Why I use Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I use Firefox

#211

Post by shrimp_emoji » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

ajorgensen wrote: post #195

zahma wrote: post #19

I don't see why I would want to use anything else. Even if Chrome is marginally faster in an arbitrary benchmark test, I doubt I'd notice. And so far, I have no interoperability issues between Firefox on my laptop (macOS) and my iPhone (iOS), which runs Safari + Firefox Focus (because it's all the same webkit underneath). The add-on and plug-in marketplace is quite healthy, too. At the end of the day, I care about op…

I have tried to switch quite a few times over the years to Firefox and I still to this day consistently run into websites that are unusably broken on Firefox, do you have the same experience? I realize this probably speaks volumes to the need for more people to use browsers other than Chrome but its unfortunately frequent enough that I always end up switching back to Chrome after a few months.

The only reason websites break on Firefox for me is that I break them myself with uBlock Origin and NoScript. >:D I'd rather have them broken than put up with their repugnant bullshit. The rare time I need a site to work pristinely for some reason, I begrudgingly pull out my (mostly) vanilla Chrome though.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#212

Post by bad_user » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

This article is decent, because at least it tries giving some technical pros of Firefox. Activism doesn't work folks.

To contribute, here's what Firefox does well, from my perspective:

    + History sync actually works — most Chromium browsers don't sync all history;
    + DNS-Over-HTTPS works in parallel to corporate DNS (fallback to system);
    + Tree-style-tabs;
    + Bookmarks management is better;
    + Very nice Reader View (Android & desktop);
    + Ctrl+Tab which actually works;
    + Non-admin upgrades, most of the time, making upgrades on managed laptops less annoying;
    + uBlock Origin, on both desktop and mobile;
    + Total Cookie Protection;
    + Multi-account containers (e.g., second Reddit user);
    + Android: accessibility zoom actually works;
    + Android: multiple search engines;
    + Android: Open in app;
    + Android: Dark reader / Cookie AutoDelete / other extensions;

Unfortunately, it also has issues:

    - They dropped the ball on PWA support — mobile has unfixed bugs, desktop dropped SSB, has trouble keeping up with features [1];
    - Poor performance on Android, known problems when scrolling (e.g., Mastodon, Twitter);
    - incompatibility with online services (e.g., Microsoft Teams), although, granted, they're working hard to remedy that;
    - No customizable keyboard shortcuts, which is surprising for a project that supposedly cares about accessibility;
    - Firefox is still funded almost entirely by Google's search ads, which means they can't actually compete with Chrome;
    - Mozilla has had poor and overpaid management, spending people's donations on political activism, while firing people working on next-gen improvements (e.g., Rust, Servo).

[1]: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev

Re: Why I use Firefox

#213

Post by anbotero » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:13 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #6

It's a great browser for Android. You get superior ad blocking and background video playing, extensions like dark reader...

I use Firefox Focus on Android. I don’t really care for most articles I open on my phone, usually a quick look will do, so whenever I close it or it automatically closes all tabs I’m not in the least worried.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#214

Post by jchw » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

I use Firefox. (Specifically Librewolf.) That said...

> Google can. Apple claims that they can’t, but they have disclosed user data to law enforcement in the past, so I don’t trust them. Mozilla says that they can’t, and I trust them.

Google does offer end-to-end encryption, with a separate "sync passphrase". I honestly suspect all of the major vendors actually do a good enough job here if you configure things right. Google's UX is crummy for it though, and I think iCloud has at least an optional account recovery feature that you can't really trust. So Firefox Sync is probably winning for user privacy, but it's not due to the lack of proper end-to-end encryption from the other vendors, it seems a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#215

Post by dralley » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

logicprog wrote: post #200

karolist wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

That post's points about Mozilla's source of revenue and expenditure on their CEO are good, but the rest is a politically motivated hit job. They spend the first few sections establishing that Mozilla has a ton of revenue, and then the best examples of misspent money they can bring up are utter peanuts in comparison to the revenue they literally just established Mozilla has. $300,000 is nothing compared to $600,000,0…

Lunduke once claimed that Mozilla supports terrorists because they donated money to a pro-privacy email service that he claimed was commonly used by Antifa.

I have a low opinion of Lunduke. Most of his criticisms are, if not entirely false, in extreme bad faith.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#216

Post by cubefox » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

smhenderson wrote: post #205

ajorgensen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to switch quite a few times over the years to Firefox and I still to this day consistently run into websites that are unusably broken on Firefox, do you have the same experience? I realize this probably speaks volumes to the need for more people to use browsers other than Chrome but its unfortunately frequent enough that I always end up switching back to Chrome after a few months.

