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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

#131

Post by dblohm7 »

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…

> These may seem like big asks but Mozilla is taking in 1/2 billion a year

It takes a huge amount of money to build and maintain a modern web engine and browser.

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

#132

Post by com2kid »

Firefox, on occasion, cannot play videos above 4fps until I restart it.

After running for awhile, Firefox slows my entire system down to the point there is a 250ms-500ms delay for every key press.

Despite all this I keep trying to make FF my primary browser, but wow it is hard.

I'm actually using Opera as my day to day, it has hotkeys that are just a little bit better than Chrome's, backspace still does what I'm used to it doing (going back a page) and the "jump to last tab" hotkey is super appreciated.

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

#133

Post by dorgo »

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…

> minor fiasco with their extensions ecosystem

minor? you are kidding

>feeling like I'm in more control of my browser

I lost the control of my browser after quantum. Now I still have some control over the websites displayed in the browser but the browser itself (loading screen, private mode, new-tab, reading view, focus of adress bar, all chrome-urls, ... ) are out of reach. Mozilla took 40% of control away. Without serious effort (fork , hacking..) I can't control my browser any more.

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

#134

Post by forapurpose »

qznc wrote: post #106
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…

Viewing pdfs was a big difference some time ago. Nowadays Firefox seems to have catched up. While I switched back to Firefox as well, I still miss Chrome's print dialog. It looks much simpler, yet does everything I need with a lot less clicks.

For printing, try the Print Edit add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit/

EDIT: The Firefox Quantum version (thanks politelemon): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we...

It's not simpler, but it's worth trying just to see and appreciate it; I've never this functionality elsewhere. You edit the document in Print Preview in an amazing number of ways, from removing sections to editing text to changing page breaks to much more. It's been completely reliable IME. It's hard to believe someone did it, maintains it, and is giving it away for free.

(Despite my enthusiasm, I have no connection with the software or developer.)

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

#135

Post by com2kid »

8xde0wcNwpslOw wrote: post #3

It's odd to see Firefox being called a memory hog just a few years back. As far as I can tell, Chrome has used more memory pretty much always if you have multiple tabs open. (Firefox may have been slower on slow hardware, but that has never been an issue for me.)

FF was still 32bit and without per process tabs it would run out of memory and crash multiple times a day for heavy users.

With multiple processes and being 64bit across all platforms, those particular complaints are gone.

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

#136

Post by KozmoNau7 »

jazoom wrote: post #109
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…

Unfortunately the Firefox car, running on Android fuel, has awfully weird driving (scrolling) physics that for some reason are different to every other car. If they fixed that I might be inclined to have another look, but they've had many years and still haven't addressed it.

It's fixed now, at least good enough that it didn't hinder me.

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

#138

Post by dblohm7 »

tomcooks wrote: post #107

It's a pity Mozilla is pushing for a dumbed down version of its core principles, if I were them I'd: - drop the whole cartoonish nonsense, childish errors such as "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." should be swapped back to something more useful (or at least give me an HTTP error to look up on top of that stupid cartoon) - quit pushing for pocket and other proprietary nonsense - stop messing with user dat…

> quit pushing for pocket and other proprietary nonsense

Mozilla owns pocket and is in the process of open sourcing it. Some parts are already on GitHub.

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

#139

Post by ksk »

skybrian wrote: post #49
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…

Why should we listen to you? Have you even tried to turn that stuff off in Chrome? What did you find out?

>Have you even tried to turn that stuff off in Chrome?

Personally, I have made an effort to try to turn things off in Chrome, because I felt it to be a superior product to FF. I switched to FF purely because I realized that my interests are never going to be aligned with Googles.

The problem is with the rate of change, and lack of UI stability. Can you disable WebRTC? You used to be able to with an easy flag, now its probably harder. Can you disable WebGL? Can't seem to w/o jumping through hoops. Why is Chrome looking at my USB devices? Can I disable WebUSB? nope. Disable Omnibox? Dont think so anymore. You used to be able to IIRC,etc, etc.

Google is never going to make it easy for you to stop sending data to them. An option of "Don't send anything ever, and don't ask me again" would be nice. More and more UXs are employing dark patterns where disabling is never an option, just 'deferring' or 'pausing'. (e.g. https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

Its hard to make definitive statements because Chrome keeps changing. Now, thats not Chromes fault, of course, but what rate of change is manageable? I don't know.

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

#140

Post by stuartd »

mmsimanga wrote: post #67
dizzystar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did your security classify Firefox as a risk?

It was just after WannaCry was big news. They had installed some Blucoat or something along those lines. I think Firefox didn't play so nice with the monitoring software hence it was classified a risk. I have to add that the Security Director wasn't a security expert, highly ambitious and was never going to entertain anything he didn't understand.

the Security Director wasn't a security expert - not ideal..
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