necessarily want Firefox to go away, but as it stands right now it's not independent from Google and can't take a hard stance on privacy or web standards.

sedatk 3y ago

I want to use Firefox so badly yet they make it so hard: - Bookmark bar icons are not synced. So they’re the same gray blobs until I click on them one by one after connecting to VPNs they’re behind, and do that for every new installation. Not a problem with other browsers. - Google Docs & Sheets render terribly due to kerning problems on canvas with 150% zoom on a HiDPI display. The text becomes almost unreadable. This is a 6 year old bug on Bugzilla.

smileysteve 3y ago

Firefox for Android is a big ux improvement between adblock and dark eyes. There is one annoying rendering issue though

bradgessler 3y ago

I'm really getting tired of hearing the excuses from really smart people in tech sticking with Chrome. Yes, you will find a thousand excuses to not switch. Yes, you will find things that are worse (you will also find things that are better). Yes, things are different. Just suck it up and make the switch. You're smart. You'll adapt. We'll all be better for it.

Seb-C 3y ago
There are plenty of alternative browsers based on Chromium that are way better than Firefox, and I don't see any good reason to switch on it. I went away from Firefox a few years ago and am very happy about it. I also think that the "free web" arguments are bullshit. Blink is open source, so any wrongdoing from Google can be undone. An organization like Mozilla that is able to develop and maintain his own engine could achieve the same results by forking Blink. It would probably reduce the costs by more than 10, without any ethical compromise, resulting in a far better browser overall. If they wanted it, they could lead the way to bridge projects like ungoogled-chromium or the various attempts at reviving android extensions in a consistent and ethical fork. Probably even convince others like Vivaldi, Edge, Opera or even Apple to join the initiative.

xony 3y ago

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Leader2light 3y ago

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Leader2light 3y ago

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capl 3y ago

I have a couple of issues that keeps me using Safari. First off is the insane battery usage. It’s like 2x battery usage of Safari. Then it’s all the noise like Pocket, sign in this and register that. And then a very specific problem that has annoyed the crap out of me: extension windows close if Firefox loses focus! That means that using Bitwarden to do this: 1) open Bitwarden and find some login details 2) alt tab to the program you’re trying to sign in to 3) paste the username 4) alt tab back to Firefox/Bitwarden and there you go, the Bitwarden window was closed due to Firefox losing focus and you now have to open it again, search and find the credentials again and then paste the password 5) open Bitwarden a third time and search yet again for the OTP code… A huge pain in the ass that makes me want to use another browser just because of that.

sigmonsays 3y ago
for bitwarden, you can open it in your sidebar. but I admit, that is super annoying when opening bitwarden from the extension icon.

devwastaken 3y ago

Switching to Firefox is like asking python devs to not use CPython. Firefox in the current ecosystem is the least innovative or open tech. It is not modular, you can't use it for anything but Firefox. The technology is designed only for FF, you can't use it for your own purposes without metaphorically reaching in and pulling out wires. They don't have the resources or the engineers necessary to make technology. All they can do is try to play catch-up with their browser. This is why everyone else (not webkit) saw the writing and went chromium. If Firefox was the optimal browser everyone would have forked it instead. They would be using it in their own stacks.

ape4 3y ago

Lots of us are tech "influencers". Lets use that influence to spread Firefox.

Vicinity9635 3y ago

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jbverschoor 3y ago

I'll give it yet a another go...

vishkk 3y ago

Maybe Arc.

hhsectech 3y ago

I've used Firefox forever. I've tried for many years to convert people to it...but they can't live without "muh chrome".

21eleven 3y ago

I switched to Firefox as the default mobile browser on my android phone and the experience is excellent. I have not missed Chrome one bit.

porridgeraisin 3y ago

1. pwas 2. Filesystem and other APIs for extensions.

neonsunset 3y ago

Firefox on Windows and Safari on macOS. No developer should daily drive Chromium-based browsers today except when needed for ensuring correct behavior as a target.

DiabloD3 3y ago

People who use Chrome, or any Chrome-based browser, are inherently self-destructive and greatly confused. Chrome, and Chrome-based browsers, perform worse, are buggier on; especially on non-Nvidia drivers and especially on OSes other than Windows Have what is considered an ideal AMD+AMD Linux box? Chrome, nor any Chrome-based browser, is for you. For extra irony: Chrome on Android and Android Webview sucks on any Qualcomm-based phone. Firefox? Smooth, high performance, nearly bug-free. A lot of the sibling comments here tell insane stories like "I use Chrome because I once used a broken website." Fine, if a website goes out of its way to write HTML, CSS, or JS that is so non-standard and broken that it can't work on Firefox, then use Chrome for that website specifically; use Firefox for all the websites that actually are spec-compliant. Side rant: I don't even know how webdevs are getting this wrong. There aren't webdevs in the traditional sense anymore, just a bunch of kids that are using whatever popular bullshit framework is out today, banging out some flavorless souless crap so they can collect a paycheck like the rest of us. Like, they're using React + one of the popular React UI things (Next or MUI or whater), or they're using Tailwind + something for the JS, or any one of the popular combinations... guess what? THEY ALL WORK ON FIREFOX 100% OUT OF THE BOX. How are you screwing this up?! The work is already done for you! Stop going out of your way to break it!