I, similar to the parent, have very few issues on either my computers or phones. I run Firefox on several different OS's and I just don't have the issues you mention. Do you have some examples of websites that really behave that differently depending on the browser you're using? Having lived through the "best viewed with..." days I'd hoped we were past all that by now!

Google Images has problems with Firefox. If previewing several related pictures, the back button of the browser doesn't bring you back to the last image, but to somewhere else.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#217

Post by dralley » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #123

dralley wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh look, it's my least favorite HN trope. Comment A) "Screw Mozilla, all their funding comes from their Google Search deal, they're just Google in a mask" Comment B) "Screw Mozilla, they waste all this money on side projects (that would provide diversification and non-Google revenue streams) when they should be spending all of their effort on Firefox (which is effectively un-monetizable apart from the search deal - a…

no, the criticism of their side projects is NOT that they would provide diversification, it's that they're usually politically motivated feel-good marketing distractions with no chance of ever producing additional revenue except maybe by bringing users to Firefox by convincing them that Mozilla better-aligns with their worldview or whatever except oops all corporate politics are the same so the politically motivated…

I'm going to name some side projects, would you like to explain how the are merely "feel-good marketing"?

- Rust

- LetsEncrypt (collaboration)

- Opus (collaboration)

- AV1 (collaboration)

- Mozilla Common Voice database

- FirefoxOS

- MozillaVPN

- Lockwise

- Relay

- Bugzilla

- Servo

- Pocket

- MDN

- The VR projects - even if you think they're dumb they're hardly political feel-good stuff.

- The new privacy monitoring services

- The Scroll partnership (defunct because Twitter bought them and destroyed it)

Re: Why I use Firefox

#218

Post by charcircuit » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

mariusor wrote: post #157

charcircuit wrote: post #13

Gecko is my least favorite feature of Firefox because it doesn't properly handle websites like github where it doesn't show the full page forcing you to reopen the page in a new tab and close the bugged one. If Firefox doesn't have the resources to properly handle common sites they should just I switch to Blink to leverage a better maintained browser engine. It would also let Firefox invest more resources into differ…

I'll take your comment at face value, but implying that alternate rendering engines is just "duplicate work" instead of providing one of the few ways to fight against the full monopoly on the web by Google is plainly absurd.

>instead of providing one of the few ways to fight against the full monopoly on the web by Google is plainly absurd.

Firefox becoming a better browser and gaining market share is what will fight against a monopoly. Whether Firefox does that while using Gecko or some fork of Blink it doesn't really matter.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#219

Post by mostlysimilar » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

ajorgensen wrote: post #195

zahma wrote: post #19

I don't see why I would want to use anything else. Even if Chrome is marginally faster in an arbitrary benchmark test, I doubt I'd notice. And so far, I have no interoperability issues between Firefox on my laptop (macOS) and my iPhone (iOS), which runs Safari + Firefox Focus (because it's all the same webkit underneath). The add-on and plug-in marketplace is quite healthy, too. At the end of the day, I care about op…

I have tried to switch quite a few times over the years to Firefox and I still to this day consistently run into websites that are unusably broken on Firefox, do you have the same experience? I realize this probably speaks volumes to the need for more people to use browsers other than Chrome but its unfortunately frequent enough that I always end up switching back to Chrome after a few months.

Often claimed, never backed up with links.

Re: Why I use Firefox

#220

Post by jwells89 » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #212

This article is decent, because at least it tries giving some technical pros of Firefox. Activism doesn't work folks. To contribute, here's what Firefox does well, from my perspective: + History sync actually works — most Chromium browsers don't sync all history; + DNS-Over-HTTPS works in parallel to corporate DNS (fallback to system); + Tree-style-tabs; + Bookmarks management is better; + Very nice Reader View (Andr…

On the tree style tabs part, I wish Firefox had better hooks for vertical tab extensions (like TST) to use than the multipurpose sidebar. I’ve not once used the sidebar for anything but vertical tabs and it’s a nuisance to have to hide the unnecessarily huge sidebar header with usercss. Letting approved addons hide the default tab strip would be nice too.

It’s not like vertical tabs are that strange of a feature at this point… Vivaldi, Edge, and Orion have them built in and they’re the only option in Arc. I understand why Mozilla might not want to have to deal with maintaining a full vertical tabs feature themselves but at least give extension authors the tools they need.