I use firefox on ubuntu and the performance is terrible. Its constantly crashing, tabs crash individually, it hangs, launching memory heavy websites seems to crash it most often. When I switched to chromium the performance got a lot better.
I use firefox on ubuntu as well and it works very nicely. Its RAM and CPU usage is negligible, sites load very fast, and the developer tools are awesome.
Some anecdotal data in the other direction, I made a comment about my experience on linux 5 months ago [1], and my opinion is still roughly the same (Except the blank tab problem has gone away after a Firefox update at some point, which WAS the biggest annoyance I had, so my mood has improved considerably since I made that post), and I have since taken to using Arch on an XPS, stock Ubuntu on another (more modestly specced) machine, and have had similar experiences there too.
That said I still use and prefer Firefox, but I also have to open up Chrome probably once every few weeks for various reasons, and it has occasional abhorrent behavior that I don't experience with any other program on the same machine.
I was having a similar experience earlier this year, so I reluctantly did the same for a while. I got sick of chromium though, really missed reader mode for one thing, so I decided to put in some more effort to troubleshoot.
For me what did it was switching to wayland (sway[1] specifically, from dwm on x11). Now it's a good step faster than chromium.
I agree with the sibling comment; there's something wrong going on, what you're describing isn't firefox's baseline.
> I see you are downvoted and I think that is wrong.
I downvoted the comment. I'm just not sure it adds anything useful to the conversation when it's not representative of the vast, vast majority of experiences that users have. It sounds like an anecdotal, isolated issue. I didn't post a top-level comment to say I've been using Firefox for over a decade without it crashing because it's just not remarkable or interesting.
I'd be more interested if some crash reports or BugZilla issues had been linked to substantiate the comment.
For what it's worth, I'd have downvoted a comment made in the same vein regarding Chrome too.
So you downvoted me for sharing the fact that I have given firefox numerous chances and it has continued to not be what this thread promised? That's just hivemind in action, you're punishing someone for going against the HN grain. Besides, by downvoting those with issues, you're burying their comment away from others who may have similar issues or know the fix.
Downvotes should be for trolls and shills and low effort memery, not for legitimate dissent.
I didn't downvote you for dissenting, and I explained this in my comment.
But what can we take away from the anecdote? We don't know anything about your system's hardware components, we don't know if you're using X or Wayland, we don't know which versions of Firefox you tried. We've not seen any BugZilla reports or crash reports. We don't know what websites are problematic.
I would have no problems with folks saying "on device X, I had issues where the Firefox would use 100% of a CPU core when I visited website Y. Here's my https://profiler.firefox.com/ link, I reported it on BugZilla but the bug hasn't been fixed yet.". That's specific, useful anecdotal information that developers can follow up on and users can use to evaluate whether it's a deal breaker for them or not.
Generic comments like "performance is terrible for me, I've tried multiple times" are just going to get replies from users who've had no problems at all.
This thread is full of generic comments and anecdotes devoid of details. Did you downvote all of them as well? Or just the ones that don't agree with your opinion?
This is Hacker News not BugZilla. It's perfectly fine for users to expose their anecdotes without having to provide extensive details.
It only crashes for me after it automatically updates. The devs set it to intentionally crash when you open a new tab. I don't know if that makes it better or worse really.
>The devs set it to intentionally crash when you open a new tab
Is it intentional? It sounds like the distro's package manager is swapping out the binaries from underneath it whilst it's running. I have some sympathy for the devs here, because I suspect it doesn't happen with the built-in updater (which, let's face it, most users will be using) which probably swaps the binaries on next start-up and just invites the user to restart the browser.
I mean, if you replace application components underneath the running application through a distro-update, it's not that surprising that this doesn't result in a stable state. All kinds of application will become unhappy when you do a upgrade on a running system.
I don't think this fits the definition of spam. Many average Joe users happen to find those curated suggestions useful. Yes, user testing has been done.
> Defaults matter.
Yep. More advanced users also tend to be better positioned to opt out compared to average Joe opting in.
Spam: unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as e-mails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places[1]. By that definition, it is spam.
> user testing has been done
User testing isn't flawless, and is what got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.
> got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.
