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I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

• calrain 2y ago
  I switched to Firefox for privacy reasons, and it took a while to get used to it, but I'm completely enjoying Firefox. There is some subtle tab / link click behavior that takes a bit to get used to, but after a while it just doesn't bother you any more because you're used to the behavior.
• internet_points 2y ago
  It's the closest we have to a browser not controlled by the corporate giants. Sometimes Mozilla makes unpopular choices and people raise a stink about it, but we do that because we hold them to a higher standard. With Microsoft and Google, we just expect them to Do More Evil, with Mozilla we expect Good and will complain loudly when they fail to uphold our principles, and we recommend Firefox because we feel like it is possible to expect Good from them.
  • kokada 2y ago
    Yes, pretty much. While I don't concur with Mozilla 100% of the time, it is still the only major browser that I can have control (e.g.: by still having Manifest V2 extensions available). Also most of controversial choices in Firefox can be disabled or changed in `about:config`.
    • scarface_74 2y ago
      What about the choice not to optimize for battery efficiency on my Mac?
      • julienwaj 2y ago
        Can you please elaborate on that?
        • Klonoar 2y ago
          They may be referring to the fact that Firefox is probably the worst on battery of the 3 main browsers when used on macOS. Safari does admittedly set a very high bar though, and only cares about 1-2 platforms at most.
        • scarface_74 2y ago
          Neither Firefox nor Chrome optimize for battery efficiency like Safari does on Macs or Edge does for Windows. I’m not trying to be the “just Google it” guy without citations. But I couldn’t find a definitive citation - just general discussions and some YouTube videos including earlier discussions on HN. I searched for “firefox vs safari battery mac” and the same for Edge on Windows.
          • lern_too_spel 2y ago
            Chrome doesn't optimize for battery efficiency like Safari on Macs. It optimizes better than Safari. https://birchtree.me/blog/everyone-says-chrome-devastates-mac-battery-life-but-does-it-i-tested-for-36-hours-to-find-out/ https://birchtree.me/blog/everyone-says-chrome-devastates-ma...
      • kokada 2y ago
        Safari have only 2 platforms (actually one since they share pretty much the same kernel and much of the user space code) to support vs Firefox needs to support 4 (macOS, Android, Linux and Windows). I would be surprised if Firefox was the most battery efficient browser on macOS.
      • asadotzler 2y ago
        You didn't say "like Safari does" and instead made the bullshit and unsupported claim that they chose not to optimize. That's some uninformed garbage if I've ever seen it.
  • pveierland 2y ago
    Mozilla does plenty of really useful things! Super happy with Firefox as my primary browser. Shout-out to MDN as well for being an excellent reference on all things web: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
  • baxtr 2y ago
    I actually really like Safari… sometimes tabs sync across devices is buggy, reloads a lot. But other than that I’m quite content.
    • jampekka 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • baxtr 2y ago
        That I do in Chrome I admit :) but for my personal browsing I use safari
      • redman25 2y ago
        I do web dev and prefer safari. It’s less power hungry on a laptop. If you develop for the lowest common denominator, every other browser just works. There’s something to be said for adding _less_ features to web browsers. A simple web is a web where open source solutions can compete with chrome. It helps avoid a browser monoculture.
        • dartos 2y ago
          Yeah but we’re not in a simple web. Safari isn’t trying to make it simple for you, they just use it to keep you in their walled garden. PWAs are a great example of this. The general idea was even a product of the Jobs era of Apple, before the App Store. Safari and iOS’s poor support of PWAs is exactly a result of Apple wanting to prevent app distribution channels other than their App Store. Choosing safari is choosing a more closed web, where missing standards means that you, as a safari user, are unable to access certain features or apps that Apple doesn’t want you to access.
          • jamespo 2y ago
            Missing standards like Manifest V3 that everyone was crying out for?
          • mrweasel 2y ago
  • input_sh 2y ago
    More like "we'll complain all the time regardless of what they do by repeating the same talking points over and over again". > How much do they pay the CEO? Why aren't they exploring other funding options? At the same time, why are they "wasting resoures" working on other things!? They should exclusively work on Firefox! > ...and that's why I stick to this Chromium fork with its own digital advertising service and its own cryptocurrency, but you can easily switch it off!
    • diggan 2y ago
      You know parent made a good point when comments come in attacking points parent didn't even mention or brought up.
    • mossTechnician 2y ago
      Of all the ways to critique Brave, consider Mozilla's exploration of "other funding options" has recently been digital advertising. They purchased two advertising companies - Anonym[0] and FakeSpot - and have integrated FakeSpot directly into Firefox. Mozilla has an ad sales division [1]. Mozilla even added extra telemetry just for advertisers[2]. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_betting_privacy/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b... [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/formats/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/formats/ [2] https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/ https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/07/14/mozilla-di...
    • woolion 2y ago
      I almost never use Chrome-based browsers, but recently was forced because debug points were simply not working on Firefox. You can strawman all you want, there are unfortunately technical points where Google is abusing its position to force its standards, but the primary architects of Firefox downfall is Mozilla. For the record, I used a Firefox phone for many years (and yes it did cause me a lot of problems), and remember vividly when they announced a luxury Firefox phone about one week before killing the project.
    • pessimizer 2y ago
      So weird to paint consistency as a vice. "Talking points" is from the same land as "gotcha questions." "Talking points" are the points that people are talking about that you'd prefer not to talk about because you don't have good answers for. So you pretend like repeating an unanswered question is an dirty underhanded plot. > How much do they pay the CEO? Why aren't they exploring other funding options? At the same time, why are they "wasting resoures" working on other things!? They should exclusively work on Firefox! This isn't a quote. Don't make up quotes. This is you putting words in people's mouths, and choosing the ones that allow you to reply with something about Brave. At the same time, you're excusing Firefox for doing things because Brave does similar things. The people switching to for-profit Brave from Firefox would have prefer a non-profit, user-focused Firefox, but have been pushed to the point where they don't see any moral difference between the two, so they might as well experiment. When Firefox was innovating, it was the founder of Brave that was running it. Most Firefox haters use Firefox. They just wish that it wasn't so bad, that it wasn't so much torture to put it into a usable state, and that the developers weren't actively fighting the users to keep them from putting it in that state, rather than centering on the users. They largely blame this on the company, Google, who subsidizes Firefox while competing with it. And on the company, Mozilla, that sucks all of that subsidy up in salaries, while seemingly neglecting the browser.
  • scarface_74 2y ago
    Most of Firefox’s revenue comes from Google….
