Ask HN: Why continue to use Firefox? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why continue to use Firefox?

49 pointsjkabrg46 comments

Now that Firefox's UI is becoming more and more like Chrome's, why should anyone continue to use Firefox?

I'm thinking the reasons might have something to do with:

  - Lower memory usage compared to Chrome [1]
  - Increasingly more of it being written in a fast and memory-safe language, Rust [2]
  - Not belonging to a for-profit company [3]

Would also be nice to know what plans Mozilla has for Firefox in the longer term. Once Firefox becomes a near Chrome clone written in Rust, what comes next?

[1] - https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-uses-less-memory-chrome-edge-safari/

[2] - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla

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1. Firefox 58 has considerable speed improvements

2. Firefox has much better support for tab customization like tree style tabs (not yet supported in 58, I think), multiple tabs, where you can close, move, reload multiple tabs together, copy url of selected tabs in custom format etc.

3. Reliable session recovery. With chrome , if you have more than one window each with multiple tabs, recovery of all windows is not guaranteed. Firefox on the other hand has a versatile session restore process. I sometimes have 6 or more nested session restores. Only thing affected is your sanity, when going through all the tabs. Also, in firefox, when recovering, the pages are not loaded unless the user purposefully navigates to the page, saving memory.

Firefox also supports hundreds of tabs easily. It is THE browser for tab hoarders.

4. Chrome on android does not allow extensions. So no ublock origin on Chrome mobile. That leaves a bad taste in the mouth. For that and other reasons cited by other answers here, I do not trust Chrome on desktop either.

5. Certain features on Web developer tools are better in firefox. I use both firefox and chrome for this interchangeably.

6. I like that typing in address bar checks only in history and bookmarks and the search bar is separate. In chrome, I often notice that search is given more priority over history. What is one hop in firefox becomes two in chrome: first to the search page, then the actual website.

> 6. I like that typing in address bar checks only in history and bookmarks and the search bar is separate. In chrome, I often notice that search is given more priority over history.

Thought I was the only one that noticed this

Mine are a little simpler: It's "good enough," and seems good for the open web and open source.

The search bar is soon to be hidden by default -- you'll have the option to turn it on. [1]

[1] - https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/09/08/2330232/firefox-57-...

https://www.mozilla.org/it/firefox/all/ only reports firefox 55 as available for download.

They mean 57 in nightlies: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#night...

Yes, I meant the nightlies. It is at 57. I can no longer edit my original answer.

Firefox Nightly is at version 57, why are you talking about v58?

Despite these points, FF uses much more CPU on OS X. If that wasn't the case, I'd totally give it a shot.

Plus, FF displays current downloads in another window which is annoying.

Sorry, why 58? Nightly is on 57 only. What is landing in 58?

It's possibly to do with a roadmap of extension APIs that are required to properly implement vertical tabs. WebExtensions Experiments allow developers to make changes to the APIs before they are in the official builds. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280347

I don't know either. Might be the first release with Stylo, the new CSS engine written in Rust, but I can't really find any references to that.

Stylo is on by default for 57 at the moment.

WebRender is upcoming, but I don't think on-by-default anywhere.

(That said looks like maybe OP just mistyped.)

Does that also mean that Stylo will be the default in the release version of 57, if everything goes smoothly?

That's my understanding, yes.

Yes, I meant 57, currently the nightly. I was typing on mobile and couldn't cross check. Sorry.

- To promote and foster diversity between browsers. You don't want to end up with a new Internet Explorer called Chrome.

- Google has already its hands on so many things. If I can prevent it from controlling my browser, I'm good.

- I HATE chrome UI and look & feel

- With FF, I can syn my tabs between several devices while hosting my own sync service .

- Google is not beyond Firefox. I like more Mozilla than Google.

> while hosting my own sync service

A late reply but I thought I'd chime in.

You also need to host your own accounts service and all its dependencies (assets, tokenserver, profile), unless you trust Mozilla to be not forced/coerced to compromise your security. Even with auto-updates disabled, the Firefox Accounts login form is served from the network, so a paranoid user must be very cautious if any of their browsers suddenly asks to re-authenticate.

Also, note that Sync is now consists of two pieces: there is Sync 1.5 server and there is Kinto (which is used to store WebExtensions data). This is usually not mentioned in the "host your own Sync 1.5 server" articles, but here are the details: https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Sync/ExtensionStorage...

If you're fully self-hosting you need to install the latter as your tokens aren't working for Mozilla's one (so basically your WE-based extensions can't sync anything). If you're only hosting your own Sync but not Accounts, you should be aware that some of your data is stored at Mozilla's services instead of your own server.

Taking a stand against companies fighting to undermine privacy is a good reason to choose a product like Firefox. I don't think it's as much about being a for-profit [3] as it is about the intentions of the company, its influence, and the way it makes money.

I want to switch to Firefox because, lately, I've been trying to lessen my dependence on Google and Google services. All I need is a method to easily switch browser profiles!

Container tabs[0] (currently an experiment) will hopefully stick around. That alone is reason enough to use it from my point of view. Paired with Cookie AutoDelete it is the most control I've ever had over my privacy in a browser and it feels good.

Fx's new CSS pipeline and the other stuff they're porting from Servo is amazingly cool. Not just tech wise that they can pull this off but the benefits it brings means Fx has a decent chance surpassing other browser's performance, in a few places it already does.

I have control over my data. With Chrome I don't, I'd have to rely on Chromium to be sure and keeping Chromium up to date is tedious.

I used to only use Safari but ever since Firefox 57 showed up (the curently nightly) it's been my daily driver and it's absolutely awesome.

[0]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...

Container tabs are live in the latest nightlies (without addons), so signs are good that it will make it to stable.

Container tabs are already in stable. Just activate them with the privacy.userContext.enabled preference in about:config.

Privacy. Not wanting to encourage Google's monopoly positions any more than I wanted to encourage Microsoft's back in the bad old IE6 days. Inertia.

But yeah, I'm disappointed they're changing the UI to one I dislike, and at the same time removing the ability to customize it. Kind of fuming about that, actually.

But the alternative will be to stay on a browser that won't get any updates, and gets left behind by websites using newer features, and hacked when it doesn't get security updates.

Maybe some enterprising open source developer will find a way to hack the Servo rendering engine into a different browser chrome UI - just as Firefox (then Phoenix) did with Gecko back when the Mozilla suite was dying.

I'd never consider using a free browser from an ad network, and don't have windows or a mac. That pretty much leaves Firefox as my daily driver.

Not to mention I've been using it since Netscape 0.9 or whatever it was first released as. Started on Mosaic ;-).

Have appreciated the kick in the pants from chrome and keep chromium around for testing. Shame about the dumbing down of the UI but extensions have mostly saved me so far. I prefer traditional widgets, a single OS theme, and hate skinz.

Chrome stopped all updates (including security) for older Windows versions some years ago. Firefox gets security updates just fine so far (I believe Vista support will get dropped soon). Windows 7 support will continue for a while. I switched my parents' Windows laptops to Firefox 2 years ago.

Firefox on Android (and the new Firefox Focus) feels faster and lighter on resources. I prefer Firefox on my Android devices.

For me, a third reason is that Chrome has started segfaulting big time on my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS laptop. This started very recently. Switched to Firefox.

Aside from all that, for me it's just the principle that it's better to encourage multiple excellent feature-rich cross-platform browsers instead of ending up with a monopoly.

Chrome won't allow AdNauseum. I also hate how it collects all my data^#. I've started using Waterfox, a Firefox based browser that won't collect my data and allows all extensions.

# admittedly, I don't quite understand what all data it gathers and how. But I know it does because my FB feed is littered by ads based on my chrome browsing. And I feel sooo exploited when that happens.

