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

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

#601

Post by anyzen »

StavrosK wrote: post #465
bad_user wrote: post #374

Just dropping a note in support of Firefox ... It's a great browser and I've came back to it even before the changes in Quantum, because the UI is better and it's also a browser I can trust to protect my interests. Just one thing to consider ... recently in Chrome 66 they introduced the means for cosmetic ads blocking via stylesheets that can no longer be overridden, as Google finally succumbed to demands for it. Fir…

This is a great point. It's evident in Chrome's course so far that the browser has put Google's interests first, whereas Firefox puts the users' interests first. That's why I stuck with FF when it was slow, and I'm very glad that's all fixed now. Plus, FF for Android is amazing. I can run Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin on my mobile browser!

And uMatrix! I don't know what I'd do without it.

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

#602

Post by eat_veggies »

callahad wrote: post #572
kees99 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.

Google themselves launched or re-launched five Chrome-only sites last year (Hangouts, Meet, Adwords, Earth, and Allo). Six if you count the Google Advanced Protection Program. Google Flights began blocking Firefox for Android last week, and Google still serves a degraded Search experience to Firefox users on Android (but hey, no AMP). Despite well-meaning concern from the Chrome team, it's abundantly clear that Googl…

Allo works on Firefox now, but before, I used to set my user-agent to Chrome's and it'd work.

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

#603

Post by dghughes »

Firefox on Android continually crashes at least for me and many other people going by comments on Google's Play Store. It must be at least six months since something changed to the Firefox Android app making it randomly crash. It has occurred across the last few versions.

I wish I could figure out why because I miss uBlock Origin since Chrome on Android doesn't offer it.

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

#604

Post by wilsonnb2 »

samplesizeme wrote: post #543
retSava wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, performance-wise I can't complain :) I'm a compulsive tab hoarder with about 400 open (admittedly, have to enable the "don't load until focused"-setting) on a 5 yo laptop with lots of other stuff running. No problem at all.

I am a tab hoarder as well and switched to Firefox last year for this reason. I have a 16GB MBP and I had to restart Chrome twice a day due to memory usage. The most I saw was 25GB of RAM used by Chrome (thank you solid state swap!) When Quantum was released, I did a side by side comparison, opening the exact same tabs in each browser, switching browsers each day, manually keeping tabs in sync. Did this for about two…

I use saved.io for all of my bookmarks.

Once you register, all you have to do to save a bookmark is go to "saved.io/www.google.com", for example, and it will save www.google.com.

If you want to save to a subfolder, all you have to do is go to "subfolder.saved.io/www.google.com".

To access your bookmarks you just go to saved.io in whatever browser on whatever device you want. I use Safari on the iPad, Chrome on my Android phone, and Firefox on my desktops and it works great in all of them.

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

#605

Post by phyllostachys »

radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

Indeed. "Firefox is back." - Well, from where I stand, it never left, nor I it.

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

#606

Post by wilsonnb2 »

severine wrote: post #428

I always refrain from talking in Firefox threads because my use case is so different from the HN crowd, but still... I have a netbook with 1Gb RAM. It was a handout from the owner, as it was painfully slow even after cleaning and tweaking the Win 7 install. Eventually, the owner got a new beefier laptop and I got the netbook. Long story short: I put Xubuntu on it, and it's still my daily driver and main computer 6 ye…

I'm curious as to why you haven't replaced it with something with better performance. It just seems masochistic to use a netbook with such a pathetic amount of RAM on it as your main computer.

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

#607

Post by sevensor »

isolli wrote: post #344

I have always used Firefox, ever since they implemented tabbed browsing (an incredible improvement, for those who don't remember the time before that). However, in recent times I have had to switch more and more apps to Chrome because the UI breaks in Firefox: intercom.io, trello.com, notion.so. Probably no fault of Firefox, but if a UI is broken there is no choice but to migrate.

I recall using a very early version of tabbed browsing that arranged the tabs on the left by default instead of on top. I think this was Mozilla Browser on Red Hat Linux 6, around 2000. At the time, neither I nor my computer was able to handle more than one website at once, so I didn't use the feature much!

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

#609

Post by afranchuk »

radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3.

I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed much over the years). Maybe other usage patterns used to cause problems... Also worth noting I was always on Linux; maybe Windows/Mac versions weren't as good?

When quantum came out, I didn't personally notice a big performance improvement in terms of user experience (though I don't doubt it's there, and I don't watch CPU/MEM constantly). I've seen these headlines and have just been thinking to myself "but it's always been good!"

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

#610

Post by qazwse_ »

irrenhaus wrote: post #476
fencepost wrote: post #85

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…

Actually I would really like to use FF again. But each and every time I try it I'm impressed with the desktop version, install the Android version and instantly am driven away from FF. Not only that FF on Android is awfully slow for me. But they also refuse to support either Android accessability services or the new auto completion services which makes them basically totally useless if you want to use a password mana…

Depending on what password manager you use, you can try getting the Firefox extension for it. I use Bitwarden, and their extension just works. Although I agree with you that they should have support for it through the accessibility/auto-completion services. The ability to have uBlock in a mobile browser is too convenient to give up.
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