I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero.
These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site was hopelessly broken on chrome.
As someone in the Apple ecosystem, Firefox is not a very compelling alternative. I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based) and I've tried switching on desktop as well.
On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in. On top of that, it was simply a slower browser, both with DOM manipulation and Javascript.
For example, when I made my latest research project (https://pl.aiwright.dev) Firefox would routinely struggle with the large complex graphs (over 100k nodes, though only a few hundred nodes attached to the DOM at any given time). Safari handles it with no issues whatsoever. I'm sure there are likely workarounds to speed things up on Firefox, but I don't have the time or energy for something like that since it's a research project, not an end-user facing product.
Maybe you can make the argument that switching to Firefox will incentivize improvements, but so far that hasn't been my experience. I've now moved away from Firefox to things like Orion (which is still quite buggy, but useful enough). Safari seems to be getting better over time, with things like containers now and extensions like Userscripts [2].
On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in
If Firefox suited my needs 100% as well as Safari, this is why I’d still not use it. God damn is it noisy. You’re a browser, I have no interest in engaging with you more than necessary, whatever-I-was-trying-to-do is what I care about. Please stop acting like a kid who’s not getting enough attention. It’s off-putting.
God damn is it noisy
What is this noise you're referring to? I'm 90% Firefox and 10% Safari and I don't understand this comment.
I kinda do. Safari feels very much like a simplistic browser, but a damn good one, except when it's not. Firefox tried to do a lot, tons of features baked in, Safari outsources a lot to the operating system and as a result the interface and interaction becomes simpler, but less flexible.
The primary reason I don't use it 100%, but 90/10 like you, is due to extensions and those few sites that doesn't work in Firefox.
Safari outsources a lot to the operating system and as a result the interface and interaction becomes simpler, but less flexible.
Yes, definitely agree with that. But I think of "noise" as stuff that interrupts your normal interaction with web sites and in that regard I don't think Firefox is particularly noisy.
There are definitely a lot of features, settings and extensions with Firefox and while I don't use very many of them I do really appreciate the ones that I do use.
And much of the “noisiness” stems from tooltips, popups, etc explaining changes and additions. I can see where some users might want those but it should be possible to disable those entirely, or at least make them more “quiet” (e.g. a notification icon with red news count pip on the new tab screen where changes can be seen at the user's leisure).
I know what he's talking about. Firefox has constant nag screens. I just restarted Firefox and got two separate nags[1]. I am certain that within the next week it will nag me for at least one more thing. Maybe it'll want me to try Pocket, or sign in with a Mozilla account, or set up sync, or the absolute worst offender - when I launch the browser it will say "heyyyy I gotta update and I treat this like it's 1998 so you'll need to wait, and then I'll need to restart". Firefox is VERY naggy.
Ok, but obviously in this case you can check the "Don't show me this message again" checkbox and, like me, you'll have had to endure the burden of responding to this nag just once in years of using Firefox.
I may be forgetting about nags that don't allow themselves to be disabled, but if so, they're infrequent enough that they seem insignificant and obviously non-memorable.
Edit: I should add, when I had to have Chrome installed I really didn't like the fact that it updated itself automatically via a daemon process. I don't think having a constantly running background process for a browser, especially one from a giant advertising company, is a good alternative.
I don't know if it's the same "noise", but for a period of months I used an extension that replaced the New Tab page. When you do this with Firefox it pops up a notification the first new tab you open each session stating "your new tab has changed, keep settings?" I mean, I installed the extension to change the new tab page, so presumably I wouldn't need to be asked a second time.
The noisy part was this notification steals focus so you can't type into the search bar immediately, you have to hit escape or click out to gain focus again. And the popup kept appearing until I realized you had to specifically press "yes, keep changes" on the notification to get it to stop (usually I canceled out of it reflexively to do actually important things). If you just hit Escape or tried to use the URL bar it would come back next session and steal focus again.
It sounds like something minor but the idea of stealing focus to re-confirm a change you already confirmed is a mild source of headaches, and not necessary in my view. Not to mention, this process would repeat itself for every Firefox installation synced with, since the extension counts as a fresh install each time. In a world where switching browsers is trivial, I think minor annoyances like those are best removed.
Google and Apple get to engage you frequently all the time for free. You have no choice in the matter. Every surface is theirs.
Firefox doesn’t need to get me to “engage” when I’m already in their browser.
Firefox needs to make money.
That’s why I have to change the default search engine.
Most of what they’re nagging me about won’t even make them money. It’s marketing-changelog pages nobody reads. They could save some money by keeping text change logs where people who care can find them, and dropping those altogether.
It's been a long time since I've had a fresh install of ff (I do recall some notification bars in the window you have to close out), but as a very longtime user, I have no idea what you're talking about...example?
They pop new tabs, little “hint” boxes, et c, all the time. It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to become blind to as a power user (but is annoying if you do notice it), but that murders UX for lots of folks.
Once every three months, one gets an upgrade tab showing release notes. Upon occasion (and I mean, occasion, not regularly) they may try a new feature like Sync, save for later, etc.
Once I get the browser installed and running, what you describe matches 0% of my experience with it.
chrome has to be worse. now there's that ad privacy option that you have to remember to change
Same, it's simply easier to use Safari on my phone and Mac. The performance is fantastic, syncing is perfect, and switching between the two devices is effortless.
If I used windows or Linux I would probably give it a try again.
Not to mention on iOS your choices are really between Safari and Safari with a different skin.
No, on iOS the choice is between Safari + Plugins (official Safari) and Safari w/o Plugins (Chrome, Brave)
Brave on iOS is a, more or less, perfect Youtube Player. I haven't seen ads in months and it just works while also supporting the download of videos and creation of local playlists.
The YouTube app is also a perfect YouTube player, so I’m confused…
I haven’t used the official YouTube app, but I seriously doubt it’s ad-free and that it lets you download videos.
It does both, actually!
Are you saying that, by default and without any account, the official YouTube iOS app does not display ads? Then why are there so many alternative frontends which have ad blocking as a feature and Reddit is littered with threads asking how to block ads in the app?
Oh yes, I totally agree (and I hinted on this in my other comment here). Brave on iOS is a blessing.
I have had a lot of success with Orion on iOS. I can use both Firefox and chrome extensions, all on my iPhone. It seems like even YouTube works better in Orion than in Safari.
I also love having the Apple Pay and automatic SMS OTP integration. Those got me to start using Safari again from FF, and the only thing I'm really missing is uBlock Origin (Adguard is doing okay in its place)
I don't know what browser you've tried, but it certainly is not Firefox Quantum. That browser in my experience is on par with Chrome's performance.
Firefox has shipped Quantum in mainline for years. It may be on Chrome's level (I never tested), but regardless, it's nowhere near as performant as Safari.
Try running a very compute intensive script (that chokes your CPU/GPU). In my experience Firefox becomes unusable, Safari is still buttery smooth.
Now maybe Safari simply performs better, or maybe that's some OS level prioritization unfairly advantaging Safari, but to me as an end user, that's irrelevant.
I seem to be the only one, but I swipe to go back one website, and Safari for some reason shows the old website but freezes for 1-2 seconds.
Legitimately curious. Considering Firefox Quantum was released in 2017, is it even possible that my M1 is running any other version of Firefox? Doesn't seem likely considering the copy on the Mozilla site [1] for Firefox Quantum:
Firefox Quantum was a revolution in Firefox development. In 2017, we created a new, lightning fast browser that constantly improves. Firefox Quantum is the Firefox Browser.
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/quantum/
similarly, on mac this bug is a showstopper for me, so I'm using Brave currently: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1149826
(the bug is that text replacement does not work in FF on mac, something that saves me so much time daily)
My main Problem is that fn+E won't open the emoji picker.
I have to go to another app, insert an emoji there and copy it over.
I tried switching to Firefox like 3 times this year, but there's always something putting me off. I really really want to though.
On macOS, the most annoying thing for me is the inability to use the native login to authenticate to apple web services. I have to type in my apple ID, my password, and then the code sent to one of my devices every time. On chrome and safari, I can just use my fingerprint or laptop password and done.
I use Librewolf and Orion on MacOS, Orion on iOS/iPadOS (which is Safari I suppose, but the shell is awesome)
I’ve tried using Orion but I found it very slow and does not work fully as it should with a single chrome plugin I tried. Back to Safari!
Safari is much smoother on my Mac. I was recently running a very compute intensive script. Firefox was dropping frames so badly that the UI became nearly unusable. In contrast, Safari was still a buttery smooth 120fps.
Combine this with the fact that I still get E2EE sync and better integration with my OS, Firefox is no longer tempting to me. And I used to be a Firefox power user for years.
For me, the enhanced plugin ecosystem and additional control that Firefox offers simply isn't worth a slower browser that isn't as well integrated.
I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based)
TL;DR The truth is, no one has ever used Firefox or Chrome on iOS.
You say you know it's webkit based... but the entire engine for any browser on iOS is Safari, not merely webkit based. Apple doesn't have a policy of "your browser must be derived from webkit" they have a policy of forcing browsers to use the literal same engine built into iOS that Safari is using - i.e you are just using Safari with a different UI, there is only one browser engine on iOS.
This is an annoying detail to have to repetitively explain to people, and Apple benefits from this blurring of the lines in the army of users defending them for browser diversity. Honestly, if i had an iOS device I would use the Safari app - and as a web dev and a user I fucking hate Safari, but what's the point in using a different UI, they are all the Safari engine, the main browsing experience is by definition the exact same.
Weird, I have very little problems with Firefox on macos. I had performance issues with Chrome for big tables. Firefox was sluggish, but Chrome took 30s to render it (about 3000 rows, 300 columns). I ended up writing something that displays a small view of the table using absolute positioned divs which depend on the scroll bar. Now it works smoothly on all browsers (including some older tablet). It was not a simple workaround, though.
Orion is also webkit, but buggy, isn't it? I don't care for it.
Firefox proper is available for Mac but remember that on iOS the "firefox" is not using its own browser engine and there are not any add-ons available.
Firefox is not my primary browser on macOS for similar reasons. Given how similar iOS is to macOS I wouldn’t expect the situation to be much different with a hypothetical Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS — the performance and efficiency isn’t quite there compared to WebKit-based stuff.
There’s platform-agnostic issues too, however. Firefox is my primary browser on Windows and Linux, but it has a pile of UI papercuts which I’ve kinda-fixed with userchrome.css hacks, and the result is underwhelming (as is the possibility of these hacks periodically breaking with updates). It’s enough of a frustration that forking Firefox to properly fix them would be tempting if keeping up with the firehose of security patches from mainline weren’t so daunting.
My biggest wish is for Gecko to re-gain embedding support on desktop platforms so I can build my own browser around it, making keeping it secure as simple as updating dependencies.
I had to stop using Safari for development when I discovered the cache wasn’t clearing, even when I asked it to. That was a few years ago, and frankly, I’ve never looked back.
Using Safari on Apple’s stuff seems fine. What really matters is not supporting the chrome-alike push toward monopoly.
I use Firefox on macOS as my primary browser it’s great no complaints at all.
I've had one too many times where Firefox crashed and I lost all my tabs. Then had to go through weird steps to recover them. Too much annoyance. Just use Safari now, happy as a clam.
We all switched to Firefox back in the day because it was better.
Better than IE, there was no chrome and safari was a joke.
Entreaties and ‘trying to make Fetch (firefox) happen’ won’t work, evidently.
How do we make Firefox obviously better?
I’m core market for Firefox and just use Safari. Better battery life. And it’s just as good for privacy.
At least that’s my impression. Is it wrong?
If I don’t use it there’s very little chance people will change the defaults.
Defaults are powerful.
Firefox + uBlock origin is far better than any other browser without UBO.
Mullvad browser
That is quite literally Firefox + UBO. Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons.
I don't mean this as a dig or anything but it's literally what they described.
Like it's literally a fork of the tor browser (which is downstream firefox) with a custom config and preconfigured addons.
Yes, which is not Firefox with default settings
Yes for the GP but UBO on firefox isn't defaults either. The bulk of the benefits you get from mullvad browser past what you get with default firefox + the same extensions are easy config changes. Things you can accomplish by just scrolling through the settings and flipping on a few settings with "more secure more better" worded descriptions.
For the average user there's not really a particularly good reason to jump for a downstream browser unless you are specifically using their main features (tor or VPN). It's easy enough to get 95% of the way there with 30 seconds of config tweaks off stock upstream.
I've been using Firefox for about as long as I can remember, and really don't notice sites not working. I do notice, however, that using any browser without UBO makes my eyes bleed in an unending agony of capitalist garbage. It's like using a browser and then putting sand in your eyeballs.
Brave's built-in Adblock is just as good as Firefox+UBO in my experience.
"better" is completely subjective. From my point of view dev tools are way better in Blink-based browsers, so Chrome is my default dev browser. The browsing experience is really good in Safari, I love the compact tabs and minimalist UI, so that's my default on macOS. Edge has a really nice productivity feature that lets you split a window to see two different pages at the same time, so that's my default on Windows. Other than being open source I don't see what would compel me to go back to Firefox in 2024, the competition improved a lot. Also I personally lost faith in the Mozilla Foundation.
Yeah, I actually switched from Firefox to Safari this month. I didn't know Safari had tab groups, the feature I missed from Chrome when using Firefox. No speed differences and Safari has less of a battery impact so far.
Hard to complain about a browser that still cares about privacy, but with tighter OS integration.
What Adblock do you use with Safari? I would also like to try switching from Firefox to Safari but I haven’t found anything that can compete with uBO
My deshittification suite is NextDNS (Pi-hole as a service), 1Blocker (ad blocker, bought pre-subscription model), Rekt (block bags, redirect AMP), and Vinegar (replaces YouTube player).
I use UBO on Chrome and find the above experience comparable.
1Blocker (ad blocker, bought pre-subscription model)
Worth noting they continue to have a lifetime plan.
Been using wipr, I never see ads.
AdGuard is good. Not as good as uBO, but 98% of the time it gets the job done.
I’m not the person you asked, but I’ve been happy with 1Blocker. As a bonus it can also block ads and trackers outside the browser (that part only works on iOS).
Defaults are powerful.
This is true, though the current dominance of Chrome is evidence that a lot of people will switch. Chrome isn't the default browser on any desktop, after all, and yet a majority of non-technical users have deliberately switched to it...
It is the default browser on many phones though.
Better battery life
do you have metrics for that or it's just a feeling?
it’s just as good for privacy.
ublock origin isn't available for safari, which greatly increases the probability of safari not being just as good for privacy
Orion, which is based on Safari [1], supports uBlock Origin [2].
[1]: https://help.kagi.com/orion/why-orion/orion-vs-safari.html
[2]: https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/ublock-origin...
If battery life is all you care about, I'd argue you are not "core market" for FF. You're core-market for OS vendors, who will always be able to give you a better battery life by leveraging all the tips and (typically undocumented) tricks that a cross-platform project cannot touch.