Why should you dismiss Firefox based on UI similarities ? :/ And, by the way, it's not Firefox being like Chromium in terms of UI…

I've been a long time Firefox user until the early days of Google Chrome and I remember doing the switch just for the amazing startup time of the latter and then being acquaintanced to it. Nowadays I use the Opera (beta) flavor of Chromium due to the team effort in providing a slightly (but appreciable) better experience.

Firefox seems to be in period of internal renaissance which I greatly appreciate; something that remind me of the hype around it during it's 3rd major release.

I tried the Nightly release last week and, being on a laptop, the only thing that currently hold me back is it's lack of a battery-friendly mode – like the one I use daily with Opera – and other little details.

Because Mozilla is not an ad company and actually cares about users' privacy. I do not trust Google and do not want to enable them to vacuum up more of my data.

Firefox allows non tabbed browsing, leaving window management to the window manager of the desktop environment.

This feature alone is enough for me.

A lot of the things being said here are true. I gave FF a chance again (after nearly a decade) last month. I switched back to chrome for two reasons:

1. After a couple of days of use, page interaction began to 'stutter'. Every 2-3 seconds the page would lock up. 2. They still don't sand box tabs, so a crash brings down everything. I lost work because FF locked up on one tab while I was working in another. Everything came to a screeching halt.

That was enough for me to forget FF all over again. #1 consistently happened on two different machines, but I couldn't find a fix (just similar issues related to graphics HW acceleration from two years ago.) I have no idea how isolated these incidents are, but if I can't rely on FF to work > 99% of the time I can't use it.

Now that Firefox's UI is becoming more and more like Chrome's, why should anyone continue to use Chrome?

I use it mainly because I like Mozilla and dislike Google. You have to put your money where your mouth is.

Because it's fast. Nightly 57 is very very fast.

Firefox's typography is more advanced than Chrome's. Chrome has improved a lot in recent releases, but is still behind. This is from a few years ago, but still relevant: https://lee-phillips.org/google-chromeBadKerning/

Also, Chrome's resource usage is out of control, at least on my Linux laptop.

[3] Yes, we should never use anything from google, facebook, amazon, microsoft and apple. (Don't ask why, or I'll be more talkative than a vegan).

I'm using it (Nightly on OS X with stylo enabled) now, for the first time and I love it, it's faster than Chrome or it looks like it's faster, anyway, I simply want to use it even when almost all best plugins doesn't work currently. In the meantime stable version is almost unusable, I tried it couple of times, it was always lagging on page scroll.

Because I need FIFO ordering for tab switching with Ctrl+Tab, and every time I check, Chrome doesn't support it and extensions can't offer it (because they cannot override the shortcut).

Firefox supports it via extensions, although the author has noted it will stop working in 57.

Which extension do you use?

Until Firefox has a method to easily switch between profiles, I'll stick with Chrome.

I have a few different clients that I have seperate logins for and I like to keep all that completely separate while still only using a single browser.

You should definitely try out container tabs.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec... https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/

I don't use either (I use Safari) but if Firefox became a more memory efficient chrome from a company besides google, that still sounds better than chrome.

Google is and for the foreeeable future will be an ad network first and foremost.

My favourite feature of Firefox that I haven't found in any other browser is the ability to capture, edit, and resend HTTP requests directly from the Developer Tools. Super useful.

Couple reasons: - Some of the add-ons which are privacy focused are not available in chrome (although with the move to webextensions this may go away) - Momentum. I resisted switching to chrome when it first came on the scene because I didn't want Google having access to my browsing history. That fear has abated, particularly since I owned several Chromebooks, but I've always used Firefox on my Windows and Linux desktops. It still does what I need it to do. - Firefox for Android allows installing extensions, specifically ublock. This was critical for me, and so since I know I'll keep using Firefox on mobile, it's advantageous to keep using Firefox on desktop for syncing.

Not contributing to googles botnet is good enough reason for me.

Scrachtpad is awesome for prototyping. It has Vim keymap support.

firemacs

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