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Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

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271–280 of 753 posts

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#271
post #180

Why doesn't everyone use multiple browsers all the time? I've got chrome, chromium, firefox, opera and use them all in amounts that vary with mood. That mood is probably affected by the differing ways those browsers develop. I don't recall firefox ever being a bad browser or so dramatically worse than others that I would consider stopping using it. I can see the reservations people have with chrome, mostly it's not t…

I assume everyone hates the idea of websites being fully responsible for what they serve. It would be interesting to hear why rather than the anonymous negative response.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#272

I switched to Vivaldi a year or two ago after using Firefox as my main browser for the longest time. I've considered switching back, but every time I run up against several features in Vivaldi that I am just not ready to part with yet: 1) tab stacks, 2) the ability to save and reopen an entire session, 3) a page load progress indicator in the URL bar, 4) using Ctrl-F highlights the position of all matching locations…

I'm on Vivaldi right now and I love it. The window panel is so much nicer than tabs (for those that don't know, it's tabs along the side, kinda bookmark style). Tab stacks are amazing. The background downloading is nice where it starts the download while you decide to Save, Save As, or Open. There is a lot of little stuff too, like in the window panel you can select multiple tabs and copy the URLs. The closed tabs st…

> The background downloading is nice where it starts the download while you decide to Save, Save As, or Open.

AFAIK firefox does that too, it just doesn't show it. Just test it: click on a large file download link and leave the dialog alone for some seconds. Once you actually click on Save, Save As or Open... it opens instantly (or already has a large downloaded chunk, depending on the file's size and your bandwidth of course).

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#273
post #152

I haven't seen anyone mention this, but Firefox is my "daily driver" for almost all browsing, and is also locked down with uMatrix, uBlock Origin, DecentralEyes and Ghostery (though I could probably drop Ghostery without missing it). Chrome has uBlock Origin and a few other things but interferes with pages less. I keep a set of pages for some specific web apps (e.g. GMail, Google Calendar, task management, etc.) open…

I'd remove Ghostery. Not only is it useless once you are running uMatrix & uBlock Origin, they also used to sells your data (page visit, blocking, and advertising statistics) if you activated a feature called "GhostRank". Not sure whether it's still true or not.

Indeed, and I personally replaced it with the EFF privacy badger plugin.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#274
post #76

Firefox was never away, at least for me. Therefore the expression "Firefox is back" sounds a little odd to me. I have been using it since 2006 (Firefox 2.0). Back then, the presence of the Firebug extension for Firefox made me switch to Firefox as my primary browser. Two years later, Chrome arrived but Firefox remained as my primary browser because I wanted to continue using the Vimperator extension for Firefox that…

It’s for your average NY Times reader that doesn’t keep up with the day-to-day tech news world.

And don't forget about those thousands (millions?) of users who suddenly found Chrome installed on their computer because they updated their Virus Scanner or installed some Freeware where it was bundled with Chrome.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#275
post #89
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially on YouTube where I believe there’s an issue with Firefox not using the most efficient encoding on the videos.

Do you have details? I noticed that Youtube on Firefox makes the fan spin up on my 2013 rMBP a lot. I currently use Firefox but as a heavy Youtube watcher this is a pretty big negative.

Same here, if I'm watching YouTube on my 2015 rMBP I have to use Safari rather than Firefox if I don't want the fans to spin up.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all political views are valid, what about someone that has documented pro-segregation views? Is that person qualified to make decisions that impact the lives of a diverse workforce? If not, where do you draw the line? I'm not trying to make a strawman argument - I'm seriously asking why would this be any different? The problem isn't that he had some thought in his head - its that he took that thought in his head a…

Should people that donate to women-only colleges be fired? After all, that's supporting a type of segregation, and you didn't specify which type of segregation you're referring to. But to answer your point seriously (presuming that you're referring to Jim Crow era segregation), the people that genuinely support those kinds of heinous policies will almost certainly end up committing actual harassment and be fired with…

I was clearly referring to Jim Crow era segregation. And, if your point is that all supporters of Jim Crow era segregation, which is super racist, will inevitably do more things that are super racist, why must we wait for them to do additional super racist things before judging them to be unfit to be a CEO of a large company? Similarly, once someone has demonstrated that they hold opinions contrary to the best interests of their employees, why must those employees wait until after they become CEO for them to demonstrate that fact yet again? If they have demonstrated that they are unfit, they are unfit, and they shouldn't have the position.

