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

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

mobile.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 753 posts

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

#731

Post by atombender »

manigandham wrote: post #117
atombender wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's account management is infuriating! First, it almost never remembers what account you used with what service. If I do some Google Cloud stuff under my work account, I don't want Google Maps using my work account, or vice versa. The list of accounts in the upper right corner, and what's signed in/out, seems completely random and broken. The second problem is that Google's various apps are wildly inconsistent i…

> resolve the union of identities I dont want this, it's better to be explicit with the accounts. However they are just using cookies and Chrome gives each "profile" a separate cookie container which works well and I prefer it to the mess it would be at the tab level. I have separate window profiles for work and personal and can keep everything (including passwords) completely separate. BigQuery has a new UI built in…

I use Safari, which doesn't have profile handling at all. The web should not rely on clumsy browser hacks. Chrome profiles are way too coarse-grained — all the settings and state (history, bookmarks, etc.) are separate. It also interacts badly with everything else on a computer. If I click on a Slack link to a Google document, then nothing knows which Chrome window to open it in.

Google's mistake was the account switcher. Supporting multiple accounts is fine, but pretending they support concurrent logins is nonsensical.

But I have no choice to use multipel Google accounts, since my company uses Google Apps or G-Suite or Google For Work or whatever it is called today, and I'm consulting for a third company that also does this.

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

#732

Post by Digital-Citizen »

nkkollaw wrote: post #286
Digital-Citizen wrote: post #282

From the article: "But [Firefox] became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser." Google Chrome is proprietary software. There's no way to back up any claim of it being "secure" because there's no way to determine what proprietary programs do. Users lack the permission to inspect the program's source code, alter the program, or distribute altered versions. Firefox,…

"secure" probably refers to the sandboxing functionality that Chrome has had since version 1.

"Probably refers to"? That you don't know what "secure" refers to is itself a problem. But more problematic is anyone's defense of Google Chrome's architecture while overlooking that that architecture is implemented with secret software which you aren't allowed to vet, alter, or share with others (parts of software freedom).

This proprietary software apparently allowed for sending Google every URL a Chrome user types in (http://www.favbrowser.com/google-chrome-spyware-confirmed/) and making it easy for extensions to spy on Chrome users (https://labs.detectify.com/2015/07/28/how-i-disabled-your-ch...) which many Chrome extensions apparently do, or activating a Chrome user's microphone and sending the captured data to Google (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-ch...). Hardly behavior users are likely to call "secure" because such behavior does not look out for the security of its users, but instead securing access to Chrome user's data.

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

#733

Post by Sylos »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #702
Sylos wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox supports both, completely separated browser profiles and these more lightweight Container Tabs. You can type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar to manage your profiles (which you can also bookmark for easier access). You can also run "firefox -P" in a terminal to access a similar GUI. With "firefox -P profile_name", you can start a specific profile. To run multiple profiles in parallel from the CLI, you have t…

Can I have multiple profiles open at the same time?

Yeah, in about:profiles, there's a "Launch profile in new browser"-button.

For launching multiple profiles in parallel from the command-line, I already tried to explain it in my previous comment, though it is more finicky that way.

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

#734

Post by thermodynthrway »

Sylos wrote: post #725
sp332 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's different about the home page?

I don't know, if he's talking specifically about this, but on Firefox for Android, Google serves a version of their search page from a few years ago.

Yes exactly, looks like a website from 1995

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

#735

Post by kqr »

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…

> It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not because it is better, but because it is the right thing to do

But then sometimes the free option is also, i.e. in addition, the better choice for other reasons as well. And those cases (e.g. Postgres, Darktable, etc.) are worth pointing out, because they may serve as gateway drugs to free software, for users that may not initially care for it because they associate it with invariably bad user experience.

I have an article brewing on this, because I increasingly think it's important. When free software does not suck from an UX perspective, there is zero reason not to use it. That's a huge market.

