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I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

howtogeek.com

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Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#51

Post by alexvitkov »

ericrallen wrote: post #34
alexvitkov wrote: post #18

I'm glad the writer is enjoying Firefox, but posts like these make me realize we've forgotten how to use computers. Built-in screenshot tool? "You don't need to install extensions"! Really? Dude just press Print Screen, it even works outside a browser, if one day you have to be put through the unspeakable torture of using a native application! Single-use burner emails are also nice and all, but why exactly does this…

Firefox’s screenshot tool is a little more advanced than Print Screen. [0] There are situations where it’s really useful to be able to capture the entire web page and not just the visible viewport. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/how-to-capture-...

Fair point, but I highly doubt that this is how it's used most of the time. And taking 20 screenshots and compositing them in mspaint can be a meditative experience.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#52

Post by sylens »

KaiserPro wrote: post #44

I have been using mozilla for _years_ it got shit, then better, then shit, and now its close enough. The thing I _Love_ is container tabs. I can isolate empires by using container tabs to sandbox cookies and other web state. This means that ebay doesn't change my adverts to the last thing I searched on every site, and autoplay embedded youtube doesn't fuck up my video recommendations. It means I can hide my work gmai…

Agree, container tabs are the killer app

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#53

Post by klez »

On my work laptop I use Chrome. There are a couple of things I sorely miss from Firefox

* The omnibar: I have a couple IPs I connect to frequently. One ends in 36, the other in 243. In Firefox I can just type 36 (or 243) + Tab + Enter. In Chrome I have to type the whole address. And why can't I search for the title of a page I know is in my history or even just a tab I already have opened directly from the search bar? I do that all the time in Firefox

* Ctrl+Tab to switch back and forth between tabs instead of cycling them in order (not the default in Firefox either, but at least it can be configured without having to install an extension and a native executable as I had to do in Chrome)

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#54

Post by segasaturn »

baxtr wrote: post #11
internet_points wrote: post #3

It's the closest we have to a browser not controlled by the corporate giants. Sometimes Mozilla makes unpopular choices and people raise a stink about it, but we do that because we hold them to a higher standard. With Microsoft and Google, we just expect them to Do More Evil, with Mozilla we expect Good and will complain loudly when they fail to uphold our principles, and we recommend Firefox because we feel like it…

I actually really like Safari… sometimes tabs sync across devices is buggy, reloads a lot. But other than that I’m quite content.

I find Safari on iOS to be nice, and Safari on macOS to be horrifically slow and inadequate, even on the newest M-series processors. It's like two different worlds, you can really tell that all of the engineering time is going into iOS because that's where all the money is at.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#55

Post by bartread »

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

It’s also laziness in software development practices. Developers (still) only develop and test with Chrome. My last job a bunch of us used Firefox as our main browser, which was hugely helpful.

As recently as yesterday I ran into an e-commerce site that didn’t work in Firefox (CPC Farnell, I’m looking at you), giving some obscure security error in multiple languages. I thought it might be caused by an extension at first (e.g., uBlock Origin) but, after trying various workarounds, I realised the site would only work in Chrome. It’s not OK.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#56

Post by ethbr1 »

wruza wrote: post #46
ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

That's how Chrome started. I remember it showing a banner with itself on /. which froze a page on scrolling over it for a few seconds. In all browsers except Chrome. Never understood this Chrome-go-go mob mentality that everyone had back then. It was literally an ads-network prodived crappy browser with just tabs and urlbar. It was fast, because it did nothing and had no cpu pressure from the banners. I wouldn't be s…

It was fast because in 2008 it used V8 [0] and other browsers didn't.

Eventually competitors caught up.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#57

Post by diggan »

ethbr1 wrote: post #49
ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

What doesn't work with YouTube on Firefox? Asked as on mobile I run as few apps as possible, so use the web version. Haven't seen any issues.

> What doesn't work with YouTube on Firefox?

The performance is way worse (which Google engineers will explain by some browser API being slower in Firefox and they haven't yet had time to optimize it, N years later [they did the same with Inbox + Firefox before]) and you'll also see more ads if you're not a paying user and using Firefox compared to if you used Google Chrome.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#59

Post by Jnr »

pkphilip wrote: post #38

Unfortunately, I have had to move in the opposite direction. I have been a Firefox user for more than a decade but after an upgrade to Linux Mint 22 I have had very regular crashes on Firefox which took the entire computer down and so now I am on Brave which seems to be so much faster.

If it crashes your whole computer, I would suspect hardware, since software should not crash the whole OS. Maybe try running some thorough RAM tests.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#60

Post by extraduder_ire »

pkphilip wrote: post #38

Unfortunately, I have had to move in the opposite direction. I have been a Firefox user for more than a decade but after an upgrade to Linux Mint 22 I have had very regular crashes on Firefox which took the entire computer down and so now I am on Brave which seems to be so much faster.

Have you tried a clean install of firefox? A separate profile even. A lot of people switching to another browser and finding it much more performant/stable is just them starting with a default browser with minimal addons.
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