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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

#381

Post by unethical_ban »

bmacho wrote: post #347

No it is not. In the past months/years they removed: - ability to zoom out images. Firefox has two different zooms, but none of them can zoom out images. If an image doesn't fit your screen, you can't see it period. - ability to open an image in the same window - ability to use different search engine in the search bar and URL bar - ability to quickly change search engine clicking the magnifier icon top right - custo…

In Firefox Developer Edition Desktop, I was able to

  - Quickly change search engine clicking magnifier icon top right
  - Set a custom search engine keyword ("wiki" + search term in the URL) via right-clicking a search bar
  - View download speed of an ISO file
  - Zoom images in and out, both as part of a page and as a standalone file
I was not able to right-click > open image in same tab, or have different default engines in URL vs search bar. That last use case is really edge, considering they have a search bar with multiple search engines and one can set search keywords and for most people, having different engines per bar would be unexpected and confusing.

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

#382

Post by stonemetal12 »

starik36 wrote: post #210
marginalia_nu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the buttons are small, they are harder to click. It's also harder to understand what they do, which is important when they have icons that are just cryptic monochrome squiggles. What's the merit in making the buttons unobtrusive? What are you going to do with all those saved pixels? There is no pixel shortage on desktop! That's a mobile design consideration. When the browser is covering a sixth of my screen it's a…

Given this line of thought, why doesn't Firefox put every single icon from the menu on the toolbar. Since there is so much space. My argument is that since those buttons are rarely used, they should be unobtrusive. Looking at my toolbar now, I really don't think they are that small. Just the right size. https://i.imgur.com/wyM9c2k.png

>My argument is that since those buttons are rarely used, they should be unobtrusive.

Why the half measure? If they are rarely used remove them. If they are used enough to leave them on the UI make them big enough and labeled well enough that I don't need a decoder ring and magnifying glass. Making them small and unintelligible is probably the best way to make them rarely used.

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

#383

Post by starik36 »

rrishi wrote: post #342
starik36 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this line of thought, why doesn't Firefox put every single icon from the menu on the toolbar. Since there is so much space. My argument is that since those buttons are rarely used, they should be unobtrusive. Looking at my toolbar now, I really don't think they are that small. Just the right size. https://i.imgur.com/wyM9c2k.png

Curious to know the set of extensions you've got there

In order of buttons:

Downloads (not an extension)

Firefox Account (not an extension - I really should hide it) uBlockOrigin

Honey (basically coupons)

PushBullet (I use this occasionally to move links or images between the PC and iPhone. Should probably get rid of it since Firefox now supports functionality natively).

Multi-Account containers

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

#384

Post by charcircuit »

agluszak wrote: post #175
crazygringo wrote: post #142

I love Firefox too but this is a really weird post. The OP is clearly having performance issues with Chrome presumably due to extensions interfering or something else. I can guarantee you that Google makes sure Gmail loads at least as fast in Chrome as in Firefox. Chrome is customizable too (panes you can open/close), Chrome extensions are also thriving, and Chrome was the one who invented the "clean look", same as F…

> Chrome extensions are also thriving Yeah, especially with Manifest v3 :) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-ma...

Which ironically could have solved the network performance problems that the OP is experiencing.

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

#385

Post by moskimus »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #314
swozey wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't open it right now but I'm pretty sure you right click anywhere around the bookmarks bar (NOT a bookmark) you get an option to customize the UI/bars and there's a checkbox for icon size Unless I'm completely mixing this up with Chrome but I don't see that here.

Nope, not getting any of that. If it ever existed, it's another casualty in the war on configurability. There's an option to add more space between the icons, but they're still as tiny as they ever were.

It still exists. Customize Toolbar -> Density (bottom left). There are only 2 or 3 presets, but it is possible to slightly adjust the icon size. Just confirmed on 109.0.1.

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

#386

Post by cleanchit »

wrldos wrote: post #76
loa_in_ wrote: 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.

Lets be clear here. They were only tested on some developer's fast machine on Chrome. All the users are going to be using it on some bag of shit $300 laptop running crapware infested Edge so they will be suffering like your Firefox users are. The problem is the left hand side of the chain. Stop pulling in thousand layer garbage abstractions and making the user pay the penalty for it.

All web developers should be required by law to work on 4gb 3ghz laptops with a 3G mobile connection.

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

#388

Post by charcircuit »

Idiot_in_Vain wrote: post #239
shaunsingh0207 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome also has objectively better performance ( https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Chrome-109-Benchmarks ), especially for 3D performance. I'm sure on modern machines both browsers are more than fast enough, but I'm not quite sure why everyone seems to think firefox is faster. On the other hand, I feel like the nyxt browser ( https://nyxt.atlas.engineer ) has a spot on HN, its very much like emacs in the sense ev…

"objectively better performance" What are yon talking about? How many people browse the web on an i9 13900K with 32GB RAM? Try a 5 year old laptop with 4GB RAM and you'll see a completely different picture - Firefox is far better at managing limited memory. Also on Android (probably on iPhones as well) Chrome doesn't allow installation of ad-blockers - making it 10x slower than FF with uBlock Origin.

>Chrome doesn't allow installation of ad-blockers

That is not accurate. The Android version of Chrome does not support web extensions at all. It's not like Google has a switch somewhere that they can flip and make web extententions work. Supporting web extensions on Android would be a brand new feature and would need significant development time.

Not even Firefox properly supports web extensions on Android. They tried, but then seemingly gave up and just whitelisted a select few extensions from developers they could trust not to abuse the security of it.

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

#389

Post by alexjplant »

Vinnl wrote: 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…

I wrote about my favorites here [1]. I make an active effort to sculpt my online experience into something useful rather than intellectually draining; every time I fire up an unconfigured browser instance on a new machine I'm taken aback at how much I lean on various extensions and configurations to make the web usable.

[1] https://alexplant.org/post/my-favorite-firefox-plugins-produ...

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

#390

Post by account42 »

innerbits wrote: post #130

Firefox is my primary browser at present but definitely has annoyances: - unable to close pinned tabs without custom extensions - unable to undo close open tabs after closing last window (also solved with extension) - pins itself to taskbar and install desktop icon on every install - I prefer how downloads' progress is handled in Chrome better - Not all settings are synchronized (esp. around privacy), making it very…

> unable to close pinned tabs without custom extensions

Middle click works and there is also a context menu option to close the tab.

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