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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

#191

Post by hellofunk »

ubercow13 wrote: post #162
dguo wrote: 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…

Containers still have quite a bad UX though. It’s OK to open a tab in the desired container and load Facebook, but whenever you leave Facebook via a link, it will stay in the same container. If you eventually end up on a website you want to be logged in to, you’ll have to manually switch to the right container again. It seems like containers are a powerful concept with multiple different uses, but the UX for each of…

Yet these days facebook will be using IP tracking anyway, it won’t matter whether you’re logged in or not, in the other containers, if you’re just logged in once, they will know what sites you’re visiting, your browser fingerprint easily identify as you, even if you’re not logged into Facebook in those containers.

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

#192

Post by wizzwizz4 »

microcolonel wrote: post #171
zelphirkalt wrote: post #158

People, who choose Chrome (not even Chromium) over Firefox for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns, are simply not the target group of Firefox developers, because they do not care about privacy enhancing features. To…

> ...for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns... That is false and defamatory. Chromium is noticeably faster than Firefox on a large swath of popular websites and web applications, the majority of which Google does not…

It isn't entirely false, though. Google has been known to break other browsers. Of course, we can't know that it's deliberate, but… remember https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824?

> For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our [EdgeHTML's] hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life.

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

#193

Post by floatingatoll »

pmoriarty wrote: post #106

Firefox is agonizingly slow for me on an otherwise idle system, on my old, slow (2 core, 1.5 GHz) laptop, with only 8 tabs open. It takes about 30 seconds to load a web page, and I'm using an ad blocker (uBlock Origin) and also block unnecessary Javascript (via uMatrix). I have some other blockers too: Decentraleyes and CanvasBlocker, along with some other extensions like Stylus, Tree Style Tab, and Multi Account Con…

Note that each third-party content blocker you listed slows down page load speed by a fraction of a second on fancy multi-core desktops. That slowdown may be more significant in your case.

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

#194

Post by Waterluvian »

johnc1231 wrote: post #105
Waterluvian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can probably blame the web apps Im using for not saving state... But honestly I shouldn't be banned from opening tabs until I reboot the browser.

I've never had this happen personally. What OS is this? I use Firefox on OSX installed through Homebrew, so I have to manually update it with brew. Firefox has never asked me to update.

Ubuntu bionic. Latest default Firefox without any special enterprise stuff or whatnot.

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

#195

Post by verisimilidude »

hollerith wrote: post #143

OK, Firefox experts: which desktop OS does Firefox run best on? And which desktop OS has the largest usage share among the developers of Firefox? (I want to know because I am undecided on which OS I will be using in the future. By "run best" I mean the fewest bugs and the fewest instances of behavior that would surprise an ordinary user.)

(This is probably subjective, and I don't consider myself and expert.)

I think Firefox feels best on Gnome-based Linux desktops: Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.

Windows 10 is also a fine target for Firefox; I never encounter any problems there. I hear some features are missing on touchscreen laptops: gestures, etc. I could be wrong.

Firefox has always had a little bit of funkiness on the Mac. Little UI things, battery killing performance issues, and so on. YMMV. But I still used Firefox on the Mac as my default for many years, and it was fine.

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

#196

Post by ubercow13 »

mbrumlow wrote: post #178
ubercow13 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Containers still have quite a bad UX though. It’s OK to open a tab in the desired container and load Facebook, but whenever you leave Facebook via a link, it will stay in the same container. If you eventually end up on a website you want to be logged in to, you’ll have to manually switch to the right container again. It seems like containers are a powerful concept with multiple different uses, but the UX for each of…

Is that not the point though? You don't want to expose to Facebook that you have a account on some 3rd party site and expose to some 3red party site you have a Facebook accoun. You describe exactly what I would want and expect.

Do you mean that it would be exposed by the referrer? I guess so. It’s not clear whether the referrer is preserved anyway when you refresh the external page in a different container. In theory could the external page have a Facebook widget that would be able to see your Facebook account anyway? I’m not really sure, I don’t know enough about how cookies work across domains.

I feel like this is the point. It’s not really clear how to best use containers to protect your privacy; it feels like you have to understand a lot about how the web works and how Firefox works.

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

#197

Post by hellofunk »

bitexploder wrote: post #83
dguo wrote: 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…

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 :)

But modern tracking methods go far beyond whether not you’re actually logged into some site, I’m not sure how this is much of an improvement, your IP remains the same, your browser fingerprint is probably similar enough, if not identical, for them to track you regardless of whether you’re logged in. You only have to be logged in once on the machine from one container for all the other sites you visit in other containers to track you on any site that has a presence or tracking code associated with the one that you’ve logged into somewhere else.

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

#198

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

dguo wrote: 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…

But getting separate session between different private browsing windows has been requested for a very long time with no dice [1].

[1]:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117222

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

#199

Post by finalfantasia »

notamaan wrote: post #30
neogodless wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I use it everyday at work on a 2015 MBP Retina, now on Catalina. No problems! What feels off for you?

Lack of media key control and pinch to zoom are the 2 that stop me from using Firefox (I use Brave instead)

Firefox just gained the ability to use Mac’s hardware media keys to control media playback in the latest beta/developer edition (71 right now): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1575995

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

#200

Post by floatingatoll »

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.

Can you reproduce these issues with a fresh profile with no Addons installed or about:config changes?
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