You guys were friends with Chrome?
Seriously! Even back in 2007 I was all “chrome is faster? Great, now Firefox has some competition” I never switched to chrome. You couldn’t pay me to use that privacy nightmare.
I used it when it was new and google didn’t seem so bad. Google even sent me one of the original Chromebook prototypes (CH-47) before they launched as a product for sale. i don’t know when it started to become clear that google was going evil, but around 10 years ago it was really obvious where things were headed.
i don’t know when it started to become clear that google was going evil
It was around the time they removed “Don’t be evil” from their official philosophy.
I moved to Chrome after years of using Firefox when FireFox was having tons of issues that Chrome resolved.
Most of them are fixed now. Though it still has issues with selection boxes on some websites forcing me to use Chrome again for them. At least they’re government sites, mostly, so there’s no ads needing to be blocked… Yet.
i haven’t used chrome in over ten years. i could never understand why anyone the least bit nerdy would use it, but that’s autism for ya
Chromium does have a clean UI. I still use Librewolf but the Firefox UI is a mess
What UI? Both browsers render one line with tabs and the address bar below. They’re almost identical.
For reals. This is the browser equivalent of being concerned that your car only has 14-way adjustable seats instead of 16, or whatever the marketing team dreamed up last year.
Look at the screen usage though. It wastes a lot of space.
Alt-tabbing back and forth, chrome’s combined tabs, address, and bookmarks bar is larger than Firefox 's…?
By default Firefox puts spacers either side of its URL bar, is that what you mean? Just remove them
What exactly is “clean” about a ui that doesnt conform to the os ui standards…? The ui is basically bloated because of it.
To me, the Chromium UI looks and feels like a toy…
Could you be more specific? I’ve been using ff regularly for a long time now and never feel like the UI is getting in the way, though I do use a tab groups add-on to help manage my mess of open tabs. But I also haven’t used Chrome for even longer than I’ve been using ff, so I’m curious about what specific ways you think the chrome ui is better.
All the buttons and menu options are huge
In my UI (on desktop), tabs take up the title bar and all the other necessary buttons fit in the row with the address field. I’ve also got a bookmarks bar below that but it’s optional. There’s also the optional sidebar that I do use but mostly keep hidden.
For menus, there’s the tab menu that is a button on the tab row and is mostly filled with open tabs plus 4 other items. Then there’s the main menu with 19 items. Tbf, one is undesired (log in for sync) and at least 7 are redundant (as in if they weren’t there, I’d still have easy access to their functionality), but I find menus are easier to discover features through (and hate how MS wants to get rid of them) and am ok with the redundancy.
There’s also various context menus, but I’ve never found them to be obtrusive.
This is the state after some customization, but not a crazy amount. If I install FF on a new system, I can usually get it to a point where I’m happy with it pretty quickly.
If you mean the mobile version, I can understand that a bit more but personally prefer the screen space to be used up to expose more functionality. On mobile, I’ve felt like FF gives me the most power that feels closest to what I can do on a desktop, though tbf it’s been a while since I used other browsers (excluding electron stuff or apps that integrate Chrome or Google Web view for web browsing rather than letting me use my preferred browser, though I’ve never felt happy with the more minimalist UI instead of the capabilities FF exposes).
I also haven’t tried librewolf and don’t know if the same UI is possible there.
I actually like the UI of the mobile version. I am also used to Firefox at this point but when I first moved it was painful. I think they should polish up the UI and focus on minimalism I stead of cramming in new features
Honestly? I’m lazy, my adblocker still works so that’s enough for me
FF has been my daily driver for at least a decade, but I gotta test my web apps in everything :/
I kinda prefer Vivaldi for testing chromium-based browsers. I guess MS Edge would be a similar experience too nowadays
Vivaldi is so pretty, I hide pretty much everything from the interface and use it for making product demo and training videos. I considered using it as a daily but I’ve got FF set up just the way I like it.
I draw the line at installing edge on my linux machine! I just figure that if chrome works then edge works and haven’t had anyone report any issues.
Safari is the real pain in the butt…
Tab groups. I switched from Chrome to Firefox when all this Manifest V3 stuff started, and I’m still looking for a Firefox extension that works as well and looks as clean as the way Chrome handles tab grouping.
Firefox has panorama and supports browser groups which swap the whole visble tab bar. Lots of options.
Neither of those are nearly as effective though
so many webapps and logins dont work properly in ff. or lets call it AdFox for now while they’re still selling us out to alphabet. so autism is when you just see black or white. chrome isnt bad overall…they have a UX, AdFox isnt good overall for too many reasons. i hope we’ll get a real browser before the web is dead.
When have you used Firefox the last time, 10 years ago?
Right? What kind of wildly niche activities are people doing where FF doesn’t work? All of my stuff works, and I’ve never had any weirdness. I browse art, shop online, do social media (a little), check my email, use auction sites, and watch Plex and other streaming services.
There must be an entire corner of the internet I don’t even know about.
do social media (a little),
Don’t worry, we all do social media at least a little. We’re here, aren’t we?
I have some telehealth services I need to use occasionally that don’t support Firefox, but that’s pretty much it. And I guess Google meet is glitchy, but that I can deal with.
today.
I’ve been using Firefox consistently since the beginning in 2004. And Netscape navigator before that. And I have never had these issues you speak of. I never made the switch to chrome when it was released because I always hated the look of it. Firefox does everything anyone needs to do. I don’t understand how some people struggle so much.
Firefox does everything anyone needs to do. I don’t understand how some people struggle so much.
I’ve always wondered what it is that people are doing when they say that FF is too slow or inadequate in some way. But elsewhere in this thread to be found:
There’s only like one notable website I’ve had to use chromium for instead of Firefox.
The website for recalibrating a Google Pixel’s fingerprint sensor. I’ve had to use that website twice, and I just used Microsoft Edge to do it since I can’t uninstall it.
Absolutely wild.
I would use firefox, but youtube is basically unusable on it.
Also wild.
All stuff which is using web serial doesnt work in ff(esp-home or the Installation Of grapheneOS for example). But for this rare tasks i have ungoogled chromium. My daily driver is Zen
I have run Ungoogled Chromium, Thorium, and Vivaldi, and all of them perform much faster and better than Librewolf.
And Librewolf is my daily driver.
If you haven’t used Firefox in 3+ years, its improved a lot. For 99% of people its interchangeable with Chrome except for being in the Google ecosystem.
no. everytime its more shit. slap AI or autotranslate on it while no user hat that top prioritised. this shit stupid search in the middle that takes your cusor to magicbar or what that crap is called. pocket…fuck it. it takes longer to debloat firefox than finding an alternative. shit default search, shit ceo… moz has become 99% worse. TB was so good it had to go to keep the bar super low for future moz releases. devs are the worst in how they handled feature request while taking money from google.
I don’t understand why translation is bad, could you please explain
well either you use it and thats fine eventhough much culture gets lost in translation. or you dont use it at all like me and is just more bloat like shitty pocket. overall i want to chose what to install. my ff profile is so old with every update the first start after update takes ages…and mostly because adfox added stuff i didnt ask for. why is moz so stupid? other plattforms (osx, atlassian jira, slack) allow me to add functionality through their stores but keep the original product clean. adfox goes like slapping shit on everything. lets add AI to improve my searches…ah, why not use ai to do the entire browsing? and thats how idiocracy started.
I’m as frustrated as the next person here when it comes to how AI is crammed into products, but translation between languages is one of the few things AI can be good at. A lot gets lost in translation, sure, but everything is lost when it’s not translated at all. Are we expected to have official translaters for everything? I use it most often translating explanations of how to fix a chunk of code. Someone else solved the problem except that it’s not in a language I understand, one quick AI translation and I can understand what their solution was and deploy it myself. I couldn’t do that ten years ago. Most AI is hot garbage but I find translation AI very useful.
Just be fluent in every language it’s not that hard
¿Por qué no los dos?
How come you don’t have a usename? Or is it a bug on my side?
BTW, I’m super happy with translation and AI in ff. I guess not every users wants the same, especially for those with english as first langage.
name is using non latin characters, so id just imagine youre using an app or browser that doesnt support the character codes for it
Always has been.
I’ve been using Librewolf for quite a time now. Any other recommendations? No reason. Just got brow-curious.
Zen wasn’t all that good. Not polished.
I though it is not supposed to be polished since it rather new?
Kinda yeah but it almost feels like an alpha stage product. Still very promising.
I’m on Librewolf too. Recently its been fully signing me out of my extensions on every startup, so I can’t just unlock bitwarden with my pin anymore. Anyone else run into this?
That was a bug in the bw extension, it’s not unique to LW
E: I use LW and bw and had this issue a couple of months ago, but it’s been back to normal for a month+
Ah, this just started in the last couple of weeks.
Brow-curious, lol. I’m gonna use that one
I love Librewolf too, and if you’re looking to explore other options I do recommend giving the Mullvad Browser a go. It’s another firefox fork but I believe it handles fingerprinting in a better manner. Similarly, it comes with uBlock Origin built in but also NoScript. I’d likely use it as my primary browser but I don’t really care for NoScript and removing the extension would ultimately defeat the fingerprint resistance of Mullvad.
Ublock is building a manifest v3 compatible extension, in case you want to compare the effectiveness of v2 vs v3 Ublock.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh
You mean Librewolf, of course.
There is no Librewolf without Firefox.
There is no Firefox without people’s desire for privacy. There is no sufficient privacy without people removing the diseased fingerprint of multiple big companies.
There is no possibility of a big browser surviving, without caving to big companies, in the artificially hostile web created by Google’s monopoly.
And that last one is fundamentally unfair, beyond any accusation of “Derivative!” anyone can make.
I actually switched back to Firefox (from chrome) about 5 or 6 years ago because I liked the interface more. And I still like the Firefox design decisions more than what chrome is doing.
Privacy is nice too but people come to Firefox for lots of reasons.
Hey let’s not force the guy to move again privacy comes one step at a time.
This tbh. I know Mozilla has been up to some questionable things lately but I only just got a bunch of my friends to finally ditch Chrome.
It’s sad that firefox only exists to keep chrome from becoming a monopoly, around 80% of Mozilla’s income is from Google to keep google.com the default search engine.
I tried Vivaldi and honestly it looks and feel amazing, but the issue is that it’s chromium based, but if mozilla put more effort in actually working on firefox, I would love it even more. Wish librewolf had a mobile app
Use Mull on mobile
You might want to keep looking for better friends. Firefox recently got busted tracking users without their consent
https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature
With a recent Firefox update, Mozilla seems to have taken a leaf out of Google’s playbook: without directly telling its users, the company has secretly enabled a so-called “Privacy Preserving Attribution” (PPA) feature. Similar to Google’s (failed) Privacy Sandbox, this turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites.
Edit: i am not saying that Firefox is bad. I just wouldn’t call it a friend, let alone a best friend
Well, when there’s only really 2 friends available, and the other options are just those guys in different hats…
That’s the definition of browser monopoly
Yeah it’s a pretty shite situation all around. Will be interesting to follow the US DOJ ruling on the split-up of Google.
WebKit: TheyDontKnow.jpg
You don’t know. Webkit is the older brother of Blink (the engine in Chrome). They’re not different enough to count as separate.
Fair point. I just thought the image of safari standing alone in a corner was a funny one. Since I never hear anyone complain about it, but I don’t see anyone stan it either.
Edit: complaints other than it being the mandated engine for iOS.
Meh. WebKit is Blink as much as it is KHTML. It’s also not controlled by Google.
Y’all can downvote this person but they aren’t necessarily wrong. Unfortunately, it seems you have to pick the poison you know in the browser space or take a risk with something else. And something else is usually just one of those original poisons wearing a different label. That said, there are some projects that tend to be of better form than others. Consider the Mullvad Browser and Librewolf. Those two are built on Firefox but are “fixed” enough to mitigate the crap Firefox has done. For Android, I believe Mull browser is the best one can get right now, it’s like a mobile Arkenfox.
The story is an overblown nothingburger and would make Firefox still the massively better choice. This is just agenda pushing at this point. But hey, keep using Chrome if you think they preserve your privacy and the web in a better way. No one is forcing you to use a Firefox based browser.
I don’t think there’s any sense in overlooking flaws just because something is overall better. Firefox is the massively better choice if the goal is to avoid data collection. However, I don’t think that means it’s fair to let things slide so easily. A community that calls out its developers when they make a mistake can ultimately improve things, and prevents devs from saying “they won’t understand and they won’t care.” Firefox isn’t a total angel when it comes to data collection, I mean telemetry being opt-out instead of opt-in is a pretty big boon, even if it’s not as bad as it is in other browsers. I’m not sure what agenda you believe is being pushed here, I never once suggested folks jump ship from Firefox to Chrome.
What else are you going to use honestly. I use Librewolf but that still is Firefox based.
It is funny to me that they call targeted advertising “privacy preserving”
I’m not saying it is a bad choice. I just wouldn’t call Firefox my best friend. That’s all
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
There’s only like one notable website I’ve had to use chromium for instead of Firefox.
The website for recalibrating a Google Pixel’s fingerprint sensor. I’ve had to use that website twice, and I just used Microsoft Edge to do it since I can’t uninstall it.
Which site?!? I like my pixel but the fingerprint sensor is like it was made by insane baboons
https://pixelrepair.withgoogle.com/
Worth noting that the calibration is for when you replace your phone screen, because often the phone screen comes with a new fingerprint scanner and for some reason the phone won’t recognize it without a firmware update.
IDK what pixel you have, but iirc some of them are just known for having kinda shitty scanners. I have a pixel six with a glass screen protector and I often have to try more than once.
The feature isn’t even mentioned in Mozilla’s data protection policies. The only way for users to turn it off is to find the opt-out function in a sub-menu of the browser’s settings.
Irritatingly, a Mozilla developer justifies the move by claiming that users can’t make an informed decision.
This is all IN ADDITION to them turning on DoH (DNS over HTTP) without permission which nullifies ad blockers.
We have heard this a million times. The feature you’re referencing is a net positive for privacy and yet the zealots just cannot accept that fact.
First of all, every would is true. Nanana boo-boo is not a rebuttal.
Second, if it is so awesome for people and not about tracking, why do you sneak in changes that circumvent anti tracking without telling people about it and burying the change in submenus?
How many people regularly read submenus?
You’re so right about all of this /s
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
DNS over HTTPS is very good for privacy and security. Even Librewolf turns it on.
Putting ads in Firefox is bad in so many ways but encrypted DNS is good as it keeps DNS actually secure.
Not if you leave it at default, which is cloudflare, and is the only option. Fuckers MITM-ed half the internet, and now they’re after DNS. I’d rather trust my ISP and NSA more than them.
There are a relatively small amount of DNS over HTTPS servers. It makes sense they would go with a bigger company. Also having it on by default bypasses a lot of censorship.
I don’t like Cloudflare and I personally switched it to quad9
Really enjoying Zen browser this week, may be my new favorite. The tab handling is VERY weird at first though.
TIL, it is Gecko-based but more than just another Firefox clone.
Kinda neat, right? What do you think of it so far?
Since you asked I had to download it and give it a try. I liked how the installation was simple, just one command, no need to download an installer and follow a wizard. I personally prefer Linux but I’m on Windows now for reasons. Overall it feels familiar but different, I still need more time with it, but I do like the Zen Sidebar feature already.
Oh, I thought you had already.
Didn’t Firefox sell to Google recently or something like that?
no. they do get money to put google as one of default search engine. but IMO that’s fine for now, as they need money somehow. And librewolf, for those who take it seriously.
They get sponsored to be the default search engine. Firefox developers cost money and being non-profit relies on dontations and sponsorship
Of course not.
I would use firefox, but youtube is basically unusable on it. No idea why, but it is so much better on chrome
I find that interesting because I hear it a lot, yet I’ve never had a problem with it. I use all the usual adblocks and whatnot, but it runs fine.
That’s what I hear, but it’s really bad for me.
I’d recommend backing up your bookmarks, then delete your profile in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Reinstall only uBlock Origin, then give Firefox another shot.
Maybe try an extension like chameleon? I’ve had it on with ublock when using YouTube for a bit, makes it seem like I’m using chrome to YouTube.
I could try that too. Thanks!
Very much a ymmv, but I use Firefox on windows and Linux, don’t really have an issue with it. Hope it helps!
Not true. I haven’t used YouTube on anything but Firefox for a couple of years now. It’s 100% fine.
Don’t know what to tell you. It’s true for me.
In what way is it unusable?
Videos take about 10 seconds to load, freeze constantly. Live streams completely freeze after a few minutes. Videos become unresponsive after a while and you have to close the browser entirely.
What OS?
Windows 11
My condolences. I have stopped using windows because I generally have a lot of trouble with it
Me too and I don’t have issues at all.
I use adblocker and a script blocker that blocks everything but the main Youtube page.
Maybe the script blocker helps.
Edit: I case you don’t use a script blocker, they’re usually set to block every script, so basically every Web page is broken on the first visit.
When was the last time you tried it? There have been hiccups a few times where Ublock needed to push an update, but (at least on my end) those issues have tended to resolve quickly
If YouTube is your only issue you could also just keep chrome around as a YouTube player and use Firefox for everything else - unless space is exceptionally tight on your system, a second browser isn’t the worst thing to have on hand :)
I use YouTube daily, and it’s been awful for a while now. I don’t understand, my computer is very powerful, but youtube is unusable on Firefox. I tried to figure it out but no luck
Most likely hardware acceleration isn’t working properly.
I have that unchecked
Yeah, YouTube without hardware acceleration is unusable. You need that for anything beyond simple text and images. Give that a try, though it might not work properly depending on your setup.
Ok let me try that. I always saw everyone say disable it
Hope it helps!
This is super weird to hear. YouTube is way BETTER on FF for me. Videos load/play exactly as expected and my ad blocker still kills all the junk that I would have to put up with on Chrome.
I haven’t figured out how to totally remove the stupid chat window on the right side of videos, but that’s true regardless of browser.
I don’t know why the downvotes. Sadly some webpages are made only thinking in chromium, thus working worse in other browsers.
I have found the same issue with youtube. I still use firefox, but youtube under firefox works worse than under chrome or other chromium based browsers. Probably it’s google fault this, I’m certain they do it on purpose.
Also clarify that I use an old computer that struggles a bit in general, so newer hardware may have not experience this, maybe?
Sadly some webpages are made only thinking in chromium, thus working worse in other browsers.
YT absolutely works in Firefox. I use it daily for many many years. The only thing that annoys me is that the fullscreen toggle is kinda sluggish but that’s not anything I’d use Chrome for.
I don’t use chrome over that. I prefer using tube archivist opened on firefox.
But on my low spec computer for instance using YouTube on any Gecko based browser I get stutter audio over bluetooth, that does not happen on chromium based browsers.
As the original commenter said that makes youtube unusable for me in firefox, but I still use alternatives to chrome. Other chromium based browsers or tube archivist is my choice.
You could try https://freetubeapp.io/.
Thanks! I didn’t know about it. I’ll give it a go.
Not sure why the downvotes, either. Can’t imagine the downvotes once they find out I am using Windows 11.
I wonder why it’s broken for you.
This is definitely a “you” problem. Something is worng with your installation or OS
I need the quick and easy profile switching management in Firefox like I have in Chrome and I’ll never look back.
That looks like something similar to what I’d find useful, but the requirement to download a separate binary to use the plugin feels like 100% malware and I will not touch it.
bro it’s open source https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher-connector
What I did for that is I made a second shortcut on my taskbar, so now it lets me open both instances or just one
Yes, I’ve done that, but I don’t want more icons on desktop and I’m out of room on the taskbar for even more goddamn icons. Unfortuantely the muti-account-containers isn’t quite what I want, and the other suggested plugin hasn’t been updated in 2 years and also requires a separate binary download to work, which just screams malware and if off the table entirely. Thanks for the suggestion any how. I’m still looking. Cheers!
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