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I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

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Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#581
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is possibly faster for 10 tabs or less. When you go upwards of 100 like I do... It's not even in the competition. Its UI becomes terrible and its unresponsive. FF keeps chugging along without missing a beat.

Total opposite experience. At least under Windows Chromium is perfectly fine with 150-200 tabs but FF starts falling apart

For what is worth: On my windows Chrome just freezes everything under 10-20 tab load. Firefox just works with hundreds of tabs not rebooting for months.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. I've been on Mac for more than a decade so no idea. Notice that this only became a thing with Quantum so if you used an older version of FF it wouldn't apply.

I'm with the GP on this: FF is unstable with lots of tabs. It's a big memory hog, and it's been like this for about 2 years in my experience so far. I'm using a Mac with 16GB RAM, and it's not enough for Firefox any more (something changed, it used to use less memory). Using current FF (103.0b9). Lot of tabs, but auto tab-unloading so there shouldn't be a large number active. Reported memory use (in Activity Monitor)…

I vaguely remember reading a discussion about how much memory Firefox should use to optimize performance. Some ppl wanted it to just use everything while others wanted a memory footprint as small as possible. I think they went with a percentage of available memory, an idea neither side liked. (hah)

I bet there are settings to be configured.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TST is literally the killer feature for FF. It's actually the only reason I went to FF, it was getting out of hand to have all my tabs across the top, and it makes little sense with modern screens being so wide that giving up a little horizontal space to get legible titles is absolutely worth it. Someone in Chrome/Edge/Safari must be thinking about doing this, I don't know why it hasn't been cloned. Can't be too hard…

I never got to leverage TST, something about the UX bothers me. I have better flow with Tab Stash. Also TST suffers with my hoarding habits and the subtree features have bare naked UI.

Me too. I was a long time TST user but I found I am more productive if I use stashes instead, pin the ones I use daily, and try to only keep what needs to be open in a native tab.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#584
post #379

I feel the same way about Safari. Yes, it's not perfect- and no, you don't get all the flexibility, but it's so lightweight, stable, and energy efficient, I have a hard time considering something with a few more features in the categories I've been able to do without.

Serious question: what's the best way to block ads and enable privacy features on Safari? I'm open minded about Safari but it seems like it's a lot more difficult and maybe impossible to have the same level of privacy as I do on Chrome/Firefox/Brave.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... so which one is it, if not Lynx? Links, elinks, links2, netrik, w3m, ..?

Do any of these support JS?

At least one of them used to support JS. Below is from a changelog.

Honestly I wonder though why anyone would want JS for a text-only browser.

Maybe I have just been using one too long to remember what it is like to think the (text-only) web requires Javascript.

IME, if the goal is to read text/plain or text/html, then JS is never needed.

Generally, I can always retrieve the text/html of a website without ever using JS.

Many times times I do not use a browser for the retrieval step.

Sometimes websites might make gratuitous use of Javascript to make requests the www user never specified.

For example, the www user types example.com, but the content of the website is actually found at example.cdn-123.com.

The web developer may use Javascript to make HTTP requests to example.cdn-123.com.

In such cases, I will retreive the content from example.cdn-123.com, making the requests myself, without using Javascript.

Often JSON is returned instead of text/html. This is ideal.

Because there is no need to read text enclosed in HTML tags there is no need for a browser.

For example, I search YouTube by retrieving JSON not HTML.^1 I use netcat plus a localhost forward proxy instead of a browser to make HTTP requests. Then I transform the needed data from the JSON into a TSV table using a custom single purpose program. Optionally, I then load the table into a database using sqlite3.

1. The initial search returns HTML with embedded JSON that I extract. The continuation search returns only JSON.

   === RELEASE 2.1pre29 ===
   
   Mon Apr 16 01:49:07 MET DST 2007 mikulas:
   
           Javascript was removed. The reason is that it is very buggy, Martin
           Pergel doesn't have time to develop it and code is so messy that no one
           else can understand it.
   
           If you use links for special purposes (embedded devices, etc.), you can
           bring javascript back by copying javascript files from previous release,
           removing "dnl javascript" lines from configure.in, adding *.c and *.h
           files to Makefile.am and re-running automake and autoconf.
   
           Javascript hooks from main code were not removed --- they just won't be
           maintained.
   
   === RELEASE 2.1pre28 ===
   
   Wed Apr 11 01:39:36 cet 2007 mikulas:
   
           Fixed a bug in decompression and javascript document.write introduced in
           previous release (compressed data were displayed after document.write)
   
           (BTW. because the javascript interpreter has bugs, Martin Pergel has not
           time for it and the code is so messy that it couldn't be understand by
           anyone else, javascript will likely be removed in next release)

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also WinCairo for Windows. https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/BuildingCairoOnWindows But unfortunately they don't provide binaries, so you have to build from source.

Do you know why that is? Sounds crazy unhelpful to not provide windows binaries.

Actually if you check that page above, under "Download build artifacts from Buildbot", there's binaries available for download which includes MiniBrowser.exe.

https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/BuildingCairoOnWindows#Download...

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#587
post #291

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.

Video playback is janky for me in Firefox on Linux on some sites (like IGN), but not on Brave. Actually, now that I mention it, I bet I haven’t installed a codec or something.

Happened to me too starting a few weeks ago. What solved it was to turn off Bluetooth, and prevent from activating on start.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#588
post #412
post #291

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.

I personally dislike Firefox for its annoying "Looking for updates" pop-up whenever I open the browser. That 3 second stop generated more dislike from me for Firefox than bad privacy policies of Chrome ever could.

I’ve never seen or heard of that. Is this recent? Anyone have a screenshot?

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#589
post #342
post #291

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.

> Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on history a lot. My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my personal history w…

If you use the Multi Account Containers extension [1] built by Firefox and use the built-in Firefox account sync, then you'll get that same functionality in Firefox across Windows, Mac, iPhone. That doesn't seem like a whole lot of effort and you get more functionality.

The biggest improvement over the account-based Chrome experience is that you could even have contexts (containers) for several things if you like - a container group for social media, a different container group for banking, work, shopping, etc.

All in different tabs, color-coded / labeled by container group, each with isolated cookies, etc but shared bruiser history in the same window just like in Chrome (I'm assuming) but with better privacy.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#590
post #291

Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.

The killer features is the developer tools panel. It's so packed with features it might as well be an IDE. I use Firefox on all my devices for personal browsing, but I still use Chrome for webdev works.

What web dev tools do you find valuable that Chrome has over Firefox?
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