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Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#191

Post by on_and_off »

neurostimulant wrote: post #183
on_and_off wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean being able to : - use chrome on Android (with chrome tabs and autofill it is a pretty nice experience) - firefox on the desktop And from any of these two, access a common list of opened tabs on all my devices. Actually, since Chrome on Android does not support extensions, no way to do this both ways, bummer.

You can use firefox mobile instead of chrome on your mobile device to get the bookmark/history syncing with desktop firefox.

yeah but that means moving all my usage (desktop and mobile) to firefox.

I feel it is harder for FF to compete on mobile.

How does it integrate/compete with Chrome tabs on Android ?

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#192

Post by on_and_off »

spajus wrote: post #165
on_and_off wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners — like publishers, advertisers or web developers. I don't really understand the issue people have with aggregated information. All the companies I have worked for have been tracking how people use their product. It does not feel like I am invading somebody's privacy by tracking that 20% of our users clicked on the banner in o…

Problem with sharing your behavior, even in aggregated form, is that you are becoming a subject for all the evil A/B tests which are designed to make you: - buy more stuff you don't need - look at ads longer - more likely to click a button because of specific color - scroll your feed longer because of the content you are getting served I'm not sharing shit with anyone, no matter if it's anonymous, aggregated or not.

First, I really wish we would stop calling random stuff we don't like (even for good reasons) evil.

It blurs the discourse and hampers objective discussions IMO.

I understand that A/B testing can be used to exploit addictions mechanisms and other gray (at best, more likely dark) patterns and IMO that should be forbidden.

At the same time, I don't know any mobile company launching a new feature without a server side A/B lock these days.

Simply because that way :

- it allows you to open the feature gradually and close it if there is a nasty side effect like a crash.

- look at usage patterns between 2 features. I guess the separation between helping the user and exploiting them can get blurry but really when we look at data it is to see if they know the feature exists and find it useful. The truth is that almost all users barely know how to use their phones, so each time there is a feature based on long click, gesture, something buried in a screen other than the first one of the app, a button in the toolbar, etc, chances are that most users won't even know that it is there, even if they would like to use this feature.

I honestly don't know how to conciliate the 2.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#193

Post by hosh »

bugmen0t wrote: post #101
hosh wrote: post #66

I already use container tabs for my dev. (Usually have to test an app using multiple test accounts). I have not figured out how to run a second copy of Firefox that is fixed into a different workspace -- but if I ever do, I will switch on my work laptop. My personal laptop, an old 2011 Mac Air is definitely switching. Chrome just runs too poorly on that now, and container tabs is too useful. It's really interesting,…

What you call workspace is likely called profiles. Try running Firefox --new-instance -p

What I call workspaces are an OSX-specific feature. I already knew about the `-p` flag.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#194

Post by matty22 »

Manishearth wrote: post #174
vatotemking wrote: post #148

Me, far too many times. Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome. However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla, non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages. Now,…

Please let us know if you'd like to see the devtools improved! Also, the devtools are actually a React app ( https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html ), and this means that you can hack on them using ... your devtools (and any other HTML/JS/React tooling you like)! And you can hack on them in any browser, and use them to debug any browser (however some browsers may not support the same debugger protocol feature…

I really wish I could create my own theme for the dev tools. I just can't get into the colors of the existing themes.

The dark theme is too dark/not enough contrast between background color and text colors (pastel fonts on dark bg).

The light and firebug themes are too light and don't have enough contrast between background color and text colors (pastel fonts on white bg).

The lack of bg/font contrast in the dev tools always drives me back to Chrome despite really wanting to be a Firefox user.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#195

Post by ospfer »

forapurpose wrote: post #146
joshka wrote: post #95

I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable). The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the…

You could use bookmark keywords in Firefox, which provide a similar function: 1. Create a bookmark for some-service.example.com/search?q=foo 2. Open the properties for the bookmark. Replace "foo" with "%s" (the universal string for bookmark keyword variables). In the keyword field, type some letter or string you'll remember; I'll use "q". Close the properties dialog. 3. In the URL field, type "q my-search-terms". (At…

It appears that this process has been streamlined a bit. If you right-click in a search field on any site, the context menu has an option to "Add a keyword for this search." The new bookmark will then be created with the "%s" string in the appropriate position in the URL to make this work.

I've set it up for a number of sites since converting over to Firefox yesterday and have yet to find a site that this method doesn't work for.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#196

Post by vatotemking »

Manishearth wrote: post #174
vatotemking wrote: post #148

Me, far too many times. Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome. However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla, non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages. Now,…

Please let us know if you'd like to see the devtools improved! Also, the devtools are actually a React app ( https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html ), and this means that you can hack on them using ... your devtools (and any other HTML/JS/React tooling you like)! And you can hack on them in any browser, and use them to debug any browser (however some browsers may not support the same debugger protocol feature…

Serves me well at this point. Maybe other devs can chime in. Love the work you guys put on FF and Rust btw, cheers!

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#197

Post by ivcha »

on_and_off wrote: post #88
jacek wrote: post #63

I have switched to Firefox a long time ago. The main reason is privacy. I just trust Mozilla much more than Google (I actually don't trust Google at all). From Google Chrome Privacy Notice [1]: [...] Chrome usage statistics include information about the web pages you visit and your usage of them. [...] We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners — like publishers, adver…

>We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners — like publishers, advertisers or web developers. I don't really understand the issue people have with aggregated information. All the companies I have worked for have been tracking how people use their product. It does not feel like I am invading somebody's privacy by tracking that 20% of our users clicked on the banner in o…

Wow, the reason you would think that the fact that all the companies you've worked for have been doing the same as a positive thing, as well as that it might support any argument for collecting this type of information (or "aggregating") is beyond me. If you don't care about privacy and you don't mind giving away information about your behavior, that's fine, that's your thing, but please refrain yourself from spreading these false claims and arguments.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#199

Post by jraph »

joshka wrote: post #158
jraph wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyword trick given by others is nice. If like me you are lazy, use the autocomplete feature. First manually type the URL with the search terms and validate. Then for your second search type some unique part of the base URL and it appears because it is in your history, press down and modify the URL for your new search. When you have done this several times, it seems firefox understands what you are trying to do a…

Tried this a few times, didn't seem to trigger. Thanks for the suggestion though. I have enough specific searches that switching to the keyword trick works well enough for me.

I wonder why it works for me and not for you. I guess I'll have to guess what in my usage pattern allows that :-)

Maybe I accessed the base URL without the query parameters.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#200

Post by bhnmmhmd »

techsupporter wrote: post #47
dmlittle wrote: post #5

I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config - privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use: production and staging.

Or you can install the multi-account containers add-on in FF57: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Thanks. This add-on got me one step closer to start using FF57 altogether.
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