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Comment by nullspace | Hacker News Reader

Personally, it has to a large extent. Somethings that are not yet there:

1. Since Webextensions are new, some extensions that I use in chrome, need to be ported over. Most are not must haves to be fair.

2. Hangouts for work. :(

3. A solution to manage different personas - Chrome has the "user profile" thing linked to google accounts, firefox as container tabs. I think user profile is better than container tabs, although both are kinda bad.

Except hangouts, none are deal breakers - I use firefox as much as I can, and in fact overall it feels more faster and more repsonsive than Chrome starting with Quantum. It also looks and feels better than chrome.

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Thank you for choosing Firefox.

1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

2. Sorry about Hangouts; follows a trend of Chrome-only product launches/re-launches from Google (five this year so far). Wish we could do more, but if Google's OK shipping things that only work on one browser, that's their prerogative.

3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs. The UI isn't as polished as in Chrome, but it works: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

> Are there any specific extensions you need?

Keysnail. It requires the ability to override C-n, though.

> 3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs.

hey callahad, thanks for shiming in. My biggest pain with profiles is that you cannot use separate profiles at the same time. A Firefox instance can only run one at the same time, making it useless to run e.g. a work and a private profile together. Container tabs also do not help here because they share the same history which I do not want for privacy reasons.

Nonetheless, thanks for a great release!

> A Firefox instance can only run one at the same time, making it useless to run e.g. a work and a private profile together.

I may be misunderstanding what you mean, but I believe you actually can do that. If you navigate to about:profiles, there should be a "launch profile in new browser" button that runs multiple profiles at the same time, each in their own, isolated Firefox process.

To make this a bit easier, you can create desktop shortcuts which launch a specific profile like `firefox --new-instance --profile Work` (on Windows, use --no-remote instead of --new-instance).

> 1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

LastPass please. I'm sure it's on your list already, and I'm sure they know about it too but every little helps.

I am happy to use pass/keepass (whatever version) but the family says only LastPass is acceptable.

LastPass updated a few days ago -- I'm using it with FF57 now!

> 1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

for me, vimperator/pentadactyl and tab groups. i can't use a browser without them so i won't be upgrading :(

Tab Groups is the reason I won't be upgrading :( Hopefully someone will take on the task of upgrading/rewriting it.

> 3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs. The UI isn't as polished as in Chrome, but it works: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

Chrome allows users to simultaneously run multiple profile instances, each with it own profile. Firefox didn't seem to support that.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... (or a similar addon) might bring me back to using Firefox.

With Chrome, one set up a profile shortcut to a given profile, and then all tabs/windows within the instance corresponded to the same profile. This meant hitting Ctrl+T to open new tabs, rather than having to click and dig through a menu to pick the right profile.

I'd like the containers addon to support easy shortcuts. Maybe on hitting ctrl+t, one can then press 1-5 (or some other selector) to determine which profile the new tab opens in. Alternatively, more safely and less confusingly, just having windows sticky to a specific profile, so all new tabs predictably open into the same profile.

Firefox does support multiple isolated instances, just without a prominent UI. You can use the Profile Manager (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...) or command-line flags to launch and manage separate profiles.

The UX around multi-account containers is still being worked on, but the contextualIdentities WebExtension API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP...) allows add-ons to interact with containers, so a third party developer could create exactly the experience you've requested.

In case anyone comes back and sees this thread, instructions for launching different profiles simultaneously can be found here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Opening_a_new_instance_of_Firefox_...

As for your third point, yes, Firefox does have containers now, but it has the profiles feature as well. `about:profiles` and starting your Firefox with `-p` flag will help you out.

Yeah, without the UI it's 80% useless.

`about:profiles` is the UI. It allows you to create new profiles, restart Firefox with a specific profile, and manage profiles. Starting Firefox with `-p` (and no passed argument) starts a window which allows you to do the same.

Sorry I wasn't clear. Chrome profiles is a usable UI. Easy to find, switch, manage, create, delete, all with just a couple clicks, never very far away.

about:profiles is not discoverable (obviously), easily usable (you have to restart), or easily switchable (you have to open about:profiles or the terminal).

By the technical definition of "UI", the raw filesystem and terminal counts, sure. Opaque and unknown about: pages count, sure. But that doesn't make it good.

For features like this the UI is the feature. about:profiles is not a good UI, so the feature is 80% useless.

Container tabs have a much nicer UI. They're a bit experimental but they're easy to use.

does hangouts.google.com work in FF (too lazy to try it)

No. Hangouts only works on Chrome and Safari (with a plugin). It does not work in Edge or Firefox, as we've phased out support for third-party plugins.

Specifically calls (and video) doesn't work. If you just want to message it works fine.

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