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Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#151
post #50
post #5

I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config - privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use: production and staging.

Is there also a proxy/VPN support per container? That would be stellar :)

No, not in containers. I use different Firefox profiles for that purpose.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#152
post #95

I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable). The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the…

The keyword trick given by others is nice. If like me you are lazy, use the autocomplete feature.

First manually type the URL with the search terms and validate. Then for your second search type some unique part of the base URL and it appears because it is in your history, press down and modify the URL for your new search.

When you have done this several times, it seems firefox understands what you are trying to do and autocompletes the URL with the common parts.

Works Weil with wiktionary, wikipedia and WordReference for instance. Special mention to WordReference with its friendly URL scheme.

Works on firefox mobile too.

I canot remember how to validate autocompletion, my fingers do it themeselves. It must be something like Right or CTRL+Right. On mobile, it is a touch.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#153

I just switched back on the latest release. * Sadly I'm missing a single really important Add-on and there are some annoying and apparently long-standing bugs that have been ignored and I've had to work around, but otherwise it's a major improvement and it's good enough to work with. * I'm glad that they've ditched the rounded tabs and cleaned up the interface. * I'm still annoyed that Pocket is integrated into every…

You can disable pocket. Nav to about:config then search for extensions.pocket.enabled and do the obvious thing. :)

Nice, thanks for the heads up on that. A small thing makes a surprisingly big deal. I'm unsure as to why that isn't available in options other than the monetary reasons. Nothing against pocket personally, I just clutter it up enough on my own. :) Cheers.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#154
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF57 still consumes more memory than Chrome ? For the same tabs? Or are you maybe experiencing some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation — opening more tabs because they mostly "feel" lighter-weight?

I opened the same exact tabs in both FF57 and Chrome (7 each) and sorted by memory usage in Activity Monitor. When adding up the main task and helpers, FF57 used significantly more.

The pattern I noticed is that with small amount of tabs Firefox can consume more RAM, but the situation quickly changes in favor of Firefox when opening more of them.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#155

Yep. Like to see some competition and I’m a huge fan of rust, so like to support it any way I can. I hit minor compatibility issues on some sites, but it’s rare. Main thing I miss is auto shrinking tabs. FF doesn’t support the bajillion tabs methodology so well right now.

What? I have hundreds, sometimes low thousands of tabs open constantly - auto shrinking tabs is exactly what makes me despise Chrome. It's completely unusable once you reach circa 50 and mouse wheel becomes the only way to navigate them.

In contrast, Firefox, thanks to no auto shrinking, is somewhat usable out of the box, and works wonderfully with extensions like Tab Center Redux or Tree Style Tabs.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#156

Me, far too many times. Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome. However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla, non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages. Now,…

> only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome.

Me too.

Unfortunately, it seems like Chrome is still wining for me over the new FF. For example, this comments section page takes about 3.5 seconds to load in Chrome and about 7.25 seconds in FF. I run a fair few privacy add-ons in each, so that may not be helping things, but still, a 2x increase in loading for a mostly text comments page is not cool (at least for me). Don't get me started on the YT main page ...

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#157
post #95

I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable). The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the…

Probably an alternative: you can configure a keyword to a stored search engine. Then you can search like `a lean startup`, where `a` is a keyword followed by a blank for amazon.com. I found this to be very fast. It's also handy for translations, etc..

Thanks. This was exactly what I was looking for.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#158
post #152
post #95

I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable). The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the…

The keyword trick given by others is nice. If like me you are lazy, use the autocomplete feature. First manually type the URL with the search terms and validate. Then for your second search type some unique part of the base URL and it appears because it is in your history, press down and modify the URL for your new search. When you have done this several times, it seems firefox understands what you are trying to do a…

Tried this a few times, didn't seem to trigger. Thanks for the suggestion though. I have enough specific searches that switching to the keyword trick works well enough for me.

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#159
post #95

I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable). The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the…

You could use bookmark keywords in Firefox, which provide a similar function: 1. Create a bookmark for some-service.example.com/search?q=foo 2. Open the properties for the bookmark. Replace "foo" with "%s" (the universal string for bookmark keyword variables). In the keyword field, type some letter or string you'll remember; I'll use "q". Close the properties dialog. 3. In the URL field, type "q my-search-terms". (At…

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57?

#160
Back when Firefox originally came out I was one of the first few adopters of it (primarily to escape Internet Explorer), but left it back in 2008 when Google Chrome came out because of it's speed. However, almost a decade later after having issues with Chrome on my new Linux rig and hearing all the fuss about Quantum I tried the Firefox Beta about a week ago (I'm not a patient man) and immediately fell in love with it. Not only was it faster, but it used half of the system resources that Chrome was using! I know some people are not thrilled with the loss of extensions, but having come to it at this time of transition I found all the extensions I had on Chrome and a few others that made my web browsing experience better than ever. I'm very excited about the new changes in Firefox and can't wait to see where they go from here.
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