> Banning certain political views almost always going to harm overall inclusion.

Nothing was banned here. His position was that same-sex marriage should be illegal. Their position was that someone who supports same-sex marriage isn't fit to be a CEO of a large company, making decisions about a diverse workforce, based in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.

I'm also unclear about your definition of inclusion - is it just finding the largest number of people that happen to agree with each other?

> Refraining from firing people regardless of their political views would not cause the world to fall apart.

Its not about the world falling apart. Its about the right of employees to express their opinion of someones fitness to be their CEO. Which is totally the right of the employees of Mozilla to do.

> I really hope you realize that you're supporting the ability of a privileged elite (stockholders, CEOs, managers, etc.) to police their employees' political activity and coerce them into political submission through the threat of termination.

You are literally arguing that employees (ie: not the privileged elite) shouldn't speak out against the opinions of their CEO (ie: the privileged elite).

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you didn't find to be true in your case - Firefox becoming slower over time (as OP says) or Firefox shipping with Pocket? Or both? Personally my reason was Pocket incident and since then I never went back to Firefox. Checked few months ago and they still had Pocket. Besides I am pretty happy on Safari except the lack of extensions which I am kind of used to by now.

They still have Pocket, but it's both less in the way and now actually owned by the Mozilla Foundation though that's not really made obvious. The most obvious place you'll see it is on the default new tab/blank tab page where top trending stories being saved on Pocket are listed. It's a crowd-curated list of stories that people have found interesting enough to save to read or return to later, almost like a technology…

The way Pocket is integrated in Firefox is a problem for me, may not be a problem for others and that's completely understandable.

For me Mozilla was the "open" browser (and "clean" too). Integrating Pocket in it by default, in a way that it cannot be "completely" removed, put me off. Heck, they could just ship the browser with it installed as a "normal" extension that can be "completely" removed like any other extension. And maybe disable this extension by default, or keep it enabled they'd really want it that way.

And no, if I want curated trending stories I will go the website I want to read those from. Or I'll install a relevant extension of my choice; maybe Pocket.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#278
post #79

After running for a few hours, Firefox starts making my entire computer lag, eventually to the point of freezing up for seconds at a time multiple times per minute. Over time Firefox's video playback gets more and more janky, until it drops more frames than it shows. In task manager I can see FF using 50% of my GPU to play a 720p stream from Twitch. Closing FF completely and reopening it fixes the problem, until it h…

Sounds like ghost windows. Try disabling all your add-ons to see if the problem persists? You can also record a profile via perfht.ml and send it to me, I'm happy to have a look.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#280
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have details? I noticed that Youtube on Firefox makes the fan spin up on my 2013 rMBP a lot. I currently use Firefox but as a heavy Youtube watcher this is a pretty big negative.

Same here. I have been a longtime Firefox user and don't recall having performance issues with YouTube on macbook before Quantum. But now if I'm watching anything more than a short clip on YouTube, the MBP's fans start to annoy me and it feels like it is going to burn a hole in my lap. YouTube in Chrome is totally fine. YouTube on Firefox on my Windows Intel NUC desktop is also totally fine. It seems to be a mac only…

Firefox uses H.264 for YouTube on macOS, so it can use the system's H.264 hardware decoder, which should be faster and use less power than a software decoder. Chrome uses a VP9 software decoder on YouTube. You can try VP9 in Firefox by setting the about:config pref "media.mediasource.webm.enabled" = true, but it is disabled by default for good reasons. :)

This YouTube page will show which codecs are currently enabled in your browser: https://www.youtube.com/html5

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