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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

#501

Post by debug-desperado »

gbil wrote: post #31

Time for my rant as a Firefox user since the beta Phoenix versions, stating that I'm a daily MacOS and Android tablet user * Firefox uses much more battery on MacOS than any chromium based browser. Bugzilla ticket exists since ages, few things have change * Firefox on Android tablet after the change to Fenix is a stretched phone browser, with no tabs support, no default desktop support. Firefox developers treat this…

Not sure on MacOS memory usage (I stick with Safari and Edge on respective laptops for battery life reasons), but agreed 100% about Firefox on Android tablet. It's just awkward.

They need to make the Android UI in general a closer match for the desktop and iOS (skinned Safari) browsers. For instance, note how buried things like "passwords" are in the Android menus compared to iOS and desktop browsers:

Desktop: Menu->Passwords iOS: Menu->Passwords Android: Menu->Settings->Logins & Passwords->Saved logins

It's almost like the Android team doesn't even use their own browser on other platforms, or there's no product lead to make things consistent.

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

#502

Post by folmar »

robjan wrote: post #294
Operative0198 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is FOSS and fills the gap (if you can find all the crypto ads toggles hidden as hamburgers).

I find Brave slower than Chrome on my phone even on sites filled with ads.

Enable JavaScript JIT (disabled by default on Brave for something like a year) to trade some safety for performance.

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

#505

Post by michaelmrose »

SilasX wrote: post #458
michaelmrose wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox normal collection, automatic or triggered in about:memory, will reduce memory used by Firefox about the same as restarting firefox. The latter only SEEMS to reduce usage because it also unloads all tabs which are only reloaded when accessed. If you want to prove that to yourself compare a restart preserving tabs and manually trigger tab unloading in about:unloads If you are dealing with normal amounts of memo…

>Firefox normal collection, automatic or triggered in about:memory, will reduce memory used by Firefox about the same as restarting firefox. Obviously not, since the memory usage is increasing without bound despite no corresponding increase in memory-intensive tabs. Thanks for suggesting an alternate workaround for the collection failures though. >If you are dealing with normal amounts of memory usage and you have le…

The quit behavior does seem to be a Mac specific behavior not a bug. You'll note the request to change it is labeled an enhancement as opposed to a bug. I agree it seems a sub-optimal choice.

Your memory usage growing without bounds on the other hand is obviously a bug. I would create a fresh profile and see if you can reproduce this behavior without extensions and report it.

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

#506

Post by rft »

pja wrote: post #473
rft wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time FF user my opinion of it took quite a hit recently. I wanted to hack together a small personal extension, likely outside the scope of what Tampermonkey can do easily. I was really shocked by the mandatory signature enforcement. You need to get your extension signed by Mozilla with no way to disable it in the standard FF, the about:config setting does nothing (see [1]). Your temporary extension will als…

Usually you find that the reason these barriers exist is because people were abusing the previous system. There are (sadly) plenty of people out there who will install a browser extension & tweak an about:config setting if you set up the right incentives to get them to look past the warnings. The price of protecting these people from those that would take advantage of them is developers having to download a different…

> Usually you find that the reason these barriers exist is because people were abusing the previous system.

I absolutely get this argument and this is also what I got from the Mozilla docs. For me the decision for user safety moved too far away from user freedom. I get that this is a tradeoff, I am not happy with the outcome personally. I have no perfect solution to this problem either, I just find the current state runs counter to what I personally would expect.

I see a sliding scale from Apple walled garden to Windows XP wild west. I think I am more on the XP side than the Apple side, so my view likely clashes with what Mozilla has in mind.

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

#508

Post by CountHackulus »

Zak wrote: post #462
rofrol wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use 8 extensions on firefox nightly on Android. They work quite well.

You have to jump through a bunch of hoops to use them, to the point that only a handful of people do it, which decreases the motivation for anyone to put effort into supporting Firefox for Android in their extensions. It really seems to me like Firefox wanted to prevent a healthy extension ecosystem on Android, but they have not been transparent about their reasoning.

What hoops do I have to jump through to get some extensions on Chrome on Android?

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

#509

Post by clircle »

raffraffraff wrote: post #237

Recommend: 1. Sign up to Firefox sync 2. Install the Multi-Account Containers extension. Create containers to partition your identities. Eg: Banking, Shopping different Gmail accounts, different AWS console accounts etc 3. Install the "containerise" extension so you can create URL rules that automatically open sites in the correct container. (It can match URL regexes, allowing you to identify different accounts on ea…

What's the advantage of using multi-account containers and partitioned identities?

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

#510

Post by altairprime »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #397
altairprime wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemetry is not synonymous with tracking. You can implement telemetry while not tracking users. You can track users without telemetry. There is a lot of telemetry , but there doesn’t seem to be any tracking.

I don't want my applications to dial home and tell Mozilla what I'm doing with them. Doesn't matter what you call it.

It does. “I don’t want telemetry” and “I don’t want tracking” are two overlapping sets of people. Whether or not you care about the distinction, others do.
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