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Why do you use Firefox?

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Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#111

Post by yellowapple »

For me, it really is the extensions. Specifically, it's Tree Style Tabs. Very few browsers seem to offer even just having tabs along the side of the window instead of at the top, let alone the actual tab tree. XUL also enables some neat Firefox-based browsers like Conkeror to exist.

Hopefully something can be worked out so that similar functionality can be implemented in Firefox even after the death of XUL. Else, hopefully there can be some Firefox equivalent to CEF so that I or someone else can build a Firefox-based browser with an alternative UI.

Else, I'll likely start browser hopping again - something I hoped to avoid by switching from Chrome to Firefox in the first place. I'll certainly still use Firefox on Android, since it's a fantastic little browser that has a somewhat-usable tab interface that doesn't become completely worthless beyond the 10-tab mark (I've got 52 open on this phone right now). For desktop, though, my hopes are on NetSurf to become reasonably usable (the recent Duktape integration is a nice start).

Basically: I just want a browser that's FOSS and that doesn't shove all my tabs into the top of the window end-to-end like a goddamn maniac. That's really all I ask.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#112

Post by yellowapple »

nextos wrote: post #50
mybrid wrote: post #21

No processes. No hangouts. No index service started without asking. Chrome on Windows is a pig. Back when I was using it then nonstop then 25% of CPU usage was pegged to Chrome. I gave up trying to manage Chrome and switched to Firefox. Recently Firefox said they were moving away from threads to processes. I think that's a mistake. Killing Chrome was a pain at times because when it does hang all the child processes h…

I love Firefox because it's like the Emacs of browsers [1]. It's self-discoverable, it can be scripted and it has dozens of wonderful extensions. To me, dropping their plugin architecture to achieve compatibility with Chrome is a bit absurd. Vimperator, GreaseMonkey and many others make Firefox unique. [1] I know there's Conkeror, but the project seems to have stalled.

Not only has Conkeror stalled, but scrapping XUL is a surefire way to murder it in cold blood. The only option going forward would be to rewrite it as an alternate browser that uses Gecko and/or Servo as the engine.

My hope is that the move to WebExtensions will actually help here. Currently, Conkeror is theoretically compatible with Firefox extension-wise, but it often meant writing a bunch of glue code to expose Firefox extension functionality without Firefox' actual UI. Now that extensions are forced to be UI agnostic, it seems reasonable that a browser that's Firefox-compatible could have a much easier time with that. Hopefully a post-XUL Firefox will continue to support something along the basic lines of XULRunner (i.e. present a Firefox window without the actual UI) to make that easier than having to fork Firefox itself.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#113

Post by yellowapple »

sf_rob wrote: post #52
mybrid wrote: post #21

No processes. No hangouts. No index service started without asking. Chrome on Windows is a pig. Back when I was using it then nonstop then 25% of CPU usage was pegged to Chrome. I gave up trying to manage Chrome and switched to Firefox. Recently Firefox said they were moving away from threads to processes. I think that's a mistake. Killing Chrome was a pain at times because when it does hang all the child processes h…

>No processes From my understanding, the initial rollout of multi-process has a single render process (in addition to the main browser process). There are ongoing experiments to determine the optimal number of processes, so it's likely to increase soon. In the future you can force this to 1 by using the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref if you don't want your process manager to resemble Chrome.

I feel like that defeats the point of multiprocess; on Chrome at least, the one-process-per-tab model is intended to isolate tabs from one another without having to duplicate a bunch of work that the OS does already.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#114

Post by chikei »

mybrid wrote: post #21

No processes. No hangouts. No index service started without asking. Chrome on Windows is a pig. Back when I was using it then nonstop then 25% of CPU usage was pegged to Chrome. I gave up trying to manage Chrome and switched to Firefox. Recently Firefox said they were moving away from threads to processes. I think that's a mistake. Killing Chrome was a pain at times because when it does hang all the child processes h…

Fortunately (at least for now), Firefox uses N:M process:thread model instead of 1:1 like chrome (I am typing this in Firefox with 40+ tabs but using only two processes and with a chrome with single OneTab's tab using 10+ processes....) and it allows you to turn off e10s in about:config.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#115

Post by quicksave2k »

synicalx wrote: post #100

I used to use Firefox way back in the day before Chrome was a thing, then once Chrome existed and run pretty fast I moved to that for many years. Now I'm back to Firefox almost entirely due to the absurd 'Web Bluetooth' BS from Chrome's Update 56. It's noticeably more sluggish than Chrome even with little or no addons and tabs, but I'm far more ready to put up with that after the last few Chrome updates.

