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Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

gizmodo.com

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Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#551

Post by detaro »

FilterJoe wrote: post #177
gvb wrote: post #15

I read the article hoping for something insightful, but when I read the paragraph ...a half-dozen tabs that auto-open on launch thanks to the dozens of extensions I've accumulated over the years[...] I had to stop and say "wait, what?" To leverage his analogy that it is like coming home to a new house to find that most of your stuff is already there, it is like not cleaning your house and not taking out the trash for…

The problem is using many open tabs with Chrome. If you use no more than 3 or 4 tabs, Chrome is generally fine. If you use more than that, Firefox has some built-in features to help with tabs such as delayed tab loading and tab grouping. It also has more and better extensions for helping with multiple tabs. Furthermore, it doesn't launch a new process for each tab. In a browser comparison I wrote last month, I includ…

I regularly use Chrome on windows with ~100 tabs, and it ... just works? It is a bit annoying that it loads everything immediately on start-up, on the other hand once it's done everything is available without further delays. Firefox seemed to get slow/stuck easier, but I haven't tested it extensively for a while.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#552

Post by danneu »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #480
TomDavey wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Tree Style Tab. I like to keep dozens of tabs open, and to drag and drop 'em into hierarchical groups. I also like to additionally organize the tab trees into multiple windows; the windows can be distinctively named with the FireTitle extension to identify them quickly. I admit that I never learned Panorama or Tab Groups. Tree Style Tab does just about everything I need.

Tree Style Tabs looks like it has a potential to allow querying HTML via SQL. I have been thinking about this for a while. I do not have a concrete idea for an application, but it would be cool to retrieve titles of all open sites in certain group/tree. Almost like some sort of scraper.

Vimperator has fuzzy matching on tab titles if you press "b":

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/quq37nq1583x0lf/sr732e...

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#554

Post by zobzu »

metastart wrote: post #455
justizin wrote: post #105

I don't have to agree with the author's justifications, I switched back some time ago for primary browsing because FireFox makes a browser for me and Google makes a browser for them . Privacy Extensions always seem to work better in FF because it's produced by an organization, if imperfect, whose values center around privacy and not subservience to advertisers. I've worked in offices of companies with ad-supported si…

Many privacy extensions do protect some privacy on one hand, but then take away some on the other hand e.g. block trackers but collect other information on your browsing to sell (data business model). Using addons is thus risky. Firefox uses your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you. They get nearly $1mn/day from Google. They have done some good things in privacy with Yahoo, but they're overall probably…

You do realize that Mozilla does not actually get 1M/day from Google right now.. right?

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#555

Post by mirimir »

jacobolus wrote: post #482
dmix wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is way ahead of Firefox in terms of security. It's worth the performance trade-offs. Each website is rendered in a separate process with a sandbox, each with an empty chroot + process namespace + network namespace + tiny seccomp-bpf + syscall whitelist. Chrome also has a stronger sandbox, pioneers better SSL, supports PIE on binaries, uses pepper - doesnt use native Flash plugins, the JIT compiler does randomi…

Worth the performance trade-off for who? For my own use cases, Chrome drags my whole system performance into a gutter and shoots it full of bullets. In other words, it’s not just a “trade-off”, but rather Chrome is completely and utterly unusable, while both Safari and Firefox handle the load with no problem.

It depends on the user's risk/benefit model.

There are WebKit-based browsers far lighter and faster than Firefox. Chrome, Firefox in Linux, and the Tor browser provide better security. Isolating browsers in separate VMs or Qubes AppVMs provides even better security.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#556

Post by zobzu »

fizzbatter wrote: post #160
justcommenting wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with relatives' computers has been that trying to completely remove Chrome from Windows is a lot like trying to remove a rootkit, specifically one that phones home a lot. If any other company did those sorts of things in persisting pieces of their software all over the OS without easy removal for non-technical users, people would be calling it malware or spyware.

Interesting, what specifically are you having trouble with? I would think it just uninstalls. Are you claiming otherwise? I'd love to try and reproduce what your claims are (fact check).

A bunch of adware reinstall it actually, because they get money from Google for that. On a clean system its pretty simple to uninstall.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#557

Post by asuffield »

austenallred wrote: post #164
nvk wrote: post #7

The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it's been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I've lost data twice by bugs related to not having a linked ID. Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google account.

You should probably understand this: Google doesn't give a shit. The total market share of people who care about whether or not their browser is linked with their Google account is probably less than one percent. The value they get from knowing everything you do online? I'm not sure how you'd calculate that, but I'm positive it's greater than losing the tiny number of hackers who are protective of their personal data…

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing my employer, read the links for yourself. I work at Google, not on Chrome.)

> The value they get from knowing everything you do online?

This is a myth. Or less politely, a lie you have been told.

https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/privacy/ is very clear about exactly when chrome reports back data, including what happens when you sign in. It does not report your online activity in ways different from other web browsers. It sends just about the minimum possible to implement the features it provides.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#558

Post by zobzu »

hackuser wrote: post #249

This is really about the tech equivalent of fashion. You're not still using last year's cool browser, are you? I doubt there is enough difference between the browsers to make a meaningful productivity impact for most end users (the population at HN might probably has more exceptions to that statement). The only significant difference is confidentiality, where I trust Mozilla far more than Google. Here is what is real…

this comment is sadly very accurate ;) The worse part IMO is that companies indeed play on that effect, and people, even smart techies will always fall for the new cool.

We have such a tendency to have to follow trends in groups.. its a little scary at times.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#559

Post by zobzu »

taf2 wrote: post #481

Meh the issue here is not chrome or Firefox... It's that people still use IE and more people are using Safari with all of its broken features... Both chrome and Firefox are open source and can be excellent browsers. Neither are limiting the content we can access via the web. Both agree to support the web as a platform. Contrast this with safari and IE and you see IE avoiding WebRTC due to an 8 billion dollar purchase…

to be a little more fair safari made webkit possible (and thus chrome)..

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#560

Post by zobzu »

malkia wrote: post #437

Wow! Hold right there. Chrome uses shared memory among it's spawned processes on all operating systems. If you use Task Manager (Windows) / Activity Monitor (OSX) or something similar in Linux, you would see memory over-reported. Google for this: http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory" Some info: http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder Some more info: http://blog.chromium.org/2008/0…

Note that it still uses way more ram than firefox regardless. in firefox right now.. ive 4 tabs open and been using it for 2 hours.. 246megs used. I just started chromium 42.. open hacker news and theverge.. boom already at 311megs.(thats measured with about:memory)

Another funny thing is that chromium "measures" ff memory but measures it as more than the OS or Firefox itself. Not too sure whats going on there, albeit its still lower

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