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Switch from Chrome to Firefox

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Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#921

Post by mda »

humility wrote: post #904

I seriously don't understand why people have been gravitating towards Chrome for years despite Google being synonymous with surveillance, even on Linux. Google chrome is the fifth most popular download on Arch User Repository[1]. Alternatives like ungoogled chromium exist, but aren't as powerful/stable as the real thing, so why not use Firefox. Call me overly optimistic, but augmenting the firefox/mozilla community w…

Fwiw, I don't see it as surveillance, it is trusting your data with them, might seem similar but a little bit different. Google in general a very good steward of private data if not the best. They don't sell it and provide tools to manage it So far I find it an acceptable bargain.

As for Chrome, the latest announcement is a bit troublesome, but i still find it better than alternatives.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#922

Post by DecoPerson »

jwr wrote: post #161

I don't understand why Mac users use Chrome. Safari seems to be out of fashion: people just assume that it should not be used for some reason, even though it is actually a great browser. I use Safari for both my own browsing and for development (a fairly large ClojureScript application), and it is by far the best browser on the platform by all measures (speed first and foremost). The only place where Safari falls sho…

Chrome's tabs are nicer to use. They're visually easier to parse at a glance and arguably nicer to look at. Chrome's tab dragging is really tight and predictable.

Chrome's first paint is faster and more consistent. I think when I used macOS, Chrome had DNS preloading but Safari didn't.

It's been a while since I used macOS (RIP my 2012 13" MacBook Air), but Chrome's scrolling behaviour is more effective -- "solid" is how I'd describe it.

The omnibar is simple and usually shows exactly the right suggestions. Safari's address bar often didn't have the thing I wanted, and had extra things that I definitely didn't want or took a second for my brain to parse.

Chrome's context menu has better contrast, being black on white rather than black on silver. The choices are ordered better as well.

This is all that comes to mind right now.

An employee at my old company used a Mac Mini. She's not computer-saavy, but she far preferred Chrome over Safari. I asked her why and she couldn't describe it -- just that she was certain. I think it would be really insightful to do studies where you take tiny features from Safari, like the context menu colour, put them in Chrome and survey users on how they liked the product.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#923

Post by CaptainZapp »

mda wrote: post #917
marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

So you came up with 2 things, first one is actually a good feature and second one is meh and world is going down? HN is utter ridiculous nowadays.

May I ask you to explain why you think that having to be signed in to Google in order not to gete fuxored in your Web experience is a good thing?

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#925

Post by [deleted] »

marricks wrote: post #15

Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave. First it’s “sign in” with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser. Of course let “power users” (who’ll turn that crap off anywa…

[deleted]

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#926

Post by baq »

kortilla wrote: post #858
freedomben wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your company's customers aren't going to care when you tell them this. They're going to complain to your support department that your app doesn't work.

Pray tell, which YouTube support department do I complain to as a viewer?

The ’I want to be a product and you aren’t letting me’ department.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#927

Post by gregknicholson »

hodder wrote: post #646
saidajigumi wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.

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.

Such as switching their browser to be based on Chromium, which is controlled by Google?

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#928

Post by HelloNurse »

TheKarateKid wrote: post #824
dgellow wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a developer and power user, I switched to Firefox months ago. What is making difficult to switch? I found equivalent for all my plugins so far.

What many others have already said - it's slower and many popular sites don't work properly on it. I don't feel like randomly having websites break when I am trying to get things done. Even on a newer computer Firefox feels jagged and hangs. Memory leaks still happening years later. It is so frustrating to see Firefox using 1.5GB of RAM when only 2 tabs remain. Quantum helped a lot, but it's still not enough for me a…

Popular sites? If they work only with Chrome they aren't popular sites for me, and I'm happy to know that I shouldn't trust them too much.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#929

Post by alpaca128 »

The-Compiler wrote: post #907
alpaca128 wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switched a long time ago from IE and no matter what other browser I try I always come back to Firefox after a while. It just behaves as I expect it to and the UI customization feature is awesome. The only browser that I think could make me switch is qutebrowser, though the lack of an adblocker is an obstacle for me.

> The only browser that I think could make me switch is qutebrowser, though the lack of an adblocker is an obstacle for me. qutebrowser has a built-in adblocker (based on a host blacklist) which works fine for most scenarios. There's also https://gitlab.com/jgkamat/jblock though that's not really supported until extension support is finished.

I do already block ads via the /etc/hosts file and it largely works pretty well but it completely fails on YouTube and Reddit. I've read that YT is at best tricky with pihole as well, so for now I just use Firefox for these sites and qutebrowser for most other purposes.

But great to know there's some progress.

Re: Switch from Chrome to Firefox

#930

Post by pmlnr »

_vk_ wrote: post #886
saidajigumi wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft.

>It's like Google found developer goodwill burdensome, and decided to pack it all up into container trucks and ship it all to Microsoft. Funny how that changes. If anyone told me in 1999 that Microsoft would eventually become one of the Good Guys...

They did not. Read up a few levels, Skype refuses to work with Firefox, because it's inconvenient for them.
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