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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

#161
post #49

> I'd be glad to learn of any other cool features and extensions that y'all might want to share. I'm sure others will be sharing it as I type this comment as well, but for many HN readers, Multi-Account Containers [1] are bound to be a godsend. Easily log in to different accounts for any website, in different tabs. Great feature that's not available in other browsers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/mult…

You're right, but for a counter-point versus Chromium, multi-account containers are worse for security compared with profiles…

This matters when you can't 100% trust your browser session, or the installed extensions. Did you ever load https://my.1password.com in your browser? How do you feel about it? Do you trust your installed extensions to not take a peak? I don't.

Chrome solves this elegantly via profiles. Even more, you can install websites as “apps”, with a shortcut that gets indexed by the OS, and Chrome remembers the profile. I simply type “1Password Online” or “Banking” and my Chromium opens a new window in my “Private” profile that has no extensions installed. Firefox dropped the ball on both PWA shortcuts, and on profiles.

Even for using multiple accounts, I feel like Chromium profiles are a better solution.

For example, my workplace has very strict security requirements, and when looking at company documents it's not cool to provide access to extensions like LanguageTool or Grammarly. I'd be in trouble. And Chromium always had finer grained permissions for extensions, like activating or deactivating them per website.

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

#162
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the last sentence as well? > It's because they were only ever tested on Chrome during development.

That only means the developers didn't care if it was fast, or even works, in other browsers. It says nothing about Firefox. The first sentence, where the author complains that JS heavy apps are too slow in Firefox, is the part that's about Firefox.

That sentence is a simple statement of fact - that some apps are too slow in Firefox. It places no blame for the slowness. The blame comes later, and is put on lazy developers.

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

#163

The Tree Style Tab extension[1] is wonderful for "keeping tabs" on our modern "to forget" lists (unclosed tabs). Putting tabs on the left is also a good screen real estate trade for wide aspect ratio screens. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

I use Sidebery, which is similar, but adds features like 'panels' (essentially switch between sets of tree-style tabs in the sidebar) that integrates with Firefox 'containers', so you can have a 'work' vs. 'personal' panel&container for example.

The tabs being listed vertically is by far the most important aspect to me though, I previously used something (that stopped being maintained) that did that without being 'tree-style'. Nesting is probably not what I wanted as often as it is.

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

#165
post #95

I also use Firefox as my main daily driver and have been for 5 years or so. Recently I started trialing Arc ( https://arc.net/ ) and it's interesting. They try to be quirky and have a bit of a different approach. What I like is that they also have the idea of different profiles (like Firefox Multi-account Containers) built in. I'm not 100% convinced of Arc yet, but it's good enough for my secondary browser (also for…

I've really loved using Arc recently, it's a very fresh take on web browsing. I've found that its spaces feature handles my uses of (most) bookmarks and tab groups in a more coherent way. My main annoyance is that there isn't any sort of backup standard bookmark system built-in.

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

#166
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition: - SponsorBlock - Automatically tag and skip portions of youtube videos, such as sponsors, intros, recaps, and others. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ - Firefox Relay - Automatically create up to 5 (for free, more if paying for it) email addresses that redirect to your actual address, to avoid giving your private address to everyone. - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo…

Ha, thanks for sharing Firefox Relay - I actually work on that, so I was a bit hesitant about sharing it. I'll add that "paying for it" is €1 a month for unlimited email addresses.

Not a paying customer but if there was a way to sign up and pay anonymously (crypto and/or cash via mail), I'd be banging on the door even at a significant markup.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree Style Tabs is absolutely vital to me, I don't understand how people can live without that extension. The other thing I use a lot is firefox's readability builtin (it's not an extension), which removes all the cruft and *walls from websites and makes them... readable in one click. These two together are killer apps for me. I might consider switching to another browser (firefox isn't exactly the paragon of virtue…

I used to use it, until I wrote my own vertical tabs extension, which acceptably handles thousands of tabs...

Is there a link to this extension for your own vertical tabs

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

#169
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.

I recently wrote a small JS page, the core of it is a table of tens of thousands of items and a for(let i=0; i In Edge the page loads quickly and the loop is typically under 20ms. In FireFox the page lags many seconds while loading and rendering, and several seconds when the loop involves a lot of hide/show of the table. It's not that I haven't tested, it's that FireFox just isn't as fast as Edge. This simple approac…

> It's not that I haven't tested, it's that FireFox just isn't as fast as Edge.

Only in this one specific case. You don't know the other cases. What you do is write code and check if it's fast enough in Chrome. If it's not you change your code. You never check if it's fast in Firefox instead and then go on with your day, saying "well chrome's just slow".

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