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Give Firefox a chance

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Re: Give Firefox a chance

#161

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

mgkimsal wrote: post #43

I do give it a chance, regularly, but it's never enough to be 'default'. Pins. Loved the idea. Unfortunately, they often go missing. Loading the browser, about 15% of the time, I get the "oh this is embarrassing" screen, with "restore your session". If I don't restore right then, all pins are gone. For good. Forever. I've lost way too much time recreating those over the last couple of years. Have never had this happe…

The “restore your session” shouldn't be regularly appearing when you start the browser and indicates it's crashing on shutdown or otherwise failing to save state. That is a bug.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#162

Post by TheArcane »

edraferi wrote: post #99
Lazare wrote: post #59

I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox (right after the Quantum project landed, and Firefox was meant to be a lot faster), but found FF to still be bloated, slow, and painful to use. A couple weeks ago I made another try to switch back to FF, and I have found the experience to be very pleasant this…

I had the same experience. Switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago, tried and was disappointed by the initial Quantum release, tried Firefox again with the “Chrome is killing uBlock Origin” announcement, very pleased this time. My main gripe with Firefox at the moment is Sync. It just doesn’t sync everything you need. My Firefox profile is highly customized, with a lot of extensions that all have their own complex…

Oh I absolutely detested this as well.

Containers is one of my favourite add-ons, and I have it highly customized. But I have to set it up everytime from scratch on a different computer - there's no sync even though Containers is from Mozilla themselves!

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#163

Post by iamdamian »

Chirael wrote: post #147
iamdamian wrote: post #87

I want to move on from Chrome, and Firefox's Containers have made Firefox an easy decision for me. But I am a huge fan of Chrome's aesthetic and don't want to give that up for the sake of privacy. I am not one to do extensive tweaking to my machine, but this is important to me, so I spent an hour experimenting. And I have to say, I am pretty satisfied. Even though it isn't straightforward, Firefox actually can look n…

I don’t know that web pages would have have access to user chrome settings but I still have to ask, do any of those changes make browser fingerprinting easier?

This is a great question the honest answer is I don't know. That said, I would be incredibly surprised if web pages had access to the settings in that file.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#164

Post by iamdamian »

sorenjan wrote: post #135
iamdamian wrote: post #87

I want to move on from Chrome, and Firefox's Containers have made Firefox an easy decision for me. But I am a huge fan of Chrome's aesthetic and don't want to give that up for the sake of privacy. I am not one to do extensive tweaking to my machine, but this is important to me, so I spent an hour experimenting. And I have to say, I am pretty satisfied. Even though it isn't straightforward, Firefox actually can look n…

> Now we just need Mozilla to come up with a more modern-looking logo. You're in luck: https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2019/06/11/firefox-the-evo...

I'm excited to see this and hope it means they recognize the importance of modern UX.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#165

Post by vinay_ys »

bad_user wrote: post #28
petepete wrote: post #10

I switched back to Firefox from Chrome earlier this year, and the experience has been very positive. It performs well, feels snappy, the dev tools are on par with Chrome's and everything feels right. The only negatives are that container tabs are still taking a bit of getting used to (why can't I have a 'Work' window in which all the new tabs are 'Work' tabs by default?) and the initial migration of passwords was a b…

For passwords the browser's built in management is inferior to password managers. I use 1Password (most polished) and there's also Bitwarden (hosted, but open source) and others. And I use my password manager every day, so if there's a cost associated, it's worth it.

Firefox is investing into Lockwise (lockbox?) https://lockwise.firefox.com I feel they are spreading themselves too thin. Instead they could do everything they can to push WebAuthn with support for on-device Secure Enclave (without needing an independent hardware key) so that everyone can benefit from having as close to a separate physical key as possible.

