Live data from Hacker News

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

marko.fyi

131–140 of 374 posts

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

#131

I wish Firefox worked well with MacOS, but even with the newest version, which was intended to fix battery issues and such, it still is vastly inferior to Chrome. Pinch to zoom still does not natively work in Firefox. Battery life still sucks compared to Chrome. Video performance lags behind, even on non-Youtube sites. I wish Firefox was significantly closer, but I still find myself limited by it at the moment.

If you think it’s inferior to Chrome – give Safari a shot. I use it all the time now because it’s so incredibly energy efficient. It also feels faster on the butt dyno in many ways than Chrome.

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

#132

As I have already said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026626 : Firefox really should take care of it's native interface, it feels like a cross-platform app, and while it does have some worthy features to consider, for me it's too non-mac (and in that aspect, it really doesn't look like an Window/Linux app either) for someone using Safari to migrate.

If they put some emphasis on embeddability, some of us might build these alternative interfaces for them.

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

#133
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...

Here is the post from an extension developer invited in the latest Mozilla workshop with info on the plans for Mozilla for manifest v3

https://gist.github.com/Lusito/dd6b76b93f83267903619103745cc...

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

#134
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally run my browser in containers to achieve this. I still trust that more than letting the browser manage it. I call it ultra-private mode :)

A poor mans container (at least under unix-alikes) is simply running the program as another user with 'su' or 'sudo'.

That's too complicated. Use profiles for same result without having to use another user.

firefox -new-instance -P

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

#135
post #82

The post briefly mentions multi-account containers[1]. I have loved using them and regard them as a killer feature for Firefox. Very few websites support account switching. Google is probably the best example, and even then, I don't really want to log in to both my personal and work Gmail within the same session. But containers effectively and cleanly enable multiple sessions for all websites. Like tabs so many years…

Problem with containers is that they don't work in anonymous mode (at least last time I tried them they didn't).

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

#136

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 Lin…

I too have virtually no experience with any modern browsers crashing in the ways often reported here. And I'm at least a "power user," using browsers for consumption and web development throughout the day. Dozens or hundreds of tabs—no problem. Developer tools open all the time. No modern browser even breaks a sweat.

I just happen to favor Firefox because I like its speed, look & feel, user interface quirks (versus the quirks of the other browsers), and options for customization.

Notably, I use proper workstations both at home and in the office. I suppose it's possible the popularity of using laptops as developer "workstations" may be underlying much of the grievance we often see here.

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

#137

I read somewhere that Chrome will be adding DoH (DNS over HTTPS) and I'm not sure if it's some experimental flag you toggle. I imagine they will be using 8.8.8.8 (which supports DoH). So now you are sending all your personal data to Google instead of Cloudflare :o But you can always use another DoH provider if you dislike Google or Cloudflare[0] I imagine any browser worth its salt will eventually switch over to DoH…

> I imagine they will be using 8.8.8.8 [...] now you are sending all your personal data to Google

You shouldn't guess/imagine something and then build your opinion on it. IIRC, Chrome will continue to use your configured nameservers and only use DoH if it's in a whitelist of known implementers.

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

#138
I've used Firefox as my main browser on my Mac for quite a while. I use Chrome when working on my company's web stuff, because I like its developer tools better and its handling of multiple profiles is a lot better [1].

There is one thing that threatens now and then to move me to Chrome.

Here is a sample of that thing: prosecutable subtractive tunable epicycle inductor subparagraphs transactional micropayments blacksmithing inductor solvability verifier ethicist tradable tradeable auditable splitter surveil responder commenter.

Firefox tells me that all of those words are spelled wrong. Chrome, Safari, and on Windows Edge all know that most or all of them are spelled right.

It just gets tiring to regularly be commenting somewhere and get distracted by Firefox falsely claiming some word is misspelled, disrupting my train of thought as I have to go look it up to verify that I am in fact spelling it right.

Everything else I type text into manages to spell check orders of magnitude better than Firefox.

[1] Yes, I know about Firefox's multi-account containers. Great if all you are trying to do is keep yourself logged in to a couple different accounts at the same site. If you want to have separate bookmarks, extensions, and history too, you need to use profiles. Firefox has them, but Chrome does them better.

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

#139
post #102

I am as happy as I could get with Firefox except for the native tab-switching Among opened tabs. Tab search is done by typing % in the address bar followed by a keyword to search among opened tabs. - Ctr+L to get in the address bar - Shift+6 to type % - space, - type your keywords. My fingers, especially the pinky just cannot do this, particularly switching between Ctrl and Shift. Also, you have to release Shift othe…

With the Vimium extension you can type "t" to search open tabs. (And you can follow links with "f".)

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

#140
post #134
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor mans container (at least under unix-alikes) is simply running the program as another user with 'su' or 'sudo'.

That's too complicated. Use profiles for same result without having to use another user. firefox -new-instance -P

I do this so frequently that I wrapped FF (and chrome) with a PyGTK starter, each profile with an icon. Less clicks to launch a new session of my preferred flavor
Post reply on HN