Google's got a major conflict of interest with adsense and I'm sure they'll eventually ramp up the war on adblockers to a degree that will make manifest v3 look like a joke.
If Firefox decides to not implement blocking restrictions they will then have the chance to be the only browser people will still be able to normally use the internet with. That's the only chance they have for any kind of resurgence from their currently laughable 3% market share.
Small gimmicks like privacy, battery life, customizability, stability, etc. are frankly what 99.9% of people don't give a half a shit about. They will only make the switch from default once they're genuinely annoyed to the point where they can no longer use Chrome/ium. For Firefox users that moment unfortunately happens every time a government website doesn't work.
Entreaties and ‘trying to make Fetch (firefox) happen’ won’t work, evidently.
Pop culture references aside, `fetch` was also a browser! Sort of. `fetch` was a CLI predecessor to `wget` and `curl`.
Quoting myself:
Hmm.
Using Firefox because it has a particular technological feature is a political choice. That political stance would lead users to turn to other browsers as fast as tech is added or removed.
I use Firefox for political reasons and for what it stands.
Which means that when Firefox gets worse I still use it and support what it stands for.
It's very Stallmanesque and let it be clear I am not saying the choice to favour superior tech over ethic concerns is wrong. It's just a different choice.
That's what I tell people when talking about Signal and messenger, Chrome and Firefox.
Also, I don't think Mozilla is a white knight and in my opinion they fucked up some good things over the years (tech or ethic). But the good still largely surpasses the bad.
Let's say Firefox was the open platform it is today but with the exception of, hmmm, tabs ? No tabs. Well, using Chrome because FF has not tabs if fine of course but you are trading convenience for a Google controlled Internet viewer. At some point Microsoft tried the EEE tactics with web browsers (jscript and box models and the whole DHTML hell, etc.) and the argument was the same: "do we want a web that is controlled by MS, a web where MS is the only gateway to how content should be displayed/accessed and where MS totally control the evolution of the tech ?"
Instead of trying to figure out exactly what features would accomplish that, I wish they would focus on making it embeddable. Personally, I like the UX of Arc. Arc uses Chrome under the hood. And if anyone else wants to make a browser specifically for some small subset of users, they're going to pick Chrome.
Why not make it easer for developers to embed Firefox and let a thousand small, weird browsers bloom? Some will be terrible, but a few might be brilliant.
If they don't do this, I'm holding out hope for Servo.
I use PWAs extensively and Firefox decided they won't bother to implement them, so that's going to be a no from me.
Rather than wanting the web platform to be first class, they really want it to languish as a second-class citizen. Really sad, seeing as they also fired devs, and invested in "AI" instead.
Curious, can you give some examples of PWAs you use, and why? I've rarely seen any benefit of actually installing a PWA vs just bookmarking the site.
On mobile, I could see privacy reasons for wanting to use a PWA vs a native app, but every time I've seen a site that supports a PWA, they also support a native app and the PWA is usually a sad substitute in comparison.
Along those lines, does macOS 14's Safari's support for "Add to Dock" count as installing a PWA? I have a couple frequently used websites in my dock, acting more or less like regular Mac apps (or at least like Electron apps). What would a "proper" PWA add to that?
(Not a leading question. I'm genuinely asking people who like and use PWAs: is there something cool I'm missing out on?)
You're correct. I'm actually not sure what installing a PWA does that visiting the website in your browser doesn't, but it's essentially opening the website in a headless browser. So very much like electron except instead of having to bundle the browser in the executable it uses your machine's browser.
I use PWAs for YouTube Music, Slack, and Readwise Reader.
Sometimes there is a standalone app available, like with Slack, but often the PWA has the same features and doesn't duplicate the entire Web Platform stack (Electron), which saves some battery.
Thanks, the Slack example is a good one, I just use the electron app now but there is no reason I shouldn't use the PWA.
Photopea, it's a web based photo editor that is really really great. If you install it as a PWA, it works offline. Similarly, excalidraw, monkeytype, google calendar all work offline if you install it as a PWA.
Apart from that, I have youtube music, slack, discord, whatsapp web just for convenience of having it in alt+tab rather than cycle through a thousand tabs (admittedly, this usecase is nullified by tab search)
Any online IDE is a much nicer experience as an installed PWA compared to as a browser tab. VS code server for instance, since you don't get a the address bar at top like https://code.visualstudio.com/assets/docs/remote/vscode-serv... (without having to go Full screen on browser), and you get a standalone icon in task bar, and standalone window so you can Alt-Tab between it and other apps like web browser of choice quickly.
What's the real use case of PWAs?
They just seem like another way to attempt to shift users from the 'proper web' into a place where blocking ads is more difficult.
Personally, I wish we could purge the vast majority of 'apps' from the world, they shouldn't be apps in the first place, most have no need to run native code, they should be links to websites, sites that can work on more-or-less any device in any browser.
> What's the real use case of PWAs?
Letting companies save money while still claiming they have "desktop apps".
They just seem like another way to attempt to shift users from the 'proper web' into a place where blocking ads is more difficult.
Extensions still run in PWAs on Chromium-based browsers, so I'm not sure that's the intent behind implementing them.
Personally, I wish we could purge the vast majority of 'apps' from the world
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the distinction between an app and a website? PWAs are largely just websites with an OS shortcut, and in some cases more integration via platform APIs. I'm sure you're familiar with the term "web app", which perfectly highlights how muddied the line is with modern tooling.
On Windows the Twitter, Instagram, TikTok apps are PWAs. I like to use them because I can pin them to the start menu, have them start on a separate window by default and remember the window position.
I used to be the maintainer for Nativefier (which made web apps into native apps via Electron). It was very popular because many people don’t want certain sites to be one of X tabs in one app, especially when those sites act like they’re own apps. So we gave users the ability to treat these web “apps” like any other apps.
We actually shut down the project because a good PWA implementation does this better than we ever could. PWAs can have extensions like ad blockers (very difficult to impossible in Electron). PWAs get automatic browser updates (very difficult with Electron).
PWAs are great, and FF’s implementation of them is not.
What's the real use case of PWAs?
Having apps that works as well as native ones, while using the same codebase and open technologies, and that is naturally as decentralized, safe and accessible as the web.
Also not needing to be politically correct, approved by Google and Apple or share large percent of revenue and marketing data with them.
It could be happening if Firefox took it more seriously and Apple didn't prevent it from happening.
I personally hate PWAs even the ones I use on mobile (with firefox). Not being able to open a link in a second tab for example. I much rather just open the web app in a normal browser. PWAs just seem to reduce functionality over a normal web page.
Poorly built ones, sure.
But in all fairness, it’s easier to build one poorly, and there isn’t much incentive not to.
Indeed:
Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks. [1]
Any idea what Mozilla's motivation is here? (Apple's at least is easy to understand, even if you disagree.)
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
Firefox and Safari do not support installing PWAs on any desktop operating systems... Chrome and Edge support installing PWAs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks.
That's not actually true, MDN needs updating. PWAs are installable as standalone apps since macOS Sonoma and Safari 17 - https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0....
we really need a wealthy tech founder type (especially one who made their millions or billions on the web) to start a new foundation that will actually care about Firefox rather than see it as a liability. Mozilla has completely lost my trust and support
I like to see Firefox the browser as something that will have a life independent of Mozilla the (crappily managed) corporation. When they finally go down in flames, the open source community will continue to work on it in some fashion. It started as a skunkworks project, and I expect it will continue to have a life after Mozilla.
That, or something else will fill the void (maybe something built off Servo, I dunno), but that seems less likely.
I have tried to switch out of curiosity, but the lack of PWA support in addition to missing features like WebUSB really limits how useful the browser is to me.
It's decidedly non-ideal that it requires an extension and a native helper, but https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/pwas-for-fire... works.
Anyone else remember Mitchell Baker (Firefox CEO) calling for more than deplatforming?
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
Yes that's the problem with switching to Firefox. It's run by someone who abhors free speech, loves censorship, funds anti-male and anti-white hate movements and just in general stands against either things about myself I cannot change, or things that made the internet great.
Switching to Firefox empowers her organization, therefore it's something nobody should do. Especially as the reasons are so flimsy:
Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising
Mozilla makes 100% of its money from advertising. Safari and Edge are the browsers built by companies that don't make money from advertising. This argument is just completely wrong.
Chrome, Safari and Edge all use variations of the closely related Webkit and Blink engines
Blink forked from WebKit years ago and is by now very different.
Firefox is actually really good
So are Chrome and Safari, so what.
How has firefox discriminated against you as a white male?
A lot of the money they make from Firefox usage gets spent not on Firefox or the web but on social justice activism, which is invariably exclusionary of ordinary European and American men.
For example, they have an entire sub-fund devoted to nothing but ideological activism in Africa:
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/awards/Africa...
A typical project is something like funding a mobile app (note: not a website), specifically for African women to teach them how to plant potatoes.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/growing-skills-confid...
They don't help men - the app is exclusively given to women - because "The issue" is, as they put it, that "In Tanzania, older men are the primary decision-makers in households and local communities".
They could fund things useful to everyone globally, or even things useful for the web specifically (radical), but they choose not to deliberately. Instead they fund content for competing platforms. That's because Mozilla is a generic left wing NGO that sees the Google/Firefox deal as merely a legacy endowment. Naive geeks use it and send them money, which enables them to divert funding to what they really care about.
Edit: primarily -> a lot of, which changes nothing about the argument
The money they make from Firefox usage gets spent not on Firefox or the web but primarily on social justice activism, which is invariably exclusionary of ordinary European and American men.
I know facts don’t care about feelings, but according to Mozilla Foundation’s on website it says $22 million since 2015. The most recent financial numbers I found are from 2022, which lists “software development” expenses at $242 million. That’s 1% a year.
I know you’re speaking from a place of feeling aggrieved that some underrepresented person without power somewhere’s life might be made just half-epsilon better, but for your own benefit, perhaps you should get informed before spouting off nonsense.
Who am I kidding? Facts don’t care about feelings, and feelings are all that matter.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
Your "primarily on social justice activism" affirmation is obviously not true. Most of Mozilla spending is going to staff salaries, including of course paid Firefox developers.
Are you bothered by them funding apps that teach African women to plant potatoes?
Maybe patriarchy is causing some of their issues, and maybe it isn't. Either way, it doesn't seem worth getting riled up about.
He is saying platforms need better tools than simply banning. I don’t see a problem with this aside from a headline that is a bit provocative.
She is saying that the "open web" Mozilla envisions is one where Mitchell Baker and her friends get to censor and manipulate content directly in the browser.
Obviously, people of the same ideology as her will agree with that, because they hate openness and debate. This is an excellent reason to stay away from Firefox. Using it is getting very close to being a political statement, which given the blog post, could mark its users as those in favour of in-browser political censorship.
Edit: very strange that some people cannot see this. She is extremely explicit:
> Donald Trump is certainly not the first politician to exploit the architecture of the internet [...] to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy [...] and he won't be the last [...] changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors
Let's rephrase that: she claims the "architecture of the internet" - that's the web - has "dangerous dynamics" because (she thinks) it helped a Republican. Not some specific website, or some specific incident, or even some specific politician! The whole design of the internet itself is dangerous, and hence she demands "solutions" to make a "better internet" that goes beyond mere "permanent removal of bad actors" but rather solves the problem pre-emptively before "untold damage is done". Nobody who runs a browser should have this kind of revulsion towards what the internet is.
The only point in this piece that sounds like that is “Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation”. It’s fair to disagree with her on that point but also consider that in conjunction with her call to make feed algorithms transparent. So she is saying to give preference to NYT over Breitbart by default but also make it obvious that is what you are doing.
Can you be a little more specific about where you are reading that she would like to "censor and manipulate content directly in the browser"?
I read the entire linked post, then searched for "browser", "user agent" and "software" and still don't see it.
All in all we need more of this, rather than the bland milquetoast garbage we are spoonfed by media. The insurrection attempt is a huge deal that is being treated with kid gloves. What in Baker's proposal specifically do you disagree with? I'll copy/paste them here:
- Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.
- Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.
- Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
- Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.
Yep, one of the many reasons I won't support the organization.
At least capitalist/for-profit organizations are honest about who they are.
After reading your link I'm not sure I see the problem you're pointing to.
I do remember, which is why I will never use Firefox again. Our culture is already far too censorious, I have no desire to support those who want to go further.
Awesome blog post, thanks for sharing!
Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data
This is true for Google, etc, but definitely not for Apple. Not saying Apple is perfect in every way, but they actually have a track record for privacy protection.
Apple definitely makes a lot of money from advertising...probably more than they make from selling Macs (based on 2022 results).
Also I think this quote might be technically right, but Mozilla's revenue is almost entirely paid from advertising companies who pay royalties to have their search engines by default in Firefox. So they are very much coupled to the dynamics of the ads industry.
Apple makes money from ads in their App Store. Do they make ad money from Safari? I couldn’t find that info.
Apple gets 30% of Google's advertising revenue from Safari's default search. So Apple is earning from Google's advertisements. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/google-witness-a...
Not doubting you, but do you have a source for that? Best I could find was their last quarterly earnings report which does have “Services” ahead of everything but iPhone, but I would imagine includes some big money makers like AppleCare.
Apple gets 30% of Google's advertising revenue from Safari's default search. So Apple is earning from Google's advertisements.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/google-witness-a...
Brave runs on Chrome and has some of the highest privacy protections.
I love Firefox, but just questioning if there aren’t good solutions available on Chrome.
And while Apple may not have a business model as focused on selling data, they still have a growing ad business + weaker protections against fingerprinting and ad blocking
weaker protections against fingerprinting and ad blocking
Citation?
Brave’s internal ads and crypto weirdness are enough for me to be uncomfortable with it.
What internal ads? I see 0 ads while using brave because of its internal ad blocker.
Crypto features are an easy toggle to disable. The toggle isn't hidden, doesn't re-enable itself, and isn't weird in any way.
Firefox has ads doesn't it ? for the homepage links.
(I am not complaining. long time firefox user)
Firefox’s default search engine is also Google Search, full of ads and spam.
This is what pays their bills. Major source of income for Mozilla is Google paying to be default search engine
If you keep feeding the Google monster you soon won't be able to browse the internet without a 3rd party attesting that your computer is worth browsing that site.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...
This was reworked to be a more limited proposal specific for Android Webviews, IIRC. Fairly recently (last month)?
And after that's normalized, then Google will enhance your user experience by bringing "Android Webview security" to Chrome on android, you know, it makes you really secure, it's really to help you keep safe.
A few years down the road, a surprising amount of companies insist you can only use their product on those secure smartphone browsers because of it's enhanced security, so Google helps you out by adding a special "Android Secure Mode" to desktop Chrome.
Unreasonable and unsubstantiated expectations.
Web sites want you to visit them, they have no reason to barrier you. Some sites I use still have http and if a site wanted you to visit it in a specific way they'd use an app. If the model is to make web sites less accessible for profit it would need a compelling reason to visit it in spite of the barriers. It will never happen.
