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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

I wish Containers would get some love. Ability to set root domain for example would be great, so I could keep all Bandcamp sites in a single container without micromanagement for example.

I also wish there was a simple way to suspend tabs, essentially turning them into the "ghosts" they are when you start the browser. So many times I want to keep a tab around for easy access, but they got some stupid JS framework running sucking CPU for no good reason.

That said, overall I'm quite pleased with Firefox and hope Mozilla keep developing it. We need a proper Chrome alternative.

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I use the Auto Tab Discard extension, which turns tabs I haven't looked at recently back into the same ghosts as they are on startup. There's a bunch of configuration for how it chooses which tabs to discard. I'm away from my PC now, but I'm pretty sure it gives a right-click option on the tab to suspend one manually if you want.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/auto-tab-disc...

Do you use this on desktop? The add on install page is saying that the extension is not intended for desktop, so figured it was worth asking.

Not the parent, but I do. It works fine IME.

He linked the android version, if you click the warning it goes to the normal desktop page.

Sidebery is primarily a horizontal (/tree style) tab lister, but this is also a feature of it (calls it 'unload' I think) on right click, really great if something's being a resource hog, but I might want it again later.

Auto Tab Discard works great for me as well. Would love to see something like this built-in, though.

I've also found cutting the content process limit in half to significantly improve performance. Combined with the above add-on my machine doesn't start swapping or become non-performant even with lots of sites open.

Auto Tab Discard is to Firefox memory problems like uBlock is to online ads.

The actual discard feature is native, the addon just exposes it.

Would be nice if ATD didn't kill FF PiP video tabs though!

I used this but had to stop using it as occasionally Firefox would require a restart for some reason or another and when in that state any paused tabs would lose their state if you clicked on them. Lost to much important state and it had to go.

I use Auto Tab Discard along with an extension I wrote to 'garbage collect' (close) the all the discarded tabs by clicking a button in the toolbar

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/close-discard...

I wish Safari has this feature.

I just want temp containers. With all the cookie bullshit you have to pick and choose on each website, I just want to accept it all and then flush the container once I'm done with the website.

Do you know about the Temporary Containers addon? While it has some quirks, it seems to do exactly what you described, automatically and quite intuitively. I'm a happy user for two years now I think.

Man, I love this plugin. Every time I open a link from HN, CTRL-Click (configured this way) and into a new container it goes. Combine it with Chameleon, and you can really confuse some sites.

How did you do that? Cmd+Click opens links in the same container for me, and I can't find the right setting.

In Temporary Containers settings: Isolation tab, Global, Mouse click. Set "Ctrl/Cmd+Left Mouse" to anything but "Never".

Thank you for this comment! That extension is exactly what I was looking for for a while.

"Cookie AutoDelete"[1] extension might be what you want. It flushes cookies after you close all tabs for a site. There's an allowlist of sites for which to retain cookies.

It's nice when paired with the "I don't care about cookies"[2] extension which auto-accepts cookie requests and makes sure you never see any cookie permission dialogs.

1: https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete

2: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

I don't recommend it as a comprehensive solution because it misses some stuff, such as indexeddb and service workers. For maximum isolation you'd want temporary containers.

Looks like Cookie AutoDelete does support IndexedDB [1] and Service Workers [2] by the way.

[1] https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/... [2] https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/...

This is news to me. Looks like firefox finally added the requisite APIs. The only issue seems to be that it doesn't play nice with container tabs.

I think Cookie Autodelete does though! There's a setting in the extension preferences to make it aware of containers.

From the linked documentation:

>The API for browsing data cleaning doesn't appear to support Firefox Containers. So if cookies from one container are cleared, then all of that site's data from all containers are deleted regardless of rules.

On Firefox you can select “Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed” under the browser privacy and security settings. You white list a bunch of sites you want to stay logged into using the “Manage Exceptions” button. No need for a plug-in. For all other sites you can use Firefox’s remember password feature.

Then, instead of using “I don’t care about cookies” you can simply tick all the boxes in the “Annoyances” section of uBlock Origin. That way you only need one plugin and not three.

That does assume that one closes Firefox, however. While Cookie Autodelete will remove cookies for a site within a few seconds† once the last tab is closed, and correctly handles tabs in containers.

†in case you're redirecting briefly for SSO or similar.

I found that having cookies actively deleted like that often crashes websites inadvertently and it ended up being a pain to manage. Allowing a website to track you for a day or so is not the same as being tracked for months. I believe that it is not nearly as useful to marketers. Closing and reopening my browser after a heavy web session is not a big price for me to pay. I do it to free up resources on my machine anyway.

Sites I log in to I don't clear. Other sites _shouldn't_ be able to tell the difference between deleting cookies and being a fresh visitor. This brings a new problem, in the form of cookie and GDPR banners. But there's an extension for that, too: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/.

With browser fingerprinting persisting across all these flushes, discarding cookies and trackers won't help. You'll still be identified.

Browser fingerprinting is a problem, but the solution isn't to throw your hands up and spoonfeed them identifiers.

Blocking tracking scripts does thwart fingerprinting. I really hope we can figure out a decent access model for JavaScript someday.

