Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by tgv | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

tgv

Get Firefox now, install uBlock Origin, and live with the minor pains.

View on HN

And help your parents, brothers and sisters, neighbors, uncles and aunts to do the same.

And set DDG as the default browser.

I can't imagine why anyone here on HN still would use Chrome.

I do. AMA.

Don't you care about an open internet?

Not the person you asked but I, too, still use Chrome[1] for personal stuff on desktop. Why do I get a black-and-white vibe in this question? Like, either I support an open internet (by not using Chrome) or I am a horrible person for being a BIGCORP shill and I'm no true hacker, shame, shame!

Can't I be simply tired of switching browsers, making even minor adjustments to my workflow, every damn time my current browser manufacturer does something the internet adjudges to be morally corrupt?

I don't disagree with the collective in this case either. For me it's just easier to reconfigure Chrome to not do auto login on every fresh install. Maybe the day Google removes this option is the day I finally switch to Firefox for good. Or maybe I'd wait for a fork/plugin that restores the ability to opt out.

[1] For work purposes I use Firefox but it's not for any hacktivist idealism. It just fits my workflow. In Android I use Firefox full time too because I got fed up of AMP but it's still all about the experience.

Brave Browser, based on Chrome, is another alternative that'll let you keep all your Chrome extensions. Makes the move away from Chrome painless.

If I'm trying to get away from Google, why should I switch to a Chromium derivative that also depends on the Chrome Web Store for add-on distribution?

Brave and Edge are better than Chrome if you care about privacy, but 99% of the code base is still controlled by Google and they don't really have a voice in standards committees. To support the open web it's much better to have engine diversity too.

In which way does Edge have better privacy than Chrome? The following articles rate Edge as worse than Chrome:

https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/best-browsers-for-privacy/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-professor-says-edge-is-the-w...

Microsoft and Brave both run ad networks. They are trapped in the same perverted incentives. Same thing for Apple.

Firefox is the only one that doesn't.

Then again, Mozilla only survives thanks to Google for sending search traffic their way.

Or the conspiracy take: Mozilla only survives because Google wants to make sure that an alternative exists so they cannot be considered a monopoly.

That would also explain Mozilla behavior for the last few years... But motivations from big corporations are rarely as singular and neatly defined as I just made it sound, so while that might factor into their actions, it probably cannot be considered to be THE reason for action.

I do

Because when the tab bar is full Firefox will overflow them while chrome will resize every tab until only an icon is left and then start the overflow.

If there is an extension to fix this I’ll switch but last I looked I couldn’t find any

You can change when the overflow scrolling starts by setting browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 50 (or any number you want, the unit is pixels) in about:config

> help your parents, brothers and sisters, neighbors, uncles and aunts to do the same.

One sec let me try to explain how to do this to my grandma who is currently x thousand miles away. Oh yea and if something breaks good thing I'm there for tech support amirite.

??? Why does you grandma care about when tabs start overflowing? I assure you, your Grandma isn't GGP and will happily accept what the browser does.

>Why does you grandma care about when tabs start overflowing?

Oh she doesn't. The issue Grandma, Uncle Fat, Cousin Lou all have is they used this thing and started getting used to it and then they got an update and someone changed everything and they don't know how to do anything anymore. Repeat this three or more times and when you tell them to use something they smile at you and nod then stick with Chrome because it's something they know how to use and doesn't change all the time.

>then they got an update and someone changed everything and they don't know how to do anything anymore.

Your claim is FF updated something and your Grandma couldn't figure out how to do anything? Which update was this?

Because grandmas are fictional personas so you can say whatever feature X of software Y is your pet peeve is broken, flawed and it's the most important feature ever.

I sincerely suggest using vertical tabs! There's two popular FF extensions for it, the original Tree Style Tab [1] and Sidebery [2]. Most widescreen displays are far wider than web content these days, so you don't lose any horizontal space by switching to vertical tabs, and you gain the ability to actually read the text + organize them by hierarchy.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

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

I switched to vertical tabs too, and honestly I'm never going back.

You also don't gain any vertical space, because Firefox decided that its built-in tabs shouldn't be hidden.

You can use userChrome.css to remove them - I main this setup everyday and haven't had horizontal tabs on at all.

Firefox's behavior here is massively better. Why in the world would anyone actually LIKE the tiny tiny icon-only tabs?!

