The most surprising thing is that the Android version of Firefox is excellent. So good that I switched from Chrome a few months ago when this expected news first dropped. No ads on mobile is awesome.
One more problem is that containers are an addon and do not sync between Firefoxes on different desktops. Still extremely useful though.
A request: I run Firefox nightly [2] as my main browser and would like to request everyone to consider using a pre-release version of Firefox if possible. It helps us make the argument that Mozilla should not run experiments in Firefox stable.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...
See my comment above - I think the obvious workflow for containers is a container window, not a tab, and all tabs created in that window inherit the container settings.
As I also note, above, I don't see how to manage per-container cookies and history ... I can't clear history for just my "banking" container (or whatever).
I really want to make heavy use of a container-like feature but keep stumbling over things like this.
privacy.userContext.enabled;true
privacy.userContext.ui.enabled;true
privacy.userContext.longPressBehavior;2
Remind me - is this different than the "Container Tab" choice in the File menu ?
I find the built-in container functionality in Firefox to be surprisingly awkward and poorly thought out ...
For instance, the very first use-case that I attempted (create a Window, not a tab and have all new tabs inherit that same container) is impossible.
It also appears to be impossible to clear the history of just a container.
These are basic use-cases that came up, immediately, in a cursory exploration of the feature - I wasn't digging deep to find these ...
Their contrainers are domain centric, not WI dow or tab centric. You can tell a domain to always be in a container, and then on the prompt to change contrainers when you visit th at domain, you can confirm to always switch.
Locking a window to a container would result in people following links and logging in again in accident in a different container, or being constantly annoyed that it wasn't the right one. If they closed the normal WI dow and kept that one, it would be annoying until they figured it out, and they would probably blame Mozilla thinking it a bug.
It's not a bad idea, but I can defi itely see why they would leave it out of the regular setup, as it's prone to causing confusion and only really useful for power users. It's ripe to be implemented as an additional addon though.
That's basically the process I went through with 3-4 other complaints I had. On actually thinking through it, they had one of the best sane approaches. Maybe when more people are familiar with the concept and how it acts and looks they can extend it, but there's only so much complexity you can push to the general public at one time.
Phoronix's tests seem to back my experience as well. From 4 days ago:
"As for the Firefox vs. Chrome performance, Google's web browser continues generally delivering better performance."
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox6...
But I use FF as my main
Enabling apz kinetic scrolling is another approach. That cuts the lag by about 90%, getting it much closer to chrome.
Firefox crashes ten times a day for me.
I don’t understand how anyone can use it.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox6...
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox6...
Personally, I'm working towards moving to Vivaldi...
However, this is the only time I've encountered this issue, and I tend to think it's more likely an issue with the windows installation than Firefox. I'm just too lazy to reinstall, this isn't my main computer after all.
You can try taking a profile and reporting it -- developers may have some ideas: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Repor...
1. Firefox Nightly
2. WebRender enabled
3. Tracking Protection set to Strict + DuckDuckGo extension
Vanilla firefox is slower than chrome but WebRender is noticeably faster than chrome. Chrome on a 4K monitor slows down to a crawl, but WebRender handles it like a champ. It can be easily enabled with a flag.
- Can you please make this a default?
- Can you please fix text rendering on mobile? Sites like reddit render at desktop resolution on mobile screen, and there is no clear text sizing that works. With Chrome I just set my size option and move on with life.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
In some configurations you have to set a config flag to enable it.
Go to about:support and search for WebRender to check if it worked.
Works great for me with Kubuntu 19.10 / Mesa / AMD. It didn't work when I tried it a couple of months ago.
EDIT: Nope, I’m not one of the default-on “safe” configurations.
I mean if their crappy mobile site encourages you to switch to their annoying app, I guess they consider it mission accomplished?
Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient...
In both cases, people are choosing products because they're better. "Better" for most favors properties of the product. "Better" for you favors the politics of the product. Both are completely valid approaches.
It's about immediate pain vs future gain. People are susceptible to temporal discounting.
There is the Mozilla Foundation which holds all the IP, governs development, and provides supporting infrastructure.
