Hacker News Reader

Comment by fear91 | Hacker News Reader

I've used chrome because it was faster than Firefox ( and didn't crash so often ).

I've switched to Firefox a few weeks ago and couldn't be happier. It seems that all the stability issues were resolved.

I urge everyone to do the same.

I've been using Firefox as my main browser for a couple of years now. It's really getting better in every build. And Vimperator is not available for Chrome. Nowadays my biggest reason to stay with Firefox is that I trust Mozilla more than I trust Google.

> I trust Mozilla more than I trust Google.

No company working with the NSA can ever be trusted. That only leaves Mozilla.

Plus, are there any other companies that are not-for-profit, like Mozilla? Because this point gives them a huge credit.

What makes you think that Mozilla are obliged to cooperate with the NSA any less than Google are?

For now:

a) The fact that they didn't appear in Snowden's documents like the other companies,

b) the fact that companies like Google (and Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) have it as their mission to build as precise user profiles as possible ("data hoover"), for example because the rely on advertising revenue. (Google is a 1-trick-pony, advertising being its trick.)

For the most part, Mozilla concentrates on releasing software rather than storing copious amounts of data about users. (Perhaps their "startup" Persona service is an exception to this, but I doubt it.) NSA is more likely to target all that juicy user data that Google has. They might also seek to undermine the security of software, but Mozilla aren't going to make that easy for them.

I switched from FF when it was sluggish. Funny, the reason I don't switch back is the opposite of yours: I don't want to miss Vimium... how does Vimperator compare to Vimium?

Much more features. If I try to use Vimium, it feels like Sublime's vim mode compared to the Emacs' evil-mode...

I was in the same boat. I tried to switch back to Firefox a while back. Some people prefer Vimperator and Pentadactyl, but after using Vimium for a while, I found them to be a little too complicated and, well, different from what I was used to. It's possible I could have adjusted, but I didn't bother at the time and quickly returned to Chromium.

Later I discovered a Firefox addon called VimFX that basically aims to be "Chromium for Firefox": A very simple set of Vim-like shortcuts, configured in almost exactly the way Chromium is. Once I started using it, I felt right at home in Firefox, and I haven't looked back since. It's got a few warts (delay when using gg, Ctrl-F rebound to PageDown by default), but all things considered I'm pretty happy with it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vimfx/

https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx

thank you! :)

> Google could create an anonymous identifier, tied to users of its Chrome browser on a specific device

That certainly is in the interest of the NSA as well.

I too used Chrome because it was simple enough to seem to get out of the way, but Firefox has gotten so much faster that I can't remember how there was an advantage.

Now, I can't stand that there is never a sidebar in Chrome for things like Todoist, and you have that annoying pop-down menu instead. Firefox even lets you use extensions that radically alter the interface, such as the really convenient Tile Tabs[1], without any noticeable slowdowns.

I used to switch back and forth, using Firefox if I was using a extension for some specific task, then back to Chrome for everything else, but now Firefox just never seems to slow down much, so there's no reason.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs

I just switched today. After installing the omnibar extension and removing the ugly bar in the bottom, if feels just as comfortable as Chrome.

I use Chrome for google apps because it works better. I use Firefox for everything else.

...and besides this allows you to surf without google registering every fart of yours. Good idea.

Uh, also I suggest to everyone the "self-destructing cookies" extension. I think it's the best cookie solution so far: basically it deletes the cookies after a certain "grace period" unless they are into your white list. This means that (1) your session is forced to last only for slightly more than the time you are on the website (2) you don't stand out as tinfoil-hat (https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

fwiw the address bar does most of what Chrome's omnibar does, out of the box. It's just a bit hidden because they include the search field by default.

Except that it won't search for things that look roughly like an URL or a hostname.

Not sure what you mean. If I type "youtube" it starts autocompleting as "youtube.com", but the search results below the bar include youtube.com videos, a random news article with 'youtube' near the end of the URL, etc. If you want to search google or whatever from there just hit spacebar or backspace to reduce it to a bare word, and hit enter.

Tbh I prefer this over what Chrome tends to do to me. In Chrome, if I type "youtube" and hit enter it searches for youtube, despite having many such URLs in my history, including youtube.com. Firefox will just take me to youtube.com immediately.

Try doing a search for "foo.bar". When it's a run of non-spaces with a dot Firefox will never do a search and always try to interpret it as a URL. Chrome will instead search for the things it cannot resolve (at the very least don't tell me that no server could be found at something that doesn't even use a registered TLD).

Aah, yeah, it does do that. I can see that being annoying. And somewhat surprisingly, it doesn't fall back to search if you prefix with a space, so you're practically stuck adding a fake search term or some other annoying kludge...

Fwiw that has also been (generally) preferable for me: going to .local domains is a PITA on Chrome because it tries to search for it first.

You can start with ? (which works in IE and Chrome too to force a search), but then you first have to remove the www. that Firefox helpfully adds ;)

And agreed that Chrome is a little unhelpful there too; I always have to remember prefixing a non-domain hostname in our network with http://. Although by now I resorted to a bookmark.

