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How to Firefox

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Re: How to Firefox

#401

Post by nuker »

CivBase wrote: post #378
nuker wrote: post #323

- June 2024. Mozilla acquires Anonym, an ad metrics firm. - July 2024. Mozilla adds Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), feature is enabled by default. Developed in cooperation with Meta (Facebook). - Feb 2025. Mozilla updates its Privacy FAQ and TOS. "does not sell data about you." becomes "... in the way that most people think about it".

Sorry, but I can't stand posts like this and they always come up in discussions about Firefox. If you have a better alternative than Firefox, please say so. Mozilla has many problems and has done bad stuff. Firefox is better than Chrome for most users. These are not mutually exclusive statements.

It is just facts.

I use Safari with Wipr and iCloud Private Relay, better than FF if you have Apple devices.

Re: How to Firefox

#402

Post by chao- »

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…

Adding some data points to the sibling comments:

Linux Mint 22 (X11 + Cinnamon)

Firefox 139.0.4

Integrated Graphics (AMD Ryzen 7 5800U)

At 1440p 60Hz monitor, every test that listed FPS showed 60fps, and all others looked the same level of smoothness as Chrome.

Re: How to Firefox

#403

Post by ksec »

Let's ignore problems with Mozilla's management or board for a minutes.

To most of the problems people describe on HN, have you file anything on bugzilla? Even if you dont file it on bugzilla you could at least describe your problem in full on HN, which you can always copy and paste back in the future when someone ask you once again. At least someone will have a record somewhere.

1. Are you on Linux? Or is the issue specific to Android?

2. Performance Issues? Where? How? At least describe it? Firefox since e10s and Quantum landed fully has been as fast if not even faster than Chrome. Chrome has since caught up again. Generally there shouldn't be noticeable performance difference in day to day usage other than some benchmarks or Gaming, WebGL / WebGPU scenario.

3. Websites having issues? Which one?

Re: How to Firefox

#404

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #398
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #311

Having tested uMatrix and uBlock Origin for years, and having tried many other Firefox extensions, IMO the best Firefox advantage is neither of those nor any other extension. It is a rarely discussed about:config option called network.dns.forceResolve Chrome desktop also has something like this, but it's a command-line option. Firefox OTOH allows one to select a global domain-to-IP mapping while the browser is runnin…

I dabbled in the cli browser space but a lot was left to be desired due to the state of the modern web. I was having trouble with HN threads even. They would lose indentation structure for the comments and appear all one after another. Mostly dabbled in links and w3

I actually dislike the indented structure. I disable tables in links.

Non-hyperlinked HN can also be retrieved and read without using a browser, e.g., using the Firebase JSON endpoint. I can filter the JSON into formatted text the way I like it.

For anything other than reading, I can use the command line: short shell scripts I wrote for retrieving, submitting, replying and editing.

I also filter HTML to SQL and have the HN pages^1 stored in SQLite database. I prefer searching (not fulltext) using sqlite3 over using Algolia.

1. Fields are: id,status,url,title,points,user,time,comments

For me, the whole idea of not using a popular browser is that is is _different_. As I mentioned, these smaller programs can be more robust and can handle many MBs of HTML at a time without a hiccup. There is no auto-loading of resources, no CSS or Javascript. There are no "web sockets". The web developer's control is minimised and the computer owner's control is maximised. All websites look more or less the same. That's a feature not a bug, IMHO.

If I wanted to try to recreate what so-called "modern" browsers do, potentially giving control over one's entire computer to "web developers", then I would not be making HTTP requests outside the browser and using a text-only browser to read HTML.

At this point I am heavily biased. I have been reading text on a black, textmode screen (no X11) for so long that the color and indentation on HN threads in a graphical browser is ugly to me. Perhaps it is difficult for a graphical browser user to switch to a text-only browser for reading HN because, if nothing else, it is so unfamiliar. It is certainly difficult for me to switch from a text-only HTML reader to a graphical browser for reading HN. It is very awkward.

As a text-only www user, I find that the so-called "modern" web is continually becoming _more_ not less text-friendly. (Many HN commenters complain about so-called "SPAs", I welcome them.) Because, in general, more and more websites and every "web app", have a resource serving plain text, usually JSON, sometimes CSV, XML, GraphQL, etc. The early www had text files, and I still like the old formatting that was used back then, but the text was not as structured as what I get today.

Re: How to Firefox

#405

Post by rererereferred »

brooke2k wrote: post #317
xboxnolifes wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube will after a while.

I use youtube a worrying amount, all through firefox (and I am also an ADHD 1000 tabs open person), and I have never had this experience across multiple computers.

Youtube freezes for me on Windows with Firefox. Sometimes it freezes the whole browser so added a rule to block it in uBo and use another browser for it (which also helps me reduce my time on youtube thanks to the added friction). I don't know if its an issue with my specific hardware or what. In Mac and Linux (different PC) it works fine.

Re: How to Firefox

#406

Post by xboxnolifes »

brooke2k wrote: post #317
xboxnolifes wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube will after a while.

I use youtube a worrying amount, all through firefox (and I am also an ADHD 1000 tabs open person), and I have never had this experience across multiple computers.

You need to keep the same youtube tab open and navigate the website a considerable amount on it for it to occur. I use the same tabs repeatedly, and by the end of the day I get an incredibly sluggish site. Not the end of the world, since I just close the tab and start a new one, but it does exist.

Firefox has had documented issues with youtube for the better part of a decade at least.

Re: How to Firefox

#407

Post by comprev »

sebstefan wrote: post #217
perlgeek wrote: post #99

One of my main reasons for staying with Firefox is that in the long term, I think it's good to have a diversity in browser engines. Back when I started web development, there were standards, but nearly everybody just coded to what Internet Explorer supported. Which I really hated :-) In the past few years, I've seen the occasional "works best with Chrome" website, which worries me, but so far it hasn't been too bad.…

> In the past few years, I've seen the occasional "works best with Chrome" website, which worries me, but so far it hasn't been too bad. Microphone & webcam support, screensharing and stuff like that almost always shit the bed for me. Slack, teams, they don't care to check if their shit works on firefox.

As Chrome has slowly become the default browser in enterprise environments it makes sense to cater for the _paying_ customers of Slack, Teams, Jira, etc. and they become the focus of product development.

It didn't feel that long ago when Internet Explorer was the primary target for development.

Re: How to Firefox

#408

Post by ddejohn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #307
Twirrim wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Face…

Not having subdomains work for container assignments is a baffling design decision. It's a well-known issue and oft-requested feature that the devs seemingly have no plan to fix. It's incredibly frustrating.

> whenever I'm browsing in a container tab, I wish CMD-T opened a new container tab

Not exactly what you're looking for, but Temporary Containers (no longer maintained, fwiw) at least will open every new tab in a new temporary container that will be wiped after a configurable amount of time after closing.

Re: How to Firefox

#409

Post by bobbob27 »

godelski wrote: post #392
charcircuit wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is actually not a good test It is a realistic user scenario, which in my opinion makes it a good test. The real world performance is what matters here. The user doesn't care if technically there is some trick that is being used to "cheat."

> The user doesn't care if technically there is some trick that is being used to "cheat." You framed the "benchmark" around performance, not perceived performance. Those are two very different things. We're on HN, so don't be surprised when people correct you or nitpick. Either accept the clarification (if it is correct), clarify what you originally intended to say (without being overly defensive), or move on. Beside…

Uhhh... he followed your own advice better than you did.
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