Then there is the Mozilla Corporation-- the profit seeking portion of the conglomerate. They are guiding product development and contracts which will either bring profit now, or in the future. Think about their big forced Pocket feature. This is a future profit driver, if it is not already.
Source where FF gets the lions share of their funds.
I'm not saying they are bad, but use some critical thinking and stop making corporations heros, generally. Hold them accountable.
Be aware, use your voice, vote with your patronage.
If I can't have ublock origin, I'm going back to internet explorer 11.
Google simply can't be trusted with all that ads stuff
People aren't going to be happy without uBlock and Ad Block...
Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. What's a NEW Google product that you actually like (that they didn't acquire)?
They literally CAN NOT build new products that people like.
... all their hardware products suck. New things like Google Allo exist for like a year and then they are killed.
It seems like they give a half-assed attempt at creating new products as a way to keep skilled talent at Google rather than having them leave to work for Facebook or Apple.
They're actually DECENT at large acquisitions but that's the only thing that's saved them.
It's really a shame because Chrome is actually a GREAT browser but I won't use it without ad blocking.
I've already migrated to Firefox on my phone and it's been pretty great so far. It also supports extensions on mobile which is huge!
Nope, they're in the advertising biz now. They aren't so much "dropping the ball" as playing a ballgame (extremely well) that you dislike (because it's harmful and exploitative and destroys the tools you love).
They're just a new microsoft. Or since they're in a particular phase of that development, let's say a new M$. Embrace, extend, exploit.
Robots that kill people? Come on, there are people that think that's cool.
There's absolutely no mapping between folders and albums. If you sync your photos and don't organize them into albums manually every time, the folder structure is lost completely.
Pretty much all Android apps will only let you pick images from folders. There's usually an option buried in the hamburger menu to pick images from Google Photos, but you can only see ALL your photos lumped together, no option to choose from an album.
Sure, you can use the share feature in Google Photos, but that doesn't work if you need to use the image in a specific context, for example replying to a specific tweet.
With iCloud this all works seamlessly, my only gripe is that album order does not appear to be synced and even if I reorder them on my device, many apps appear to list albums in creation order. But overall it's still better.
What new products have Apple or, seriously?, Facebook created that you actually like?
Pretty sure people aren't leaving Google for Apple & Facebook because they want to build good new products.
My hierarchy of browsers looks like this. FF is my default, along with an extensive suite of security and privacy extensions including uBlock Origin. Very rarely, I’ll encounter an issue with a site, and I’ll fall back to Brave. Exceptionally rarely, I’ll fall back from Brave to Chrome, but I can’t remember right now the last time I needed to do that.
Edge Beta on macOS has been my daily driver (and dev browser) for a month (switched to it from Firefox, actually), and my only gripe is the extension story isn’t yet complete. The MS store only has a few extensions, and you have to jump through a couple of hoops to install from the Chrome store.
Advocates for Firefox often say "Firefox is better, just try switching!" yet when people point out reasons it's not better the response is "Oh those don't matter, you're just being nitpicky!"
But it's not a very gentle push back, it's forceful.
In this thread someone says "I don't like how much ram Firefox uses" and the response is
> I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage.
and
> Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs.
Firefox, as a product, has many issues when compared to Chrome. Why does everyone spend so much of their breath arguing against the real concerns and problems people have with it? Chrome has been getting worse in lots of major ways, Firefox has a chance to be the better product for a wider audience.
But Firefox won't become better with a culture of downvoting and arguing against criticism rather than trying to understand it. This is not the culture of Mozilla as far as I know, but it's the culture of many Firefox advocates all across the internet.
The person who takes the time to complain isn't an enemy, they're making an effort to bring something to attention for the community. You want more complainers instead of people silently rejecting your community and product.
The 'argue against the messenger' first reaction of many projects creates insular communities and insular communities create worse products.
Of course, now I'm used to Firefox, and my routine is centred on it - so now when I fire up Chrome, I have the same experience in reverse.
I don't think Firefox advocates should under-play the amount of time and disruption the shift to Firefox involves: but I do think it's worth doing. While there are a few things I miss, Firefox meets all my needs and more.