Umm because your comment is actually just an opinion? And there are people on the other side as well.

It was also a reply to an opinion. And you're replying to a reply to an opinion, reiterating the original opinion.

The post you were replying to isn't replying to an "opinion" or punching down on one. Instead, it is answering the question "Why in the world would anyone actually LIKE the tiny tiny icon-only tabs?"

I personally don't, but I know a lot of people who deal with large amounts of tabs and prefer icons because they can quickly glance over the icons to get to the page they want. I know one guy who has probably 50+ tabs open at any given moment but can still get to whichever tab he wants to out of instinct by going "oh that was in the 5th google sheet tab". I deal with that by not having more than a dozen tabs and grouping in TST but I gotta admit, it's an impressive skill to have.

I find it odd that the “hacker mindset” answer to this is, accept surveillance.

Exceedingly odd.

Do people actually prefer to memorize website favicons and their placement instead of scrolling with some text still visible to let you know what the tab actually is?

This is a great question, and I think the trouble here is that there is a temptation to answer with one off anecdotes from the idiosyncratic example of a single use case. The more peculiar, individualized, unique, and unrepresentative, the more likely it is that we're going to hear that.

This temptation is very strong on HN. I honestly would be fascinated by a blog that gathered together all the extremely specialized use cases that people use as examples of why product XYZ wasn't good enough. That way of thinking leads to interesting to discussion but needs to be tempered by stepping back and looking at how representative those examples are, and I think that step is the point in the process where these conversations always break down.

This is what I was wondering also, and it makes me think other people look at a much larger range of sites with different icons than I do.

I use Chrome at work because I have to. I often get into the situation with icon-width tabs, and to me it's bad because a lot of my tabs are the same few sites. So the icon doesn't always help me, and I end up using the 'close all tabs to the right' feature a lot.

In addition, a lot of the sites I use at work have time-limited sessions, so going back to a tab from even a couple of hours ago isn't useful because I have to reauth anyway. I guess I could find an old tab and refresh, but I usually just 't' (with vimium) to open a new one and retype the address instead. Maybe for me this is more a preference for the keyboard vs. having to move a pointer around?

Check out an even better option (in my opinion): multi-row tabs

https://github.com/Izheil/Quantum-Nox-Firefox-Dark-Full-Them...

well in case of developer tools chrome beats firefox. that's the only reason me and some of my friends are still using chrome for development.

Shout out to Vivaldi browser. Great for customizability and features like vertical tabs and stuff. A browser designed for power users.

Vivaldi is webkit/blink based though.

> I can't imagine why anyone here on HN still would use Chrome.

I do. It's the only option for watching Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney+ on Linux AND casting to a Chromecast.

No one's saying you can't have Chrome installed.

It's really no big deal to open it when you want to watch any of those. I've never heard anyone complaining about switching from your phone's browser to the Netflix app on your phone, so I don't see why opening another browser on your computer is a big deal.

So what's the use case for having Firefox installed at all if Chrome is installed? What can Firefox do that Chrome can't?

Container tabs. Good text rendering. Support for some niche css features, the WebExtension implementation can support more advanced extensions (sidebar, runtime theme modification, dns, etc). shift+right click to bypass websites that block context menus. if a website uses the background-image css property, the firefox context menu will have the correct image options and chrome won't. i can hold ctrl and properly select HTML tables to paste into spreadsheets.

Firefox can provide a browsing experience that isn't designed by Google.

Does anyone here only have a single browser installed on their computer? I always install Chrome, but do less than 0.1% of my browsing in it. What's the reason you couldn't have both? Storage?

What you gain from using something other than Chrome is privacy, and using something other than Chromium makes it harder for Google to gain more control of the internet.

That being said, I find both Firefox and Safari to be better experiences than Chrome.

Security. Whenever I push myself to go use Firefox I very rapidly run into obvious bugs and things like page display corruption that has the terrible bad code smell of shoddy insecure software.

I would really, really like to switch, but not for now.

Can you give an example? I've been using both Safari (personal laptop) and Firefox (work laptop) for years, and I've never noticed anything like that.

That's unfortunate, you should try updating your GPU drivers (if you're on linux there's some different things you need to change). Firefox uses the GPU for more stuff so bad drivers really heck it up.

This is on the iPhone.

That's extra strange. Because Firefox on iOS is just a thin wrapper over a WebKit Webview. It should basically be as stable as safari then.

