Switching from Chrome to Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#221

Post by thibran » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

siliconpotato wrote: post #217

thibran wrote: post #175

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:prefer…

It's a good thing that you are actually able to tweak these things to your personal tastes.

Yes it is, and I'm thankful that it is possible.

There is – and always was – someone who gets paid to distract you from doing what you want to do. This is called advertising and we have seen on the web multiple very aggressive excesses here: pop-ups, auto playing sound/video and nowadays notification spam. What I'm trying to say here is, that you shouldn't need to be a nerd to get a pleasant browsing experience.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#222

Post by woranl » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

I would like to switch to Firefox too, but it just lacks some of the most key features. It cannot effectively create large blob from chunks through the use of Filesystem & FileWriter API. Yes, I can use IndexedDB for blob storage, but the time required to copy and paste chunks in/out of IndexedDB will grow exponentially for large blob. There is simply no other effective ways to build a large blob from chunks that can work in Firefox. This is why Firefox will always be slow on some modern web app.

All other major browsers support Filesystem & FileWriter API: https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#223

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

thibran wrote: post #221

siliconpotato wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing that you are actually able to tweak these things to your personal tastes.

Yes it is, and I'm thankful that it is possible. There is – and always was – someone who gets paid to distract you from doing what you want to do. This is called advertising and we have seen on the web multiple very aggressive excesses here: pop-ups, auto playing sound/video and nowadays notification spam. What I'm trying to say here is, that you shouldn't need to be a nerd to get a pleasant browsing experience.

If you limited your post to just the lines that you're talking about in this post, you'd have "install ublock" and "Notification Settings > Block new requests".

Not very damning, nor nerdy.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#224

Post by m-p-3 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

mschuetz wrote: post #219

thibran wrote: post #175

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:prefer…

> - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save I hate the default behaviour so much. What's wrong with asking me where to save the file? I almost certainly have a place in mind where the file should go.

I prefer to dump everything in the Downloads folder and move files if they're needed on a longer term.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#225

Post by m-p-3 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

wfdctrl wrote: post #216

thibran wrote: post #175

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:prefer…

You can set these settings using a user.js file, so you don't have to reconfigure everything over and over again.

Uh didn't know that, I'll have to redo my `about:config` tweaks in that format.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#226

Post by phjesusthatguy3 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

sir_brickalot wrote: post #161

philshem wrote: post #38

For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature “multi-account containers” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Unfortunately NoScript is not able to allow/deny selectively for containers. I block all Facebook domains with NoScript so I cant really use facebook in a container.

uMatrix is good for that. You can default block facebook scripts/cookies/etc. everywhere, but on facebook allow them. It's how I block google everywhere except when I'm logging into gmail.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#227

Post by ubercow13 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

Pimpus wrote: post #214

thibran wrote: post #175

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:prefer…

How does this make for a better "browsing experience"? It is just neurotic nitpicking. A good browsing experience means performance, security, minimal popups and minimal tracking. Firefox provides this OOTB now.

For example the notifications one improves browsing experience by eliminating spam notification popups from news sites

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#228

Post by rhlsthrm » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

r_singh wrote: post #97

I use Safari full-time and am pretty happy with it. Pinned tabs, the keyboard shortcuts, developer options, ghostery extension, I find everything pretty neat. Anyone else here feel the same?

I'm a full time Safari user. I love the "Share" button built in which lets me easily AirDrop and iMessage tabs I want to share between devices or with friends. It also feels faster on my MacBook and uses way less RAM. I open Chrome tabs only occasionally if I need specific extensions (Metamask for crypto stuff), run into webapps that simply work better on Chrome (Shopify for example), or to use the dev tools.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#229

Post by ilikepi » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

wfdctrl wrote: post #216

thibran wrote: post #175

Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience. Things I do: - about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session - about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ... - about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save - about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites - about:prefer…

You can set these settings using a user.js file, so you don't have to reconfigure everything over and over again.

Yep, if you don't want to use Sync, user.js is an alternative. It's also helpful for sharing settings across multiple profiles. (For the latter, I do wish there was support for including other files...)

There is a user.js project on github[1] maintained by ghacks.net community members that provides a source of documentation for many settings. It's also useful as a way to monitor new and deprecated settings.

[1]: https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#230

Post by juliend2 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

Not sure why, or if i'm the only one, but sometimes I have this problem with Firefox (latest) on Win10:

When I open a new tab, there is a ~50% chance that the URL i'm querying won't ever connect. As if there was no internet.

I tried to remove some open tabs (I have ~20 open tabs all the time) and it worked again.

When it happens, opening a new tab on Chrome always works, though. I wasn't using a proxy and my internet connexion is pretty stable and fast.

Restarting Firefox also helped, IIRC. But I never had such a problem with Chrome, when it was my main browser. Now, this happens every month or so with Firefox.