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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

#271

Post by patrickmcnamara »

maaaats wrote: post #242
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.

If I enter "gov.ie" in Chrome, it will search for it rather than going to the address. So annoying.

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

#272

Post by techwolf »

Naac wrote: post #253
catalogia wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That might very well be performing poorly. But I interpreted the OP to talk about usability of viewing all the previous history. My goal is to never delete my firefox "sites visited" history so I can refer to it back later. So naturally I've never experienced the problem you're describing.

My places.sqlite is 400MB, and just opening the history viewer is enough to cause Firefox to hang for several seconds. It's really not designed to store history forever; I even had to change places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages in about:config to prevent it from deleting old entries.

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

#273

Post by robin_reala »

robbrown451 wrote: post #262

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…

The source you linked to has the spec created by a Google engineer and in working draft. All the browsers you mention are based on Chromium so will automatically inherit this functionality.

I’m not saying it’s not something useful to implement, but it usually takes some time and a stable specification before other browse manufacturers want to implement non-mainstream functionality.

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

#274

Post by wutbrodo »

edoceo wrote: post #140
Hitton wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For those unaware, this interface already exists this simply in the browser's UI (the difference being that your approach allows launching from desktop)

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

#275

Post by bhauer »

pedrocx486 wrote: post #213
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…

The new Edge based on Chromium is full of rounded edges (heh). Microsoft has plans to make Windows' UI round (again).

Indeed. Disappointing.

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

#276

Post by remir »

myth_buster wrote: post #237

I'm surprised by the lack of focus on mobile in that post. Most of the third world leaped the desktop stage and are coming online using mobile. Primarily due to cost factor but also the additional infrastructure (telephone line, router, dongle etc) and maintenance (dirt/dust on keyboards) you need for a desktop. And imho, this trend will catch up in the first world countries specially with newer generations. Hence I…

That's a very important point: Firefox missed the boat on mobile and Mozilla would need a miracle to increase its marketshare.

I personally use Brave on mobile which is great since it natively blocks ads and allow me to use Youtube with the screen turned off. On desktop I use Firefox since I prefer it's interface and the container feature.

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

#277

Post by maksimum »

ubercow13 wrote: post #196
mbrumlow wrote: post #178

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…

> It’s not really clear how to best use containers to protect your privacy

Do you think private browsing sessions are also unclear/have unintuitive UX? It seems like firefox containers are just private browsing sessions that you can close and re-open.

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

#278

Post by zelphirkalt »

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…

Deactivate pre-loading of websites the website you look at links too and then talk again. Chrome uses all kind of tricks to trick you into thinking it is the faster rendering browser. Deactivate the gimmicks and then look at a comparison. There wont be much difference there. Also I'd rather have my browser have a low memory footprint, than using GBs of more RAM, just to load a page a fraction of a second faster.

Still the whole argument is laughable, because even if I saw every page a second or 2 slower, it would still be worth it, if it protects my rights online.

Also using more memory just because I have more, to the degree of using all of it, is not a good strategy. Sorry, I run other applications too, the browser is not the only contender for my RAM. I highly doubt that Firefox does anything half as aggressive with regard to memory as Chrome does, in order to "impress the user" with their speed. As I said, sitting on over 200 tabs and only using 33% of my RAM, while other applications are running too. It is not simply eating up all my memory, as I have seen Chrome doing with loads of tabs.

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

#279

Post by remir »

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.

Brave is great, especially on mobile. Being able to use Youtube in the background, with the phone screen off, is a killer feature.

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

#280

Post by remir »

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.

By default, Brave blocks ads and their ads platform is disabled.

As for Chromium's performance, I think it'll improve over time as MS started using it for their Edge browser and are committed to improve performance and battery life.

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