On the contrary. The ribbon is a really excellent piece of UX work, much more discoverable and usable than the masses of menus that preceded it. It just isn't what people were used to. My favorite story is a friend of mine ranting about how he couldn't find anything with the ribbon in Word, and adding, "but at least they added styles to Word." I had to point out that styles had been in Word for a long, long time and the ribbon had just done its job very nicely.
So... I'm not sure what exactly we're talking about. Since the comment said "spam and self-promotion", I'm assuming spam doesn't mean the self-promotion but the recommended media articles. They're not commercial messages. Arguably the self-promotion could be called spam but it also occupies much less space on the page.
Frankly, yes. I might find Google's actions offensive in principle, but since I block ads they have absolutely zero impact on my life. Things like Pocket are actual hassles, albeit small ones.
With Manifest v3 in Canary it feels like there's no chance it won't reach stable in substantially the same form. Moving to Firefox now gives you a transition period where both browsers are viable.
I didn't know it was in Canary. I used Firefox for several months earlier this year before going back to Chrome. Due to this, my transition back to it will be pretty quick and painless.
Let’s enumerate how Firefox is bugging the user to tell him they respect his privacy:
- Each time one opens a tab,
- Every week in my mailbox,
- When opening any other website and their popup is here to tell me « You’re protected! »
- When one opens a website and FF asks « Do you want to install this privacy extension? », pointing at the facebook jail or the container feature.
- When suggesting to use Pocket or any new idea,
Chrome succeeded by advertising in competitors’ browsers (through Google properties) for Chrome and making Chrome get out of the way... in Chrome. I’m not sure Firefox can succeed by bugging the user in their own browser. Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich.
I think Mozilla should have a stance about this, such as « We don’t exclude white males » or « We don’t exclude Christians ». It is an extremely difficult thing to say in 2019. The series Silicon Valley did an excellent parody of the IT scene’s position about Christians in S05E05, where a gay christian is outed by a founder, and everyone asks him to apologize for ruining his reputation.
Not because he’s gay. Because he’s Christian. And there is no way I would donate to an organization that is so much anti-Christian that they consider their pro-life positions as criminal.
> Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich.
Two corrections. Brendan Eich made a public donation in support of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in California. He also was not fired; he voluntarily stepped down.
It is, but a political campaign is not a charitable organization.
I also think it strains credulity that he could check his feelings at the door and treat all employees equally, given he felt it so important to oppress LBGTQ people that he wanted it enshrined in the California state constitution.
It's true. I have kept giving Firefox another chance over time but haven't been convinced.
Recently, I tried Firefox again on Windows. And the experience is amazing indeed - faster, smoother, and with trackers blocking, very pleasant. And with strict protection, that's sort-of a builtin ad blocker.
Something still feels off on MacOS even though the last version has been a massive improvement for MBP Retina.
I keep trying Firefox but Google services are absolutely terrible on it, and I spend a lot of time in Gmail/Drive/Docs/Hangouts so having two sets of browsers like another commenter here said is a non-starter for me (I've tried it).
B) is my choice and I have made peace with it. Generally speaking, the HN crowd vastly overstates how important any one person's data is and/or vastly overestimates the ability to get out of this future anyway.
That's the attitude of most everyone, and hence the reason it won't change. But IF.. (just if) a few hundred million people decided to ditch Chrome and Google's "services" (data collectors in disguise), Google might be forced to take notice.
On the other hand, never say never to Google's dominance going out the window. They may find themselves in very deep trouble in the not too distant future.
To expand on your comment a little: The new API means uBlock Origin cannot do useful things that it does now. gorhill/Raymond is not refusing to implement a new API, he is refusing to nerf uBlock Origin.
That's a stance I like very much. And it is good news for Firefox for sure, since the roughly 30% (last I checked) of users that use privacy-enhancing extensions are being handed a very good incentive to switch.
Thanks. uBlock Origin has a unique author who does not bend with "acceptable ads" nonsense and it's a shame to lose that addon. Hopefully something similar will emerge. I think that Chrome developers have a good reason to abandon old API, because Apple did something similar with Safari approach to ad blocking. Also it's a good thing if more users will migrate from Chrome. While I, myself, use it and love it, I think that healthy competition benefits everyone.
