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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

I still don't get why people who care about privacy (and ad-blocking) use Chrome. Firefox works really well these days, even if Mozilla's track record isn't the greatest of late. I haven't had a need to open a website in Chrome in... years? I can't even remember the last time.

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MS Teams doesn't support Firefox: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/unsupported...

Or the VMware console: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1769175

There's probably a bunch of other web apps that exclusively support Chromium-based browsers, unfortunately.

I mean, it's not that bad to jump into chromium once in a while

Chrome really has become the new IE. That's sad.

It's even worse than IE was in it's day. At least IE back then was just a monopoly and not also a giant spy machine for an ad empire.

No, it's objectively not worse, you can compile Chromium yourself and remove any features you don't want, something you were never able to do with IE.

I don't think not having enough versions of IE was ever a problem. The problem starts when everyone builds their app to a platform that is very dominant and controlled by people who's interest are not always aligned with the user's interests.

You don't have to compile Chromium to have a browser incompatible with the websites that people build for Chrome, you can just use Firefox or Safari or write your own browser if you want to have a web browser that won't be able to run Microsoft Teams.

Chrome != Chromium. The vast majority of the planet is using Chrome, not Chromium. Most average joes have no idea about Chromium.

Either way, whether you're using Chromium or Chrome, you're still entrenching Google's monopoly over the web.

Like the sibling said, the problem was IE's monopoly itself not the lack of more IE-based variants which wouldn't have helped at all, the same way how Chromium isn't helping counter Google's monopoly.

IE held back the development of the WWW. That would be the spot Safari has today. What Chrome is doing is much worse, since it is strangling the web, not just holding back new features.

Not true at all, IE what is the most innovative browser until it wasn’t. For example They invented Ajax, One of the core technologies that made the web what it is today.

They invented ActiveX object and the accompanying XmlHttpRequest that AJAX would later morph into, and then change the X part (XML) to JSON.

While it was innovative, I would argue it's made the Web worse, given the impact of Javascript and surveillance on the Web.

i mean just because they arent supported doesnt mean they dont work just fine. the vmware bug is 2 years old.

honestly slowing down updates for adblockers sounds like a dangerous idea. sooner or later, someone will send you to court for an appstore monopoly, and sooner or later youll lose that case. in the meantime people lose interest in your ecosystem because of the increasingly predatory chicanery that makes their browsing experience suck. sending more eyes to firefox makes firefox better. eventually, better than even you.

This all smacks of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." Manifest V3 is dead on arrival if youre going to bury the average google user in an avalanche of unskippable ads and full screen GPU testers. nobody wants this modern hell, and you've everything in your power to reform or amend it to dial back the surveillance capitalism and hyper consumption.

Yeah, I only use Chrome once in a blue moon and have had a few dozen interviews through teams on web. Haven't had a problem yet (or, no more problems than Google meet/Zoom). My last role used teams on the day to day and Chrome wasn't even installed on my work machine.

Unsupported browsers in 2023? Shame on them.

They only did this in the last 6 months or so. I used to use Firefox with Teams meetings until recently.

Why would anyone want to use ms teams? I understand employers stuck in the fax age might demand it but it’s their problem if they want their data leaked. For personal and outside work no one should use ms teams.

Companies like to use Teams because it's basically free: they already subscribe to Microsoft's Office365 services, and Teams comes with it. To use a competitor, they'd have to pay for that separately. "Teams is shitty and buggy" isn't enough of a justification to convince upper management to shell out big bucks for licenses for something like Zoom when they're already getting Teams effectively for free.

The Teams doc from Feb 2023 is a bit out of date, or is just legal cya.

Still limitations, but I joined a Teams meeting the day before this comment with my microphone and external cam, and participated fully, using Firefox on MacOS.

Yes, some client functionality is still missing (I didn't share a screen, for example), but both sides (MS and FF) appear to be making improvements.

I use Teams fairly regularly in Firefox on Linux. Everything seems to work completely fine, with the exception of 1-on-1 calls. You can't send them, you can't receive them, and you can't even see when someone is calling you until the missed notification pops up. I have no idea why group calls work fine but those don't, but that's how it is.

I used Teams in Firefox for a couple of years. It was shit, but I'm pretty sure it would have been just as shit in Chrome.

Slack calls and "huddles" still do not work in Firefox, either.

Way back before huddles were implemented it used to work. Then they broke it and now it's Chromelike-only.

