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What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

neilzone.co.uk

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Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radisson doesn't load on Firefox for me, only on chrome. Marriott doesn't load on chromium. I'm talking about the rooms pages, they show errors when loading prices. Static resources still load. The situation is similar with other websites behind akamai, such as US ESTA, the static resources load but all API calls fail. The IP address probably also matters, indeed.

This is untrue, did US ESTA fully on Firefox. Not sure what settings you use but the problem ain't FF nor the website.

Firefox on Linux?

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#112
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radisson doesn't load on Firefox for me, only on chrome. Marriott doesn't load on chromium. I'm talking about the rooms pages, they show errors when loading prices. Static resources still load. The situation is similar with other websites behind akamai, such as US ESTA, the static resources load but all API calls fail. The IP address probably also matters, indeed.

There’s something up with your internet connection.

API calls which go through Akamai all return their default "access denied" or "something went wrong" html, my 1Gbps internet is fine.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#113
post #18

I'm not sold that avoiding Chromium is any sort of win. It seems to be BSD licensed. The code comes from a long and storied OSS tradition. It is unclear why that having multiple different browser engines is strategically important. As far as I know we've long left behind the world where a hobbyist project could reasonably expect to implement modern JavaScript. Brave's existence and success suggests that competitors b…

I can't say that any of the changes of the last fifteen years have really brought about a better or more usable internet. Ads are worse than ever, the browser still doesn't know whether it's for browsing documents or hosting interactive apps, we're still stuck with javascript and no real standard library, and there don't appear to be real efforts towards reigning in complexity. From my perspective the current mode of development failed a long time ago.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#114

For people who use LibreWolf - do you happen to know if it honors Firefox' internal settings relating to disk/memory caches? I insist on configuring Firefox to store as little data as possible on disk in favor or using in-memory caching.

Pardon the noise, I found the answer within the product description:

* Disable disk cache and clear temporary files on close.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#115

I decided to just stay with Firefox and disable any rubbish that Mozilla adds as it comes. I tried Librewolf, but the unstable RPM repository was very annoying, because zypper disallows system updates if even one repository fails to refresh. I also had some weird issues keeping it pinned to my desktop environment's dock. It also didn't want to save its window geometry (very annoying for me), and the only way to trans…

Brave browser seems like the best choice moving forward

Yeah, the browser that has had multiple huge incidents where they've been caught doing sketchy stuff is definitely who we should turn to...

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#116
Moved from Firefox Dev Edition to Librewolf. No deal breakers yet.

Procedure to transfer over painlessly: Install and run Librewolf. On both browsers go Help > More troubleshooting information > profile folder > Open. Close both browsers. Delete everything inside the librewolf profile. Copy everything from Firefox Dev profile directory into Librewolf profile directory. Run Librewolf with "--allow-downgrade" once. First run was a tad slow with extensions doing some 'recombobulation'. You can now run Librewolf normally without the above allow downgrade option. Enjoy.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#117
post #50

** To clarify - looking for any Firefox alternative, not restricted to the Gecko engine Is Brave at all a viable alternative? Or do their own ads and all the crypto-shmypto make the switch moot? Tangentially - has anyone tried building Firefox from the source? [1] I wonder how feasible this would be as an alternative if coupled with disabling all unwanted parts of the browser. [1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.…

Gentoo offers firefox built from source with various privacy defaults such as disabling telemetry: https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/www-client/fi... It's regularly updated. It also offers a binary package with privacy default configs such as disabling Normandy which "allows Mozilla to push changes for default settings or even install new add-ons remotely": https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/…

It's really been a joy using Firefox from source with gentoo for so many years. Every so often I'm reminded by a friend about all the crap Mozilla does with new Firefox versions on the Windows side, especially apparently when it comes to messing with the UI whereas mine just stays the same and looks much like I had it back when Firefox 3 was the new thing. I'll trust the gentoo maintainers to keep at it. I also think a big canary on the actual impact/difficulty of disabling for privacy-invading and related things would be for the tor project to give up and switch to a chromium-derived base for their browser bundle.

But Mozilla has long since lost any goodwill from me. I use Firefox because there's no alternative for what I want from a user agent. If I could configure or find extensions to make some Chromium-derived thing look and behave the same way, I'd just switch already. (Minimum: adblocking at least as good as ubo, NoScript, RSS feeds, and the big one, close feature parity to TreeStyleTabs or Sidebery. The full scope of everything else I'd really want on top is too much for here.)

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mainly, I'm still dependant on Mozilla no matter where I go. They are the ones actually doing the hard work of developing the browser engine You are being reasonable. Firefox is an essential application in my day. I support Mozilla directly -- in a small way, this helps to ensure that Firefox is available to me and others. Consider -- Browser Market Share Worldwide - February 2025 Chrome 66.29% Safari 18.01% Edge 5…

> GOOG dropped the slogan "Don't Be Evil" -- I cordially invite all relaxing frogs to speculate about future increases to the water temperature. the problem is that mozilla also seems to be boiling the frog right now.

I worry less about 2.63 % of the marketshare using some aggregate browsing data than I do about GOOG dominance (60-90%) in the commercial surveillance industry.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mainly, I'm still dependant on Mozilla no matter where I go. They are the ones actually doing the hard work of developing the browser engine You are being reasonable. Firefox is an essential application in my day. I support Mozilla directly -- in a small way, this helps to ensure that Firefox is available to me and others. Consider -- Browser Market Share Worldwide - February 2025 Chrome 66.29% Safari 18.01% Edge 5…

> I support Mozilla directly -- in a small way, this helps to ensure that Firefox is available to me and others. Money you send to the Mozilla Foundation cannot be used on Firefox, because Firefox is a project of the Corporation and money can only flow from the Corporation to the Foundation, not vice versa. There is no way to help support Firefox development directly, Mozilla employees will always point you to buying…

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