Besides the browser itself still has a lot of work to do. Apparently they had a known remote code execution vulnerability for 2 months waiting to be fixed. That is quite concerning and gives pause while deciding if we should make Firefox our primary browser.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#166

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

bgdnyxbjx wrote: post #152
latexr wrote: post #108

I’m tired of seeing “change to Firefox” arguments that never address its faults. Particularly on macOS, Firefox is unusable for many users — read this thread and any others on HN where Firefox is the topic, and you’ll find the same complaints: * Lack of AppleScript support (my main complaint, every other was lifted from other comments). * Lack of other basic features such as pinch-to-zoom. * Poor Keychain support. *…

It’s also really rough for me on Windows too. I try it every months a new release comes out and I don’t last a day. Sites render badly (names colors and fonts look wrong on Firefox but look the same on Edge Chrome and Safari (macOS)) It hangs multiple times a day Some heavy JS sites are much slower in FF than Chromium It takes dev tools minutes to become responsive on the site I work on, while in Chromium they load u…

> look the same on Edge Chrome and Safari

In other words: Blink, Blink, and WebKit (of which Blink is a fork) look the same. This is why people talk about supporting Firefox to avoid a monoculture.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#167

Post by vntok »

dontbenebby wrote: post #129
orpheline wrote: post #101

I'm apparently one of those rare people who never switched off Firefox - it's been my default browser on Mac and Linux for years. Open source, good plugin ecosystem, and does everything I need (not a web developer, so the dev tools were never a strong selling point for me). I've used Chrome here and there through the years, but the more invasive Google became about data collection, the less inclined I've been to use…

I'm the same way. I tried Chrome when it was new but at the time it didn't have a NoScript equivalent so I went back to FF.

Chrome has had NoScript equivalents for a while, you should try it again!

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#168

Post by bgdnyxbjx »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #166
bgdnyxbjx wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also really rough for me on Windows too. I try it every months a new release comes out and I don’t last a day. Sites render badly (names colors and fonts look wrong on Firefox but look the same on Edge Chrome and Safari (macOS)) It hangs multiple times a day Some heavy JS sites are much slower in FF than Chromium It takes dev tools minutes to become responsive on the site I work on, while in Chromium they load u…

> look the same on Edge Chrome and Safari In other words: Blink, Blink, and WebKit (of which Blink is a fork) look the same. This is why people talk about supporting Firefox to avoid a monoculture.

Regular edge, not chromium Edge. So that’s three different rendering engines that can do it right, and one that doesn’t.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#169

Post by bradleyjg »

derefr wrote: post #148
bradleyjg wrote: post #146

I switched several months ago from Chrome to Firefox (don't remember exactly when, think it was when the articles about logging into gmail would turn on sync came out). Unlike many here I'm not a browser power user--few to no plugins, no sync, and no customization. I'm not a web developer, so I rarely use the dev tools. It's fine. The only annoying thing is that there are a few webpages here and there that just don't…

I wonder if Firefox (or a living fork thereof) could be built with a “Chromium compatibility mode” where it boots up a Chromium-based renderer for a known blacklist of pages. Sort of like Edge with its IE compatibility mode. There’s no technical problem with the idea; but I would worry that smoothing over the problems some pages have when rendered with anything other than the Chromium renderer, would just cement Chro…

At least for me, I'd rather the other way around. When I'm on my work machine and using one of my company's assets I want to know if it breaks on firefox so I can go file a bug report. If my bank's website breaks on firefox I both have less interest in filing a bug report and less confidence it will do any good.

I suppose it would be different if my employer officially disavowed compatibility.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#170

Post by jhasse »

nvrspyx wrote: post #81
jhasse wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure I could configure it back [...] It's literally one click in the "Chrome" menu.

They’re talking about the keyboard shortcut. It’s much quicker to use CMD + Q to quit any app on Mac, but Chrome insists on making you hold it down. Clicking through the menus defeats the purpose and misses the point. I’ve turned to using Alfred and typing “qgc” to Quit Google Chrome, although I use Alfred for most navigation now.

I know, I meant that "configuring it back" is just one click on "Warn Before Quitting" in the Chrome menu. See https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/340517
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