I can use Teams perfectly on Firefox by switching my User Agent to Chrome. It's a weird decision MS have made.

You can still use Chrom* for those crappy sites and Firefox for everything else.

not supporting a particular browser just means that if a bug report comes up about your product with that browser then nothing gets done, but since everyone develops towards standards bugs in FF will probably be minimal, especially if they do support Safari (because unlikely something does not work in both Safari and Chrome)

also the Teams link describes ways to work around limitations with teams on a particular browser that does not support the teams web app, which is what the article says FF etc. does not support.

Same question for Firefox. Because Firefox is both not privacy respecting (has telemetry by default) and not privacy protecting by default (does not block ads). Both are paid by the world's largest advertising company, not their users.

A browser that cares about privacy would be both zero telemetry and ship with an ad/tracking blocker by default. Ideally you would also be able to pay for it to align incentives (vs a third party paying for your browser on your behalf).

Mock me, or teach me.. but.. I use it still because it's very easy, quick, and good.. to use the translate page functionality.

Yes, I am also aware that Firefox has some technology (in the works?) that will do offline translation even. Cool.. except I still have yet to find a good, easy, fast, accurate translation feature for Firefox. There are some extensions, but none are as good.

Same. The built in translation feature is super valuable once you move country.

The Mozilla translation extension works fine for me when I've used it. It may even be enabled by default now.

Firefox has translation built in now (Menu -> Translate Page), but it's really not up to the same standard as Chrome.

- It's slow.

- Automatic language detection rarely works.

- It only supports a few languages.

- For many sites it breaks the page.

I assume Chrome just hooks into Google Translate. Firefox translation works locally apparently. Hopefully the can improve it.

Translation is the only reason I still break out Chrome now and then.

Firefox finally sort of has it, but it's not that good. Often it won't believe you that the page is in another language, so you can't translate at all, even by trying to force it. The translations can be weird and miss parts of the page.

I'm sure it'll get better, though, and once it does, I can delete Chrome entirely.

Offline translation has landed for a while now. It's built in now.

It has about 10 non-beta languages, and even amongst beta and non, the language is not available. Unfortunately. I would use it if it were. Thank you for taking the time to reply though.

Convenience - that’s how they get you to give up stuff.

Firefox autofill is really bad, while chrome's works most of the time, be it passwords/credit card info/ addresses.

Have you tried the Bitwarden extension for Firefox? https://bitwarden.com/

There's some friction in moving my passwords, which are stored in my Chrome profile. Before you say "just use Bitwarden to sync passwords", I can't, because they block me from logging in based on "unusual network activity". I don't want to spend $3/mo for 1Password. I _could_ spend the first day after migrating resetting all of my passwords as I use different sites and probably will once ad blocking stops working for good on Chrome, but until then it's simple inertia.

Firefox does not support WebUSB. I need it.

I don't bother because Mozilla is just controlled opposition at this point, I'll stick to Chromium based ones like Brave for now as I don't consider there to be a meaningful difference.

Also Firefox mobile doesn't seem to have tab groups and is the only browser I've tried which doesn't have a proper Android tablet UI.

But FF mobile has ublock.

Brave mobile and Vivaldi mobile have it built in. Hell, Vivaldi even has its super useful two layer tab bar available on Android.

Firefox mobile's plugin support doesn't make up for it missing other basic usability features.

Similarly, Vivaldi mobile doesn't allow custom search engines, so Brave is the only one with the minimum feature set I need (tab grouping, vertical tab bar or two layer tab bar, ad block, custom search engine, android tablet UI), and since I want to be able to sync between all my devices, I use Brave on everything.

Never tried Brave. I rarely browse on mobile so with FF I'm fine.

Firefox doesn't have support for AppleScript and this is crucial to my browser habits/workflow. Both Safari and Chrome/Chromium-based browsers have it. Once/if Firefox adopts it, which I doubt but hope so, I'll consider using it.

Here is the 22 years old ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125419

> Add AppleScript support and capabilities to Mozilla on Mac OS 9 and X.

That was 3 whole CPU architectures ago, damn.

There are probably hundreds of macOS specific bugs that Mozilla will never fix.

Firefox is probably the worst browser in the terms of feeling native to macOS.

These aren’t minor, cosmetic issues but glaring omissions in functionality.

Here’s one on the missing support for the macOS password autofill api. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212

Safari and Orion are much better options.

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