In 2024, please switch to Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#771

Post by RunSet » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

boringuser2 wrote: post #390

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't much care, TBH. Having worked in the Chromium codebase before, I know what an absolutely mammoth amount of engineering hours goes into that. V8 on its own is a technological miracle. But all funded by a firehose of crazy privacy invading ad revenue. So. I'll live with the odd pause and a bit of battery drain. I gave Google 10 years of my life as an employee in exchange for $$, I'm not interested in giving the…

I get it, it's a nice story, but here's a nice little life-hack: What if you could take the benefits of the spending and jettison the side-effects? It's called Brave, they have their own ad blocker in the source code written in C, so it can't be hamstrung.

If you're trying to go "chrome but better" than Brave is a move in the wrong direction, given its bundled cryptocurrency and ad platform.

Perhaps you haven't heard of Chromium. If so, that may be because Chromium doesn't spend as much on marketing as Brave.

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium/

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#772

Post by lolinder » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:06 AM UTC

plugin-baby wrote: post #418

atrettel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One UI feature that I love that Firefox lets you change is the scrollbars. I forget the precise settings, but I set them up so that they are always present and always big enough for me to see how far down a page I am (yes, like I'm using Windows 95!). That might only be something that matters to a few people, but the fact that it is customizable to that level is one of Firefox's greatest strengths.

This sounds great, but for web developers I feel it’s a risky change if you want to see your sites as your users do.

Web developers should be in the habit of checking against many different configurations anyway. I've lost track of the number of times that I've stumbled on a scrollable area that wasn't meant to be scrollable, which would have been caught if the developer had opened the site in the browser with always on scroll bars.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#773

Post by xtracto » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:06 AM UTC

TheCleric wrote: post #226

bluescrn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the real use case of PWAs? They just seem like another way to attempt to shift users from the 'proper web' into a place where blocking ads is more difficult. Personally, I wish we could purge the vast majority of 'apps' from the world, they shouldn't be apps in the first place, most have no need to run native code, they should be links to websites, sites that can work on more-or-less any device in any browser.

I used to be the maintainer for Nativefier (which made web apps into native apps via Electron). It was very popular because many people don’t want certain sites to be one of X tabs in one app, especially when those sites act like they’re own apps. So we gave users the ability to treat these web “apps” like any other apps. We actually shut down the project because a good PWA implementation does this better than we eve…

I love having relaxingjazz.com open as a "webapp" in an independent non-browser small window on my linux desktop. Mint makes it very easy.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#774

Post by n8henrie » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #319

nsagent wrote: post #79

As someone in the Apple ecosystem, Firefox is not a very compelling alternative. I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based) and I've tried switching on desktop as well. On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in. On top of that, it was simply a slower browser, both with DOM manipulation…

I use Firefox on macOS as my primary browser it’s great no complaints at all.

Same here, using basically nothing but FF for maybe 6 years or so.

I somehow was lugging around up to 2,400 tabs for much of last year and it handled it surprisingly well. Got down to 30 at one point, now back up to nearly 400 :/

Very rarely a website won't load, I just change the user agent to Chrome and refresh and it almost always works fine.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#775

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

"Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There's been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don't even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox."

Firefox is not independent. It is financed by Google and all web search queries on Firefox go to Google by default.

Mozilla has stated over and over that the web "must" have advertising. Sometimes advertising and privacy are incompatible. But to Mozilla, who is totally reliant on Google to survive, the two are _always_ compatible.

"Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data."

Where is this information coming from? The people who wrote Chrome for Google previously worked for Mozilla.

The annual salary of the CEO of Mozilla is over $600 million. How is Mozilla making this money. Donations?

Perhaps it is coming from sales of advertising services performed by their business partner, Google.

Browser vendors do not need to "sell personal data" in order to profit. For example, Google, Apple and Microsoft can sell advertising services.

Mozilla might be one of the few if only examples of a browser vendor selling personal data. Mozilla gets paid for sending search queries to Google.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#776

Post by EE84M3i » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

ferbivore wrote: post #333

babypuncher wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these sites break I prefer to spam their support or just not use them. If they won't support firefox then they don't deserve my patronage.

It's not patronage if you don't pay. Google would rather not have you as a user if it costs them any amount of time to support you. The relationship here is adversarial on both sides and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

For those that don't know, Virustotal saves all samples and provides them to researchers.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#777

Post by Springtime » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 2:23 AM UTC

pivo wrote: post #555

mvdtnz wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what he's talking about. Firefox has constant nag screens. I just restarted Firefox and got two separate nags[1]. I am certain that within the next week it will nag me for at least one more thing. Maybe it'll want me to try Pocket, or sign in with a Mozilla account, or set up sync, or the absolute worst offender - when I launch the browser it will say "heyyyy I gotta update and I treat this like it's 1998 so y…

Ok, but obviously in this case you can check the "Don't show me this message again" checkbox and, like me, you'll have had to endure the burden of responding to this nag just once in years of using Firefox. I may be forgetting about nags that don't allow themselves to be disabled, but if so, they're infrequent enough that they seem insignificant and obviously non-memorable. Edit: I should add, when I had to have Chro…

Firefox for many versions now has no way to disable update notification messages, which will repeatedly appear as a popup from the addressbar on every launch, unless one creates a new file with particular content.

Even if one wants a particular version for testing. Chromium doesn't do this ime. And this isn't to say it's a reason not to use FF but it is a counter-example to simply being able to dismiss something without it being annoying.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#778

Post by nzrf » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:01 AM UTC

trts wrote: post #228

behnamoh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>\ Hot take: I tried FF for a long time but finally switched to Brave. Yes, I'll be downvoted for saying this but it's objectively one of my top 3 favorite browsers rn. 1. Brave 2. Edge 3. Safari I like each of them for different reasons. Brave (after disabling annoying features such as crypto and VPN) is awesome and its iOS app is the only one which can play videos in the background, has dark mode, and syncs really…

Brave is really good and always surprising me with features while largely staying lean and out of my way. They recently added a chatbot that runs locally they call Leo based on llama2. It's pretty impressive that you can perform LLM tasks on the current page without the use of any 3rd party service. And of course you can pay them for the souped up version. https://brave.com/leo-release/ Feels like I am alone in think…

This also where I landed with Brave as it seems to be working great for all of devices. Runs smoothly and I don’t really have a problem full with many sites on aggressive mode. I’ve had the sync’ing feature go flaky a few times, but over all good experience.

My big gripe with FF honestly is the lack for PWA ( progressive web apps) If they resurrect that effort I’d give it a shot. I’m not really interested in running another browser for that feature.

Also the brave privacy settings are remarkably better “by default” across all my devices. I’m sure Firefox can be configured to be hardened I just have other ways I’d like to spend my time. Heck I’d even pay for better option for all my devices.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#779

Post by qwerasdf5 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:13 AM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #137

xedrac wrote: post #76

I use Firefox exclusively, and I love the Rust language that took shape at Mozilla, but it makes me sad to see HN censor comments that point out Mozilla's despicable behavior when they fired Brandon Eich because he didn't espouse gay marriage.

Just to be clear, it is readers themselves who flag and bury comments on HN

Which readers? I've been a reader for years, yet I cannot flag any comments.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#780

Post by ajkjk » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 3:30 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #648

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.

Well I don't know what you mean by fifth columners, this is just my own opinion but it's quite widespread because they really sold out people's trust. The thing, though, is that Mozilla is in the perfect spot to get better, any time they want. Which means I'm not personally letting off the hook. Whereas there's no point hoping for any change from Google.