It’s too bad that Firefox has such a great UX and privacy-focused cloud features like this, yet is being held back by its engine. As a heavy FF user for the last few years it’s become more and more clear that the world just doesn’t care about making sites work on FF and I’m more frequently having to switch to Chrome. My dream is that FF would switch to Chromium while keeping all the great features around the browser engine. But suggesting such a thing is blasphemy in the FF world so we’re stuck with an engine that no one targets any more and isn’t keeping up with modern web APIs more web devs are using.
I have the exact opposite experience. I've been using FF for a very, very long time, and I have yet to encounter a site that doesn't work on it.
Also, what modern web APIs Firefox doesn't support?
The only roadblock I’ve found has been the webserial API, which enables users to flash ESP32/8266 or other devices from webpages. It’s super handy for flashing WLED or ESPHome to devices because you don’t have to install any extra software. As far as I know, it has been marked as a “wontfix” in the Firefox bugtracker as they consider it a harmful feature [0]
[0]: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336
I mean, I understand the attractiveness, but it's a super-niche feature that wouldn't really move the needle.
The real problem, imho, is the constant glitching on Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Even if they were really "accidental" (big if), they impact massive amounts of users in their everyday lives, and it takes very little to lose a user forever.
Maybe FF should launch a GMail competitor, and/or promote alternatives to any Google property.
Big blocker for me too. Would love to see support, perhaps behind some buried flag.
It’s a lot of little things. Just yesterday I was on vanguard and a select box wouldn’t display at all on FF. You start to notice these rendering differences all over the place. Gone are the days a site just flat out won’t work unless it’s specifically using an API FF doesn’t support, but it’s all the small stuff like wondering if a form is working correctly because something seems broken for FF
It's missing webnfc support which means it's not an option for our web based inventory tracking system.
I have issues, but rarely. (but I'm tech savvy... wouldn't want to tell my mom to try a different browser...)
My sense of what sites don't work properly (not necessarily 100% of the time, joy) are some big corporate, non-tech company websites, like Kaiser Permanente's and ADP's sites. My sense of recollection says these cases are frequently experienced as the combination of, "Ugh, gotta log into that stupid bloated benefits/work related site, oh and it's not working... time to try Chrome."
It's too bad that I can't read the article - because I'm using Firefox and an ad blocker. I get "Something went wrong. Please disable your blocker on How-To Geek"
works fine for me with uBO
How-To Geek is one of those spam sites that is full of basic tutorials that don't really help with your problem and pollutes your search results for ... anything.
Don't think you lost much, I didn't even try to open the original article.
Works fine on my Firefox with several blockers.
It shows nothing of the sorts for me. Try uBO if you are not using it.
I'm using Mull, an Android Mobile browser based on Firefox with some privacy tweaks, with uBlock origin enabled, Android set to use NextDNS with even more adblocking, and a VPN. The page loads just fine for me. Maybe you're missing one of the lists that helps with anti-adblocking?
Works fine on Firefox with uBlock Origin.
It's too bad this is always one of the most upvoted comments on every FF thread when it just doesn't reflect reality.. been using Firefox for basically it's entire existence and it just works. It's always worked. Never been significantly slower than Chrome, at least to an extent that it matters, and now it's not slower at all. I don't have Chrome installed on my computer since everything works. What parallel reality do others live in?
My experience also. Whenever a site doesn't work I try it in chrome and bing -- and it doesn't work there also.
Yeah, in most cases sites "break" only because they integrate too much with some ad-tech SDK etc. Which means they break on any browser doing any serious ad-blocking.
Some smaller sites (for example local restaurants) will recommend chrome, but Firefox still works just fine for me.
I have also been using Firefox since its early days. The only issue I have is trying to share my screen with Google Meet it just does not work. While, not surprising it is a slight annoyance as my company uses Google meet for all of our meetings.
My experience has been quite different in that I don’t even have Chrome installed on my Windows machine just yet, because FF has been working fine for me for a long time. I like to use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. I don’t use the cloud sync feature myself, because I mostly switch between FF and Mobile Safari and I don’t know if there is a good sync solution, and I’d prefer not to send my usage history and stuff out anyway. I’m sure someone out there - many someones, probably - has painted a number of more or less accurate pictures of who I am using my browsing data anyway.
In most cases FF is blocked by useragent sniffing, so you just need an useragent changer addon
This assertion doesn't match my experiences. I can't recall the last time a site gave a clear complaint about "we don't support firefox". I remember doing useragent modification 10-15 years ago, but more recently, when I tried to do it (I forget why), it seemed like changing the useragent has gotten less convenient, too (installing an addon feels worse than whatever I used to do). I also have the impression from podcasts maybe, that useragent filtering just isn't the near-source-of-truth it used to be.
Bing AI chat wants edge, change the user agent to that and it works on firefox
Hey look more anticompetitive behavior from Microshit. I can't believe that they get away with requiring you to use Bing and Edge when you search from the Windows task bar either.
Why should Firefox move to an engine that is completely controlled by Google? Firefox's independence is exactly why uBlock Origin will continue to work just as well as it always has, and Chromium-based browser will flounder with MV3.
Wouldn't it be better to build according to standards - rather than browsers? Do that and any site will work in Firefox.
I very rarely have issues with FF and I've been using it for 10 years or so. If a site doesn't work I'll try agan in a chromium based browser I use as needed but that's it. It's easy to keep one installed for such a use case.
In a decade of use, I have yet to run into sites that don't work just fine with Firefox.
I took a glance at Can I Use what the difference between the last public release of Firefox and Chrome is [1] and they don't really have that big of a difference in the eyes of normal use-cases? Some of these aren't implemented purely because of privacy reasons, the proposals aren't finished yet or complexity [2].
Why would Firefox need to change to Chromium engine? The only websites I notice that don't work with Firefox is because of user-agent targetting or just putting 5-second time-outs in Youtube code on non-chrome webbrowsers [3].
Can you give some examples of websites not working on Firefox?
[1] https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+120%2Cfirefox+121&compar...
[2] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
[3] https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-seemingly-intentionally-...