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Switching from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#221

Post by crossroadsguy »

matsemann wrote: post #4

I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems". For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve. Ne…

Yes. You need to sacrifice. Almost zero of my banking and credit card websites work flawlessly on Firefox which does so on Chrome. So that’s a huge enough sacrifice for me — the end user.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#222

Post by jlokier »

reaperducer wrote: post #69
matsemann wrote: post #4

I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems". For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve. Ne…

The thing that keeps me from using Firefox is that it doesn't use certain standard macOS interface methods. That keeps me from using macOS's built-in keybinding system to change tabs with the touch of a function key. Every other program I use from Finder to my database manager allows me to switch tabs with one button. Firefox has no way to accomplish this, which would make it an interruption to my muscle memory and t…

I'm not sure if this fits what you want with "allows me to switch tabs with one button", but in macOS Firefox keys ⌘1 to ⌘9 (cmd-1 to cmd-9) switch to tabs 1 to 9 respectively in the current window. ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ (alt-cmd-left and alt-cmd-right) switch to tabs left/right.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#223

Post by reaperducer »

jlokier wrote: post #222
reaperducer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that keeps me from using Firefox is that it doesn't use certain standard macOS interface methods. That keeps me from using macOS's built-in keybinding system to change tabs with the touch of a function key. Every other program I use from Finder to my database manager allows me to switch tabs with one button. Firefox has no way to accomplish this, which would make it an interruption to my muscle memory and t…

I'm not sure if this fits what you want with "allows me to switch tabs with one button", but in macOS Firefox keys ⌘1 to ⌘9 (cmd-1 to cmd-9) switch to tabs 1 to 9 respectively in the current window. ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ (alt-cmd-left and alt-cmd-right) switch to tabs left/right.

That's two buttons, and different from how every single other program in my computer is configured, which is why I use Duck, instead.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#224

Post by r00fus »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #221
matsemann wrote: post #4

I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems". For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve. Ne…

Yes. You need to sacrifice. Almost zero of my banking and credit card websites work flawlessly on Firefox which does so on Chrome. So that’s a huge enough sacrifice for me — the end user.

Name them. All of mine do fine. Anecdotes are not data.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#225

Post by jlokier »

Liquix wrote: post #109
TechPlasma wrote: post #107

I recently switched over and am quite happy with Firefox all in all. My only gripe is the loss of Tab Groups (I'm a tab hoarder) and I haven't been able to find a decent replacement.

Tree Style Tab is incredible for grouping and nesting tabs. Heavily used by tab hoarders https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Unfortunately, as a tab hoarder myself, I had to remove Tree Style Tabs when I figured out it was the single reason Firefox was taking about 1 second after clicking to do actions like open a new tab or switch tab, and generally higher than ideal CPU usage. When I disabled it, everything got so much faster, it was like getting a new browser.

So I switched to Sidebery, which seemed much faster at first and I still have it enabled sometimes. But after a while and many tests to be sure, I found Sidebery was the single reason Firefox was taking an extra 10GB or more RAM. Just today, I opened about ten Hacker News tabs for an afternoon's read, and the RAM usage crept up from 18GB to 28GB. These are text-only sites as you know, and like most people I didn't read the articles only the HN comments :-) So that's a lot of unexplained RAM. I disabled Sidebery in that window and the memory usage crept back down to 18GB. (If I launch Telegam in a Firefox window with Sidebery enabled it goes up to 67GB then crashes as my SSD is too full for that much swap!). If Sidebery is disabled all along, the memory usage doesn't creep up like that.

These are figures reported by iStat Menus on macOS on my laptop. The swapping induced by the higher RAM usage caused scrolling to be extremely janky, as well as editing in forms and text boxes.

So unfortunately for me, to have a reasonable browsing experience, I found I can't use either of the good tab-sidebar extensions Tree Style Tabs or Sidebery with Firefox at the moment, each for a different reason.

I haven't seen other people reporting these issues, and each one took me a while to recognise. Therefore I asume these issues are related in some way to the total numbe of tabs and/or windows I have and that most people aren't affected (enough to matter), or those affected haven't found the cause.

There are some tab group extensions, but I found Simple Tab Groups lost hundreds of my tabs several times, with no indication that it had lost them (they just weren't there when I went to find them later), so I stopped using it.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#226

Post by dataflow »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #26
dataflow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never had problems with font rendering Okay, so what's the logical conclusion here? That the person is lying? The font rendering is very much off, some people just don't notice or don't care. Denying something others see with their own eyes doesn't help anybody.

As a 15+ years Firefox user: What is "very much off" about Firefox' font rendering? For me it's the opposite, Chrome's rendering looks completely off to me - thin and it looks like the ClearType effect is set to 11. On the other hand, Firefox' font rendering in that screenshot looks like native Windows font rendering to me.

> Firefox' font rendering in that screenshot looks like native Windows font rendering to me.

How?!

This is how example.com renders: https://i.imgur.com/MFo7ACg.png

Pay attention to how the word "illustrative" renders: https://i.imgur.com/lFJIEZG.png

See e.g. the boldness on e.g. the first "l"? Firefox's clearly has two very dark vertical strokes in adjacent pixels -- one black, one dark blue right next to it. Its rendering is substantially bolder than Windows's. I can understand if you personally prefer that, but how can you claim they look the same?!

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#227

Post by dataflow »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #184
rjmunro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "very much off" for font rendering is that it is relative to what you are used to, not relative to any actual standard font rendering. If you've been using Firefox a while, Chrome will look off. If you've been using Chrome, Firefox will look off.

Maybe I am reading too much into the sentence but to me, "some people just don't notice or don't care" implies that there is something objectively broken about it that can be quantified.

There is. I just posted a screenshot and explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37231149

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#228

Post by SushiHippie »

neals wrote: post #13

I've always found the Firefox devtools be a little less 'quality of life' like. Just my opinion. Haven't used it in a few years. But for me, I just live in devtools, you know. As most of you here, probably. Opinions?

Discussed two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37198603

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#229

Post by dataflow »

crazygringo wrote: post #108
unethical_ban wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"off" implies an error. Which browser does it correctly? Having used Vivaldi and Firefox in close succession I never noticed a difference.

No, "off" in this case merely implies different from what you're used to. This is aesthetic preference, there's no such thing as "correct". It goes back to the old debate on Mac vs. Windows font rendering -- do you like pixel alignment or do you like letterform accuracy? There's no right answer.

> No, "off" in this case merely implies different from what you're used to.

Kind of enough, but...

> This is aesthetic preference, there's no such thing as "correct".

"Correct" for the purposes of this discussion could be the normal OS rendering, and deviation from that is what would be "off"-ness.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#230

Post by ghusto »

luuurker wrote: post #187
ghusto wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this pop up a few times in this post. What's the use case for different extensions etc.?

Personal vs work profiles, for example. My work profile has uBlock Origin with stricter rules which would break some sites/tools I use for work. I also redirect Twitter to Nitter, use a different password manager, etc. For bookmarks, it's more a question of not wanting to have personal stuff together with work stuff. Then there's some settings that works on one profile but would cause issues (or annoyances) on the ot…

Gothya, thanks, I understand now.

> but stopped after searching for stuff on Google and YouTube on the container I had my work Google account logged in

Thought I'd mention though, that this is one of the areas I find containers a life-saver. Google's handling of multiple accounts is so badly broken, that I only ever log into a single account on a single container. Easy to keep work and personal Google separate then.

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