  • anthk 2y ago
    Icecat it's far more free than Firefox.
    • Idesmi 2y ago
      Icecat is Firefox.
  • ekianjo 2y ago
    > Sometimes Mozilla makes unpopular choices Sometimes? They tend to hit the mark of bad decisions more often than not
    • ziddoap 2y ago
      People just remember the shitty decisions more vividly and for longer than people remember the dozens of good decisions made in between. Most good decisions don't get a full press cycle (because they are boring).
      • mossTechnician 2y ago
        Mozilla's brand identity is tethered to specific moral prescriptions[0] that their products are supposed to abide by. People sold on that identity are bound to care. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
        • ziddoap 2y ago
          This seems unrelated to whether or not Mozilla makes bad decisions more often than not. I'm talking about frequency, you're talking about severity. People don't remember the 1000 times you did something correctly.
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
  • asadotzler 2y ago
    Most of HN: We hold Mozilla to a higher standard so we've abandon them for the corporations we don't have any expectations from. Good job. Smart tactics.
• Trasmatta 2y ago
  How are the Firefox dev tools these days? Every time I've tried in the past I end up missing the Chrome dev tools, and it's too much of a pain to have one browser for development and one for browsing. I would love to switch, though.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jampekka 2y ago
    Mostly on par with Chrome, at least for basic (95%) usage. Although for some cases I switch to Chromium.
  • montroser 2y ago
    Dev tools are very decent. At this point it's almost indistinguishable from Chrome dev tools. The "Performance" tab might be the one exception, where it's a different flow for profiling. But otherwise it should feel very familiar.
  • _joel 2y ago
    I can do everything in terms of debugging in firefox than I can in chrome. I've not found any issues thus far, including wrangling cookies and more esoteric auth stuff. Obviosuly every good webdev does multiple browser testing and sometimes firefox behaves differently to chrome so you have to jump in and see why. Never been an issue (to my work at least).
  • johnsonjo 2y ago
    I haven't used Firefox in a bit, but I thought their devtools were pretty good, but last time I used it I used their developer edition browser [1]. I think the devtools were particularly bad when you used to have to install Firebug as a seperate part of the browser which is no longer the case [2]. For a quick view of what the developer tools currently look like you can see here [3] [1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ [2]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/firebug-lives-on-in-firefox-devtools/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/firebug-lives-on-in-firefo... [3]: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/ https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/
• sylware 2y ago
  I did switch to links/lynx (could be netsurf), and I did never look back.
  • psychoslave 2y ago
    Well, I do try to grab pages using it here and there when reader mode fails. But now most of the time the amount of garbage around the text is so high that command line browser just can’t display anything.
    • sylware 2y ago
      links and netsurf are graphical (links has both a ncurses and x11 interface). I use links to browse maps from openstreetmap servers.
      • anthk 2y ago
        Try Florb for that. It needs omake, but you can ditch opam/omake and the whole ocaml stack after the builds. BTW, I use lynx/links too, among sacc and gemini browsers. News/portal/translator and so over gopher: gopher://magical.fish Blogs: gopher://sdf.org Text wikipedia: gopher://gopherpedia.com Graphical: I forgot the URL for Gemini Weather: finger yourcity@graph.no Weather over gopher, replace Madrid with your city: gopher://graph.no:79/0/madrid Web decrapifier: gemini://gemi.dev (News Waffle) Everyhing else: IRC, Usenet, Bitlbee, sxiv, mocp, mpv, mupdf.
• tomrod 2y ago
  I have definitely looked back. And also gotten to a stable state with Firefox for most things and Vivaldi for most things needing Chrome since web standards when Chrome is around is not a respected thing. Unfortunately, companies treat chrome like they treated IE. Hard to get rid of.
• homebrewer 2y ago
  I could never leave it — even in its worst times of version 4 onwards — for a simple reason of how autoscrolling works (i.e. scroll on middle click). The acceleration curve used by Chromium is awkward, and scrolling in nested containers causes the outer container to start scrolling when you run to the end of the nested one (which makes nested scrolling pretty much unusable if you value efficient interaction with the machine). Pretty minor thing overall, but has been surprisingly important for me.
  • extraduder_ire 2y ago
    I don't think that feature even works on linux by default. I have an extension installed in chromium specifically to add it back, and even then it clearly feels like a workaround when using it.
  • adithyassekhar 2y ago
    Never knew this was a chrome thing!
• diego_moita 2y ago
  I use Firefox 90% of the time. The other 10% is a mix of Edge, Safari, Brave and Chrome. The good of Firefox: * the extensions ecosystem (KeepassXc, TamperMonkey, AdBlock, Disable Javascript, Youtube Audio, etc) * the defaults in privacy and performance are good enough for me The bad of Firefox: * it is a minority web client engine so a few technologies and sites have problems with it. E.g: it is easy to debug WASM in Chrome, it isn't in Firefox
• dotdi 2y ago
  Same. I use Firefox on all my devices. Actually, I am now experimenting with Zen Browser (FF-based fork prettier than Firefox, and even more privacy-focused). My wife and my kids get no say in it: it's Firefox in the whole household.
• pinoy420 2y ago
  I switched to firefox. Then went back to edge. Edge is just… better… once you remove the weird stuff
• oguz-ismail 2y ago
  I tried Firefox but it was too slow
  • squarefoot 2y ago
    In 2015? Maybe. Today? Not at all.
• alexvitkov 2y ago
  I'm glad the writer is enjoying Firefox, but posts like these make me realize we've forgotten how to use computers. Built-in screenshot tool? "You don't need to install extensions"! Really? Dude just press Print Screen, it even works outside a browser, if one day you have to be put through the unspeakable torture of using a native application! Single-use burner emails are also nice and all, but why exactly does this have to be linked to my browser? Of course switching browsers it's gonna be a big deal, when you actively walk out of your way to lock yourself to your browser's "ecosystem", but better Mozilla than Google I guess.
  • klez 2y ago
    I see what you mean, but that tool allows you to take a picture of the entire vertical length of the page. You can't easily (i.e.: with one click) do that with the print screen key.
  • ericrallen 2y ago
    Firefox’s screenshot tool is a little more advanced than Print Screen. [0] There are situations where it’s really useful to be able to capture the entire web page and not just the visible viewport. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/how-to-capture-screenshots-with-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/how-to-capture-...
    • CubsFan1060 2y ago
      This is great. I wish I could add a clock to it somehow. This would be super useful for auditing purposes.
