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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#671

Post by NoGravitas »

on_and_off wrote: post #387
ared38 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has had syncing built in for a while: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/ Haven't tried it on iOS yet, but it worked great on my Android.

and this is where Chrome has a good hook on me. In order to switch, both FF desktop and mobile need to be better than Chrome. Does FF support a version of Chrome tabs too ? Damn, they have built themselves a good moat just with features I will miss.

The Firefox equivalent of Chrome Custom Tabs on Android is Firefox Focus, IMO. I use Focus for opening links from other apps, but full Firefox (beta) for actual browsing.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#673

Post by InitialLastName »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #621
InitialLastName wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with AdBlock Plus is that, as far as I can tell, the way to get on their "unobtrusive ads" list isn't to actually be "unobtrusive" to any meaningful standard, it's to pay them to qualify you as unobtrusive.

IIRC, you pay them (not a lot) to check out your ads and verify that they are, in fact, unobtrusive. I realize it's distasteful that money changes hands at all, but I can imagine it takes a non-trivial amount of person-hours to vet these things on a large scale, and it should be easy enough to tell if they're crooked or not just by using ABP and seeing if the permitted ads are intrusive.

When I used it (until after their ad whitelisting came in), I found that they did a poor job of blocking obtrusive ads, then. Either that, or their standards for "unobtrusive" were low.

I switched to a better adblocker, so now I just whitelist sites whose ads I'm willing to see.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#675

Post by phatfish »

milofeynman wrote: post #562
jakub_g wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW: if using Android, if FF is not for you, try Brave instead of Chrome. It feels exactly like Chrome (it's Chromium-based), but has a built-in adblocker, tracker blocking, HTTPS everywhere, no nagging to sign in, and does not throw "suggested news" (with no opt-out) upon you. Brave's founder is ex-Mozilla's CEO (Brendan Eich). However latest FF on Android is actually not bad, at least if you have a modern phone (th…

I have moved entirely to Firefox Focus. My only problem is that the GOOGLE BAR on my home screen still throws trending suggestions and opens up chrome. Does anyone know if I can change this?

Can you install add-ons in Focus? When I tried you couldn't and that made it less privacy friendly than vanilla Firefox with Ublock.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#676

Post by ralfn »

tspike wrote: post #368
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

Thanks for the reminder. I just downloaded the latest FF beta and exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role. All the back-and-forth about speed and features is understandable, but misses the point that Firefox needs our support if we are to have any real non-proprietary options for what is quickly becoming the base system abstraction layer for most computing.

Yeah but for our support we need to start getting in depth with Firefox devtools again.

They have features not in chrome and Visa versa. But to blindly switch means taking a productivity penalty, at least temporarily.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#677

Post by stesch »

stesch wrote: post #665
tempestn wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually every addon indicates on the addon site whether it is compatible with quantum or not. In some cases, there are indeed addons that are only compatible with 57+ (also indicated there), but the ones I described were accurate; I'm already using the updated versions, but they are seriously hamstrung. I agree that things are likely to slowly improve as the WebExtension APIs are extended and addons go through more…

> Actually every addon indicates on the addon site whether it is compatible with quantum or not. Not on the new site and not if you are using Firefox 56. You need to click on "View classic desktop site" in the footer. Then you see a "Compatible with Firefox 57+" tag/badge right from the version number of the extension.

Oops. They added the feature that indicates that an extension isn't ready for quantum.

My bad.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#678

Post by iterati »

DiThi wrote: post #662
iterati wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too soon to judge - plugins I used no longer work unless I turn off auto-update or move to the LTS version. The team knew these were breaking changes for months or years, but the APIs to un-break things don't exist and aren't prioritized. It's discouraging to collaboration when you look at 2+ year old issues ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 ) that still haven't been properly addressed.

You make it sound like there's no movement, but I see enough movement to have both short-term alternatives, and medium term fixes. Read comment 46 and the next ones. They were super busy with what they can actually release with FF 57. Until today the issue wasn't really pressing. In a few days we'll see if they're serious about that issue.

You don't break something and then prioritize fixing it. That's backwards. If they knew it was going to break the proper thing to do it prioritize the fixes before it effects end users, not after. If I were to push up a breaking change this morning and just wait for bug reports, I'd be looking for a new job by this afternoon.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#679

Post by dietrich »

a254613e wrote: post #652
m_st wrote: post #16

I switched from Chrome to Firefox 57 beta and couldn't be happier. Only issue so far was the ugly black title bar on the Mac, but switching to the integrated 'Light' theme fixed that. Too bad 'Light' isn't the default on macOS. Also note their updated Firefox on iOS. It looks and works just fine now and comes with Firefox Sync which gives you access to your tabs, bookmarks and history.

Speaking of firefox and macOS integration, does anyone know why they don't support pinch to zoom like chrome and safari do? I tried looking this up, but can't find any specific answers.

Looks like some work done, but not complete:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#680

Post by seba_dos1 »

nachtigall wrote: post #629
nkkollaw wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotcha. Interesting. :-)

Just for completeness: * Firefox's Awesomebar (the address bar) is much more powerful. Whereas Chromes sends you to google mainly: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire... * Tree Style Tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

There's also Tab Center Redux, for people who already need a better way to handle tabs, but don't need or want to use trees there: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-re...

Thanks to Firefox's userChrome.css, you can pull pretty nice customized UIs even without any additional extensions :) https://github.com/eoger/tabcenter-redux/wiki/Custom-CSS-Twe...

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