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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

#521

Post by blacklight »

This post feels a bit like fanboy without much data backing, but I think the OP could have mentioned a big win of FF over Chromium-based browsers: support for Manifest V2.

As an extension developer who makes heavy use of HTTP requests and header sniffing, I feel like V3 literally put me in a cage carefully crafted by Google (and their explicit hatred for ad-blockers, no matter if making life difficult to uBlock developers eventually makes life hard for all other developers too).

I feel like V3 is a grave mistake that eventually will make Chromium-based browsers less flexible. No matter if Brave announced that they'll keep supporting V2 extensions: they don't have their own store, they still rely on the Chrome store, and the Chrome store now only accepts V3 extensions.

So FF announcing their continuous support for V2 is really a breeze of fresh air, and eventually it'll be (at least for me) their biggest selling point over Chromium.

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

#523

Post by Zak »

CountHackulus wrote: post #508
Zak wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Whataboutism isn't a particularly useful response. Firefox used to have thousands of supported extensions and allow users to install unsupported extensions. Now it doesn't, deliberately, and I would like them to reverse that decision. The fact that a more popular browser has a worse situation is irrelevant.

You can run a fork of Chromium that supports most desktop Chrome extensions: Kiwi Browser. That's not so different from having to run an unstable build (nightly) or fork (Iceraven) of Firefox.

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

#524

Post by alex7734 »

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…

> The price of protecting these people from those that would take advantage of them is developers having to download a different version of the browser in order to develop their extensions.

So what stops these people from downloading a developer version of the browser themselves?

You cannot protect people from themselves. The only cure for idiocy is death after all.

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

#525

Post by moskimus »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #394
moskimus wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh, I get two presets. And the density only changes the spacing between the buttons. They're still the same size.

You may be right. I checked before replying, but I may have just been tricked by an optical illusion with the extra padding shifting everything.

By default there are only 2 densities, but there used to also be a "Compact" option which was removed. I believe it is possible to still enable this, though it is officially unsupported at this point.

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

#527

Post by mac-chaffee »

Don't use it on macOS. It has no protections at all for cookie theft. Unencrypted SQLite DB sitting in a user-readable directory. Chrome and (I think) Safari both use encryption keys in the secure enclave. That's still not perfect (Chrome remote debugging and Safari code injection can get around those), but better than nothing at all.

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

#528

Post by phaedrix »

clircle wrote: post #509
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?

If you have multiple awa accounts it's a godsend.

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

#529

Post by adenozine »

Aldipower wrote: post #138
adenozine wrote: post #56

This is very obviously an ad… at the top of the front page… Y’all crack me up sometimes.

It is opinionated, but is it en vougue nowadays to call everything an ad? Come one.

It’s literally a product name drop and elevator pitch of user features.

I mean, I can appreciate your trying to take a nuanced approach, but it is quite literally and quite clearly an advertisement.

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

#530

Post by [deleted] »

wrldos wrote: post #498
madeofpalk wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Firefox just flat out has some worse JavaScript performance and bugs/incompatibility with other browsers. I’ve been/am currently burned by Firefox’s pretty poor IndexedDB support and performance. IDBObjectStore.getAll() fails with a cryptic exception if you store too much in IndexedDB (iirc 256mb is the limit), whereas Chrome and Safari have no problem with it. It also has terrible performance - about 4x slower t…

That's a microscopic problem in a macroscopic ocean of shit.

[deleted]
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