That's even worse. Because the issue on iphone is regular encounters with pages being corrupted (as in, split in the middle).

Seconded. Firefox is better than ever. Can't believe there isn't a Chromium derivative with multi-select, table selection, and shift+right click. Containers are also incredibly useful.

I don't use containers because they require a mozilla account

Pretty sure they don’t. I use them all the time, no account.

They don't? I've gone as far as disabling all account functionality with about:config and am using containers right now.

Ok maybe it changed or maybe I misunderstood something. I wanted to try this a year or so ago and that was the impression I got.

I've been using containers for years- since at least 2019 - and I've never had a Mozilla account.

This would have been around the time containers were first announced. But again maybe I misunderstood something.

I just want tree tabs.

Vertical tabs is so much more space efficient than horizontal.

If you want a chromium skin with vertical tabs, both Edge and Vivaldi offer them built into the browser.

As does Firefox with the tree-style tabs extension.

Unfortunalty it requires manual css entry to hide the horizontal tabs.

Vertical tabs are not tree style tabs, the latter is far more flexible.

Definitely, but GGP did mention vertical specifically :)

OMG I just learned about multi-selection of tabs. This is great. :D

use cases?

It has at least one drawback. In the past there was an option to reload all tabs ( because every couple weeks Firefox starts begging to be restarted and after restart all tabs are blank ). Now you have to select all, reload, and not forget to de-select. If you forget and hit Ctrl+W you close all tabs.

well yeah, multiple tab management is my use case, what else? :P

Your pain points are real, but incidentally not relevant to me. Since I've been using FF nightly fulltime for a while I restart the browser (with session restore of course) quite regularly, mostly every day.

And I have the option enabled to confirm when closing multiple tab. Mostly because I sometimes hit Ctrl-Q by accident. Because conveniently, the "nuke everything" shortcut is situated right between the two most used shortcuts: Ctrl-W and Ctrl-Tab... :|

So yeah, I happen to not be affected by this particular problem :P

I wouldn’t say it’s pain at all. Containers are a killer feature and I can’t imagine going back to a browser that doesn’t let me have isolated browser tabs in the same window.

Yes!! I install uBlock Origin on every computer and browser I come across. People love it.

The bulk of financial support Mozilla gets comes from Google, they stopped being a real competitor in the browser scene years ago. You don't really have a choice when it comes to modern web browsers, maybe Safari is the "safest" / most privacy-aware choice you can make assuming you already bought into the Apple ecosystem. What else is there, the crypto-mining scam that is Brave or the ProGaming WebBrowser / Chinese backdoor aka Opera?

But really, you're better off using something avangard that some nerd came up with during the weekend. At least these hobbiests' browsers can be trusted to be not be evil & greedy.

If the market share wasn’t 3 percent, it would be less so.

wdym

Say Mozilla’s market share was 25, it wasn’t necessary to be beholden to Google.

Of course, but that's not the reality. The reality is that Google have positioned Firefox as a "viable competition" while having them mostly under control. Can you trust Mozilla as an organization, when you know that it receives over 80% of its funding from Google?

is there any evidence, that Mozilla's decisions are explicitly made to favor Google? imo it's pretty alright for them to take some cash from Google and make it their default search, and give you the option to change that.

The marketshare on desktop is more like 8%, up to 60% depending on the country.

When did Firefox stop being competitive? They're keeping up with standards better than Apple (ElementInternals just shipped in v93) and it's fast. None of my 'normal' friends have complained about Firefox since switching to it.

Mozilla's relationship with Google also isn't set in stone. Yahoo was the main sponsor for a while.

I'm using firefox too, and yea it works great - but that doesn't mean its the "anti-chrome" / anti-google browser. The executives running Mozilla live in the shadow of Google's interests, and long ago have forgotten that their job is to make a damn good browser. Now they're too encumbered by the politics of the game, politics (and game) which Google are in full control of.

I haven't seen any real evidence that Mozilla has made any decisions designed to explicitly benefit Google. They've been pretty antagonistic actually. The foundation is investigating YouTube and the Mozilla employees I've spoken to seem to hate Google.

For better or for worse, I would still say it's the anti-chrome. Find me another crossplatform browser with a stack that's still as independent as Mozilla's. They have the engine, the add-on store, and everything in between.

I would be using Opera right now but they threw in the towel years ago. Now the brand is being milked by a private equity firm.

