How Firefox Got Fast Again • Hacker News Board

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#331

Post by iterati » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

pweissbrod wrote: post #247

iterati wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sadly true. I switched off Chrome 5+ years ago due to the "vim-like" plugins being much better on FF than Chrome (specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages) and since FF56, vimperator and pentadactly no longer function. There have been months of back-and-forth between some developers and the FF team, but the functionality required for these plugins has never been prioritized and I had to disa…

If you were heavily utilizing the nmemonics provided by those vim-like plugins (I was before the upgrade) you may be quite pleased by the fast minimal experience bought by qute-browser which is basically webkit wrapped in python/qt bringing a browser built centrally around vim interaction (as opposed to a plugin)

If the vim stuff was the only plugin I needed, I'd move over in a heartbeat.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#332

Post by iterati » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

catamorphismic wrote: post #240

iterati wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sadly true. I switched off Chrome 5+ years ago due to the "vim-like" plugins being much better on FF than Chrome (specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages) and since FF56, vimperator and pentadactly no longer function. There have been months of back-and-forth between some developers and the FF team, but the functionality required for these plugins has never been prioritized and I had to disa…

Search for Tridactyl, which is aiming to reimplement the Vimperator/Pentadactyl feature set in WebExtensions Firefox. It's still in early stages of development but there is already an initial release on AMO with some basic features implemented and with a very familiar feel.

I've tried Tridactyl, but the plugin not working on Firefox pages is the same frustration I had with vim plugins for Chrome.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#333

Post by iterati » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

DiThi wrote: post #182

iterati wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sadly true. I switched off Chrome 5+ years ago due to the "vim-like" plugins being much better on FF than Chrome (specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages) and since FF56, vimperator and pentadactly no longer function. There have been months of back-and-forth between some developers and the FF team, but the functionality required for these plugins has never been prioritized and I had to disa…

Give it some time. I was expecting not to switch because of lack of Tree Style Tabs until around end of year. But I switched some weeks ago. Some addon authors use this opportunity to make a better addon. A few days ago GreaseMonkey has been released with a new API. And of course there will be new addons made by other people to replace lost functionality. It's happening, just not overnight.

That's the issue - there's no real path to making these legacy plugins work. There are open issues for a keyboard api for FF that has had very little movement over months, so while I'm sure it'll eventually get to a point where I can use FF as I used to, that not being the case now has given me little reason to stay with FF and so back to Chrome I went.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#334

Post by Moseman23 » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:29 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…

I'm sorry but in most areas of online life the system monopolies of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are crushing our freedom and choice in tons of ways. You DO have to use Google Docs(for your PTA, your kids soccer team, your communication with your accountant or your church), because everyone else does. Most people won't be running their own mail server or Diaspora. There are many many examples of this by now, and this technolibertarian babble among many of my colleagues in Tech is getting pretty old.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#335

Post by bonsai80 » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

Manishearth wrote: post #316

icc97 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 finger…

The use case for this is that you want to leave your gmail/youtube/etc all logged in, but not let Google track you all over the internet. My primary use for this feature is this specific use case. I created a "Google Spyware" container and configured Google-related things to open in there. If I go to google.com outside of that container, I'm a non-logged-in user. If I open it in the container I AM logged in, so I get all the convenience of staying logged in without the downside of all the surveillance. Of course there are other means to track me, but this is a big step in the right direction.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#336

Post by gressquel » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

if they modernise their developer tools I would jump back to FF. Chrome has got too much power is not abusing it.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#337

Post by Manishearth » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #146

eitland wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends a bit: if devs switch back I'd say definitely. If devs are ready to repeat the IE 6 story, this time with Chrome. Getting companies to do cross browser testing seems hard even if it it should be simpler than ever before.. :-/

I switched to Quantum as my daily driver a few weeks ago, I love it as a user. It has made me hate the Chrome dev tools with white hot passion. Firebug might be gone, but the new dev tools are a masterpiece of usability. I emphatically recommend developer edition as a development browser.

Yeah, the new devtools are pretty nice! The revamp is missing some bits (e.g. the pretty printer is missing for files without a sourcemap) but I suspect that will trickle through slowly.

I've noticed that a lot of folks don't realize there are a bunch more devtools tabs that you can enable hidden in the settings (including a shader editor, a canvas debugger, and a DOM inspector). They're less useful than the main four (inspector/console/debugger/network) but are pretty neat and help a lot.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#338

Post by moomin » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #289

deong wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Until all the big corps start censoring the same kinds of contents and behaviour by an unspoken consensus. At that point it becomes effectively as easy to live without all the major online services as it would be to live as an outlaw. Easier or more difficult to get by without shouldn't distract us from the core point GP made, that corporate (arbitrary) censorship, with no redress, should be taken as seriously as gov…

Consider this: imagine the guy sat next to you at work starts yelling at you with a loudhailer all day. Every day. And he never ever shuts up. (Alternatively, imagine that he just whispers "fuck santosh" all day.) Would you expect him to be free to continue doing it? Would you expect the government to stop him? Or would you expect your employer to stop him?

The answer is: groups of people (and corporations are groups of people) are free to limit speech according to whatever rules the group decides upon. What you're proposing is that certain large corporations be treated as quasi-governmental entities. Which is a _free-speech restriction_.

Not saying it's a bad idea, necessarily. But I'd rather my freedom to say that certain types of speech are unacceptable was guaranteed.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#339

Post by Santosh83 » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

wheresmyusern wrote: post #270

remedan wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you could add about:profiles to your bookmarks. But I agree that the UX around profiles in FF is a bit clunky. But containers don't have separate extensions, bookmarks and history so they can't completely replace profiles.

exactly. i cant believe nobody here seems to know about profiles or about:profiles. its the perfect solution. my setup is tree-style tabs (recently made to work with 57) and a different profile for each task (one profile for each language im learning, one for music, and one for each research topic i might be pursuing). whats your setup like?

But does about:profiles work bug-free for you? From my experience it has had a long standing bug: when you select a different profile to the one you're currently using and click the "Open profile in new window" button, it actually loads the current profile again in another window. I read on a forum somewhere (forget the link) that this was an acknowledged problem and would be fixed sometime in future.

So at least until then, about:profiles is no replacement for using the -P command-line switch to start the profile manager.

Using multiple profiles seamlessly is one area Firefox can and should seriously improve, or Chrome's "User" feature will always have the edge.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#340

Post by Manishearth » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

anirudhan wrote: post #273

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox does have some distinct features that are important to me. I want to open links from Gmail or Inbox without being logged in to my Google account. Firefox containers are perfect for that. I also like snoozing tabs and quick tab switching by typing % into the address bar. Some of these things can be done in other browsers using third party extensions, but I am extremely reluctant when it comes to third party ex…

I didn't know we can switch tabs by typing '%' in the address bar. Helpful indeed.

You can also just type something matching the tab name or URL and "switch to tab" will be in the results in the address bar, usually at the top. It's very nice especially for when you have lots of tabs and you want to do "Open the page matching this from my history unless that tab is already open, in which case switch to tab" because you can just type into the address bar and press enter and it will work.