    • alexvitkov 2y ago
      Fair point, but I highly doubt that this is how it's used most of the time. And taking 20 screenshots and compositing them in mspaint can be a meditative experience.
      • oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
        I would put money on it being the most common use case. It's certainly the reason I installed a screenshot extension for Chrome. I like the nod towards humour you've added at the end there, but it's probably time to cash out your chips and accept your losses.
• joeyagreco 2y ago
  I switched to Firefox from Chrome a few years back and I've enjoyed the experience.
• qntmfred 2y ago
  I used Firefox before Chrome took over, and then stuck with Chrome until about a year ago when I started using Brave. Last week I switched to Edge. I know some people will turn up their nose at such a choice, but it turns out to actually be a very nice browser. I'm even using it on my phone now too.
  • globnomulous 2y ago
    Same experience. I've found Edge to be the smoothest-feeling browser I've used on Android. Brave may be objectively faster, but somehow Edge feels better. If Microsoft did this deliberately, I'd love to know how.
• ustad 2y ago
  Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms that come with them. Instead of building a better experience, these engineers seem to be focused on sabotaging alternatives in the name of profit or control. The kind of mindset behind this reeks of the same tactics we see in some ad networks or big tech companies - if we can’t convince you to opt in, we’ll make sure you’re inconvenienced or frustrated until you do. It’s a dangerous precedent because it introduces a toxic game of cat-and-mouse, where the user is constantly playing defense, trying to protect themselves from deliberate misdirection. It’s not just an ethical concern, but also an issue of how we value user autonomy in the digital space. For the hackers out there, this is a opportunity to dig into the JavaScript code responsible for this. There’s almost certainly some interesting obfuscation or odd behavior hiding in the code, and by pulling it apart, we can both understand how these tactics work and build tools or methods to counteract them. Let’s make sure the only thing that slows down the web is bad design or slow servers, not malicious code aimed at punishing the user for making their own choices.
  • wruza 2y ago
    That's how Chrome started. I remember it showing a banner with itself on /. which froze a page on scrolling over it for a few seconds. In all browsers except Chrome. Never understood this Chrome-go-go mob mentality that everyone had back then. It was literally an ads-network prodived crappy browser with just tabs and urlbar. It was fast, because it did nothing and had no cpu pressure from the banners. I wouldn't be surprised if it was "fast" all this time only due to special treatment from google, youtube and the corresponding ads/tracking scripts. "Precedent", yeah.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      It was fast because in 2008 it used V8 [0] and other browsers didn't. Eventually competitors caught up. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)
• libertarian1 2y ago
  Firefox has better UX than any other alternative. Chrome feels too shallow.
  • aembleton 2y ago
    What do you mean by shallow?
• beka-tom 2y ago
  Still, I need smooth page rendering and scrolling, similar to how Safari does on a Mac.
• Daunk 2y ago
  My very old, and bad, laptop takes an extremely long time to start Firefox. However, forks like Floorp are a lot quicker to start. And since I'm pretty strict about using the same tools everywhere (no matter the OS) I'm now using Floorp on my main PC as well. But I'm not sure Floorp can be trusted... does anyone have anything to say about it?
  • bcraven 2y ago
    This reads like one of those cases where simply buying a new laptop will be the easiest solution.
    • Daunk 2y ago
      I barely ever use my laptop. It works fine 99% of the time, Firefox is like the 1% that's too slow to be usable with it. Floorp solves that.
  • Jnr 2y ago
    Is it not the case of using Ubuntu with Snap? I have experienced similar things with Chrome and Firefox on Ubuntu starting extremely slowly when using the snap version. And Ubuntu does not offer deb packages for those anymore, you have to manually add the Mozilla repo to use that.
    • Daunk 2y ago
      I've not used Ubuntu in many years. Laptop is running openSUSE Tumbleweed. Snaps and even Flatpak are a no-go on this laptop hehe.
    • Vinnl 2y ago
      More about the Mozilla repo: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/4-reasons-to-try-mozillas-new-firefox-linux-package-for-ubuntu-and-debian-derivatives/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/4-reasons-to-try-mozill...
• jampekka 2y ago
  Firefox on Android is a no-brainer because of the extension support. It was a bit rough experience few years ago but has been solid for a long time.
  • simlan 2y ago
    Same experience. For a while I had to do chrome again because it became unusable on my aging phone and then they turned the ship around. I am always stunned when I have to use anything else at how unusable some pages are without my extensions.
  • pkilgore 2y ago
    Best Android browser hands down, entirely because of the extension support. I don't know how people use phones with ublock or leechblock. I guess "with less battery life" and "more".
  • sexy_seedbox 2y ago
    Kiwi Browser for me on Android with full extensions support and developer tools. Any reason to switch to Firefox on Android?
    • rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
      Vanadium for GrapheneOS also supports ad-blocking (enabled by default IIRC).
    • efreak 2y ago
      It's extremely outdated now because the developer has abandoned it. I have the vague impression it's lying about the chromium version it's based on as well, or something related to that.
• _joel 2y ago
  Firefox wins for me for multi container tabs that integrate with AWS SSO, so I can have multiple envs open in coloured tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-conta...
  • KetoManx64 2y ago
    Same here but for work O365!
• nomilk 2y ago
  Dumb question, but I couldn't live without some chrome extensions. Are they easy to port over to Firefox?
  • RealCodingOtaku 2y ago
    It depends on the extension, what are you using? Search in the Add-on store[0] If It's present there, then Firefox can even import them from Chrome for you if it matches certain criteria[1] [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/ [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-google-chrome#w_complete-imported-extensions-installation https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-google...
  • hexagonwin 2y ago
    It's generally pretty easy since FF uses the same WebExtension API.
• hasbot 2y ago
  I started using Firefox when it was first released and have never used anything else since except to download Firefox.
• pkphilip 2y ago
  Unfortunately, I have had to move in the opposite direction. I have been a Firefox user for more than a decade but after an upgrade to Linux Mint 22 I have had very regular crashes on Firefox which took the entire computer down and so now I am on Brave which seems to be so much faster.
  • Jnr 2y ago
    If it crashes your whole computer, I would suspect hardware, since software should not crash the whole OS. Maybe try running some thorough RAM tests.
  • extraduder_ire 2y ago
    Have you tried a clean install of firefox? A separate profile even. A lot of people switching to another browser and finding it much more performant/stable is just them starting with a default browser with minimal addons.
