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I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

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Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to...

Where is the article titled

"I don't know how to explain that ads (and the "suckers" who view them) are what keep the internet running"

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#162

I really want to switch to Firefox but cannot because it doesn't sync bookmark favicons. My bookmarks bar is filled with bookmarks without names that I can recognize by the icons. I refuse to re-visit every bookmark when I login from a new PC, which is often. This has been requested for 17 years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=428378 Every other browser sync solution has this feature. Firefox insists on…

Has anyone found a fix for this? It's very annoying, and has been around for years.

I personally use Checkmarks: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkmarks-we...

It just opens every bookmark to load the favicon. Brute force, but it works!

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#163
post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. While I agree; between an up-to-date uBlock Origin and https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-mask YT is quite usable. Long term I'm more worried by Mozilla leadership than Google shenanigans.

From your link:

> Please don't use Chrome Mask on YouTube. It won't resolve any issues, and it will make your experience worse over time. If some issue got fixed after toggling Chrome Mask on, it most likely got fixed by the addon clearing the cache. But you can do that yourself, too, without the need for this addon.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#164
post #138

I've used Firefox on desktop since 2019. It's upsetting how often (it's not every day, but more often than it should) a website just doesn't work because of the devs didn't test on Firefox at all. I even ran into this on Vanguard, a firm that manages god knows how much in assets, on a page to download PDFs... I used to get teased (all in good fun) at my last company for being the only dev that used Firefox. Then I'd…

Strange, been using it since inception, but since 2019 I can probably could on one hand the times I couldn't use firefox and had to crack open chrome/safari/whatever. It's usally been overly zealous ublock rules that have stopped me, but easily fixed and nothing to do with firefox.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#165
post #66
post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

> It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. Why would I, as a developer whose income stream is based on advertising, intentionally cater to users who are costing me money? There is a web based on hobbyist platforms like PeerTube and Mastodon, and you can clearly see why they haven't captured the masses.

This is basically true. The ad supported web sucks, but the solution is to not use it.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#166
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers (still) only develop and test with Chrome I've heard this before... Oh yeah, replace Chrome with IE and you've got the same thing happening again.

Developers will always be time crunched / lazy. Why target multiple platforms when you can just support one?

This is a management problem, not a developer problem. Yes, developers should advocate, but it's not the developers' burden to make time out of thin air.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#167
post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

[flagged]

Imagine your local cafe notices and starts feeding you poisoned food instead of asking to pay.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#168
Firefox is great and IMO it's important to have a browser that is open source and not controlled by Microsoft, Google or Apple. For that reason I would probably continue to use it even if the user experience was slightly worse, but thankfully it's not. When I switched from Chrome years ago I didn't notice any drop in performance and I've never really had any major issues since then. Every now and again I run into a website that is broken and think "ah, this must be what everyone is talking about online when they say Firefox sucks" but then I check the same page from a different browser and have the same problem. I hope it continues to survive and gets the support it needs from the community.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#169
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back nobody would believe that Google's search dominance could be disturbed... and now many have either switched away or stopped using search altogether. It takes me two clicks to set a search to DDG, Kagi or other and Google has lost this customer (often a family) forever. So let them be arrogant and loose their YouTube customers over time too.

Google still has close to 90% market share with DDG being a little more than a half percent. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/wo... Edit:Wrong year - that was 2020 this is 2024 https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/wo...

You've linked to 2020.

2024 is at https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/wo..., but the numbers seem to be identical.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#170
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony that Google, who made their bones on the "open web", is now attacking open web standards and trying to turn the internet into their own walled garden that they control every aspect of I hope is not lost on the people here.

Once the love of "Microsoft Loves FOSS Again" fades away as they aim to enter the next phase, some other company (Cloudflare? Tailscale?) will receive all the developer love until yet again, people realize that for-profit companies don't actually have their best interest at heart. Rinse and repeat forever...

The only one who has your best interests at heart is you. And you sometimes get it wrong.

It is very common the case that someone else will do something that aligns with your best interest. (love for example) In fact it is often in your best interest to do something that helps someone else and appears to harm you. (giving money to the poor at first glance appears to harm you and thus be illogical - but there are a number of secondary results of this that make it in your best interest anyway)

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