Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 200 posts

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

#121

Post by neurolit »

martinpw wrote: post #120
boudin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel slower. With a low memory device it's a pain, but on a high-end one I don't find this that annoying. The good side is that's it provides plugins (so proper ad-blocking) and custom search engines. I haven't found any other browser as complete on Android. It balance the not as smooth feeling when scrolling which is not that important to me

I use FF on Android just because I can block ads with extensions since the ad-laden experience is so unbearable on mobile, even though overall Chrome seems a better browser. So I'm puzzled that its market share on that platform is so low (0.6% according to the article), given you cannot use blockers like UBlock Origin with mobile Chrome. Since ad blockers on desktop have a pretty high penetration, what is going on on…

Maybe people are not using browsers on mobile but apps?

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

#122

Post by Pistos2 »

bad_user wrote: post #64
Pistos2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to your analogy: What of Chromium [with the right settings switched in the user's favour]?

Switching off Chrome is like "voting with your wallet", because you're increasing the market share of another entity / project, increasing its legitimacy in the eyes of your friends and colleagues or in the stats that all major websites are collecting on browsers. But switching to Chromium does none of that. Also stripping Google's integration out of Chromium leaves you with a much less capable browser. Are you, for…

Maybe my needs are much more modest than that of the average user, but, as a matter of fact, I do get by without using extensions from the Google Chrome store which are not open source. I do install open source ones from there, but I'm ready to download from source and avoid the store, which I do indeed do in some cases.

Even if Chromium's source is developed by Google employees, it being open source at least allows it to undergo scrutiny with respect to end-user-unfriendly behaviour.

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

#123

Post by sofaofthedamned »

Vinnl wrote: post #7
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #2

I have done - and it's awesome on Windows / Fedora. But it's so janky and slow on Android, this is on a Pixel 2 XL. What is so wrong with the Android version? For the record i've tried to move across for ad-blocking which Chrome doesn't provide, and I do need the account sync. Firefox is just as janky without any plugins on Android.

On Android it's supposed to still be getting better, although it's taking quite a while now and I feel it's not the main focus (apparently it's hard to fix the codebase, so IIUC they're getting there through a detour by first focusing on the embeddability of Gecko - which will take a while). That said, Nightly is already somewhat better, so I've been using that to relative satisfaction for a while now. You might want…

I was on the beta when I wrote that comment - tried the nightly and though better is still a jank fest. It's the reverse of the desktop where Chrome has gone awful and FF is nice. The biggest thing is the scrolling behaviour on FF which is truly horrendous. Is this just me? There's also a click-lag. I'm not rooted, have minimal apps, etc.

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

#124

Post by forapurpose »

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…

> how many sites are "only working in Chrome" these days

Which sites? I've never encountered one that worked only in Chrome.

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

#126

Post by johnp_ »

shady-lady wrote: post #116

I kept with firefox through it all but started use Chrome for dev exclusively. The only reason I stuck with firefox was Tree Style Tabs. While I'm delighted at their recent improvements, I still can't help but wonder if they are putting the ~500 million they get each year to good use. There are still features in the browser that are quite lacking: - history -> history viewer is still so ~basic~. most query constructs…

> * for those settings where it makes sense to sync.

What makes sense for one person may not make sense for the next. That's why it's configurable: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Fir...

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

#127

Post by sofaofthedamned »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #50
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #2

I have done - and it's awesome on Windows / Fedora. But it's so janky and slow on Android, this is on a Pixel 2 XL. What is so wrong with the Android version? For the record i've tried to move across for ad-blocking which Chrome doesn't provide, and I do need the account sync. Firefox is just as janky without any plugins on Android.

Interesting; I use the nightly build on my Pixel 2 XL and it seems just fine, almost on par with Chrome.

Thanks for your input, unfortunately it doesn't tally with my experience. Maybe i'm doing something wrong?

I've literally just installed the nightly version as opposed to the beta - no plugins, but sync is enabled. Scrolling on Twitter is a jank fest, not as bad as previously but I put that down to the adblockers I had on the beta.

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

#128

Post by eat_veggies »

forapurpose wrote: post #124
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…

> how many sites are "only working in Chrome" these days Which sites? I've never encountered one that worked only in Chrome.

For a long time, Google Allo's web client didn't work on Firefox unless you sent a Chrome user-agent.

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

#129

Post by alde »

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, FFs devtools are slow to the point of being unusable for me. I still use Firefox for general web surfing, but need to switch to Chrome for debugging/inspection.

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

#130

Post by gmemstr »

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…

I think one of the biggest issues with AdNauseum is devaluing ads to a point it's no longer viable to show any because the adsense account (or alternative) will get flagged as fraud or ads will pay out far less, harming the publisher much more in the long run than an ad blocker. If I still ran ads on one of my websites, I would be very upset if this was the case. While I agree it is also probably in Google's best interest to sell ads at high prices, it does affect those who use adsense as well.
Post reply on HN