    • squarefoot 2y ago
      Sometimes a clean install isn't even needed. I moved my ~/.mozilla directory across all my main PC installs (and different flavors such as Palemoon and Waterfox) for years and all I had to do was cleaning the cache and every now and then the years long history which can really slow down the browser at each startup (note: system disk on SSD, home on mechanical HD, so YMMV).
    • pkphilip 2y ago
      Yes, it was a clean install. I had reinstalled even the OS from scratch
• tempworkac 2y ago
  I'm glad we have different options available. I personally use Chrome, but it's good that Firefox exists too.
• surume 2y ago
  Firefox still crashes for me. Multiple computers and laptops, PC’s and Macs - it always crashes. I test it every few years and the crashes still occur. It makes it an unusable browser. Instead I use Brave.
  • puzzlingcaptcha 2y ago
    It crashes with per-tab thread isolation? When was the last time you tried it? I don't believe I've had a single crash in the past five years and it's my daily driver.
    • RealCodingOtaku 2y ago
      Ditto, the only time I use Chrome is when some old portals in work require it. I've never had a crash in the past 8 years, but then again, I keep my tabs clean and have uBlock Origin.
• worldmerge 2y ago
  I really hope they eventually support all the web APIs chrome does like web midi. Till then if you want to use those APIs you’re making Chrome apps.
  • alibarber 2y ago
    Yes - I've been quite disappointed by this recently. I'm trying to make something that can interact with embedded devices and wanted to use the web serial JS API. Unfortunately it seems that the powers that be at Firefox have no plans to support it on account of privacy and security - which I half get, but, it appears to be an established standard in Chrome. The discussion surrounding it kinda sucked and well.
    • RunningDroid 2y ago
      Fwiw, someone created a webextension that provides the WebSerial API: https://github.com/kuba2k2/firefox-webserial https://github.com/kuba2k2/firefox-webserial I tried it a while back to configure my keyboard but it didn't seem to work at the time, I think it is a nice solution to Mozilla's problems with the API though
• KaiserPro 2y ago
  I have been using mozilla for _years_ it got shit, then better, then shit, and now its close enough. The thing I _Love_ is container tabs. I can isolate empires by using container tabs to sandbox cookies and other web state. This means that ebay doesn't change my adverts to the last thing I searched on every site, and autoplay embedded youtube doesn't fuck up my video recommendations. It means I can hide my work gmail from my home, and separate search histories (although thats less relevant now with AI.) lastly, being able to scroll left and right on my tabs, rather than new ones being unaccesable is great.
  • sylens 2y ago
    Agree, container tabs are the killer app
  • Vinnl 2y ago
    And for those who do actually feel they want to separate their extensions and passwords and such as well, there's a Profiles revamp coming up that's looking really good in Nightly: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/td-p/57694 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re... But yes, people should learn about Multi-Account Containers if they haven't, yet. It's a killer feature that no other browser has. This is the extension to enable the UI for it: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-conta...
    • asabla 2y ago
      > there's a Profiles revamp coming up that's looking really good in Nightly Oh wow! I totally missed this. Thank for sharing! I've been using multiple browsers for as long as I can remember. But always liked Firefox ocer the others. Especially now with container tabs. And the only thing I keep wishing for, has been a better experience with profile management, but also running the browser in different profiles. I'm really looking forward for these updates
      • WorldMaker 2y ago
• jedisct1 2y ago
  I switched to Arc and never looked back.
• klez 2y ago
  On my work laptop I use Chrome. There are a couple of things I sorely miss from Firefox * The omnibar: I have a couple IPs I connect to frequently. One ends in 36, the other in 243. In Firefox I can just type 36 (or 243) + Tab + Enter. In Chrome I have to type the whole address. And why can't I search for the title of a page I know is in my history or even just a tab I already have opened directly from the search bar? I do that all the time in Firefox * Ctrl+Tab to switch back and forth between tabs instead of cycling them in order (not the default in Firefox either, but at least it can be configured without having to install an extension and a native executable as I had to do in Chrome)
  • binkHN 2y ago
    > Ctrl+Tab to switch back and forth between tabs instead of cycling them in order (not the default... I recently started using Firefox, after giving up on Windows, and recently found out about this feature. It's a godsend for productivity, especially in a world where a lot of things are done in a browser.
  • diggan 2y ago
    > In Chrome I have to type the whole address. And why can't I search for the title of a page I know is in my history or even just a tab I already have opened directly from the search bar? I do that all the time in Firefox You can't do that because that would lead to less people seeing the Google Search page, and therefore less ad impressions. People been complaining about that for decades at this point, and Google just refuses to fix it, pretty clear why.
  • r00fus 2y ago
    Omnibar is unsurpassed in browser usability. Some of my work involves project names in an obscure part of the URL (everything else is the same base/parameters). FF handles this perfectly, no other browser I've tried comes close.
  • iggldiggl 2y ago
    > And why can't I search for the title of a page I know is in my history I sometimes use Edge as a fallback browser, and it suffers from this problem, too, and yeah, it is sooo annoying – much as I'm unhappy about various Firefox changes in the last years, I wouldn't switch to a different browser for that alone. Interestingly, Edge (and probably Chrome, too, unless it's a strange Microsoft customisation) simultaneously suffers from the problem that on the rare occasion where an addressbar search actually delivers a locally history result, the autocomplete is often too precise, because it prefills the whole URL, not just the domain.
• dalton_zk 2y ago
  I have been a long time problems with videos on firefox, sometimes the browser broke, and it's not only on YouTube, but Twitch and Crunchyroll for example. Even with issues I have using firefox and switching with brave/chrome.
• elashri 2y ago
  If someone is missing the workspaces from chrome/Arc. You can try the zen browser [1] which is Firefox fork that will have it. So you get the best of two world. Containers and workspaces. It is very good and they keep up with upstream with frequent updates. [1] https://zen-browser.app/ https://zen-browser.app/
  • InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    I've switched to Zen a few months ago. Apart from some very minor issues that usually get fixed in the next release, it's been working perfectly for me, and for me, the way the UI works is vastly superior to browser like Chrome or regular Firefox.
• speedypete 2y ago
  I switched to Firefox, and then back to Chrome and never looked back..
• feverzsj 2y ago
  Their font rendering always looks off to me. The only browser with proper font rendering on windows is Edge.
  • sumtechguy 2y ago
    I have to fiddle the settings pretty much every time I move to a new copy of windows with firefox. Basically I think the two different font engines are fighting with each other and create a wobbly mess. Usually by the time I do it windows has moved where the settings are and firefox has too in some subtle way. Took me a couple of days playing with all of the settings until it 'looked right'.
