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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it:

  Sync
  Containers
  Tree Style Tabs
  uBlock Origin on Android
  Open Source since 1998!
  Not based on Chromium

Be wary of sync on a fresh Linux install, it might sync the default bookmarks and merge them with your own. Not a huge deal but definitely an annoyance.

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Most important is that Firefox is the only barrier that protects us from Google locking up internet behind a DRM.

Firefox has compromised on DRM before and there's no reason to expect they won't cave again next time.

In fairness, they did compromise in such a way that you can still keep it disabled. If/when they do it again, they'll likely also keep a safety switch involved as before.

They caved because they were afraid that without Netflix they would lose market share but then they lost market share anyways. In the alternate universe where they didn't cave users mounted a pressure campaign against Netflix for blocking Firefox and that got the FTC's attention and Netflix was the one that caved .

In this scenario, you haven't removed the reason why people flew to Chrome though. In this alternate universe, you'd probably need to remove all the Chrome propaganda, installs by default, etc.

Can you really say that when Firefox makes most of its money funneling users to Google?

If Containers is a sufficient alternative to Chromium's profiles, I'm switching, that was the only thing holding me back.

Firefox has its own profiles, which are separate from containers.

`about:profiles` shows you a window for creating and switching to a different one. I add that as a bookmark on the bookmarks toolbar of the two profiles I use

I believe there is a `-P` option to open a new window with a specific profile. I do not use it. I usually just open the browser and then go to the aforementioned bookmark and open the other profile.

I use different colorways to differentiate the windows between the two profiles.

There may be addons that alleviate a few of the pain-points with Firefox profiles. I have not tried to find any.

IMO containers are easier to use than profiles. The main issue is that history seems to be shared across containers, but being able to mix tabs from multiple containers in the same window is very practical. Though I guess it increases the risk of accidentally opening some website in the wrong container if this is one concern. (though there is a feature to make some website always open in a given container)

I like maintaining a work/clean profile and a personal one. It is very annoying to mix histories when something like screensharing happens are you do not want to advertise what sort of messageboards or forums you post on.

The main difference is that profiles allow for different extensions to be enabled. You effectively get completely different browsers. The price for that power is a bit of IT geekery - if used regularly, you'll need either a bookmark to about:profiles or a desktop shortcut pointing to Firefox.exe -P yourProfile.

I mostly use containers for everyday work, but when a site looks borked (which typically happens because of strict ad-blocking extensions doing their job), I temporarily switch to my "unprotected" profile that has no ad-blocking whatsoever.

(And also when I test new extensions I build, but that's a very niche use case.)

Containers is what every browser should be or have. Only Firefox as far as I know has containers as thoroughly.

Chrome doesn’t. Safari has something similar.

I use first party isolation and block third party cookies (and delete first party ones on tab close). This is as if I had a "container" for every new website.

For my money this should be the default behaviour on ff.

I’ll have to look into containers and tree style tabs. I have never knowingly used those.

Containers are the best. I use them every day.

Also I switched from Tree Style Tab to Sidebery. I like it better for some reason.

I found a config that worked for me using TST so I haven’t explored other methods for vertical tabs. What eventually convinced you to try Sidebery and what convinced you not to switch back to TST? I’m curious what I’m missing out on!

Nothing major. It just feels sleek. I don't require much from these plugins.

Tree style tabs enables vertical tabs, which are listed at the side of the window rather than the top.

It means you can still read tab titles when you have more than a dozen tabs open. Plus you can nest and rearrange your tabs to fit your work or study.

For some, like me, it's a game changer and I dislike using chrome now because it doesn't support vertical tabs.

Caveat: to disable top-of-window tabs you have to use a user chrome CSS file, so it's not just "install extension, enable checkbox" easy.

Minor addition: you have to create a user chrome file AND you have to go into about:config and set "toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets" to true.

https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery is also good for this, different approach than TST

> Tree style tabs enables vertical tabs

It's not just vertical tabs (which MS Edge has an option for), it's tree-structured vertical tabs. If you open a link in a new tab, the new tab will become a child of the original tab, making it easy to identify related groups of tabs. The subtrees can be expanded/collapsed. There are a lot of configurable options (e.g., to automatically collapse a subtree when you open a new one).

More info on the extension's page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

As someone pointed out in a sibling comment, Sidebery gives you a similar UI. I haven't used it as much, but it seems to work OK too.

I don’t use containers all that much (I just auto clear cookies and history when Firefox is relaunched) but I can’t overstate the workflow upgrade that was my switching to TST a few years ago. That combined with a plethora of mouse macros for moving between tabs, changing their position in the tree hierarchy, and other basic functionality really made the experience of using a web browser more enjoyable and interesting. Lots of customization to be had with userChrome.css + TST css theming. Thankfully there’s a lot of prebuilt configs shared on GitHub to help get you started.

Especially if you do any web development or IT, containers is great for testing different cookies. You can easily be logged in under multiple different accounts in the same browser window, which can be super useful for debugging certain issues tied to user accounts on a site. It's honestly such a useful feature that I'm shocked there isn't an alternative available in chrome, but it does also thwart tracking so I can see why Google won't implement it.

Yup I use it to be logged into various azure accounts

Not entirely owned by google.

But treestyle tabs (and sidebery) require editing the chrome.css to remove the tabs at the top. It just feels janky.

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