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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

#321

Post by icelancer »

Naac wrote: post #252
paulcarroty wrote: post #77

Stop sending my data to Google ( https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... ) and make Firefox fast on Linux (minimum as Chrome) - reason't why I'm not use Fox anymore.

off topic, is it common to twitter this way? Wouldn't a blog post be more efficient than multiple tweets ( that are meant to be read independently? )

Yes, it is common. Yes, it would be easier to blog. But people do not click external links anymore.

People being non-HN users. It's easy to say "Just go to the blog!" but people don't like navigating away from their Twitter app (often they're on mobile) to do that, for whatever reason. I agree 100% with blogging more but the views just are not there.

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

#322

Post by garbagetier666 »

There's nothing 'calm' or 'distraction-free' about the obnoxious toolbar animations: https://i.imgur.com/N6v30Sa.gif . Which just happen over and over and over and over again as you navigate from page to page. Do you really need a blue animated progress bar flash signifying the page has loaded? Does the refresh and stop icon need to have a half second long animation every single time it switches between the two? Does the throbber need to oscillate back and forth like a pendulum used to induce hypnosis? Worst part is it requires some userchrome.css patch to fix that awful throbber animation, not easily in the normal settings area.

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

#323

Post by stjohnswarts »

tialaramex wrote: post #243
mcny wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Yeah but you still really should be using utilities like cookie autodelete, clearURLs, pihole, decentraleyes, and nano defender.

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

#324

Post by dan-robertson »

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…

I guess the reason is probably that it probably requires a developer with a midi device, and it affects too few users for Mozilla to want to prioritise it. The bug currently has priority P3. There are about 8300 existing P1 and P2 bugs, and over 10000 P3 bugs.

Saying that it works in chrome, brave, opera, edge etc sounds like “look at all these other vendors who put the effort in” but really they are all running the same code these days so you could instead write “chromium implements it”.

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

#325

Post by johnmorrison »

Does anybody know how to remove the forward/backward arrow buttons in Firefox for windows? I love how customizable the UI is, and they allow you to remove the reload and home button by default, but other things like the forward/backward button and search bar are fixed to the toolbar.

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

#327

Post by weaksauce »

catalogia wrote: post #302
weaksauce wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wher…

Vacuum has no substantial impact here. It only knocked about 10% off my places.sqlite and mass deletion remains pathologically slow.

perhaps you can file a bug about it? should not be that slow.

here are a few of the places where it's being deleted by the looks of things:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=history+delet...

it's in javascript so it could be debugged with an artifact build perhaps?

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

#328

Post by waddlesworth »

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.

I use Firefox at home, but I use Chrome at work. I'm mostly just trialling Firefox at home for now.

I've swapped to Firefox before, but there's always things that annoy me every time I do.

Having things like the Bookmark Manager and the History panels as separate windows seems to get in the way, particularly when the interface is usually worse. I much prefer Chrome's history tab, often for no other reason than it's sorted by date instead of alphabetical. In Firefox, I seem to have to use the separate history window to sort it that way. Even if it is fixable, you would have to spend a few minutes working it out, which is a problem.

Then there's just small stuff that gets in the way. One thing that happened to me recently was that I wanted to look at a background image for a div. You can't right click and open in a new tab for these, so I inspected it in the dev tools, and in the style panel, there's a link there, but you can't click on it. In Chrome, you can right click on it and go "Open in New Tab", in Firefox, the closest option is just "Copy URL" - which means I have to open a new tab and paste it in.

Chrome just in general seems to have a better UI/UX.

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

#329

Post by iscrewyou »

51Cards wrote: post #316
iscrewyou wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve said this in many other similar threads and I’ll say it here again. Google services suck in Firefox. And that’s why I first went back to chrome after switching to Firefox. And then it clicked, chrome is just an app for google services for me. Want to use google maps? Chrome. Want to browse the web? Firefox. Chrome is literally a google app now. I love using Firefox for everything and I’ve mentally transitioned t…

What features of google maps aren't working in Firefox? I use maps constantly and never have an issue. In fact I use the whole suite of Google apps daily (mail, calendar, YouTube, maps, photos, keep, drive, office suite, etc) without issue.

Google maps zooming is horrendous. Loading of the maps is bad when you zoom in and out.

YouTube doesn’t load as fast on Firefox.

Gmail is sometimes slow.

Those are two big ones. So I have google signed out on Firefox and use chrome as simply the gateway to all things google.

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

#330

Post by Rotareti »

icelancer wrote: post #318
asadkn wrote: post #10

It's true. I have kept giving Firefox another chance over time but haven't been convinced. Recently, I tried Firefox again on Windows. And the experience is amazing indeed - faster, smoother, and with trackers blocking, very pleasant. And with strict protection, that's sort-of a builtin ad blocker. Something still feels off on MacOS even though the last version has been a massive improvement for MBP Retina.

I keep trying Firefox but Google services are absolutely terrible on it, and I spend a lot of time in Gmail/Drive/Docs/Hangouts so having two sets of browsers like another commenter here said is a non-starter for me (I've tried it).

I think you have two options then:

A) (if possible) migrate away from the services you mentioned.

B) lock-in deeper and deeper with the biggest advertising company on the planet.

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