• bilekas 2y ago
  This might be a hot take but Firefox has always been a bit heavy and sluggish for me. I've been using Brave the last 3 years or so and so far I love it.. Say what you want about using the chromium engine but it's solid.. And with continuing support for manifest v2 I can't complain.
• acheron 2y ago
  Same. It was in 2002. Well, I guess it was still Phoenix then.
• kopirgan 2y ago
  Problem for Android users like me is Chrome is the default on mobile, so all passwords bookmarks etc are there. Of course we can install Firefox but I find Chrome better on mobile. Just couldn't get used to FF on Android. Moving to laptop it then makes sense to continue using it instead of installing Firefox over and above Edge anyway there plus Chrome. So it gets crowded out.
  • Vinnl 2y ago
    Have you tried installing uBlock Origin on Firefox for Android? Feels like that would outweigh any pain of getting used to the UI, so worth a shot if you haven't tried that yet.
  • hencoappel 2y ago
    Agreed Chrome is good on mobile. But I can't stand browsing without uBlockOrigin or dark reader. Plus URL bar on the bottom in Firefox is brilliant.
    • kopirgan 2y ago
      Lol that was the hard part getting used to...thanks for suggestions I will try with uBlockOrigin.
• wruza 2y ago
  Recently I preventively migrated from Vivaldi, and Firefox lacked: Gestures, "search with" context menu, "add active tab" in a bookmarks bar folder, autorenaming downloads, custom keybindings, tab squeezing (it keeps them wide and shows scroll buttons), last tab standing, proper double-click-drag selection and text editing in general. Probably a dozen more things that I cannot remember now. Also "sync" just doesn't work, something went wrong, try again. For gestures I used Gesturefy - isn't a mess and has "rocker". For "search with" I just had to write my own extension with hardcoded searches. I'm autorenaming through AHK - external tool, non-general use case. Tab squeezing and last tab solved through about:config. "Add active tab", custom keys, text editing still unsolved. In general I'm sort of satisfied with the results, but it took quite a while to migrate. Firefox is sort of extensible but not hacker-ish. Extension store is not generic-developer-hacker spirited either. FF is almost as dumb as Chrome, with a few settings that can make it better if you know where to look and have time for that.
  • mcc1ane 2y ago
    "Foxy Gestures" for gestures. "Context Search Origin" for a context menu search.
    • wruza 2y ago
      Thanks!
  • int_19h 2y ago
    To be fair, Vivaldi is a pretty high bar given how much stuff they have in the browser itself (and the overall "super customizable kitchen sink" philosophy they carried over from Opera days that enables this).
    • wruza 2y ago
      Yeah I’m really happy I managed to migrate at all, ignoring these non-fatal losses. It was not the first time I tried. Sadly Vivaldi also slowly breaks things, although I guess I’ll remember my words at the next Firefox “refresh”.
• gumbojuice 2y ago
  I occationally use chrome (not chromium) to get the cast functionality -- in order to bring a website to my tv.
• denistaran 2y ago
  One of the nice things about Firefox on mobile is that you can install extensions like uBlock Origin to block ads. Mobile Chrome doesn’t let you do that.
• noisy_boy 2y ago
  Firefox works fine and I like the privacy focus and general features. However, it still randomly causes the CPU usage to spike and makes the fans run full tilt (top shows 90-100% usage for god knows what), even when the same tabs are open doing the same things. I don't see this (atleast not as often) in Chrome, which I don't want to use, but end up using it until Google does one more privacy destroying thing, in a long line of such things, which makes me angry enough to go back to FF until the cycle repeats. I guess I have resigned being like a ping-pong ball bouncing between these two browsers.
• _def 2y ago
  This seems like a good place to mention my favorite Firefox Addon for Android: https://github.com/mozilla/video-bg-play https://github.com/mozilla/video-bg-play Some days ago I was wondering how it works and was kinda surprised just now that this is from mozilla itself. Reading the project Readme makes this even straight up sound like a privacy addon. I wonder why this is not natively supported.
  • MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    Wow, so the music stops when I do something else because the site developer wants me to download their app, so they detect a switch and turn off the video? Diabolical. I'll have to try out that extension.
    • int_19h 2y ago
      YouTube has been doing this exact thing for years. Background play is a YouTube Premium feature.
  • KetoManx64 2y ago
    This is fantastic, thanks for sharing
  • spacechild1 2y ago
    Amazing, thanks for sharing!
• Sanctor 2y ago
  I really want to switch to Firefox but cannot because it doesn't sync bookmark favicons. My bookmarks bar is filled with bookmarks without names that I can recognize by the icons. I refuse to re-visit every bookmark when I login from a new PC, which is often. This has been requested for 17 years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428378 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428378 Every other browser sync solution has this feature. Firefox insists on not implementing it because what, it's too much data to sync? I'd pay for it if it was a premium feature. If anyone has a browser agnostic bookmark syncing solution that can sync the favicons, let me know.
  • the__alchemist 2y ago
    Has anyone found a fix for this? It's very annoying, and has been around for years.
    • titaniumtown 2y ago
      I personally use Checkmarks: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkmarks-web-ext/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkmarks-we... It just opens every bookmark to load the favicon. Brute force, but it works!
      • the__alchemist 2y ago
        Sweet. After rereading OP and your post, I believe I misinterpreted it. But I will say I have that problem too... Problem A: What OP and you are talking about: When you switch computers to one that doesn't have the bookmarks, you have to click through every one to get the icon to populate. Problem B: Once FF has an icon, it will never update it. Even if you delete and re-add the the bookmark. I have no workaround for this.
  • hiq 2y ago
    > I refuse to re-visit every bookmark when I login from a new PC, which is often. Why not? How often? This should take literally 5s using the bookmark manager, right click on "Bookmarks Toolbar", "Open All Bookmarks". Then some more to load the websites I guess.
• arnaudsm 2y ago
  Firefox is guilty of every single thing Chrome is accused of. * It includes advertisements in the New Tab page without user consent https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy * It shared browsing history without user consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz#Integration_with_Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz#Integration_with_Firefox * It enabled a new tracking protocol for advertisers without user consent https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/ * It blocked uBlock Lite from their store without notice https://www.pcworld.com/article/2474353/popular-ad-blocker-removed-from-firefox-extension-store.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2474353/popular-ad-blocker-r... * It's ~80% funded by Google 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... * Their main focus lately has been white-labelling dubious products https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/mozilla-drops-onerep-after-ceo-admits-to-running-people-search-networks/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/mozilla-drops-onerep-aft... Mozilla is a tech company that stopped caring about tech and loves to portray itself as a victim. Since they fired the entire Servo (& Rust) team, the project joined the Linux Foundation. Servo is now my best hope for a truly independent browser.
