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Switch from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#861

Post by ihuman »

cityzen wrote: post #249
dpedu wrote: post #110

I'd love to switch but the technique of having one browser import another's bookmarks, settings, and autofill just isn't good enough anymore. I have no fewer than 28 extensions installed on my Chrome installation and while not all of them are enabled all the time I do use them regularly. For me, the "cost" of switching to Firefox is, for each of these extensions, finding and vetting a firefox-compatible replacement.

Surprise! Chrome extensions work on Firefox! This was a big one for me as well, namely Tab Wrangler. https://www.howtogeek.com/346981/how-to-install-any-chrome-e... I can't recall if I used that Chrome Store Foxified but I do know that i'm using all of my chrome extensions and firefox and don't miss chrome at all.

If you use that method, don't they uninstall themselves if you relaunch firefox?

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#862

Post by sudhirkhanger »

Some of the current issues I face with Firefox. They are mostly UI/UX-choices that are personal to me.

* No global zoom by default which also remembers per-page zoom changes. * Bookmarking is overly cluttered with with other other, toolbar, menu, etc. * Skype Web doesn't work on Firefox. * User profiles which are as easily accessible as in Chrome.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#863

Post by ethanpil »

bshacklett wrote: post #431
ethanpil wrote: post #102

I wish MIcrosoft would have worked off Firefox for the new Edge instead of Chrome. Just doesn't make sense why they would feed into a direct competitor. Bagging Edge off Firefox would have made it a real option for me as well as creating an opportunity now with all the ad blocking stuff going down...

On the plus side, we now have another large player working on Chromium, which may help prevent Google from forcing design decisions which benefit them alone.

This is a great point. I wonder if one day either it will force them apart again, or present problems of collusion...

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#864

Post by soheil »

A few things that still make me not love FF:

- Going full screen on Youtube takes longer than Chrome at least on OS X and there is a momentarily black screen.

- Moving the cursor to the top of a full screen video in Chrome brings down the OS X menu bar this is useful if you want to check the time/date/other menu bar activity, in FF nothing happens when moving the mouse to the top of the screen in full screen mode.

- When a page requests to send web notifications FF basically pretty much blocks the entire browser until you answer whether you want to allow the notification or not, this is very annoying if you visit many sites for the first time that ask for notification permission, which apparently a lot of them nowadays do, making it more apparent now that I switched to FF from Chrome.

There might be settings you can change to fix these, but even if that's the case not having them set as default makes me question whether I made the right choice making the switch.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#865

Post by hollerith »

vbezhenar wrote: post #424
pattpass wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit does Microsoft have by using Mozilla instead? Earnest question. Electron, the software framework VSCode uses, runs on Chromium. Github maintained and developed the framework and they are currently owned by Microsoft. If Microsoft contributes to Chromium and improves performance they benefit in a lot of places: their new browser is improved(Edge Chromium), their own framework(Electron), and their own prod…

One benefit would be to reduce dependency on Google. Huawei used Android that was owned by enemy country, it backfired.

Huawei depended on the proprietary bits of Android ("Google Play Services"?). In contrast, Microsoft is knowledgeable enough to use only the permissively-licensed parts of Chrome as the point of departure for their fork.

Also, if Huawei were to fork Android they'd be responsible keeping their fork of a huge code base secure by push security updates, and Microsoft is much more likely to be able to do that competently than Huawei is.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#867

Post by ralph84 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #741
hodder wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It is truly unbelievable. Same with user goodwill. Microsoft is vaccuuming it all up. Meanwhile Microsoft is making tons of great moves to get devs and users back on their side.

You have to read that comment from a long-time Microsoft developer : https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2019/05/24/github...

Meh, he lost me when he tried to say Microsoft success in cloud is due to Office. Microsoft's success in cloud is due to having a good enough cloud platform and being better at selling to enterprises than Amazon or Google. IBM and Oracle can sell to enterprises but lost because their cloud platforms suck.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#868

Post by r3bl »

michaelmrose wrote: post #631
r3bl wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned experience for absolutely zero reason. The reason is almost certainly a new user agent (compared to non-Chromium Edge) that YouTube didn't expect. Chromium-based Edge is still not stable, and therefore, not properly supported by YouTube. I don't have time to test this, but I'm willing to bet that you'd get the same result by using any indie browser…

Do you remember when almost all sites worked fine without internet explorer but refused to work without it unless you faked the user agent? Why are you defending round 2 of best with IE? The web is a standard. Auto failing based on user agent is a sign of developer incompetence.

I wouldn't be defending them if YouTube refused to work with a "strange" user agent, but that's not what happened. Judging by the screenshots, YouTube still worked, it just refused to use a new design. The old design is still perfectly functional.

Chromium-based Edge is not stable. It's a new thing that I don't expect website owners to test against. The error message showed that the new design is tested against the latest version of Edge. Complete rewrite of Edge still hasn't replaced the old Edge.

Also, no, the web is not a standard. There's no fixed set of things that a browser should implement and call it a day. It's constantly-evolving depending on the needs of the owners of the website. It's why nobody dares to create a browser from scratch nowadays.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#869

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

azpekt wrote: post #793
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTerm2 is a decent reason. I've tried to switch to Linux numerous times and I have yet to find a terminal app that is even half as good as iTerm. And command line tools on Windows are a joke currently, at least until the new one comes out soon (which looks good, but I doubt it will be better than iTerm). If you spend a lot of time in your terminal, being able to use the best one that behaves the way you want it to an…

Try Tilix. It has nice UI, a tons of cusomization, even quake-mode.

Next time I am messing around on a Linux desktop, I will give it a shot. I don't think that is one of the ones I've tried. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#870

Post by house9-2 »

sound1 wrote: post #560
house9-2 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checked out Brave browser? Fork of Chrome and most if not all Google extensions work. https://brave.com/

Last time I checked Brave looked awful on 4k screen on linux Kde, may be 6 months back. Have they fixed it? I wanted to like it so much but no luck :-(

Seems fine on my imac retina screen and retina mbp.
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