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Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

marko.fyi

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Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#41

Post by speg »

lovelearning wrote: post #20

I've been happy with everything about Firefox (on Xubuntu) from many years now. But when they released Quantum, the thing that bothered me a bit was not any feature or performance, but them removing curvy tabs for rectangular ones. Rather shallow of me, but we all have our UI quirks :). Luckily, Firefox UI is very customizable and somebody had already put in the effort [1] to provide curvy tabs. Just had to download…

Not silly at all. I tried getting back into Firefox on macOS after Quantum but it still didn’t sit well with me. I just felt slightly out of place. Fast forward to last week and I happened to try it again and it looked real nice! The UI seemed smoother and less jarring than before. Plus the icon was new and slick. Not sure when those changes landed but just the look and feel give me more confidence in its solidness.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#42

Post by acidburnNSA »

eternalny1 wrote: post #31

I've been a Firefox user since Phoenix/Firebird, but I did switch to Chrome when it first came out, then back to Firefox when Google started being the opposite of "not evil". One quip on this website, why is the text limited to such a small column? I thought it had gutters that my adblock was blocking but it doesn't. The image is literally twice the width of the text. The first row of text only fits "We're living in…

In Firefox, if you don't like the layout of a site, you can try "reading mode" and it will reformat it. Its the little document-like icon towards the top right of the address bar.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#43

Post by dao- »

drankula3 wrote: post #19
po1nter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my new tab page: https://imgur.com/TpSzOCZ Note that the search bar can also be removed. So yes, as distraction free as you want to make it.

Defaults matter. And currently, Firefox fills their new tab page with spam and self-promotion by default.

> spam

I don't think this fits the definition of spam. Many average Joe users happen to find those curated suggestions useful. Yes, user testing has been done.

> Defaults matter.

Yep. More advanced users also tend to be better positioned to opt out compared to average Joe opting in.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#44

Post by Dragory »

I switched back to Firefox (after using Chrome for a long time) back when Quantum launched and have stuck with it since. Initially I fell back to Chrome every now and then for the devtools, but I haven't felt the need to do that for a good while now. Works really well for my use cases at least.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#45

Post by lol768 »

isarat wrote: post #37

I always had given Firefox another choice, but throws me out of websites, unoptimized websites and font issues etc. stopping me from using it. I really wish Firefox tighten up their game.

>but throws me out of websites, unoptimized websites and font issues etc. stopping me from using it

Do you have examples of these? It's helpful to report them to the webcompat web-bugs repository as you discover them - e.g. https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/36955 - https://webcompat.com/ has more information on the project.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#46

Post by acidburnNSA »

deepersprout wrote: post #3
Dumblydorr wrote: post #2

I use firefox on ubuntu and the performance is terrible. Its constantly crashing, tabs crash individually, it hangs, launching memory heavy websites seems to crash it most often. When I switched to chromium the performance got a lot better.

I use firefox on ubuntu as well and it works very nicely. Its RAM and CPU usage is negligible, sites load very fast, and the developer tools are awesome. I think something is wrong on your system.

Same for me. Been using Firefox in Ubuntu for years and it is lightning fast and extraordinarily stable.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#47

Post by ubercow13 »

zenhack wrote: post #5
Dumblydorr wrote: post #2

I use firefox on ubuntu and the performance is terrible. Its constantly crashing, tabs crash individually, it hangs, launching memory heavy websites seems to crash it most often. When I switched to chromium the performance got a lot better.

I was having a similar experience earlier this year, so I reluctantly did the same for a while. I got sick of chromium though, really missed reader mode for one thing, so I decided to put in some more effort to troubleshoot. For me what did it was switching to wayland (sway[1] specifically, from dwm on x11). Now it's a good step faster than chromium. I agree with the sibling comment; there's something wrong going on,…

Chromium has a reader mode but you have to enable it via a command line switch I think.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium/Tips_and_trick...

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#48

Post by testerhn »

the password management[1] and GCP support (likely Google doing something non-standard) was lacking last I tried. I hope it got better.

[1] I use a password manager, but avoid browser add-ons or extensions to limit the surface I expose my manager such as on work machines. Besides there being the occasional exploit targeting those browser add-ons or extensions.

What do you all do?

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#49

Post by acidburnNSA »

sesuximo wrote: post #4

Firefox is okay overall but it's quite distracting. for example it often blocks apt-get with auto updates. it crashes once an hour

I personally have used it for years on linux and have never once experience the apt-get block. I also can't remember the last time it crashed.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#50

Post by el_programmador »

lovelearning wrote: post #20

I've been happy with everything about Firefox (on Xubuntu) from many years now. But when they released Quantum, the thing that bothered me a bit was not any feature or performance, but them removing curvy tabs for rectangular ones. Rather shallow of me, but we all have our UI quirks :). Luckily, Firefox UI is very customizable and somebody had already put in the effort [1] to provide curvy tabs. Just had to download…

Similar thing with me except I stuck up with them even with Quantum until that fiasco with SSL certs happened and all extensions came to a halt. I'll never be able to trust a browser which does such a thing to its users.
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