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Switching from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#101

Post by shrikant »

hrgiger wrote: post #53

if someone has more details: I remember years ago that when I was digging FF source code I saw it was using chromium source code (not everywhere but for the CSS engine and extensions i think),that was the time servo was in consideration, is it still the case? I personally dont mind that I use both chromium + FF with some firewall rules but it always gave me impression that while FF using chromium source it does an ad…

No shared codebase (or even conspiracy!) here -- it's just referring to user interface elements.

Definition: Chrome is the visual design elements that give users information about or commands to operate on the screen's content (as opposed to being part of that content). These design elements are provided by the underlying system — whether it be an operating system, a website, or an application — and surround the user's data.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#102

Post by SquareWheel »

onion2k wrote: post #49
mav3rick wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in, they mask it as some sort of far left viewpoint that forces them to oppose Google at every opportunity. Google can solve world hunger and HN would still blame them for a "PR" stunt.

Google has the resources and brains available to solve world hunger, so they probably could do that. Unfortunately all those people who work there would rather spend their time and effort thinking of new ways to get people to see ads. I don't see that as very positive for Google.

Google has hundreds of product teams. Very few work on ads. Your comment is not accurate at all.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#103

Post by anon_alchemist »

psv1 wrote: post #78

For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good. I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.

Brave blocks all ads and provides its own "ad platform" which basically means that they curate what ads you will see. I fail to see how their model could fix what is wrong with facebook or google.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#105

Post by jpalomaki »

ypeter wrote: post #8
bennyz wrote: post #3

I am still missing chrome-like profiles

Have you tried Multi-Account Containers? It’s not the same but for me it works (I want to be logged in with various accounts on the same website)

Multi-account containers is the reason why I'm using Firefox.

Too bad it is just an extension and not a first-class feature. The settings are not synced with other Firefox settings. Somewhat annoying as there is lot of work to setup the container settings if you happen loose then.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#106

Post by prox »

foepys wrote: post #72
haunter wrote: post #66

I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.

Is 1000 tabs open a replacement for bookmarks? I can’t imagine a workflow where having this many open would be advantageous.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#107

Post by thinkingemote »

dimator wrote: post #73
notkaiho wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?

So we have to bring it up every few days? Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.

Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#108

Post by psv1 »

anon_alchemist wrote: post #103
psv1 wrote: post #78

For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good. I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.

Brave blocks all ads and provides its own "ad platform" which basically means that they curate what ads you will see. I fail to see how their model could fix what is wrong with facebook or google.

Their ad model is what gets discussed every time Brave comes up and it's irrelevant to me - I block all ads myself regardless of the browser.

My point is that if you switch ads off in Brave, you end up with a really good browsing experience, better than Chrome + adblock or Firefox + adblock.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#109

Post by clement_b »

feanaro wrote: post #11
clement_b wrote: post #7

I did that about a month ago, after more than 10 years with Chrome only. So far so good, apart from battery usage on Android. I sometimes feel it spirals when too many tabs are left open. Desktop, no problem. I have kept Chrome for my work stuff, because I want 100% efficiency / no delay due to my tech choices and I work on a SaaS tool primarily targeting Chrome. I still think Chrome is better when it comes to poweri…

> The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.

OK for 'us'. But what about my mum and dad? What's the reason for them to use Firefox over Chrome? They don't care about the web being destroyed by Google and Apple. They care about... a smooth experience, I guess? They moved to Chrome from IE because of a very poor experience on IE.

Chrome is amazing. Having most people switching away is a hard sell. I honestly think Brave has a more compelling selling point here, even if privacy is not something that sells as well as it should, meaning its adoption will be limited to early adopters / privacy-aware individuals only.

I agree with the other comments, it's our duty to ensure other browsers still exist, we can't let Chrome have it all, but we need more than obscure features to turn it around.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#110

Post by nosianu »

ailideex wrote: post #46

I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux - both Fedora 31 and RHEL 8). In general I like FireFox more and prefer features like multi-account-containers so I'm quite sad to have to use chrome.

> I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux...

Similar experience here.

I run a VM with Linux for development and for viewing videos (e.g. anime). I only use uBlock Origin, NoScript is installed but was quickly disabled because it is too much of a hassle, and I don't care since this is the VM which I use for "pseudo-anonymous" web activities without all my regular logins anyway.

I chose Firefox there just to give it a try. I had to switch back to Chrome. At some point I could no longer watch anime on one site - on Firefox. It still worked fine in Chrome. What happened was that as soon as I started the video the entire browser seemed blocked, comparable to having a way too work-intensive Javascript running. However, Firefox showed me that none of the open tabs incl. the one with the videos had more than 1% of CPU time, plus, it worked in Chrome and that would have been blocked by a runaway JS script just the same. I also don't think the built-in HTML5 video player would be blocked by JS.

I think it was the video that was the source of the block somehow. It took several seconds for any command given to the video to have an effect (play, stop, forward 10s, timeline jump, etc.) The video site used iframes to show the videos from various sources (completely different video domains). Regardless of the source, the behavior was the same.

I gave up, because of the several-second delay of everything debugging was quite impossible anyway. Profiling did not show anything at all. I had to go back to Chrome. This only happened for one (meta) site, it was not a general video issue. I have no idea how I would even debug this, I don't think the regular dev. tools meant for (JS) web dev. were enough here. I made sure I used the exact same extensions in Chrome - only uBlock Origin, with the exact same settings too. So I'm sure the difference was in the browser itself. Similar nr. of open tabs (ca. 10), all but one suspended, on FF using its native built-in tab-suspend (i.e the tab does not load until activated after browser start) so this was not a "huge nr. of tabs" thing.

So unfortunately, at least in my experience, there does not quite seem to be parity between Chrome and Firefox. Also, everything is just a bit snappier now back in Chrome. I sure wish I would not have to depend on a mega monster corporation but I won't go out of my way to achieve that.

Of course, outside this one problem area all worked fine, apart from the bit where Chrome still feels a tiny bit snappier.

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