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

#736

Post by BuckRogers »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #19

I never really "switched" to any particular browser, I use Safari/Vivaldi/Firefox concurrently, but have noticed how much better Firefox has gotten recently, after years of painful decline (Speed, and resource hogging being my biggest peeves). The only major thing I wish it did better is if it conserved battery power as well as Safari does. If I want to maximize my laptop's battery life I don't really have a choice o…

Firefox has enough features and customization available that it's the only non-native browser that I'll use. I don't think Chrome or the others are worth it.

Otherwise in general, the native browser is usually the best bet for battery life. They render differently and have tighter integration overall as you noted. Firefox or native is the way to go, and if native browsers keep improving, even Firefox should watch out.

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

#737

Post by BuckRogers »

Run DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Containerize & uBlock Origin.

If you setup Containerize properly you'll never use anything else other than FF again. It can accept wildcards to break out of containers.

DDG Privacy Essentials is also a must-have, as you get the functionality of Privacy Badger & HTTPS Everywhere in one addon. It also works a little better in my tests when compared to HTTPS Everywhere. DDG PE also gives you a privacy grade on sites you visit, which is a pretty nice addition.

I've been using Firefox since it was in beta (as Phoenix). Never left. I used Navigator before and so it was a natural transition. It has always been better than everything else if you knew how to to utilize the features it has that others don't.

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

#738

Post by zmix »

bovine3dom wrote: post #394
zmix wrote: post #218

This journalist does not seem to know about the tech world he reports about. Not a single word has been shed about all those high quality addons, that Firefox users once had, and how huge the quality gap is between Chromium based add-ons and what was available for Firefox. In my opinion, this is so extreme, that I switched over to Vivaldi browser, now that XUL is gone.

What add-ons are available for Chrome-likes that you miss in Firefox?

I meant, that there are XUL add-ons, that are neither available for Chrome-likes or the new Firefox. Like DownThemAll, Ubiquity and so many more.

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

#739

Post by Jaepa »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #442
Jaepa wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially after installing the native message. Want a bind to open something in mpv/youtube-dl `";v": "hint -W exclaim_quiet mpv"` Want to open a text field in gvim? Hit `ctl+i` Want to remove the extra chrome: run `:guiset gui none` I stuck on the ESR of firefox for a long time because I wasn't willing to give up vimperator. Its not the same, but its pretty close. There are 2 main pain points, which I don't know it…

Can native message fix the fundamental problems in keyhandling? Meaning it can react to keys without the site fully loaded? Work on all sites and dialogs? Have a predictable behaviour instead of timing-problems which can happen now if you type to fast? For example, opening the commandline and typing something to fast can have the effect that the typed text does not end in the commandline but instead is handled outsid…

Sadly no. There are some issues still that may not ever be addressable with how Firefox's WebExtensions currently exist.

Some things have Bugzilla tickets to fix in a future release, but something just won't be possible as it stands today.

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

#740

Post by Jaepa »

bovine3dom wrote: post #412
Jaepa wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially after installing the native message. Want a bind to open something in mpv/youtube-dl `";v": "hint -W exclaim_quiet mpv"` Want to open a text field in gvim? Hit `ctl+i` Want to remove the extra chrome: run `:guiset gui none` I stuck on the ESR of firefox for a long time because I wasn't willing to give up vimperator. Its not the same, but its pretty close. There are 2 main pain points, which I don't know it…

> hint -W exclaim_quiet mpv You know how mathematicians get excited by exp(-i*pi)+1=0? This is like that but for all of the things I'm embarrassed about in Tridactyl: - our documentation is not great, particularly of current configuration/possible configurations, hence why the GP didn't know about it - hints don't support pipes - obviously this should be `hint | ! mpv` - hints don't support pipes because of a bad arc…

Hey Oliver!

Yeah Tridactyl is great. While I'm not a great JS/TS developer I might be able to offer a couple of pull request for documentation. Is there anything I can help with currently?

> 2. This isn't actually true. Tridactyl does override page binds. The reason you think GitHub is stealing a Tridactyl bind is because GitHub steals `/`, but Tridactyl doesn't bind anything to `/` - that's a default Firefox bind! (And whoever decided it would be a great idea to use that in GitHub should probably test their code in more browsers).

Didn't know that. Interesting.

Post reply on HN