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Firefox Sync actually works

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Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#41

Post by rrdharan »

pzmarzly wrote: post #23

Can some long-standing user of iOS Firefox say if the sync issues there have been fixed? Halfway-broken sync on iOS version of Firefox (as well as a general lack of love for it and the UI that kept getting redesigned every other month) was the reason why I switched to Safari 4 years ago.

Still kinda broken and buggy.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#42

Post by ugjka »

xnzakg wrote: post #15
ugjka wrote: post #5

It can be a pain when you do large random deletes from browsing history, then sync can hang up for 20 minutes with lot of IO/Cpu. You can trigger this by doing "Forget this website" and if that website is a lot in your history

I suppose it probably has to rewrite your entire history in that case? Deleting lines in log-like files isn't exactly easy. Actually, I wonder how that's stored in order for the search to stay responsive, some kind of bloom filter? Or just a normal database?

i think they use sqlite for everything

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#43

Post by [deleted] »

_cenw wrote: post #38
_lqaf wrote: post #20

Configuring browsers to mirror each other across machines makes a big soupy mess. I understand why surveillance capitalists like the idea, makes their lives a little easier. But I really don't get why I'm supposed to want it. I use different machines differently. The laptop I'm typing this on is my "main" browser, I have lots of bookmarks set up in a specific structure. I only use my phone browser when I have to, and…

surprise revelation: some people work differently from you

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#45

Post by [deleted] »

xnzakg wrote: post #15
ugjka wrote: post #5

It can be a pain when you do large random deletes from browsing history, then sync can hang up for 20 minutes with lot of IO/Cpu. You can trigger this by doing "Forget this website" and if that website is a lot in your history

I suppose it probably has to rewrite your entire history in that case? Deleting lines in log-like files isn't exactly easy. Actually, I wonder how that's stored in order for the search to stay responsive, some kind of bloom filter? Or just a normal database?

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#46

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

It does work very well, but personally I'd appreciate a mechanism that I could implement manually and without the cloud. Something like "copy files Foo, Bar and Baz on the source device to folder DooDad on the target device". I appreciate that this doesn't work for mobile devices with their filesystem-free presentation, but even there I'd rather explicitly import data from a file I downloaded than have it move through the cloud.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#48

Post by amenhotep »

gausswho wrote: post #18

I've avoided FF sync because I don't want my browser history on the cloud. I only really want my profile configuration, such as my addons and userjs flags. Unfortunately the FF directory in my .config is intermixed enough between config and content that I don't try to back it up. Am I missing something?

You can choose to sync or not sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, logins and passwords, credit cards, add-ons and settings individually. So, yeah, you're missing that you can just not sync history!

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#50

Post by yesimahuman »

It’s too bad that Firefox has such a great UX and privacy-focused cloud features like this, yet is being held back by its engine. As a heavy FF user for the last few years it’s become more and more clear that the world just doesn’t care about making sites work on FF and I’m more frequently having to switch to Chrome. My dream is that FF would switch to Chromium while keeping all the great features around the browser engine. But suggesting such a thing is blasphemy in the FF world so we’re stuck with an engine that no one targets any more and isn’t keeping up with modern web APIs more web devs are using.
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