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Give Firefox a chance

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Re: Give Firefox a chance

#311

Post by oAlbe »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #57
petepete wrote: post #10

I switched back to Firefox from Chrome earlier this year, and the experience has been very positive. It performs well, feels snappy, the dev tools are on par with Chrome's and everything feels right. The only negatives are that container tabs are still taking a bit of getting used to (why can't I have a 'Work' window in which all the new tabs are 'Work' tabs by default?) and the initial migration of passwords was a b…

> why can't I have a 'Work' window in which all the new tabs are 'Work' tabs by default? Same. I've tried Firefox last month and it is the only no-go I've no. With Firefox profiles being a thing, I wonder if a front-end to manage them like in Chrome is in development.

You could solve this problem in two ways that are pretty easy to setup and handy to use, IMO.

1. You can open a new window, move the new tab in the "Work" container (if you use an extension [1] you can just type "co work" in the address bar), and use alt+c [2] to open new tabs in that window, ensuring they are all opened in your "Work" container.

2. You can create a separate profile for work, running "firefox -p" to first create it, and then create a desktop shortcut that links to that profile. This way you'll have two separate profiles on two separate Firefox "icons" that that you can launch at your will. There are ways to do this both on Windows and Linux (not sure about Mac, never used that), and the setup needs to happen only once. I've had separate Firefox profiles for years now that just keep working without any problem. I even ported some profile folders between different installs (same OS), and to my surprise they still didn't break.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-and-sw...

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-container...

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#312

Post by iamdamian »

dralley wrote: post #151
pnelson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I launch my browser with profiles instead of using containers. I have three at the moment: firefox --no-remote --profile "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/firefox/home" --class="browser-home" firefox --no-remote --profile "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/firefox/work" --class="browser-work" firefox --no-remote --profile "$(mktemp -d)"

Profiles and containers solve two different problems. Multiple profiles will keep websites that you only log into from one profile from leaving cookies that can be seen by the other profile, but containers prevent one website from leaving cookies that can be seen by any other website even on the same profile, and prevent that website from seeing any cookies other than their own.

According to this thread, they largely solve the same problem:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258432

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#313

Post by Qub3d »

frenchy wrote: post #221
vntok wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome has had NoScript equivalents for a while, you should try it again!

I suspect for most people who hadn't switched already, that ship has already sailed. Chrome had something of an edge over Firefox for a while with a more responsive UI, but since Firefox Quantum it hasn't really had anything besides some creepy Google integrations. Edit: Chromium is also easier to embed, but that doesn't really matter for the purposes of chosing a browser.

Its strange, for me. I remember getting super pumped about Chromium when it went live in '09. Then, somewhere along the line, I felt like a boiled frog.

Honestly, a big change for me was symbolically realized by The logo change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#/media/File:Chro...

It went from this space-age, nerdy little project to a cleaned up design that signified its shift to a position as a core Google product.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#314

Post by yoasif_ »

ZuLuuuuuu wrote: post #206
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the reason why majority of people are using Chrome and Safari is not because of speed, it is because of synchronization, I think most people use Chrome simply because they switched once and never looked back, especially when “lol other browsers use Chrome” is pretty much a meme. Firefox Sync is great and I don't think it's lacking some key feature Google offers.

Firefox Sync does not have synchronization of contacts, calendar or map locations.

There is a contact manager and calendar in Chrome? When did Chrome become a PIM?

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#315

Post by yoasif_ »

CryptoBanker wrote: post #52

I switched back to Chrome from Firefox. FF was slow, bloated, used all my RAM,no add on support (even for those add-ons who had an an FF product) Mobile sites, especially HN just don't work properly on HF. The simple act of collapsing posts often seems to overwhelm the browser on my Pixel. Not to mention there's this bug where videos create notifications on FF Android, and these notifications keep your phone alive fr…

Have you tried Firefox Preview? It may work better for you. You can download builds from https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/releases

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#316

Post by yoasif_ »

grecht wrote: post #34

I recently tried Firefox on a Windows machine, and noticed that the font rendering was much, much worse than in Chrome or Opera, it looked almost bold and was hard to read. I guess it’s got something to do with subpixel hinting. Has anybody else noticed that?

Firefox uses your Windows font settings (Chrome does not). Have you tried playing with Cleartype tuner?

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#317

Post by yoasif_ »

igetspam wrote: post #11

I use FF as my daily driver. I am forcing myself to do it because I value privacy. Unfortunately FF doesn't make it easy. Chrome may be a memory hog but FF gets OOM killed multiple times a day and every night. I'm not a light user but I'm also not a tab junky. The big consumers are the 3-5 gmail tabs and the 3+ slack tabs. Other than that, it's normal browsing. Chrome ate all my memory but FF just dies.

If Firefox is using an unexpected amount of RAM, report a bug by following the steps below:

1. Open about:memory?verbose in a new tab.

2. Click Measure and save...

3. Attach the memory report to a new bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&comp...

4. Paste your about:support info (Click "Copy text to clipboard") to your bug.

> If you are experiencing a bug, the best way to ensure that something can be done about your bug is to report it in Bugzilla. This might seem a little bit intimidating for somebody who is new to bug reporting, but Mozillians are really nice! http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2014/08/14/diffusion-of-responsibilit...

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#318

Post by yoasif_ »

illumin8 wrote: post #158

Firefox has way better privacy controls than Chrome, however, their track record on security is abysmal. In fact, a 0-day was just found last week targeting Coinbase employees. I wish I could switch to Firefox for privacy reasons, but good security is table stakes and Firefox just doesn't have nearly the security credentials that Chrome does at the moment. This definitely could change in the future, and I hope it doe…

>In fact, a 0-day was just found last week targeting Coinbase employees.

And this happened to Chrome last month: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-reveals-chrome-zero-day...

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#319

Post by ghettoimp »

Spivak wrote: post #297
mathgeek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For passwords the browser's built in management is inferior to password managers. This is a good thing. Browsers should be good at browsing. Password managers should be good at managing passwords. The two should have API’s as necessary to interact so that the user can choose what’s best for them.

Technical differences aside, why is it a good thing that the password manager shipped with Firefox isn't as good as most 3rd party password managers? It seems odd to prefer that software be bad. Lockwise, which admittedly requires an add-on but integrates with the built-in password manager, I think is pretty on par with its contemporaries.

FWIW. I think keeping the password manager separate from the browser makes wonderful sense.

- There are many times you need a password when you are not in a browser. For instance, on my phone where I don't even have FF installed, my bank's app can still get its password filled in automatically with LastPass.

- Using a separate password manager means you can use multiple browsers with no loss of password access. On my laptop I regularly use both Chrome and Firefox, and I have access to my passwords in both. On my phone, I can use my passwords from Safari.

I may be biased. My wife and share a LastPass account for all of our passwords. We have so many accounts, I can't imagine managing it any other way. Having access to the passwords on all our devices is really great.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#320

Post by nvrspyx »

eitland wrote: post #196
nvrspyx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If UX designers are designing unguessable interfaces, then they’re not doing a good job. A good UX designer would make it better than guessable, they’d make it mostly intuitable so you don’t have to guess for most things. As much as I’m against Google and that I use FF, Chrome/Chromium (and derivatives that don’t change too much of the UI) does have the best UX (IMO) with Safari as a second, amongst the browsers I’ve…

> Chrome/Chromium (and derivatives that don’t change too much of the UI) does have the best UX (IMO) with Safari as a second, amongst the browsers I’ve tried. It's almost as if different people are different and have different ux preferences and expectations :-)

Sure, which is why I put in (IMO)
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