Facebook Container Extension
addons.mozilla.org
addons.mozilla.org
Multi Account Containers - Same thing as the facebook container but more generi - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
Temporary Containers - Same container concept but you can create and destroy them on the fly - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
For me, it's the best setup I've found in terms of cookie/session management. By default, I do want every new tab I open to come with a clean slate of no cookies, local storage, SQLite, or whatever other storage/tracking mechanisms are invented. If I need to open up a Google service, I simply open a new tab in my Google container. Combined with a good password manager to quickly login to lower security accounts, it is a marginal increase in work managing sessions, with the benefit of not tracking all your cookies and history around everywhere you go. The features aren't perfect since it's not a workflow optimized for consumer simplicity, but it works for me.
I sometimes wonder whether Google was strategically preempting this paradigm when they mainstreamed ephemeral sessions under the framing of sneaky mode.
If you don't want cookies, you can turn them off for all sites (with exceptions) or for some sites.
Cookies aren’t inherently bad. If a second party asks me to hold on to something while I’m actively engaged with it, that’s typically fine. At the end of the day, though, I’m deciding what to take home.
I'd like that too, how can you do that?
I've been using Firefox containers for a while. When I open a new tab it opens in the default non-container which carries it's own storage cesspit.
I just opened a new tab normally, with no shortcut, and it automatically created a fresh temp container "tmp2". I logged into HN and replied to this comment. I will close the tab now, and in 5 minutes, due to another Temp Containers setting, everything in the temp container will be wiped.
The whole silly "No Container" business goes away entirely.
See https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/wiki/Autom...
For me the shortcut is alt C.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-dev/c/IZ...
In response to asking about supporting multiple profiles between different tabs.
>Extraordinarily difficult. I would expect person-years of effort for this, as the link between profile and window is deeply ingrained throughout the code.
Chrome doesn't support containers because it would take a big investment that no one is currently willing to make. Google doesn't want to spend millions of dollars and deprioritize more important work for a niche feature that not that many people benefit from.
"... Chrome is built on foundational but really wide C++ APIs, such as the //content/public layer. We examined what it would mean for us to build Rust components against these types of APIs. At a high level what we found was that because C++ and Rust play by different rules, things can go sideways very easily.
For example, Rust guarantees temporal memory safety with static analysis that relies on two inputs: lifetimes (inferred or explicitly written) and exclusive mutability. The latter is incompatible with how the majority of Chromium’s C++ is written. We hold redundant mutable pointers throughout the system, and pointers that provide multiple paths to reach mutable pointers. ..."
[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2023/01/supporting-use-of-ru...
I'll go with incompetence over conspiracy.
You're done. Build while fresh.
P.S.: Microsoft is actively rigging its software, lastly VS-Code just for these things, but it's another can of worms I have no desire to open again.
There's a function to always open a site in a container, but this obviously falls over if you have multiple accounts (aws, gmail, etc), plus the UI is poorly communicated.
There are requests to make it so you can associate a container with a bookmark, for instance, but apparently Moz prevented Moz from doing this via browser apis, and have been powerless to do anything about it for years.
It could have been awesome.
Anyway some tips and tricks from a long time user. First, you can use always open this site in container x. Which is useful for some sites. Then, I also used pinned tabs with various gmail accounts in different containers.
And you can right click on links, bookmarks, and tabs to (re)open in a particular container. I use containers a lot to test our app with various different users in different containers. I also use this with google drive to manage drives for various accounts. Also if you click on links in a particular container they open in the same container. So, for example if I have an online meeting in my company container, the video call opens in the same container.
The UX could be improved and it would indeed be nice to tie individual bookmarks to containers. I've also been looking for this very obvious feature that somehow is the hardest thing ever in Firefox. But it still beats what other browsers offer here, which is mostly nothing. Chrome has account profiles but it is a bit awkward to use and you have to work with different windows. This is much more powerful. You could do the same with Firefox by starting it with different user profiles but it's a bit painful to set that up. Account containers are much easier.
Essentially, if I make a container for you're website, you've made it to my personal shit list. :)
Ha, I'm the other way around: all websites go into temporary containers, and if I make a container for your website, it's a privilege that I'm allowing you to remember me.
- there was no way to make CMD/CTRL+T open a new tab in the same container context as the one you were currently in. To me, this seems like an obvious UX flaw. If you’re browsing in a container, the actions you’re doing should keep you in that container unless you consciously want to switch.
- building on that, there was no option to right click and open a link in a different container. These two features would make container use feel far more natural, and likely make adoption much easier.
