Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

I've used Firefox since the time it was called Phoenix. I still use it as my default browser, but there are two quite simple features in Chrome that I'm really missing in Firefox:

1. Exemplary implementation of user accounts. I have a separate user account for my private Google account (Gmail, Calendar etc), a second for Facebook, a third for work (separate Twitter and Google accounts) and a third for web development. I know Firefox has a Profile manager and that it is possible to use -no-remote to run several profiles at once. But: it does not work very well at all. Not even with the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profileswitch... addon.

2. Incognito window can run in parallel with the "normal" browsing session. This is lovely when I want to see how a website looks in a clean browser. In Firefox the private session replaces the normal session until i chose to go back to "unprivate" again.

Seconding 2). Incognito is not just for porn, but very handy to check for cookie or session related troubles too. Chrome's implementation should be the default for all private browsing sessions in browsers.

Per-window private browsing is implemented and available in Nightly according to [1] (so, most likely in Aurora after the release shift this week). So hopefully it'll be in Firefox 20.

Meta-bug for per-window private browsing in Bugzilla is [2].

[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/firefox-development-highli...

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463027

Great news!

> Chrome's implementation should be the default for all private browsing sessions in browsers

I actually like to have an option to have a private tab. If it's just for a quick test then windows is fine, but if I want to continuously work with two logins on one page or something similar then I found the tab to be more appropriate.

There are UX problems with the Chrome style, though. Many, many times I've debugged issues developers are seeing because they thought they had closed their last incognito window and then opened a new one, but there was another one minimised in the background somewhere that persisted their cookies.

Yes, the Firefox mode is far more awkward for quick testing, but it does have the advantage of making it explicitly clear when you start and end your private browsing session.

So true. Took me a while before I realized each Incognito Window wasn't isolated (but shared cookies etc).

A better behavior here would perhaps be that after having the first Incognito Window open, the next would be become "Incognito Window 2". The "detective icon" could have a number overlay and each window would isolated. If you want to share data between the open pages the natural thing to do would be opening a new tab.

+1 to numbering the incognito sessions. Sometimes I need to simulate two user accounts polling some web service, or perhaps simulate a chat-like environment. Point is: I need two separate cookie jars. I've accomplished this using profiles, or by using my incognito window for "user A" and a profile window for "user B." However, there's less overhead with incognito windows and for development scenarios (which are inherently ad-hoc and temporary), overhead sometimes makes all the difference.

I'm on the nightly (version 20) and they added the feature where you can run private windows with non-private ones concurrently. Took them long enough..

How does Chrome handle user accounts?

I use Chromium and have a few Google accounts and find switching profiles a chore (first world problems I know). If there's a feature I'm overlooking then that would be fantastic.

Lifesaver: Ctrl+Shift+M

Built in PDF viewer is the only Chrome feature I wish Firefox had.

PDF.js is Mozilla's project to implement plugin-less support for PDF in Firefox. Please give it a try.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/

PDF.js comes builtin with the recent releases of Firefox.

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/09/08/enable-the-built-in-pdf-rea...

And it's enabled by default in the current Aurora (pre-beta) test builds:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/19.0a2/auroranotes/

Hooray!! Thank you so much for telling me about this.

#2 is shipping as part of Firefox 20.

An ugly hack for #2 is to run "firefox -no-remote -private -ProfileManager". This will pop up a new session of firefox that is in private mode. However, you will have to choose a profile other than the one you are currently using.

Firefox also missing: Close tabs to the right/left of this tab instead of only "close other tabs".

This is a feature that I figure is available in many addons that add functionality to the tabs in Firefox. One of the pros with Firefox is that "low level" GUI behavior can be modified.

Tree Style Tab is my favorite example of this: https://addons.mozilla.org/sv-se/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

(Poorly informed guess ahead) That may be a consequence of the "each browser tab in its own process" approach I've read somewhen that Chrome uses and Firefox does not, or not yet.

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