Nothing similar will ever emerge, because the only reason Gorhill isn't supporting development on Chrome is due to the API changes that means that uBlock literally cannot function anymore. There will never be a new uBlock, or anything similar, on Chrome without some kind of exploit or Chrome backtracking on the manifest changes.
Nothing similar can emerge for Chrome. You can't do hueristics or "right click to block" with a static declarative list. Also, the list is limited in size.
> The blocking version of the Web Request API remains available for managed extensions because of the deep integrations that enterprises may have between their software suites and Chrome.
Guess that leaves corporate Mac and Linux users in the lurch.
I’m pretty sure my org uses managed extensions. I’m on a Mac and I get “some settings are managed by your organization” or whatever, and we’ve installed at least one chrome extension from a local domain site.
Also less development overhead, when one does not need to develop for Chrome any longer. Seems like a sweet deal to take. With a more focused development, we might see more improvements for the code of the Firefox extension.
"Google wants to drop support for blocking WebRequests, which will cripple certain extensions, others might not even work at all. Mozilla is not going to follow this destructive path."
I used to use safari on Mac when on battery. It used seems more battery saving. I also use it at work when plugged in as my “personal browser” (email/banks etc). work web browsing is Firefox and chrome (for testing)
The new firefox is better at power management but since I’m on a Linux laptop it’s now Firefox (no safari on Linux).
I never thought I would say this, but I'm actually really looking forward to the new Chromium based Edge browser.
They have announced they will be releasing builds for Linux recently. They also are weighing their options with the Manifest v3 changes.
If Microsoft wanted to steal a bunch of users from Chrome, this seems like an easy "win". Don't support / force the Manifest v3 changes and win a bunch of goodwill from people who are able to use uBlock Origin style adblockers.
I know this has implications with extension compatibility but won't this just mean that the new Edge browser supports a super-set of extensions when compared to Chrome?
How do you get by without extensions? The extension "store" (now part of the App Store) isn't searchable, and among the available extensions, which are very few, most are junkware.
Not OP, but my use cases don't really require "traditional" extensions; 1Blocker and the Instapaper button are all I really need and want for day to day browsing, so improved extension support on other browsers doesn't add any value for me.
Eats lot of RAM, has limited number of extensions, doesn't support royalty-free VP9 video codec. Feature-wise better than Edge, worse than FF ( https://caniuse.com/ ).
I've been happy with everything about Firefox (on Xubuntu) from many years now. But when they released Quantum, the thing that bothered me a bit was not any feature or performance, but them removing curvy tabs for rectangular ones. Rather shallow of me, but we all have our UI quirks :). Luckily, Firefox UI is very customizable and somebody had already put in the effort [1] to provide curvy tabs. Just had to download it, change the RGB() values therein, and got back my preferred green curvy tabs. Just a silly thing, but might give somebody one more reason to switch to Firefox.
Not silly at all. I tried getting back into Firefox on macOS after Quantum but it still didn’t sit well with me. I just felt slightly out of place. Fast forward to last week and I happened to try it again and it looked real nice! The UI seemed smoother and less jarring than before. Plus the icon was new and slick. Not sure when those changes landed but just the look and feel give me more confidence in its solidness.
Similar thing with me except I stuck up with them even with Quantum until that fiasco with SSL certs happened and all extensions came to a halt. I'll never be able to trust a browser which does such a thing to its users.
That fix was a hack, pushed out using a system that never should've been used for such things. A proper fix would've been re-signing the cert, but that took a lot longer.
I can't really think of a better approach they could've taken, though, if re-signing the certificate wasn't something they could've done straight away.
Sometimes I open Chrome, not after any kind of abnormal force-close, and it says something like “your browser profile was corrupt and has been permanently deleted”.
That's interesting, I've never had issues getting old sessions back. You could try recovering it via "History > Recently closed windows", it should be there usually.
I've never had this happen personally. What OS is this? I use Firefox on OSX installed through Homebrew, so I have to manually update it with brew. Firefox has never asked me to update.
Have you ever applied any of the about:config settings from one of those harmful “privacy” guides? Are you using an enterprise or school managed computer?
I was about ready to murder somebody the second time I ran into that, but some googling gave me the reason: it happens (on GNU/Linux) when you have updated firefox, but you are running the old program. Since opening a new tab opens a new process, this effectively means the old system would have to work intimately with a newer version -- which is too hard.
The solution is the same as always: don't upgrade until you are ready to reboot the system anyways. Or don't upgrade at all, if you can get away with it.
I've been a Firefox user since Phoenix/Firebird, but I did switch to Chrome when it first came out, then back to Firefox when Google started being the opposite of "not evil".
One quip on this website, why is the text limited to such a small column? I thought it had gutters that my adblock was blocking but it doesn't. The image is literally twice the width of the text. The first row of text only fits "We're living in the Google Chrome" ... and that's it.
In Firefox, if you don't like the layout of a site, you can try "reading mode" and it will reformat it. Its the little document-like icon towards the top right of the address bar.
I can confirm the macos version has had its performance issues fixed. Runs perfectly fine on my 2015 mbp, with several real time tabs and dozens of other tabs.
It's also nice to use tree style tabs to manage them all, plus you can reclaim the space for the tabs at the top with some css. I couldn't find anything matching this in chrome in terms of stability and ease of use.
I always had given Firefox another choice, but throws me out of websites, unoptimized websites and font issues etc. stopping me from using it. I really wish Firefox tighten up their game.
My experience with Firefox in the last few months have not been good. I encounter so much input lag when typing in the address bar, usually after opening a few tabs. In general, the UI is not responsive as I'd like so I'm using Brave right now where those issues are non-existent
I switched back to Firefox (after using Chrome for a long time) back when Quantum launched and have stuck with it since. Initially I fell back to Chrome every now and then for the devtools, but I haven't felt the need to do that for a good while now. Works really well for my use cases at least.
I’ve said this in many other similar threads and I’ll say it here again. Google services suck in Firefox. And that’s why I first went back to chrome after switching to Firefox. And then it clicked, chrome is just an app for google services for me. Want to use google maps? Chrome. Want to browse the web? Firefox. Chrome is literally a google app now. I love using Firefox for everything and I’ve mentally transitioned to using it completely (sans google services).
It’s a great mental exercise and I love the fact that I’ve been able to abandon chrome this way. I feel happy using Firefox now. And all the data google has on me now is so biased because they only get my usage for their own services.
What features of google maps aren't working in Firefox? I use maps constantly and never have an issue. In fact I use the whole suite of Google apps daily (mail, calendar, YouTube, maps, photos, keep, drive, office suite, etc) without issue.
the password management[1] and GCP support (likely Google doing something non-standard) was lacking last I tried. I hope it got better.
[1] I use a password manager, but avoid browser add-ons or extensions to limit the surface I expose my manager such as on work machines. Besides there being the occasional exploit targeting those browser add-ons or extensions.
I'm using KeePass, also avoiding any plugins. Most websites remember my credentials, so I don't need to log in every day and it's not a big hassle to press few more keys.
I used to use FF exclusively until the last update. After that it doesn't fully load some websites like Slack. I poked around to try and figure what is the problem, but in the end it was just easier for me to switch to Brave.
For those testing this, open Safari and Firefox to HN and compare the shade of orange in the header. In Safari it’ll be the correct dull sRGB orange as shown to PC users decades ago when HN picked that color. In Firefox it may be blindingly saturated and bright.
If it is, and you prefer Firefox to apply ICC color correction to match Safari, set gfx.color_management.mode to 1 in about:config and restart.
There is an upcoming color standard change that will allow web developers to specify wide gamut CSS colors. Right now, they cannot. The current draft of that spec declares that all #aabbcc web colors are not wide color by default, unless specified by the designer. If that is kept in the final release, Firefox will eventually comply and this option will no longer be required.
I made the switch from Chrome to Firefox about 3 weeks ago. It's a little bizarre at first but you get used to it. No autoplay is really nice. Being unable to use two dictionaries at once for spell checking is super annoying, but it's a detail. All in all it works quite well, and if uBlock Origin has to leave Chrome, the switch is a no-brainer.
Since these threads always wind up with lots of top-level comments from people providing anecdotal complaints about how [browser under discussion] crashes all the time on their computer, or eats up all the RAM, or whatever, I just wanted to add a similarly anecdotal top-level comment with my own, positive experience.
