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Switching from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#71

Post by foxfired »

Having multiple small tutorials like these will make it easy for anyone who wants to move to Firefox. The more the merrier. That said, I still can't get used to Firefox.

It's fine on desktop, and using profiles is not too much of a big deal for me. But on mobile, Firefox is not as intuitive as chrome is to me. On my phone I have Chrome, which I only ever use if a website fails on all other browsers, I have Brave as my daily driver, and Firefox because I want to make it my default.

I just can't navigate as easily on Firefox as I can on Chromium browsers. An example, when I use HN, I open links on a new tab and I can swipe the header left or right to navigate from tab to tab. Easy breezy.

On Firefox, I have to click on the tab menu, figure out where I am, and read titles to know where I am going. Every single time I forget, I end up clicking on many tabs before I find where I am going.

Don't know if this feature in Firefox's pipeline, but that's the only thing stopping me from making the switch.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#72

Post by foepys »

haunter wrote: post #66

I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#73

Post by dimator »

notkaiho wrote: post #16
dimator wrote: post #12

Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!" Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talking about the merits of the argument (I switched to Firefox), I'm just talking about how much of an echo chamber this is.

Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?

So we have to bring it up every few days?

Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#74

Post by sam_goody »

haunter wrote: post #66

I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

I am a heavy tab user as well (sometimes crawling above 500) and have found Firefox MUCH better than Chrome. Way, incomparably much better.

Better memory and usability of computer (Chrome lugs and lags and my iMac and Macbook). Normal tabs instead of vanishingly small tabs. All my tabs on restart (Chrome has several times been unable to recover tabs on a restart over the past few years) and quick restart.

And, though I don't use it, there is sidebar tabs for FF.

I have 4GB ram on laptop.

Curious why our experience differs. What platform are you on?

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#75

Post by dfsdfklgjljg »

_tkzm wrote: post #5

the custom search engines and the banning of dissenter extension is why i am still on chrome. ff failed me on technical and personal level with these. at least with chrome/google ... the devil you know.

At least ff supports sideloading, while chrome.. doesn't. And if you use ff ESR, you can also freely sideload unsigned addons.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#76

Post by tenant »

ailideex wrote: post #46

I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux - both Fedora 31 and RHEL 8). In general I like FireFox more and prefer features like multi-account-containers so I'm quite sad to have to use chrome.

I'm back using firefox full time since about 3 months and don't notice that at all. In fact I now struggle to remember why I ever moved to chrome in the first place, I know there were reasons but I can't remember what they were. Moving back was surprisingly painless. If I could find a similarly easy and good path out of gmail I'd be gone tomorrow.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#77

Post by saagarjha »

kmlx wrote: post #56
feanaro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.

> Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. 1. all web engines are open source 2. we had multiple engines. it didn't work out, at all. user experience was thrown out the window, technologies weren't implemented, the web was massively fragmented. 3. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contri…

> all web engines are open source

Open source does not mean open development. Forking a browser doesn’t help if nobody cares about your fork.

> technologies weren't implemented

They’re still not implemented. Sometimes this is because the teams are slow; sometimes it’s because the technology is a privacy nightmare.

> we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contributes to since it's better for everyone's experience.

No, see above.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#78

Post by psv1 »

For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good.

I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#79

Post by philshem »

mendelmaleh wrote: post #51
philshem wrote: post #38

For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature “multi-account containers” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Or maybe don't... I relied too much on it, and lost quite some data. Too bad it had no sync capabilities, or even basic import/export for backing up.

Can you explain? It’s a puzzling comment about containers

Re: Switching from Chrome to Firefox

#80

Post by The_Colonel »

kmlx wrote: post #56
feanaro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox? Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.

> Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut. 1. all web engines are open source 2. we had multiple engines. it didn't work out, at all. user experience was thrown out the window, technologies weren't implemented, the web was massively fragmented. 3. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contri…

Everyone can contribute to chromium/blink but only one side calls the shots.

In other words you can contribute all you want as long as it fulfills google's needs.

Of course you can fork it and do it your way but then you will be left behind since you need massive man power to be able to do development on your own.

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