Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In 2024, please switch to Firefox

roytanck.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 850 posts

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#641

Post by gitaarik »

torstenvl wrote: post #188

I use Firefox as my main browser. I love Firefox and I want it to succeed. However... a person who uses Firefox as their primary browser must generally still keep Chrome installed. A person who uses Chrome as their primary browser has no need to keep Firefox installed. Firefox should endeavor to fix that. First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string.…

Yeah, and apparently Google deliberately makes their sites work worse in Firefox. So for Firefox to by default spoof their user agent to be Chrome for those sites would be great. I actually installed a user agent spoofer plugin for this, User-Agent Switcher.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#642

Post by Vinnl »

netbioserror wrote: post #580

The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be…

Mozilla could contribute to Blink, but that would not help it prevent Blink from adding e.g. Web Environment Integrity ("DRM for the web"), or other additions that are user-hostile. Being in control of an engine gives way more sway over that engine.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#643

Post by lmedinas »

I agree with everything the Author said and I do have Firefox installed for those reasons although my main Browser is Brave (Win/Linux) and Safari (Mac). Nowadays Firefox is as good as the Chromium alternatives, there is no doubt on that.

The question is: What would it take for the majority of the Internet users (enterprise, users with low literacy, Developers, Powerusers, etc...) to switch to Firefox ?

15 years ago it was clear. Firefox was vastly superior to IE. Nowadays is not vastly superior to the competition, in fact, I cannot think of any major compelling reasons which would make all those groups of users to change.

As for me, I used Firefox before it was Firefox or Mozilla and I do plan to join the cause and use Firefox in 2024.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#644

Post by kouru225 »

tejohnso wrote: post #421
TheCleric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave’s internal ads and crypto weirdness are enough for me to be uncomfortable with it.

What internal ads? I see 0 ads while using brave because of its internal ad blocker . Crypto features are an easy toggle to disable. The toggle isn't hidden, doesn't re-enable itself, and isn't weird in any way.

They’re talking about the ability to turn on ads within brave and get BAT as a reward.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#645

Post by ijhuygft776 »

krastanov wrote: post #85
jcalvinowens wrote: post #5

I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero. These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site w…

Firefox out of the box indeed does not cause broken websites. However, the demographic of this forum probably will use Firefox with "Multi-Account Containers", "Temporary Containers", "uBlock Origin", and a few more. These are amazing for privacy and productivity, but will occasionally cause broken websites. Source: I am a Firefox-first user who occasionally uses plugin-less Chrome because the aforementioned plugins…

consent-o-matic lets a lot of them through.... I need to find an alternative that works better

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#646

Post by D13Fd »

01nate wrote: post #460
krastanov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox out of the box indeed does not cause broken websites. However, the demographic of this forum probably will use Firefox with "Multi-Account Containers", "Temporary Containers", "uBlock Origin", and a few more. These are amazing for privacy and productivity, but will occasionally cause broken websites. Source: I am a Firefox-first user who occasionally uses plugin-less Chrome because the aforementioned plugins…

I have had sites that are definitely broken in Firefox even after a stock install with every last toggle/extension/script blocker turned off. It's fairly rare, but there are a slowly growing list of sites that don't behave properly under Firefox but work in Chromium.

I only use Firefox, and I very rarely notice any kind of broken sites. I remember one bank site last year had a minor issue.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#647

Post by Longhanks »

bad_user wrote: post #571
Longhanks wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit is founded by Apple selling their devices and it runs perfectly fine on Linux via Epiphany. I don't see how it is related to ads in any way?

Google pays Apple billions in their search deal, per year ($18 billion in 2021). Apple may sell devices, but it's safe to say that at this point Google entirely funds Safari. Apple is unwilling to upset that cash cow without risking those tens of billions, even if we are talking about 5% of their revenue. ;-)

And you really think Apple, selling their devices with the privacy label, would leave the browser market to 100% in google's hands? This would incredibly undermine their marketing strategy.

And what makes you think Safari R&D is solely funded by the search provider deal they have with google? Safari is a product that is sold as part of the "Apple universe", there's definitely more value to it than just a place for the google search box.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#648

Post by rightbyte »

ajkjk wrote: post #572

The list of bullshit Mozilla has tried to pull over the years weighs heavily, and although I have had plenty of complaints with Chrome's decisions also, Mozilla's strike me as much worse. Not interested until they completely disavow those strategies in a convincing way.

We know they know we know. Google is evil but the uproar about Mozilla is about the fifth columners trying to wreck it. Like, our last hope with a consumer facing browser that has any hope of keeping up with Google spamming disfeutures into the web space.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#649

Post by EvanAnderson »

graphe wrote: post #343
Drakim wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after that's normalized, then Google will enhance your user experience by bringing "Android Webview security" to Chrome on android, you know, it makes you really secure, it's really to help you keep safe. A few years down the road, a surprising amount of companies insist you can only use their product on those secure smartphone browsers because of it's enhanced security, so Google helps you out by adding a specia…

Unreasonable and unsubstantiated expectations. Web sites want you to visit them, they have no reason to barrier you. Some sites I use still have http and if a site wanted you to visit it in a specific way they'd use an app. If the model is to make web sites less accessible for profit it would need a compelling reason to visit it in spite of the barriers. It will never happen.

Publishers, already pushing back against ad blockers and now suing because their sites were scraped and incorporated into LLM weights, would love to have clients "attest" to the "humanity" of the user and "integrity" (read: no ad blockers) of the browser. It's not hard to imagine that, if given access to the feature, they'd jump on it as soon as it ways feasible and make the user experience for non-attesting browsers progressively worse to force the change.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#650

Post by Devasta »

netbioserror wrote: post #580

The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be…

The fact that Blink is open source is totally irrelevant; sure it may mean that some niche browsers can exist with a few tweaks, but any serious attempt at forking would require a legion of developers.

If Microsoft isn't able to maintain their own browser, the idea that some other org out there is going to have the resources to fork it is laughable.

Post reply on HN