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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

#241

Post by seba_dos1 »

tomrod wrote: post #148
NilsIRL wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Mozilla has abandoned Firefox on Android to work on Firefox Preview (code named Fenix). Here is the github issue that tracks container support on Firefox Preview: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1481

I would LOVE to use Firefox on Android. But the UX is so kludgey! My main beefs - Refresh requires two clicks instead of the now-standard pull down (like Chrome) - Text resizing is _all_ _over_ _the_ _place_. I go to Reddit and the text shrinks down to size 3 or something. There is no clear way to make any adjustment whatsoever. Compare to Chrome/Chrome-clone Brave's very easy text resizing. Why do I love firefox on…

Pulling down to refresh is so annoying. Way too easy to trigger accidentally. I really prefer the Firefox way.

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

#242

Post by maaaats »

2ion wrote: post #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…

At least Firefox gives proper suggestions from history when typing in addresses. Chrome is way off, as if it wants you to search in google instead.

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

#243

Post by tialaramex »

mcny wrote: post #210
hellofunk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is the Facebook container add-on blocks phoning home by Facebook like and share buttons. You are right that ad networks can still share data (use uBlock Origin) or websites can share this in the back end (nothing we can do about I guess) but the Facebook container is not nothing.

The Facebook Container add-on is distinct from the Multi-Account Containers feature.

It's much friendlier than building your own containers, since most of the hard work and decisions have been made by the developers of the Facebook Container add-on.

You should definitely install the Facebook Container if you have a Facebook account, it traps that neatly inside a box. These days it can even be taught about any sites you use Facebook to authenticate with (this isn't a good idea but whatever) to bring them inside the container while everything else stays outside.

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

#244

Post by mplanchard »

BoorishBears wrote: post #183
mplanchard wrote: post #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 Lin…

I'll share my anecdote in that case I installed Manjaro on my Surface Pro and Firefox was included (? or I happened to install it instead of Chrome, I'm fuzzy on that) The next day, a few minutes before a job interview I opened Firefox to find a curious error Using an older version of Firefox can corrupt bookmarks and browsing history already saved to an existing Firefox profile. To protect your information, create a…

Yes, that sounds terrible, and I can understand why it would sour you on the whole application!

Edit: just wanted to make sure to say that there’s no sarcasm here at all. I would absolutely feel the same way if I had had that experience

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

#245

Post by grappler »

Other than multi-account containers, already discussed in the top comments here, another killer firefox extension that I think is largely undiscovered is SessionSync.

I searched for a while for a decent way to deal with the "too many tabs" problem and SessionSync is where I've landed, so far anyway.

SessionSync doesn't ask you to set up an account anywhere new - it just saves tabs as bookmarks into a 'SessionSync' folder in your firefox bookmarks menu, which are then synced automatically with the rest of your firefox profile data, to any other computers or phones synced with the same profile. Even if you decided to stop using SessionSync, you'd still have access to everything using Firefox's usual bookmarks interface. It basically gives you some options that I think firefox was missing, to save and restore whole sets of tabs to ordered lists in bookmark folders rather than dealing with urls individually.

I have no affiliation with SessionSync; just wanted to mention it as one thing I really like in the firefox ecosystem. It has rough edges (e.g. no 'undo' if you save over the wrong folder accidentally, and sometimes weirdly changes the order of tabs on save), but it's the best tool I've found so far to do this sort of thing. Please let me know if you're using something as good or better though :)

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

#246

Post by Naac »

2ion wrote: post #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…

I also had the same desire as you to keep my firefox history for as long as possible. It's especially great for auto-completion of previously visited websites.

My places.sqlite file is several years old and has moved across several machines, it is 47MB.

I can't say I've experienced the same lag you're describing. At least using the firefox url bar ( where auto-completions show up ) I found it to be pretty quick. The firefox history management window "feels" a little old ( read: 90s ), but is functional for the times I've had to search for a site I visited 5 years ago and vaguely remembered the name.

What specific features would you want to see from firefox's history management window.

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

#247

Post by catalogia »

2ion wrote: post #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…

> "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."

I've not probed this deeply, but I have encountered it and can confirm it's a problem. To give an idea of the magnitude of the problem, deleting 10,000 history items can easily lock up Firefox for a full hour. I think but haven't confirmed that it might even be nonlinear. e.g. deleting 1,000 entries 10 times in a row seems faster than deleting 10,000 entries in one go.

I don't know what firefox is doing here, but it's badly broken.

(My places.sqlite is 55MB)

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

#248

Post by joemaller1 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #142
huzaifaahmed wrote: post #120

What do you guys think about Brave? I use it and I think it's actually better that firefox in terms of speed and other features.

The problem of Brave is that at heart it's still from an advertising company, no matter how nice they come across. Advertising is inherently at odds with productivity (ads waste your time) and potentially privacy (for better ad targeting), so I wouldn't recommend it. Under the hood it's just a reskinned Chromium so the battery life & performance concerns remain.

This and other accusations against Brave came up in the last Firefox thread too. Can you provide a link?

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

#249

Post by catalogia »

Naac wrote: post #246
2ion wrote: post #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…

I also had the same desire as you to keep my firefox history for as long as possible. It's especially great for auto-completion of previously visited websites. My places.sqlite file is several years old and has moved across several machines, it is 47MB. I can't say I've experienced the same lag you're describing. At least using the firefox url bar ( where auto-completions show up ) I found it to be pretty quick. The…

Make a copy of your profile (to preserve your history) then in Firefox's Show All History window, search for a site that has thousands of visits, select them all, then press delete. Firefox will start burning a few CPU cores and lock up for a long time, every time.

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

#250

Post by mda »

neiman wrote: post #123

A question for HN readers that use Chrome: why did you choose that? The readers here seems like the ideal crowd of Firefox users.

- Still faster and snappier.

- Better track record of security, better security architecture overall. (Firefox is getting better, but not there yet)

- Very smooth account sync across devices and platforms.

- Credit card payments with Google pay is very convenient.

- Good spell checker

- Good Google integration overall.

- Development tools

- Crashes are very rare.

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