  • airstrike 2y ago
    But until Servo is usable, Firefox is the only defensible choice.
  • Capricorn2481 2y ago
    > Firefox is guilty of every single thing Chrome is accused of If you misrepresent what Chrome is "accused" of, sure. I have 0 attachment to Firefox as a permanent solution, but it's WAY better than Chrome on every issue, and the only thing Servo has over Firefox is it hasn't existed in a usable form long enough to push the same kind of updates. If you disabled updating in Firefox today, you would have a more complete version of Servo that is just as private and secure. You may not like Mozilla as a company, but Firefox is the best tech option for open source web browsing and it's not even close. That's why browsers like Librewolf that just barely tweak Firefox are possible. I have to address these issues, though, because your descriptions of them really bury the lede. > It includes advertisements in the New Tab page without user consent > It shared browsing history without user consent > It enabled a new tracking protocol for advertisers without user consent While the ad tracking is not great, everything you posted is opt-out. I know you take specific issue with being automatically included as "opt-in" on update, but you don't even have the option to opt-out of everything in Chrome. > It blocked uBlock Lite from their store without notice That was a mistake remedied very quickly. Contrast that with Chrome where Ublock is now broken. Raymond Hill is the person speaking in your link, and he still explicitly recommends Firefox in his releases. > It's ~80% funded by Google And? That Google has money to throw around (and most privacy zealots specifically won't fund anything) is not a mark against Firefox. There's nothing to indicate Firefox is controlled by Google, and you may be surprised to know a lot of these competitors fund each others OSS because some of the tech is critical infrastructure. > Their main focus lately has been white-labelling dubious products I have to ask, are you reading these links or getting them from a friend? This was also opt-out, and as soon as this information was discovered, Mozilla immediately dropped them. You make it sound like they knew about this and powered through. Should they drop their partnership with haveibeenpwned on the off-chance they might secretly own an ad company? [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/1.62.1b1 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/1.62.1b1
• JimmyWilliams1 2y ago
  [dead]
• Alifatisk 2y ago
  If you enjoy Firefox, try Zen browser. You’ll lever look back
  • beka-tom 2y ago
    Zen looks interesting thanks for sharing
• jjice 2y ago
  I've used Firefox on desktop since 2019. It's upsetting how often (it's not every day, but more often than it should) a website just doesn't work because of the devs didn't test on Firefox at all. I even ran into this on Vanguard, a firm that manages god knows how much in assets, on a page to download PDFs... I used to get teased (all in good fun) at my last company for being the only dev that used Firefox. Then I'd be the only one to ever catch the Firefox only bugs in PRs. I get it - it's got way less market share, and for a small company, you may be able to argue the value of the time vs the probability of a bug, but not having your website work on all browsers in the 2020s (aside from new browser features like WebGPU and file system access) is a let down.
  • _joel 2y ago
    Strange, been using it since inception, but since 2019 I can probably could on one hand the times I couldn't use firefox and had to crack open chrome/safari/whatever. It's usally been overly zealous ublock rules that have stopped me, but easily fixed and nothing to do with firefox.
    • tzs 2y ago
      Question for all you people who have used Firefox before 2022: how did you deal with its poor spell checking? I used it for a few years, but sometime around the end of 2021 I switched to Chrome because I got tired of the Firefox spell checker marking correctly spelled words as incorrectly spelled. Here's a list of words I reported in 2020 and 2021 on the open issue they keep in their bug tracker for this problem: ad hominem, algorithmically, all-nighter, another's, auditable, automata, backlight, ballistically, blacksmithing, bubonic, cantina, chewable, coaxially, commenter, conferenced, counterintuitive, dominator, epicycle, ethicist, exonerations, ferrite, fineable, hatchling, impaction, implementer, implementor, inductor, initializer, intercellular, irrevocability, licensor, lifecycle, manticore, massless, measurer, meerkats, micropayments, mischaracterization, misclassification, misclassified, mistyped, mosquitos, partygoers, passthrough, per se, phosphine, plough, pre-programmed, preprogrammed, programmability, prosecutable, recertification, responder, retransmission, rotator, seatbelt, sensationalistic, shapeshifting, solvability, spectrogram, splitter, subparagraphs, subtractive, surveil, survivorship, synchronizer, tradable, tradeoffs, transactional, trichotomy, tunable, underspecified, untraceably, untyped, verifiability, verifier, webmail It was kind of puzzling because Firefox actually uses the same open source spell check engine that Google, Apple, LibreOffice, and many others use, and all those others had no trouble with any of the words that Firefox got wrong. This suggests that it might just be a dictionary problem and Firefox could simply grab the dictionary that say LibreOffice uses. I mentioned that on one of my comments in the bug tracker and a developer said they were going to look into it but I don't know if anything ever came from that. All the words I reported now work but I don't know if they just added those to their dictionary or switched to a better dictionary. Maybe I'll try doing my HN commenting from Firefox for a while and see if is fixed.
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  My only problem with Firefox is that getImageData does not return the actual encoded pixel values, but the values rendered to the screen after any sort of OS color profiles. This makes it impossible to offer remote sensing processing tools that care about radiometric values to Firefox users. I specifically have to tell them to use a different browser if they want to use that toolset. Mind you I haven’t checked this issue in almost a year so maybe they finally offer a way to make it behave like every other browser.
• pluc 2y ago
  The best reason to use Firefox is to not empower Google's domination of yet another segment of the web. Everything else is chrome-based.
  • eviks 2y ago
    So there is no good reason since it's already empowered plenty
  • Foomf 2y ago
    Not everything. There's also webkit.
• greenie_beans 2y ago
  i've noticed that google search can be slow af in firefox ever since they released the ai answer feature
  • greenie_beans 2y ago
    seriously, there are some days where it feels like google shipped a new ai feature and it completely breaks firefox.
• jokoon 2y ago
  Also Mozilla is not completely white, they offer many services that could be seen like they siphon data. Although to be fair, as long as it's done properly, it's fine, but I don't know if Mozilla communicates on those products. I remember one security employee mentioning that monitoring chrome with wire shark showed an insane amount of unnecessary traffic that went to google and others.