dmix 3y ago

I use FF as daily but haven't been able to use any site with Cloudflare gating. I get agressive very slow loading captchas. But these same sites work fine in Chrome. I haven't figured out why but it's super annoying. I despise CF with a passion.

mark-r 3y ago

Until my Windows became unusable, I was using Chrome about 90% of the time and Firefox about 10%. Since then I've been trying to get along with Ubuntu Linux only, and it came with Firefox. Haven't even installed Chrome yet, and I don't think I will.

charcircuit 3y ago

>In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. ... This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web. What hindered development was Microsoft resting on their laurels thinking they won the browser war. Google on the other hand is continuing to invest resources into Chrome. As evidenced in the past if Google stopped investing into Chrome, and stopped taking community contributions to chromium eventually another better browser would come around to overthrow it.

ralphc 3y ago

Chrome is the only way to do Chromecasting, right?

thruway516 3y ago

This being HN, I'm really surprised no one has mentioned Brave. Brave is what Firefox was a few years ago (and what firefox claims to be but isn't) in terms of privacy and comes pre-loaded with an ad-blocker that uses the same list as ublock. It's also faster and less of a memory hog. I switched from firefox as main driver and haven't looked back. It is chromium based but I don't see this as a drawback. But this is 2023 and using a single browser is an artificial limitation (and makes no sense if you're a web developer) so I don't know why people make it sound like it has to be one or the other. It's not exactly like choosing an IDE. I pretty much use every browser except Edge.

soundnote 3y ago
People here have a major hateboner against Brave. Some of it is crypto, some of it is Eich, relatively little the product itself.
- thruway516 3y ago
  Yeah, it does have all the crypto bloatware, but it doesn't force it on you so all of that can just be ignored. I actually think Brave (and maybe Safari) is the least opinionated browser in terms of features it forces on you and it's somewhat easy to turn off or ignore what you don't want. I might be deluding myself but it's always feels like the lightest browser that I use.
  - soundnote 3y ago
    It's so bloated: https://i.imgur.com/tuMGc3c.png https://i.imgur.com/tuMGc3c.png
PUSH_AX 3y ago
I do use it but I just wish crypto wasn’t baked in.
- dave78 3y ago
  Agreed, though I recognize that they need income too to avoid Mozillas's problems, so I can tolerate some amount of them experimenting with revenue strategies. That said, I turned off the crypto stuff on day 1 and it has stayed off and I never even think about it anymore. Brave is great and I think more people should give it a shot.

beanjuiceII 3y ago

My main browser has been firefox for awhile now and I've been slowly migrating to chrome for performance reasons. firefox is just not good with memory in my experience over the last few years. I have to restart it a few times a week so my computer becomes usable again ;( i wish this wasn't the case because i don't really want to migrate

tarruda 3y ago

In 2023 I had to switch my work web browser to Brave because Slack decided to stop working on Firefox.

usernamed7 3y ago

I switched to waterfox after the whole ads-in-your-address-bar debacle.

maxlin 3y ago

> ethical browser > "we need more than deplatforming" No. Firefox single-handedly destroyed their reputation beyond belief with that article in my eyes. They are supposed to support the exact opposite instead of being evangelists for censorship, centralized control, lack of ownership. That Google pays their bills from them keeping Google as the default search engine isn't even as bad as that one article made them appear.

mvdtnz 3y ago
Wow, I just googled that[1] and it's absolutely shocking. I want no part of a browser vendor who thinks they should be in control of what is and isn't on the web. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
deleted 3y ago
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milkglass 3y ago

FF is great! The only stopper for me to uninstall chrome is google meets. Background blur only works occasionally on FF but it has gotten a lot better this year.

tipsytoad 3y ago

Switched to Firefox a month or two ago, mostly for ublock origin on android, and unlimited history (seriously, why is this not the standard?) I've tried to like it but honestly it's been painful. MacOS Sonoma seems to have a hover bug, which has been unresolved through the last 3 bug fix updates. Performance is "fine" but seems to lag with many tabs open which was never an issue in chrome (this is on an M2 pro!) PDF reader also seems significantly slower as well. At this point I'm considering going back to chrome.

