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Why I use Firefox

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101–110 of 319 posts

Re: Why I use Firefox

#101

Post by dathinab »

jjordan wrote: post #78

Sometimes I wonder where Firefox might be today if, in the last 10 years, it had competent leadership singularly focused on delivering the absolute best browser in existence.

I'm not sure it hadn't had competent leadership tbh.

HN loved to hate on it's decision but a lot of them (like XUL removal) where strictly necessary for firefox to still have any chance for relevancy.

And while they did try out a lot of things but FF fundamentally has a hard time gaining new users as they have very little killer features. So stuff like pocket, VR or FirefoxOS where needed tries of FF to gain some feature with which you can gain users. Tries they lost but I would say failing to try would have been worse leadership.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#102

Post by thworp »

mo_42 wrote: post #66

I also use Firefox because it allows more customization. For example, every major browser nowadays not only supports tabbed browsing but enforces it. I think tabbed browsing is misdevelopment of UX because I need to handle window management on the OS and browser level. I'm using the tabbing feature in sway/i3 so every application has tabs not only browsers and they all act in the same way. I know that not many people…

I used to do this, but ever since I was forced to boot into windows at work I went back to treestyle tabs everywhere (context-switching became too much). I also never bothered to set up scripts/keybinds for easier managment of deeply nested containers in i3 so moving windows from one tree to another became a keyboard-attack scenario. I have to admit that this one of the things that is nicer to do with a pointing device.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#103

Post by dartos »

javajosh wrote: post #50
zahma wrote: post #19

I don't see why I would want to use anything else. Even if Chrome is marginally faster in an arbitrary benchmark test, I doubt I'd notice. And so far, I have no interoperability issues between Firefox on my laptop (macOS) and my iPhone (iOS), which runs Safari + Firefox Focus (because it's all the same webkit underneath). The add-on and plug-in marketplace is quite healthy, too. At the end of the day, I care about op…

I agree. I would also suggest occasionally checking out the other browsers like Opera and Vivaldi because they often have a surprising feel and feature set. Vivaldi in particular has a very nice RSS/Atom feed reader built into it, and Opera tends to be very fast. (Mozilla and Goog were smart to start offering account-based sync because this creates a moat for regular adoption. But anyone can and should go window-shop…

I wouldn’t touch opera with a 1000ft pole.

Any non OSS browser makes me feel weird. The amount of trust you place in a browser is insane.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#104

Post by sojournerc »

efilife wrote: post #58
throwaway4PP wrote: post #41

On desktop, FF supports the best vertical nested tab tree I have seen. What I’ve seen on chrome is laughably amateurish with huge chunks of wasted space due to unmodifiable(?) padding elements

Extension name?

Not sure about GP, but I use sidebury and am happy with it

Re: Why I use Firefox

#105

Post by bbkane »

walrus01 wrote: post #94
jjordan wrote: post #78

Sometimes I wonder where Firefox might be today if, in the last 10 years, it had competent leadership singularly focused on delivering the absolute best browser in existence.

I can't even recall the names and purpose any of their other side projects other than some janky mobile phone OS and hardware attempt. But clearly they've put a lot of staffing resources and money into some of them.

Rust was a Mozilla side project for a while. Then (if I'm remembering the posts right), they laid off most of the team.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#106

Post by fsflover »

cardboardmetal wrote: post #63

If only they properly supported PWAs, I would be all in. I like having certain websites in my taskbar and the future is looking like a lot of software is going to be web-based, with the OS becoming a "launcher" for websites if you will (cf. ChromeOS)

https://forums.puri.sm/t/firefox-web-apps/21499

Re: Why I use Firefox

#107

Post by thworp »

One of my main reasons for using firefox is Tridactyl [0].

It's the most comprehensive vi-mode addon for a mainstream browser. Support bookmarks, search engines, pagination, external text editing and colorschemes on top of the usual features something like vimium has. It is under active development [1] and written in TypeScript (which is also a plus for hackability in my book).

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim... [1] https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

Re: Why I use Firefox

#109

Post by kome »

Timber-6539 wrote: post #83
kome wrote: post #9

I never used Chrome, so i don't know if it has a picture-in-picture player. But if it doesn't, you are really living in the past. It's so incredibly convenient. p.s.: I googled, there is an extension that does the same for Chrome, but not natively.

You don't need any extension to activate PiP in Chrome. It is a native feature just like it is on Firefox.

Other commenters suggest otherwise, perhaps it depends on the platform?

Re: Why I use Firefox

#110

Post by dralley »

rvnx wrote: post #7
jhoechtl wrote: post #2

For me it's > Mozilla develops their own browser engine This is key. Without Mozilla we are aproaching monopoly as Safari aproaches gradually Internet Explorer.

It would be true, if in practice all the finances of Mozilla didn't come from Google. So it's like Google wearing a mask.

Oh look, it's my least favorite HN trope.

Comment A) "Screw Mozilla, all their funding comes from their Google Search deal, they're just Google in a mask"

Comment B) "Screw Mozilla, they waste all this money on side projects (that would provide diversification and non-Google revenue streams) when they should be spending all of their effort on Firefox (which is effectively un-monetizable apart from the search deal - and you can bet hard money that there would be screaming if they tried)"

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