• NoboruWataya 2y ago
  Firefox is great and IMO it's important to have a browser that is open source and not controlled by Microsoft, Google or Apple. For that reason I would probably continue to use it even if the user experience was slightly worse, but thankfully it's not. When I switched from Chrome years ago I didn't notice any drop in performance and I've never really had any major issues since then. Every now and again I run into a website that is broken and think "ah, this must be what everyone is talking about online when they say Firefox sucks" but then I check the same page from a different browser and have the same problem. I hope it continues to survive and gets the support it needs from the community.
• a3w 2y ago
  I dislike that chrome still searches faster: Type in skinflint (price comparison) page I often use, tab toward "search on this site". Then I press enter. All non-Chromeengine browsers have - type website, enter - wait to load, use search bar on site as a workflow. Made me stay with Chrome way too long. Now, I use Firefox, but miss this.
• DuncanCoffee 2y ago
  My personal experience: I use Firefox because all its issues are fixable either via about:config or extensions. It's not slow or crashing. - Embedded telemetry can be disabled via about:config - Running ublock origin in advanced mode blocks all third party domains, websites are often broken but easily fixable - Cookie Autodelete deletes a website cookie after the tab closes - Decentraleyes as a local CDN to avoid external requests for common libraries - Redirector to change request to alternative no tracking frontends for famous websites - Simple tab groups keep tabs organized by "job" - Bitwarden to manage passwords I rarely encounter websites that are not working and I just switch to another website, and I use Vivaldi for things like meet where I want things to "just work".
• perryizgr8 2y ago
  My experience has been very similar. I don't use the pocket feature though. But I'm loving the first class ad blocking and the container feature. I wish they would let you create container windows and not just tabs.
• kmfrk 2y ago
  Been pretty happy with Firefox after changing some default settings, but I still have what I assume is a bug where add-ons keep getting disabled every time I start up the browser. Only solution I've seen so far is deleting all add-on files on my computer, but nuking all settings is a bit extreme with all the time that went into the configuration in the first place.
• teekert 2y ago
  For me it’s the cookie containers, always moving between (MS365) orgs, using different social (Google) accounts etc, just with a click in the containers plug-in.
• bnetd 2y ago
  I switched from Firefox and Never Looked Back
  • skyyler 2y ago
    It seems like you looked back long enough to open this thread and make this comment :^)
• stronglikedan 2y ago
  I really want to like FF, but it just feels so clunky and inefficient when compared to Chrome (for my usage patterns anyway). It's nice that we have choices (and competition to spur innovation).
• lucumo 2y ago
  I've done a round-trip through a few browsers in the latter half of last year, and now I'm back to Chrome. It's usually sync that was too broken for me to use. Chrome's sync works nearly immediately. Firefox on Android would stop syncing open tabs so frequently that I barely remember it working at all. I had to log out and log back in from my Firefox account to get it to sync. But an hour or so later it wouldn't work anymore. Vivaldi has better sync, but it seems to just randomly break a LOT. It would recover itself after a while, so in that sense it was superior to Firefox. (I liked Vivaldi's amazing configurability, but it's lack of bookmarklet support was breaking some of my workflows too, so in the end I abandoned it.) I tried Opera too, but I think it had similar issues and I abandoned it quickly. Syncing extension settings (the settings of an extension, e.g. custom filters in uBlock Origin) seems to only be supported on Chrome. Firefox doesn't have it.
• darrmit 2y ago
  I've been using Firefox for years personally and I love it. But it's cumbersome to try to use it for work, at least in a separate browser instance a la Chrome Profiles or Safari profiles. I wish they'd make that easier.
• xutopia 2y ago
  I've been using Safari for a few years now and I love it. Snappy all the time. Syncs between devices flawlessly and doesn't eat up battery as fast as other browsers.
• mmis1000 2y ago
  I use firefox for daily tasks. (I am an old user since firefox 3 from the age that firefox is truly customizable). But for frontend develop, I use edge. Firefox is basically unusable in current state. Not able to jump from profiler to debugger makes the whole thing completely useless. How on the earth do I lookup line column like `1:19995` by myself? You just can't. And it remain in this state for years already. And about other stuff. The UX is also becoming more and more confusing recently. You now have 3 places to look for browser history. The menu, the standalone history window. the firefox view. And except for the menu. Thye all miss certain stuffs. The standalone window miss tabs from other devices and recent closed window. The firefox view don't have bookmark and recent closed window.
• alin23 2y ago
  I've been on Firefox Dev Edition for Mac for the last 4 years I think, and I can't remember more than 1 or 2 websites that didn't work correctly on it. It's been flawless, more battery and memory efficient than Chrome, less finicky and problematic than Safari, and with all the extensions that I need. I seriously don't see any disadvantage in picking Firefox over Chrome. I still have Chrome around if any website requires it specifically, but I haven't launched it in ages. There were a few Chrome extensions that weren't there on Firefox [1] [2] but I fixed that _easily_ by getting the crx file, unpacking it, then adding the https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill to the extension to make it cross-browser. It's easy enough to make an extension work on both Firefox and Chrome, I've done it myself with SideHN (https://github.com/alin23/sidehn https://github.com/alin23/sidehn), but I guess Firefox is not really in the mind of Chrome extension devs. [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/anchor-headings/lggjnoadjgfilclcmbakfkkfjjkhdpfo https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/anchor-headings/lgg... [2] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/xpath-helper/hgimnogjllphhhkhlmebbmlgjoejdpjl https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/xpath-helper/hgimno...
  • markjgx 2y ago
    > It's been flawless, more battery and memory efficient than Chrome Is that actually true?
    • alin23 2y ago
      It was true for me, specifically for my workflow, the websites I use and how I leave some specific tabs in the background. I’ve used Chrome for many years before Firefox and it was always prioritizing JS responsiveness even when the app was in the background and not needed, so it consumed CPU cycles and battery power needlessly. I see now that Chrome enables a Low Power mode by default on battery and it’s unusable as scrolling gets janky. I don’t know if the overall experience has gotten better in the last year on Chrome. Not sure what’s different about memory though, but Chrome always appeared like a memory hog when I tested both browser side by side on the same set of websites and same few extensions. Could be that it just caches more and that’s benefitting responsiveness
    • 2y ago
• joshdavham 2y ago
  I know this is contrarian, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable installing many of the browser extensions offered on Firefox given that they can still be manifest v2. After building a fairly involved browser extension this last year, I’ve become way more paranoid knowing just how insecure browser extensions can be; especially manifest v2 extensions. It’s not just about ad blockers unfortunately.
