How Firefox Got Fast Again • Hacker News Board

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#311

Post by SapphireSun » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:13 PM UTC

deong wrote: post #278

orbat wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we…

> If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it? Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools. Corporate censorship is entirely under your contr…

This argument doesn't apply if you are suddenly locked out of your account. Then your option to switch still incurs the tremendous costs of the loss of possibly years of work. The original provider must still be accountable.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#312

Post by _puk » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #193

mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

For most Google SPAs I use an appify tool, that contains the site in a single app webview with no shared cookie store. Then in my main FF browser I have cookie crushing on, so that when I navigate away from a domain, all cookies that were created are destroyed.

Ok, I spend my life filling in captchas, but to me that’s a signal that it is working and Google aren’t overly sure who I am.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#313

Post by voidmain » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #308

voidmain wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? Because one of these organizations can throw you into a cage to be raped and tortured for the rest of your life, and the other can deny you access to some fairly useful web apps.

Denying someone's access to his own email inbox can have dramatic consequences on his life. Not as dramatic as being detained and tortured obviously, but still pretty serious. There is already a case where private companies can't shut down their service to you as they wish, it's utilities (water, electricity, gas). I hope we can recognize at some point that Internet access should count as a utility too, and some core…

So if that risk is so scary, build an e-mail service that protects someone's access to their inbox by contractual or technical means, and try to convince them to switch.

Any power that you take away from (comparatively weak, subject to competition) Google by giving it to (already terrifyingly powerful and monopolistic) USG is not a move in the right direction.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#314

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:15 PM UTC

ghostcluster wrote: post #206

e40 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies? It was locking out journalists drafting stories! How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mount…

Sign up for Google Gold and you can make as many abusive documents as you want, without any risk of automated censorship!

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/31/google-docs-users-locked...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#315

Post by SubiculumCode » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

Firefox Nightly user, and I honestly love it.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#316

Post by Manishearth » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #303

Thorncorona wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF just came out with multi account containers about a month ago -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Firefox containers are awesome. Once you've got a GMail account it's really easy to fall into the trap of letting Google track your everything. GMail, Google searches, Google Maps, You Tube. Containers splits them out beautifully, with minimal tracking. With Chrome / Chromium, Google wants you to log-in using a Google account, so you fall into the trap again.

Does Google actually track web activity when logged out whilst logged in to Chrome? By this I mean connecting e.g. searches done on google maps with your account, not just storing the history.

Google of course has all the information server-side to do this; I'm unsure if they actually use it. There's usually a line on tracking that (you think) a company won't cross; e.g. I wouldn't expect Google to use browser fingerprinting to track you when logged out in a different browser, but I'm not sure about web activity in Chrome. Sounds plausible either way.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#317

Post by beemboy » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

I can still remember:

* that moment I was overjoyed to use Lynx over dialup in South India back in the mid-90s allowing me to browse the World Wide Web!

* ...And then that moment being surpassed when I wet myself running the Netscape "GUI browser" on Windows 95 using a brilliant hack by a pair of brothers I knew that wrote a winsock.dll shim on top of Lynx over dialup (called Blue Laser; those guys went on to become CS PhDs doing microprocessor research)

* ...And then that moment being surpassed when IE4 came out in '97 and I couldn't imagine what a faster browser could be or do.

* ...And then that moment when FF 1 came out in '04 and I thought this is incredible, Netscape is alive!! and kicked IE's a55 and me thinking the "browser wars" are over

* ...And then that moment when Google Chrome came out and I went "who needs another browser??" and then switching wholesale to it in short order

* ...Many moments in between thinking "Wow, the browser wars really are over in my lifetime"

* ...And that moment 2 weeks ago when I installed Firefox Quantum beta (Firefox??) and went "Holy crap, this thing is FAST!" and then switched all my browsers everywhere to it. To a beta browser.

It sure is a good time to be a nerd.

Keep up the great work moz://a

PS - edited to reformat

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#318

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #151

mtmail wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium removes many of the nagging and background features related to Google services.

Unless Chrome has features you can't survive without (and I admit its dev tools are pretty good), then I don't see the purpose of this. If staying free of Google becomes a goal, then by using Chrome you're still helping them, even if your Chrome is un-googlified. This is because you help Chrome become a monopoly in the marketplace, I view it as the new Internet Explorer already. Many people here probably don't rememb…

[deleted]

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#319

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

catamorphismic wrote: post #228

tgb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that it saves it enough that I often perform 'dumb' googles in an incognito window just so it'll never suggest "how do I parallel park" again. But how is this unexpected behavior? It also saves every URL you visit - in your browser history. And those URLs encode the search terms. If you want it to not save what you do, then you use incognito mode.

How is it not unexpected that a piece of software uploads and saves everything you search for on a remote corporate server? When did this become so commonplace that users don't even blink an eye to it? And more importantly, why would anyone find this acceptable?

[deleted]

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#320

Post by graphememes » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:19 PM UTC

To everyone using "54" and "57" use the Nightly build, it is actually a lot better.

I was going to comment about the slow scrolling, laggy input, and horrific experience that I have normally using Firefox. Then, I decided to try out the Nightly build.

It removes all of that.

However, it still has a horrible developer tools experience.