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It’s time to give Firefox another chance

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Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using this addon, but I'm having a hard time with it. I wish you could disable smooth scrolling when using "j" and "k"

Not on a pc right now, but there may be an option for that? Not entirely sure.

There's a checkbox to control smooth scrolling in about:preferences#advanced , but I just tried both options and didn't notice any difference, neither when using the touchpad nor with j/k in Vimium-FF.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is available as an extension now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... And it's definitely a reason to switch to Firefox. Keeping personal and work Google and AWS accounts open and separate simultaneously is really nice.

Not really a reason to switch to Firefox, it's more not a reason not to switch to it - Chrome has had it for ages. Still good that they have it though!

Firefox has had support for multiple profiles since before Chrome existed. This is a different feature that let's you segment individual tabs within a session.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium has been found to phone home on a regular basis. The data (or metadata) that is sent back is most likely beneficial for Google. I have Google Analytics on my startup's SPA when it can't even be crawled by Google due to the framework we use. The only logical explanation is that Chrome sends data back on the sites you visit.

Let's do a quick thought experiment and imagine all the completely legitimate reasons that a browser might have to call home. Off the top of my head: * Any of the disableable features like safe browsing * Addon code update checks (chrome web store) * Certificate pinning list updates * CA certificate bundle updates * Browser code update checks * Uploading crash reports * HSTS list updates * Settings synching I also be…

You've described perfectly valid use cases for a browser to request additional information. But I think we can both agree that collecting data for the purpose of improving a specific product that Google owns (outside of Chrome itself) is wrong.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#354
post #9

I was very critical of Mozilla in the past about all their "science projects" like Rust. While I appreciate Rust, I thought it was wrong for Mozilla to be wasting resources on it, instead of focusing on Firefox. I was so harsh with them only because I strongly believe that Firefox is my only hope for a free web. But then I tried 57, and I must admit, boy was I wrong. This thing is fast! I haven't stopped recommending…

Rust was pretty much designed to solve problems for Firefox. It's IMO the best bet Mozilla has made these last few years and we're just starting to see them reaping the rewards.

How much Rust is actually in the new Firefox? I'm not seeing any based on a casual click-around in the repo, though I'll freely admit I haven't scanned the entire source tree.

Edit: if there is any, can someone give me a link to the part of the source tree that has it?

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#355
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on a pc right now, but there may be an option for that? Not entirely sure.

There's a checkbox to control smooth scrolling in about:preferences#advanced , but I just tried both options and didn't notice any difference, neither when using the touchpad nor with j/k in Vimium-FF.

I have smooth scrolling disabled in about:prefs, which only disables it on my touchpad, not with vimium-ff

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#357
post #30

Boy, I _really_ didn't want to swap to Chrome. I'd held on through about a year ago, even despite knowing it was slower, a memory hog, and so on; at least this way, _someone_ on my team was viewing our site in FF and would notice discrepancies. I hated to let Google manage yet another aspect of my life. But as some point, too much was too much. Unable to bear vanilla, Google-owned Chrome, I ended up in (closed-source…

> And the Nightly builds are (typically) _more_ stable than production-issue from other vendors. Yeah, I switched to Nightly a couple releases ago (I'd use Dev edition before that because in the past Nightly used to be really unstable) and it's been great. The only time I've been getting crashes are when I flipped stylo on early (which was to be expected), and a couple of random crashes here and there. In fact, I've…

> Netflix is force of habit, it works great in Firefox now

Netflix doesn't work great in either Firefox or Chrome, but that's not the browser's fault. Netflix only streams 720p video to Firefox, Opera, and Chrome whereas it will stream 1080p or better to Safari, IE 11, and Edge:

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

You can see the playback details (formats, resolution, bit rate, etc.) of the video you're currently watching on Netflix by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D.

I use Safari to view Netflix though I'd prefer to use Firefox. I'm paying Netflix for access to 1080p video, but I only actually get 1080p video with Safari.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#358
post #326
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't say Mozilla and squander in the same sentence without referencing their phone OS.

Around 2012 when they started Android still sucked, so IMO it was a reasonable choice. They also killed it off fairly quickly so no big deal.

It's also still considered one of the main-reasons for Chrome eating up all market share, that they now have the leading mobile OS under their control. You can invest a lot of money trying to remedy that, before it's actually a waste of money.

And a lot of technologies and standards that were developed as part of Firefox OS still are very much around today.

In terms of standards, they did a lot of work for camera and microphone integration, which they now needed again anyways with Google having pushed WebRTC to a web standard.

In terms of technology, the biggest thing is probably Asynchronous Panning and Zooming (APZ). Basically offloading scrolling, zooming and window resizing on the desktop to a separate thread.

If you remember how horribly laggy scrolling on Android Firefox was prior to Firefox 46, APZ is what fixed that.

And it's one of the main-reasons why desktop Firefox with multiprocess immediately felt so much better. (Released in Firefox 48, but extensions needed to be updated to be compatible with multiprocess, so most people here probably didn't experience multiprocess and APZ on the desktop until around Firefox 51.)

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#359
for $BAR :: CPU, GPU, MEM, IO

What's the best way to visualize the relative $BAR usage of browser tabs in real time in the browser UI?

Could each tab have an instantaneous or averaging resource demand indicator shown? ...by a font modification, performance dial, color scheme, or animation...?

What's the best way to sort or select from all tabs, or a selection of tabs, by $BAR usage or a query on $BAR usage?

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