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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

#181
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers will always be time crunched / lazy. Why target multiple platforms when you can just support one?

This is a management problem, not a developer problem. Yes, developers should advocate, but it's not the developers' burden to make time out of thin air.

I have never had a manager that said “don’t make it work for firefox”.

What I have seen is developers do it wrong to start, then tasks to fix it get low priority due to market share based priority.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#182
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…

[flagged]

You forgot to tell another half of this story where this cafe used all sorts of tactics to kill competition and uses semi-related businesses to ensure its dominance. Then they nicely suggested everyone to pay what they can, or else. It's not an innocent local cafe as you paint it. It is a corporate network monster whose win strategy is "leave no survivors".

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#183
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is I see it everywhere around me. People don't care looking for a better search engine. Worse I am pretty sure that most people do not know they can choose their search engine and can define whatever is used when searching in the url bar.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#184
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…

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. I would add to the list the Linux Foundation too. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-annou...

Note that the effort there is to shift chromium to a more open governance model. This would mean Google has less influence on the project.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#185
post #147

I really want to switch to Firefox but cannot because it doesn't sync bookmark favicons. My bookmarks bar is filled with bookmarks without names that I can recognize by the icons. I refuse to re-visit every bookmark when I login from a new PC, which is often. This has been requested for 17 years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428378 Every other browser sync solution has this feature. Firefox insists on…

> I refuse to re-visit every bookmark when I login from a new PC, which is often. Why not? How often? This should take literally 5s using the bookmark manager, right click on "Bookmarks Toolbar", "Open All Bookmarks". Then some more to load the websites I guess.

Some links can only be accessed through a VPN.

I have thousands of bookmarks that also have names but I would still like to see the icons before clicking the link. Sometimes the name doesn't hint at what kind of resource the bookmark was at a glance. Is it a youtube video, is it an article?

I already have access to that information at the time of bookmarking. I don't want to lose it and then have to get it again.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#186
My personal experience: I use Firefox because all its issues are fixable either via about:config or extensions. It's not slow or crashing.

- Embedded telemetry can be disabled via about:config - Running ublock origin in advanced mode blocks all third party domains, websites are often broken but easily fixable - Cookie Autodelete deletes a website cookie after the tab closes - Decentraleyes as a local CDN to avoid external requests for common libraries - Redirector to change request to alternative no tracking frontends for famous websites - Simple tab groups keep tabs organized by "job" - Bitwarden to manage passwords

I rarely encounter websites that are not working and I just switch to another website, and I use Vivaldi for things like meet where I want things to "just work".

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#187
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)

I've used firefox for a very long time and have never had an issue with youtube...

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#188
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 not the engineers making these decisions. They write the code they are told to write. Some middle manager / VP gets a promotion if they 'increase engagement', 'increase ad-spend', or some other hollow metric they chase. They are the ones deciding to send any 1-3 star ratings to customer support, and 4-5 ratings recorded as an actual rating. It's not about the users at all. It's about gaming the system for some manager's benefit.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#189
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)

Firefox + ublock origin seems to be the combo allowing me the best user experience with youtube. I have no idea what the previous poster is talking about really.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#190
post #91

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 w…

"Foxy Gestures" for gestures. "Context Search Origin" for a context menu search.

Thanks!
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