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An Update on Firefox Containers

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#81

Post by Vinnl »

fish_fan wrote: post #58
tomjakubowski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome profiles are an absolute joy for splitting between personal/work activities. They also work better for, say, switching between Google accounts than the "inline" Google account switcher, which is often buggy and at least used to have incomplete support (does the Analytics dashboard finally support the account switcher?).

To my understanding, firefox also has support for multiple profiles at that level, but it may be by app launch, not by window.

It can be per-window: in about:profiles there's a "Launch profile in new browser" button underneath every profile.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#82

Post by asfdsfggtfd »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #50
throwaway613834 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple profiles are such a pain. You don't even get the common history and autocomplete that comes with having a single profile. I've used them for a while with Chrome and they're just too annoying to use. This looks like it could turn out really great. EDIT: It seems I was unclear in what I was trying to say. I wasn't criticizing multiple profiles in general; I was criticizing using multiple profiles as a replacem…

Hmm, I find it odd that you want cross-noise in your autocompletes. I use the things for doing personal browsing on work machines and find them very convenient. But on Firefox it seems totally unusable because of near misses in UI. I haven't found a nice menu for switching between profiles, or a way of getting a list of available profiles short of rooting about in my settings. The default profile is can change itself…

The thing you are looking for is about:profiles

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#84

Post by lucideer »

aembleton wrote: post #74
lucideer wrote: post #69

For me, the most significant part of this announcement is the breaking out of this feature into an extension. Some interesting questions - Does this represent a deprioritisation of the feature by Mozilla (it would seem not, since there's an explicit WebExtensions API just for this, but I'm curious to see how the level of maintenance of the extension UI keeps up with browser changes going forward) - This seems like th…

Personally I don't want this feature. Because it is an extension, I don't have to have it and my browser can be lighter. This is exactly what should happen, move as much as possible into extensions. If WebExtensions doesn't allow for this, then yes, Firefox should extend it. That way, other extensions can make use of it. You might not be able to port it to Chrome because it is using specific Firefox APIs but the alte…

I have to agree with Vinni here, particularly as a former Opera user which is a browser that took the polar opposite of this approach and yet remained by far the lightest, most performant of the main browsers up until version 12.

It is absolutely possible to have your cake and eat it here, and the main reason for this is that extensibility - from an engineering perspective - is complex. Providing extension APIs necessitates generalised code, that fits a range of use-cases and is parameterised in a generic manner. Providing specific browser features on the other hand requires specific code, which can be written in a targetted fashion for the single feature, and therefore can be made much leaner and optimised.

This is absolutely not always the case - you can of course have the worst of both worlds (inflexible non-extensible apps with inefficient badly written code), but I would not underestimate the heaviness of extensibility, nor the potential "lightness" of built-in features.

---

That said - I'm impressed with the performance of 57 and the ease of writing WebExtensions, so I'm pro this move personally.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#85

Post by cJ0th »

A question for clarification: Containers don't prevent the browser from leaking information such as the addons and fonts installed, right? In other words, the browser fingerprint would still be revealed?

If this is the case then containers might be an okayish first step but may convey a false sense of security to the user.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#86

Post by cygned »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #83
cygned wrote: post #6

I use them daily for development. It is great to be able to have multiple sessions in the same window for the same application when testing/developing a feature. Great work, Firefox team!

But responsive design mode doesn't work?

Yes, that's true and I wonder how these are related. I usually use the tabs not in containers for mobile, the containerized ones for the desktop testing.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#87

Post by morsch »

On a related note, does Firefox implement something like Safari's "Intelligent Tracking Prevention"[0] that times out third-party cookies? Advertisers seem to be mad[1], so they must be doing something right.

[0] https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16308138/apple-safari-11-...

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#88

Post by trey-jones »

I gave it a shot for about 3 weeks, the last time container tabs popped up on HN, but I'm back on Chrome now. Containers are awesome! But Ctl + T not doing what I want it to, combined with FF still just not being as responsive and stable as Chrome did it in for me.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#89

Post by jherdman »

This just isn't what I want. In Chrome I have two separate profiles: work, and home. This lets me have work and home specific history, extensions, and settings. Opening a new tab in one doesn't bleed into the other. This is what I want. It's literally the only thing keeping me in Chrome these days.

Firefox used to have something like this in the past, but it's either buried deep inside some obscure setting or has been ripped out. It's a damn shame.

Re: An Update on Firefox Containers

#90

Post by vulkoingim »

jherdman wrote: post #89

This just isn't what I want. In Chrome I have two separate profiles: work, and home. This lets me have work and home specific history, extensions, and settings. Opening a new tab in one doesn't bleed into the other. This is what I want. It's literally the only thing keeping me in Chrome these days. Firefox used to have something like this in the past, but it's either buried deep inside some obscure setting or has bee…

It still has it, although is not as easy to access as in Chrome. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiple_profile...
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