• blacklion 2y ago
  I'm using "Firefox" since Netscape Navigator 3.x times. As long as I'm using web at all. Never used Chrome on desktop. Never had one installed. Ok, as Windows user I have "Edge" installed inevitably, but never used it more than 1 time to download FireFox installer. Using FireFox on Android from early betas, no problem. Is it something worth to write article about? Edit: grammar (maybe, not enough).
• twilo 2y ago
  How is Apple handling all of this?
• 34679 2y ago
  Has slashdot started showing ads in the last 48 hours for anyone else using Firefox and ublock on Android? It was a very weird experience to see an ad on my phone for the first time in over a decade. My brain kinda froze and took a second to process what it was seeing.
  • nosioptar 2y ago
    I'm using IceRaven, so it might be a bit different on Firefox. I just get a white screen that says "Hello world. I'm a bubble" and flickers. When I change to desktop site, I'm not getting any ads.
• ubermonkey 2y ago
  I'm on a Mac, so I use Safari, too, but were I on any other platform I can't imagine NOT using Firefox. How did we get to a point where the dominant browser is designed to be hostile to user choice?
• nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
  seems ff has been relegated to strictly technical users now. It's 90% of my personal browsing, and effectively the only option considering UBO is a requirement for the modern web. I've always loved the `user.js` configurability, extensions for actual tree-style tabs, etc.
• GNOMES 2y ago
  I've been back on Firefox for 2-3 years now since the Manifest v3 stuff was initially brewing. Still eagerly waiting for Fission/tab isolation to land on Android. Every morning I open a bookmarks folder with my dailies (news/blogs/Wordle/XKCD etc) that includes https://mrotherguy.github.io/fx-nightly-changelog/ https://mrotherguy.github.io/fx-nightly-changelog/, and CTRL+F hoping for Fission on Fenix :(
• lifeinthevoid 2y ago
  I'm back with Firefox after a short relationship with Brave. Still use Brave on iOS to block ads when needed though.
• tim333 2y ago
  I've got Firefox and Chrome and tend to use Chrome because some things like Google Lens are so handy, and translate works better. Containers are good in Firefox though.
• b0dhimind 2y ago
  Sidebery/TST is the main reason I use FF but this article points out a lot of other reasons I forgot I liked so much: keyword searching, the Library window, and other browser customization... looking forward to the AI features when they come to the main release.
• czottmann 2y ago
  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).
• habosa 2y ago
  I've been a Chrome user since literally the day it came out. On my iPhone 13 though I just noticed Chrome was getting slower and slower. At first I thought it was the phone, since I spend most of my time on the phone in the browser it was hard to tell the difference. Then I switched to Firefox for iOS. It is SO MUCH FASTER. It's like getting a new phone. Idk what the Chrome team is doing but it's slow.
• amelius 2y ago
  Today I tried to start Firefox on a file:// type of url. It said the file could not be reached while I was sure it was there, as md5sum could read it. Then it turned out that because Firefox was installed using Snap, and the file was apparently on a mount point that was out of reach of Snap, the file could not be read. I think Mozilla should refuse package managers that are clearly broken.
  • joelthelion 2y ago
    I think people should also stop using distributions that have been pushing this broken shit for years.
    • amelius 2y ago
      Yes. But I'm using an nVidia Jetson which vendor-forces me to use Ubuntu.
• hintymad 2y ago
  I had two issues, possibly due to my own perception, with Firefox. One is that it still froze in the same way Netscape did: the UI had no response whatsoever and a there was a hanging process in the process viewer. Granted, it didn't happen often, but it was noticeable enough that I got back my PTSD of using Netscape back. The other is somehow Firefox still feels less responsive than Chrome. This may well be just my unfounded perception, but pager loading, typing, and opening on a new tab somehow always felt a little delay, compared to using Chrome.
• avg_dev 2y ago
  how is the webauthn story for FF? I recall that some hardware tokens could sometimes play weird with FF on Mac, I am not sure if Windows had the same thing. that was one practical advantage Chrome had.
  • lousken 2y ago
    i use yubikey every day on linux version of ff, after a year of going back and forth with microsoft works fine with ms365; github worked out of the box, ...
• javier_e06 2y ago
  If firefox worked with Chromecast audio I would be all set. I have 2 of those hockey puck's audio dongles Google used to make to connect to your stereo. They only work with Chrome, SiriusXM, VLC, CalmRadio and Youtube, Chrombooks. They don't work with Firefox. Sad. Maybe Mozilla should start IoT devices for Firefox.
• imran9m 2y ago
  Best feature is how much I customize in about:config
• lousken 2y ago
  vertical tabs + fully working adblock + containers, that's all i need in 2025
  • grounder 2y ago
    Are vertical tabs now in the main release of Firefox? I've been on Nightly for the vertical tabs and I love it. Fully agree - container tabs are awesome too.
    • lousken 2y ago
      I didn't see any announcements and I don't see it in the settings so I don't think so. With that said, I have customized version of tree style tabs, so I am not sure how would these visual customizations transfer.
• serverlessmania 2y ago
  Firefox crashes constantly on my computer, and my previous Windows machines, too, never understood the way.
• SirFatty 2y ago
  I switched to Mozilla and never looked back. I switched to Opera and never looked back. I switched to Firefox and never looked back. I switched to Chrome and never looked back. I switched to Firefox and never looked back. I switched to Brave and never looked back. I switched to Tor and never looked back.
• spacechild1 2y ago
  I have been a happy Firefox user for about 20 years now and never felt the need to switch. It's my standard browser on every device I have.
• snapplebobapple 2y ago
  librewolf but basically #metoo
• agambrahma 2y ago
  Hard to read this with all the ads cluttered in. Ironically, Safari would render this cleanly with 1 click.
• pentagrama 2y ago
  I use Pocket, and I love it. However, I would prefer if it wasn’t built into Firefox but instead remained as an extension. One thing that astonishes me is that, even as a built-in feature, every few weeks, when I click "Save," I find that I’ve been logged out. It shows me a login flow, and after completing it, the link isn’t even saved—I have to click "Save" again. That’s frustrating.
• Maple-Wind 2y ago
  [dead]
• justinde 2y ago
  I also like (would like) Firefox, but on Mac, it constantly causes memory issues. It just eats up all the memory.
• prakashn27 2y ago
  Page is full of ads
• michaelcampbell 2y ago
  I use both, but I wish FF had an easier to way setup "custom" searches, like: bg3 foo => searches on the baldurs gate 3 wiki r tragedeigh => goes to the reddit.com/r/tragedeigh subreddit ... It can be done, but it's far too difficult. Containers are the absolute bomb though.