If those two features have been implemented, I will give Firefox and containers another go. If not, then I’d like to know what your workflow is and why it is a more natural UX.
Bonus points: make the first option configurable. Extra bonus points, for the second feature, have a right click option to open in a new container.
Edit: since I know I bookmarked it, I went and dug up the bug report for that first feature:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1245262
It’s 7 years old and still open. A quick glance shows that discussion is still ongoing today, so I assume it isn’t possible. Given how long it has been actively discussed, I don’t think it would be far fetched to say that my expected use case is not odd.
There's still no quick, default shortcut for this, but you can use this add-on to give you that functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/easy-containe...
FWIW, the main add-on (Multi Account Containers) lets you do Cmd + Shift + {number} to open a new tab in a specific container -- but I admit that's still some cognitive overhead compared to just doing something like Cmd + Opt + T to open a tab in the same container as your current tab.
> - building on that, there was no option to right click and open a link in a different container.
This is absolutely in the main add-on now, and I use it regularly!
As others have said, you can right click -> open in container!
Those shortcuts are by default, I haven't had to tweak anything, and although they're not standard browser shortcuts, I prefer that option to a remapping of standards.
So yeah, everything else happens in the main browser as before.
It implements a batch URL open, rather than ad-hoc link open
When the "always open" setting conflicts with a current container, you get a prompt. If you want to open a specific container, long press the create tab button to get a selection of containers so you can browse to the website manually.
Using multiple accounts works great for me. Clicking on links will open in the same container, opening the website in a specific container is easy, I don't see the blocker here.
I don't know how many containers you intend on using but I don't find the feature problematic at all. Maybe the Tree Style Tabs integration is fixing a problem I don't know about, but it's working great for me.
You can create rules around which URIs open in what containers, even with regex.
or right click on the tab > reopen in container > choose container
> If you are a Multi-Account Containers user who has already assigned Facebook to a Container, this extension will not work
(along with workarounds)
It has total cookie protection (meaning tabs don't co-mingle) and u-block origin is on by default. Finally, history is wiped on browser close. This, IMO, is on par with the aforementioned plug ins, but is more "uniform" in the sense that every librewolf install is identical.
Additionally, librewolf has WAY less telemetry out of the box than Firefox, which is always nice.
Have any of you seen/noticed a difference when TCP is enabled? I wasn't paying attention when it was deployed.
The history (and other stuff) wiping is something I'm thinking about doing, but just for "health". I tend to accumulate open tabs to review later... that I never review. I started doing it in my cell phone, opening all links by default in private/expendable tabs. If the apps closes, they're gone. If the link is interesting, I'll do the effort of manually saving it somewhere.
Just saying...
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26294561
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849452
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/facebook-cont...
[2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v5/addons/addon/facebook-cont...
Containers are a misunderstood technology. People think about them as a privacy feature, but that's far from real. The only benefit of containers is the ability to have different sessions of the same service in the same windows/profile. That's it. A good use case is when you need to work with multiple AWS accounts.
Cross-site tracking is already enabled by default since... 2018? So, using containers as a way of dealing with cross-site tracking is utterly unnecessary.
anyways, it's CAD the one providing you that sense of privacy, not the container.
1. Unify all of the various settings, addons, downloads, bookmark dialogs. They should all just be tabs, with consistent style. I should be able to "nav" to the others easily, and they should probably open as new tabs.
2. Multi-Account Container support baked in. This "containers are built in but borderline useless without more functionality from an addon" is... not great. It also means that no one seemingly "owns" containers to be able to do things like -- have static identifiers/ordering so that containers are actually portable.
3. There are Cookie management extensions, but the best is many years out of date and missing some obvious nice UX features. Many don't take into account containers. It's unclear what backup/restoring my settings will do here given, again, container identifiers don't map across Firefox instances, even when using Sync.
Imagine a Firefox with proper container + cookie management support built in. The same way I have this one Firefox instance tweaked, I could declaratively or Firefox-Sync-ly have the same settings for all of my Firefox instances. Even just some tab+session sync would make my life a lot easier. I've theorized about using SyncThings and "locks" to have a single Firefox profile ACTUALLY shared across machines, but that sounds like too much fighting against momentum.
I have a "money" container, my money apps open there, their cookies are whitelisted for that container, so I can start to "clear all cookies" and know that for certain sites, in certain containers, their cookies are whitelisted. This is ideal for privacy - I get to whitelist what stays, I get to isolate, I get to clear the rest of the trash at my whim.
