The first thing that I do is turn off these fancy new tab pages. Very often, there is no option to have a blank page instead and less and less people know about pages like about:blank
For all the hate they get, FF is easily the best and most respectful browser around
Without containers, I’d probably bite the bullet and start using some chrome fork that doesn’t show me useless ads.
So Chrome and FF are in the same boat: "UX" "designer" taking non-sensical decisions for the whimsical greater good.
I presume grandparent has either hit a bug, has some unusual/untested about:config combination, or, most likely, an addon that broken.
Here is the relevant about:config settings I have these changed for the URL bar:
browser.urlbar.suggest.searches false
browser.urlbar.searchSuggestionsChoice false
browser.urlbar.showSearchSuggestionsFirst false
browser.urlbar.trimURLs false
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled false
* Tips and News from Mozilla and Firefox * Recommendations while surfing * Recommend addons while surfing
I'm not entirely sure what you saw that made you angry, but I'm pretty sure you can switch them off rather than abandon the entire browser.
That goes for a lot of Firefox hate, I find: quite often people are ranting online about some new or removed feature, which they can dis- or enable easily in the settings. Or -a tad harder- in about:config. Or even a tad harder, with an addon.
That makes me think those ranters don't really want their problem solved, but just want to vent some anger about X changing something that they are emotionally not ready to see changed.
Obviously the actual page rendering and JavaScript executing would be Safari. But 99% of the time when I hear people advocating for browser X over browser Y it is not because X has better rendering or a better JS engine. It is because of higher level things, like containers (Firefox over Chrome) or better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox) or better spell checking (everything over Firefox).
Does having to build on top of Safari on iOS also constrain those higher level things?
Yes!
> containers (Firefox over Chrome)
No, they can't install add-ons (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios). Even if they could built this into the browser, they can't (see how the profiles are handled).
> better profile handling (Chrome over Firefox)
No, Chrome does not support this feature on iOS (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE...). iOS' WebKit limits this to only one permanent profile and one ephemeral profile. You can technically have multiple profiles in the iPad - that is, if you're a school, and that's really more of a OS-wide user account thing. (G did a hack over this by rewriting that profile when switching profiles - but it's not truly a multitask thing, and violates Apple Developer Guidelines).
> better spell checking (everything over Firefox)
No, and for more sensible reasons. Users do expect consistent spell checking because they use the keyboard to do that. Regardless, if you want to implement spell checking in-browser, that's impossible. If you want to do it outside of Safari, go ahead - it's just not integrated to those Apple things (more of a dedicated Grammarly interface rather than desktop spell checking).
Was switched off.
All the others (according to the linked information) are irrelevant for intrusive pop-up ads. By all means, please explain to me which of those settings do something different from what they are supposed to do, or tell me about an about:config settings that tells Firefox to never show me pop-up ads.
What made me angry: https://i.imgur.com/s9hC23U.png which blocks the interaction with any part of Firefox until I click "Not Now"
With a bit of effort, you can get a similar level of privacy to Firefox in Chrom[e/ium].
What specific effort?
A real shame.
What I don't like is Mozilla using it as a dairy cow, and starving it on top of that.
> What I don't like is Mozilla using it as a dairy cow, and starving it on top of that.
Mozilla have many interesting projects and several of them may be good, but none of them have had such impact or has such potential for the future as Firefox.
Edit: and I'm willing to pay $10 - $50 a month to someone who will create and maintain a patched version of the latest Firefox that fixes the worst problems like not being able to hide the standard tabs (in addition to any sponsored search deals they may get).
I suspect I'm not alone: for many(most?) of us our browser is one of our most important tools, the other being and IDE, an editor or some graphics tool.
Edit 2: Paid Chromium based doesn't count for me. A major point is to counter the Chrome monoculture.
But if you are willing to fork Firefox, that's a very good reason. I just don't think any fork will be as long as the majority of users are on a chromium based browser, those are toxic to the ecosystem.
Who said I do, I often have multiple months between every time I use a Chrome or Chrome based browser.
Edit, I use a multipronged approach:
- I use only Firefox - except once in a blue moon to verify if something is an actual Firefox bug or a general bug.
- and develop in Firefox. Bonus: Without testing in any other browsers most weeks I can count on one finger the times I have introduced cross browser defects
- I raise awareness that Mozilla is extracting money from Firefox, not funding it.
- I raise awareness about how Google is pushing to kill competition in the browser markets (besides here on HN and contacting authorities myself I have also urged a grumpy colleague today to contact relevant competition authorities)
- I rise awareness about the likely outcome of a Chrome monoculture: mostly that ad blocking will disappear, the web as a platform will stagnate and we will have to live with more nasty restrictions.
For me it would be Edge that gets the most laughs but I find is a better performing browser, at least in terms of UI than FF or Chrome. Side-bar tasks, grouping, integrated screen-shot, etc.