I have been using FF Nightly and FF Dev Edition on both my work and home machines (MacOS and Arch Linux) for years, using the former for personal browsing and the latter for work.
I generally only restart the browser when there are updates, and I’ve maybe had two or three restarts in all that time where I lost my tabs. Even rebooting the computer, I usually get a window asking if I want to restore my tabs, which works with no fuss. On the rare occasions that doesn’t happen, I’ve been able to “restore previous session” from the history menu.
I have generally beefy machines, but I’ve never had personally noticeable issues with performance since Quantum was released. I usually have somewhere between five and fifty tabs open in each browser.
The only crashes I’ve seen that I remember have been when I was playing with WebRender settings in about:config, and happened whenever I was scrolling in a particularly large Confluence document. Also, occasionally my strict third party settings will make a login or other functionality break, in which case it’s easy to relax the settings just for that page.
FF integrates very well with 1Password, which is my password manager of choice.
I use FF Mobile on iOS, and while it is a bit rougher on battery life than safari, having all my history and bookmarks synced is worth it.
Anyway, my experience is definitely not everyone’s, and I don’t doubt that some people have strange and frustrating issues with the browser. That being said, I suspect experiences like mine are more common than comments on threads like this suggest.
I too have virtually no experience with any modern browsers crashing in the ways often reported here. And I'm at least a "power user," using browsers for consumption and web development throughout the day. Dozens or hundreds of tabs—no problem. Developer tools open all the time. No modern browser even breaks a sweat.
I just happen to favor Firefox because I like its speed, look & feel, user interface quirks (versus the quirks of the other browsers), and options for customization.
Notably, I use proper workstations both at home and in the office. I suppose it's possible the popularity of using laptops as developer "workstations" may be underlying much of the grievance we often see here.
I installed Manjaro on my Surface Pro and Firefox was included (? or I happened to install it instead of Chrome, I'm fuzzy on that)
The next day, a few minutes before a job interview I opened Firefox to find a curious error
Using an older version of Firefox can corrupt bookmarks and browsing history already saved to an existing Firefox profile. To protect your information, create a new profile for this installation of Firefox
I click through it and... everything's gone. Including my plugins, which I need for... 1Password. To log into my Google account, to access the link I need to join.
Cue me frantically googling how to fix it, before I end up having to type in a 70 character password off my phone screen.
In the end I did manage to fix it by manually editing the profile. But obviously off to a terrible start, joining the meeting almost 5 minutes late.
Enter the interview and we're screen sharing my IDE. But it's a complete slideshow on my end. My computer is running like it's throttling itself, I can barely create a new project.
Cue me fumbling through the activity monitor when it becomes clear that there's no way I'll be able to complete the interview like this.
Firefox is going haywire and using all my resources.
"Hey sorry, do you mind if I take a second and install Chrome"
Install Chrome in the middle of the interview and it handles screen sharing just fine without killing the laptop.
Keep in mind, this is all WebRTC screen sharing, no custom plugin or anything, so the implementation is 100% on the browser.
You could watch my interviewers enthusiasm fade, and my confidence drop off a cliff as I went through all this. I was pretty much told I didn't perform terribly, but they weren't sure about my knowledge based on the final output (half the interview being wasted on FF issues)
So yeah, stuck with FF for 24hrs, figuring what's the worst that could happen, HN is always hyping it up.
Indirectly cost me a job opportunity in those 24hrs.
I really really want to use Firefox but I am still annoyed by the relative slowness compared to Chrome.
For me it is noticeable slower both when it comes to basic functionality such as opening new tabs, but also when it comes to the dev tools. When I want to use the dev tools I launch Chrome and use it from there just because I know it will be a more pleasant experience.
for all those here who want a chrome-like experience (including dev tools) but with easy tracker blocking out of the box may I remind you about Brave browser?
373 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadI think something is wrong on your system.
That said I still use and prefer Firefox, but I also have to open up Chrome probably once every few weeks for various reasons, and it has occasional abhorrent behavior that I don't experience with any other program on the same machine.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20049553
For me what did it was switching to wayland (sway[1] specifically, from dwm on x11). Now it's a good step faster than chromium.
I agree with the sibling comment; there's something wrong going on, what you're describing isn't firefox's baseline.
