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uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

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Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#221

Post by haddr »

baby wrote: post #193
bad_user wrote: post #174

After being a Chrome user for several years, I've switched back to Firefox for the past two years or so and I'm really, really happy with it. Latest version does multi-processing, e10s is finally here (though it might still get disabled by usage of certain add-ons, I remember I had to force it to stay enabled). On performance, in the past it felt sluggish, but now Firefox is fast and for my usage patterns it uses les…

Tree Style Tab is the biggest difference for me, if you haven't used it before you are probably slow to browse the web :)

I like a lot the "tabs outliner" extension for Chrome. It's especially useful when you work with many tabs open at the same time, and want to preserve sessions, etc. Unfortunately there is now alternative to that in Firefox. Session Manager comes close, but is painful to use. So I'm still looking forward to such extension for Firefox, because honestly I prefer FF to Chrome for most of the things.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#222

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pcwalton wrote: post #108
Silhouette wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely unreasonable. We use software because it's useful. If you make it so secure that it is no longer useful, what have you got left? In the case of Firefox extensions, I'm aware of the risks of the old model, but the fact is that the only observable difference it has made to me so far is that when I accidentally hit back on a page with an unsubmitted form the other day I lost about 20 minutes' worth of…

The idea that the XUL extension model is necessary for a browser to be useful is obviously false. The majority of Web users use browsers that do not have a XUL extension model. (And, of course, I don't believe your desired functionality is incompatible with Web Extensions anyhow.)

> The idea that the XUL extension model is necessary for a browser to be useful is obviously false. The majority of Web users use browsers that do not have a XUL extension model.

I explicitly preferred Firefox over every other browser I ever tried because its extensions were more powerful and more abundant, and it appears likely that this was due to XUL providing deep access to extensions. You can't just say that others didn't have a feature if that feature was a key differentiator!

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#223

Post by simias »

exDM69 wrote: post #220
vanderZwan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. If you're the type with a lot of tabs open, that should improve a lot in the next few releases. https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.ht...

> If you're the type with a lot of tabs open I'm not and I don't store/restore tabs on close, so that's not the case here. It's just Firefox + Vimperator + uBlock origin with about:blank as home page. I'm on Linux/X11 if that matters.

That's odd, from SSD a cold firefox start takes a few seconds on my debian testing (using firefox 54 from apt). Maybe you're using a slow HDD?

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#224

Post by jhasse »

Vinnl wrote: post #216
exDM69 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the best feature of Firefox compared to Chromium (both out of the box, no extensions. not sure if there are extensions that could help) is the address bar. Firefox does a fuzzy search into your browsing history and if you visit the same sites often, the suggestions are quite good. Contrast this with Chrome, where the idea behind address bar user experience seems to be maximizing the number of Google searches d…

This is supposedly a lot better with Firefox 55, released this week :)

Only for restoring lots of tabs.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#225

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

newscracker wrote: post #184
pcwalton wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the XUL extension model is necessary for a browser to be useful is obviously false. The majority of Web users use browsers that do not have a XUL extension model. (And, of course, I don't believe your desired functionality is incompatible with Web Extensions anyhow.)

The idea is for extensions to have the flexibility they have had. I don't think anyone would object to WebExtensions if it didn't cripple or make existing extensions impossible to exist in the future. Also, this interest is not about the majority of the users. This is about the users who know about Firefox extensions and use a bunch of them everyday! I know my life has certainly become more productive and less stress…

> I don't think anyone would object to WebExtensions if it didn't cripple or make existing extensions impossible to exist in the future.

Actually there have been some complaints about API churn; rewriting is no fun. But I agree with the rest of your post.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#226

Post by bovine3dom »

exDM69 wrote: post #220
vanderZwan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. If you're the type with a lot of tabs open, that should improve a lot in the next few releases. https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.ht...

> If you're the type with a lot of tabs open I'm not and I don't store/restore tabs on close, so that's not the case here. It's just Firefox + Vimperator + uBlock origin with about:blank as home page. I'm on Linux/X11 if that matters.

This is probably a good place to plug the fact that Vimperator is going to die with FF57 [1].

If anyone wants to help with making an alternative, look through that thread. I'm particularly invested in Tridactyl [2] but other people are working on others.

[1] https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/705

[2] https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#227

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

sp332 wrote: post #50
NewEntryHN wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as an extension developer he is particularly sensitive to the tech behind Firefox, which makes him understand some of Mozilla's decisions. For example, the move from legacy add-ons to WebExtensions is surely one less maintenance burden for Mozilla. As a user who doesn't think about such issues, it terribly looks like it's becoming a Chrome clone. I think it's Mozilla's responsibility to have a clearer communi…

But as a user, you're probably just going to want to know if there is an extension that does what you need. Are you worried about the underlying APIs if you're not a developer?

I don't care for myself, but the author of one of my favorite extensions has stated that he's not porting to a webextension because he doesn't want to rewrite (again) and because (at the time he looked, at least) the APIs didn't really support it. I don't care about the API directly, but I absolutely care when they're insufficient.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#228

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

edgartaor wrote: post #157
arca_vorago wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people would focus on content in HTML and CSS for layout and newfad devs weren't shoving 50 jscripts a page down our throat this wouldn't be happening as bad. I plan to make all my future sites librejs compatible, and forgoe js altogether whenever possible.

How this could be done if your backend it's a REST API?

You can still render server-side, an with a REST endpoint it should be easy to do so.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#229

Post by ycombinete »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #214

I would love to use Firefox for it's privacy credibility, the Awesome Bar and to prevent monopolization of the Web. Unfortunately 2017 is the year of the CPU usage apocalypse on the Web. Go to this insane Guardian page, scroll down a page, and observe what happens for a minute or two perhaps scrolling down some more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/10/adele-vocal-cor... The numbers keep jumping around a lot…

I tried this:

  1. With uBlock Origin running, I don't go above 11% CPU 

  2. I turned uBlock Origin off: reloading immediately sent my CPU to 80%, and it *stabilised* at a constant 30%.

Re: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

#230

Post by f311a »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #25

Firefox is coming back, finally- I think their market share is at the bottom and we'll see a big uptake over the next couple of years.

Market share has nothing to do with features/functionality. Google has the ability to promote their products to the big audience.
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