The point of my comment is a lot of people have various real issues with Firefox that make them prefer Chrome and those people should be listened to rather than dismissed. The tone of Firefox advocates responding to critics is often aggressive and dismissive.
Even my comment, which says "Don't dismiss the critics!" is presently in the negative.
Generally I've written off arguing on the internet, but sometimes (like today) I slip up when it's too tempting to respond.
> Rest assured the engineers of Mozilla are doing their best to make the product superior, independent of the principles difference.
Even if it's obvious it is always nice to hear that an organization cares about doing the best job they can. I'm very appreciative of the work Mozilla is doing even if here I'm defending the critics of their work.
I also recognize your name from the massive contributions you're making to the Rust ecosystem. Thanks!
Last time I remember trying to discuss an issue in Firefox was when they dropped ALSA support and started requiring PluseAudio for sound. When people complained, a manager silenced everyone by locking the bug report. This was not surprising, as other problem reports in recent years have been met with similarly obstinate responses.
It's nice to think that at least some of their engineers are genuinely trying to improve things. (If you're one of them, thanks for trying!) It is nevertheless discouraging when problem reports are silenced by both the internet public and the company's own managers.
Sadly, the current situation is that both major browsers have made themselves deficient in one way or another. I manage to get things done by switching between them, but really, I'm ready to drop them both if a good alternative shows up.
You can jump back by CTRL-L for address bar
The same is true for some other applications
Fuck watching half a minute of ads on YouTube before the thing I actually wanted.
I gave it a hard try, but it just wasn't workable.
Still using Firefox on all desktop/laptop devices, though.
The RAM will appear to pass hardware checking in our testers, but you hit it hard and suddenly the frequency becomes unstable, often dropping down to DDR1 speeds. Plenty of room for error, there.
That's an expensive set of kit.
For example, how do we know my good experience and your bad experience are not easily explained by hardware differences? If so, what does that say?
Honestly, every bug/glitch/criticism is important, even if it doesn't affect a large portion of users. Ideally, it should be reported in Mozilla's bug tracker if it hasn't already, but still important nonetheless.
You keep bringing up this point about feedback that is irrelevant to the actual conversation at hand. Nitpicking feedback is kind of useless and pedantic when the purpose isn't to be feedback.
The comparison app (Chrome) _just works.__
Firefox has gaps for a noticeable fraction of folks.
No one complains when their software works as expected.
[Edit] I say this as someone who prefers firefox on all their machines wherever possible.
Except when it doesn't. I initially switched to Firefox on Android because Chrome was crashing often and was noticeably slower.
I plan to switch from regular Firefox Mobile as soon as WebExtensions are supported.
What platform are you referring to? Is it faster on macs too?
> Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox runs as a single process on mobile and has no sandbox beyond the OS sandbox. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux, where it can hardly be considered a sandbox at all) and lacks support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole.
So, despite concerns about monoculture, I guess Chromium-based browsers other than Chrome are the most practical solution for now.
The WebView argument is basically an argument for monoculture: you should only have one browser engine installed because that's less attack surface than two, and since Chromium must be installed for reasons, it must be Chromium. That's actually kind of a weak argument since it's not that common for users to load a specific attack in both browser engines.
I still hate what Google is doing for Chrome and I'm now using a dual browser strategy... I use Firefox and Chrome at the same time, with a preference to Firefox.
You can report those issues to https://webcompat.com -- if they are Firefox issues, they will be logged and hopefully fixed.
And the last update is forcing dns over https that for some reasons keeps get reenabled all the time. Constant issues with ssl handshake.
I am almost ready to go back to Chrome.
That isn't true -- there's something else going on. Is DoH enabled in preferences? How are you verifying this - have you seen https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-dns-over-https ?
FF is really on par with chrome for me, with the exception of few extreme performance applications like webgl.
What we really need is an alternative to the official Chrome Web Store.
Yes they have. They had their own browser previously but have since given up on that. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser
Chromium is listed right on the readme.
It also tends to unload unused tabs and perform pretty well with ridiculous amounts of tabs so if you forget to bother it won't perform much worse.