Comment by BMorearty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BMorearty | Hacker News Reader

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I recently switched from Chrome back to Firefox after the news about Google forcing people to stay logged-in to Chrome for tracking purposes. I’ve switched in the past but always ended up switching back for one reason or another. This time I’ve actually been very happy with it and don’t think I’ll switch back soon.

Better in Firefox:

* Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.

* In Firefox the two-finger swipe forward/back works much better. Three-finger swipe works well in both.

* Built-in reader mode that’s instantaneous and works well. In Chrome you need an add-on.

Better in Chrome:

* Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.

* Google Docs dictation works. But I never use that.

* Printing lets you scale up past the page size (useful for printing my AYSO team’s lineup).

No mention of the Multiaccounts Containers addon?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

How about the fact that ublock origin is more effective on Firefox?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24212176

Then there are the other features like TRR, first party isolation, ECH, actual video hw decoding support on Linux...

My comparison list was based on things I care about / have noticed so far, not based on a full feature comparison. Multiaccounts Containers addon isn’t something I care much about. I do kind of like the Facebook container addon but would be fine without it.

Funny you mention uBlock Origin being more effective on Firefox. As I mentioned, it seems to block things I don’t want it to block when I’m using Firefox.

I'm not familiar with Chrome's tab groups, but I use tree style tabs [0] on Firefox which allows physical grouping of tabs, albeit after a significant layout change.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Thanks, I looked at that one but I’m not looking for something that takes up more space, either horizontally or vertically. I like how Chrome’s tab groups just collapse your tabs along the top tab bar.

Maybe then this is more to your liking? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-...

(I too don't know how Chrome tab groups work)

No, I’ve looked at every tab group addon I can find. None works to my liking.

> Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.

This is one of the main reasons why I still use Firefox. Also in my experience Firefox address bar does a better job pulling urls from history based on the words you typed.

Much much better. I think Chrome is intentionally bad at this, to force you to do a search.

> * Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.

Have you tried Tree Style Tabs? Presents your tabs as a collapsible, hierarchical sidebar tree. Even when Chrome was kicking Firefox's ass in every other aspect, I stuck with FF because of TST. It's so much better than any other UI for tab management I've ever seen.

If you go through the steps of disabling the top tab bar and sidebar padding elements in user chrome CSS, it's more space effective than anything else too.

I switched to Firefox from Chrome on mobile because Chrome forced me to use tab groups which I do not wish to use.

I live in hope FF will catch up with Chrome on printing functionality.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@page

Ctrl+Tab recent order is an options in the settings in firefox. Not sure if this is on be default. I got used to this feature from VS Code. Lovely to have it in Firefox!

It's on by default, but only for new users. For those who were using it since before it was introduced, it's still set to the other value.

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