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Switch from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#471

Post by JoshMnem »

inyorgroove wrote: post #455
JoshMnem wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a better way in Firefox. In Firefox, go to Preferences -> Search and click on "Add search bar in toolbar". Also uncheck "Show search suggestions in address bar results". Then ctrl-l will only autocomplete URLs and ctrl-k will search. Once you're in the search box, press TAB to cycle through your search providers. You can add additional search providers easily.

Slightly better still not there. If I have 15 search providers I have to press TAB 15 times to get to the last one, that is tiresome. I can search amazon/ebay/npm/rubygems/mdn/etc without looking at the screen or keyboard with chrome. I have probably >10 search engines I use daily.

You can set custom keywords that are the same as on Chrome. You just won't need to press TAB. I don't use that feature, but it's described here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

I didn't think about adding sites like rubygems and mdn, but that's a good idea.

Edit: I just tried it and it works. Example: create a bookmark in Firefox and change the URL to the one below. Set the keyword to "r" in the bookmarks editor. Then you can type `r devise` in the address bar to search rubygems.

    https://rubygems.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=%S

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#472

Post by zanny »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #243

If you forked Chrome, how hard would it be to change it do DRM'd video however Firefox does? I'm not saying forking Chrome would be easy, it's complicated software, I think it would require a lot of labor to keep it competitive over the long term, which is the real barrier. But I'm not sure if the DRM is an insurmountable barrier, Firefox plays that same video somehow , it should be at least theoretically possible to…

You can use Widevine with Chromium if you install it as an extension.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#473

Post by stronglikedan »

If I could just get it to start up as reliably as Chrome, I would. Instead, I have to hope I won't get the "black window" on startup, where I have to play a cat and mouse game of killing the process and restarting it until it works. I do use FF for some things, like HN, but unfortunately, I must use Chrome when I just need things to work right away on the first try.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#474

Post by wishinghand »

gosseyn wrote: post #252
marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

I used to have Firefox and Vivaldi ...but honestly I used Vivaldi mainly...when I heard that even Microsoft was going to use chromium I realized...Firefox is literally the last front ! I installed Firefox and started using it as my main browser! What I miss the most is Vivaldi speed dial and bookmarks. Add-ons aren't always a solution ! I miss Netscape days...internet wasn't a megacorp business playground :( !

I looked up Vivaldi Speed Dial. It looks like the same sort of thing Firefox, Chrome, and Safari have where a new tab has a pinned list of favorite or most visited sites. What does Vivaldi do that I'm not seeing?

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#475

Post by asadotzler »

dccoolgai wrote: post #459
marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

The day the Web sold its soul. Such a disappointment when TBL came out in support of that. People who knew better tried to warn us, but they all got shouted down and told there "was no other choice" b/c content creators were going to try an lock down with extensions and it would somehow be worse.

Not with extensions, with plug-ins, and they were already doing it. Flash and Silverlight came with DRM for any publisher that wanted to use it. Many did.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#476

Post by gruez »

marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

>your new browser won't work with most internet video

"most internet video"... by what metric? Hours watched? Catalog size? I find it unlikely that DRM videos outnumber non-DRM videos by any reasonable metric.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#477

Post by pnathan »

I use cloud profiles heavily. All bookmarks, history, plugins. However, if ads get re-enabled for Chrome, then I am definitely going to have to figure out how to port myself back to Firefox. Very, very, very, annoying.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#478

Post by RussianCow »

vbezhenar wrote: post #415
marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

"Most internet videos" probably is overstatement. I'm watching youtube, pornhub and twitch and I don't think that it requires any DRM. The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway.

> The only service with DRM I'm aware of is Netflix and it's terrible anyway.

Ha! Tell that to their 150 million subscribers. :)

More seriously, using a browser without DRM would be a deal-breaker to many users like myself solely because of Netflix, unfortunately. That said, if you're serious about using a DRM-free browser, there are other ways to watch Netflix (iOS/Android, smart TVs, etc).

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#479

Post by andrethegiant »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #250
jwr wrote: post #161

I don't understand why Mac users use Chrome. Safari seems to be out of fashion: people just assume that it should not be used for some reason, even though it is actually a great browser. I use Safari for both my own browsing and for development (a fairly large ClojureScript application), and it is by far the best browser on the platform by all measures (speed first and foremost). The only place where Safari falls sho…

How's the dev tools (aka whatever the equivalent of Chrome "dev tools" is)? As a web dev, the main reason I don't switch is I know how to use Chrome dev tools, and hate spending time I could be producing code instead learning new tools for something like this. But eventually I'll get myself to (prob to FF rather than safari, as long as I'm switching).

I prefer Safari's dev tools, actually. The UX is far better, Chrome's dev tools UI is so incredibly cluttered. The only area I find where Chrome's dev tools outshines Safari's is JS profiling — that tree chart graph is pretty useful. The other 95% of the time I stay in Safari.
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