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Wait, people hate Firefox? Why??
Chrome defaultism, and so websites are usually made for Chrome, often disregarding testing on Firefox completely, and so they work a bit worse here and there
Also no Google connectivity
Huh, I haven’t really noticed any differences since making the switch. What do you mean by google connectivity?
Chrome browser will let you log in with your Google account which means things like passwords that are saved to your Google account will auto fill
Firefox Sync exists though, and it does the same.
Yup but that doesn’t really help people who already have their passwords saved on Google on their browser and phones
You have been able to import and export data between browsers for years. This is not an unknown or difficult to access feature.
I’m a Firefox user and pretty tech savvy and I really didn’t know it was possible to port my passwords from Google password manager into Firefox. In any case I use LastPass as my password manager, but the point is this isn’t common knowledge for the average person and sounds just like an extra step/hassle. Just trying to be devil’s advocate and answer the “why don’t people just switch” question.
Speaking of Firefox sync, Firefox has this bug when you’re importing your passwords from other browsers, it doesn’t sync to your account. Only your manually inputted logins will be synced.
Ohhhh, I didn’t even consider that being a deal breaker for some people, but I’m pretty sure Mozilla will let you transfer all your saved passwords from chrome.
Yes of course it will. I don’t know what rock these people are living under where they think they can’t export/import data between browsers. It’s a basic feature in every major browser.
I dragged my feet for a long time before switching from chrome to firefox a year or two ago for that exact reason. When I actually did switch it was practically seamless, I haven’t run in to any website that has been problematic on firefox but not on chrome. The only thing i dislike is that i haven’t found a way to have a custom newtab-page but still be able to directly input text to the navbar, so i always have to do ctrl+t -> ctrl-a.
By custom new tab what are you looking for? You can make the new tab display your home page, I think a blank page, and with extensions you can make it do almost anything with a new tab.
I’ve configured it so that when i open a new tab it will by default open the url to my calendar. It does not select the url in the navigation bar, so if i want to input my own url i first need to select the calendar-url so that my inputs deletes the existing text. I do think that the custom url new-tab is an extension though so that doesn’t really help my case (not at the computer so can’t check).
What sites have issues with Firefox? I’ve been using firefox exclusively since 06 besides trying chrome for 2009-2010 and never had any issues. Not saying they don’t exist but it seems like a very small amount that won’t function at all.
People always bring this up like it’s a major issue to avoid Firefox and it’s just not even remotely true. I’m a long-term Firefox user like you and I can count on one hand the number of sites I’ve had problems with over the many years I’ve been browsing. For those very rare cases, I just use Brave to access the site. Problem solved. This idea that if the alternative isn’t 100% perfect, it is therefore completely unusable and the only realistic option is returning to big tech surveillance just needs to die already.
Anything containing WebGL and anything containing complex CSS/JS animations comes to mind, also Canvas (even though it rarely used, still lags like a motherfucker), Firefox really suffers in that regard, but they recently promised that they will fix it; and I remind you that because of hardware decoder legal ussues Firefox sucked very hard at 4K and 120 Hz YouTube on Linux for a long time too
There are others, commonly created because Firefox focuses on privacy, and so, for example, all internal website timers can only count by 0.1 seconds because anything less will open you to tracking vunerabilities, often settings sacrifice performance for data safety like this
Also no Google connectivity
I wish people would see this as a feature, not a drawback.
I don’t hate it, I really want to like it. It’s just that I have a rather niche issue that really bugs me and forces me to chromium (or derivatives).
FIDO2 / YubiKey support on Chromium is far superior compared to FF.
Ah gotcha. I don’t use a lot of 2FA outside of duo.
Hey, you should. Great way to secure your accounts.
I use bitwarden for most of my password creation and storage. I think they have 2FA so I may look into it.
I’m pretty iffy on 2FA. I’m using it for several things but I don’t like that my one and only option for that is this one smartphone. If I drop the phone in a lake, I can’t do Google anything anymore, or do some other crucial things. If I decide to step down to a dumb phone, no, I can’t. I’m just locked into this permanently, now. Half the internet is off limits if I lose, break, or decide to get rid of my phone.,
I’ve gone from having two options for net access - phone and PC - so a primary and a backup, to having one option, both of them at once, and one is none.
It’s a single point of failure that’s already vulnerable to SIM swap attacks and even shoulder surfing. You’re highly reliant on the target org you’re logging into, and whether their setup process is janky.
2FA makes sense in broad theory, it doesn’t make sense in practice, where no options except for your one and only smartphone exist for 2FA. They’ve not developed some other method and don’t appear to be trying. It’s just that or fuckin nothing.
It should be smartphone plus other thing as 2FA options, so the phone can be lost, stolen, destroyed, without leaving you up shit creek, and yet that other thing refuses to show itself.
and yet that other thing refuses to show itself
You can buy a dedicated 2fa device. You can set your Google account to use the hardware key instead of sms verification. I don’t use sms 2fa on any of my accounts. Hardware security keys are inexpensive and work when you lose the phone. Yubikey offers numerous products that do what you want. You can also have 2FA keys on your smartwatch.
I’ll have to look into that, thanks.
Yeah, that’s always been my hesitant, and I don’t really have the physical assets, financial assets, or intellectual property that would really demand the need for 2FA on all of my accounts.
You mentioned chromium and not chrome, so I’m assuming it works well in Brave?
Yes, which is what I use. I don’t really like the company and people behind it, and they’ve did some shady stuff but the other chromium browsers aren’t really any better.
A lot of websites will block your access if they detect firefox too
Because it is bad, bloated, bookmarks are horrible, end users have constant problems that aren’t even their fault. I literally am using Opera now to avoid Chromium because FF has gotten so bad
Opera is rebranded Chromium
“Firefox is bad because I got a virus one time and Firefox was my default browser therefore Firefox gave my computer a virus”- my brother
He’s the virus because he bought the computer
Firefox rules, people need to smarten up. Hell, Firefox on Android has an Adblock extension. Firefox is what’s up.
It’s also as fast, if not faster, than Chrome now.
Is Firefox for Android getting faster as expected? Last time, it seems very slow. I might switch back from Vivaldi if tests seem very well.
I recently switched to Firefox Nightly on Android and haven’t noticed it being any slower than the previous chromium browser I was using. I did opt to forgo the Dark Reader add-on for it though since that was slowing down webpage rendering a bit.
I recently switched from Opera to Firefox.
I was getting 59 FPS average in Opera, full bore 165 FPS / Hz in Firefox.
I didn’t -want- to switch but it’s objectively faster, especially on Linux.
There’s a work around for Firefox nightly that allows installation of any add-on too, eg sponsor block.
The fact that it needs a workaround is still bullshit.
No work around is needed. You can install a very limited number of extensions on Firefox mobile and they are the ones you want the most. This includes uBlock Origen.
hey are the ones **you **want the most
You don’t know which extensions I want most. I want:
- uBlock Origin ✅
- Consent-o-Matic ❌ - but the sort of thing they might eventually add to the blessed list with enough begging
- Bypass Paywalls ⛔ - Mozilla will never recommend this or even distribute it on its addons site
3-4 years ago, I could install any extension I wanted. I reject their stated reasons for barring me from doing so (security, stability - those are on me once I start installing unsupported add-ons) and use Kiwi Browser instead.
The issue for me with Firefox on Android is it would sometimes refuse to load pages when switching back after being suspended from the background and I have no clue why. I’d have to open a new tab and copy the URL to force it to load and it was so frustrating.
I use Brave now (with the promotional stuff off, even though I still don’t fully trust them), since it seems to be the only other ad-blocking browser on Android that’s even decently easy to use. However, I still use Firefox on Windows with tree style tabs and raindrop.io to sync bookmarks, both of which are god tier productivity tools.
I get this issue every now and then with Chrome.
Or even better, a fork of Firefox which disable all that telemetry crap and bundle with uBlock Origin : LibreWolf.
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Wow wow wow, care to explain ? This r huge news for me
The original dev handed over development to a team and left, new cunts removed his name from project and made donation links, original dev came back and made ublock origin which is now the best adblock out there.
I’ve only known ublock as ublock origin had no idea of this fiasco
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but hardened firefox 😏
Shut up, you godless furry
Godless furry bot: when
This!
The new Mullvad browser is even better, and regularly maintained. But a little bit further down on the privacy end of the Spectrum and further from the useability end. Watch out for timezones, that one always gets me!
