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I'm glad to see more and more people switching (back) to Firefox, as I admit I'm quite a Firefox fanboy. I've never made the full switch to Chrome. First, as a
by Spittie 13y ago
I'm glad to see more and more people switching (back) to Firefox, as I admit I'm quite a Firefox fanboy.
I've never made the full switch to Chrome. First, as a long time linux user, Firefox was never so bad on it (startup time, random freeze for i/o...).
Second, when Chrome was (a lot) faster Firefox had way more addons. Now Chrome has kinda fixed that (I still miss some essential addons, like Tree Style Tab), but Firefox is again about as fast as Chrome.
Regarding Google, I've found that it's result are often better than DuckDuckGo. But I promised myself that sometime I'll make a week using only DuckDuckGo, and see if I can survive without Google.
- joeblau 13y agoI used DDG for two months and as a developer trying to find the latest bugs, code snippets, and help; It was a lot harder on DDG than in Google. I would always end up having to type google.com <tab> in my address bar to search for programming related items. That being said, people have pointed me to resources to help me improve my search results.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- k-mcgrady 13y agoOn DDG you can add !g to the start or end of a query and it will do the search on Google.
- Spittie 13y agoThat's one of the best, and yet one of the worst feature of DuckDuckGo. When I tried using it a while ago, I ended up always searching for "!g <query>", since I knew I would always get equal or better results. I'm glad it's this easy to search on Google from DuckDuckGo, but it also makes the switch harder. Or, at least, it did for me.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoI had the same problem. I switched to DDG and Firefox when the PRISM story broke but ended up using !g on so many queries I made Google my default again. I find Google much better when I'm searching for API docs, StackOverflow Q's etc.
- joeblau 13y agoYeah I had the same problem. If I'm going to be in DDG but most of my searches are on Google, what's the point of me using DDG?
- dredmorbius 13y ago!sp will search on StartPage, which is a privacy-proxied Google search. That's my fallback if the default DDG search doesn't work.
- teaneedz 13y agoThe !Bang syntax is excellent for searching language/framework/library specific answers. Just append it to the end of a search if you need to. [DuckDuckGo !Bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html) If you still need a Google result, try appending !sp which will give you a Startpage result (Google result with privacy)
- bad_user 13y agoYou don't need DDG for that. Both Firefox and Chrome support adding shortcut keywords for search boxes. For example, in Firefox all you have to do is to right click on a search box and select "Add Keyword for this Search". It's much better than DDG because: 1) if you care about privacy, then this is obviously the right way, as you don't have to redirect through a third-party's server 2) you can add shortcuts for whatever you want, without being limited to a fixed set. For instance I type "dex someWord" for getting the definition of words in my native language. I type "word hello" for doing a search on wordnik.com. I type "w definition" for Wikipedia. I type "mvn package" for doing a maven package search. I type "gem library" for doing a RubyGems search. And yeah, it's easier to add a shortcut that's relevant to you, then it is to read that DDG document you linked to.
- teaneedz 13y agoI haven't played with Firefox keywords really but isn't the saved search still going through whatever the default search engine is (in Firefox, Google)? [Update] I guess my point is that DDG has it ready to go and the syntax is usually easy enough to figure out without building up one's own keyword list. Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems that DDG offers a better solution.
- teeja 13y agoExample: I use the letter 'd' for DDG searches in the address bar. In the "Show all bookmarks" window for the DDG bookmark, I've filled in "Location: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" and "Keyword: d" . When I enter into the address bar: "d turkey trot [return]" Firefox turns that into "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turkey https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turkey trot" and initiates the DDG search. But you can use the same FF keyword feature to auto-generate a URL for any site. If you go to BoingBoing a lot, you could just enter 'bb [return]'. [Note: some of the DDG 'bangs' are out of date ... try !js]
- simgidacav 13y agoI switched to DDG some time ago, and I totally live happy with it. Besides, lately they improved the quality a lot, both on the results and on speed performances. The bang syntax is just awesome, and I rarely need to !g my results.
- malbs 13y agosame, everyone I know switched to Chrome, and always had said "why are you still using Firefox?". Because I've used it since 0.5 or whatever, I like the browser, I've stuck with it. It doesn't install a bunch of uninstallable tools into Windows either like any Google app does (Try and find where you uninstall the Google update binaries, it involves deleting folders, editing the registry, editing scheduled tasks)
- shmerl 13y agoSame thing here. I always used Firefox, and never got the hype about Chrome. I like Mozilla goals stated in their manifesto way more than Google's ambiguous "don't be evil" which doesn't even hold up to its promise.
- rlu 13y agoI don't know why, but Firefox always takes so long to load for me. Personally I'm quite happy with Chrome.
- ruv 13y agoTree Style Tabs is cool! Have you got any other recommendations? Besides AdBlock+, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere and Chatzilla?