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Why I use Firefox

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Re: Why I use Firefox

#251

Post by extra88 »

robertoandred wrote: post #174
berkes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari leads in several areas This is the first time I've ever heard someone say this. The overwelming sentiment is that safari is leagues behind, lacks features, lacks performance is has the worst standards support of all common browsers. What areas are you referring to? All we ever did at my jobs, when people complained "it doesn't work on safari" is put up a banner for safari users pointing them to either the ap…

Position sticky, has, subgrid, and filters to name a few. And now it’s pushing forward color standards, better text layout, new image formats, and more css math functions.

Yes to all of this. It's easy to find plenty of features on CanIUse.com (with the Date Relative view) that were shipped by Safari before Chrome (Firefox had SubGrid way before the others but there was a long gap until Chrome finally shipped it).

Re: Why I use Firefox

#252

Post by extra88 »

frizlab wrote: post #67

> Apple claims that they can’t, but they have disclosed user data to law enforcement in the past, so I don’t trust them. Mozilla says that they can’t, and I trust them. Ok, I guess? Personally I don’t trust anybody, I just recognize I have to give my data to someone at some point (don’t have the time to setup everything needed in order not to…). I’ve chosen Apple (gougle is out of the question because I actively dist…

I liked the post but I didn't agree with that point about Apple. It may be necessary to read the fine print but I don't think they've ever had data they claimed they didn't have (e.g. they don't have access to iMessages sent and received but do have access to iCloud backups of messages).

Re: Why I use Firefox

#253

Post by throwaway4PP »

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?

I use Tree Style Tabs, yeah. This is how I like it configured, nice and tight: https://i.imgur.com/fWonbjC.png

To get it that way takes a bit of code in the advanced options, and tinkering with a user definition file in FF to remove the top tab bar, but it's worth it.

The other killer feature of FF for me is the ability to containerize domains and control how cross-domain containerization occurs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-wi...). My interactions with google (for example) never leak out of my google container, so my search queries or browsing aren't explicitly linked to my google account, because I do that outside my google container. Want to watch a video on yt without it tanking your recommendations? Do it outside the google container.

Of course there are a lot of other ways for google to infer it's "me", so I don't know if this is pure security theater or it actually hinders them building my profile. Either way, it's nice to be able to explicitly determine when and where my google profile is built as I traverse the web.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#254

Post by kkfx »

I use Firefox because:

- extensions to make the modern web usable, NoScript, ClearURLs, uBlock origin and so on

- vertical tabs (tab center reborn + css to hide tab bar) because I have a 21:9 screen and also on other 16:9 screens there is plenty of horizontal space, but too little vertical space and rotating screens makes them uncomfortable for various multimedia usages

- a little less owned by a big corp, so potentially a little less developed against their users interests...

Re: Why I use Firefox

#255

Post by throwaway4PP »

brokencube wrote: post #61
incontrol wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough on my machine, Chrome is the slowest on https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/ 401 - Chrome 446 - Firefox 546 - Safari

Probably subjective to your particular set up - I just got the opposite results on my mac: 202 ± 4.7 - Chrome 184 ± 5.0 - Firefox 171 ± 2.6 - Safari

fyi, if you're uncertain in the single-digits place, you have no precision in the tenths place. for experimental uncertainty, it's always one sigfig

Re: Why I use Firefox

#257

Post by madphilosopher »

skizm wrote: post #171
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 still need to use Chrome for YouTube when I'm on my Windows 11 desktop unfortunately. YouTube in FF causes weird issues with my monitor turning on and off after I've been watching YT for more than like 20 min. It gets into a state where any new windows I open or close cause the screen to turn off then on. I have no idea where to even begin diagnosing what's going on. This behavior seemingly goes away when I run YT…

Unrelatedly, I use Chrome for websites where I need to be logged into a Google account (gmail, youtube, google docs, google maps, etc.) and Firefox for everything else. I like keeping the two activities separate.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#258

Post by samatman »

crazygringo wrote: post #234
samatman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it displays the domain name That is the domain name. I'm glad that Hacker News, the site for hackers, displays the domain name, and not the rendered display version of the domain name. Other places can and should do it differently, it's the right choice here.

But I can't read the ASCII encoding. It's gibberish. It tells me nothing about which site the article is from. It's unintelligible. You might as well not show anything at all. I can't understand why you think the underlying ASCII encoding should be used, instead of the Unicode domain that actually gets rendered in the browser's address bar. That makes as much sense as saying non-ASCII characters in the comments secti…

In the comments, UTF-8 is the encoding, so it makes sense to display it (although you'll notice that some characters are filtered out, emoji most of all).

In a domain name, punycode is the encoding. The actual domain name, the one you'd need to run DNS and such, is what you see. Also, rendering it into unicode is a vector for attacks. So it's the wrong choice here, where no one wants to deal with the aggravation of knowing that confusables can be slipped into domain names at any time.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#259

Post by grimgrin »

nexus6 wrote: post #97
sidcool wrote: post #60

Firefox removed tab grouping for some reason. I think the only feature I miss in FF from Chrome. And Tab group saving.

There’s addons that can do this. Sideberry is what I use: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sidebery

Hell yes. TST got me by, it was okay.. but kinda of a mess? This is a nice alternative at first test and glance. I also like that unloaded tabs are sorta ghosted out.

Lately, on my older computer, I've been unloading a lot more? Similar to closing and reopening your browser with tab restoration (restores tabs, doesn't _load_ tabs). Or.. similar to about:unloads and clicking a button a bunch.

May as well link it here, I didn't put it on the store yet

https://github.com/shmup/firefox-tab-unloader/releases/tag/v...

This is the crux of it: https://github.com/shmup/firefox-tab-unloader/blob/main/back...

(I should point out, it unloads tabs in all windows -- this might not be a nice default but it's for me right now hehe)

Re: Why I use Firefox

#260

Post by deanishe »

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 don't see why I would want to use anything else

I use FF, too, but I can see why someone wouldn't want to: It's just not a very good Mac app. Weird windowing and focus bugs in fullscreen mode. Keyboard shortcuts that randomly stop working. Zero scripting capabilities (it used to have the bare minimum, but Mozilla bizarrely ripped it out), and just poor integration in general. My system-wide shortcuts — the ones that are so important I've added them to every context menu on the system? That's a big nope because FF devs apparently think showing poxy extension icons is more important.

Google had the good sense to copy Safari's keyboard shortcuts in Chrome. Mozilla didn't.

The bookmark manager is straight out of Windows 95. Awful UX.

I do like Firefox, but it's just not up to snuff on macOS.

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