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Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

marko.fyi

151–160 of 374 posts

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love containers as well. Does anyone know when/if they'll be coming to Firefox for Android and iOS? Also, I really wish you would be able to specify which container you want in the Home button when using multiple urls for your default tabs. So this: https://gmail.com/|https://gmail.com/ Would become something like this: {container:personal}https://gmail.com/|{container:work}https://gmail.com/

I'm pretty sure Mozilla has abandoned Firefox on Android to work on Firefox Preview (code named Fenix). Here is the github issue that tracks container support on Firefox Preview: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1481

What makes you say they are abandoning it? I hope they change the name if it happens.

Edit: https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/27/mozilla-geckoview-firefox... is an article on this. It says Firefox Focus is being replaced. But Focus was not really a full featured browser and hasn't meant replace the normal Firefox on mobile. Confusing...

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#152
post #133
post #11

Is Chrome still planning on rolling out manifest v3, which kills uBlock Origin? I imagine that would boost Firefox growth. Edit: Answering my own question...yup, it's in canary as of November 1st. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins...

Here is the post from an extension developer invited in the latest Mozilla workshop with info on the plans for Mozilla for manifest v3 https://gist.github.com/Lusito/dd6b76b93f83267903619103745cc...

The key passage:

"Google wants to drop support for blocking WebRequests, which will cripple certain extensions, others might not even work at all. Mozilla is not going to follow this destructive path."

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#153
post #134
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor mans container (at least under unix-alikes) is simply running the program as another user with 'su' or 'sudo'.

That's too complicated. Use profiles for same result without having to use another user. firefox -new-instance -P

[deleted]

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#154
post #123

A question for HN readers that use Chrome: why did you choose that? The readers here seems like the ideal crowd of Firefox users.

Better energy efficiency

Superior video playback

Allows 2 simultaneous dictionaries

Doesn't show ads when I open a new tab

Pinch to zoom

They haven't forgotten to renew certificates so far

Smooth Gmail

Never crashed on my machine vs Firefox used to crash once a day

Superior dev tools

Doesn't cause high cpu usage in some sites like Twitch

-----

I'll revisit my options when/if Chrome breaks uBlock Origin on stable

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#155
post #140
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too complicated. Use profiles for same result without having to use another user. firefox -new-instance -P

I do this so frequently that I wrapped FF (and chrome) with a PyGTK starter, each profile with an icon. Less clicks to launch a new session of my preferred flavor

There use to be something called prism (not that one) that would do exactly this. The project was abandoned a few years ago sadly and I couldn't get it to work under a recent Ubuntu

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#156
I have been using firefox... forever now and only thing I miss is translate functionality chrome has. I searched for some extensions but they were opening a new window for translation which does not compare to google's inlined translation. Any suggestions?

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#157

About once a week Firefox bans me from opening new tabs until I reboot it for an update. It promises to return my existing tabs but it never has. For this reason I don't trust it when I'm doing meaningful work.

I've never seen this before, are you sure it's an upstream Firefox thing?

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#158
People, who choose Chrome (not even Chromium) over Firefox for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns, are simply not the target group of Firefox developers, because they do not care about privacy enhancing features. To sacrifice ones rights to gain tiny speed improvements or often only the feeling of being faster – It is simply a laughable trade-off to make. Many people and even institutions of education, which should know better, choose to do so apparently.

If one is concerned about privacy and data being sent to Google using FF, well, there is always IceCat. Managed by the people, who stand most firmly for your rights in computing and software. GNU.

It is also quite well known, that Chromium and Chrome are memory hogs. One OS process per tab? Really? I've also not read anything about improvements on that front in the last many months, while at least with Quantum the FF developers aim to keep memory usage low and cores optimally used - at least in their pitch. I think Chromium has a long way to go, before it gets close to low memory usage for many tabs scenarios. As a tab hoarder and curious person, memory usage patterns like the one of Chromium are not acceptable. I am sitting on 238 tabs in IceCat right now and 33% of my 8GB RAM are in use, with several other applications, including one electron based open at the same time. No problem whatsoever to have my browser and multiple other memory intensive applications open.

The same seems infeasible with Chromium and its forks. I've seen it with double of my RAM and much less tabs on a co-worker's machine. Chrome just ate all of his RAM. I cannot remember, whether it crashed then, or he had to close the browser, to continue to work. Both are quite disruptive for getting things done.

I think FF devs have done a great job with Quantum. Unfortunately one cannot always trust Mozilla entirely (see some cases of "studies" and the money they get from Google), although they often do great work and enhance online privacy. For me it seems the better option to stay behind a shield of people, who take privacy and user rights very seriously and remove telemetry and similar things from FF and use the outcome of that.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#159
post #154
post #123

A question for HN readers that use Chrome: why did you choose that? The readers here seems like the ideal crowd of Firefox users.

Better energy efficiency Superior video playback Allows 2 simultaneous dictionaries Doesn't show ads when I open a new tab Pinch to zoom They haven't forgotten to renew certificates so far Smooth Gmail Never crashed on my machine vs Firefox used to crash once a day Superior dev tools Doesn't cause high cpu usage in some sites like Twitch ----- I'll revisit my options when/if Chrome breaks uBlock Origin on stable

Thank you for the reply, I guess it's a matter of usage/machine, since I have none of the issues you mentioned.

Re: Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

#160
post #34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not reason enough to support Google instead.

Very true, Google can be much worse. I still use Firefox. But whenever Mozilla asks for donations, this is still in the back of my mind.

I think Mozilla should have a stance about this, such as « We don’t exclude white males » or « We don’t exclude Christians ». It is an extremely difficult thing to say in 2019. The series Silicon Valley did an excellent parody of the IT scene’s position about Christians in S05E05, where a gay christian is outed by a founder, and everyone asks him to apologize for ruining his reputation.

Not because he’s gay. Because he’s Christian. And there is no way I would donate to an organization that is so much anti-Christian that they consider their pro-life positions as criminal.

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