> I haven't seen any real evidence that Mozilla has made any decisions designed to explicitly benefit Google.

Mozilla literally makes Google the default search engine.

Well, yeah. I was talking about besides the actual terms of their agreement.

and how hard is it to change that? as hard as it is in edge?

Firefox has pretty rich search settings, better than any other browser IMO. It's very easy to use different search engines for different things and changing the default is one click in about:preferences. As easy as it gets I think

That’s an arms length business arrangement though, rather than some undue influence

Its hard to be truly arms length with the person who gives you the majority of your money.

Well, at this point we've degraded into vague speculation, which isn't up to the standard that should be necessary to guide people's decisions.

If new scary stuff starts showing up in Firefox of source code where the auto sign you into google, or strangely start turning away from web standards and towards Google supported proprietary initiatives, or something like that, that would put some meat into the nothing burger.

If its hard, then they they must be commended for doing so.

What’s annoying with Firefox is how much it advertises.

Seriously, every time you start it, it opens one or even two tabs saying why Firefox loves you and protects you. It introduces nagging on the new tab page to tell you how much Firefox loves and protects you. It installs Pocket or has shortcuts to help you buy products that love and protect you.

Firefox also insists that you should create a Mozilla account and upload all your passwords over. Because they are so kind and protecting about your privacy.

Mozilla also fires people who donate to Christian charities for the beliefs they have (and yes, abortion is a belief, whichever side you are). Even if you are the founder of JS. Hear that: Mozilla fires people who are technically good, for political motivations. It’s as dystopian as it gets. They never apologized.

Mozilla is as dystopian as Google, and the worst evil usually sits with people who believe they are the good guys. In fact, they are sponsored by Google and share the same political slant.

I was curious if this is true, so I created a new profile. The first two tabs were the normal onboarding and the privacy policy. When I opened a new tab I did get the silly news feed so I clicked the gear icon in the top right and turned it off.

I haven't seen any nagging to create an account yet after mucking around with the UI.

And honest question, what's your idea for monetizing Firefox? They're pushing subscription based products to reduce the reliance on Google money and adding different avenues for sponsorships that aren't from Google. Sounds like a plan to me.

Also Brendan Eich had strong support within Mozilla. If I had to guess, he resigned because of external pressure. (remember OkCupid putting a banner on their service protesting Eich, that was wacky)

>And honest question, what's your idea for monetizing Firefox?

How about taxes? Browsers are modern infrastructure, same as roads and street lights.

I completely agree with you. Seems unlikely though :(

> Seriously, every time you start it, it opens one or even two tabs saying why Firefox loves you and protects you.

I believe the page you're talking about appears upon installation or update to a new version.

There's also: Preferences -> New Windows -> Select "blank page"

You can also install one of the de-branded Firefox remixes like Waterfox or Librewolf if you really want to be completely Mozilla-free.

> Mozilla also fires people who donate to Christian charities for the beliefs they have

Everything about this statement is factually wrong.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

> Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer.

The FAQ elaborates at length about the situation and emphasizes why he stepped down.

Furthermore, the political contributions that triggered "boycotts, protests, and intense public scrutiny" were not to "christian charities" but donations to vehemently bigoted politicians across several decades, culminating with a donation to the California Proposition 8 PAC, a campaign to strip LGBTQ people living in California of the basic human right to marriage.

Since numerous HNers asserted that "there is no human right to marriage" last time this subject came up: read Article 16 of the UN human rights charter.

> Mozilla also fires people who donate to Christian charities for the beliefs they have (and yes, abortion is a belief, whichever side you are).

You can believe whatever you want about abortion. What you cannot do is force other people to change their behaviour to accommodate your beliefs.

"What you cannot do is force other people to change their behaviour to accommodate your beliefs"

Now that is a tangent, because that is not what is being suggested.

> Now that is a tangent, because that is not what is being suggested.

That's exactly what was suggested. The Mozilla CEO that resigned donated money to a 'charity' (can an organisation that promotes evil be a charity?) that tried to get gay marriage banned in California. That goes a lot further than just believing something, that's trying to force your beliefs on others.

If you're against gay marriage, that's fine, don't marry someone of the same sex. But don't deny others that just because it doesn't fit your worldview.

>Mozilla is as dystopian as Google,

They are most definitely not. Its not even close. Google creates and maintains a world-wide spying apparatus, easy pickings for three letter agencies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com