Nothing unreasonable or unsubstantiated. This is exactly what happened with app geolocking, privacy sandbox/topics, SafetyNet/Play Integrity API, etc. All of these are supposed to improve security and privacy and yet none of them are under the control of the user. Clearly implying that the user is the biggest security/privacy threat to them.
Which sites require those? How would that allow them to make more profit?
I literally said if they want people to visit anywhere they use a site and if not they lock down the experience with an app, and you said they lock down apps as 'proof' that they'd lock down web sites because somehow they are equal. Apps have never been about freedom. Starbucks doesn't want user choice and privacy when they ask you to download their app.
And I'm yet to see what business model it would work for. I'm going with 'none'.
Which sites require those? How would that allow them to make more profit?
Practically every banking site (or more importantly banking apps). And a lot of weird cases like bus/train timings app, mobile operator apps, etc. You don't see that a lot with websites yet because the web isn't so severely constrained as mobile apps are. But the moment they appear, it will go the other way. One good example of this is AMP - which thankfully fizzled out for other reasons.
And I'm yet to see what business model it would work for. I'm going with 'none'.
You can go with whatever you feel like. But the real world experience corroborates what the other commenter said. And one good reason for this is the corporate security culture. 'Our app isn't secure if it doesn't use the PIntegrity' type of argument. They'll all fall for it even if it's detrimental to their users.
Making a website less accessible doesn't make any sense. You've given an example of apps like before and you've yet to substantiate any points you made, maybe bank logins have a reason to be secure but that forum you go to doesn't, and wouldn't do this.
If they wanted to make it less accessible they could easily do that by forcing you to use newer browser versions which some boilerplate sites with frameworks do, from lack of expertise. No "safety" required. I'm not going off feeling, I'm going off facts. It will NEVER happen.
Websites want all the real visitors they can get, webapps are not quite as concerned with that. I remember the Microsoft Silverlight days
After all the intense backlash they faced, they made it a 'limited' webview feature rather that dropping it entirely. Now that it's away from a standardization body, what's to prevent it from being developed unimpeded by public opposition? What's to stop them from expanding it to browsers once the 'feature' is ready? After all, this is exactly the pattern we saw with FLoC, 'privacy' sandbox and the Topics API.
Yes, but it's the sort of creepy that they can't just undo by saying "nevermind".
"Users often depend on websites trusting the client environment they run in. This trust may assume that the client environment is honest about certain aspects of itself, keeps user data and intellectual property secure, and is transparent about whether or not a human is using it."
Double-plus-good rights management!
From yesterday's Firefox thread:
Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it:
Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc
Containers keep sites separated nicely[2]
Tree Style Tabs[3]
uBlock Origin on Android[4]
Open Source since 1998!
Not based on Chromium
[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
[3] Tree Style Tabs requires several extra steps to remove the tabs at the top of the window. You have to set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true, then create a "chrome" (lol![5]) directory in your profile and add a userChrome.css file to it. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab
[4] uBlock Origin on mobile web makes a massive difference. You can even use the same rules that modify the style of the page you're viewing, such as setting HN to a dark mode via:
news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white)
On [5]:
It's not that Mozilla named their UI "Chrome", but that "chrome" is a graphical user interface word. For a browser it refers to the stuff around the web page content, but it's more general than browser use (you could refer to Blender's chrome around the 3D viewports to refer to its toolbars, etc).
i.e. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome
I still hate Google for naming their browser Chrome for that reason. They made a perfectly good and useful UI term almost unusable.
Ironically, the modern web also led to UI chrome being harder and harder to distinguish even in native applications.
Feels a bit Microsoft'y like for example "Word".
Ah, thank you I learned something today!
My apologies for editing my comment and breaking your [3] reference. I'm trying to imagine just how much work it would be to enable footnotes in comments that others can link to. It would be nice but quite the effort to get right, and I'm sure people would prefer other features first such as more formatting. (or a full implementation of Emacs in the editor window with org-mode as the markup language, with citation links. lol!)
I really wish Firefox just implemented a high quality first party tab solution.
I’ve been using Arc on my MacOS devices and Edge on windows devices because I just like a nice first party vertically tabbed browser.
Oh absolutely agreed. I use Tree Style Tabs (TST) and consider it essential now, but I wish Firefox would embrace vertical tabs as a way to remain distinct from Google Chrome.
I have 15 tabs open right now. The tabs' titles are easy to read, and different sites have different colours assigned to them. My Kagi searches open in new tabs, which are automatically set as child branches/leaves of the parent tab, which helps me to organize my work. If I go over about 30 tabs, I can just scroll the TST view with the mouse wheel, it's very easy and is non-intrusive to my workflow.
I can also bookmark tab trees, which is nice when I want to switch context from Python to Terraform for instance.
About 2:
If you work with multiple AWS accounts, there is a web extension that automatically places each new account in its own firefox account container.
As far as I know, chrome has profiles, but I am not aware of any automated way to assign new profiles.
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/aws-sso-conta...
That is really nice! I currently use AWS Extend Switch Roles extension[1] to switch profiles, but an automated way to confine those roles to their own profiles would be very neat.
Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc
Chrome also allows you to choose what to sync.
Container tabs really is the killer app for me. At work I might need to be signed in and accessing multiple Microsoft 365 admin portals across tenants. Or at home, being able to have containers for my homelab/dev Microsoft 365 account that can run entirely separately of my main browser profile.
Like you said, you can use multiple browser profiles in chromeium based browsers, but managing multiple whole windows when I just need 1 browser page seems like such a pain in comparison.
On [1], also note that Firefox's sync is end-to-end encrypted by default. Contrast that to https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-....
"Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising"
This is BS. Firefox is funded entirely by Google's Ads. Even if you donate to Mozilla, those donations won't be invested in Firefox. At this point, all 3 major browser engines are funded by ads.
You may argue that Mozilla doesn't directly make money from advertising, but that's irrelevant because they'll never do anything to upset their cash cow. And Google can always kill Firefox by avoiding renewing their search deal, without much of a loss, as most Firefox users would switch to Google anyway, much like what users did when they tried switching to Yahoo as the default.
---
UPDATE — A good reason to use Firefox is if it's simply better for you. For me, Firefox is better than Chromium-based alternatives because:
+ History sync is full and actually works;
+ DNS-Over-HTTPS works in parallel to corporate DNS (fallback to system);
+ Tree-style-tabs;
+ Bookmarks management;
+ Reader view (Android & desktop);
+ Great Ctrl+Tab;
+ Non-admin upgrades;
+ uBlock Origin;
+ Total Cookie Protection;
+ Android: multiple search engines;
+ Android: Open in app;
+ Android: Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, Cookie AutoDelete, other extensions;
- poor battery life on macOS, and I fear that Chromium currently has an edge there, even if both are worse than Safari;
- problems when scrolling on Android, poor performance for certain websites (e.g., Mastodon, Twitter);
- incompatibility with certain apps (e.g., Microsoft Teams), but in fairness, they've been investing in compatibility, see their recent work on Google Meetup;
I hope Firefox continues to evolve and differentiate itself from Chrome because ideology isn't a good enough reason to prefer it over alternatives, not when Chromium is a thriving open-source project with multiple large companies contributing to it.
That's another Lala land of obliviousness. Browser is a complex piece of software that needs effort. Users are not paying for it and those who will pay for itthen will probably require access to those users, for sure.
Firefox is a dwindling piece of software and maybe they themselves should take some responsibility of where it is heading today.
User adoption is merit driven and not mission or ideology driven.
EDIT: Typos etc.
I want to pay for Firefox. I do not want to contribute to the Mozilla CEO's outrageous US$7M compensation package. How do I do that?
There’s no way to do either. The Mozilla Corporation doesn’t take donations. (The Mozilla Foundation doesn’t make Firefox.)
There's no way to do both simultaneously. You can, however, donate to The Mozilla Corporation and help pay their CEO's salary.[0] It won't help Firefox one iota, but you can do it.
0. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990-ty22-public-disclosure.pdfIf you wait a year, you can instead contribute to the next $8.5M+ compensation package. It will be announced at the same time Mozilla announces that they're shutting down the browser and committing to becoming an AI cryptocurrency.
How much does the Mozilla CEO deserve? I know the tech salaries and I believe a comparable role (senior director or VP) in a Faang would at least be 7 figures, can we try to ballpark by how much we are over (or under) paying the CEO?
You can't. FF is opensource, and in theory you could pay someone not employed by mozilla to work on it and submit patches. But really you're still contributing to money to mozilla in that labor == money.
User adoption is merit driven and not mission or ideology driven.
Yes, Google telling everyone to install Chrome, and Chrome being the only "other" browser installed on many corporate networks is totally merit driven.
WebKit is founded by Apple selling their devices and it runs perfectly fine on Linux via Epiphany. I don't see how it is related to ads in any way?
Google pays Apple tens of billions in their search deal, per year.
Apple may sell devices, but it's safe to say that at this point Safari is entirely funded by Google.
1. Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data.
Mozilla tracks and gives (sells?) unique information about every download to Google unless you choose to grab it from the FTP servers.
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
I use to be a supporter and I am a customer of Mozilla Relay, but I refuse to use their browser while they are financed by Google. It makes them nothing but controlled opposition.
I do appreciate the moral consistency of at least supporting alternative revenue models.
does that apply to installations from apt?
It does not. Those binaries are signed by your distribution and the same for everyone.
I'm honestly curious why they don't also track the FTP server downloads.
My best guess: <1% so statistically not relevant.
Can you explain the process by which Mozilla gives the unique identifier to Google?
The article quotes Mozilla saying they can correlate the two, but it doesn't state how.
That's bad. But not as bad as a binary blob from Google that is the browser.
Since I use Linux I don't download FF manually.
Any Firefox user who is concerned about privacy should definitely read the Firefox Privacy Notice:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
The name "Google" appears multiple times, sometimes within the phrase "data to Google".
There are also currently references to "third-party ad platform" and "a third-party referral platform", along with other companies/organizations.
Some people will claim that it doesn't matter because some of this Firefox functionality that involves data collection and/or third-parties can be disabled, or that it's fine because it has been disclosed, or it's somehow acceptable because Firefox maybe doesn't send as much info as some of its competitors do, and so on.
I don't buy into those arguments. If Firefox was truly privacy-respecting, it would never collect nor send any data beyond that necessary to provide its core web browsing functionality.
Any functionality that might compromise a user's privacy should not be bundled by default, and would have to be explicitly opted into by manually installing an extension that provides such functionality. This would include Firefox's/Mozilla's own "telemetry".
(sells?)
An accusation like this would benefit from some evidence.
By not offering any evidence, you get all the benefits of sowing doubt without having put in any of the work necessary to have an actual discussion about it.
The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me, I will switch. And I'll be bringing my entire family tree and friends along with me!
What does everyone think about LibreWolf vs mainline FF? It reminds me of Waterfox: https://librewolf.net
Why re v3?
It nerfs adblockers so the current net convenience of using Chromium vs Firefox becomes a net inconvenience. Manifest v2 disablement day might as well be Firefox Switching Day.
#LibreWolf much more lightweight; bloat, telemetry removed.
LibreWolf
Why are FOSS names always so bad...
Your loyalty is commendable. But we all forgive you if you make the switch now.
Why wait until the final nail has been hammered before escaping your coffin?
The microsecond manifest v3 is forced upon me,
Protest before if even happens by switching now, maybe?
Happy to chime in regarding LibreWolf and Waterfox, as it comes up alot in our support forums[1]:
This question comes up every now and then, I'll base my currently updated reply starting with my previous response[2]:
Now, ignoring feature differences between all the forks out there, I'd like to present a different perspective and consideration that I think gets overlooked when comparing forks like Waterfox to other forks (if I am incorrect regarding Librewolf, someone please correct me).
Waterfox provides signed binaries for download. Librewolf (and most of the rest) do not. Checksum's are all well and good, but IMO, not enough. Code signing provides trust.
Librewolf does not provide auto-updates. There are 3rd party tools out there, but IMHO that brings in its own set of problems, and breaks the chain-of-trust.
The most important one that I believe, maybe apart from Pale Moon, only Waterfox does, is offers _accountability_. There is (and has been since 2012) a legal entity behind Waterfox. That used to be Waterfox Limited, then it was System1 and now BrowserWorks (the entity I control). Laws must be abided and the end user actually has an entity to hold accountable. GDPR, CCPA, the rest are things that _actually_ need to be followed. The other projects, who are you _really_ going to hold accountable if things go wrong? To me this is super important because a browser is used for sensitive information. It's just not worth the risk otherwise. This also goes hand in hand with the code signing.
Above all else, Waterfox has been around for 12 years
Don't get me wrong, things like EV code signing certs are a bit of a racket, and yeah you can jump in and code audit all those other forks too. But really, push comes to shove, they can just disappear into the aether.
Separately, I'd say the end goals of each browser are different. Librewolf seems to aim for privacy on a rolling release. Tor and Mull will both target ESR (extended support releases, which is where Mozilla aim for my enterprise friendly releases of features being set and instead security/bug patches applied only). All of them will sacrifice compatibility for privacy/security. From my above comment, I'd go with Tor if you're willing to sacrifice speed, Mull if you want better speed but broken websites. After all a web browser probably accesses the most _sensitive_ data it can, I'd put my faith in a piece of a software run by a legal entity so you can have some legal recourse on matters.
Waterfox's goal in terms of privacy is a usable web that still leans heavily to privacy but doesn't want to sacrifice the web experience for that to work.
Waterfox has done a lot to reach that, from careful curation of preferences to supplemental infrastructure such as DNS over Oblivious HTTP (DoOH). These aren't just features that "might" help; there's real benefit to it. For example, users have reported being able to access censored websites when using Waterfox. In my opinion, I've reached Waterfox's goal perfectly here: privacy and web compatibility.
Then, there's all the other "sugar" on top:
- Customization
- Reverting features removed by Mozilla but are genuinely useful/should've remained in Firefox.
- Adding features when Mozilla is slow to do so (better JPEG-XL support for one).
- The only fork that AFAIK that supports DRM content, for watching Netflix, Prime Video etc. Considering how difficult this was to achieve I doubt any will get support any time soon either.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/comment/k...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/j...
I use Firefox exclusively, and I love the Rust language that took shape at Mozilla, but it makes me sad to see HN censor comments that point out Mozilla's despicable behavior when they fired Brandon Eich because he didn't espouse gay marriage.
Just to be clear, it is readers themselves who flag and bury comments on HN
Submissions about Firefox, Mozilla, or Rust that get a lot of comments often remind me how I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", except it disabled all moderation.
With that setting enabled, there would be no grayed-out comments, no dead comments, no reordering, and no whatever else might be done based on a comment's ratings.
It's annoying how what are often perfectly reasonable comments are obscured or hidden, and it's also annoying having to work around that obstruction just to read them.
How would you want the comments to be ordered then, chronologically? Or are you saying you want them ordered by rating, but not colourized or minimized? Note also that you can vouch dead comments with the vouch button if you believe they're reasonable.
He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom.
And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things.
He actively gave to organizations that were formed to restrict freedom.
And the LBGTQ community, we're not going to sit and be quiet about those sorts of things.
You seriously don't see the irony in this at all?
Retaliation against someone for what they do in their personal lives is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom?
Purporting to speak for an entire community without any authority or consent is... what, exactly, if not restricting freedom?
Workplace retaliation for private lawful activities should never occur. That seems like a principle that the GLB community should embrace.
Do you not know what protected statuses are? There's a reason those exist. There's a reason it's allowed to penalize someone for being bigoted but not for being gay. This is not a symmetrical/both-sides thing.
Dude, he wanted to outright ban same-sex marriage.
I'm using Firefox everywhere I can, but in all honesty, this whole flagging issue is making me want to switch to Brave.
I would like to, but Firefox behaves problematic in regard to auth urls like
https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com
1: When you bookmark them, it shows the auth part when you hover the bookmark with the mouse.
2: When you open them from the command line
firefox https://name:password@news.ycombinator.com
These issues make it insecure to use auth urls because as soon as someone looks over your shoulder (or there is a camera like in many cafes), you are p0wned.
I wish we had a better way to log into a website from the command line, like ssh keys. But for now, we are stuck with what we have. And Firefox makes it insecure to use it. So for now, I continue to use Chromium.
You save passwords in plain text (bookmarks) and then complain that people can read the plain text over your shoulder?
Yes. The auth part should not be displayed when you hover over a bookmark. Chromium does not display it.
In the end, every security mechanism is "plain text". Even ssh keys. When someone gains access to your ssh key, which is just an ascii string, they can log in as you.
My SSH keys are protected with a password, on top of that I have a biometric lock (MacBook fingerprint reader) on my SSH keys. So they would only grant access to someone that 1. has access to my computer, 2. knows the password (which only I know) and 3. has my finger. Definitely more than just plain text!
I strongly suggest looking into multi-factor authentication, or other modern authorization/security mechanisms if you want to see examples of security systems that are not just plain text.
Chromium does not display it.
Security by obscurity is not ideal, although I can understand that the lack of this feature in Firefox hinders your usecase.
Same here. You can't just access my auth data over the internet.
You would also have to get hold of my machine and get past it's security mechanisms.
You can put as many layers on top of what you call "obscurity". But at the bottom it's still just a simple string that holds the power to authenticate you.
And "multi-factor authentication" does not help with the situation "User is allowed to use this script, so they are also allowed to use that website. Let's open it for them.".
You're literally putting the password in plain-text into the (unencrypted) browser bookmarks (and also into your terminal where it's likely logged to your ~/.bash_history).
That is the bigger security issue you have, not how Firefox is handling the display of the URL.
If anything, Firefox is highlighting your insecure security practice.
I'm not typing them in my terminal. I have scripts that automate my workflow. And part of it is logging me into websites.
Regarding storing them in plain text: That's not much different from ssh keys. When someone can read your ssh key, they can log in as you.
If you know a better way to automatically log a user into a website, let us know!
Every modern password manager has this capability built in.
I have a hard time believing you even do what you're claiming. The number of sites that support logging in that way is basically (pun intended) 0. In fact, firefox is the only browser that warned me that someone is probably trying to scam me with a url like that, the other browsers just dropped the auth part and went to the site without logging in.
Firefox user since before it was Firefox.
Daily: Firefox with probably too many blockers, tampermonkey, umatrix, Stylus. I aggressively block any and every element on sites I visit regularly. You get no stats from me.
Also daily: Firefox Developer Ed for frequently visited sites where I need to login and every site is in a container tab.
Brave - my daily puzzle fix for Wordle, Wordiply, Travle, Tradle (no logins, clears data on exit).
Edge, in Private mode, if and only if I cannot get a site to otherwise work.
Also nextdns.io to block as much as I can including all Google, all facebook, all Automattic properties and more.
While I'm sure some data is being collected I am very happy with how my internet looks.
do you have any other recs for firefox extensions?
Archive Page
Bypass Paywalls Clean
CSS Exfil Protection
Decentraleyes
DDG Privacy Essentials
Ghostery
NoScript
Privacy Badger
Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy
Stylus
Tampermonkey
uBlock Origin
uMatrix
Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.
So when you want to enable JavaScript, you have to click around in both uMatrix and NoScript?
I have to temp-trust some elements in NoScript, then look in uMatris for the specific items I'll set to green. That probably sounds like a hassle and I get that. But I've been doing it for so long it's the norm.
If I need to unblock trackers in NS, I close the tab and go on my way.
And every once in a while I'll factory reset both NS and uM.
This probably sounds very tinfoil territory but as I've said I'm happy with my internet experience.
Doesn't many of those extensions due the exact same thing? Like why have Ghostery, DDG Privacy Essentials, Privacy Badger and to some extend uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes (maybe uMatrix as well), either one would do.
For extensions, I recommend people follow the recommendations[1] in the arkenfox repo and either harden their firefox or use librewolf. Umatrix is unmaintained since 2019.
Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful macro forces pushing us to that outcome. "Switch, please," calls to action are a noble but insufficient countermeasure.
Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable.
Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway.
What annoys me the most, however, is that several things simply don't work in Firefox and the associated report is over a decade old, so with close to zero chances of ever getting addressed. Copying the content of a canvas element as an image to the clipboard is one of these things. In Chrome, this takes a right and a left click. Firefox didn't have such a basic feature last time I checked. There used to be a workaround, opening a blob URL in a new tab and then copy that, but this got broken later, I believe by a stricter security policy.
Firefox is essentially the browser equivalent of Fairphone. It's the most ethical option but it inconveniences you left, right, and center.
Is Fairphone 5 such an inconvenience you describe it? On paper, it seems pretty usable
I can't comment on the Fairphone 5 specifically but some of the issues reported by the community sound similar to the two predecessors. My personal experience with two Fairphone 4 phones running Android 13 isn't great. Apps sporadically stop reacting to taps and auto-rotate in combination with standby somehow locks up the phone, usually with a black screen. The picture quality isn't good, the stock camera app misses half of the button presses and there's a 2-4 second delay until it actually takes a picture.
Case in point, Nvidia video super resolution is buggy in Firefox, it will randomly stop working until you restart the whole browser.
Is that a common belief on the Google Chrome team?
You'll have to ask them. I left Chrome in an exasperated huff several years ago.
The browser ecosystem as we know it is in a tenuous state. It is unhealthy for the web that Chromium has become so dominant. It is a symptom of this imbalance that users line up to defend Apple's choice to lock out other browser engines from iOS. This kind of popular user sentiment would have been unthinkable to me in the era when Firefox first rose up to fight back against the IE singularity. Yet, here we are.
I switched to Firefox earlier this year, having used Chrome since 2008/2009, previously having used Firefox. Mostly out of laziness.
Can't believe how good Firefox is now, and how great it is on Android (addons, config).
Being able to control anything on the browser is fantastic. Want to increase a certain UI elements font size just a tad? Sure! Want to tweak every aspect of the UI? sure! Want a myriad of config options, sure go ahead! Love the concept of Nightly, has worked great for me.
One UI feature that I love that Firefox lets you change is the scrollbars. I forget the precise settings, but I set them up so that they are always present and always big enough for me to see how far down a page I am (yes, like I'm using Windows 95!). That might only be something that matters to a few people, but the fact that it is customizable to that level is one of Firefox's greatest strengths.
This sounds great, but for web developers I feel it’s a risky change if you want to see your sites as your users do.
You raise a good point. Fortunately, I'm not a web developer but I will keep your point in mind in case I do any web development later.
From a web development standpoint, the scrollbars do seem to be an ignored feature for a lot of web pages. Adding scrollbars actually fixes a lot of issues with some sites. For example, some sites often have a frame inside of another frame, and this reveals the scrollbars for both frames. If I were to use my mouse wheel, I might scroll down inner frame or the outer frame, and I wouldn't know which one would be activated until I try, but with the scrollbars on, I always know which one is which. This was a surprise benefit to this change.
Unless you're on mobile, in which case you'd find it to confusing, so they removed the option, unless you're on nightly, with all the issues that entails.
It took a long time, but the situation improved a couple weeks ago. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2023/11/28/open-extensions-o...
Maybe if they don’t align with Google agenda so much, I’ll switch.
What’s the ethical of switching if Mozilla is just the non-profit arm of Google?
Are they still receiving funds from Google?
Around 86% of Firefox’s income is from Google, yes.
soo....yeah..
I believe Mozilla falls into a difficult non-profit grey area. Having another browser on the market isn’t as critical to humanity as providing anti-malarial medicine to millions of Africans, yet I think we can all agree that a world without any browser competition would suck for people rich enough to use a browser in the first place. It would be hard for Mozilla to attract $400M/yr of relatively strings-free cash from anyone other than Google.
Google’s search dominance won’t be cured by Mozilla ending its partnership. It will only be cured by innovative competitors who discover an even better way of organizing the internet’s information (perhaps OpenAI or LLMs generally?), or by government regulation. In the meantime, I like to think of Mozilla’s siphoning of cash from Google as a good thing while we all wait for a proper long term solution that may never arrive.
A similar philosophical question ought to confront us every day about many things we use without thinking, both on the internet and off.
Are you talking about the payment Mozilla receives for keeping Google the default search engine on Firefox? Just change it.
I use Firefox as my main browser. I love Firefox and I want it to succeed.
However... a person who uses Firefox as their primary browser must generally still keep Chrome installed. A person who uses Chrome as their primary browser has no need to keep Firefox installed.
Firefox should endeavor to fix that.
First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string. That's how upstart web browsers have fought against sites breaking things for them for decades.
Second, Firefox should endeavor to be as compatible as possible with Chrome with regard to the DOM and JS, being sneaky if it has to. I think O365 webmail is the first good place to start, since it's widely deployed. USG websites as well, like DFAS MyPay or Marine A-PES do not work well on it. Obviously, it's difficult for Firefox devs to test on these sites, but that's all the more reason to take bug reports seriously.
First, Firefox should honor age-old tradition, swallow its pride, and spoof 99% of the Chrome user agent string.
This leads to the larger issue of not knowing who your visitors actually are. If 75% of all Firefox installations spoof Chrome, then you won't know that they are actually FireFox users. This can drive adoption rates down as they stop caring about making things work on Firefox.
No. Fragmentation is not a feature of the web, and delusions about developers caring about Firefox and its ~2% of web traffic are not helpful. The way to make sites work on Firefox is to convince them to stop serving broken shit to Firefox. This is the way the web has always worked.
It's already the case that companies using "Real User Metrics" will miss many Firefox users -- client-based monitoring is indistinguishable from client-based tracking (intent notwithstanding) with the result that if I need to disable three separate sets of protections (ETP, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin) before my browser will report my useage of my employer's website.
Not everyone using Firefox will be quite so determined as I am, I'm sure. But it's still an issue that I try to raise with people who want to use browser statistics for anything.
It's also worth noting that Firefox does spoof its user-agent in some circumstances, if you visit `about:compat` then you can see a list of sites that have user agent tweaks applied to them. See also: webcompat.com
Yeah, hard to recommend a browser that breaks on certain sites for subtle reasons to family members who aren't as tech oriented for instance.
Just let it die. We need something new or at least a CEO with a vision that is not steered by the tides of LinkedIn hype
The thing is we can hardly have something new.
A new browser engine is an incredibly hard thing to program and historically they have always been financed by multi-millions (now billions) companies. Even Firefox via Google.
If you want another engine that is not WebKit or Gecko and you want it open source, you are asking for something that the free software community failed to deliver for the last 30 years and that is harder to deliver everyday.
If Firefox happens to die, we are basically stuck with a Webkit-only internet. We may have open source browsers but nobody is going to pay for the Gecko development (which is not just maintenance but keeping it up to date with the web specs) and nobody is going to pay for a new engine.
Just fork it. I don't have a problem with the tech I have a problem with the corp that governs it. Because in their last Annual Report they see the future of Mozilla in AI services...and that's not what's going to get usershare back.
These fear-mongers that make everyone hate needs to stop. Multi-millionaires that give their own agenda and anything else is anti-this or stupid needs to stop.
You also probably say you hate "Cancel Culture" while cancelling things including coke.
Wrong thread?
The main short coming in firefox for me is the ability to create different profiles for different use cases like one for personal and one for work etc.
It is doable but is hidden behind special settings:/// etc sort of and switching between them also requires something similar.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers is far superior to multiple profiles, IMO.
They are not a like for like alternative.
Profiles allow for greater separation of browsing personas: I can have a different set of passwords, extensions, bookmarks per persona I have like Work, Personal, Focus etc...
And while Firefox does have profiles, its not a great user experience. Theres no quick switching, the UI to access it feels outdated, and in general as much as it pains me to say it, Google has done a great job at implementing it.
I'm sure Firefox will get there, but as of right now its a sub-par experience.
Multi Account Containers don’t sync with Firefox Sync. I assigned hundreds of websites to various containers only to lose them all when I rebuilt my Mac. Safari, Chrome, Edge all have this functionality and until Mozilla add this, Firefox is DOA for me.
Switched to Firefox a month or two ago, mostly for ublock origin on android, and unlimited history (seriously, why is this not the standard?)
I've tried to like it but honestly it's been painful. MacOS Sonoma seems to have a hover bug, which has been unresolved through the last 3 bug fix updates. Performance is "fine" but seems to lag with many tabs open which was never an issue in chrome (this is on an M2 pro!) PDF reader also seems significantly slower as well. At this point I'm considering going back to chrome.
Unlimited history is nice but I hate how history works out of the box. I might be doing something wrong but ctrl+h pops up a sidebar which shows every single website visited today in no discernible order. I've learned about ctrl+shift+h which is better but even there, the UI is a bit lacking compared to what Chrome has out of the box. Is there anything I can do to improve this?
There's a filter at the top right if I remember right, change it to Last visited
Have you tried Brave?
This being HN, I'm really surprised no one has mentioned Brave. Brave is what Firefox was a few years ago (and what firefox claims to be but isn't) in terms of privacy and comes pre-loaded with an ad-blocker that uses the same list as ublock. It's also faster and less of a memory hog. I switched from firefox as main driver and haven't looked back. It is chromium based but I don't see this as a drawback. But this is 2023 and using a single browser is an artificial limitation (and makes no sense if you're a web developer) so I don't know why people make it sound like it has to be one or the other. It's not exactly like choosing an IDE. I pretty much use every browser except Edge.
People here have a major hateboner against Brave. Some of it is crypto, some of it is Eich, relatively little the product itself.
Yeah, it does have all the crypto bloatware, but it doesn't force it on you so all of that can just be ignored. I actually think Brave (and maybe Safari) is the least opinionated browser in terms of features it forces on you and it's somewhat easy to turn off or ignore what you don't want. I might be deluding myself but it's always feels like the lightest browser that I use.
I do use it but I just wish crypto wasn’t baked in.
