>We would however like to highlight Picture-in-picture (PIP). If you start playing a video on a web page, but then want to check out other content, you can activate PIP and keep the video playing in a small overlay while you continue to navigate the rest of the page (or other pages).
Firefox is on a serious roll this year, from performance improvements to actual privacy hardening that matters. Since Chrome rolled out auto-login, I've made it my personal mission to stop using it, and now I'm realizing I haven't even installed Chrome on my newly imaged laptop. I doubt I'll have any reason to switch back.
Installed Firefox in my new machine and never looked back. Before I used Chrome, Yandex, Vivaldi and Opera. Only miss Yandex much superior native start page;
This is absolutely true, though I have still switched to Firefox and no longer use Chrome. I've taken to filing bug reports or reaching out on the "contact us" page of websites when I find a feature isn't working correctly on firefox.
Sometimes those are FF bugs (or "bugs", but FF wants to fix them anyway), and you can report them to the firefox-run https://webcompat.com through the menu.
> People expect websites to work regardless of the device or browser they are using. When a site works in one browser but not another, that is most likely a web compatibility bug that we want to know about.
I reported an inline-svg rendering bug in FF preview. It only took a minute or two, and a volunteer responding within a day that they had replicated the problem and moved it to a Github issue, which frankly amazed me.
Yep. After trying all sorts of browsers for months at a time, I've come back home to Firefox. Despite Mozilla's occasional off-track behavior (Mr. Robot add-on, Pocket, etc) I still think they are hands-down the best option.
That's truly saying something that if Firefox can screw up every now and then but still feel worlds ahead of other browsers in terms of their approach to web browser building, and that's how it feels to me.
Chrome auto-login was the thing that made me leave Chrome for good. That was the turning point, and it's been a long time since. Manifest v3 is just another nail in the coffin for me personally.
> Sometimes you need to find a CSS file that defines a color, or work out which file generates a button label on a page. Full-text search makes this possible by letting you search through all resources in the Network Monitor.
I wonder if they couldn't use Firefox Replay's features to enhance privacy: "taint" code that has touched identifying or fingerprinting information. If that code tries to exfiltrate such information, replay that data path with dummy values.
It would also be interesting to extend this to the OS level (maybe for user data first, and maybe move on to fingerprinting information later).
The Mozilla person who marked this wontfix summed it up pretty well, in my opinion:
> hi, the distribution folder is a way for third-parties to bundle/modify the browser - when a user is paving over a firefox installation with a setup file provided by mozilla, the assumption/signal is, that they want to receive the plain unmodified version of firefox. that's why the distribution folder is getting removed by default.
this is the documented behaviour and if you want to keep the distribution in place when using an installer from mozilla, you'd have to run it with the /RemoveDistributionDir=false parameter: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/installer/wi...
Only reason I haven't moved to Firefox on my Mac is that I can't reassign keyboard shortcut for tab change (without using any external software).
Firefox default is Cmd-Shift-[], which gives me pain in left hand if I use it too much. So I have used OS keyboard to reassign the tab change to Cmd-[]. Most apps seem to respect it, but Firefox doesn't.
One problem with this is that it’s a combination keystroke involving two special keys and tab. That is bad for your fingers especially if it something like tab switch that you use a lot.
With Cmd-[] you just use total two keys which are easy with two hands.
I agree it's very annoying you can't change keyboard shortcuts in Firefox.
If you use the Mac trackpad, use BetterTouchTool to assign a gesture (I use tiptap left and tiptap right) to the switch tabs left and switch tabs right keyboard shortcuts. You can assign them per-app so it can send a different combo for Firefox than anything else.
I switched from Chrome back to Firefox some time ago and generally I'm happy with it.
Just this Firefox Lockwise stuff seems to be buggy. Every once in a while it disables automatic password fill-in. The security menu is also badly labled, it states something about asking if login data should be stored, but it's also resposible to fill it in after it was stored.
The one thing that's really lagging is adding back support for more of the customizations that were lost in the transition to the new architecture at FF57.
For example, one of the most useful and popular add-ons ever was called Tab Mix Plus. Here's a link to the open issues blocking the re-implementation of this functionality.
It's funny that here on HN, we see this constant narrative of "only one browser" like, which browser is objectively the best, and thus the only one that will be used.
People in HN comments frequently talk about "switching" to a different browser, as if it were true that you could only have one browser installed at a time, which is laughably false.
Is there an OS setting for a default? Sure, but that setting is inconsequential, since many shallow shortcuts to both browsers are readily created, and equally accessible. Furthermore, many HN users profess a deep mastery of command line expertise, explaining how effortless it is to use the console in a terminal window and pour shell commands from their finger tips. Surely, it would be just as easy to enter the name of one browser or the other, or both, alternative arbitrarily, as needed.
The false narrative of loyalty to a browser is beyond silly, when you can just use all of them, and most people frequently do exactly that.
So, what does it mean when we see, over and over again, nameless, faceless users boiling to the surface to broadcast a deep emotional investment in a browser?
I think it means there are a lot of liars. People presenting themselves in a disingenuous manner.
Sometimes I do get asked by regular less technical people, what my general tendency is, and I tell them it doesn't matter, this all bullshit, and the cards are stacked against you. The default settings are designed to reveal your identity as unique, JavaScript is forced when it need not be, and an emphasis on the perfection of CSS graphical representation is overburdened and counterproductive.
Differences among browsers are superficial, and we haven't seen anything truly new since 2004. That last new thing was tabs, and since then, the mass migration has been to mobile deviced where options and real estate are limited, forcing the adoption of apps, locked into the OS of the device vendor's choosing (apple or google).
Sure, we use laptops, but browsers don't really matter anymore. Gaming rigs and work stations? Who cares?
Our future has been stolen from us, and we are lie to about it every day.
Stop arguing about browsers. It's absurd and untrue to claim that the browser is what will save us.
All important things happen on the server side, and that is where we are ruined.
34 comments
[ 8.8 ms ] story [ 1469 ms ] threadThat's pretty nice.
But Chrome works all the time.
> People expect websites to work regardless of the device or browser they are using. When a site works in one browser but not another, that is most likely a web compatibility bug that we want to know about.
I reported an inline-svg rendering bug in FF preview. It only took a minute or two, and a volunteer responding within a day that they had replicated the problem and moved it to a Github issue, which frankly amazed me.
That's truly saying something that if Firefox can screw up every now and then but still feel worlds ahead of other browsers in terms of their approach to web browser building, and that's how it feels to me.
Chrome auto-login was the thing that made me leave Chrome for good. That was the turning point, and it's been a long time since. Manifest v3 is just another nail in the coffin for me personally.
This is incredible.
It would also be interesting to extend this to the OS level (maybe for user data first, and maybe move on to fingerprinting information later).
This is awesome. Definitely a feature that separated FF from Chrome DevTools
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1576400
> hi, the distribution folder is a way for third-parties to bundle/modify the browser - when a user is paving over a firefox installation with a setup file provided by mozilla, the assumption/signal is, that they want to receive the plain unmodified version of firefox. that's why the distribution folder is getting removed by default. this is the documented behaviour and if you want to keep the distribution in place when using an installer from mozilla, you'd have to run it with the /RemoveDistributionDir=false parameter: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/installer/wi...
> so i assume this bug is a wontfix...
Firefox default is Cmd-Shift-[], which gives me pain in left hand if I use it too much. So I have used OS keyboard to reassign the tab change to Cmd-[]. Most apps seem to respect it, but Firefox doesn't.
Does anyone have a better solution?
With Cmd-[] you just use total two keys which are easy with two hands.
allows you to set a keyboard shortcut for it (among other things)
disclaimer: I don't personally use it.
If you use the Mac trackpad, use BetterTouchTool to assign a gesture (I use tiptap left and tiptap right) to the switch tabs left and switch tabs right keyboard shortcuts. You can assign them per-app so it can send a different combo for Firefox than anything else.
Just this Firefox Lockwise stuff seems to be buggy. Every once in a while it disables automatic password fill-in. The security menu is also badly labled, it states something about asking if login data should be stored, but it's also resposible to fill it in after it was stored.
See: https://forums.lastpass.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=356405
The one thing that's really lagging is adding back support for more of the customizations that were lost in the transition to the new architecture at FF57.
For example, one of the most useful and popular add-ons ever was called Tab Mix Plus. Here's a link to the open issues blocking the re-implementation of this functionality.
http://tabmixplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=73159#p73159
People in HN comments frequently talk about "switching" to a different browser, as if it were true that you could only have one browser installed at a time, which is laughably false.
Is there an OS setting for a default? Sure, but that setting is inconsequential, since many shallow shortcuts to both browsers are readily created, and equally accessible. Furthermore, many HN users profess a deep mastery of command line expertise, explaining how effortless it is to use the console in a terminal window and pour shell commands from their finger tips. Surely, it would be just as easy to enter the name of one browser or the other, or both, alternative arbitrarily, as needed.
The false narrative of loyalty to a browser is beyond silly, when you can just use all of them, and most people frequently do exactly that.
So, what does it mean when we see, over and over again, nameless, faceless users boiling to the surface to broadcast a deep emotional investment in a browser?
I think it means there are a lot of liars. People presenting themselves in a disingenuous manner.
Sometimes I do get asked by regular less technical people, what my general tendency is, and I tell them it doesn't matter, this all bullshit, and the cards are stacked against you. The default settings are designed to reveal your identity as unique, JavaScript is forced when it need not be, and an emphasis on the perfection of CSS graphical representation is overburdened and counterproductive.
Differences among browsers are superficial, and we haven't seen anything truly new since 2004. That last new thing was tabs, and since then, the mass migration has been to mobile deviced where options and real estate are limited, forcing the adoption of apps, locked into the OS of the device vendor's choosing (apple or google).
Sure, we use laptops, but browsers don't really matter anymore. Gaming rigs and work stations? Who cares?
Our future has been stolen from us, and we are lie to about it every day.
Stop arguing about browsers. It's absurd and untrue to claim that the browser is what will save us.
All important things happen on the server side, and that is where we are ruined.