Is that different from opening in an incognito window? Genuine question, I don't know how cookies are handled in private windows and what other weirdness they might invite, but they do seem to serve this purpose very well for me. I often 'Open in Private Window' websites that have been linked from reddit or HN but that I don't trust to play nice with my privacy.

You can only have one private window instance, with all your private window contents mixed in that scope. And this instance cannot be discarded until you close every single private window. It would be better to have multiple temporary instances so you don't have different websites mixing and don't need to close everything to reset your session on one site.

Are you sure about that? I was testing some web app earlier this year and everytime I opened a new icognito window I was able to log in again as an other user. Opening another tab in the same window shared the state of the window.

Maybe it's different in Chrome. In FF they all share an instance.

A couple things:

- If you need to restart the browser, temporary containers are persistent. Several times I've lost a session from an incognito window because Firefox wanted to restart and wouldn't let me load any new pages until I did so.

- Pages visited in containers are still included in your browser history, which can be useful if you want to find something again later

- You can have multiple temporary container sessions running at once; while all incognito windows share a session, cookies, etc.

I block all cookies by default with uMatrix (yes, I know.. still using it for now at least though) and then 'Cookie Auto Delete' add-on cleans up anything I whitelist in uMatrix (e.g. to make a checkout work) that I haven't also whitelisted in itself (e.g. I let HN keep a cookie rather than login every day or tab close).

> yes, I know..

Wait, I think I missed something, is uMatrix bad somehow?

It got archieved, meaning the development of it is on hold

Sorry, that was lazy of me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532973

It's great, it just might not survive too many Firefox version bumps now. Hopefully there'll be a clear successor fork to switch to before long.

use the temporary containers addon... the multi-account containers addon is nice too.

You could just block all cookies and make exceptions to enable them for the few websites that you need to log in.

The only downside is the GDPR warnings keep coming back. I've been making custom CSS and JS injection rules to get rid of GDPR warnings though by removing or hiding them from the DOM -- any Adblock-style plugin to get rid of all of those? If I hide all the GDPR popups with custom CSS, I will have never seen them, and therefore never agreed to them, and if I block cookies they can't track me anyway.

uBlocks "Annoyances" list should cover a lot of cookie and GDPR notifications. If that doesn't go far enough there's also a really great ultra annoyances list that'll unstick and remove just about anything that tries to constantly stick itself on your screen.

https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances

Oh thanks, this looks amazing!

It does but very often a site won't let you proceed until you clicked the ok button on their annoying popup. And because the pop-up is blocked, there's no way to proceed then :(

I've seen this on several sites now. Understandable but having to turn off ublock puts you on the radar of all the trackers again.

Maybe we need a more advanced plugin that auto-agrees to all those tracking cookies to make the websites think they got permission and work, but then blocks/deletes those cookies so that they don't actually get to track.

Or even better, if the tracking uses some commonly available libraries, actually mess with their tracking data and send it back so that it's a lost cause on their part to even try to track people. Doubly awesome if FireFox can ship a browser that in its default configuration messes up tracking data with false data (hee hee).

It would be amazing if it could to that! But with the current marketshare of Firefox, it would be a drop in the ocean :)

https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ works in many cases.

There's an addon called Containerise that seems to do what you describe. The basic usage in the description could be easily used to isolate the bandcamp sites.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/

Works great in combination with multi-account + temporary containers extensions.

Grants the ability to regex match on domains & url paths for sites that do auth redirects or to isolate corporate & personal accounts on the same domain (github, google etc) - MAC should have this functionality built in, and there are several open issues requesting it.

Containerise does have builtin limited temporary container functionality, but I found the separate extension to have more useful configuration options for how temp containers are handled

You've been recommended Auto Tab Discard.

Another one I use, and it works very well, is UnloadTabs [0]. I discovered it because it's one of the addons recommended by Tree Style Tab [1].

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

> So many times I want to keep a tab around for easy access, but they got some stupid JS framework running sucking CPU for no good reason.

Why not keep it as a bookmark? I don't understand why people live inactive tabs open.

I'm a tab hoarder. I open several tabs releted to some task and keep them opened for weeks and months.

Later when I search for it in address bar and Firefox offers me to jump to one of the tabs, I do that and instantly see related tabs to the left and right of the current tab. My current tab may not always be the exact one I was looking for, but the one I need is still easilly trackable.

If I don't do that and try searching the web my search may not be precise enogh to bring the needed page.

Overall, it's just a different mode of browser use. It suits some people and doesn't suit others. Good thing that Firefox can accomodate both types of users.

Take Gmail. I want it easily accessible, but I don't need it running in the background as my phone will ping when I got a new mail.

When developing, I'll open a new window and keep some tabs relevant for what I'm working on. Frequently it involves me piecing together bits from different APIs or parts of APIs, so require switching between multiple tabs. Often I'll have to come back, and it may take a day or two. No need to keep the tabs running, I just want to quickly pick up where I left.

Stuff like that.

Bookmarks discard a lot of (potentially valuable) context that tabs don't. History, for one. Parent & child tabs, if using Tree-Style Tabs, for another.

