I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back • Hacker News Board

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#171

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

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…

Also it boggles my mind that an advertising company (1) offers its own ad blocker to block competitors ads, and (2) circumscribes what ad blockers can do, and (3) nobody stops them... All when the FBI is saying you should run an ad blocker to avoid being the victim of a crime.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#172

Post by the__alchemist » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

titaniumtown wrote: post #162

the__alchemist wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone found a fix for this? It's very annoying, and has been around for years.

I personally use Checkmarks: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkmarks-we... It just opens every bookmark to load the favicon. Brute force, but it works!

Sweet. After rereading OP and your post, I believe I misinterpreted it. But I will say I have that problem too...

Problem A: What OP and you are talking about: When you switch computers to one that doesn't have the bookmarks, you have to click through every one to get the icon to populate.

Problem B: Once FF has an icon, it will never update it. Even if you delete and re-add the the bookmark. I have no workaround for this.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#173

Post by flexd » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

elephanlemon wrote: post #83

ethbr1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I ended up switching back from Firefox to Chrome after a few weeks because I found that if I had more than about 6 YouTube tabs opened, the YouTube interface would become very laggy. I blamed it on Firefox at the time but maybe it was something intentional by Google.

My Firefox does this on Windows. I have no idea how many tabs I have open, but regularly the whole YouTube tab I have open freezes, especially if you try to watch one video, and then another, and the whole UI is delayed by many seconds. Even closing the tab will have the audio playing for several seconds in the background. It's not due to load or hardware as far as I can tell. The videos play just fine in Chrome or Edge. I still use Firefox as my daily browser (previously Chrome), but these issues are super annoying. I don't want to have to restart my browser or PC all the time. I don't know if it's some combination of extension/ad-blocking or YouTube doing stuff, but it's very annoying.

Unrelated to that, but on a Ubuntu laptop I have Firefox tabs regularly stop working entirely. They just won't load anything, and the only fix is to open a new tab and that loads fine most of the time. Other times I have to restart Firefox. I've tried searching for others experiencing this problem and even asked in Mozilla channels on Matrix, but even then I didn't come up with any answers. The laptop's hinge broke last year so I haven't used it since then, so likely never going to figure out what was going on.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#174

Post by kome » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

danielbln wrote: post #130

asdfasdf1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I was about to write that YouTube works flawlessly for me in Firefox on Mac, but I just upgraded to a monster of a M4 MBP, so it's probably just overcoming these issues (malicious or otherwise) via brute force.

I watch youtube on a 10 years old macbook air 11, and it works flawlessly with firefox and ublock origin.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#175

Post by kurble » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #122

delecti wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble seeing that as irony in a world where "embrace, extend, extinguish" exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... . We could also start calling it Embrace, Extend, and Enshittificate

Extinguish is fine.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#176

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #55

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 fi…

For years I have used Firefox as my daily driver, anything I work on works on Firefox. Maybe once a year my tester finds a problem w/ Chrome, if that.

Developers like myself are the thread that Firefox keeps hanging on by.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#177

Post by InsideOutSanta » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

elashri wrote: post #61

If someone is missing the workspaces from chrome/Arc. You can try the zen browser [1] which is Firefox fork that will have it. So you get the best of two world. Containers and workspaces. It is very good and they keep up with upstream with frequent updates. [1] https://zen-browser.app/

I've switched to Zen a few months ago. Apart from some very minor issues that usually get fixed in the next release, it's been working perfectly for me, and for me, the way the UI works is vastly superior to browser like Chrome or regular Firefox.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#178

Post by a3w » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

I dislike that chrome still searches faster:

Type in skinflint (price comparison) page I often use, tab toward "search on this site". Then I press enter.

All non-Chromeengine browsers have - type website, enter - wait to load, use search bar on site

as a workflow.

Made me stay with Chrome way too long. Now, I use Firefox, but miss this.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#179

Post by basilgohar » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

dismalaf wrote: post #149

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…

Using an ad blocker ( and not paying for a subscription in the case of YouTube) isn't the "user making their own choices", it's stealing content. If a creator puts up ads or a paywall, it's because they want to be compensated. You should either respect their wish or simply not view their content.

I understand this perspective, but I disagree with it.

If someone wants to use a public space (i.e., the Internet), then they have accept that technological solutions to annoyances are also part of that.

Block it with a subscription if you don't accept this reality. But getting the benefits of a free, global audience doesn't entitle the artist to any means of revenue they choose, including what annoys and harms people.

It's like saying you have to walk the long way around to your exhibit through the concessions hall before seeing my display, when someone can just take a shortcut and skip that, and blaming them for doing so.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#180

Post by Workaccount2 » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

Croftengea wrote: post #167

Workaccount2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Imagine your local cafe notices and starts feeding you poisoned food instead of asking to pay.

>> it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads,