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How to Firefox

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Re: How to Firefox

#301

Post by godshatter »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #212
stby wrote: post #4

The article implies that tabs, bookmarks, passwords can only be synchronised between Firefox installations and not with Zen or Libre (I assume this refers to LibreWolf?), but at least Zen can be connected to the Mozilla account and synchronises everything with the other connected Firefox, Firefox for Android, ... installations.

I'm eagerly awaiting Zen to enable tab groups/folders. I've been watching feat:9355, but its gotten bogged down in a debate about the whether tab folders in the tab bar should be the same as bookmarks, ala Arc. I personally did not like that Arc considered tabs and bookmarks to be the same because it made management and syncing a pita. Having to use a third script to export your bookmarks is not a good look.

I haven't used tab groups, is it like the indenting done in tree style tabs? I find workspaces and vertical tabs in Zen sufficient for my needs in organizing tabs, but I'm a complete amateur when it comes to the fine art of loading extreme numbers of multiple tabs from what I've seen of others.

Re: How to Firefox

#302

Post by everybodyknows »

WorldMaker wrote: post #271
iamkonstantin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure making a list that's been done time and time again here would make a difference. But if you're truly interested, here are my top 3: - Firefox comes packed with all kinds of telemetry and analytics turned on. - No workspaces/profiles. I know there are extensions that can enable various flavours of this functionality, but it's just too much overhead to experiment and test every-single-one. - Widgets! I lov…

> No workspaces/profiles. I know there are extensions that can enable various flavours of this functionality, but it's just too much overhead to experiment and test every-single-one. Most of it is built-in and these days there is generally only one recommended extension: Multi-Account Container. Containers (tabs in the same window with different cookie jars/etc) are built-in, the UI for working with them is not, and…

> Multi-Account Container

Last I looked, it was not possible to bind a bookmark to a preferred MAC.

Re: How to Firefox

#303

Post by stuaxo »

moffkalast wrote: post #207
giancarlostoro wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm about the same, I don't even know what the loading speeds issue is about, I still remember Firefox Quantum beating the daylights out of Chrome, and I don't know if Chrome ever fully caught up to Quantum? What's really funny is for ages Chrome would load the browser window even if the whole browser UI wasn't done loading, and sometime after Quantum, Firefox started doing the same trick to make you feel as though i…

What I've found recently is that Linux is surprisingly Firefox's achilles' heel. Canvas and WebGL run easily an order of magnitude slower than Chromium. Check with https://webglsamples.org if you don't believe it. All of it runs capped at 60 fps on Chrome for me, Firefox struggles to break 30 on mid tier settings in aquarium and stutters horribly throughout most of them. I'm sure it's fast at loading static sites, bu…

The recently work with DMABUF on Linux might help a lot of things get faster.

Re: How to Firefox

#304

Post by Sayrus »

exiguus wrote: post #240
mattlutze wrote: post #89

I am surprised how many people have so many problems with Firefox. I've never felt impeded by loading speeds, and my ADHD regularly has me forgetting to restart it, to the tune of 100+ tabs open across multiple desktops. My wimply little MacBook Pro doesn't seem to mind. The only downside I've found is that, because so many people just default to "Chrome or nothing," there's occasionally sites that have bugs because,…

My take is that Firefox is not very effective at marketing. For example, Chrome publishes articles like 'Chrome achieves highest score ever on Speedometer' (2024) [1]. I haven't found similar articles or any reliable scores for Firefox. Some computer magazines suggest that Firefox is in second place after Chrome in running Speedometer 3. For me, at least, it's hard to find any specific numbers. Also, it's important t…

Mozilla does sometimes. For instance 'Quick as a Fox: Firefox keeps getting faster'[2] from 2023 and the related articles in Mozilla Hacks[2]. They used to do that a lot more when Quantum was all the hype and had some marketing performance comparison[3] with Chrome a long time back. Recently, it feels like Mozilla is dropping that type of marketing to focus on the image of privacy and talk about some features.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/uncategorized/quick-as-a-fox-fir...

[2] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2023/10/down-and-to-the-right-fire...

[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-private-browsing...

Re: How to Firefox

#305

Post by josephd79 »

akazantsev wrote: post #30
paavope wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use profiles on Firefox daily and they work fine https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

The only way to access it with `about:profiles`? It looks like a joke. How could users possibly find this? UPD. The more I look at this, the worse it gets. Hidden under a special URL, requires you to launch the default profile before you can switch to another profile (yes-yes, there are command-line hacks). It's more like a user data manager for devs than profiles for users. Even containers look better than these pro…

what in the world are you talking about? you click settings in the upper right hand corner and its right there.

Re: How to Firefox

#306

Post by OkayPhysicist »

ReadCarlBarks wrote: post #280
throw7 wrote: post #171

The issue with firefox is sites don't develop or test on firefox and will outright just say use chrome/edge. e.g. on air india can't buy tickets (must use chrome, actually a _lot_ of india sites require chrome to just work), one of my work's agency website literal says on login to use chrome or edge. I mostly blame mozilla "leadership" for going off on ridiculous directions and identity politics. They've reaped what…

Use this extension created by a Mozilla employee: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/chrome-mask

THANK YOU. I've been running a Chrome User-Agent for a few years, but my highly-manually UA editing was obnoxious. This is just what I needed.

Re: How to Firefox

#307

Post by pavel_lishin »

Twirrim wrote: post #210
eclecticfrank wrote: post #80

Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome. I hope this will mean that in the long run Firefox (and other secondary browsers) will gain more users again. For me, Firefox is a solid piece of software. Works well in strict privacy mode, with uBlock Origin and Multi-Account Containers.

Multi-Account Containers is a major feature I can't sing the praises for enough. I use it all the time, both to isolate stuff to break cookie tracking, and to enable me to log into things with two different accounts without opening a separate browser, which happens more often than I'd have thought.

There's a few pain points with containers; whenever I'm browsing in a container tab, I wish CMD-T opened a new container tab, not my default tab. I haven't been able to find a setting for this :/

I also wish there were more keyboard shortcuts for opening links in specific containers, or re-opening a current tab in a different one.

I know you can set certain domains to always open in certain containers - fine for Facebook, when I occasionally have to use it - but annoying when I'm trying to do things in different (e.g.) Bluesky accounts.

Re: How to Firefox

#308

Post by WhyNotHugo »

mattlutze wrote: post #89

I am surprised how many people have so many problems with Firefox. I've never felt impeded by loading speeds, and my ADHD regularly has me forgetting to restart it, to the tune of 100+ tabs open across multiple desktops. My wimply little MacBook Pro doesn't seem to mind. The only downside I've found is that, because so many people just default to "Chrome or nothing," there's occasionally sites that have bugs because,…

> 100+ tabs open across multiple desktops. My wimply little MacBook Pro doesn't seem to mind.

There's a bug on Linux where background windows continue rendering, even if they're in an inactive workspace or not visible in any other way. This really hits performance, but it doesn't seem to be fixable due to some limitation on GTK3.

If I hide/resize my system status-bar, every single window gets resized to match the new available screen space. Firefox re-renders all content in all windows, causing multiple CPUs to spike to 100%.

See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1880467

In fact, there are a lot of bugs which are basically "unfixable due to limitations in GTK3". So the experience is likely quite different that on other platforms.

Regrettably, there don't seem to by any plans to move away from GTK in future.

Re: How to Firefox

#309

Post by WhyNotHugo »

eclecticfrank wrote: post #80

Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome. I hope this will mean that in the long run Firefox (and other secondary browsers) will gain more users again. For me, Firefox is a solid piece of software. Works well in strict privacy mode, with uBlock Origin and Multi-Account Containers.

> Lots of Firefox hate here, but little discussion about the articles kicker, which is the exclusion of uBlock Origin from Chrome.

I'll complain about Firefox a lot, because I'm exposed to all its issues. That doesn't mean I hate it: I see issues in all products that I use, even the ones that are really useful or essential. I'm sure I'm not unique in this aspect in the HN crowd.

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