With the exception of casting things to my chromecast, I've switched to Firefox for everything. Performance isn't an issue, development tools are really good, I can be "that guy at work who catches firefox bugs," and I'd rather support Mozilla than Google at the end of the day.
Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
21–30 of 203 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#22I've given it a decent shot - but it still has very average profile support, which I use daily. In Chrome, it's easy to see what profile I'm using (top right corner of the window), and very easy to switch. In Firefox, you need to go to about:profiles to even see what profile you're currently using.
Would containers work better for your use case?
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#23I want to uninstall chrome, but can't find a good replacement for chrome report desktop. It just works so seamlessly on all devices, including mobile. Any suggestions?
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#24I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config - privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use: production and staging.
Chrome has this as a first-class feature, "People." I have one window open for personal, and another for each of the AWS accounts I have access to. Sounds from your description like FF can do this at the tab level?
Yes, that's correct. The containers feature enables profiles on a per-tab basis. As someone who does a lot of account switching, it's a killer feature for me. I would imagine some users would not really find it necessary.
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#25I have, temporarily. Some bugs and occasional slowness, coupled with more memory hogging, have me reconsidering.
FF57 still consumes more memory than Chrome? For the same tabs? Or are you maybe experiencing some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation — opening more tabs because they mostly "feel" lighter-weight?
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#26I've been using Nightly for about 2 months for personal browsing, and have recently switched to using it for my web development job using containers, and it's been great.
Biggest feature I'd like to see is a keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab in a particular container, as opposed to Cmd+T opening an uncontained tab.
The Developer Tools still have a ways to go before they beat the performance of Chrome (large source files lag), but it's perfectly usable and getting better all the time.
All in all, I've been very happy with my switch, especially when Quantum landed in Nightly: a noticeable increase in speed and snappiness!
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#27I've given it a decent shot - but it still has very average profile support, which I use daily. In Chrome, it's easy to see what profile I'm using (top right corner of the window), and very easy to switch. In Firefox, you need to go to about:profiles to even see what profile you're currently using.
Check out Containers - it goes a long way towards solving this problem. I also used to rely heavily on Chrome profiles
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#28Switched to Firefox on Macbook Pro.
It feels faster, but my two main complaints:
1. While using the touchpad to go 'back', a page on Safari will show you the page you're going back to. Chrome will at least offer an arrow animation backwards. Firefox offers no such thing, often leaving me confused as to whether it's registered. A couple times so far it has instead scrolled me up the page a bit.
2. I have nothing else open, yet certain actions (i.e. scrolling through Zillow pictures earlier) will result in it sporadically using so much memory that my computer's fans are audibly loud and the computer gets quite hot.
Nonetheless, I still would narrowly recommend it, though some of that is likely to do with wanting to support Mozilla.
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#292010 macbook, Chrome user. Things are generally slow, but felt like they got a bit snappier after the High Sierra upgrade. I tried FF57 but for me it feels a bit slower than Chrome on this older device.
Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?
#30I never stopped using Firefox, but for years was only using it for an isolated development environment.
But I've been using Firefox 57 for a few month, and it's great. I still use Chrome, but I'm probably spending equal time in both now.