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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

#261

Post by catalogia »

codedokode wrote: post #256
paulie_a wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can combine IP address with fingerprint built from WebGL video card information, fonts list and rendering details, OS name, CPU type, memory size (yes, browser provides this) and screen resolution.

I'm a bit confused, is the nature of the complaint that Firefox lets you use multi-account containers without at the same time forcing you to use resist-fingerprinting? Because you can certainly choose to use both.

If your point is that resist-fingerprinting would be a sane default, I agree. But Mozilla insists that most firefox users would be too confused by a few websites breaking because of it.

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

#262

Post by robbrown451 »

My biggest gripe with Firefox is that it doesn't support MIDIAccess. So any web app that works with an electronic piano, doesn't work. They've been saying they are working on it for years. Works in Chrome, Brave, Opera, Edge, etc.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MIDIAccess

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897

It's actually pretty bizarre since the basic functionality (hit a note on the piano, send it to the web page that is listening for such events) is so trivial, compared to the vast majority of features.

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

#263

Post by antpls »

Hitton wrote: post #135
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…

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

I confirm. I never used containers before, and when I tried, I discovered it wouldn't work with how I configured firefox, which is always ON private mode.

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

#264

Post by cpeterso »

Hitton wrote: post #134
qplex wrote: 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

You can also create and launch new profiles from a running instance of Firefox on the about:profiles page.

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

#265

Post by pistoriusp »

ayoisaiah wrote: post #40

My experience with Firefox in the last few months have not been good. I encounter so much input lag when typing in the address bar, usually after opening a few tabs. In general, the UI is not responsive as I'd like so I'm using Brave right now where those issues are non-existent

This is exactly my main gripe. The address bar lags and I can't help but feel like everything's slow after that initial interaction.

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

#266

Post by lcall »

I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power with Google, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chrome derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise:

1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea);

2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception list or temporary exception, and easy to manage it without a mouse once the tab is open; separately, I do change the search engine also, and create search keywords), and

3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know),

4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties, more than what Firefox has done (ie, the security track record of each, frequency of major holes over, say, the last 1-3 years). I don't really know but I'm glad they try.

Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).

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

#267

Post by sciurus »

edcastro wrote: post #170
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 just wish they had per-container proxy support. That would make me immediately switch to Firefox.

What's the use case for this? You can already configure different proxies to apply to different domains. The UX isn't great though, you have to use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config

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

#268

Post by weaksauce »

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…

you can try going to your profile and running:

sqlite3 places.sqlite vacuum

to see if that helps speed things up a bit. might not but it's free and safe(well as safe as anything can be i guess).

to your other point if you want to check this out you can likely use an artifact build to compile firefox in under a min or so if the changes are only in the javascript frontend code and not the backend c++ code. (unsure where the slowdown is)

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

#269

Post by temac »

ken wrote: post #211
bhauer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it really doesn't look like an Window/Linux app either) I guess this is a subjective matter because to my eye, it looks fantastic on Windows, matching the Windows 10 dark theme very well. The active tab highlight looks like the open app highlights in my top-docked Windows taskbar. And the Firefox Container color-bars look great below that. Its sharp edges are a match for the sharp look of Windows. To me, Chrome is…

On the Mac, at least, it's painfully obvious that nothing matches. The look is a little off, but the behavior is way off. The scrolling doesn't work the same as native scrolling, nor do the context menus, the toolbars, the tabs, or the keyboard shortcuts. You can't do anything in Firefox without being reminded that you're using an app which is not like any other app on your Mac. It seems they've been struggling to ge…

This problem is easily solved on Windows by having no two programs looking the same :D (even those made by Microsoft and even those actually part of Windows)

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

#270

Post by kome »

catalogia wrote: post #247
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 giv…

I confirm it too. it's very annoying.
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