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I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

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Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#91

Post by wruza »

Recently I preventively migrated from Vivaldi, and Firefox lacked:

Gestures, "search with" context menu, "add active tab" in a bookmarks bar folder, autorenaming downloads, custom keybindings, tab squeezing (it keeps them wide and shows scroll buttons), last tab standing, proper double-click-drag selection and text editing in general. Probably a dozen more things that I cannot remember now. Also "sync" just doesn't work, something went wrong, try again.

For gestures I used Gesturefy - isn't a mess and has "rocker". For "search with" I just had to write my own extension with hardcoded searches. I'm autorenaming through AHK - external tool, non-general use case. Tab squeezing and last tab solved through about:config.

"Add active tab", custom keys, text editing still unsolved.

In general I'm sort of satisfied with the results, but it took quite a while to migrate. Firefox is sort of extensible but not hacker-ish. Extension store is not generic-developer-hacker spirited either. FF is almost as dumb as Chrome, with a few settings that can make it better if you know where to look and have time for that.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#92

Post by dartos »

redman25 wrote: post #77
jampekka wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I do web dev and prefer safari. It’s less power hungry on a laptop. If you develop for the lowest common denominator, every other browser just works. There’s something to be said for adding _less_ features to web browsers. A simple web is a web where open source solutions can compete with chrome. It helps avoid a browser monoculture.

Yeah but we’re not in a simple web. Safari isn’t trying to make it simple for you, they just use it to keep you in their walled garden.

PWAs are a great example of this. The general idea was even a product of the Jobs era of Apple, before the App Store.

Safari and iOS’s poor support of PWAs is exactly a result of Apple wanting to prevent app distribution channels other than their App Store.

Choosing safari is choosing a more closed web, where missing standards means that you, as a safari user, are unable to access certain features or apps that Apple doesn’t want you to access.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#93

Post by magicmicah85 »

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…

I'd been using Firefox for my work device for years but I only discovered containers and how awesome they are. My company was acquired and we still use microsoft accounts for different purposes. Jira works with this account, but sharepoint works with that account. Can't be logged in with the same azure account at the same time, but with containers, I can. It's great.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#94

Post by squarefoot »

extraduder_ire wrote: post #60
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.

Sometimes a clean install isn't even needed. I moved my ~/.mozilla directory across all my main PC installs (and different flavors such as Palemoon and Waterfox) for years and all I had to do was cleaning the cache and every now and then the years long history which can really slow down the browser at each startup (note: system disk on SSD, home on mechanical HD, so YMMV).

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#95

Post by dartos »

asdfasdf1 wrote: post #76
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…

about youtube being totally unusable on firefox: is it just youtube/google being evil as is customary or also firefox having loads of memory leaks, as its usual too? (plenty of mem leak bugs with video/audio reported over the years, many very recent and still open)

Yes

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#96

Post by sumtechguy »

feverzsj wrote: post #80

Their font rendering always looks off to me. The only browser with proper font rendering on windows is Edge.

I have to fiddle the settings pretty much every time I move to a new copy of windows with firefox. Basically I think the two different font engines are fighting with each other and create a wobbly mess. Usually by the time I do it windows has moved where the settings are and firefox has too in some subtle way. Took me a couple of days playing with all of the settings until it 'looked right'.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#97

Post by dartos »

scarface_74 wrote: post #89
vanous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back nobody would believe that Google's search dominance could be disturbed... and now many have either switched away or stopped using search altogether. It takes me two clicks to set a search to DDG, Kagi or other and Google has lost this customer (often a family) forever. So let them be arrogant and loose their YouTube customers over time too.

Google still has close to 90% market share with DDG being a little more than a half percent. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/wo... Edit:Wrong year - that was 2020 this is 2024 https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/wo...

Change is sometimes slow. Let’s see how Google does as a century old company.

In the grand scheme of things, they’re still a fairly young giant.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#98

Post by Vinnl »

kopirgan wrote: post #90

Problem for Android users like me is Chrome is the default on mobile, so all passwords bookmarks etc are there. Of course we can install Firefox but I find Chrome better on mobile. Just couldn't get used to FF on Android. Moving to laptop it then makes sense to continue using it instead of installing Firefox over and above Edge anyway there plus Chrome. So it gets crowded out.

Have you tried installing uBlock Origin on Firefox for Android? Feels like that would outweigh any pain of getting used to the UI, so worth a shot if you haven't tried that yet.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#100

Post by julienwaj »

scarface_74 wrote: post #85
kokada wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, pretty much. While I don't concur with Mozilla 100% of the time, it is still the only major browser that I can have control (e.g.: by still having Manifest V2 extensions available). Also most of controversial choices in Firefox can be disabled or changed in `about:config`.

What about the choice not to optimize for battery efficiency on my Mac?

Can you please elaborate on that?
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