You might want to read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577670 then ;)

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#116

Post by cpeterso »

crispinb wrote: post #107
cpeterso wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't currently support OS X's custom keyboard shortcuts for menus other than the Firefox application menu. I found a Firefox extension to customize keyboard shortcuts (ported from a Chrome extension). Unfortunately, the extension doesn't work in Firefox 51 or later (due to some unfortunate version checking logic in the extension itself). I left a message on the extension page, so perhaps the…

Thanks. I'll keep an eye on that extension. Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing links? (Yes I'm being lazy here and will look myself if you don't know). The above two were top-of-mind examples, but, particularly with extensions, the lack of keyboard shortcuts does add quite a bit of friction to FF use for me.…

> Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing links?

This is Firefox Bug 429824 - User-defined (custom, System Preferences) shortcuts don't work

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429824

I found this extension that lets you add or custom keyboard shortcuts for many Firefox menu items. It mentions the Email Link menu item, but I didn't dig much deeper.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/my-keyboard-n...

Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to assign shortcuts to extensions.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#117

Post by sf_rob »

yellowapple wrote: post #113
sf_rob wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No processes From my understanding, the initial rollout of multi-process has a single render process (in addition to the main browser process). There are ongoing experiments to determine the optimal number of processes, so it's likely to increase soon. In the future you can force this to 1 by using the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref if you don't want your process manager to resemble Chrome.

I feel like that defeats the point of multiprocess; on Chrome at least, the one-process-per-tab model is intended to isolate tabs from one another without having to duplicate a bunch of work that the OS does already.

You're correct that it defeats one of the points of multiprocess, but you still get parallel performance gains trivially that will scale well as more cores are added as well as isolation of crashes where it doesn't kill your whole session.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#118

Post by clock_tower »

jordsta wrote: post #105
clock_tower wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NoScript is mentioned in the article as not being available on Chrome, and I've heard that Chrome ad-blockers still show ads. Google being an ad company, I wouldn't expect them to allow particularly thorough ad-blocking.

I'm not one to defend Chrome, but the functionality of uBlock Origin you get on Firefox is the exact same as what you get on Chrome. Same filters available and everything. If you still see an ad in Chrome with uBlock Origin installed, it's likely that the filters haven't updated to block that particular ad yet. Moreover, you'd likely see the same ad when browsing with the equivalent Firefox.

That's true enough; but uBlock Origin is my second line of defense -- the main one is NoScript. It requires quite a bit of savvy to navigate modern websites that way, but if you can work it out it's pretty powerful.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#119

Post by crispinb »

cpeterso wrote: post #116
crispinb wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye on that extension. Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing links? (Yes I'm being lazy here and will look myself if you don't know). The above two were top-of-mind examples, but, particularly with extensions, the lack of keyboard shortcuts does add quite a bit of friction to FF use for me.…

> Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing links? This is Firefox Bug 429824 - User-defined (custom, System Preferences) shortcuts don't work https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429824 I found this extension that lets you add or custom keyboard shortcuts for many Firefox menu items. It mentions the Email L…

Thanks. I'll keep an eye out on 429824. Actually I'll need to as it turns out after a few hours more use that emailing links is something I use too much in the course of work to be willing to reach for the mouse (and the 'My Keyboard Navigator' doesn't work for this purpose on the mac). I wouldn't have known this without a few days experimentation, which in itself says something interesting about UX & (my) self-knowledge.

For now, it'll have to be back to Chrome, with Safari as a back up for hot days.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#120

Post by Avernar »

The main reason I use Firefox over Chrome is that the Chrome devs are very against users having a choice on how the browser operates. They also tend to over-engineer solutions to problems.

Here's an example. There has been a bug report asking that Chrome ask to overwrite files instead of silently adding a number to the filename. Instead of making Chrome operate like every other browser and every other program out there they instead came up with a scheme to track all file downloads in the download history and if etags and dates match to "snap" to the location where the file already exists on the user's drive.

Countless of users have said they don't want that. All they want is to be asked to overwrite. Nope, not going to happen. So give us an option in the settings. Nope. Apparently too many options is a bad thing to have.

That's why I don't use Chrome.

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