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Hang on to Your Firefox

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Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#311

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #288
MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably just use an extension that unloads inactive tabs from RAM, and maybe another that closes tabs that haven't been touched in over a week. Between those and an extension that closes duplicate tabs, it's pretty easy to get down to a sane number, no LLM required. If a tab is important, you'll be using it more often than once a week. I have a similar rule with impulse purchases: anything I want needs to…

>You could probably just use an extension that unloads inactive tabs from RAM Doesn't Firefox already do this? (Or at least have an option for it?)

Some of it, yes, but you get finer control with extensions.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#312

Post by collinvandyck76 »

Of my cohorts, I am probably the most loyal firefox fan. That said, I've broken up with it twice, and am currently in the second breakup b/c at work we're mandated to use the Island browser due to security reasons, and my work machine absolutely cannot handle two browsers running while I also have all of the work dependencies and IDEs and slack running.

I know much of this is subjective, but the chrome experience just feels better / faster. This is what precipitated the first breakup, and when I think about the situation now, it feels like this dynamic is probably long lasting. It does make me sad though. I'll come back to firefox later, perhaps when I get a laptop refresh and can be a little more cavalier with RAM.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#313

Post by flaviolivolsi »

happytoexplain wrote: post #273
Forgeties79 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dismissal of gendered language as politics is arguably “defensible” in a “I wrote this in a way that allows me to hide behind it” sort of way. It was wrong and needlessly dismissive in a way that clearly communicates he disagrees to anyone who understands typical internet discourse tactics. If he really did not want “political drama” or whatever there are far more effective ways to handle it that don't allow you…

I completely agree that he was unnecessarily prickly/political in his response. I only disagree that it validates xgulfie's implication that he is in the "so bad we should disparage whatever he does" category.

Thank you

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#314

Post by Larrikin »

p-e-w wrote: post #185
bpbp-mango wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox to push personalized ads oh ok I'll change to Chrome then surely they would never do stuff like this

Firefox has indeed done things that are worse than anything Chrome has done, such as abusing a privileged update channel to push content advertising a TV show to user’s browsers without their knowledge or consent.

Have you ever used stock Android TV? They push out updates daily about TV shows and even snack food ads.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#315

Post by andai »

mhitza wrote: post #13
hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

Brave's adblocker does a good job. As far as I know Firefox started using some of the Rust written components of that engine. Interestingly on fingerprinting test websites, Brave also did significantly better than Firefox + PrivacyBadger + ublock Origin + one or two more which I forgot. When I ran some tests a couple months back.

Firefox was slow on my computer (old Thinkpad). I tried using Degoogled Chromium but it kept crashing. So the closest thing for me (Chrome minus Google) was Brave.

Vivaldi is cool (I loved Opera 20 years ago) but very laggy on my machine. (They did the UI in JavaScript or something.)

I use both now (Brave and Firefox), when I want to use a second account. And Firefox scrolls PDFs more smoothly. (But Chrome-based browsers have sharper text rendering in PDFs! Can't win 'em all!)

I like that they both have vertical tabs now.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#317

Post by unloader6118 »

nik282000 wrote: post #262
p-e-w wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of good community forks of Chromium also. And no, a fork of Chromium isn’t “the same as Chrome”.

Chromium forks are not the same as Chrome but it does help Alphabet keep a strangle hold on the render engine ecology. And eithr way, monocultures are bad, a surprise vulnerability could nuke 70% of users overnight, which could be partiularly bad with features like WebSerial and WebUSB.

What does "keep a strangle hold on the render engine ecology" even meant?

Does "make Firefox compatible with more web site" make chrome stronger?

A thought experiment: if Firefox can use all chrome extension, does this make chrome stronger? I guess yes, right? What makes a website different from extension?

[ I am trying to show the "chrome ecology" argument is ridiculous, not saying we show stop supporting website ]

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#318

Post by ksenzee »

delecti wrote: post #151
olejorgenb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also better that the other browser in many ways. The "Awesome Bar" among them.

What's different about the Awesome Bar from Chrome? IIRC Chrome had the unified search/URL bar before Firefox did, and I don't remember it being very different from Firefox's implementation. If anything, I remember it being easier to add search engines in Chrome (unless it's gotten worse in the past few years since I switched to Firefox). Am I missing out on cool features of the URL bar in Firefox? Edit: made my ques…

You can start typing words that were in either the title or the URL of some thing you vaguely remember visiting last month, or last year, and the Awesome Bar will reliably surface it for you. I hardly even use bookmarks; I just count on the Awesome Bar finding everything for me. If I had to choose between it and uBlock Origin, I wouldn't even have to think twice. Ads I can deal with, if I have to. I've been outsourcing my memory for the web to the Awesome Bar for decades. It's part of my brain.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#320

Post by themaninthedark »

linuxhansl wrote: post #229
autoexec wrote: post #53

> Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox…

> when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company What would you have them do? Somehow they have to make some money somehow. Alternatively they have to live purely from donations, which means that people like you and I have to part with of our money. Or they could be purely open source, in which case people like and I donate our time.

How is it that we can have a plethora of different Linux distributions, the Linux kernel, the FreeBSD kernel, the OpenBSD kernel, GIMP, LibreOffice and several other large projects that are run and maintained by donations and volunteers.

Yet somehow Firefox is different? It needs to make money! It needs to make money so much that they keep spinning up all sorts of new projects so that they can make more money, or at least that was the argument for some of what they were doing.

At this point in time, if they had taken all the money they spent on their various projects and put it in a trust they would probably be able to fund development without taking in any more money.

And it's not like people wouldn't donate to them either, look at how much Wikipedia has pulled in from donations.

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