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It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

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Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#81

Post by futurix »

jypepin wrote: post #14

Thanks but no thanks. I really tried to switch from Chrome multiple times, mostly because I find Chrome to take too much memory, the tracking, etc. Every time there is some kind of update, either for speed, less data tracking, vpn, etc. I give it a try and always end up being disappointed, even on things that should be so obvious and simple, like scrolling. Even recent versions for FF on a brand new macbook pro, scro…

So Mozilla actually made some major improvements, but you don't want to try switching again because you tried it before on occasion of some minor updates?

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#83

Post by watty »

rbag wrote: post #75
glogla wrote: post #38

Here's my favorite metaphor to explain Chrome and Firefox. So, imagine you have two cars to chose from. The first car, called Chrome, is really cool - it's quick, it's nice, it's reliable, it's comfortable. There's just one thing. There's a guy on the back seat. He's always there. He writes down wherever you're going. When you go shopping, he makes a copy of the receipt. When you drive with someone, he listens to the…

My same analogy with cars would be : "Would you drive a car produced by Exxon". Google interest is not the web, it's its own profit.

Mozilla made 530M in 2016 - they're a company. Firefox is is a strategical business decision. Their interest in the web is the exact same interest as Google's in the web. $$$.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#84

Post by superkuh »

This article starts with the headline, "Because everyone using Chrome for everything is a bad idea" and it's right about the need for diversity in browsers. But that doesn't mean just Firefox or Chrome.

On the contrary, for technically inclined users it's time to consider giving up on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and all the other locked-down anti-user walled gardens that violate software freedoms. I know this is a niche belief system but among the types that read hackernews more care than average.

Firefox held out much longer than most but the pressure at Mozilla to make it 'safe' for grandma (only add-ons signed by Moz) and 'safe' for consuming commercial media (DRM black box, no exceptions for research) won in the end. It has become Chrome if only in target demographic and feature prioritization. Just switching from Chrome to modern Firefox won't create the browser diversity argued for in this article.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#85

Post by nol13 »

mitul_45 wrote: post #45
originalsimba wrote: post #35

Author thinks Chrome is the best browser so whatever. I've been using Firefox for the past 4 years and while the latest version is certainly the best thus far, even when Chrome performed "better" I'd still not use it for a myriad of reasons mostly revolving around the fact that everything Google does these days is crooked. Author mentions the built in ad-blocker. Did you know Google also banned AdNauseum from the pla…

Especially as a web developer, I gave Firefox a second chance and tried to use it's FirefoxDeveloperEdition - but debugging JavaScript was so painful. It somehow felt so slow compare to Chrome's JS debugger. Has anyone else felt this too?

yup

ff4life and all that but dev tools def slower

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#86

Post by morganvachon »

zeta0134 wrote: post #9

I switched to Firefox as my primary browser a couple of months ago, and have been happy enough that I haven't looked back. It is significantly more smooth and performant than it was; the work on Quantum cannot be understated, and the minor fiasco with their extensions ecosystem, though painful, I feel was the right move. With that said, a few anecdotes keep jumping out at me: - Pocket integration. Dive into about:con…

> - Pocket integration. Dive into about:config, turn it off, lather rinse repeat on every device and every fresh OS install. I have about a dozen.

This always bothered me, especially after it became hard-coded into the project. I used to do the same as you to remove it, but now I use Waterfox which rips it out at the source.

> - Bookmarks sync well (yay!) but don't always retain the same ordering on each device, which gets a bit confusing. I can work around this easily enough, but it's not quite as smooth as the same feature on Chrome.

I have found that if I give it about five minutes after syncing, my bookmarks tend to line themselves up according to the last fully synced install. This is important as I put all my bookmarks on the bookmarks bar arranged by folders and subfolders, and muscle memory gets thrown off if I don't give them time to sync positions.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#87

Post by enzolovesbacon »

zeta0134 wrote: post #9

I switched to Firefox as my primary browser a couple of months ago, and have been happy enough that I haven't looked back. It is significantly more smooth and performant than it was; the work on Quantum cannot be understated, and the minor fiasco with their extensions ecosystem, though painful, I feel was the right move. With that said, a few anecdotes keep jumping out at me: - Pocket integration. Dive into about:con…

I have the same issues/annoyances as you.

Also, for the past few weeks, I set up a few Linux desktops. When you install Firefox Quantum alongside with the pre-installed Firefox ESR (most of mainstream distros has it) and enable sync, your bookmarks will have a higher chance of being incorrectly synced and your history (if you chose to sync it) will probably be at FIREFOX_PROFILE_DIR/places.sqlite.corrupt

A simple fix is to close Firefox and

  $ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOUR_PROFILE
  $ mv places.sqlite.corrupt places.sqlite
I'm still trying to find the time to prepare a proper bug report.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#88

Post by fuzzy2 »

mitul_45 wrote: post #45
originalsimba wrote: post #35

Author thinks Chrome is the best browser so whatever. I've been using Firefox for the past 4 years and while the latest version is certainly the best thus far, even when Chrome performed "better" I'd still not use it for a myriad of reasons mostly revolving around the fact that everything Google does these days is crooked. Author mentions the built in ad-blocker. Did you know Google also banned AdNauseum from the pla…

Especially as a web developer, I gave Firefox a second chance and tried to use it's FirefoxDeveloperEdition - but debugging JavaScript was so painful. It somehow felt so slow compare to Chrome's JS debugger. Has anyone else felt this too?

Yes. However, that's a recent development. Mozilla apparently overhauled the entire DevTools stuff. It's not even feature complete at the moment and it's really f*cking terrible.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#89

Post by throwaway84742 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #56

I never gave up on Firefox. I always knew Google Chrome was sending back telemetry data or whatever and never looked back. Also with how many sites are "only working in Chrome" these days I still hold the claim that Chrome is working itself to being the next IE in terms of breaking the web for people using other browsers. I still hold respect for Chrome in other areas though. Firefox was always complained about but h…

Unless you turn off telemetry, Firefox sends it back too. It’s just that Mozilla doesn’t have the incentive to sell your eyeballs, other than charging an arm and a leg for the search engine default. Or at least I don’t know of any such incentives.
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