Honestly?

As a tab hoarder, I have wondered why I do this so many times. I think the answer is that Firefox's bookmarking is ... not great. It is always slow and clunky-feeling to use. You're forced to put these bookmarks into a tree structure, which isn't awful until you realize that you have to remember just how you stored it later. Just for reference, I often find myself running SQL commands against Firefox's places.sqlite DB to locate a page I visited.

I think tab hoarding could be greatly reduced by a series of thoughtful improvements to bookmarking.

Bookmark-Workflow in Firefox (and probably all browsers) sucks. It's far to much hazzle to manage all the crap for the low benefit it gives you. Because Session-Managment in Firefox is now working so well, there is not much benefit for bothering with bookmarks.

If they would improve bookmark-handling it might be a different story. I thing it would probably not even so hard doing this. There are already many addons implementing significant improvements on certain parts. Just combining them and streamlining the whole stuff might be enough.

I agree on the containers. It's such a powerful feature, but it feels weird to need extensions to make containers work the way many feel they should intuitively. For instance I have a Google container, but I can't figure out how to make outbound search links open in a different container.

afaik multi account containers should work, if you set google as "always open in google container". temporary containers (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...) would also work.

I use multi account containers and it doesn't work for me. For instance, if I go to amazon.com directly, I get my Amazon container. But if I do a search in Google and then click an Amazon link I will still be in the Google container.

You can right click to open in a specific container. Take a bit of forethought though.

This is fixed now with the Limit to Designated Sites feature. It's a little buried though: click the multi-account containers button in the title bar > the arrow next to your Google container > Manage This Container > Limit to Designated Sites.

Thank you. This is the what I am after. Unfortunately Limit to Designated Sites does not work when combined with the Containerize add-on.

Google feeds Mozilla. I am astonished this extension is even available in the store.

Relatedly, it would be great to be able to edit site lists manually. Often sites redirect to a short URL briefly at login, which breaks when using containers. Seems to be most common for me with banks.

Your could try this extension. I mostly use it for its auto suspend but you can also manually suspend tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

my only complain about containers is that it doesn't work well when you want to authorize an app. For example, I want to sign in with Google on my Zoom app but since i told them to always open google domain on my B container, it opens it in B while my gmail account for personal use is in A container. My workaround for now is to change the default browser app and revert it back once i'm logged in. I wish there was a solution for this.

> Ability to set root domain for example would be great, so I could keep all Bandcamp sites in a single container without micromanagement for example

I think you can already do that, unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you use the "Always open this site in..." menu option while you're on the bandcamp website, it'll automatically change the container then next time you visit any bandcamp.com url.

So close yet so far.

If I go to https://mayflowermadame.bandcamp.com/ and select "always open this site in...", and I then open https://vandrer.bandcamp.com/ having not visited it before, it doesn't open the site in my Bandcamp container.

MAC Containers developer here. This treatment is done by default in the Facebook Container add-on. It's more of a question of how to handle the setting on a per domain/Container in the UI.

Follow along for the root domain issue here: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/1...

Not for the root domain, no. It treats www.acme.com and mail.acme.com seperately

The way Chrome has integrated the switching between 'Google account' is super useful and well done.

I've got a lot of marketing clients I work with, and having everything in the context of a google account for that client is deeply embedded as part of my workflow.

I could do the same with Firefox accounts, they just need to implement it!

The whole idea of having everything in the context of a Google account is the exact reason I use Firefox and not Chrome :)

Suspending tabs would be very useful. I used to suspend tabs in Chrome by freezing the process of the tab (kill -STOP | kill -CONT), but Firefox shares the same process for multiple tabs.

Has anyone tried to implement a "suspend tabs" extension that would pause the debugger ?

yes, if firefox gets ornery (with entirely too many tabs open all the time), i just kill some/all of the "FirefoxCP Web Content" processes (on macos) and then reload only the tabs i'm interested in at the moment. not the ideal level of granularity, but works ok in a pinch to reduce memory/cpu usage.

This is something that bothers me a bit. On my PC memory usage spikes even after having tabs open for a short while.

I've recently shifted to Firefox and I noticed that after opening 10-15 tabs on about 3 separate firefox windows the memory usage is way higher than Chrome's. I have seen lesser memory usage on Chrome for way more tabs and windows.

I have very similar observations on my android phone as well. I've had 100+ chrome tabs open on my phone with no hiccups, but about 20-30 in, on Firefox, my entire phone slows down to a crawl and tabs start crashing etc.

Is it just me?

my impression is that all browsers are pretty greedy about memory for the first few dozen tabs. once you get to hundreds of tabs, the serious optimizations and compressions kick in so that the per-tab memory use curtails drastically. but i'm no expert in this area, just a user.

Yes the containers are amazing but I kinda miss the way to change settings in each container. Sometimes I mistakenly chick allow notifications in a container but can't find any way to undo it without deleting the whole container.

I wish ctrl+tab would cycle through all recent tabs regardless of what container they’re in.

I see this works. Either it always did, or has been changed since I first noticed it

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