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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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481–490 of 713 posts

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#481

A question as I consider moving to Firefox. On Chrome I've set my search engine keywoards so I can open a new tab and type "w foo" to search Wikipedia for "foo". And similar things for DuckDuckGo, Hoogle, Amazon, etc. On Firefox I can do something similar if i'm willing to click on a small icon rather than hitting enter or move to the search bar with ctrl-k, type my term, then press tab a bunch of times to select the…

No extension needed. Right-click in any search box on a website and select "Add a Keyword for this Search." It looks like a normal bookmark, but if you set a keyword on it, it'll work just like Chrome.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#482
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google One thing they have been doing very well is allowing history to sync between multiple devices on different OSes. Right now I use Chrome everywhere because : - It feels pretty fast (I still have to try the new FF) - Any replacement needs to come with an extension covering this feature an…

I've been using FF sync for at least 3 years now, probably more. And FF 57 is definitely on par with Chrome in browsing speed. Still not quite there with WebGL, though. The debugger is much better now, too, and surprisingly more responsive than Chrome's.

JS debugging in particular or do you mean the developer tools in general?

(I'm the Chrome DevTools tech writer / advocate)

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#483

A question as I consider moving to Firefox. On Chrome I've set my search engine keywoards so I can open a new tab and type "w foo" to search Wikipedia for "foo". And similar things for DuckDuckGo, Hoogle, Amazon, etc. On Firefox I can do something similar if i'm willing to click on a small icon rather than hitting enter or move to the search bar with ctrl-k, type my term, then press tab a bunch of times to select the…

If you just set your default search engine to DuckDuckGo, DDG has !commands that do basically the same thing. So I can type "!wiki foo" to search Wikipedia for "foo". And the other benefit is you're not letting Google (or Bing or Yahoo or whatever) see your search traffic anymore!

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW: if using Android, if FF is not for you, try Brave instead of Chrome. It feels exactly like Chrome (it's Chromium-based), but has a built-in adblocker, tracker blocking, HTTPS everywhere, no nagging to sign in, and does not throw "suggested news" (with no opt-out) upon you. Brave's founder is ex-Mozilla's CEO (Brendan Eich). However latest FF on Android is actually not bad, at least if you have a modern phone (th…

From what I've read, Brave doesn't block ads -- it replaces them with other ads. I don't think that it's a good idea. Firefox for Android also allows browser extensions, which gives some control of the software back to the user.

I'm using Brave on Android and it does block ads, here is the ad block engine they use: https://github.com/brave/ad-block. The replacing of ads thing isn't implemented yet, and I expect that it can be turned off when that feature has landed, like the Brave payments thing that is currently opt-in on the desktop version: https://www.brave.com/publishers/.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#485

I just installed Firefox 57 (thanks jacek for the link) and the first things I noticed are: - The cross to close a tab and the one to create a tab are aligned in a weird way. - Opening a tab is laggy (I'm on a MBP with an Intel Iris chip and 16GB of RAM). - The scrolling still does not feel native (I'm on macOS High Sierra). I'm very impressed by the work that has been done for this release as a dev but this does not…

If you set your screen resolution to "default for display" in System Preferences, does the scrolling feel closer to native?

This seems to have fixed it for me! Not that I could actually live with this fix, but now I could report it to them or something. When I turned it to default scaling it was snappy again. And when I move the window over to one of my 4K monitors it is also fast, so it's something unique to the laptop monitor with scaling.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it does actually block ads and doesn't replace them. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet when you can just try the product :)

Except it does. It has the functionality to do BOTH. The tagline of giving the option to either disable ads or replace ads is to provide a way to enjoy an ad-free experience or to receive only optimized advertisements. A big reason some users dislike ads isn't because of their entire existance but rather their tendency as of late to be malware-ridden or cause drops in webpage performance. These are the things that ca…

>A big reason some users dislike ads isn't because of their entire existance but rather their tendency as of late to be malware-ridden or cause drops in webpage performance. These are the things that cause some users to enable ad-blockers, and Brave is the only way I've heard of that has pushed the envelope of a BETTER ad experience.

AdBlock Plus also does something equivalent through their default option to show "Unobtrusive ads."

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#487
post #368
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…

Thanks for the reminder. I just downloaded the latest FF beta and exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role. All the back-and-forth about speed and features is understandable, but misses the point that Firefox needs our support if we are to have any real non-proprietary options for what is quickly becoming the base system abstraction layer for most computing.

FF57 stable is arriving tomorrow. But you can get it from the FTP server today:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're getting downvoted mostly because of calling Google "comparatively weak", but I think your point and your comparison is correct. Google is weak in comparison to the U.S. Government and, importantly, is subject to competition.

There are other email services which offer what people want. Want people are proposing is imposing their will on Google and the people that run it, even though there is competition out there that people could use instead and get what they want. Gmail and Google Apps are far from the only options people have, and far from the only free options people have. But if it is so important that people have an email address, then the USG could actually offer that (I've long thought the USPS should offer verified email addresses with strict spam protection by aggressively pursuing violators). Otherwise, let people pay what they want for the level of assurance they want.

The other side of this argument is that there are some things we do want to enforce companies do, such as offer a base level of health care in a package. I support this as well, because that solves an endemic problem where people have restricted choice and it also hurts society as a whole. That is, I think Hobby Lobby should have to provide birth control in their health plans because of the reasons outlined above, but I don't think any non governmental service provider that isn't a monopoly (and Google isn't a monopoly in cloud apps, even if there is an argument that can be made about them being one in search) should have to adhere to dictates about what what content they must allow on their service. That's a pretty slippery slope in my view.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#489
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?

The signing into an account in Chrome almost got someone fired at a small customer of mine a few weeks ago. Fortunately they called me first to look into it, I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. I also wrote this up for the owners to send to the…

> I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home.

So the offence was merely having porn bookmarks in their browser - not visiting porn sites at work? Wow.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#490
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…

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