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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

#211

Post by mossTechnician »

ziddoap wrote: post #153
ekianjo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes Mozilla makes unpopular choices Sometimes? They tend to hit the mark of bad decisions more often than not

People just remember the shitty decisions more vividly and for longer than people remember the dozens of good decisions made in between. Most good decisions don't get a full press cycle (because they are boring).

Mozilla's brand identity is tethered to specific moral prescriptions[0] that their products are supposed to abide by. People sold on that identity are bound to care.

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#212

Post by asdfasdf1 »

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.

using an ad blocker is the ONLY option to avoid adds. You can pay evilcorp for a subscription/premium account/whatever and they'll still try to force you to watch 10 minutes of adds for a 1 minute video. Fuck them. We own them nothing.

Banksy said it better:

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#214

Post by PaulHoule »

rileymat2 wrote: post #181
basilgohar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had one who did say "don't make it work for firefox" but he was the only one.

The basic mechanic is that the off brand browser has to work hard to be compatible whereas the dominant browser works hard to be incompatible. If you develop Firefox first (have some really ideological devs) you'll find Chrome related bugs eat up 1% of your time if that. If you develop Chrome first you'll find supporting other browsers is a bear.

(In the early 2000's when IE was dominant I was afraid it wouldn't be possible to browse the web with Linux. I worked at a library that would have deployed Sun Rays as public computers if we could get Mozilla to compile on Solaris but we couldn't, even with the help of Sun support. I developed Mozilla-first and then Firefox-first and helped keep the flame alive back then.)

The system I work on now works on both because I develop Firefox-first. There's one screen that loads up 40,000 rows (crazy you say?) worth of data that performs fine on Chrome and is laggy on Firefox, but otherwise the site spins like a top on both of those. Once in a while we run into a serious headscratcher on mobile Safari that burns up some dev*weeks.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#215

Post by dismalaf »

asdfasdf1 wrote: post #212
dismalaf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

using an ad blocker is the ONLY option to avoid adds. You can pay evilcorp for a subscription/premium account/whatever and they'll still try to force you to watch 10 minutes of adds for a 1 minute video. Fuck them. We own them nothing. Banksy said it better: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and m…

> using an ad blocker is the ONLY option to avoid adds. You can pay evilcorp for a subscription/premium account/whatever and they'll still try to force you to watch 10 minutes of adds for a 1 minute video. Fuck them. We own them nothing.

On YouTube? No. I pay for Premium, there's no ads.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#216

Post by ethbr1 »

lxgr wrote: post #145
scott_w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I read it as "6 tabs" not "6 YouTube tabs."

I sometimes do have several Youtube tabs open to line up things I want to watch next.

To this, have you tried running a no-autoplay style extension? (Not exactly this scenario, but lists might be modifiable)

I expect YT is probably doing some preloading or heavyweight running in a loaded-but-not-playing tab.

Convert that to load-on-click, and you'll likely fix your issue.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#217

Post by hmmm-i-wonder »

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 almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms that come with them.

I don't think its "almost like", I think it "actually is", and that its intentional.

There is a perspective that is now prevalent in tech and business that users are good only as far as you can monetize them. Any concepts of respect or value outside of that have been discarded.

There used to be a sense that you needed to continue improving a product to keep charging the same or more for it. Now companies expect you to pay more every year while products are stagnating or being enshittified to extract higher profit margins on top of the increased prices they are charging.

Tech is now run by Business/Sales people, and every user is a statistic in a spreadsheet they are trying to extract the most money from for the least amount of investment.

Data collection and behaviour tracking is one side of the coin, but we really don't talk about why companies are willing to pay so much for that data or what they do with it... that's a conversation I think needs to be focused on.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#218

Post by ToucanLoucan »

staindk wrote: post #213
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The free coffee story is clearly just an analogy to the adblock thing.

That's possible, but it doesn't sound like an analogy to me, and I've known enough selfish assholes in my life to absolutely be able to picture this as a real thing that's currently happening.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#219

Post by Stagnant »

shayneo wrote: post #121
Trasmatta wrote: post #5

How are the Firefox dev tools these days? Every time I've tried in the past I end up missing the Chrome dev tools, and it's too much of a pain to have one browser for development and one for browsing. I would love to switch, though.

I actually have the exact opposite experience when I try out Chromium based browsers. I end up missing FF dev tools. I love the ability to edit and resend network requests. I'm sure I could figure out how do to so in Chrome devtools, but just not as intuitive (at least to me!)

For me it depends on what I'm doing. I too like the edit and resend ability in firefox dev tools but what I've found it lacking is the option to automatically open dev tools for pop ups, which is possible in chrome.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#220

Post by Timshel »

normie3000 wrote: post #163
Timshel wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. While I agree; between an up-to-date uBlock Origin and https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-mask YT is quite usable. Long term I'm more worried by Mozilla leadership than Google shenanigans.

From your link: > Please don't use Chrome Mask on YouTube. It won't resolve any issues, and it will make your experience worse over time. If some issue got fixed after toggling Chrome Mask on, it most likely got fixed by the addon clearing the cache. But you can do that yourself, too, without the need for this addon.

I can't seem to find your citation from the add-on page.

Might be a placebo but YT appear more responsive with it on than off after a ctrl+f5.

Edit: appears to be in the reviews: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/r...

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