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

marko.fyi

51–60 of 374 posts

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

#51

About once a week Firefox bans me from opening new tabs until I reboot it for an update. It promises to return my existing tabs but it never has. For this reason I don't trust it when I'm doing meaningful work.

That's interesting, I've never had issues getting old sessions back. You could try recovering it via "History > Recently closed windows", it should be there usually.

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

#52
post #18

I recently ditched both Chrome and Firefox. Now super happy with Safari.

I never thought I would say this, but I'm actually really looking forward to the new Chromium based Edge browser.

They have announced they will be releasing builds for Linux recently. They also are weighing their options with the Manifest v3 changes.

If Microsoft wanted to steal a bunch of users from Chrome, this seems like an easy "win". Don't support / force the Manifest v3 changes and win a bunch of goodwill from people who are able to use uBlock Origin style adblockers.

I know this has implications with extension compatibility but won't this just mean that the new Edge browser supports a super-set of extensions when compared to Chrome?

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

#54
post #18

I recently ditched both Chrome and Firefox. Now super happy with Safari.

How do you get by without extensions? The extension "store" (now part of the App Store) isn't searchable, and among the available extensions, which are very few, most are junkware.

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

#56
I made the switch from Chrome to Firefox about 3 weeks ago. It's a little bizarre at first but you get used to it. No autoplay is really nice. Being unable to use two dictionaries at once for spell checking is super annoying, but it's a detail. All in all it works quite well, and if uBlock Origin has to leave Chrome, the switch is a no-brainer.

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

#57
Since these threads always wind up with lots of top-level comments from people providing anecdotal complaints about how [browser under discussion] crashes all the time on their computer, or eats up all the RAM, or whatever, I just wanted to add a similarly anecdotal top-level comment with my own, positive experience.

I have been using FF Nightly and FF Dev Edition on both my work and home machines (MacOS and Arch Linux) for years, using the former for personal browsing and the latter for work.

I generally only restart the browser when there are updates, and I’ve maybe had two or three restarts in all that time where I lost my tabs. Even rebooting the computer, I usually get a window asking if I want to restore my tabs, which works with no fuss. On the rare occasions that doesn’t happen, I’ve been able to “restore previous session” from the history menu.

I have generally beefy machines, but I’ve never had personally noticeable issues with performance since Quantum was released. I usually have somewhere between five and fifty tabs open in each browser.

The only crashes I’ve seen that I remember have been when I was playing with WebRender settings in about:config, and happened whenever I was scrolling in a particularly large Confluence document. Also, occasionally my strict third party settings will make a login or other functionality break, in which case it’s easy to relax the settings just for that page.

FF integrates very well with 1Password, which is my password manager of choice.

I use FF Mobile on iOS, and while it is a bit rougher on battery life than safari, having all my history and bookmarks synced is worth it.

Anyway, my experience is definitely not everyone’s, and I don’t doubt that some people have strange and frustrating issues with the browser. That being said, I suspect experiences like mine are more common than comments on threads like this suggest.

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

#58
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spam: unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as e-mails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places[1]. By that definition, it is spam.

> user testing has been done

User testing isn't flawless, and is what got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam

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

#59
post #11

Is Chrome still planning on rolling out manifest v3, which kills uBlock Origin? I imagine that would boost Firefox growth. Edit: Answering my own question...yup, it's in canary as of November 1st. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins...

Are there definite plans for uBlock Origin not to support new blocking API?

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

#60
post #44

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.

I also did this, quantum is leaps and bounds ahead of chrome (no pun intended) in terms of being clean and feeling more solid.

Also not a RAM hog.

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