Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 78

mozilla.org

91–100 of 269 posts

Re: Firefox 78

#91
post #25

I recently tried to move to Firefox (again). I try to to this every couple years. I run into the same three blockers every time. 1. The omnibar completion isn't as good. Chrome figures out where I go pretty regularly, and autocompletes extremely well based upon habits. 2. The dev tools aren't as good. I mostly work in the frontend, and simple things like how you write css overwrites with tab completion is just not as…

0. Performance

I switch to Firefox about once a year (seasonal surveillance paranoia?). I mostly run older machines and there's a noticeable performance difference between FF and Chrome-based browsers. As a compromise I run Brave (chrome-based, un-googled, and kind of privacy oriented?) but not really happy about that.

Fwiw I really want Firefox to succeed, I donate to Mozilla every month and I am learning Rust.

I think it's partly sequencing, eg. opening a new window in FF, FF waits until the window is built before showing it (takes nearly a second on my machine), while Chrome will open it instantly and then paint in the UI. The actual time til usable URL bar is the same on both, but on FF the experience is "I gave a command and nothing is happening... oh there it is".

There's just no indication that anything is happening until it's done, and that makes a big difference. It makes it feel slow: even if the total delay is exactly the same, the perceived delay is several orders of magnitude greater.

There's also some difference in the time it takes to load a page, but once they're loaded JS perf is on par.

I expect the difference would be less dramatic on a machine from this decade, but I haven't had the pleasure of finding out :)

Re: Firefox 78

#92
I am a pretty ardent Firefox supporter and prefer it over Chrome but some of the issues are still jarring and really affect the user experience. E.g. this 10 year old bug which I still have to deal with multiple times every month where if you have couple of windows open with one having pinned tabs and close the other one first, the pinned tabs are not restored upon restart: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587400

Mozilla needs to shift focus, atleast briefly if not long term, to work on squashing such common issues instead of racing to add new features.

Re: Firefox 78

#93
post #86
post #11

Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I embraced it and it's great for bookmarking, syncthing tabs, reading news as podcasts on mobile etc. It's great.

I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated. [1]: https://www.crofflr.com/

While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.

Re: Firefox 78

#94

Great. Unlike many, I walk my talk and have always used Firefox since more than a decade with no exceptions. The very commonly given reason that DevTools are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other general browsing. Unless we support alternatives we really shouldn't complain when they gradually die off in a space that is increasingly coming under the control of giant corporations with…

I really wanted to switch to Firefox, but after several weeks the thing that pushed me back was janky scrolling. It seems like a trivial thing, but it absolutely drove me first up the wall, and then back to Chrome.

Re: Firefox 78

#95
post #69
post #65

Does anyone know if there's a way to stop Firefox giving me " http://weather/" as the first suggestion when typing 'weather' in the address bar? I have never in my life wanted to visit weather.com but I can't seem to make Firefox stop suggesting it. It doesn't do this for other keywords.

If you have that in your history, you can highlight that entry in the search results (e.g. using the up/down arrow keys after typing "weather") then press Shift and Delete to delete it from the history. If you don't want search results, you can go to the options/preferences, select search, and uncheck the "Provide search suggestions" option.

Thank you! I've had weather.aliyun.net suggested forever (it 404s now) despite clearing browser history etc. Contextual actions like this should really be available in a right-click menu and not just with a hidden key combination.

Re: Firefox 78

#96

I am a pretty ardent Firefox supporter and prefer it over Chrome but some of the issues are still jarring and really affect the user experience. E.g. this 10 year old bug which I still have to deal with multiple times every month where if you have couple of windows open with one having pinned tabs and close the other one first, the pinned tabs are not restored upon restart: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?i…

Agreed. I'm tracking a 7 year old bug to support `` that's probably an easy win, given the foundation work is completed by supporting other date input formats.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320

Re: Firefox 78

#97

one of the reasons why i love firefox? the Tracking protection. it makes webpages faster to load. Cool

Firefox's Tracking Protection is a fraud and has a whitelist of domains to allow, which include Google and Facebook properties despite them being the biggest threats to privacy.

Re: Firefox 78

#99
post #93
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated. [1]: https://www.crofflr.com/

While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.

Me too, p2k is perfect. Initial setup a couple of minutes, then it all happens automatically.

Re: Firefox 78

#100
post #3

Does it still have UglyBar from v77? Seems like that.

This new bar is why I stopped upgrading FF. with 76 you could change it with about:firefox options, then in 77 you had to use userChrome.css I got tired of trying to find a workaround for a piece of utility software. I shouldnt have to relearn functionality every minor release of a browser. I love FF, but Im sticking with 76 for the foreseeable future.
Post reply on HN