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Give Firefox a chance

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Re: Give Firefox a chance

#321

Post by Aelius »

dredmorbius wrote: post #272
paulryanrogers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree Style Tabs is a popular one. Though none can take away the Tabs in title bar without manually installed CSS hacks.

$ cat userChrome.css /* Mozilla chrome (UI) styling */ /* Hide tabs bar * * Fri Nov 17 12:23:47 CST 2017 * https://superuser.com/questions/1268732/how-to-hide-tab-bar-tabstrip-in-firefox-57-quantum * https://www.ghacks.net/2017/09/27/tree-style-tab-is-a-webextension-now/ */ #tabbrowser-tabs { visibility: collapse !important; }

Rather than simply disabling the tabs, I find it useful to conditionally disable them:

``` #main-window:not([customizing]):not([tabsintitlebar="true"]) #toolbar-menubar[inactive="true"] + #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse !important; } ```

This snippet shows tabs when in "customize" mode, so you can access elements from addons placed on the tab bar by default. It also shows tabs when the menubar is showing: tap alt to peek, enable menubar to have vanilla access to tabs again. Finally, if you use the setting "tabs in titlebar", tabs are not disabled.

Doing it this way enforces sensible behavior and gives you escape hatches that don't require editing CSS and restarting the browser.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#322

Post by Lazare »

PatrolX wrote: post #246
Lazare wrote: post #59

I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox (right after the Quantum project landed, and Firefox was meant to be a lot faster), but found FF to still be bloated, slow, and painful to use. A couple weeks ago I made another try to switch back to FF, and I have found the experience to be very pleasant this…

Firefox 67 is switchworthy. I've used nothing but Chrome since forever and I've never been a fan of FF until 67 came out, it's definitely worthy of trying it out for a week. I haven't used Chrome since FF 67 and I'm not missing it.

Yes, FF 67 does seem to be a whole new beast.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#323

Post by irrational »

chank wrote: post #310
Lazare wrote: post #59

I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox (right after the Quantum project landed, and Firefox was meant to be a lot faster), but found FF to still be bloated, slow, and painful to use. A couple weeks ago I made another try to switch back to FF, and I have found the experience to be very pleasant this…

This kind of post comes up every few weeks here on HN. I also revisit FF every once in a while, last time being when all the news went about Chrome possibly breaking ad-blockers. Chromes UX is still better than FF, IMO.

I think this is just what you are accustomed to. I use FF as my main browser. Anytime I use Chrome it drives me nuts because the UX sucks. But, the truth is that Chrome's UX probably doesn't really suck, I'm just not accustomed to it.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#324

Post by stockkid »

It is indeed sad to see the market share of Firefox declining. At the same time, I understand why; even though I use Firefox, I constantly notice that there are many useful areas in which Chrome works far better than Firefox. Those areas include profiling, debugging service worker, etc. Although I want to support Firefox by switching to it 100%, it is simply impossible when I want to get jobs done.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#325

Post by st3fan »

stockkid wrote: post #324

It is indeed sad to see the market share of Firefox declining. At the same time, I understand why; even though I use Firefox, I constantly notice that there are many useful areas in which Chrome works far better than Firefox. Those areas include profiling, debugging service worker, etc. Although I want to support Firefox by switching to it 100%, it is simply impossible when I want to get jobs done.

Regular users don’t use any of those features. Chrome is eating everyone’s market share because they are literally spending billions of dollars on it.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#326

Post by Jonnax »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #106

Chrome on iPhone is so restricted by Apple's rules that I found switching from it to be extremely easy. Working on moving to Firefox on desktop, it's my default browser and whathaveyou, but I must admit any time I get confused by something I instinctively flip back to chrome. With that level of a struggle, I can only imagine how hard it'd be to get more casual users to switch over. Anyone able to tell me how much of…

Currently there's a rewrite in development for Firefox Android:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix

The difference between the nightlies of this and the current Firefox Android is night and day.

Perhaps wait until it's out?

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#327

Post by aduitsis »

ben509 wrote: post #191
aduitsis wrote: post #95

Even as we are headed for a monoculture where the only existing browser will be for all intents and purposes controlled by one or more very big companies, one can read various complaints on HN regarding Firefox battery usage, font rendering, development facilities, etc. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and of course people have the right to complain about whatever they wish. But, can we please all of us stop prete…

I think a person pursuing a privacy agenda would still want to raise those other complaints, though. The reason is that while a technically inclined person probably has the means to cope with them, the point of a privacy agenda is broader: it wants to make privacy something everyone does and expects, to hit a critical mass. And technical barriers to adoption of privacy-enhancing technology are the obvious obstacles.…

That's what I mean, thank you. Phrasing it like "what we're saying doesn't line up with what we're doing" is a better way to express it.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#328

Post by ray_z »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #278
Lazare wrote: post #59

I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago because Chrome has a better UX (faster, snappier, cleaner UI). A couple years ago I tried to switch back to Firefox (right after the Quantum project landed, and Firefox was meant to be a lot faster), but found FF to still be bloated, slow, and painful to use. A couple weeks ago I made another try to switch back to FF, and I have found the experience to be very pleasant this…

Firefox is fast, not noticeably faster though as Chrome seems to be a bit more aggressive with caching, and Chrome has better UI. I also prefer Chrome's autocomplete and search bar. Firefox is good, maybe even technically better these days, but Chrome is still more pleasant to use.

> Chrome has better UI

if you are talking about buttons next to the address bar, like the home button, then you can customize that area and let it look nearly identical to Chrome.

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#329

Post by torstenvl »

Every once in a while, I decide to give Firefox a try, but I always find it wanting.

- UI responsiveness is poor. Scrolling through the about:config window feels like I'm drunk. If they can't get the row highlighting to keep up with the mouse cursor, they should just turn it off.

- Setting up keyword search is tedious. Import from Chrome should allow importing all the search engines, either into the Firefox search engine functionality or into a bookmark folder with keywords.

- Setting up security is tedious. The previous functionality of importing certificates via "Open with..." leads to this: https://imgur.com/H2V2bUn

- The UI is ugly. Look at the drop-shadow in that same screenshot at https://imgur.com/H2V2bUn

EDIT: Went through the tedious process of installing DoD certificates into Firefox, and it hangs about half the time on Marine Corps websites... and 100% of the time on OWA. It's completely unusable for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Give Firefox a chance

#330

Post by TheArcane »

dtroode wrote: post #183
edraferi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same experience. Switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago, tried and was disappointed by the initial Quantum release, tried Firefox again with the “Chrome is killing uBlock Origin” announcement, very pleased this time. My main gripe with Firefox at the moment is Sync. It just doesn’t sync everything you need. My Firefox profile is highly customized, with a lot of extensions that all have their own complex…

Yes. Sync isn't so good. Now I am going to create a list of FF minuses

Post it to /r/firefox when you're done!
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