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Switch from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#841

Post by reilly3000 »

depressedpanda wrote: post #829
reilly3000 wrote: post #264

That page is just missing one critical thing: 4. Migrate my extensions. It would be great if they developed a graph mapping Chrome extensions to Mozilla equivalents. Then the user could confirm installation of the ones with 1:1 parity, like LastPass, allow users to select similar extensions, or skip installing an equivalent. There are some Chrome-Exclusive extensions that keep me hooked. That and Firefox’s Storage in…

> That and Firefox’s Storage inspector is terrible, there isn’t a native way to clear localstorage during development. While I agree that the inspector could be improved, this is false. Dev tools > Storage tab > Expand local storage > Select domain > Right click a key/value > Select "Delete all". Done.

Thanks for clarifying that- you are correct. That doesn't seem to work on cache domains, but if I scroll down to other types of storage I can indeed delete items all at once or individually. When I tried that now it wasn't repainting so it appeared to have no effect, but when I refreshed within the Storage inspector the data was gone. When I refresh the page, repainting after deleting started working as expected. Weird.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#842

Post by depressedpanda »

y2kenny wrote: post #774

Are there anything that help with switching existing session? (I have like 400 tabs opened in 60+ windows.)

It's still going to be a hassle, but you should be able to do it fairly easily with the OneTab plugin and its import/export functionality. The plug-in exists for both browsers and I've moved sessions that way before.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#843

Post by Godel_unicode »

michaelmrose wrote: post #631
r3bl wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned experience for absolutely zero reason. The reason is almost certainly a new user agent (compared to non-Chromium Edge) that YouTube didn't expect. Chromium-based Edge is still not stable, and therefore, not properly supported by YouTube. I don't have time to test this, but I'm willing to bet that you'd get the same result by using any indie browser…

Do you remember when almost all sites worked fine without internet explorer but refused to work without it unless you faked the user agent? Why are you defending round 2 of best with IE? The web is a standard. Auto failing based on user agent is a sign of developer incompetence.

> The web is a standard

If only that were true. The web is, at best, a series of suggestions. See also https://caniuse.com

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#844

Post by JohnBooty »

latexr wrote: post #719
dror wrote: post #636

It is so clear to me that we need to support and promote mozilla and Firefox. They're not perfect, but they, wikipedia, eff, archive.org (who else?) are such an important part of the Internet guardianship in the face of the monopolies, that it's our duty to support them. Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product.

> 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…

    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.
I believe you, but I'm always so confused by hearing this. I use my Mac (2015 MBP) 10+ hours a day, evenly split between FF and Chrome.

Truly is close to an even 50/50 split -- FF is my personal browser and I use Chrome for all work-related tasks.

And they are subjectively indistinguishable in terms of performance. The only exceptions to that statement are, well, Google properties where Google has clearly invested time and money into optimizing things for FF.

One other possible sorta-exception is when I'm using a scaled resolution mode on an external 4K monitor. MacOS warns me, straight up, that these modes will cause performance issues for me and my modest Intel Iris graphics. The whole system's a little sluggish in those modes, and I think FF fares worse than Chrome, but I won't hold that against FF.

FWIW, Safari does feel subjectively more responsive to me when it comes to scrolling and navigating. And I recently spent a few bucks upgrading my PC gaming rig to a 120hz monitor, which makes a massive difference. And I'm one of those weirdos who keeps CRTs around for his old consoles because he enjoys that true zero lag experience. So I am not exactly insensitive to latency. I don't have magic professional gamer golden magic eyes or anything, but it is an area of interest for me.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#845

Post by Godel_unicode »

mr_toad wrote: post #801
kinlan wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biased reply - I work for Google. It depends on what you choose as your choice of technology, if you choose web components then you really can only really offer that same experience to users that have a browser that supports that API natively (without polyfills) which old Edge did not do. My understanding of this situation with yt was that our server side detection code was wrong based on an update in edge (or our UA…

> experience Developers care a lot more about this ‘experience’ than users do. Yes it’s fun to play with the new shiny, but users don’t care. User experience is an excuse, it’s double-talk.

You appear to have somehow missed the extremely loud chorus of "we hate it, change it back" that happen every time any web app gets a new design. See also the saga of Instagram on Android.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#846

Post by mattoxic »

hodder wrote: post #646
saidajigumi wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.

I agree. It is truly unbelievable. Same with user goodwill. Microsoft is vaccuuming it all up. Meanwhile Microsoft is making tons of great moves to get devs and users back on their side.

There comes a time in every corporate's life where good will is neither important nor needed.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#847

Post by wtetzner »

TheKarateKid wrote: post #824
dgellow wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What many others have already said - it's slower and many popular sites don't work properly on it. I don't feel like randomly having websites break when I am trying to get things done. Even on a newer computer Firefox feels jagged and hangs. Memory leaks still happening years later. It is so frustrating to see Firefox using 1.5GB of RAM when only 2 tabs remain. Quantum helped a lot, but it's still not enough for me a…

Really? Firefox feels faster to me than Chrome at this point. I use both for work, but I prefer Firefox at home.

What popular sites don't work in Firefox?

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#848

Post by wtetzner »

greyfourth wrote: post #788
disordinary wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a mac and firefox is my main browser, I don't remember having any problems.

I think it's crazy how everyone has such different experiences with Firefox on Mac. I want to love it, but even after a fresh install of MacOS every time I go to use it on my 2015 MBP it grinds to a halt. I'm sticking to ungoogled-chromium for now. I really hope it's resolved down the line!

Yeah, it seems like there's always this split on every Hacker News thread about Firefox.

Personally, I've use Firefox as my primary browser since before I started using Macs, and after 6 different Macs between home and work, I've never had any problems with it.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#849

Post by taneq »

lucb1e wrote: post #248
taneq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really take you weeks to get used to a new environment? WEEKS? That kind of thing bugs me for a few hours, maybe a couple of days.

If you don't take more than a few hours to get used to a completely different browser, editor, desktop/mobile OS, etc., you probably just didn't use all its features. I know that I still had Firefox reflexes after I had been using Chrome for a few weeks (this was a few years ago when Mozilla made some poor decisions, I tried voting with my feet).

There's a long sliding scale from "knows how to use most features of the new software" to "uses every single feature maximally and never, ever presses the wrong hotkey because an old muscle memory happened to fire". I don't think the latter is a reasonable bar to set for "get used to the new software".

Then again maybe I'm being unfair here because if I'm really honest about it, the reason I didn't switch over to Chrome was that you couldn't start an in-page text search by hitting the / key like I was used to doing in Firefox. (I've since found many other reasons to keep using Firefox but at one stage that was the sticking point...)

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#850

Post by ben-schaaf »

CalChris wrote: post #796
dror wrote: post #636

It is so clear to me that we need to support and promote mozilla and Firefox. They're not perfect, but they, wikipedia, eff, archive.org (who else?) are such an important part of the Internet guardianship in the face of the monopolies, that it's our duty to support them. Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product.

I already use Firefox on the iPhone. I think it’s better than Chrome. Probably gonna switch on the desktop.

Is there any actual difference between the two beyond UI and sync? From what I understand they're both safari underneath?
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