Switch from Chrome to Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#751

Post by feedbeef » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #599

TheKarateKid wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer and power user, it's difficult for me to switch to Firefox. However for most average Joe's it's fine and won't make a difference, so I always install and recommend Firefox when I play IT guy for family/friends. Time to start doing this again like we did in 2005!! It worked then and it can now!

I’m a developer and power user, I switched to Firefox months ago. What is making difficult to switch? I found equivalent for all my plugins so far.

I've had a terrible time using Firefox since Tab Mix Plus was killed. Dev is working on a replacement but many of the necessary APIs were also killed in the great add-on death of 2017 (Firefox 57), and have yet to be rewritten (and may never be).

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#752

Post by atishay811 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

I remember we used to have "IE Tab" for websites which were so bad that they needed IE and failed otherwise. I think Firefox needs a "Chrome Tab" which runs some website in chromium for the really bad offenders.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#753

Post by kuon » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

I see a lot of people here complaining about firefox performances and other things/bugs. But we are on hacker news. Many devs are here. Firefox needs us, we need a strong alternative. Instead of complaining, we need to participate to the open source effort.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#754

Post by gsich » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

If Google kicks adblockers, Chrome will be dead within a year.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#755

Post by nine_k » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #691

nine_k wrote: post #518

On top of uBlock Origin / uMatrix, some of the other Firefox's trump cards to me are: * Tree Style Tab: makes tabs much more manageable, no parallel in Chrome. If you open dozens of tabs, after using this, you can only pity the traditional tab management [1]. * Containers and container tabs: it's a bit like having separate Chrome profiles for separate contexts, but you can also have them as tabs in the same window. *…

I just discovered "Reader-View" in Firefox! Chrome doesn't have anything like that built-in and I've always had to rely on an extension to make CSS heavy pages readable. No more!

Reader view -> Save as PDF, and you have a nice readable copy of a non-interactive website to read when connectivity is sparse.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#756

Post by gnomewascool » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

jb1991 wrote: post #724

latexr wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product. Arguably. On these threads there is always a handful of complaints about the state of Firefox, mostly on macOS. On my machine, I can’t even launch Firefox in headless mode without the fans turning on, which never happened on Chrome. While I haven’t benchmarked it, for normal browsing it does feel slower than Crome. But what kills it for me is their crippled App…

Yeah, unfortunately, Mozilla has consistently demonstrated over recent years that it doesn't care about Mac users. It's weird, to be honest. The widespread issues for many, though not all, Mac users, will not make it a ubiquituous browser.

What's even weirder is that a significant proportion of Mozilla's developers use Macs as their main platform (if I recall correctly the most popular platforms are Linux, then Macs and Windows a very distant third).

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#757

Post by abdullahkhalids » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

ClassyJacket wrote: post #718

gonational wrote: post #555

Firefox banned Dissenter[1], a plug-in that did nothing nefarious - only enables browser users of the plug-in to chat / comment with each other about webpages. They did this for political reasons. Regardless of what kind of trash talk takes place on Dissenter, the point is that nobody is forced to use it. My point: neither Google nor Mozilla should be trusted and both seek to be your totalitarian Internet overlord. 1…

Agreed. The fact that Firefox doesn't allow unsigned addons is proof enough of this.

You can't have both the ability to install unsigned addons and one-click addons in a software designed for average Joe, and not end up with massive malware problems.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/04/15/the-case-for-exte...

Mozilla could not advertise Firefox as secure if they allowed unsigned addons.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#758

Post by weaksauce » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

noisem4ker wrote: post #678

weaksauce wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be addons that customize the new tab page. I’m pretty sure it’s a possibility with more recent additions to the webext api.

I don't know for sure in this case, but WebExtensions are normally forbidden in the browser's own pages. To get around this limitation, one could set up a personal speed-dial start page.

they don't let you run in browser contexts normally but they definitely let you set your own new tab page(with webextension privileges) as part of the extension which lets an extension do whatever they want.

see: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

they also have most requested urls as a privilege too so it could be recreated and extended with a little effort.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#759

Post by orhmeh09 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

chronogram wrote: post #677

xvf22 wrote: post #658

Already switched to Firefox and couldn't be happier.

Same! Had Developer edition installed for testing, but switched fully today (Uninstalled Developer, installed Nightly). The fonts look nice, it's got wayland support on my Linux partition (on Fedora), and it's just really pleasant!

If you’re switching to full time use or Firefox, I cannot recommend going with Nightly; developer edition is a good choice.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#760

Post by subsection1h » Thu, May 30, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #612

bastih wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Container tabs have made my life much easier, as I'm managing a number of Amazon accounts, and being able to do that side-by-side is a life-saver.

You can do the same thing with Profiles in Chromium-based browsers, without having to add an extension.

If a person wants to test a website using several accounts in Chrome, they need to open and manage several windows. Lame.

If a person wants to access an ad-ridden website using several accounts in Chrome, they need to install, configure and maintain all of their favorite ad-blockers and anti-tracking extensions in several Chrome profiles. Lame.

In my experience, people who prefer profiles over containers are mostly casual users who don't configure profiles and use maybe one or two extensions.