Mullvad has a browser now? Sweet! I’ve been a fan of their no nonsense approach to VPN for a while now.
Yeah it’s basically TOR browser without the TOR network. Created in direct collaboration with TOR.
Is it as simple to use out of the box as Firefox or does it require some tinkering first?
No tinkering required, technically you could achieve the same result with regular Firefox + tinkering.
It’s as simple out of the box but with a greater focus on privacy with telemetry off and the pocket integration disabled.
Can confirm. Started using it yesterday after another comment. It’s pretty much plain FF, so works well right out of the gate. I enabled some features in the setting like Firefox sync and allow DRM media, but I’m really liking it.
I’ve found that it might not work on banking sites because of the fingerprinting protection. Be warned, if you try to use on banking sites, you may be locked out. I suggest you do all banking and stuff on a separate browser that saves cookies and tracks you.
I don’t have issue on my banking site but I’m not surprised, privacy settings tend to break some sites.
Fr, people need to stop the lies that firefox itself is a privacy respecting browser, which it isnt- not since it was bought out years back.
LibreWolf and Mullvad are great examples of Firefox Forks that are ACTUALLY privacy focused browsers.
Bought out? Firefox was never bought out by anyone. What are you talking about?
My bad, bought out was the wrong way to word it- I should have said “Made partnerships with-” then listed Google and Yahoo(defunct), China and Russia.
If you watch this video discussing how privacy respect firefox is by default- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr8UFJzpNls you’ll see the telemetry they collect is miles long and Firefox is no better at protecting your privacy than Chrome/Chromium is whatsoever.
Definitely recommend Librewolf or Mullvad, which are actual privacy respecting browsers, even Chromium forks like Brave are better than default firefox.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=Fr8UFJzpNls
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Vanadium on my phone.
Vanadium is a chromium based browser.
Indeed. But privacy is good. No point in using Firefox on phone since webview is chromium based.
websites not supporting firefox is the site’s fault, not the browser’s. firefox is not some niche browser. almost every website i have used is fine on firefox, and when it rarely doesnt work (usually bc i have a configured librewolf), i just open brave or whatever.
Stumbled over that last week. There is a company where I buy nearly all my computer stuff from, and I’m a customer for more than 20 years.
I wanted to order parts for a high-end PC, but simply could not add the motherboard to the shopping cart. Everything else was already in there. I called them, and they asked me if I used Firefox. And they told me in no uncertain terms that Firefox was dead and would no longer be supported for “safety and security reasons”, I should use Chrome or Edge instead.
If their site is too stupid to cope with Firefox, why the heck does it not tell me about this upfront, e.g. when I try to enter an item into the shopping cart?
Privacy is like the least important reason I use Firefox. With Microsoft Edge and Opera being based on Chromium now there are just so many of them. With Chromium essentially becoming the de facto standard because everyone uses it that means Google can ignore web standards and just do whatever they want.
It means Google can set the web standards, which is worse.
Competitors dont have to inherit those tho just because they are based on chromium.
It’s easier to inherit because it’s less dev time spent on a part of the browser that has less evident results for the consumer. I bet they’d rather spend money on the UX provided by UI changes rather than reworking the JavaScript engine, or anything related HTML or CSS rendering.
There’s no reason a Chromium fork can’t conform to other web standards.
Are they doing so right now?
Who is “they”?
Come on. You’re being pedantic.
…I’m not being pedantic at all. There are literally hundreds of them, each with their own programming.
What are the important reasons?
Everything else I said, sorry if that wasn’t clear!
Essentially there are organizations like W3C and IEEE that define standards for how the internet works and how websites behave. All browsers follow these so everything works properly. Let’s say you have some idea you want to add to your browser you develop. You do it and tell everyone about it. You don’t have many users. Maybe a few sites do it but it isn’t really a problem that it doesn’t work on other browsers because so few people do it.
Chromium has a massive market share because so many browsers use it as their base. Even Opera and Microsoft Edge which historically have been alternatives to Google Chrome now use Chromium as their base. The danger is that Chromium has such a large user base that they are essentially what the standard is.
As a quick aside, Chromium is the name for the open source base of Google Chrome. Chrome itself is technically not open source. This jus thust in case you or other readers haven’t seen that word.
