Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF? I've been using Firefox and have never been disappointed with it. I always just assumed that if you wanted privacy, it's better to use Firefox over Chrome, Safari, or Brave.
EDIT: and for the record, I’m still upset Microsoft didn’t choose FF and willingly increased Google’s grasp
Even then, I expect some of it is the fact I use an obscene number of plug-ins to break most social media sites (to prevent overuse).
It once was a serious problem. No more
I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on history a lot.
My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my personal history with boring work stuff.
I assume Firefox probably offers account syncing, but there's no reason to switch at this point. They lost me more than a decade ago, I loved Chrome's out-of-the-box interface. It made Firefox seem ancient and cluttered with all the unnecessary buttons, and massive borders and tabs consuming precious screen space.
edit: And I'm now reading that Firefox supports multiple browser contexts but requires some effort. No thanks.
I had my paid GAFB account suspended years ago without explanation, could not get in touch with support, and as it took so long to get in touch with support, my data had been deleted by that point, meaning I lost many, many, many years of irreplaceable photographs from my Drive. Haven't touched cloud storage since.
Lesson learned: Drive is not a substitute for backups, nor is it a place to keep the only copy of important information. Now running Unraid.
Plus it is all end-to-end encrypted unlike the Google one.
Passwords go in the password manager.
Instead of history I use tagged bookmarks or a notes file (obsidian.md) with actual notes about why I wanted to save that link.
If I actually ever want to sync anything between work and home PC or to/from my phone (rare), it's an explicit choice to plug into USB and drag it over, or intentionally put it in dropbox. Not just something that just randomly implicitly happens or sometimes doesn't.
But different strokes for different folks.
The biggest improvement over the account-based Chrome experience is that you could even have contexts (containers) for several things if you like - a container group for social media, a different container group for banking, work, shopping, etc.
All in different tabs, color-coded / labeled by container group, each with isolated cookies, etc but shared bruiser history in the same window just like in Chrome (I'm assuming) but with better privacy.
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
Firefox provides essential functionalities that are altogether missing in Chrome:-
1. dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled - Enable copy paste
2. dom.event.contextmenu.enabled - Always enable context menu (right-click)
3. First party isolation.
There's also some sites that seem to actively make things worse on purpose or refuse to load even if they otherwise do work. I think YouTube was noted for doing this a few years ago.
In other areas, small company sites may claim Firefox just doesn't work on their site. Sometimes prompted because an ancient version once was broken and the browser entry list was never updated, or they simply forgot to account for it in the grouping of "Internet Explorer or Other." I see this more often than I would like.
Tbh this whole idea that the web is broken on ff is not true, tho it is true some web assembly apps fail to work properly in my experience.
I challenge anyone here to give an actual useful site that fails to work properly in ff.
This is just the most recent example I remember, unfortunately there have been enough at this point that if I'm doing anything important (such as filling and submitting some important form), I do it in Chrome because I don't want it to silently break in FF and cause other issues with invalid or corrupt data submitted to the service.
I can't reproduce this in FF 104.
- Easier to create and use multiple profiles (somewhat mitigated by Mozilla's multi-container add-on)
- Google Translate integration
Also, there’s an offline translate extension being worked on in open source: https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-pr...
With the new offline translation support I actually prefer this setup as I can try the local translate first, then if the quality is bad or the language isn't supported I can make the decision if I want to upload the page to Google.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-s...
I have hotkeys assigned to each profile via macOS shortcuts. Cmd-shift-# focuses a given profile. Or opens a new window of that profile if there wasn't one already.
Links from other apps always open in the most recent profile.
This makes it very simple to ensure links I click in Slack/iMessage/etc open where I want them to.
(Took the time to write this out in the hopes some Firefox folks see this..)
While it works kinda OK, Profiles switching is such a core element to using a browser for Work & Personal use. Chrome makes this simple.
1) when the console is open, you can right-click on the reload page button and choose hard reload.
2) when inspecting CSS properties, you can change many of them by dragging them with the mouse left and right. That makes positioning elements so much easier than guessing and adjusting a dozen times.
(this claim is based on rather limited testing so please correct me if I'm wrong)
Even with containers, when I suspend a tab, when I unsuspend I would want it in the same tab group
I use Firefox. It works OK. Is that why I think the Google docs are not very good?
I am on a Mac (for work) so in reality I am using Safari it seems from what I have been reading!
Tree Style Tab, for example, allows control over how new tabs are opened in relation to existing tabs if you don't like FF defaults. Even if you don't like the tree view, you get a UI that adds settings for how your tabs should open and stay grouped.
I miss vimperator so much.
Maybe it’s changed but I wrote them off years ago as a result.
In Chrome it works reliably for me; in Firefox it works for a small subset of the sites that work in Chrome.
Also as far as making extensions go I like how in chrome you can use dev-tools-protocol within extensions as you can you cool things like intercept the body of a response with it.
That being said I'm really wanting a better browser but for me Firefox is not it.
Over the past few years it has gotten much better. Out of sight better.
Is it the Rust project? I do not know. But I no longer have to suffer nobly, FF is just better
Give it a try.
FF is sluggish to open first time and if there is an update, god help you.
Does Firefox support that yet??
Containers are useful and we can do interesting things with them (eg: temporary containers), but they don't replace profiles. With a profile I don't have to mix personal bookmarks with work bookmarks, I can use different extensions/settings, a different theme so I don't use the wrong profile by mistake, etc.
- Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
- Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher