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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

#261

Post by HanClinto »

dismalaf wrote: post #215
asdfasdf1 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I pay for YouTube Premium. I'm thankful that it exists. I still get sponsored segments in the middle of my videos (from the content creators themselves). I haven't (yet) installed SponsorBlock -- currently, I have no plans to, but I do fast-forward to skip those commercials in the middle of the videos.

I pay for Amazon Prime, and they've started showing me preroll ads on my streaming content. I also still get sponsored product recommendations in my search list.

I pay for Kagi search. Thankfully, this area is still relatively clean.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#262

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

_def wrote: post #108

This seems like a good place to mention my favorite Firefox Addon for Android: https://github.com/mozilla/video-bg-play Some days ago I was wondering how it works and was kinda surprised just now that this is from mozilla itself. Reading the project Readme makes this even straight up sound like a privacy addon. I wonder why this is not natively supported.

Wow, so the music stops when I do something else because the site developer wants me to download their app, so they detect a switch and turn off the video? Diabolical.

I'll have to try out that extension.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#263

Post by prmoustache »

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.

> and it's too much of a pain to have one browser for development and one for browsing.

Why? I am surprised as I use 3 browsers for different contexts: - ungoogled chromium for everything behind my company's SSO - firefox with an AWS theme with containers setup for each AWS account under another firefox account. - librewolf for everything else with containers syncronized under a personal firefox account

I could probably run everything under the same firefox or librewolf browser and different profiles but that way I didn't even had to setup separate launchers for the profiles. I also like that they are all visually different so I can spot them easily when switching windows.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#264

Post by joshdavham »

I know this is contrarian, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable installing many of the browser extensions offered on Firefox given that they can still be manifest v2.

After building a fairly involved browser extension this last year, I’ve become way more paranoid knowing just how insecure browser extensions can be; especially manifest v2 extensions. It’s not just about ad blockers unfortunately.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#265

Post by notanastronaut »

tapoxi wrote: post #66
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 crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. Why would I, as a developer whose income stream is based on advertising, intentionally cater to users who are costing me money? There is a web based on hobbyist platforms like PeerTube and Mastodon, and you can clearly see why they haven't captured the masses.

There is no reason I, a user, will intentionally use your product when you fill it with ads that are, at best annoying, and at worst malware vectors.

You have your right to develop things your way, I have a right to say no thank you. Google, though, is so big it is basically saying "you don't have a choice." That's the problem and one that Google spends billions to enforce. They use the weight of the uninformed to apply pressure to the rest of us.

It was no better when Microsoft did it with IE, nor is it any way proper, now.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#266

Post by horsawlarway »

basilgohar wrote: post #166
ethbr1 wrote: 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 agree that this is a "management problem" in the sense that if you want to support Firefox, you should allocate resources for testing on Firefox.

But also - it's not high up the priority list given Firefox's marketshare. In most cases, you'll get the support by default, but I don't really see many US managers being tasked with allocating resources to support UC browser, or Opera, and those are both in the same space marketshare-wise.

My management is actively discussing EOLing several Firefox products because we have basically no real paying customers on them, and Mozilla is unpleasant to deal with in the extension space (genuinely - https://www.neowin.net/news/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-fi...)

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#267

Post by WorldMaker »

wruza wrote: post #148
wussboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How…how many videos are you watching at one time?

I go through my feed or history and bg-open the links I want to watch. Then I watch them. What a strange confusion, as if all people must have the same "workflow". Sorry, no intent to sound negative, but why not give it some thought at least. It's "6 tabs", not "6 videos playing at the same time".

As someone who hates the auto-recommendation system on YouTube and turns it off, I also appreciate this is sometimes the safest/easiest way to watch only the videos I actually intend to watch.

This seems intentionally YouTube's UX design fault, they too heavily try to push you to "auto-play". YouTube has a "Watchlist" feature where you can build a playlist. When it works it is exactly what I want, but it feels like every so many months it mysteriously breaks for a while or they hide the button for it behind some new hidden gesture or menu they expect you psychic out of their UI. (If you've never heard of "Watchlist", no wonder. It seems intentionally hard to discover.) Lately I've been complaining that YouTube adds random "auto-play" videos even to a manually curated "Watchlist" if you don't pay enough attention or watch past the end of the list (even with auto-play and recommendations entirely off).

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#268

Post by 20after4 »

i_love_retros wrote: post #252
20after4 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They may actually be implementing something on the server side to degrade the performance of connections because they have me flagged as a ublock user.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#269

Post by blacklion »

I'm using "Firefox" since Netscape Navigator 3.x times. As long as I'm using web at all.

Never used Chrome on desktop. Never had one installed.

Ok, as Windows user I have "Edge" installed inevitably, but never used it more than 1 time to download FireFox installer.

Using FireFox on Android from early betas, no problem.

Is it something worth to write article about?

Edit: grammar (maybe, not enough).

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#270

Post by segasaturn »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #255
daghamm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

All that Facebook money has gone to his head I guess. Thankfully we should still have the ability to fork the kernel if he fully loses the plot to corporate interests.
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