[1]: https://swaywm.org/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium/Tips_and_trick...
It would however help a lot if you wrote in a style that made it clear that this was your personal experience.
I'm using an Ubuntu based distro myself (KDE Neon) and have no problems.
I downvoted the comment. I'm just not sure it adds anything useful to the conversation when it's not representative of the vast, vast majority of experiences that users have. It sounds like an anecdotal, isolated issue. I didn't post a top-level comment to say I've been using Firefox for over a decade without it crashing because it's just not remarkable or interesting.
I'd be more interested if some crash reports or BugZilla issues had been linked to substantiate the comment.
For what it's worth, I'd have downvoted a comment made in the same vein regarding Chrome too.
Downvotes should be for trolls and shills and low effort memery, not for legitimate dissent.
But what can we take away from the anecdote? We don't know anything about your system's hardware components, we don't know if you're using X or Wayland, we don't know which versions of Firefox you tried. We've not seen any BugZilla reports or crash reports. We don't know what websites are problematic.
I would have no problems with folks saying "on device X, I had issues where the Firefox would use 100% of a CPU core when I visited website Y. Here's my https://profiler.firefox.com/ link, I reported it on BugZilla but the bug hasn't been fixed yet.". That's specific, useful anecdotal information that developers can follow up on and users can use to evaluate whether it's a deal breaker for them or not.
Generic comments like "performance is terrible for me, I've tried multiple times" are just going to get replies from users who've had no problems at all.
This thread is full of generic comments and anecdotes devoid of details. Did you downvote all of them as well? Or just the ones that don't agree with your opinion?
This is Hacker News not BugZilla. It's perfectly fine for users to expose their anecdotes without having to provide extensive details.
Edit: Here's the related bugzilla report
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1463960
Is it intentional? It sounds like the distro's package manager is swapping out the binaries from underneath it whilst it's running. I have some sympathy for the devs here, because I suspect it doesn't happen with the built-in updater (which, let's face it, most users will be using) which probably swaps the binaries on next start-up and just invites the user to restart the browser.
Chromium invites the user to restart. Firefox redirects every request to about:restartrequired
Note that the search bar can also be removed. So yes, as distraction free as you want to make it.
I don't think this fits the definition of spam. Many average Joe users happen to find those curated suggestions useful. Yes, user testing has been done.
> Defaults matter.
Yep. More advanced users also tend to be better positioned to opt out compared to average Joe opting in.
> user testing has been done
User testing isn't flawless, and is what got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam
On the contrary. The ribbon is a really excellent piece of UX work, much more discoverable and usable than the masses of menus that preceded it. It just isn't what people were used to. My favorite story is a friend of mine ranting about how he couldn't find anything with the ribbon in Word, and adding, "but at least they added styles to Word." I had to point out that styles had been in Word for a long, long time and the ribbon had just done its job very nicely.
- Each time one opens a tab,
- Every week in my mailbox,
- When opening any other website and their popup is here to tell me « You’re protected! »
- When one opens a website and FF asks « Do you want to install this privacy extension? », pointing at the facebook jail or the container feature.
- When suggesting to use Pocket or any new idea,
Chrome succeeded by advertising in competitors’ browsers (through Google properties) for Chrome and making Chrome get out of the way... in Chrome. I’m not sure Firefox can succeed by bugging the user in their own browser. Also, coming from a company who fired his CEO for a private donation made 10 years earlier, claiming it’s a privacy-respecting company is rich.
I have to admit this does make me not want to support the Mozilla foundation.
Not because he’s gay. Because he’s Christian. And there is no way I would donate to an organization that is so much anti-Christian that they consider their pro-life positions as criminal.
> Each time one opens a tab
you can customize to look exactly how you want it.
This is my new tab page: https://imgur.com/TpSzOCZ
> Every week in my mailbox
Don't subscribe to newsletters you don't enjoy.
> When opening any other website and their popup is here to tell me « You’re protected! »
You get this the first time only or after an update with new features.
> When one opens a website and FF asks « Do you want to install this privacy extension? », pointing at the Facebook jail or the container feature.
I don't like the recommended extensions thingy but it can be disabled https://imgur.com/xjTG4N2
> When suggesting to use Pocket or any new idea
Any new idea? really? we should just stop innovation.
