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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

#251

Post by 20after4 »

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.

Are you on Android? AFAIK Mobile Firefox on iOS is just safari with a different skin and on Android it's still not really the same as desktop Firefox.

I think what's actually happening is that they are targeting uBlock + Firefox on desktop for punishment.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#252

Post by i_love_retros »

20after4 wrote: post #244
i_love_retros wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. Can you explain this more? I don't understand what this means.

Youtube intentionally degrades the user experience if you use Firefox, at least if you are using a proper ad blocker. And there really isn't much reason to use Firefox if you aren't also using uBlock. So by targeting the users of uBlock+Firefox, YouTube is aggressively degrading the experience of Firefox users. Things I've noticed include: 1. Every video defaults to the absolute lowest resolution (240 or 320) until I…

I wonder if using DNS level ad blocking would prevent this.

I avoid YouTube as much as possible anyway as they force me to login.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#253

Post by jraph »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #236
wruza wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

And rather than stop going to this evil cafe, people just go and don't pay. So as long as you make out your flavor of the month business as "greedy and evil" you can paint yourself a moral crusader by going there and taking things for free. How convenient, eh? "This coffee shop is a terrible place, therefore I will eat there for free everyday in protest!"

The network effect kinda prevents you from finding coffee at an honest place.

(The content is on YouTube and nowhere else)

Until this changes and one can choose to go somewhere else, I wouldn't worry too much about the terrible cafe's income, because it is one of the richest entities in the world, it already shouldn't be that rich and powerful, and if it disappeared, it would finally let one go find coffee somewhere else.

The other possibility is to stop drinking coffee, of course. Though you can't really do this with everything.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#254

Post by Leimi »

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'd say the Chrome devtools are a tiny bit better, usually with more features or a bit better UX. But there are also things where I find Firefox devtools better. And the features missing are not a deal breaker for me.

Overall it's a pretty similar experience. Most difficult part is the habit changing of getting used to a different UI.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#255

Post by gjsman-1000 »

daghamm wrote: post #237
20after4 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux foundation is far from a rebel group. Look at who is involved.

Linux Foundation is much closer to an Evil Corporate than a rebel group. It is a pay-for-legitimacy scheme that abuses the Linux name and goodwill. I wish Linus & co would distance themselves from these people.

Linus & co do not follow, or respect, the values of the FOSS zealots.

He actively dislikes the GPLv3, has a good working relationship with Google on Android and ChromeOS, and has criticized attitudes in the Linux desktop community for over a decade. He famously roasted his own distribution's package maintainer for wasting their life.

All hats off to him, frankly. The Linux community can be extremely delusional at times.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#257

Post by mmis1000 »

I use firefox for daily tasks. (I am an old user since firefox 3 from the age that firefox is truly customizable). But for frontend develop, I use edge. Firefox is basically unusable in current state. Not able to jump from profiler to debugger makes the whole thing completely useless. How on the earth do I lookup line column like `1:19995` by myself? You just can't. And it remain in this state for years already.

And about other stuff. The UX is also becoming more and more confusing recently. You now have 3 places to look for browser history. The menu, the standalone history window. the firefox view. And except for the menu. Thye all miss certain stuffs. The standalone window miss tabs from other devices and recent closed window. The firefox view don't have bookmark and recent closed window.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#258

Post by carlosjobim »

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.

Yet hackers would be outside shouting and banging the doors, demanding to be let in to have the free poison, writing five hundred miles of comments about why they should not pay.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#259

Post by alin23 »

I've been on Firefox Dev Edition for Mac for the last 4 years I think, and I can't remember more than 1 or 2 websites that didn't work correctly on it. It's been flawless, more battery and memory efficient than Chrome, less finicky and problematic than Safari, and with all the extensions that I need.

I seriously don't see any disadvantage in picking Firefox over Chrome. I still have Chrome around if any website requires it specifically, but I haven't launched it in ages.

There were a few Chrome extensions that weren't there on Firefox [1] [2] but I fixed that _easily_ by getting the crx file, unpacking it, then adding the https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill to the extension to make it cross-browser.

It's easy enough to make an extension work on both Firefox and Chrome, I've done it myself with SideHN (https://github.com/alin23/sidehn), but I guess Firefox is not really in the mind of Chrome extension devs.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/anchor-headings/lgg...

[2] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/xpath-helper/hgimno...

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#260

Post by neilv »

tttttrhowwwwai wrote: post #203
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…

maybe my rant is going to be a bit out of place here but here it goes anyways: sometimes im glad im a technical person that can get away with a somewhat "healthy digital life" im basically immune to all the crap going on. i don't need to work too hard to meet my digital needs because im also a simple person. but i really feel bad for the normies who have to deal with all the shit the tech industry throws at them. the…

AFAICT, current tech industry culture is most like what I understood of the '80s stereotype of Wall Street bro culture: sociopathic unchecked-greed that will do whatever it can get away with.

I'm not saying this to complain, but to suggest a risk of what might come next.

So far, they've run wild, and taken over computers, the Internet, AI, and information technology in general.

What happens when there's a disruptive breakthrough in medical care, and the exploiters rush in with the same thinking?

Right now, one of the few firewalls against that might be that doctors generally have traditions of ethics, and some stature to hold their ground and influence things.

Earlier Internet didn't have the same formalized ethical traditions, but had a lot of very smart people people who had altruistic intentions, as well as suspicion of those who'd attempt to twist online potential. All those ethical people were pretty much swept away in a funding gold rush, suddenly with little to no influence over it.

(Google did grab some of those people, because Google said the right words, so the altruistic techies thought it was their people, but look what eventually happened even there.)

Just like virtually every IoT product and Web site violates every user, what happens if a medical gold rush (say, some kind of implant, or transformative process) means that what we thought was a bulwark of ethical practitioners, is easily bulldozed over, by investment money and culture. And then everyone's body is violated by the newly unchecked industry-wide socipathy, with no alternatives to even live?

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