xmprt 3y ago
Unlimited history is nice but I hate how history works out of the box. I might be doing something wrong but ctrl+h pops up a sidebar which shows every single website visited today in no discernible order. I've learned about ctrl+shift+h which is better but even there, the UI is a bit lacking compared to what Chrome has out of the box. Is there anything I can do to improve this?
- genevra 3y ago
  There's a filter at the top right if I remember right, change it to Last visited
jhasse 3y ago
Have you tried Brave?

shtack 3y ago

I tried so hard earlier this year to move back to FF from Chrome. I actually found the desktop experience great but the mobile app on iOS was so clunky, and I rely enough on sync, that I had to move back after a few months.

Bjorkbat 3y ago

Funny enough I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for well over a decade, but lately I've struggled to continue letting that remain the case just because of how badly managed Mozilla appears to be. The weird AI website builder thing they released was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. Besides my many objections to current AI, my bigger issue was that this demonstrated a general lack of focus and carelessness on their part.

Boxxed 3y ago
That seems like an odd reason to not use a browser, especially considering how the company that makes the dominant browser is also a mess.
- Bjorkbat 3y ago
  I mean, mess is a bit subjective in Google's case. Sure, they tend to take on a lot of side-projects only to inevitably abandon them, and they did slip behind in the AI race, but there's a huge difference between "stagnant giant with way too much money" messy and "if our browser market share gets any lower government websites won't support our browser" messy.
Dalewyn 3y ago
Mozilla is badly managed[1], at least from the perspective of users and developers. Nobody outside of the executives can possibly say Mozilla is well managed with a straight face when they fire hundreds of developers and then turn around and pay their CEO /seven million fucking dollars/[2], all the while Firefox continues to slip further into irrelevance. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary... [2]: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990-ty22-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...

arcade79 3y ago

I switched to Firefox both at home and professionally in 2020. Previously, my web browsers have been (in chronological order): Netscape 3.X, Netscape 4, Opera, Phoenix, Konqueror, Firebird, Firefox, Chrome, and now back to Firefox. I have exactly one very negative thing to say about Firefox. It absolutely sucks on machines with spinning rust and no SSD. It's the only piece of software I have that literally takes more than 2 minutes to start. With disk-IO pegged at 100% during the entire startup period. I'm assuming it reads through the myriads of files it has stored on disk, and that this is rather slow due to seek-times on HDDs. However, this is the major point I have against Firefox.

nateb2022 3y ago
Having used some machines with older HDDs up until recently, I can definitely sympathize with you there. If you go to `about:config` and change `cache.disk.enable` and `browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl` to false, your cache will be stored solely in RAM and this should speed up your experience somewhat.

dawnerd 3y ago

Only issues I’ve run into since switching this month is just some weird jank from 1pass not always filling in forms. It’s been a while since I last used Firefox and I’m very pleased with how much it’s improved.

deleted 3y ago

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insanitybit 3y ago

> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. Firefox makes almost all of their money from Google, so... > If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers Not sure what the point is here but if everyone is using Chromium/Webkit obviously this issue goes away too. And, oh, that's it. I thought this was going to have like... a list of reasons. This feels like a very odd post to be #1 on HN right now, it contains almost no information.

KronisLV 3y ago

I use Firefox as my default browser on my desktop and netbook (Windows/Linux), as well as my phone (Android), since the addons I want to use are available there and there's no Manifest v3 weirdness. The UI and performance are both okay (though content process limit is no longer exposed through the UI which isn't that nice when your netbook has like 4 GB of RAM), I quite enjoy the DevTools in particular, even more so than the ones in Chromium browsers. However, I got some Apple devices for development and it seems like Firefox on the desktop breaks access to some sites (Private Internet Access, the one that got bought out by Kape, either in OpenVPN or WireGuard mode, same issue), which was apparently a known issue last I tried figuring out what's up. So there, I kind of moved to Brave which seems pleasant for the most part. It's also honestly be nice if Windows let me get rid of Edge or replace it with Chromium/Brave as my secondary browser easily instead of sticking around as bloatware. Maybe that's just me hating on software nowadays in general (since it isn't always very nice to the user, for a variety of reasons), but Firefox is pretty great when it works!

Aachen 3y ago
I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? They ban any IP address using Firefox desktop? And somehow detect when the same person uses a VPN service?
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? When I checked, I think there were DNS resolution failures for some domains. This was regardless of whether PIA DNS or the existing DNS servers were used. It was also regardless of whether OpenVPN or WireGuard were used, or which VPN server was used - the only pre-requisite was that the VPN be active and Firefox be used on a MacBook in particular. It was very odd and hasn't ever happened on Windows/Linux with Firefox either, nor did happen on the MacBook with Brave afterwards either. I didn't care enough to dig into it, but some people had similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nhmpw/issue_using_pia_with_firefox_on_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nh... https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14ylzxi/connection_issues_with_firefox_on_macos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14yl... It seems that the suggested "fix" that worked for the other person is to disable IPv6 altogether: > This is a bug in Firefox, you can fix it by opening about:config in Firefox and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true Not like it makes me like Firefox any less, it's just odd that we get super random issues like that for relatively basic use cases (albeit maybe various VPN implementations aren't necessarily that common, who knows). Would be nice to live in a world where everything "just works", though.

furtive808 3y ago

I made sure all new computers at my work include Firefox. I also encourage staff to use adblockers.

kemiller 3y ago

Not until they do better in power draw. Safari or Orion for me until then.

CharlesW 3y ago

To Mozilla: In 2024, please switch to WebKit. Gecko had a good and honorable run, but no longer sparks joy. It's not a differentiator, which means that the resources you're applying to it are a waste of time and money. Please thank Gecko for serving its purpose in our lives and let it go, before its reputation gets worse. Firefox's market share has slipped so far that most web developers no longer test with it. Adopt and contribute to WebKit. Focus on things that matter.

tslocum 3y ago
Mentioning Gecko repeatedly without mentioning WebRender, the rendering engine that many users are using today in Firefox, and which will become the default/only rendering engine at some point in the future,[0] makes it seem that you have no idea about what you are speaking of. 0. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Gecko is the browser engine. WebRender is a component of Gecko, specifically a GPU-based 2D rendering engine. It is not a browser engine.
  - tslocum 3y ago
    Yes, WebRender makes up the compositor portion of the browser rendering engine. A very large, critical portion of it. Thus, saying "Gecko had a good and honorable run" is disingenuous to the large-scale changes and progress the developers have made (and continue to make) on the rendering engine.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      I think you think I hate Gecko. In fact, I've used it since it was NGLayout and think it's one of the most important pieces of software in computing history. I have deep respect for the world-class engineers working on WebRender and other Gecko components. I simply think that it's time has come. Remember that Mozilla itself once intended to replace Gecko with Servo. I have no doubt that WebRender is brilliant, but WebRender will not save Gecko, and Gecko will not save Firefox. If Firefox is worth saving — and I think that with hard choices, its decline can be reversed — then Gecko and its components are non-differentiating ballast that must be dropped if the balloon is to get over the mountain. IMHO, of course.

intellix 3y ago

as a frontend web developer there's a reason I use Chrome and bought an iPhone. It's so I see what my users are going to see

deleted 3y ago

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xpressvideoz 3y ago

> the only remaining ethical web browser I hate associating ethics with technical debates. Chrome didn't win by being ethical, it won by being better. Plain words cannot save Firefox from losing its market share. I know battling against tech giants is hard, but appealing to ethics will only lead to hostility for some people.

tomwheeler 3y ago
I'd argue that it "won" (read: achieved the majority of market share) because it was relentlessly pushed by Google, the search engine with the majority of market share.
maerF0x0 3y ago
What if the ethics come at a performance cost? Then you have to lead with what you value (and hope the market agrees)
cycomanic 3y ago
Chrome won by being unethical (and continuing to do so), for a while every time you visited some Google site you were bombarded with "switch to Chrome" banners. At the same time they often artificially slow down Firefox on Google sites (see e.g. the recent news about some code on YouTube)

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

I never stopped using it. Firefox is great

kornork 3y ago

I switched to the Arc browser this year, and I love it. The best feature is that it auto-closes tabs. It makes having different spaces for work and personal browsing easy, and they are constantly adding convenience features. It runs on Chromium. I don't know how that intersects with the ethical and standards issues around Chrome.

numlock86 3y ago

What bothers me is that all their recent ad campaigns just revolve around the premise of "We are not Chrome", which really doesn't sell to me.

psyclobe 3y ago

I miss chrome cast.

gauravphoenix 3y ago

Is there a way to use Apple's keychain with FF?

deleted 3y ago

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teo_zero 3y ago

I recommend Firefox with zero additional plugins, but configure it to automatically clear the cookies when quitting. You can now click 'accept' to every insisting site, knowing that they will be soon forgotten.

