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Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

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Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#361

Post by GreenWatermelon »

utybo wrote: post #283

Please, Firefox, for the love of everything, add a good, easy, natively integrated, one-click-to-enable vertical tab list like Edge's. That's the only thing keeping me on Microsoft Edge and it's a dealbreaker for me. The extensions that add ones are just not as good.

Vertical tabs are The Reason why I stick to Edge despite the constant annoyances Microsoft throws my way. That, and the fact I can still hide most annoying things (like the tools sidebar and bing chat and stuff.

Has has also gotten split screen tabs which is awesome, though I keep forgetting about it and don't use it.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#362

Post by DanielHB »

cuSetanta wrote: post #278
ggjkvcxddd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Really? That seems hard to believe. I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now. This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I…

Built in translation is a big one that I rarely see mentioned. I was long time fan of FF while living in Ireland and the UK, but when I moved to Sweden and later Germany I was effectively forced to switch to Chrome. Being required to interact with websites in other languages regularly meant that FF (circa 2018) was just not an option. The chrome experience for translating webpages was vastly superior to any other bro…

I am in a similar situation I actually switched to Brave a few months ago and while the translate function is there, it is VERY slow for some reason and seems to work less often than Chrome.

I wonder if I am just imagining things or if they use a different service for translation or, if the same, if it is being throttled.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#363

Post by thejohnconway »

patates wrote: post #334

Although I personally use Firefox and actively promote its use, I believe that a significant number of users may not be aware of the developments and will continue to stick with Chrome. From a pragmatic standpoint, it makes sense to advocate for the rights of Chrome users as well, even in the presence of alternatives.

The best way to help Chrome users is to get a significant number of people to stop using Chrome, so they Google needs to compete for users properly again, and backs off some of these changes.

Complaining without action won’t do anything.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#364

Post by _cenw »

Semaphor wrote: post #326
eloisant wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way profiles (or tab containers) work in Firefox sucks compared to Chrome honestly. I could never find a way to open in the correct profile from external applications.

Containers are amazing imo. And profiles? -P "profile name" is not that hard.

It's pretty much impossible to have them show up as separate taskbar/dock items. The workaround has always been to run Developer Edition, but that's still not great OS integration. Edge even allows you to pin profiles, and adds the profile icon in the corner.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#365

Post by nickelpro »

It's weird to me that no one on Hacker News has pointed out the MV3 version of uBlock works fine. At least I haven't noticed any difference except for the rare minor annoyance of cosmetic filtering (which gorhill removed for political, not technical reasons)

Whatever you feel about the politics surrounding MV2 and webRequest, MV3 is by no means blocking uBlock, or ending adblock on Chrome across the board. That's FUD.

It's far more convincing to speak about the on-the-ground technical facts than the paranoia of these gossip rags.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#366

Post by pyrale »

prox wrote: post #261
girvo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-technical users don't give a crap about how fast or slow their browser was: if they did, they would've switched from IE to Firefox the first go 'round. To downplay the fact that google advertised Chrome on google.com is to rewrite history, in my opinion.

It’s not rewriting history. Firefox really was a slow browser in that time, especially with lots of tabs open. It was only with the Quantum (?) engine that FF became a lot faster. Webpages loading that bit snappier really was a big deal back then, probably for a lot of developers especially. Google was still riding on the “Do No Evil” vibes till about 2012-2014 I would wager.

> Webpages loading that bit snappier really was a big deal back then

No, it wasn't.

Quick reminder, the issue with IE was webpages loading broken, or not loading at all.

People that used that crap didn't switch because "Chrome was a bit snappier than FF", they switched because all of a sudden every webpage, many sotfware install wizard, and even billboards on the street told them to switch to Chrome. Some "toolbars" installed it without asking. They probably never had heard of FF or Opera before.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#367

Post by usrbinbash »

I use both Firefox and Brave.

No, I am not disturbed by Braves "involvement with crypto". It took me all of 3 minutes to deactivate every crypto-feature the browser has, they are pretty obvious in the settings. It forces nothing on me, works great, and the best builtin anti-tracking features of a non-TOR browser I have ever seen.

I have yet to check out Vivaldi browser.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#368

Post by JonathanBeuys »

jorams wrote: post #318
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #33

My problem with Firefox is that a new Firefox windows can only be launched from the same environment (or only from a child process?) from which the first window has been started. Even the same user who started FF cannot launch a new window from a new shell. That constantly interferes with my workflow. Example: Say firefox has been started from the Destop already and now I want to start a new Firefox window from a roo…

To make this work you need to set the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR environment variable to the same value it has in the environment Firefox is running in. For example: sudo -u desktopuser XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 firefox --new-window

Please try this for yourself. It does not work. Gives the same "Firefox is already running, but is not responding." dialog.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#369

Post by FirmwareBurner »

cuSetanta wrote: post #278
ggjkvcxddd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Really? That seems hard to believe. I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now. This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I…

Built in translation is a big one that I rarely see mentioned. I was long time fan of FF while living in Ireland and the UK, but when I moved to Sweden and later Germany I was effectively forced to switch to Chrome. Being required to interact with websites in other languages regularly meant that FF (circa 2018) was just not an option. The chrome experience for translating webpages was vastly superior to any other bro…

Same for another cross-EU migrant here.

Moving countries and languages means the translate function becomes a priceless necessity on a daily basis, and Chrome's and Edge's built-in translation features are second to none, so I switched away from FF when I moved country. Firefox third party translation addons exist but they always felt clunky and flaky being often slower and sometimes failing where Chrome and Edge would breeze through.

Better privacy is nice but convenience and saving time and frustration is nicer. Beret me all you want but it's not a hill I'm willing to die on.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#370

Post by izacus »

shiroiuma wrote: post #268
subtra3t wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is "extortion" if you are asked to pay for a service you use? A service that is available for free and is very hardware-intensive, mind you.

If they want to charge for it, they're free to put it completely behind a paywall with accounts requiring sign-in, just like Netflix does. The problem is they want it both ways: they want to give it out for free, but with annoying ads, but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads. Where I live, people regularly stand on the street in busy pedestrian areas and hand out free packets of tissues with a piece o…

And yet Mozilla also wants it both ways - have a free browser and still be paid to develop it. What gives?
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