I did the same a few months ago. I hesitated to move because I was put off by Firefox's design but I found UX Nightly[1]. A few bugs here and there because it is a nightly build but overall smooth.

[1] https://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/

You can download from: http://nightly.mozilla.org

That isn't the same build. Those are features that don't focus on the UX or the design. I think that build is labeled Aurora? I could be mistaken. UX Nightly includes those features but it is focused on user experience.

>Those are features that don't focus on the UX or the design. I think that build is labeled Aurora

Nope, Aurora is something else. It's the build after Nightly. Nightly includes pre-alpha releases, Aurora includes alpha releases.

You are however correct that Nightly and Nightly UX are not the same thing. Although if I'm not mistaken the only difference between two of them is that Nightly UX also gets pre-alpha UI changes as well as under the hood changes that Nightly normally gets (almost daily). It's a bit confusing.

To sum it up, the release cycle goes like this:

Nightly (pre-alpha) > Aurora (alpha) > Firefox Beta (beta) > Firefox (stable)

Ah, thanks for the explanation. The process has been somewhat unclear to me for a while now.

Which one would you recommend I get? Am currently using Chrome and wouldn't mind switching to FF.

I'm currently using Nightly UX. I've been using it for quite awhile and I haven't had any problems with it. That being said, you should keep in mind that this is a pre-alpha release and it wouldn't be surprising to run into some problems. If your browsing experience heavily depends on extensions, I'd recommend you not to use Nightly, though. I only use NoScript and AdBlock Edge as my extensions, but if you install 10+ extensions, you're not gonna like Nightly.

In any case, you can just install it and experience it yourself. If you're like me who started using Chrome because you were sick of how slow and unstable Firefox was, you'll be amazed how good it is now.

I've used Firefox all my life because of Firebug. Then after a while it just got so slow that it was unusable and the experience became terrible. And then I switched to Chrome. I'm not fond of their developer tools as much. Not as good as Firebug. I guess I'll give FF another shot.

I switched for the same reasons but kept FF around mainly for Firebug. After using and getting use to Chrome Dev Tools, it is actually no different and in some cases better. I don't do as much front-end dev as I used to though... But I do remember reading that the FF team worked with developers of popular plugins like Firebug to help make those plugins run better, use less memory and cause less memory leaks. You may find those plugins a lot better now.

I've been using UX on Mac and Linux for a few months – love the tabs in the titlebar on Mac – and rarely have problems. A few extensions aren't compatible, and occasionally a build is unstable, so I also have Firefox (stable) and Aurora installed. I just restart into a (more) stable release if there is an issue. They all use the same profile, so settings and tabs are shared. Lazy-loading for tabs make restarting not much of an issue, even with a couple dozen tabs open.

Which Chrome release channel do you currently use: Canary, Dev, Beta, or Release? I haved used Firefox Nightly as my primary browser for almost two years and have only hit a few major problems. Aurora is a nice balance between stability and new features and optimizations.

What is this UX nightly thing exactly? Is it a fork or the actual future layout?

It is building towards an actual future layout. IIRC, once the changes are stable enough they're pushed to the main nightly builds.

Edit: Sorry, I was unclear, it is an official branch and not just a personal fork.

Some links: http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux-nightly-... https://wiki.mozilla.org/UX_Branch

I also made the switch after many years with Chrome. Chrome becomes very sluggish when you have too many tabs open, I guess this is why so many people like OneTab.

Today it's normal to have 10+ tabs open, to read the articles and then leave the best ones open for a later usage. That said I can easily have about 400 tabs open in various Tab-Groups, which is a killer feature.

But honestly, one Firefox addon is so important that I believe that it should be a core feature, it's called UnloadTab [1]. This addon frees up the memory unused tabs allocate, after a defined period of time. It helped a friend with a slow 800MHz Laptop with just a little RAM to finally start clicking links without being afraid that the machine locks up.

People who enjoy the TabGroups feature like I do, should definitely checkout the TabGroups Menu addon.

---

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-men...

Likewise. I've since been pretty disappointed in Firefox's networking backend. Something in DNS resolution or page-fetching occasionally goes out to lunch and then ... no more loading webpages. I'm on 24.0. I should probably make some effort to actually track this down, but I don't even know where to begin.

Edit: doh! Maybe just network.dns.disableIPv6=true solved it...

Those with speed problems on either Chrome or Firefox should try getting rid of Adblock (Plus). It makes many sites very slow, even though those sites are reasonably fast and fluid without the extension. It's to the point that viewing ads is less irritating.

The worst part of Google software is the included always running updater program which in addition to using unnecessary resources, probably does other unknown tasks (spyware related).

does the scrolling feel a bit weird on Firefox? to me it felt a bit too smooth or animated

You can turn off "smooth scrolling" to fix this. Makes the scrolling feel more responsive to boot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com