Firefox needs bookmarkable containers. It is almost there ...
Bookmarkable Containers are opening bookmarks in a specific container. And I don't like the hacked extension that implements this feature as a workaround using container sites.
Someone yesterday mentioned this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-c...
As I understand it, that would allow you to add a bookmark for `ext+container:name=MyContainer&url=https://mozilla.org`, which would open mozilla.org in MyContainer.
Not a fail. It has the annoyance of after clicking the bookmark, it closes the tab I am in and opening a new tab. This cannot be reversed by ctrl+shift+t. I end up losing my history of the closed tab.
Otherwise, it works.
Can't you do this by telling a container to auto open certain URLs?
Recommend doing this on mobile as well, if you are an android user. You get adblock and a URL bar near your keyboard.
The price is that occasionally there are sites (approximately 2% in my anecdotal experience) that you'll have to use chrome for.
Firefox is noticeably slower on Android than Chrome. That's where Brave really shines: as fast as Chrome with a built-in ad-blocker.
My other grief on Android is that I often get the dead tab bug. Sometimes when you reopen a tab and try to navigate, the tab just ceases to function and you need to close it.
Also they changed something in tab management, and it feels like nowadays I always have 40 tabs opened despite myself (which kinda defeats the purpose).
Other than that, I never have issues loading any website, unless they're actively detecting the agent and telling you to use chrome.
I opt for firefox nightly on android, giving me a chance to contribute to their development roll outs.
How are the Firefox dev tools these days? I feel like every time I try to switch, the dev tooling has felt subpar compared to Chrome, and I don't like using one browser for regular use and one for development. It's been a couple years since I tried though.
for css they are best in class IMHO, especially the visualizations of flex and grid
Not as good for networking and performance as chrome dev tools, but the visualizations for styling are notably better.
About as good as Chrome in most areas, but the performance is poorer. They're serviceable.
I would but I don't want to support the Mozilla Foundation
Why?
Maybe use the unbranded build of firefox? It has the great side effect of allowing you to actually edit and install extensions/add-ons without having to use Mozilla's security theater automated signing portal.
When some rare website doesn't work in my daily driver freedoms-respecting browser I'll load up Mozilla Firefox unbranded to do what needs to be done then close it.
I'll switch to Firefox when they get proper vertical tabs like Edge's. I know Microsoft Edge has a really bad reputation, but damn it I can't live without its vertical tabs, and I can disable most of the idiotic AI crap. I know there are plugins, but they all feel quite hacky and are simply not as good.
I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar), plus I didn’t like MS stealing my data.
Not a day goes by that I don’t strongly miss vertical tabs though.
I finally got sick of a lot of the crap that was getting added to edge (like the stupid button on the right that opens the right toolbar)
FYI you can disable it, along with most of the additional button things.
My family uses Apple's keypass for everything password. Is there an easy way to get passwords working like Safari?
I currently do Search Passwords, Search website, Copy password, Paste in Firefox manually.
The easiest way to get the easy of use of Safari's password manager in a different browser would be to use a different password manager that works in other browsers. Common recommendations are 1Password (my personal favorite), BitWarden, etc.
This might not fulfill your needs though, since it sounds like you'd like to use the Safari password manager in a different browser, which is not possible outside of the Chrome extension [0] that Apple provides. This means that it wouldn't work on Firefox.
[0]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/icloud-wachtwoorden...
There is not, unfortunately.
Apple has an extension for Chrome ("iCloud Passwords") that lets you use the keychain passwords there, but nothing for Firefox. It's less-restrictive than it used to be, since the extension used to only support Chrome on Windows, but they gave in back in July of this year and made it easier to use Chrome on Mac.
Apparently, Firefox removed a bunch of password-related APIs back in Firefox 57 that broke some existing keychain extensions[1], so it might not be Apple's fault that they've not provided a Firefox extension. There's no progress on Firefox bugs related to making such an extension possible again, that I could see.[2]
I would’ve considered switching to Firefox if they hadn’t shipped their Pocket “redesign” earlier this year.
It’s one of the worst most user hostile updates I’ve seen from any app or website in my 20 years on the web. It’s completely broken, frankly.
If you open a saved article and then switch apps, Pocket kicks you back to the Home Screen. Tapping the “view all” button—which should take you to your saved article list—brings you back to the article you were viewing. Awful awful awful.
Mozilla is still finding ways to antagonize its users with Pocket? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
I stopped using Firefox when they started pushing Pocket so hard. Maybe I’m remembering too strongly, but my recollection is that when I complained about it I was told this is the future, you’re being a crank, and it’s totally normal for a third party exension collecting data to be baked into a browser that claims to support privacy and respect users.
So I just started using Safari, and I’ve never been happier. Apple seems to at least know how to get out of its own way. And they seem at least a bit more credible on privacy than Chrome or frankly Firefox.
I switched away from Firefox about 3 years ago (after more than 10 years of using it) because I got tired of them breaking stuff (and my habits) with unnecessary redesigns every 6 months or so.
I’ll switch to Firefox when they fire their overpaid CEO who keeps getting hefty pay raises despite Firefox losing market share and whose big idea for revenue is “AI services”.
You have no issues with Google? Every exec is paid just right, every endeavour is pure and good?
What tends to rub people the wrong way in situations like this is hypocrisy. Google hasn't claimed to be a virtuous nonprofit, so people accept it when they do shitty things. The Mozilla Foundation is an ideological nonprofit, so people hold it to a higher standard.
This may or may not be productive, but it's how people tend to work. :D
yes, i use firefox too and i love it. however i recently learned vivaldi has tab tiling and it's WAY better for me to use at work because i can see multiple tabs at once. wish firefox could implement this feature too
Tab management in Vivaldi is excellent, it's the main reason I can't switch
Vivaldi has been my browser for quite a while now, the customizability is great. Many of the features can be replicated through extensions, but the cohesive experience is unmatched. The bookmarks, window, and the (new) sessions are extremely useful and make tab management a breeze.
I think 2024 is going to be ruled by the Arc Browser when it is fully released for Windows.
I use it on Mac and it's amazing, but as soon as it's available on Windows, I think people will start recommending it everywhere and everyone is going to start using it.
At the end of the day, Arc is a Chromium browser with a novel UI paradigm. I used it as my daily driver for six months, but I concluded that whatever problem it solves isn't really worth solving. Rather, it doesn't offer enough of a difference to me to warrant switching from Safari or Chromium.
Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data... nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy.
I think privacy activists need a more compelling "so what" than "it's better for privacy" to convince people it's worth switching. They seem to operate under the thesis that people were being duped, as opposed to having made a more or less concious choice to trade privacy for convenience, which maybe was true 10 years ago but feels antiquated today.
At least my public interaction suggests the opposite - people aren't making these compromises willingly. They just don't know any better. No one chose to stay with Chrome after the problems were explained to them - especially not after showing them what browsing looks like with UBo on Firefox.
While i wholeheartedly agree, these aren't really reasons. Playing devil's advocate reveals nothing useful.
"Its happened before"
That's not an argument, in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt. On top of that, the internet was very different back then.
"Its actually good"
I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser? I'm very comfortable in my opera/edge/chrome browser and I'd have to change my workflow.
"Its happened before"
That's not an argument
It's a subheading to "2. Browser engine monopoly". The subsection's purpose is describing how bad things were during the IE monopoly to reinforce that it's something to be avoided.
in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt
That would be agreeing with the article, unless I misunderstand what you mean.
On top of that, the internet was very different back then.
In a way that now makes it harder for truly new competing engines to pop up due to increased complexity of the web.
I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser?
The points made in the article are:
* Increased privacy, opposed to willingly giving your data to an ad-tech company
* Helps avoid a browser engine monopoly which would effectively let Google dictate web standards
* It’s fast and has a nice user interface
Onto which I'd add:
* Content blockers work best on Firefox (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...), doubly so once Manifest V3 rolls out
* Allows more customization of interface and home page
* UX improvements, like the clutter-free reader mode, aren't vetoed to protect ad revenue as with Chrome (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467)
ethical browser > "we need more than deplatforming"
No.
Firefox single-handedly destroyed their reputation beyond belief with that article. They are supposed to support the exact opposite instead of being evangelists for censorship, centralized control, lack of ownership.
That Google pays their bills from them keeping Google as the default search engine isn't even as bad as that one article made them appear.
Wow, I just googled that[1] and it's absolutely shocking. I want not part of a browser vendor who thinks they should be in control of what is and isn't on the web.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
Just want to add:
Despite its limited number of extensions, Safari has a great "reader" mode that other browsers with readability extensions can't come close to, in terms of zapping the crap, killing almost all nags and popups (sometimes, that's all you need to get past a nag-wall) and creating truly readable articles, savable as PDF.
I also use Firefox and Opera, which are fine, and which have their own universes of extensions. Opera is chrome-compatible in this respect. Both have versions of ublock-origin.
I’d take the uBO element zapper over Reader Mode any day. Some anti-Adblock scripts have figured out how to prevent you engaging reader mode.
I'm an on-and-off Firefox user, and I always find these pleas kind of lame. It's a good enough browser, but the other arguments aren't very convincing.
It's a contradiction to claim Firefox is better at privacy when Mozilla makes most of its money by funneling people to Google's spyware network. Not only is it anti-privacy, the other side effects include things like only blocking "bad" trackers, not including ad-blocking/umatrix functionality by default, etc.
And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference.
And the browser monopoly argument isn't that strong either. We have Chromium from Google, and Mozilla Firefox funded by Google. Look at DRM video - it made no difference.
I agree. The sooner Firefox goes away, the sooner people stop pretending we don't have a duopoly between Chrome and Safari already. From then, people need to work for Chromium improvements, perhaps consolidate in one good "ungoogled" fork. And let Safari be.
Does anyone know of a way to replace the browser and search engine of the search bar at the bottom of an Android phone?
Firefox provides a search widget
Maybe they wouldn't need people begging to use FF if Mozilla used its money exclusively for the browser and web initiatives, instead of political and ideological projects.
What are some examples that have put you off?
I'm already switched over! I can't switch over any farther!
If you’re not careful, you might wrap around to IE.
I will when FF doesn't regularly lose my sessions. Thanks.
Dunno how bugs like this continue to exist.
I've had a couple "scares" like that, i.e. an entire window full of open tabs disappearing (usually closing it by mistake), but normally they come back with just a Ctrl+Shift+T. Not saying that's what happened to you, just sharing my experience.
I actually finally just switched to Chrome (I'm a long time Firefox user, all the way back to when it was called Firebird), because of this issue:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/microsoft-defende...
Windows Defender flags things in the Firefox cache as a Trojan. It probably isn't, and it could also have something to do with uBlock Origin, but until that is resolved (I'm keeping an eye on the above link) I can't risk it.
i haven't seen that at all. Perhaps a refresh, clean install after deleting the hidden app folders in home?
Hi, macOS user here. I know Firefox is great, and I'd love to use it (again), but Mozilla's decision to remove all user-facing, OS-level scripting capabilities from it (i.e., AppleScript) made me drop it a few years ago. Getting anything out of FF on macOS, locally, is a major pain in the ass, actually. Try to grab the current URL from the active tab…
Add to that the non-macOS text handling, macOS-unlike font rendering, its insistence to not use the system-wide spell checker provided by the OS etc. It feels a bit rude at times.
I think it's a super-solid browser that unfortunately doesn't give a shit about the platform it's running on. Irritatingly, it's fine with being a black box, so much more than the Chromiums are (for all their various faults).
If you are using Safari on Apple’s platform, you are already contributing to the user base of the browser that isn’t headed for monopoly. IMO, you are probably contributing better than us Firefox users; Safari remains large.
I wonder if, like in Apps, Apple users are known to be more likely to pay for things…
I use Firefox because it's the least bad option remaining, certainly not because I believe it's the last remaining ethical web browser. I have no confidence in Mozilla's ethics or mission, and no longer contribute directly or financially for that reason.
I agree with the implicit point. From the ethics standpoint, regardless of what happens at the top, Mozilla's waywardness isn't reflected in the browser, unlike Google's web and user hostility with Chrome (manifest v3 etc).
I have a couple of issues that keeps me using Safari. First off is the insane battery usage. It’s like 2x battery usage of Safari. Then it’s all the noise like Pocket, sign in this and register that.
And then a very specific problem that has annoyed the crap out of me: extension windows close if Firefox loses focus! That means that using Bitwarden to do this: 1) open Bitwarden and find some login details 2) alt tab to the program you’re trying to sign in to 3) paste the username 4) alt tab back to Firefox/Bitwarden and there you go, the Bitwarden window was closed due to Firefox losing focus and you now have to open it again, search and find the credentials again and then paste the password 5) open Bitwarden a third time and search yet again for the OTP code… A huge pain in the ass that makes me want to use another browser just because of that.
for bitwarden, you can open it in your sidebar. but I admit, that is super annoying when opening bitwarden from the extension icon.
For some reason, on my Windows 10 laptop that I use for music production (Ryzen 3500U, Vega 8), Firefox installed from Microsoft store takes 5-10 seconds to start, while Edge starts instantly.
I always liked Firefox, both practically and ideologically, but the annoyance is so high I never use it from that particular laptop.
If anyone knows the cause or a fix, please share.
cause: Edge browser is started when Windows boots up, it sits there started but invisible, first window open is fast. It adds up to your windows start time and memory consumption.
solution: start firefox during windows startup, too.
https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1085268
however to start it invisible and behave like Edge, it may take additional tweaks. of course, it costs extra startup time and memory. Also, you can switch off Edge boot-time startup, if you want.
I switched to Firefox both at home and professionally in 2020. Previously, my web browsers have been (in chronological order): Netscape 3.X, Netscape 4, Opera, Phoenix, Konqueror, Firebird, Firefox, Chrome, and now back to Firefox.
I have exactly one very negative thing to say about Firefox. It absolutely sucks on machines with spinning rust and no SSD. It's the only piece of software I have that literally takes more than 2 minutes to start. With disk-IO pegged at 100% during the entire startup period.
I'm assuming it reads through the myriads of files it has stored on disk, and that this is rather slow due to seek-times on HDDs. However, this is the major point I have against Firefox.
Having used some machines with older HDDs up until recently, I can definitely sympathize with you there. If you go to `about:config` and change `cache.disk.enable` and `browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl` to false, your cache will be stored solely in RAM and this should speed up your experience somewhat.
Nowadays when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits?
Usage of experimental Web APIs? Specific CSS properties? Deprecated features still supported by Chrome/Safari for backward compatibility?
I ask because I'm wondering if it's possible for an extension/userjs to, if not polyfill, at least detect and warn users about attempts to use such features. Nowadays when a site doesn't appear to work correctly in Firefox I reopen it in Chrome, but this is a not-insignificant source of time-waste because about half of time I find either that the site is working as the developer intended, or that the site doesn't work in Chrome either. Having some overt indication (visible without having to open devtools) that unsupported browser features are being accessed could be very helpful here for reducing user uncertainty.
Relatedly: I'm glad Firefox is planning to add support for IE's non-standard (but widely used ime) CSS zoom property: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936
when a site functions in Chrome/Safari but not in Firefox, what are the common culprits
site written by google
I won't, thank you. I'm happy with Chrome. Yes, I also have YouTube premium.
YouTube Premium works fine on Firefox.
There is no support for touch screen navigation gestures in Firefox on Windows and that is the #1 reason why I cannot switch. I use the touchscreen on laptop while browsing every day.
Touch screens on windows isn't something new. They became common around the time of the release of Windows 8 in 2012.
There is a 6 year old feature request on bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443710
+1: They've been ignoring this one for years.
I use Firefox as my default browser on my desktop and netbook (Windows/Linux), as well as my phone (Android), since the addons I want to use are available there and there's no Manifest v3 weirdness. The UI and performance are both okay (though content process limit is no longer exposed through the UI which isn't that nice when your netbook has like 4 GB of RAM), I quite enjoy the DevTools in particular, even more so than the ones in Chromium browsers.
However, I got some Apple devices for development and it seems like Firefox on the desktop breaks access to some sites (Private Internet Access, the one that got bought out by Kape, either in OpenVPN or WireGuard mode, same issue), which was apparently a known issue last I tried figuring out what's up. So there, I kind of moved to Brave which seems pleasant for the most part. It's also honestly be nice if Windows let me get rid of Edge or replace it with Chromium/Brave as my secondary browser easily instead of sticking around as bloatware.
Maybe that's just me hating on software nowadays in general (since it isn't always very nice to the user, for a variety of reasons), but Firefox is pretty great when it works!
I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? They ban any IP address using Firefox desktop? And somehow detect when the same person uses a VPN service?
Funny enough I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for well over a decade, but lately I've struggled to continue letting that remain the case just because of how badly managed Mozilla appears to be.
The weird AI website builder thing they released was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. Besides my many objections to current AI, my bigger issue was that this demonstrated a general lack of focus and carelessness on their part.
That seems like an odd reason to not use a browser, especially considering how the company that makes the dominant browser is also a mess.
I never stopped using it. Firefox is great
No
the only remaining ethical web browser
I hate associating ethics with technical debates. Chrome didn't win by being ethical, it won by being better. Plain words cannot save Firefox from losing its market share. I know battling against big techs is hard, but appealing to ethics will lead to hostility for some people.
I'm still very happy with firefox. Not as much with Mozilla as an organisation though. They are losing focus. They're still playing the big corp game when at this stage in their marketshare decline they should focus much more on the grassroots movements of privacy.
And their attempts at detaching from the big Google deal are minimal. A deal with mullvad that's not really interesting for example. I'd much rather see a paid premium sync or something. Or something like iCloud private relay for web (which is much better for privacy than a simple VPN like they're offering)
But as a browser it's great. It offers some great features I didn't see anywhere else like the web containers which I can no longer do without. And the real full ublock origin, bypass paywalls etc.
Need my icloud passwords
In 2024, font rendering in Firefox on Windows is quite bad compared to Chromium based browsers. You can see it a lot with Microsoft websites like outlook and azure devops. I tried, but switched back to Chrome (Ungoogled Chromium)
Maybe Arc.
I switched to waterfox after the whole ads-in-your-address-bar debacle.
The only way I'm getting off Firefox would be if google actually makes the Web completely DRM'd and i can't do banking without chrome
Yep, I realized I was using Chrome out of nothing but habit and convivence. Made a concerted effort to switch to Firefox, Mullvad, and Tor.
If Firefox makes a New Year’s resolution to fix the horrible battery drain while streaming video on my laptop whether running on Windows or Linux, I’ll make a resolution to switch to it when it is fixed. This has been an issue for years so I’m not holding my breath. Yes I have tried it again recently and no I’m not going to play around with flags trying to get it working acceptably.
The only reason I don’t is because, when I’m on my MacBook, I’m worried about sacrificing battery life by not using safari
I recommend Firefox with zero additional plugins, but configure it to automatically clear the cookies when quitting. You can now click 'accept' to every insisting site, knowing that they will be soon forgotten.
In 2023 I had to switch my work web browser to Brave because Slack decided to stop working on Firefox.
Here's a tip re. a nice built-in function:
about:memory
You can reclaim quite a lot of memory there when your Firefox seems laggy.
I've been using Firefox since it was still called Phoenix.
It's amazing how we find ourselves in the same situation we did 20 years ago, at the mercy of a tech behemoth dominating how to access the Web, with the same Mozilla being the last man standing in the way of a true monopoly.
I may have some reservations about decisions and actions from Mozilla these past few years, but they do what they must to survive, and still provide a net benefit to our world.
Dear Mozilla Foundation, in 2024 please act like you really want Firefox to be used by more people. Thanks.
Nope. No thanks.
First, Firefox literally makes their money from Google ads, and has Google search suggestions on by default. So much for privacy.
Second, the Foundation. A bunch of people more interested in leftist activism than in building a aolid tool for the user. Or just trying to score coolness points by having a sneaker designer make time-limited themes - sorry, colorways with names like "Activist" and "Expressionist".
But the politics. In "We need more than deplatforming", the organization in no uncertain terms said they were a-ok with others deciding what I should see on the Internet. Not okay, sorry. Why would I support an organization that hates me while the competition are doing things like allowing me to tune my own search results, or have options menus like Vivaldi's with more customization than is reasonable?
And lastly, it's just not a great product. Security on Android is trash and there are no PWAs or tab groups among other things. There's just no case when I could use competition that's better and either doesn't hate me or can at least manage to not be emotionally incontinent with their hostility because the browser is what matters?
Firefox for Android is a big ux improvement between adblock and dark eyes.
There is one annoying rendering issue though
I just read a bunch of comments yesterday [1] talking about Mozilla and its CEO putting little energy and money into Firefox. I am supportive of the sentiment but when Mozilla doesn't seem very committed to Firefox, it's hard to get onboard.
I tried so hard earlier this year to move back to FF from Chrome. I actually found the desktop experience great but the mobile app on iOS was so clunky, and I rely enough on sync, that I had to move back after a few months.
i really like firefox to shine. but it’s very ugly and turns me off every time i use it. it's been around forever but the UI has never looked good, I’d argue that in recent years it’s gotten even uglier.
recently i’ve been using duck duck go browser on macos, it’s literally my main browser for the past 6 months and I’m very happy with it’s simple and beautiful UI.
i mentioned duck duck go browser because of multiple reason, first of all, there are many of us who are willing to ditch chrome, and a lot of us can live without all the goodies that come with chrome, a lot of us can live with a browser that is a bit slower than chrome, but i’m sure there are also a lot of us who cannot force themselves to deal with an ugly browser.
I want to use Firefox so badly yet they make it so hard:
- Bookmark bar icons are not synced. So they’re the same gray blobs until I click on them one by one after connecting to VPNs they’re behind, and do that for every new installation. Not a problem with other browsers.
- Google Docs & Sheets render terribly due to kerning problems on canvas with 150% zoom on a HiDPI display. The text becomes almost unreadable. This is a 6 year old bug on Bugzilla.
I like Safari
But even with Firefox your whole activity is being tracked. There is no privacy anymore. Your data is being collected massively to build a map to identify individuals. You can't protect yourself anymore from being a victim. This is so utterly bad that I even would recommend/advise to not use any computer or the Internet in total anymore.
For the Firefox fans here who care deeply about stemming its market share losses and keeping it viable consider this goal.
Please switch at least one other person to Firefox - anyone from your friends, family, colleagues etc.
I did this with my spouse last year
Chrome is the only way to do Chromecasting, right?
I miss chrome cast.
1. pwas 2. Filesystem and other APIs for extensions.
Question regarding the Mac version: Is it more battery-consuming because its core on Mac is still Intel-machine-code-based and not ARM-based?
Already did a few years ago. My only current annoyances with it are that the NixOS search page is blank in it for some reason, at least on Nightly (https://search.nixos.org/packages) and that I can't access its password store on iOS. (iOS added Google Chrome password access from any app's GUI right around the time I switched from Chrome to Firefox... UGH)
Used it religiously since 2002 when it was then called Mozilla.
I'll get downvoted for saying this but Safari isn't as bad as people say. The only reason I use chrome is for one singular extension for a single site (and they would release the extension on Safari if it didn't cost $100 a year to do so)
What bothers me is that all their recent ad campaigns just revolve around the premise of "We are not Chrome", which really doesn't sell to me.
If it weren’t for the unique to Firefox audio/video sync problem, I would.
I switched to Firefox on android when Chrome removed the "open on new tab" menu item and then ignored everyone's complaints about it for a year. It's decent although it hangs for 10 seconds or so on first startup (the fault of adblock I suspect), and sometimes hangs for half a minute or so during usage. Still worth it for adblock though.
Firefox on Windows and Safari on macOS. No developer should daily drive Chromium-based browsers today except when needed for ensuring correct behavior as a target.
Chrome feels so much better to me, I can't imagine switching
I've used Firefox on desktop for years, even through some of the bad times. Today, FireFox is a really great experience and works well everywhere for me, except for some very specific use cases like internal company websites where some employees have deemed it "not suitable" for their web app (even when proven it works), and to use web apps that utilize APIs that I don't entirely like (namely, WebUSB - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB). But I keep a spare chromium around if I really need/want to use those apps. 99.9% of my browser use is Firefox.
I think the bigger push should be to get people using FireFox mobile. In my experience, it is a much better, more customizable browser than Chrome. It works well with my browsing habits and general use of my phone (screen UI positioning, gestures, etc.). The most obvious benefit is the extension support, which makes browsing some mobile websites tolerable. Showing people the difference between browsing genius.com (lyrics website) with and without ads usually shocks them. At times on Chrome, the web page is completely unusable due to ads and pop ups.
My main gripe with Firefox on Windows:
You can’t drag a tab out of one window and hold it against the side of the screen to snap that tab there as a new window. Chrome lets you do that, and I use that feature all the time.
I’ve mostly gotten used to everything else at this point.
FF is great! The only stopper for me to uninstall chrome is google meets. Background blur only works occasionally on FF but it has gotten a lot better this year.
I still keep Firefox around and it's not horrible but have been very happy with the Chrome variant Vivaldi and some key extensions. Fast and not vanilla Chrome.
In 2024, please fix tab tearing. Thanks!
Use Firefox if only to put up a decent fight against Chrome's massive play to control your data and the ad ecosystem.
Until my Windows became unusable, I was using Chrome about 90% of the time and Firefox about 10%. Since then I've been trying to get along with Ubuntu Linux only, and it came with Firefox. Haven't even installed Chrome yet, and I don't think I will.
Firefox is my daily driver on my Ubuntu laptop, but for video streams and Google Meet (including virtual background[1]), I can see it still isn't utilizing my Intel GPU as much as Chromium (beta channel) does, so I split my usage between the two browsers to reduce the CPU usage for these specific cases.
I've followed the basic recommendations (from e.g. Arch Linux wiki) but still getting less utilization with Firefox according to intel_gpu_top.
[1] Well, at least virtual background works on Firefox now after their GSuite improvements.
I switched to the Arc browser this year, and I love it.
The best feature is that it auto-closes tabs. It makes having different spaces for work and personal browsing easy, and they are constantly adding convenience features.
It runs on Chromium. I don't know how that intersects with the ethical and standards issues around Chrome.
I switched back to Firefox like 6 years ago and it's the input browser I use regularly. I do unfortunately have Chrome installed on all my machines too since once every couple of months I'll find some usually government website that only works properly in Chrome.
Firefox for Android is excellent too, especially since you can have add-ons. Between my Adguard VM in my tailscale network and Firefox ublock, my phone is an ad free place. Other add-ons that make the mobile internet more tolerable:
Google Search Fixer - Google give Firefox users a crappy old search UI. this extension forces the new nicer UI.
Old Reddit redirect - just redirects all reddit links to old.reddit.com. this bypasses the age verification nonsense Reddit introduced given I refuse to have an account there these days.
Video background play fix - this one just means any video you are watching in the browser will keep playing if you minimise the browser - some sites try to be helpful and pause the video.
ClearURLS - removes all tracking junk from URLS - make sharing links less miserable
Dark reader - essentially just a way to make any website dark mode.
Unfortunately, no matter how evil Chromium gets, I just cannot switch to Firefox. I've been using it for 15 years already.
Not until they do better in power draw. Safari or Orion for me until then.
Firefox has been my main browser for a long time but I've also been a mutlibrowser user for a long time. Right now I'm typing this in firefox, chrome is in my second monitor running twitch, and I will be using edge for my work.
I'll give it yet a another go...
The article has good points but for the love of god please stop with the passive-aggressive "here's why you've been eating apples wrong all your life" headlines
Maybe I should write a blog post titled "You're writing passive-aggressive articles wrong, read this to do better in 2024"
Will in 2024 Firefox finally start supporting desktop installation for PWA apps? I'm not going back to Electron crap for it.
I've been a happy user of desktop and mobile Firefox for about ~3 years now. If you take the time to configure Firefox for Android to suit your needs and wants, it's a very formidable browser.
I did it for ideological reasons. I don't want Chromium strong-arming web standards (I really do hope it's not too late for that).
The only switch I've been unable to finish is the default search engine to something else. As much as Google's search results have become somewhat useless, sometimes DDG returns unrelated results. Bing as well. I've not yet tried Kagi.
I got a new laptop and didn’t install Chrome. I don’t miss it at all. The only sites that are slow on Safari and Firefox are Google related. Go figure.
as a frontend web developer there's a reason I use Chrome and bought an iPhone. It's so I see what my users are going to see
Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data.
Firefox makes almost all of their money from Google, so...
If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers
Not sure what the point is here but if everyone is using Chromium/Webkit obviously this issue goes away too.
And, oh, that's it. I thought this was going to have like... a list of reasons. This feels like a very odd post to be #1 on HN right now, it contains almost no information.
The Chrome web development tools are so much better than Firefox's
I've used Firefox forever. I've tried for many years to convert people to it...but they can't live without "muh chrome".
I have it on Firefox but it's a forced snap install so I can't download anything because snaps are sandboxed.
I switched it at some point to the app version and uninstalled the snap.
but it came back as a snap somehow!!!
I switched (back) to Firefox a few years ago, and love it.
My only complaint is that it forces me to restart the program occasionally, for updates. Does anyone know why this is done? Is it a technical necessity? Why can't I postpone it for a few hours?
Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in this article.
From getting literally billions from Google[1] ($26,000,000,000.00 in 2021 alone, with only 3% market share... that's a lot of zeros -- some startups might be rather happy to see an annual 26 billion funding round), privacy-rejecting products like Pocket[2], secretly-installed advertising extensions[3] and basically killing off non-profitable open source projects like Thunderbird out on their own, it's almost like Mozilla doesn't actually care about any of the things proponents seem to claim they do.
1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service)
3. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught...
The reason I switched to Firefox was for plugins. Then I switched to chrome when an update killed all my plugins and settings for them. Every time I tried Firefox it seems to do it again and again so I'm on ungoogled chromium until there's a good reason to switch. I used librewolf or iceweasel occasionally but there's not a good reason to switch since plugins don't delete themselves on chrome (as often).
Mozilla is a political organization. No thanks.
I’ll stick to safari, chrome, and brave. I’ll drop chrome if it ever removes v2 extensions.
I use Firefox, switched this year for the same reason.
If I were rich, I would buy Mozilla, strip everything out but Firefox, and fund its development, even at a loss.
Is there a way to use Apple's keychain with FF?
I made sure all new computers at my work include Firefox. I also encourage staff to use adblockers.
I will never switch back to Firefox. Not until Mozilla as an organization fundamentally changes.
They pretend to be the "good guys" but they're a very different organization than they were 20 years ago.
I enjoy Firefox. Occassionally, I run into issues using it. I attribute this to bad website design as this often occurs with government, and large bureaucratic organizations.
I would happily switch, but Firefox’s tabs are not sufficient for 2023. Vertical tabs are essential for me, and none of the Firefox plugin-based workarounds come anywhere close to Edge (and Brave). I prefer Firefox as a browser, but as a tool it’s growing more and more outdated.
Eh, I tried unfortunately and it's not the same. Especially with video processing, my older Macbook Pro heats up very quickly when using Firefox vs Chrome.
Firefox's history bar is still superior though
Can Firefox allow me to kill individual tabs without closing them? It's my favourite feature on Chrome.
I use FF as daily but haven't been able to use any site with Cloudflare gating. I get agressive very slow loading captchas. But these same sites work fine in Chrome. I haven't figured out why but it's super annoying.
I despise CF with a passion.
The Mozilla CEO earned $6,903,089 in 2022 up from $5.6 million in 2021, while Firefox continues to lose market share. If you think Mozilla's priorities are tied to making Firefox the best browser on the Internet, at least in terms of privacy, freedom, and features, you're seriously blind.
Switching to Firefox is like asking python devs to not use CPython.
Firefox in the current ecosystem is the least innovative or open tech. It is not modular, you can't use it for anything but Firefox. The technology is designed only for FF, you can't use it for your own purposes without metaphorically reaching in and pulling out wires. They don't have the resources or the engineers necessary to make technology. All they can do is try to play catch-up with their browser. This is why everyone else (not webkit) saw the writing and went chromium.
If Firefox was the optimal browser everyone would have forked it instead. They would be using it in their own stacks.
Only issues I’ve run into since switching this month is just some weird jank from 1pass not always filling in forms. It’s been a while since I last used Firefox and I’m very pleased with how much it’s improved.
Chrome became defacto because of techies and now techies are actively destroying the web by no longer swapping people to firefox, I guess it doesn't matter anymore, activism in general is dead, people just sit and let us all enter into a dystopia willingly.
Cannot wait until unskippable ads even with "Premium" are a thing, just like cable, and our community will have been complicit in enabling it
Switched back last year and even use their services, even one pain one: firefox relay to mask my email
As soon as they bring back xul
Right now I use Chrome because I use several PWAs. Chrome lets me install them and even gives me options to auto-start them when my system starts. Firefox doesn't seem to have equivalent functionality.
Researching it some, it seems Firefox used to support this but removed it as part of Mozilla's continuous own-goal of ... whatever the heck they're doing.
I am on Mac and while Safari is still much more snappy, more and more websites are a topping to work on Safari but work on Firefox.
If only Mozilla thought just switching to making every release a major number release wasn’t most of the job done.
Besides with every release something I had set just days back changes. And the experience doesn’t feel seamless at all. There are pages, popups with every release. So all this tells Mozilla learns nothing.
In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. ... This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web.
What hindered development was Microsoft resting on their laurels thinking they won the browser war. Google on the other hand is continuing to invest resources into Chrome. As evidenced in the past if Google stopped investing into Chrome, and stopped taking community contributions to chromium eventually another better browser would come around to overthrow it.
I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of putting their noses under some privacy violating company
I would switch when they only focus on developing browser, instead of burning money on stuff that doesn’t matter
I switched to Firefox in 2019. But the recent UI changes through me off.
I'm now on Vivaldi and loving it! Both macOS and Android.
I’m online a lot and I go to a lot of different websites. I believe people when they say they’ve had issues with Firefox, but personally this is never been an issue I’ve only had to turn off ublock a few times over several years.
I was using it, though I _think_ it was causing intermittent hangs and crashes on my Win 11 machine. It's hard to be sure, because it was so hard to repro, and could've been due to something else just interacting with FF badly. But it seems like Brave doesn't have the problem.
Which is a shame, I'd like to use FF, and still do on other machines.
I'm really getting tired of hearing the excuses from really smart people in tech sticking with Chrome.
Yes, you will find a thousand excuses to not switch.
Yes, you will find things that are worse (you will also find things that are better).
Yes, things are different.
Just suck it up and make the switch. You're smart. You'll adapt. We'll all be better for it.
Me, Very hardcore Firefox user for years, today looking at switching to arc browser becasue firefox is thrashing my system. one time. macos swap inscreased to 60gb where firefox was using 48gb. i have 16gb ram. :( also video freezes time to time )
it is probably one of my own about:config changes Though than firefox.
The Web is the single most successful application platform of our day and age: it’s free, open, and unencumbered, and it’s cross-platform, available on expensive iPhones to sub-$250 Android phones just the same. Let’s make sure it stays that way.
I have.
I recently switched from Windows to Linux (Windows 11 drove me to and I'm thankful) and Firefox was installed by default. As a result, I decided to give it a try and I'm happy I did; it's far better than the Firefox of yore and it tries to be more user friendly than the commercial browsers we have today. There are still sites that break in unexpected ways with Firefox, but it's now my daily driver.
My main browser has been firefox for awhile now and I've been slowly migrating to chrome for performance reasons. firefox is just not good with memory in my experience over the last few years. I have to restart it a few times a week so my computer becomes usable again ;( i wish this wasn't the case because i don't really want to migrate
I’ve been using Firefox almost exclusively for years with two exceptions. The web dev tools in Chrome are really just better. And recently my work made the decision to only allow Chrome for security reasons. I’m annoyed about that but I understand why, it’s not necessarily that Chrome is more secure but the central management tools are stronger and if they were only going to support one, they picked the one more people use.
Nah, too many things break or are weird. I don't care if its because Google is a bad company and hates Firefox, I have no bone in this fight, I just want to browse the web without issues.
Lots of us are tech "influencers". Lets use that influence to spread Firefox.
Firefox is my main browser it’s great.
Surprised nobody mentions this: Firefox DevTools are so, so much better than Chrome's, especially shining in two areas: (a) inspecting layouts with flex/grid; (b) inspecting websocket traffic.
Been using FF for 10+ years, never looked back.
The Firefox Developer Edition rocks!!
I used Firefox as my primary browser until last 2 year (chrome was performing better). I will give a try again for sure (Debian and Mac user)
Problem is it's not the best browser out there, Chromium is. I wanted to switch to Firefox many times, and while for regular websites it's ok, the performance in more complex web apps simply sucks. And the developer tools are dogsh* compared to Chromium's.
No, https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-...
If you really care, there is LibreWolf https://librewolf.net/
Stop double nagging me to update every time I start the fucking thing and I'll consider it.
When I start a browser I want it to do what I want it to do. Not have to fight with it to dismiss it's update nagging before I can do anything with it.
Mozilla and me are tight. There's always a few complaints, but until there is another alternative that respects me I won't even consider changing to another browser. -written on Android Firefox Nightly 123.0a1
I use librewolf，a Firefox fork, because of the things that corporate Mozilla keeps doing: from pocket to selling vpns and sponsored stories, they do enough user hostile things it ends up being a better experience on librewolf.
On android I'm using iceraven.
I've been using Firefox on the PC and phone for years now. I had the temptation a couple of years ago to use Chrome due to some issues I had on Linux (I don't remember what exactly) but then I concluded the obvious: using a browser made by a company that profits mainly on abusing user's privacy? Nah, I think I'm gonna pass.
It's a nice sentiment but Firefox' market share has dropped to 3%. It's going to take more than a blog post scolding readers about ethics to reverse that trend.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2017...
No. Plus the browser engines argument is...meh. Webkit and Chromium are open source. Why not build on top of that? What's the added value of having more than one rendering engine? All the arguments are talking about major browsers. Why not mention other, non major browsers? Oh I know why, because those are actually pretty decent alternatives and you wouldn't want to have to explain why Firefox against those as your case would be weaker.
I do use Firefox as my default browser (Linux).
My only complaint is that from time to time they see the need to change the user interface and break compatibility with whatever CSS hacks you've had to use to get it the way you like (e.g. tab position).
I wish they'd make UI layout/customization config-driven rather than relying on CSS, and commit to backwards compatibility of any such config.
I predominantly use Vivaldi, although I occasionally use FF as well. Mull and Fennec are good choices too, and in the past I used Bromite.
People who use Chrome, or any Chrome-based browser, are inherently self-destructive and greatly confused.
Chrome, and Chrome-based browsers, perform worse, are buggier on; especially on non-Nvidia drivers and especially on OSes other than Windows Have what is considered an ideal AMD+AMD Linux box? Chrome, nor any Chrome-based browser, is for you. For extra irony: Chrome on Android and Android Webview sucks on any Qualcomm-based phone. Firefox? Smooth, high performance, nearly bug-free.
A lot of the sibling comments here tell insane stories like "I use Chrome because I once used a broken website." Fine, if a website goes out of its way to write HTML, CSS, or JS that is so non-standard and broken that it can't work on Firefox, then use Chrome for that website specifically; use Firefox for all the websites that actually are spec-compliant.
Side rant: I don't even know how webdevs are getting this wrong. There aren't webdevs in the traditional sense anymore, just a bunch of kids that are using whatever popular bullshit framework is out today, banging out some flavorless souless crap so they can collect a paycheck like the rest of us. Like, they're using React + one of the popular React UI things (Next or MUI or whater), or they're using Tailwind + something for the JS, or any one of the popular combinations... guess what? THEY ALL WORK ON FIREFOX 100% OUT OF THE BOX.
How are you screwing this up?! The work is already done for you! Stop going out of your way to break it!
To Mozilla: In 2024, please switch to WebKit.
Gecko had a good and honorable run, but no longer sparks joy. It's not a differentiator, which means that the resources you're applying to it are a waste of time and money.
Please thank Gecko for serving its purpose in our lives and let it go, before its reputation gets worse. Firefox's market share has slipped so far that most web developers no longer test with it.
Adopt and contribute to WebKit. Focus on things that matter.
I switched to Firefox as the default mobile browser on my android phone and the experience is excellent. I have not missed Chrome one bit.
Firefox out of the box indeed does not cause broken websites. However, the demographic of this forum probably will use Firefox with "Multi-Account Containers", "Temporary Containers", "uBlock Origin", and a few more. These are amazing for privacy and productivity, but will occasionally cause broken websites.
Source: I am a Firefox-first user who occasionally uses plugin-less Chrome because the aforementioned plugins (and "ClearURLs", "Consent-o-matic", and a few others) occasionally break websites.
Nah, there's plenty of examples of sites breaking on Firefox. For example, the recent degraded performance on Youtube linked to Firefox User Agent strings.
Yeah but that's not on Mozilla in any way. That's just Google's anti-competitive practices. Firefox refuses to jump on Google's attempts to ban adblockers with Manifest V3 so Google wants to punish them
What matters for the end user is the experience. If using FF will lead to a poor experience on certain websites, then why recommend it?
Do people honestly believe that if they keep recommending FF, people will magically switch to FF and Google will be forced to stop its anti-competitive practices?
Yea - because Google is just outright acting evil in a number of ways. A good example is the fact that background blur isn't supported in google meet in FF and that audio translation is similarly blocked in FF. These are just arbitrary ways that Google is degrading the FF experience because of their commanding market share.
I use Google meet with Firefox on Ubuntu. Background blur works for me, as well as auto-caption. Haven’t tried auto-translation though.
Because holding that against Firefox is exactly what Google is counting on. And the more you recommend it the harder it is for Google to continue its anti-competitive practices.
The more you fall a fool for Google's (or Microsoft a decade ago) practices, the worse the experience for everyone is in the future.
Anyways, there's simple extensions that will sidestep Chrome's bs. In addition, you'll soon to be able to get an adblocked experience that you can only get on Firefox. That means less network traffic, faster loading websites, and better user privacy
Speaking of adblock experience with Firefox (and uBlock origin), Google has managed to slip ads into my Youtube experience. So far I can skip them after watching the first 5 seconds so it's not too bad.
Before that they had a popup that would timeout after 15s (?). At that point I tried disabling uBlock on Youtube but found the ads stacked up to much longer, so the 15s delay was more acceptable.
As expected, this will probably continue to be a cat and mouse game.
What good does not recommending it achieve? Maintaining the status quo which as well discussed elsewhere in these threads is hardly generally desirable?
My move back to FF has been slow (as mentioned already too) but I've been recommending it to others, who don't have my self-inflicted blocker, for some time. Maybe some will stop listening if I keep mentioning it, but people online I'll never meet in person are hardly a great loss in my life. The sort of people who are going to take such issue in RealLife™ are likely those just paying me attention in exchange largely for free tech support (the matter isn't likely to come up in other contexts) and they can do one anyway too.
Well, there's also the fact that Google is currently being prosecuted for antitrust violations on both sides of the Atlantic...
Do you honestly believe that it's OK for Google to just keep being anti-competitive? Or that this is a completely inevitable and unfixable state of affairs?
We can, should, and will hold Google accountable for its monopolistic conduct, and this is absolutely part of that.
If you want an experience that includes privacy violations, knock yourself out. Personally, as an end user, that is exactly what I don’t want, which is why I use Firefox
Immediately giving every bully whatever they want with no resistance is certainly one way to navigate life.
Manifest v3 does not ban adblockers, nor does the Chrome web store
It doesn't ban a blockers outright but does severely hamper them. It severely limits how many filters that can exist within the plugin, and also prevents plugins from updating block lists themselves and forces those updated lists to go through the plugin store.
Both of those will seriously hamper a more advanced adblock like UBlock Origin
The limits are 30,000 static rules and 30,000 dynamic rules. Running tens of thousands of regexs for each request can lead to a performance impact. Allowing for even higher limits may result in people having a worse experience from the browser becoming slower. The API was designed such that these limits can be increased in the future as available computation and user needs change over time.
declarativeNetRequest lets rules be added and removed dynamically by the extension.
The Chrome team has said that configuration can be updated outside of a store update. What the Chrome web store does not want are extensions that download and run code.
I feel like it doesn't matter how many examples of Firefox not working properly you are face with, you will simply respond "well that's not Mozilla's fault, that on the website developer" for each and every one. At the end of the day it's the Firefox user who is faced with the problem.
I do feel that there’s a difference in kind between: “a website was built with Chrome in mind, and has problems rendering in Firefox”, and “a website was built specifically to degrade in Firefox”.
If no engineering time was spent on Firefox, and it’s broken in Firefox, that’s a Firefox problem.
If active engineering time was spent on _deliberately breaking_ Firefox, then yes, I don’t think that’s a Firefox problem. I think it’s a website problem at that point.
And Netflix STILL refusing to play above 720p on Firefox if you’re running Linux, which I’m sure many here are.
I'll just keep pirating personally, I don't see why I should be treated worse if I'm paying.
One solution is not to use poorly coded websites.
It is unfortunate that Firefox doesn’t do more to help us avoid sites programmed by devs who are too incompetent to follow standards, really.
There are definitely websites that don't work with Firefox out of the box. Just one example that annoys me is https://mtgarena-support.wizards.com. "Firefox users: Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection may interfere with Sign In. Temporarily disable it in Firefox Privacy Settings to load the sign in screen."
It's probably third party cookies but not for long, Chrome will also remove them next year so they will have to do something about it.
Yeah, I find more broken websites out of the box with Firefox than Chrome (even disabling extensions/ad blockers)
I use Chrome at work (corporate provisioned device) and Firefox at home so both get a good amount of usage
Alternatively read as: “We are actively hostile to user-chosen browser privacy settings such that we develop our application to coach our users to turn these settings off as a necessary means of accessing their account”. I guess that’s what they call a death spiral given that the behavior discourages me from attending any would-have-been-DCI events.
There is a filter list for ublock origin that bypasses such things (and cookie consent popups).
That’s not “working out of the box”, but leads to a much less broken experience than chrome (especially with the manifest v3 BS).
Are you sure that your tracking protection is set to "Standard"? You'd have to change it manually to stricter protection.
I know of several sites that break if you go beyond Standard, but none if you don't.
I have chrome installed. In the rare occasion that Firefox does not do a good job I just switch to chrome for that website and then go back.
This is usually the case if there might be forms or something like that. It's minor enough that it doesn't bother me.
Now, on the other hand, tab management is so much better with chrome and I've considered using Chrome for that reason alone. At work I do use chrome because I usually have 10-15 websites open at a time (for example I like to keep one tab group per ticket and every related item to it there).
I do use simple tab groups on Firefox but it's not good enough at least to replace my workflow at work.
Have you tried Tree Style Tabs [1]?
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
This extension alone is sufficient justification to shift to Firefox.
Hey! So I finally felt inspire and made a demo of my Firefox userchrome.css and Tree Style Tabs customization and CSS on my Github here [1]. It makes it so that the Tree style tabs expand and contract over the page, showing just the favicon and number of sub-tabs when contracted, along with a few other things, like reducing border sizes and adding better indication for sound in a tab. It's pretty nifty I think; I hope someone finds it to their liking. :)
https://github.com/jessebeard/firefox_settings
"Firefox out of the box indeed does not cause broken websites" .. for you.
I regulary ran across something that does not work or has a broken style. And I know how to turn UO off.
And why should that be a surprise? FF has way less manpower than Chrome. (And even fired lots of engineers, to raise the CEO bonus)
Chrome leads the way and probably the vast majority developes for chrome and with chrome dev tools. So most of the time FF works, but not always. And performance is just worse, but not noticable on a desktop and on mobile it is offset by the working adblock. Meaning perceived performance is usually better, because ads are blocked, unlike in chrome mobile.
This has absolutely not been my experience. Must be a different extension you installed.
Or I just visit different websites?
Not the worst idea to avoid a website for breaking in FF (or take a chance to touch grass), but unfortunately when you can't pay your credit card bill or need something for your work and it only works in Chromium it can't be avoided.
Firefox doesn't. But publishers de-prioritizing or being hostile to Firefox does. I keep Chrome up for VirusTotal to scan PortableApps.com releases. In Firefox, it'll throw broken ReCaptcha prompts over and over and over after a certain number of scans per day (pick the thing, next, pick the thing, next x10, etc). And that's with all extensions disabled. Possibly related: VirusTotal and ReCaptcha are owned by Google.
When these sites break I prefer to spam their support or just not use them. If they won't support firefox then they don't deserve my patronage.
It's not patronage if you don't pay. Google would rather not have you as a user if it costs them any amount of time to support you. The relationship here is adversarial on both sides and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.
Honestly, we should take the same stand against them. Those who are hostile towards Firefox should be publicly named and shamed for sheer incompetence and/or malice.
I have had sites that are definitely broken in Firefox even after a stock install with every last toggle/extension/script blocker turned off. It's fairly rare, but there are a slowly growing list of sites that don't behave properly under Firefox but work in Chromium.
I always read that some sites don't work with Firefox but the writers never mentions which sites are broken.
So I'm curious, which sites are broken in vanilla FF?
One of them happens to be the educational site https://www.deltamath.com/
The question is if the problem is Firefox or the webpage.
Remember when Google killed the Edge render engine per YouTube problems?
I have good luck just using a private window, since that has no extensions by default. Bonus: It's really fast; ctrl-l ctrl-c ctrl-shift-p ctrl-c enter
FTFY
Wouldn’t it be Ctrl-v not ctrl-p? To paste instead of print a blank page?
Yeah im still a bit surprised that Github doesnt work in firefox for me. It wont load a repository page, its just blank with nothing but the navigation on the page. This happens after turning off all plugins. dont know if github has made it so only chrome works but thats a pretty major site for firefox to not work with.
GitHub works with Firefox. I use that combination every day.
That’s something weird with your setup, GitHub works just fine on Firefox for everyone else.
Never even heard of these... hmm
i also use ublock matrix so i get to play "which third party hosts are needed to make this page work" for every new website
I don't mind breaking websites, if I can fix them on my own terms.
Shouldn't we say "Some sites break user browsing experience"?
Firefox doesn't cause broken websites. Websites developers that target only Chrome cause websites to inadvertently become broken in Firefox.
There's some more you should do to increase privacy: Disable Firefox sending each keystroke into the address bar to all the numerous search engines (includes google). Best to just enable the separate bar for search and disable search suggestions entirely.
Not sure about the others but uBlock Origin allows you to disable it for specific websites and remember the setting.
It’s probably the ublock origin breaking websites and not the multi-account containers, right?
I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. I don't use containers but I do use profiles.
Yes some sites are "broken" with uBlock Origin. I don't find it to be many, however. I run into paywalls much more often than I do problems with my browser settings.
The only site I've found behaves terribly in Firefox is LinkedIn. Weird pauses on page load that lock the whole browser (not just the tab) for like 5-10 seconds. No idea what they're doing to make this happen, but it's odd.
Which is, well, fine, because LinkedIn is mostly a dumpster anyways.
Any site that is on the edge of performance (often due to bad engineering, which you can blame on time constraints) will perform vastly better in Chromium.
Social networks really have no business being "on the edge of performance", FFS.
Look, Google and Facebook are just mom and pop businesses - they can't afford to support all these fancy browsers!
(I absolutely agree - especially when it's google turning off features when you're using FF... it feels blatantly anticompetitive).
Okay, well, they're using React and most React engineers aren't very good so it ends up being a clusterfuck that most people don't even notice given how well Chromium is optimized.
I don't much care, TBH. Having worked in the Chromium codebase before, I know what an absolutely mammoth amount of engineering hours goes into that.
V8 on its own is a technological miracle.
But all funded by a firehose of crazy privacy invading ad revenue.
So. I'll live with the odd pause and a bit of battery drain. I gave Google 10 years of my life as an employee in exchange for $$, I'm not interested in giving them the rest of my life for free.
I get it, it's a nice story, but here's a nice little life-hack:
What if you could take the benefits of the spending and jettison the side-effects?
It's called Brave, they have their own ad blocker in the source code written in C, so it can't be hamstrung.
Crypto crap, no thanks.
This prompted me to check LinkedIn after months of having it parked in a tab and it worked with no problems.
When I have problems with a site it's usually because I'm blocking most JavaScript with uMatrix and I have to find the correct combination of scripts to make the site work for me without having to give away my soul to the gods of tracking.
As a software developer, it's been years since a customer told me that the sites I develop on Firefox don't work on Chrome or Safari. I don't even bother to check anymore. I couldn't check with Safari anyway and they are OK with that. The point is that if it works in Firefox it works everywhere. Of course we're not using any Chrome-only API but we never had to use one of them as far as I can remember.
Also checked LinkedIn, no issues in FF on a mid-2014 mbp.
Bigquery studio is an absolute dog in Firefox even on S-tier desktop hardware. It works better in chrome. Go figure.
I tried FF for a long time but finally switched to Brave. Yes, I'll be downvoted for saying this but it's objectively one of my top 3 favorite browsers rn.
1. Brave
2. Edge
3. Safari
I like each of them for different reasons. Brave (after disabling annoying features such as crypto and VPN) is awesome and its iOS app is the only one which can play videos in the background, has dark mode, and syncs really well with the desktop app.
Edge is so tempting esp. with recent Microsoft Copilot which makes it so useful (I can summarize pages right in the browser, organize my tabs by telling so to the Copilot, etc.)
Safari is not a good browser per se and lacks many features and plugins, but it's minimal and doesn't drain the battery like Brave and FF.
I really wanted to like FF but it's just not cutting it anymore.
Brave and Edge a just chromium.
Bro. You’re still using chrome.
Chromium !== Chrome.
How much do they really differ? Chromium browsers for the most part are just going to appear the same to site owners.
That is true, but the Chrome/Chromium ecosystem is largely driven by Google. And Google makes use of this power position to push through web standards that benefit them, but not the users. Therefore I choose to use Firefox, to support a more open browser ecosystem.
Brave is really good and always surprising me with features while largely staying lean and out of my way.
They recently added a chatbot that runs locally they call Leo based on llama2. It's pretty impressive that you can perform LLM tasks on the current page without the use of any 3rd party service. And of course you can pay them for the souped up version. https://brave.com/leo-release/
Feels like I am alone in thinking the crypto features of Brave are cool. And not because I think that industry generally isn't full of slime. But micropayments for content has been a good, latent idea for a generation, and here they've simply built it as a default feature.
I still use FF and Brave equally because of my experience with the first browser wars and my mistrust of Chrome, having become the new IE.
I have tried Brave multiple times. I find its desktop version as bad or worse than Firefox for things not working or bugginess.
I have used Brave more on Android. I have bounced between Firefox, Brave, and custom builds of Chromium for years. I am currently on Firefox.
Brave is my primary also, but Orion is creeping up. It’s still a little buggy, but nested tree tabs is very nice.
I use FF on my desktop and Brave on mobile. I tried FF on mobile and it has too many issues, unlike its desktop counterpart. And there are no good maintained de-googled chromium alternatives on Android other than Brave.
This is a funny comment - why'd you leave Firefox to have to come back to it?
If GP is anything like me, they used Firefox before Chrome was released. The Mozilla/Netscape suite that spawned Firefox is older than Google itself.
For a time, Firefox performed worse than a rabid dog. Chrome ate their lunch and gained market share fast. I and many of my colleagues switched around that time.
That’s what I did.
This exactly, I should've added that context
That isn't the main reason they gained market share fast. It's sabotage: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116871245021220875.html
In my case: Because Opera stopped using Presto and switched to Chromium. That does says a bit about when I switched.
I used Firefox pretty extensively, then switch to Chrome when Firefox fell behind on speed, but the developer tools absolutely sucks in Chrome, so I tried Opera which had a great feature set, speed and wonderful developer tools. It was a pretty sad day when Opera dropped Presto, and more so when they where bought by some Chinese company.
Firefox became better, Chrome became worse. Every week one time I have to start Chrome for something.
I've been using Chrome for years and I never have to start Firefox for something.
Same, but other way around. Don’t even have Chrome installed. I don’t know what websites people are using, but I’m glad to not need them. The idea that a site could fail to render on any reasonably common browser seems pretty absurd.
The few times Firefox hasn't worked is on incredibly niche and outdated sites like a local kennel to board my dog or my university parking system.
Edge works fine in those incredibly rare instances since I can't get it off my computer anyway. I think I have one
I unfortunately switched back to Chrome last week after having used Firefox for years due to not being able to use sites I frequent. I constantly ran into issues with Heroku, GCP (go figure), and a few financial sites I'd log into regularly.
I know it’s mentioned elsewhere, but this does it for me:
* Try the same site in a private window (assuming plugins are disabled when in private)
* If on dev or nightly, try those sites on the regular release.
I haven’t bumped into anything in GCP that fails to work on ff, though likely don’t use the console as extensively.
did you check if you have any funky plugins enabled?
What do those sites say about the problem when you report the error to them? Do any of them acknowledge their error?
I've been using FireFox for about 4.5 years now, but I have to have Chrome installed for a few reasons unfortunately.
- Some websites still will just not work in FireFox. It's not super common anymore, but if I sense something is fishy, I pop open the console and see some strange error and swap over to Chrome. Things will just work then. All extensions disabled even. I even ran into this on Vanguard's website, albeit for some obscure forms.
- When I worked at a company that had a larger web app presence, I would have to test in Chrome. That's a given, but my Chrome counterparts did not do the same with FireFox. I would fairly regularly (few times a quarter) find things that were completely broked on FireFox.
All that said, I don't really care about my choice in browser very much, but I'd rather support Mozilla over Google still. Especially since they're the only non-Chromium and v8 engine out there aside from Safari, which is also owned by a massive for profit company. I'd like to help support a more open web, even if it's just a little bit.
You know, it's not necessarily a bad thing that another enormous company is competing with Chrome. It might be less than ideal than Firefox having Safari's share, but it still eats at Google's monopoly more effectively.
I run into this as well, but I just use Safari as my backup browser and that usually is good enough. The only thing I still need to use Chrome for is my Nest thermostat.
Chrome is the new IE6
We need an updated version of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sKppwrLBY8
I love & support Firefox but feel nervous about going all in on it when Mozilla appears to be pivoting away from investing in it.
I've been using Firefox for regular browsing for years now, but I use Chrome for streaming videos (Firefox streaming quality is noticably worse) and LibreWolf for YouTube (blocks ads). It's annoying to have 3 browsers open basically all of the time.
I'm a FF-first user but I definitely have had to keep Chrome around for a few things— my investment banking doesn't load in FF nor do some parts of Office 365.
I'm fully switching to FF at home now. I'd half done it but had a large collection of tabs open in Chrome which kept pulling me back as I couldn't be bothered with reassessing them all (a fair I should have closed) and recording the ones I still wanted to keep elsewhere. Chrome gave me the final push the other day by completely forgetting most of those open items during an update.
I'd not encountered anything broken in Chrome that was fixed by FF though.
I'll still be primarily Chrome in DayJob though, as most of our clients' users are (with some on Edge, a few using FF, and a couple of idiots still not off IE though we don't officially support that) so that makes sense even though I very rarely touch anything front-end these days.
I just switched back to firefox yesterday. Not a long sample period, but so far I completely agree, less painful than chrome.