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Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

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Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#111
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mixed bag. Ad blocking speeds up some websites substantially. IMO that makes Firefox mobile faster overall.

Vivaldi puts Firefox Mobile to shame when it comes to speed.

Unfortunately, Vivaldi is not FOSS which makes it a non-starter for many.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#112

I love firefox and have been using it for nearly 20 years now, but my latest employer doesn't support it so they recommended I switch to Edge on my work machine... Don't get a job in academia

I just came to offer my sympathies. That sucks in ways few will understand. Please tell me you have been spared from using Microsoft Teams...

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#113

Can't use it on a Mac as it won't play ball with Keychain. Not going to reenter all my passwords.

Sadly, Apple has just completely cut off 3rd parties from Keychain for website passwords (they can use the Keychain for their own isolated items, but can't touch any shared password data). All non-Safari browsers are affected.

Firefox on iOS a loophole for this, because it's forced to use Safari's WebView, so it gets Safari's keychain, but it can also then prompt to save in its own password sync. Far from ideal, but at least a way to escape Apple lock-in.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#114
post #59
post #13

I love Firefox but some JS heavy demos etc. just don't work fast enough. I hate that I know exactly why. It's because they were only ever tested on Chrome during development.

Interesting, I haven't run into it as upto now and I was checking some pretty cool and intense CodePens earlier. I'll look into some threeJS demos to see how it goes (ex. https://bruno-simon.com/ ). Are there any other specific JS demos you've had a bad experience with?

That 3D website ( https://bruno-simon.com/) ran well enough though it did cause my laptop's fans to run but I believe that happens in Chrome too.

So far, I haven't found much of a difference in performance of websites but it's still early times for me.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#115
I use Waterfox personally, but it's a minor difference.

Some lesser known extensions:

LocalCDN

Tab Session Manager

Feedbro

Enhancer for YouTube

Request Control

Trace

There is a lot of configuration you can do with a user.js file as well. I took a lot of options from the tor browser config since I value privacy.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#116
post #70

I now use Brave on everything: Linux, Mac, iOS, iPadOS. Mozilla has some really weird stuff going on in their financials that bother me, and as a result, I just can’t use their products anymore. This is similar to my feelings about Google, Microsoft, and so on. I prefer tech companies to just be tech companies and not branch into other fields. I understand that Brave’s stance on certain things bleeds into politics wi…

I'm not an anarchist, but I did the same thing for the same reasons.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#118

I switched to Firefox several years ago out of principal, but it's been a struggle to stay with it. 2 big issues I have are the tendency to freeze, and then say "restart to keep using Firefox" because it updated in the background and can't continue. The other was almost a deal breaker, and still could be. When using a barcode scanner, Firefox can't keep up with the characters coming from the scanner. It will randomly…

Assuming you're talking about an actual barcode scanner device: barcode scanners commonly present as USB keyboards to the OS. The thing about USB keyboards is that events aren't pushed to the computer but are polled at a set rate (commonly 125Hz). It could be that the scanner produces the numbers quick enough to approach the USB polling rate, and maybe Chrome has some additional smarts to handle it, or maybe Firefox just adds a bit of overhead that's enough to lose some of the characters. You could try increasing the computer's polling rate and see if that helps.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#119
post #70

I now use Brave on everything: Linux, Mac, iOS, iPadOS. Mozilla has some really weird stuff going on in their financials that bother me, and as a result, I just can’t use their products anymore. This is similar to my feelings about Google, Microsoft, and so on. I prefer tech companies to just be tech companies and not branch into other fields. I understand that Brave’s stance on certain things bleeds into politics wi…

Sure, Mozilla seems to have quite severe organizational issues, but to me, the deep integration of a crypto wallet into Brave is what's keeping me away from it.

A Crypto pivot didn't end well for Opera, it ruined one of my favorite OSM apps for iOS (maps.me; fortunately there's an open source spin-off available now, i.e. Organic Maps), it left a bad taste in my mouth when Signal did it...

I use Firefox as my main browser, and more or less consider my relationship with Mozilla to be not different from any other corporation – as long as the product itself works for me and doesn't seem to be heading into a predatory direction (e.g. heavily pushing a subscription model, needlessly collecting data server-side etc.), I'm fine with its creators spending their money however they see fit.

That said, I'll also definitely not donate to Mozilla in its current state.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#120
post #3

Firefox was my go-to 3 years ago because it was just lighter than Chrome (and easier on my battery). I still hate the fact that different browser profiles and profile switching aren't surfaced like they are in Chrome. I think it's such a major use case for modern web browsing, I find it hard to believe they aren't prioritizing it. (FWIW this isn't even supported in Safari, which I would have preferred using) I still…

Open new tab, type: "about:profiles" create as many profiles as you want. Or as others have said you can use tab containers or the profile manager switch.
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