I love Firefox, but I kinda hate it. I just don't hate it as much as I do Chrome (though, god forbid Chrome ever get proper Tree Style Tabs, it might be over). I just lament how good it COULD BE.
---
Ironically, I feel like the existence of a FB specific container extension is... exactly proof that Firefox itself left something on the table.
---
edit: to be clear, I don't fault anyone, I understand FOSS and priorities, and all of it. But, I see what could be [with inf resources] and want for better, that's all.
they do want to do this but they are hamstrung by money and tech debt. they are a seriously old browser with as much tech debt as you could imagine. google chrome came about only fairly recently with all the lessons learned from firefox/internet explorer/opera/et.al.. the fact that we have a multiprocess firefox was a monumental rewrite of scores of core code. I do wish firefox was better too but also it's not the largest ad revenue company in the world with a vested interest in getting ads to people as easily as possible and controlling the way that happens.
The downloads and bookmarks code is some of the oldest in the entire codebase too. that's not easy to refactor.
Don't get me wrong, afaict, Firefox will get decent wayland support, new fractional support, vaapi, etc, etc on Linux desktop before Chrome, and for that I can't say Thank You enough. All to say, thank you for this perspective. I wish I knew what to really do about it (I'm not qualified or blessed with the time for C++ contributions).
I could say the same about many things in the Free software ecosystem.
I have so, so many tabs open. And when I need, I can reorganize in a tree structure and just collapse [other projects] tabs and leave them. Combined with "Auto Discard Tabs", I have hundreds+ of tabs open, with only a half-dozen using RAM. Works freakin' great for me, even on a laptop.
(note, this is Tree Style Tabs along with a userChrome.css hack to remove the tab bar; I'm okay with this tradeoff, normal extensions being able to hide the tab bar sounds like it would lead to issues.)
Makes a vertical list of your tabs in the side panel, and opening links from a page makes a node visually indented directly under that tab. Very nice for grouping tabs in a hierarchy as you descend through links on a topic.
Useful for general browsing and for sites like Hacker News: you can middle click links to interesting comments on the home page, then you can go through them one by one, opening the article (which is another tab one layer deeper), and any other links from there, all "contained" in that tree. You can collapse the tree to save space and resume at a later time. After you're done you pop the stack back to the comments and read, right click and close the whole tree when done and move on to the next article you "bookmarked".
For some workflows it's very nice.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
> When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do)
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/firefox-rolls-out-total-...
I've tried switching off different settings with no luck. Does anyone know if anything can be done? I am trying to use Firefox developer edition
By the way there is a more sophisticated version of the extension which would let you configure rules so specific websites would open in specific containers automatically.
As a result, multi-tab containers, temp containers, and total cookie protection can be seen as better alternatives.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/fbb9wo/please_reth...
Most Ads fall into a few categories: - in-app ads that target you for known account demographics: those tend to be targeted at simple stereotypes and seldomly actually something i might want - Ads on news websites or blogs that aren't much more targeted than what could be derived from the general interest group / general target audience - And finally, the bulk of all the oh-so-perfectly-targeted ads: are actually mostly just retargeting automations that keep infuriatingly showing you the very things or similar things you just bought for the next few days
I'm yet to discover a product that would have been nice to have via ads
The only "benefit" I see is that I get drowned in bike adds after some research. That's despite the fact that I bought a bike two month ago.
It doesn't really matter because it almost never happen. What happens is you get ads for things you either looked out of curiosity or already bought.
Tracking ads are almost always trying to sell you something you don't need in ways that you specifically are considered susceptible to. I'm sure there are normal ads out there, but the ones I see are almost always A/B tested and designed to exploit one of my supposed weaknesses. I don't want your psychological warfare but that's what the modern ad landscape has become about.
If I read an article about TVs, I expect ads about TVs. If someone writes a social media post about fridges, I expect ads about fridges. Content-based ad libraries are out there for the people that are interested in the products that are being advertised. On the few websites that use them, I've actually clicked on a few.
Sadly, most of them were stopped by my adblocker anyway because the redirect the ads led to still tried to track me, but in a few cases the system just worked.
If you need to know who I am, where I live, what my gender and age are, how many kids I have, how many pets I have, where I work and where I'm going on holiday this summer in order to sell me something, you don't have anything I want.
Two minutes searching for a product on Google or Amazon should disavow anyone of the notion that they have any desire to match products to people that want them.
...and this is coming along swimmingly for some aspects of my life.