_andrei_ 3y ago

Problem is it's not the best browser out there, Chromium is. I wanted to switch to Firefox many times, and while for regular websites it's ok, the performance in more complex web apps simply sucks. And the developer tools are dogsh* compared to Chromium's.

gitaarik 3y ago
The developer tools are pretty similar in my experience. I think it's maybe just that you're not used to it. And did you know that developer tools like this actually started in Firefox with the Firebug plugin? Firefox is not slower with more complex web apps, you either have a (site) specific problem or are not judging fairly. And even if you use Chromium, you are supporting Google's power position in browser technology influence. Which they use to push through web standard that benefit them, but not the users. Firefox has a more open ecosystem that is not focused on the benefit of one particular company.

ajkjk 3y ago

The list of bullshit Mozilla has tried to pull over the years weighs heavily, and although I have had plenty of complaints with Chrome's decisions also, Mozilla's strike me as much worse. Not interested until they completely disavow those strategies in a convincing way.

rightbyte 3y ago
We know they know we know. Google is evil but the uproar about Mozilla is about the fifth columners trying to wreck it. Like, our last hope with a consumer facing browser that has any hope of keeping up with Google spamming disfeutures into the web space.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Well I don't know what you mean by fifth columners, this is just my own opinion but it's quite widespread because they really sold out people's trust. The thing, though, is that Mozilla is in the perfect spot to get better, any time they want. Which means I'm not personally letting off the hook. Whereas there's no point hoping for any change from Google.

alien_cat 3y ago

If you like customization, I recommend the Firefox fork Floorp. It's the only fork where you can hide the native horizontal tab bar and use a vertical tab instead. And instead of using Tree Style Tab, try Sidebery.

tomduncalf 3y ago

Thanks for the reminder, I will give it another go - the latest Chrome redesign looks bad to my eyes, and I’m on the fence about whether I enjoy Arc or not. I’m still forever grateful to FF for leading us out of the dark days of IE6

gunapologist99 3y ago

> switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in this article. Mozilla receives literally billions from Google[1] every year -- $26,000,000,000.00 in 2021 alone, with only 3% market share. That's a lot of zeros -- some startups might be rather happy to see an annual 26 billion funding round! Mozilla forced privacy-rejecting products like Pocket[2] into Firefox. Mozilla secretly-installed advertising extensions[3]. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus... 2. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-browser-is-a-privacy-nightmare-on-desktop-and-mobile/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-brows... 3. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... CORRECTION: a comment below correctly points out that Mozilla wasn't the only recipient of that $26B in 2021; it appears that Apple was the biggest payee.

sevagh 3y ago
I love Firefox and I hate Mozilla.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
That $26B is for paying all browsers, not Mozilla alone. Mozilla is not receiving literally billions from Google every year; a recent year was $450M. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go... It's still a lot of money, more than I suspect Firefox's market share would allow. It seems more like a payment to maintain a monopoly while keeping anti-trust concerns off of Google.
causal 3y ago
These attacks don't feel like they're being made in good faith. 1. This is patently false. If you read the article you linked you'll see that $26B is Google's total spend on being the default search engine across all platforms including Apple and Samsung devices. Apple gets $18B of that alone. Firefox is a much smaller share, and it's not clear at all why taking this money would be unethical in the first place. 2. Firefox is up-front about the fact they use Pocket to generate revenue, and make it simple to disable. 3. I agree that Firefox should have been more up-front about what gets installed when participating in studies, but it should be noted that Cliqz has since been removed, and this article is 6 years old.

netbioserror 3y ago

The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be. If Mozilla got their team to work supporting Blink and integrated it into Firefox, we'd probably all be better off.

38 3y ago
Google is constantly inventing new JS APIs. Some websites adopt those, which then breaks the site for all other browsers. That's good enough reason for everyone to avoid Blink.
- r3d0c 3y ago
  > Google is constantly inventing new JS APIs like what?
  - 38 3y ago
    http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/external/chromium/chrome/common/extensions/docs/experimental.html http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/e...
    - r3d0c 3y ago
      that's specific to chrome also it's weird argument "constantly inventing new js apis" so what? their usefulnesss should be determined in their own context, not by the fact that they're a js api; unless you're a child who wages weird programming language culture wars on the internet and thinks anything that isn't the language they use is inferior
Vinnl 3y ago
Mozilla could contribute to Blink, but that would not help it prevent Blink from adding e.g. Web Environment Integrity ("DRM for the web"), or other additions that are user-hostile. Being in control of an engine gives way more sway over that engine.

madballster 3y ago

I found Firefox to be much more response when operating lots of tabs and opening and closing tabs quickly with keyboard shortcuts on Windows. My direct comparison is Microsoft Edge (Chromium based) which is noticeably sluggish on CTRL-W and then trying to type a new address. Even after days of usage, my Firefox process might grow to 3-4gb of ram usage with no noticeable performance penalty.

tim333 3y ago

I might move for a slightly weird reason. I have Chrome and Firefox and tend to use whatever's the less annoying. Recently there's a weird glitch in Chrome that in Twitter that if you scroll down by hitting space it kind of slowly keeps scrolling. Doesn't happen in Firefox so there you go.

hankyone 3y ago

I gave it a fair shot but somehow I ended up with Edge as my full time browser… I am looking forward to Arc on Windows, it’s been nice on MacOS

spacechild1 3y ago

I have been using Firefox for more than 20 years and I am happy as ever.

bobajeff 3y ago

In the near future I will probably stop using the Web as much. I'm certain now that soon the Web will at best be about as open and user focused as Android and iOS are today.

billytetrud 3y ago

I got so tired of dealing with Google's AMP so I switched to Firefox just on mobile. It's fine, tho the url bar doesn't work as well as on chrome. Other than that I've gotten used to it well enough. I'm starting to hate everything Google does. All their products are steadily getting worse and worse as they get more bloated. I'll consider switching to Firefox on desktop.

cassepipe 3y ago

I wonder how is mozilla VPN business going. It was obvious to me that they should have gone into that business sooner as VPN are all about trust and they are one the few orgs committed to privacy so they can turn that trust into something valuable to them. But I am yet to see an ad for their VPN product while on the other hand I am bombarded by ads for SurfShark and NordVPN.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox. Calling Firefox, or rather Mozilla, ethical is like calling China a paragon of protecting human rights. So no, no thanks. Firefox can and should die, because Mozilla should die.

MrDresden 3y ago

Firefox is fantastic! Please try it out both if it would be your first time or if it has been years since the last time. Also, if you do any web development at all please make sure to test your code on Firefox. I keep having to phone up companies when their webpages don't work on Firefox and ask to talk to someone related to IT (yes, I do this and it does work). It is a bit of an awkward discussion when I'm told that their developers have tested the code on Chrome, and I point out that Firefox and Safari also exist.

wesapien 3y ago

We could have a great browser in Firefox but it's been infiltrated by the same corporate virus we see everywhere. They need to just stick to creating a browser first before other initiatives. They need to listen to their users.

rebhan 3y ago

My company's antivirus for some reason blocks "firefox.exe" . Is there an (updated) recompiled version somewhere with another application name ? Palemoon seems to be quite out of date.

ifightcrime 3y ago

I wish I could! I can’t until they have better account/profile switching. I use that on Chrome heavily for test users and debugging.

oehpr 3y ago
check out firefox containers. You can launch a specific container as a new tab with the hotkey "Ctrl+shift+#", depending on what you have set. I have ctrl+shift+1 for personal, 2 for work, 3 for banking. It's a super rapid way to run multiple contexts in the same window. Really recommend it.

jftuga 3y ago

I recently switched and then made an extension called FoxColorBox which allows you to change and customize browser Window colors. When you open a new window, it will have a distinct color. This can help you differentiate between home, work, and school. It can also be useful when working in development, staging and production environments. * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxcolorbox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxcolorbox/ * https://github.com/jftuga/foxcolorbox https://github.com/jftuga/foxcolorbox

kouru225 3y ago

I started using brave a few years ago and I just can’t really switch back tbh, but if I could I would switch back to firefox.

butz 3y ago

Not only switch, find a way to contribute too, as this is an open source project. One can start with something small, like translations, answering to questions on forums, or triaging bugs.

lmedinas 3y ago

I agree with everything the Author said and I do have Firefox installed for those reasons although my main Browser is Brave (Win/Linux) and Safari (Mac). Nowadays Firefox is as good as the Chromium alternatives, there is no doubt on that. The question is: What would it take for the majority of the Internet users (enterprise, users with low literacy, Developers, Powerusers, etc...) to switch to Firefox ? 15 years ago it was clear. Firefox was vastly superior to IE. Nowadays is not vastly superior to the competition, in fact, I cannot think of any major compelling reasons which would make all those groups of users to change. As for me, I used Firefox before it was Firefox or Mozilla and I do plan to join the cause and use Firefox in 2024.

josefritz 3y ago

I've been using Firefox since about 2008. I've never had a problem that switching to Chrome fixed, and only encountered a few old clunky sites and apps that were IE specific. Those sites are so old they're looking for the wrong user agent and don't work correctly in Edge either.

ZeroClickOk 3y ago

The killer feature that everyone is waiting for Firefox is... "chromium tab". If I can open a "chromium tab" inside of Firefox for some sites that work only on chromium browsers I swear I will not look back :)

Gareth321 3y ago

In 2024, please support translation on iOS. How can there be zero translation support for iPhones and iPads?

hodanli 3y ago

I use Firefox for everything. Chrome for the Google products except search. I have secondary Google account for Firefox.

max_ 3y ago

Firefox is clunky, slow and bloated on mobile. That is my deal breaker.

zwayhowder 3y ago

I wish Firefox would support faster profile switching. I consult and have multiple customers who all insist I use their Gmail or Outlook accounts, so I need about 6 profiles on the go. I can't use containers because it means I can't default, for example Google to my Personal container, which I want in my standard profile. Having to create shortcuts to load each profile or keep about:profiles open is frustrating compared to the Chrome experience. It's not enough to stop me using FF as my daily driver, but it is enough to stop my partner using it for theirs.

webworker 3y ago

In 2022, I switched from Firefox to Safari and haven't looked back. In 2024, I'll be staying put. Either I just don't go to them, or I have really good luck, because none of the sites I visit are "broken."

joduplessis 3y ago

In 2024, I'd like to not fry my battery when browsing a simple website. Thanks.

goofyreader 3y ago

I’m probably one of the few users in the Apple ecosystem that uses Firefox for desktop but safari for mobile. Was really into Firefox on both, but ended up switching to safari for mobile because it’s less hassle to use UI wise + more feature rich esp when mobile typing is slow. Definitely losing out on the whole syncing benefits. If Firefox mobile supported adblockers and other extensions I’d make the switch.

alexzeitler 3y ago

I switched to Firefox two years ago and never looked back. Don’t even have Chrome installed.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago

Firefox seems slow for me, Chrome is blazing fast.

cryptonector 3y ago

FF is great!

qwertyuiop_ 3y ago

Why are Mac users forgetting the hen laying the golden egg aka Safari. It has impressive performance on Mac OS. I just ran browserbench and Chrome and gang do not even come close to the performance. There are enough Mac OS deployed out there to make a dent in the Chrome monopoly.

huqedato 3y ago

I gave Firefox many chances during the past 5 years but every time had to switch back to Chrome/Edge because many sites I use are just optimised for Chrome. Sad but it's a fact.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

I will not. You can't beg me. You can't scare me into it. You just have to quit fucking up Firefox. I'll use Firefox forks. But I'm not using Mozilla® Firefox™. Period. They've treated me like they don't care if I choose it for the last time. If they want to quit pushing pocket, quit preaching to me about expressing myself via themes, quit resetting my configuration upon update, quit limiting the extensions I can use and pretending it's for my benefit, quit changing UX arbitrarily, and generally quit treating me like they don't care if I use their browser or not, I'll consider it. Trust is lost quickly and gained slowly. If it's any consolation, I won't use Edge, Chrome or Safari either.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

I hope that Firefox on iOS gains extensions soon. That's the main reason I still stick to Edge. It has AdBlock built-in and it syncs with my desktop.

shmolf 3y ago

I would have switched to Firefox a while ago as my primary, except that it doesn't support PWA features in the same way as Chrome. I use PWA apps regularly. Once that feature is available and capable, I'll gladly run to the Firefox team.

johnklos 3y ago

"...the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox" That's pretty rich. Firefox did irreparable harm when they decided to funnel all Americans' DNS lookups to an abusive, monopolistic, for-profit company, Cloudflare, WITHOUT ASKING. That's sleazy, and every network I manage now has the "use-application-dns.net" canary domain because of this. No matter how much people try to frame this as, "they're protecting you from your bad, evil ISP", they're doing things surreptitiously, without consent, without any reason to believe Cloudflare, who are happy to host spammers and scammers, is any less evil. "Privacy", my ass. Address this, Firefox people, and maybe I'll trust you a little.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago

No. Please switch to a firefox spinoff. Mozilla can fuck off and die.

slowmovintarget 3y ago

I switched back to Firefox in 2016 when Google began hampering uBlock Origin. I have Chrome installed on my work PC for the one or two work-related sites that just won't work properly without pants-down mode. On personal equipment, I just use Firefox (on Linux). The sites that don't work properly are few an far between, and the usually don't work because they're waiting on a number of third-party tracker scripts to load, which I disallow.

wetpaws 3y ago

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lossolo 3y ago

It's a bad situation because of Mozilla management's incompetence, and the lack of alternatives to Firefox exacerbates the issue. Instead of investing in 'Ai' perhaps they should focus on a massive marketing campaign for their main product, which is what the majority of people here are primarily interested in.

mnming 3y ago

Long time firefox user, absolutely love it. My only grudge is that on Android some tab will just randomly go black and blank. This problem has been there for at least 1 year, I think it has something to do with os memory collection but I can't prove anything. And I still use chrome, because of the Chromecast.

