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Hang on to Your Firefox

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Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#511

Post by Izkata »

fleebee wrote: post #240
cm2187 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and not just that, it allows to escape the hijack of your right click (something google does not tolerate), but they also degraded a lot the experience the last year or two. Number of modal dialog boxes every time it updates (and of course repeat for how many machines you use), also every time there is a pending update, the performance seems to degrade until you close and update, and those updates are very fre…

I got very annoyed by the pending update pop-ups and the "Restart to keep using Firefox" messages when I opened new tabs, so I switched over to Librewolf and now I get no distracting modals at all and can update it precisely when I feel like it.

Those tabs telling you to restart are because the OS upgraded Firefox in the background and Firefox detected that its files changed under it. It tells you to restart so you don't get buggy broken behavior if anything was incompatible between the two versions. Firefox's built-in update system waits for a natural browser restart so it doesn't do that.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#512

Post by theamk »

glaucon wrote: post #31
theamk wrote: post #3

I am using firefox, but it is pretty hard to keep using it. I don't want the whole world to converge on one browser engine, but I also want things to work, and Firefox does not make it easy. Firefox on my laptop has a propensity for eating lots of RAM, and constant CPU usage, even if nothing is going on. Task manager is useless. Profiler just shows "GC collecting". Mobile firefox is OK, it simply feels like it's desi…

I don't know why but I have a different experience. My daily driver is a 13 year old Thinkpad with 16Gb memory, I use Firefox all the time, I routinely have 50+ tabs open, I really have no complaints. I also use Firefox on Android, I have less experience of using other browsers on mobile but what I've got is fine for me. I'm not questioning your experience but I would like others, who might be considering using Firef…

I think it's the specific pages - some Javascript is much more memory hungry that others.

A few hundred HN or Wikipedia tabs work absolutely fine, I've tested. But there are much heavier sites, and only a few of those can cause the machine to start swapping until OOM, especially when left to work in the background.

(And unlike Chrome, Firefox does not seem to throttle/unload background tabs automatically... or if it does, it does it much less aggressively)

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#513

Post by [deleted] »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #505
TimTheTinker wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but is there any modern browser name or brand that inspires the kind of fierce loyalty Firefox did 20 years ago? It was the alternative to IE6, the first rays of dawn bringing hope to to a desolate, war-torn funereal valley of culpable corporate complacence. Hatred for IE6 drove people to Firefox more than anything else - IE was horrible . Firefox users crowdfunded a two-page ad in the New York Times, mostly…

I think software loyalty is stuck at an all time low. Even the OS wars are over. People are stuck with subscription models. Almost everything has a cloud-based or SaaS service that works on everything. Nobody cares enough to fight about what browser they are using unless it is to fiddle around with adblockers.

[deleted]

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#514

Post by TimTheTinker »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #505
TimTheTinker wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but is there any modern browser name or brand that inspires the kind of fierce loyalty Firefox did 20 years ago? It was the alternative to IE6, the first rays of dawn bringing hope to to a desolate, war-torn funereal valley of culpable corporate complacence. Hatred for IE6 drove people to Firefox more than anything else - IE was horrible . Firefox users crowdfunded a two-page ad in the New York Times, mostly…

I think software loyalty is stuck at an all time low. Even the OS wars are over. People are stuck with subscription models. Almost everything has a cloud-based or SaaS service that works on everything. Nobody cares enough to fight about what browser they are using unless it is to fiddle around with adblockers.

Part of it is the psychology of owning vs renting. No one loves a rented house, but the landlord still wins.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#515

Post by tim333 »

theamk wrote: post #3

I am using firefox, but it is pretty hard to keep using it. I don't want the whole world to converge on one browser engine, but I also want things to work, and Firefox does not make it easy. Firefox on my laptop has a propensity for eating lots of RAM, and constant CPU usage, even if nothing is going on. Task manager is useless. Profiler just shows "GC collecting". Mobile firefox is OK, it simply feels like it's desi…

Yeah similar. When I leave firefox running on the macbook, after a couple of days I get an out of memory, 32GB used type error (8GB macbook). Maybe it's the sites I have open keep requesting stuff? Not sure.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#516

Post by 0dayz »

account42 wrote: post #454
0dayz wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to criticize clearly malicious or incompetent actions Mozilla makes, the majority of the complaints are when Firefox release a new version and people on HN bring up their personal pet peeves every single time instead of anything positive about said release or news. I'm very sick in general of "the criticism will continue until moral improve" attitude that has become more and more common.

And we are very sick of the enshittification will continue no matter what attitude from Mozilla. Sorry not sorry that you feel bad about people keep telling Mozilla off for the things where they keep being bad actors. Criticism will continue until there is no more reason for it. This frog will not be boiled.

[dead]

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#517

Post by phyzix5761 »

account42 wrote: post #457
phyzix5761 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Mozilla fund Firefox right now? I'm genuinely curious for a free product, how can they generate revenue without doing shady ad and data collection stuff?

How does Doctors Without Borders generate revenue?? How does the EFF??? How is the FSF able to fund GCC development?????

All of those are non profit organizations that receive donations. It seems Firefox is owned by Mozilla Corporation which is the for profit branch of the Mozilla Foundation. So again, how do they fund Firefox as a for profit company?

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#518

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

The problem is not any particular "modern" web browser

It is the so-called "modern" web browser itself

For certain users who care about certain things, the concept is fatally flawed

The problem of the so-called "modern" web browser concept is that every computing task ends up "inside the browser" and thus outside the user's control

"Ad blocking" is no exception

Many so-called "modern" browsers now contain their own "ad blockers"

These "ad blockers" are not under the user's control^1. By putting them "inside the browser" the browser vendor has the final control, not the user

These browser vendors are generally seeking to profit from advertising or marketing services

For any user that seeks to avoid internet marketing and advertising, this presents a problem: the user's and the vendor's interests conflict

This is why I could never take Javascript-based "ad blockers" that work "inside the browser" seriously as a long-term solution

I use them, in conjunction with other methods, but I am prepared for them to stop working at any time.^2 I have always relied on programs that are "outside the browser", not under the browser vendor's control

1. In theory, if the browser is "open source", large numbers of users should be able to modify the source code to stop the browser from automatically requesting unwanted ads, tracking and telemetry. In practice, for a variety of reasons, this does not happen. The browser vendors, including Mozilla, make no effort to remove those reasons

2. This includes UBO in Firefox. The question is not if but when

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#519

Post by giancarlostoro »

autoexec wrote: post #209
giancarlostoro wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I will gladly take an announcement where CloudFlare buys them out and frees the Fox from annoying corporate interests, they just give everyone a decent free browser, bring back the oxidation effort and overhaul Firefox to be all our Rust as Quantum was aiming towards. Someone needs to take Firefox from Mozilla itself and provide it better funding under the understanding no more shennanigans.

> At this point I will gladly take an announcement where CloudFlare buys them out and frees the Fox from annoying corporate interests I don't see how cloudflare buying firefox would keep it from being a victim of corporate interests. That'd just make them subject to the corporate interests of cloudflare instead.

They could basically re-form Firefox as a non-profit where they provide funding, but control the non-profit org enough to sway it from wasting funds, not to mention Mozilla's war chest is insane, its no wonder they have bought up some startups before.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#520

Post by wolvoleo »

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…

Yes Mozilla keeps trying to make it a glossy mainstream product, a userbase which they've long and irrevocably lost.

And I hate them trying to push the ethical ads angle. For my there is zero ethics in advertising anymore.

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