Imagine a world where everyone uses Chromium. Why would you (if you were in charge of Chromium) need to listen to what standards organizations say about how the web should work? You’re literally in charge of every browser! You can just add some new features or take some out and every website would have to comply because you (in this hypothetical) truly do control every single web browser on the planet. Their websites would not work otherwise.
Sure, out of the goodness of your heart you might behave and be a good steward but there will always be reasons for you to act against the standards that you don’t view as “bad” that other people might think are bad. I’m not saying all standards organizations are perfect and good or anything like that, but I believe I trust them more than Google.
Even if Google never does anything “bad” (naive thinking lol) avoiding the situation where they have that kind of power is a good thing.
To me that’s the most important reason to use a non-Chromium based browser. To avoid Chromium becoming the one true browser.
And just for some context, Google has done bad things before with regards to web standards and then having the de facto standard with Chrome. The recent changes to the extension API to neuter ad blocking being a prime example. And we don’t even have to speculate and sound like nutjobs. They’re a public company. They’ve said before that ad-blocking is one of the biggest threats to their ad revenue. Not that it feels tin foil hatty to suggest even if they hadn’t said it, but they actually have said it in reports.
organizations like W3C and IEEE that define standards for how the internet works and how websites behave
Too bad those organizations kept dragging their feet, writing standards by committee and making them unimplementable, pushing stuff like XHTML that nobody in their sane mind wanted… until the WHATWG called quits on them and focused on a working living standard: a reference free open source browser that anyone could just copy+paste to meet the standard.
Nowadays we call that “Chromium”.
No actually we don’t. Chromium isn’t a reference implementation. And while XHTML was handled poorly the idea behind it was actually very interesting. Didn’t pan out and was buried years ago. So what.
Chromium isn’t a reference implementation
Could fool me, since it implements all WHATWG standards… or is it the other way around?
XHTML didn’t just “not pan out”; the W3C kept beating its dead horse carcass, like it did with many others. The W3C didn’t pan out and was handled poorly, even though the idea behind it was actually very interesting.
Why do you believe Google would not be able to ignore the WHATWG the same way they could ignore other standards organizations if they controlled the entire browser market?
Well, for starters the WHATWG listens to Google, not the other way around. And yeah, they do “control” the entire “browser market”, or more precisely, the part they care about: how to show ads.
Then you’re just agreeing but saying it’s already happened.
That’s one way of seeing it.
I don’t agree with the W3C or IEEE defining the standards anymore, or with Chromium becoming a “de facto” standard; the whole point of creating the WHATWG was to explicitly ditch the W3C, make Chromium into the basis for a living standard… and everyone clapped (except for some die hards who didn’t get the memo).
That it allows Google to destroy the open internet by changing the standards until non-Chromium browsers can’t engage with the web.
That it allows Google to destroy the open internet by changing the standards until non-Chromium browsers can’t engage with the web.
Im glad the websites have a saying in this. If google also owns these all then we are TRULY fucked.
Unfortunately, no, they don’t. As Chromium gets more and more wide spread, Google is gaining the power to change the browser standards. Websites will have to comply. If your website suddenly “Breaks” because Google won’t allow Chromium load any pages without tracking tags, users will complain to you and not google.
Yeah tech illiteracy is a thing thats true. Once they realize that its their browser that breaks their shit they will just pick a different one. Thats what i mean with google owning all the websites.
I don’t think they will. I think corporations - Who make decisions the same way soulless psychopaths would - will bend.
Using Chromium supports the destruction of the open internet.
unpopular opinion: chromium is a genuinely good thing for everyone involved. Just because chrome gets all the bitches and can dictate stuff doesnt mean chromium will break the competitions will to have their own programmers make their own fork.
Good joke.
You know what happens if a customer complains your website doesn’t work in Chrome? A bug ticket is raised, goes to a developer and they fix the “bug” so it works again.
If the developer is good they’d also make sure their “fix” doesn’t break the website for Firefox and Safari. But there are plenty of developers who only test Chrome and call it a day.
Chrome is the default browser nowadays, if it doesn’t work in Chrome you have a problem. The developer might blame Google, but the user and management won’t care.
Im really confused by this sentiment. Ive been using Firefox since like 2007 and I was just a teenager who didn’t know any better.
Its been working fine for 16 years now.
Personally, I stopped using Firefox when mobile became my main computing device. When I had shitty phones and mobile browsers were newer, Chrome was much more stable for me than FF. I should try to break the habit and go back to FF now that they are both structurally sound, but by now I have years of stuff saved to and remembered by Chrome. It would be a hassle to switch, and somewhat more control of a portion of my data isn’t worth the trouble to me. I’m still gonna use Instagram for professional networking and personal posting, so I’m gonna be in packaged data anyway.
yeah having all your stuff saved in chrome would make it a hassle. sounds like a rainy day project haha
Even better idea. Wait until about 6pm, open maybe 7 beers and drink them over a four hour time frame. At 10pm, start mixing some cocktails (you can do this beforehand and just store them in the fridge), make sure you have plenty, as over the next 2 hours, you’ll need them.
Finally, at 12am, get yourself a nice spirit you enjoy, so maybe a good whisky, a good tequila, a good rum. Anything you like, and start mixing, 50ml alcohol, to about 250ml mixer is what I personally enjoy.
Once you hit 12, just get your things done. Whether it’s moving data over. Or just anything that needs to be done. Unless it involves leaving your house. As that may get messy.
This is what I always do when I know I need to get something done. And it hasn’t let me down yet.
Oh, and don’t forget your favourite music.
Don’t forget to speaker phone your ex at some point! Spice that night up baby
All that stuff you have saved isn’t important. You won’t even miss what you saved.
That’s like not moving into a better home because you don’t want to lose what’s in your junk drawer in the kitchen.
Edit. Three downvotes with no replies? No one cares to explain thier point of view?
I perpetually want to document and keep things but learning that browsing history, tabs, bookmarks, and cookies are disposable trash that I know I truly don’t give a fuck about was enlightening. A clean slate is actually great!
Man, what you said is so true. A few years ago, when I switched from Chrome to Brave (I now use Firefox), one of my worries was losing all the “important” stuff I had saved over the years. As you said, those things weren’t important at all, I don’t even remember what they were.
For those of you who are like that: change now, you won’t regret it and if you really need to save something, just copy/paste those links into a word or any other program.
Damn you stuck with it during it’s trash years, too?
It wasn’t even acceptable until pretty recently, and it’s still missing a lot of QoL features that make me keep Vivaldi around (except on my Linux machines, those just run Fox cause Vivaldi isn’t available.)
What are you talking about? Firefox has always been very much acceptable for me. What qol features are you missing?
LibreWolf
Yes, because original Firefox is not it.
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Navigated here with Netscape yo
I tunnels here with my Gopher browser.
Can someone make a comment on if and how chromium development changed since Edge uses it? I often hear that Google dictates chormium dev, but what about MS? Are they doing dev work, too?
But sadly, in privacy matters their interests are likely aligned, so that we can expect to be it further hollowed.
they’re 100% doing dev work at ms, afaik their contributions are public because chromium is an open source project. and i think it would be very beneficial for larger amounts of people to use edge (only if they’re dead set on not using firefox though) because having two different companies compete on that is still better than just having google have a monopoly.
The Edge team has made a lot of major contributions to Chromium over the past few years.
Ungoogled Chromium exists but it just feels 1/10 of what Firefox is capable of doing.
Last time I tried Ungoogled Chromium, it was a pain in the ass to install add-ons, that might have changed but back then I had to download and install extensions by hand, I don’t know if it’s still the same process nowadays.
There is also UnMozilla’d Firefox for even more privacy!
You mean like icecat, librefox or using user.js
Is Fennec on Android like that? Still developed by Mozilla, but has all branding, telemetry and firefox-account stuff removed (even comes with duckduckgo as default search engine)
I think Fennec F-Droid is a straight re-compile of the official Android app with binary blobs removed. So technically it is the actual open source version. Firefox telemetry is open source (at least on the client side) so wasn’t in the scope of that, but there are certainly variants that remove that as well.
Good to know
I use firefox for obvious privacy reasons but also because I can customize the UI. Chromium’s interface is oversized, ugly, and locked down while on firefox I can change any aspect of it using my own CSS.
I initially read your comment as “I use firefox for obvious piracy reasons” and thought “yeah, that’s fair”.
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