Two corrections. Brendan Eich made a public donation in support of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in California. He also was not fired; he voluntarily stepped down.
He meant private, as opposed to corporate. I'm not aware if it's even possible to hide charitable donations from the public eye.
I also think it strains credulity that he could check his feelings at the door and treat all employees equally, given he felt it so important to oppress LBGTQ people that he wanted it enshrined in the California state constitution.
Recently, I tried Firefox again on Windows. And the experience is amazing indeed - faster, smoother, and with trackers blocking, very pleasant. And with strict protection, that's sort-of a builtin ad blocker.
Something still feels off on MacOS even though the last version has been a massive improvement for MBP Retina.
What feels off for you?
> You can turn it on by setting 'apz.allow_zooming' to true. It sort of works but has bugs. You can track the progress and report problems that you see here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1461360.*
¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bcebze/its_2019_wh...
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2012148617A3/en
That said, the mobile version seems really robust.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/a-glitch-is-breaking-all-f...
A) (if possible) migrate away from the services you mentioned.
B) lock-in deeper and deeper with the biggest advertising company on the planet.
On the other hand, never say never to Google's dominance going out the window. They may find themselves in very deep trouble in the not too distant future.
I imagine that would boost Firefox growth.
Edit: Answering my own question...yup, it's in canary as of November 1st. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins...
And: https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1134127701583904770?s=20
That's a stance I like very much. And it is good news for Firefox for sure, since the roughly 30% (last I checked) of users that use privacy-enhancing extensions are being handed a very good incentive to switch.
Nothing similar will ever emerge, because the only reason Gorhill isn't supporting development on Chrome is due to the API changes that means that uBlock literally cannot function anymore. There will never be a new uBlock, or anything similar, on Chrome without some kind of exploit or Chrome backtracking on the manifest changes.
> The blocking version of the Web Request API remains available for managed extensions because of the deep integrations that enterprises may have between their software suites and Chrome.
Guess that leaves corporate Mac and Linux users in the lurch.
Make sure proper ad blocking only works in firefox and make google choke on their evil policies masked with performance concerns.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...
I may have to rush an extension...
https://gist.github.com/Lusito/dd6b76b93f83267903619103745cc...
"Google wants to drop support for blocking WebRequests, which will cripple certain extensions, others might not even work at all. Mozilla is not going to follow this destructive path."
The new firefox is better at power management but since I’m on a Linux laptop it’s now Firefox (no safari on Linux).
They have announced they will be releasing builds for Linux recently. They also are weighing their options with the Manifest v3 changes.
If Microsoft wanted to steal a bunch of users from Chrome, this seems like an easy "win". Don't support / force the Manifest v3 changes and win a bunch of goodwill from people who are able to use uBlock Origin style adblockers.
I know this has implications with extension compatibility but won't this just mean that the new Edge browser supports a super-set of extensions when compared to Chrome?
[1]: https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis
I can't really think of a better approach they could've taken, though, if re-signing the certificate wasn't something they could've done straight away.
For this reason I don't trust it when I'm doing meaningful work.
Which browser is good for meaningful work?
Have you ever applied any of the about:config settings from one of those harmful “privacy” guides? Are you using an enterprise or school managed computer?
The solution is the same as always: don't upgrade until you are ready to reboot the system anyways. Or don't upgrade at all, if you can get away with it.
One quip on this website, why is the text limited to such a small column? I thought it had gutters that my adblock was blocking but it doesn't. The image is literally twice the width of the text. The first row of text only fits "We're living in the Google Chrome" ... and that's it.
It's also nice to use tree style tabs to manage them all, plus you can reclaim the space for the tabs at the top with some css. I couldn't find anything matching this in chrome in terms of stability and ease of use.
Do you have examples of these? It's helpful to report them to the webcompat web-bugs repository as you discover them - e.g. https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/36955 - https://webcompat.com/ has more information on the project.
Also not a RAM hog.
It’s a great mental exercise and I love the fact that I’ve been able to abandon chrome this way. I feel happy using Firefox now. And all the data google has on me now is so biased because they only get my usage for their own services.
YouTube doesn’t load as fast on Firefox.
Gmail is sometimes slow.
