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Firefox 78

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Re: Firefox 78

#131

Post by ferzul »

burtonator wrote: post #38
Santosh83 wrote: post #12

Great. Unlike many, I walk my talk and have always used Firefox since more than a decade with no exceptions. The very commonly given reason that DevTools are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other general browsing. Unless we support alternatives we really shouldn't complain when they gradually die off in a space that is increasingly coming under the control of giant corporations with…

Love that FF exists but one of the things that always strikes me is that if FF is successful in their mission they will cut off their major revenue channel. Google is still the majority of their revenue is it not? The reason they're making that money is off the backs of other consumers who are NOT benefiting from the privacy features that you guys want to see everywhere. Willing to be totally wrong here and would lov…

many companies did targeted advertising in the pre-web days and made a profit. you can advertise without knowing anything about a consumer - except that they like reading this kind of article. so there is no tradeoff between privacy and profitable advertising; both are possible at the same time.

Re: Firefox 78

#132

Post by regularfry »

StavrosK wrote: post #78
tgv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only ugly: whenever I click in it to edit a URL (pasting in different UUIDs for testing, things like that), the change of font size means I don't know where the selection is. That's so confusing.

I am always very confused by discussions about this bar. For me, when I press ctrl-L, the bar gets slightly bigger borders and the dropdown expands, and that's all that happens. I don't get a font size change or anything. Is my experience not typical? Does anyone know why I don't get the new bar if not? I'm on 78.

Just checked for myself on FF77 on Gnome and on FF78 on Windows. I don't see a change of font size on either.

Is there something you need to opt in to?

Re: Firefox 78

#133

Post by atombender »

snide wrote: post #25

I recently tried to move to Firefox (again). I try to to this every couple years. I run into the same three blockers every time. 1. The omnibar completion isn't as good. Chrome figures out where I go pretty regularly, and autocompletes extremely well based upon habits. 2. The dev tools aren't as good. I mostly work in the frontend, and simple things like how you write css overwrites with tab completion is just not as…

I moved to Firefox and struggle a bit with the omnibar, too. I'm glad they finally dropped the separate search box, but the main autocompletions aren't as good.

My main peeve is that Firefox is so slow to learn. I have to visit a certain site many, many times before it becomes an autocomplete candidate. Firefox will suggest it in the dropdown, but becoming a "primary" autocompletion that gets filled out in the omnibar itself takes a long time. Maybe there's a setting somewhere?

Safari is, as far as I'm concerned, the gold standard here. Its autocompletions are fantastic.

Re: Firefox 78

#134

Post by regularfry »

wyoh wrote: post #51
whereistimbo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although firefox lets you make tabs smaller, it's default method of "scrolling" tabs isn't as nice as chrome infinite method. Tree style tabs works better in Firefox than Chrome. Just saying

There also an extension called Sidebery [1][2] which is a lighter alternative to TST. I've found that TST was making my Firefox hang several seconds before loading all my tabs. [1]: https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

There's also an extension whose name I forget (but should be easy enough to find for the sufficiently motivated) which unloads background tabs so they're not taking up resources unless you switch to them. Made a huge difference when I installed it.

Re: Firefox 78

#135

Post by irrational »

markandrewj wrote: post #81
viraptor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reason that DevTools are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other general browsing It doesn't even stop you from developing with FF. DevTools were completely usable for years and unless you need very specific functionality, FF is just fine.

Chromes development tools are good, but Firefox has also been doing some interesting things in this area recently. In some regards Firefox pioneered modern web development with tools like Firebug. I think developers sometimes forget that for most users developer tools are not a selling feature though. There are a number of things, that both Firefox, and Safari, do better then Chrome, from a regular user perceptive. A…

I started using Firefox because of Firebug when it first came out. It made web development so much easier. I continued to use firebug until it was discontinued (I still feel that it was superior to the dev tools built into the browsers, at least as they were at the time it was discontinued - I remember the console was especially better). I’ve continued to use Firefox since then out of years of habit.

Re: Firefox 78

#136

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

noisy_boy wrote: post #92

I am a pretty ardent Firefox supporter and prefer it over Chrome but some of the issues are still jarring and really affect the user experience. E.g. this 10 year old bug which I still have to deal with multiple times every month where if you have couple of windows open with one having pinned tabs and close the other one first, the pinned tabs are not restored upon restart: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?i…

I doubt it will happen. Fixing bugs is not sexy, so modern developers generally avoid it at all costs. Especially if there is a UI makeover they could be doing instead.

Re: Firefox 78

#137

Post by cptskippy »

StyloBill wrote: post #112
wincent wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanted to switch to Firefox, but after several weeks the thing that pushed me back was janky scrolling. It seems like a trivial thing, but it absolutely drove me first up the wall, and then back to Chrome.

Yeah I try FF every 6 months to see if the scrolling has improved and each and every time I go back to using Chrome after a few days. I wouldn't say it's bad but it's noticeably worse than Chrome and I just can't get over it. Exact same thing for FF on Android.

I'm literally flipping back abd forth between the two on my phone and I can't tell the difference.

Is there a specific site?

Re: Firefox 78

#138

Post by torvarun »

lou1306 wrote: post #86
akerro wrote: post #11

Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I embraced it and it's great for bookmarking, syncthing tabs, reading news as podcasts on mobile etc. It's great.

I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated. [1]: https://www.crofflr.com/

I have a Kobo Touch e-reader which has Pocket integration built in and it's great. The reader lags at times because of its age, but until Kindle gets Pocket I won't give up on it.

Re: Firefox 78

#139

Post by atombender »

I switched from Brave to Firefox recently, and I'm very happy! I perceive it as faster, and feature-wise it's pretty much equivalent. It's made some enormous performance improvements.

Firefox still has some rough issues. It doesn't always feel like a native app (e.g. form fields, toolbar, preferences), and its visual touches (e.g. the main toolbar) are sometimes heavy-handed. In other areas, such as the "omnibar" behaviour, it's still catching up to other browsers, but at least it's catching up.

Another thing I dislike is just how much tweaking I had to do to remove quirks. For example, Firefox has some really excessive animations, which fortunately can be turned off ("ui.prefersReducedMotion" in "about:config").

Firefox has some ways to go, but I'm a lot more optimistic about its future than I used to be.

Re: Firefox 78

#140

Post by ferzul »

chrismorgan wrote: post #82
snide wrote: post #25

I recently tried to move to Firefox (again). I try to to this every couple years. I run into the same three blockers every time. 1. The omnibar completion isn't as good. Chrome figures out where I go pretty regularly, and autocompletes extremely well based upon habits. 2. The dev tools aren't as good. I mostly work in the frontend, and simple things like how you write css overwrites with tab completion is just not as…

1: as you’ve said, the quality of such completion depends on habits ; if you’re just shifting to the browser, it doesn’t have the full details with which to do good completion. 2: strongly disagree; I use Firefox, and on the odd occasion where I’m doing something in Chrome, it drives me insane with things like its CSS editing experience, because it does things in what I find to be a much less native-feeling way, wher…

> 1: as you’ve said, the quality of such completion depends on habits; if you’re just shifting to the browser, it doesn’t have the full details with which to do good completion.

i've used firefox ever since galeon bit the dust (or maybe since epiphany switched to webkit). it knows my habits. but it still suggests urls i don't want instead of just offering to switch to an open tab. (frankly, i want open tabs to match enthusiatically. i would rather switch to an open tab than open a new tab to the same site, which is redundant.)

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