AiTricky 3y ago

I couldn't tell you what the difference is between Chrome and Firefox. But that is the reason I was able to switch. I didn't get slowed down at all in the switch. And the reason I switched is because Google has been consistently suspicious about data. Plus, Mozilla seems to be better for the internet, and I want to show my support. There was a long time in between using either where I was using Brave. Actually, when I ditched Chrome like 7 years ago, I made Brave my default and installed Firefox developers edition. It took a couple years before my default swapped.

Gud 3y ago

There is no reason to use Chrome. It might be more performant, have a better UI, whatever, I don’t care. It is developed by Google, the number one enemy of the open web. Use Firefox. To be honest, I always felt a little dirty when using Chrome so I always ended up switching back to Firefox.

mito88 3y ago

for mobile, fennec is a great firefox alternative. https://www.devx.com/terms/fennec/ https://www.devx.com/terms/fennec/

tungah 3y ago

Done.

Oxodao 3y ago

Always used Firefox and always will while it lasts. But this year I found out that Google Maps is getting really broken to the point where I have to run chromium just to use it. Anyone having the same issue / knows how to fix this ? Pretty sure its just a case of Google wanting me to migrate but that won't happen. (While OSM and alternatives are probably quite good I'd like to keep using GMaps though)

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There's been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don't even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox." Firefox is not independent. It is financed by Google and all web search queries on Firefox go to Google by default. Mozilla has stated over and over that the web "must" have advertising. Sometimes advertising and privacy are incompatible. But to Mozilla, who is totally reliant on Google to survive, the two are _always_ compatible. "Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data." Where is this information coming from? The people who wrote Chrome for Google previously worked for Mozilla. The annual salary of the CEO of Mozilla is over $600 million. How is Mozilla making this money. Donations? Perhaps it is coming from sales of advertising services performed by their business partner, Google. Browser vendors do not need to "sell personal data" in order to profit. For example, Google, Apple and Microsoft can sell advertising services. Mozilla might be one of the few if only examples of a browser vendor selling personal data. Mozilla gets paid for sending search queries to Google.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Typo: s/600/6/ https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990-ty22-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...

sagarpatil 3y ago

I switched to firefox nighly in Android and I don't think I'm going back to Chrome. The amount of ads, tracking and the overall experience was getting out of hand.

Zuiii 3y ago

Gladly, provided that Mozilla gives me a way to install 1) my own custom web extensions and 2) custom default search engines on standard vanilla Firefox WITHOUT their involvement. Until then, I'll stay with browsers that actually respect my authority as the user thank you very much.

rubicks 3y ago

I've been using firefox exclusively for years. No, slack.com, I will not switch to chrome. Fix your "huddles" to support Firefox.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

I went librewolf and love it. Highly recommend everyone switch to a firefox variant.

metadigm 3y ago

Love to... Just allow customizable hotkeys. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idi-p/4979 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/id...

ChildOfChaos 3y ago

What a pointless post. I will use whatever browser I wish , thank you very much. Firefox is rubbish. I prefer Safari. I don't care about the 'monopoly' the free market allows us to decide which is best, why would I use an inferior browser just for that reason? It has very bad UI/UX very typical of open source/techy software. There are zero reasons to switch listed in this article.

onehair 3y ago

Ive tried many times in the last 10 years. Whenever I do, FireFox slows down after a few days. And then just has issues I've never seen on chrome before

amai 3y ago

No, everybody please switch to Chrome and then sue Google for creating a browser monopoly. Firefox and Mozilla are paid by Google only to prevent this from happening.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

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eleumik 3y ago

This could convince some more people: Google settles $5 billion privacy lawsuit over tracking people using 'incognito mode' https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1222268415/google-settles-5-billion-privacy-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1222268415/google-settles-5-b...

juniperplant 3y ago

When they will support installing progressive web apps (PWA) like Chrome does, I'll consider it.

valval 3y ago

No thank you. I have absolutely no interest in it nor need for it. It’s your job to make me switch, and frankly I see zero reason to care. Chrome and Safari work fine.

dineshkumar_cs 3y ago

I use different browser with multiple profiles, so i've a clean history and separation of work. Though i love some basic features like searching tabs, it was very limiting wrt privacy/blocking. I've tried my best to adopt, the major issue was default color management and couldn't disable it. It keeps changing my display (brightens). I wish a browser releases a feature to consume less memory!

alexeiz 3y ago

The Mozilla foundation pays millions to its CEO [1] while reducing funding to Firefox development and Firefox market share is falling year after year, but hey, please switch to Firefox. Right. Let's face the reality: Firefox is dead and Mozilla itself is putting the final nail in the coffin. [1] https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-...

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

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