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

marko.fyi

221–230 of 374 posts

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

#221
The main reason I often use Chromium instead of Firefox is that it starts up faster.

I even wrote a oneliner to see if it is just an illusion:

http://www.gibney.de/browser_startup_speed

As can be seen in the tests, it is mainly about the startup time after a reboot. Where Chromium is way faster.

Not sure what the reason. Maybe Chromium actively caches something right during the boot? Or maybe it uses less dependencies?

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 real…

Beyond referrer, there are utm tags, unique URLs, fingerprinting, etc.

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

#223
The only drawback I have with FF nowadays is history management.

I have enabled 'infinite history' (do not delete old history, ever) so I can keep a journal of what I've visited when. The history, as large as it might turn out, is just a few MB of an sqlite3 database (places.sql) -- problematic is the management of it using the Firefox UI. Searching is laggy and deletion of swaths of entries is impossible as it makes the history manager UI hang for many minutes or even hours (=essentially I always kill Firefox when I do this by mistake). I suspect the GUI constructs a view of the sqlite db using single GUI objects tied to single DB entries and therefore has maximum overhead.

Editing the places.sql file directly via the sqlite3 CLI (with Firefox shut down) is a matter of (milli)seconds at best.

If I had the resources to compile FF in reasonable time I would give developing the patch a shot myself, but browser development is not an option with my current hardware, and I do not have a build server set up.

PS. The fact that Chrome does not support tagged bookmarks is another nail for its coffin. Makes it impossible to organize 10000s of bookmarks, and search on them.

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

#225
It took forever, but I finally made the switch a month or two ago. Firefox Quantum had promised to fix performance issues on the MacBook Pro, but tons of users (myself included) were complaining of CPU or RAM spiking, making it unusable. I'm trying to find the article, but they switched something, maybe the way windows are drawn, and all those issues are now gone.

There was also the bug where the top of the tab bar would have these little random glitches, and that has been fixed as well. There isn't anything for me to complain about anymore. Good job Mozilla!

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

#226

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 any browser worth its salt will eventually switch over to DoH as the default as time goes on

Any browser which wants to be banned by AD group-policies in big organisations, sure.

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

#227
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the people who make Firefox dev tools don't use it to develop. Prime example every dev has: clear all data from site for fresh start. 1 button in Chrome - Clear site data. Meanwhile in Firefox, enjoy clicking through, checking & deleting from a minimum of at least 5 sections.

Open history (ctrl+H), right click on page entry, choose "forget data about this site" (wording might be slightly different).

That also deletes the url & any other urls from domain from history, not just the site data.

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

#228

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…

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.

Ip tracking is worthless. Most people have half a dozen devices. I was actually shocked recently that I have 22 devices on my network. Then think about a relatively small business. There could be hundreds of devices. All from the same ip

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

#229
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich. Two corrections. Brendan Eich made a public donation in support of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in California. He also was not fired; he voluntarily stepped down.

>Brendan Eich made a public donation He meant private, as opposed to corporate. I'm not aware if it's even possible to hide charitable donations from the public eye.

It is, but a political campaign is not a charitable organization.

I also think it strains credulity that he could check his feelings at the door and treat all employees equally, given he felt it so important to oppress LBGTQ people that he wanted it enshrined in the California state constitution.

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

#230

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.

I was about ready to murder somebody the second time I ran into that, but some googling gave me the reason: it happens (on GNU/Linux) when you have updated firefox, but you are running the old program. Since opening a new tab opens a new process, this effectively means the old system would have to work intimately with a newer version -- which is too hard.

The solution is the same as always: don't upgrade until you are ready to reboot the system anyways. Or don't upgrade at all, if you can get away with it.

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