Those are two big ones. So I have google signed out on Firefox and use chrome as simply the gateway to all things google.
[1] I use a password manager, but avoid browser add-ons or extensions to limit the surface I expose my manager such as on work machines. Besides there being the occasional exploit targeting those browser add-ons or extensions.
What do you all do?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250461#c28
If it is, and you prefer Firefox to apply ICC color correction to match Safari, set gfx.color_management.mode to 1 in about:config and restart.
There is an upcoming color standard change that will allow web developers to specify wide gamut CSS colors. Right now, they cannot. The current draft of that spec declares that all #aabbcc web colors are not wide color by default, unless specified by the designer. If that is kept in the final release, Firefox will eventually comply and this option will no longer be required.
I have been using FF Nightly and FF Dev Edition on both my work and home machines (MacOS and Arch Linux) for years, using the former for personal browsing and the latter for work.
I generally only restart the browser when there are updates, and I’ve maybe had two or three restarts in all that time where I lost my tabs. Even rebooting the computer, I usually get a window asking if I want to restore my tabs, which works with no fuss. On the rare occasions that doesn’t happen, I’ve been able to “restore previous session” from the history menu.
I have generally beefy machines, but I’ve never had personally noticeable issues with performance since Quantum was released. I usually have somewhere between five and fifty tabs open in each browser.
The only crashes I’ve seen that I remember have been when I was playing with WebRender settings in about:config, and happened whenever I was scrolling in a particularly large Confluence document. Also, occasionally my strict third party settings will make a login or other functionality break, in which case it’s easy to relax the settings just for that page.
FF integrates very well with 1Password, which is my password manager of choice.
I use FF Mobile on iOS, and while it is a bit rougher on battery life than safari, having all my history and bookmarks synced is worth it.
Anyway, my experience is definitely not everyone’s, and I don’t doubt that some people have strange and frustrating issues with the browser. That being said, I suspect experiences like mine are more common than comments on threads like this suggest.
I just happen to favor Firefox because I like its speed, look & feel, user interface quirks (versus the quirks of the other browsers), and options for customization.
Notably, I use proper workstations both at home and in the office. I suppose it's possible the popularity of using laptops as developer "workstations" may be underlying much of the grievance we often see here.
I installed Manjaro on my Surface Pro and Firefox was included (? or I happened to install it instead of Chrome, I'm fuzzy on that)
The next day, a few minutes before a job interview I opened Firefox to find a curious error
Using an older version of Firefox can corrupt bookmarks and browsing history already saved to an existing Firefox profile. To protect your information, create a new profile for this installation of Firefox
I click through it and... everything's gone. Including my plugins, which I need for... 1Password. To log into my Google account, to access the link I need to join.
Cue me frantically googling how to fix it, before I end up having to type in a 70 character password off my phone screen.
In the end I did manage to fix it by manually editing the profile. But obviously off to a terrible start, joining the meeting almost 5 minutes late.
Enter the interview and we're screen sharing my IDE. But it's a complete slideshow on my end. My computer is running like it's throttling itself, I can barely create a new project.
Cue me fumbling through the activity monitor when it becomes clear that there's no way I'll be able to complete the interview like this.
Firefox is going haywire and using all my resources.
"Hey sorry, do you mind if I take a second and install Chrome"
Install Chrome in the middle of the interview and it handles screen sharing just fine without killing the laptop.
Keep in mind, this is all WebRTC screen sharing, no custom plugin or anything, so the implementation is 100% on the browser.
You could watch my interviewers enthusiasm fade, and my confidence drop off a cliff as I went through all this. I was pretty much told I didn't perform terribly, but they weren't sure about my knowledge based on the final output (half the interview being wasted on FF issues)
So yeah, stuck with FF for 24hrs, figuring what's the worst that could happen, HN is always hyping it up.
Indirectly cost me a job opportunity in those 24hrs.
I won't be trying it again.
Edit: just wanted to make sure to say that there’s no sarcasm here at all. I would absolutely feel the same way if I had had that experience
For me it is noticeable slower both when it comes to basic functionality such as opening new tabs, but also when it comes to the dev tools. When I want to use the dev tools I launch Chrome and use it from there just because I know it will be a more pleasant experience.