It's time to switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster and generally more efficient than Chrome plus it has the most important extensions.
The most surprising thing is that the Android version of Firefox is excellent. So good that I switched from Chrome a few months ago when this expected news first dropped. No ads on mobile is awesome.
Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome, and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each other. It's one of the best reasons to switch to Firefox, in my opinion.
I love it. Wish container settings would be synced though:
https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...
#1 most requested feature so there's hope, although it's been open for over two years. Maybe now that the new bookmark sync mechanism is rolled out in Firefox 70, the sync team may have capacity for a new task.
Very annoying, especially if you are testing stuff or debugging in firefox and frequently change profiles. Also disabling seems to reset all settings for the container add-on which is not great to put it mildly.
I don't get why this lives in an extension. It's even advertised in the options, but requires downloading a separate component. Creating an awkward experience as what looks like a core feature lives in an external module. I imagine there is a non-zero number of users who look at containers then opt not to use it because of the download requirement.
I do get it. I've been using it for several months, and I run into problems fairly often. Nothing wrong with the implementation, AFAICT, but it takes a fair amount of thought to assign sites to different containers, and you can easily end up following links that cross container boundaries and then don't work right because of the context change. I've even run into several corporate sites where federated authentication simply won't work in a container, at all.
"I do get it. I've been using it for several months, and I run into problems fairly often. Nothing wrong with the implementation, AFAICT, but it takes a fair amount of thought to assign sites to different containers, and you can easily end up following links that cross container boundaries and then don't work right because of the context change."
See my comment above - I think the obvious workflow for containers is a container window, not a tab, and all tabs created in that window inherit the container settings.
As I also note, above, I don't see how to manage per-container cookies and history ... I can't clear history for just my "banking" container (or whatever).
I really want to make heavy use of a container-like feature but keep stumbling over things like this.
"Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome, and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each other."
Remind me - is this different than the "Container Tab" choice in the File menu ?
I find the built-in container functionality in Firefox to be surprisingly awkward and poorly thought out ...
For instance, the very first use-case that I attempted (create a Window, not a tab and have all new tabs inherit that same container) is impossible.
It also appears to be impossible to clear the history of just a container.
These are basic use-cases that came up, immediately, in a cursory exploration of the feature - I wasn't digging deep to find these ...
I thought the same for the first month or two, but as I started examining what it was doing and why, a lot of their choices made more sense.
Their contrainers are domain centric, not WI dow or tab centric. You can tell a domain to always be in a container, and then on the prompt to change contrainers when you visit th at domain, you can confirm to always switch.
Locking a window to a container would result in people following links and logging in again in accident in a different container, or being constantly annoyed that it wasn't the right one. If they closed the normal WI dow and kept that one, it would be annoying until they figured it out, and they would probably blame Mozilla thinking it a bug.
It's not a bad idea, but I can defi itely see why they would leave it out of the regular setup, as it's prone to causing confusion and only really useful for power users. It's ripe to be implemented as an additional addon though.
That's basically the process I went through with 3-4 other complaints I had. On actually thinking through it, they had one of the best sane approaches. Maybe when more people are familiar with the concept and how it acts and looks they can extend it, but there's only so much complexity you can push to the general public at one time.
Try it and see, I’m very happy with it. You can even specify that any time you go to a particular domain, you use a specific container. Great for separating work from personal for a work machine.
Unless something has changed, the Chrome functionality associates an entire window with a particular profile. Firefox lets you have tabs in different containers, colour coded and all in the same window. I find this much nicer to use.
Thank you for posting this, never realized such a thing existed. Makes it easy to maintain different identities. It's made by Mozilla too. Wonder why it isn't a core feature of Firefox.
They try to develop most new features as extensions first these days. It keeps the release cycles from impacting each other and lets them make sure that the extension APIs remain useful for other developers. If it turns out to be a good feature they'll either bundle the extension or build it into the browser from the extension. That's not always something people celebrate though, see the pocket stuff.
It probably will be. Mozilla frequently moves extensions from Labs (which existed then got cancelled, and now has been reinstated iirc) to core Firefox.
It has been a core feature since v50, albeit with less feature than the addon. It's still disabled by default, just need to toggle the following configs to enable it:
+1 for this. Takes a bit of configuring before you have it all working seemlessly, and it's probably not ready for non-tinkerers - yet - but it's really powerful.
No support for Android (yet). Install this Facebook container [1] on the desktop.
A request: I run Firefox nightly [2] as my main browser and would like to request everyone to consider using a pre-release version of Firefox if possible. It helps us make the argument that Mozilla should not run experiments in Firefox stable.
Been running nightly builds since I think 0.4 - makes web development ‘fun’ as you can never be sure if something works or not in a browser nightly build! Fortunately I don’t have to do that much any more.
I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage. You can have a browser run by a company looking to loot the public good for their own gain, or a non-profit looking to keep the web open and free.
Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient...
> Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient...
In both cases, people are choosing products because they're better. "Better" for most favors properties of the product. "Better" for you favors the politics of the product. Both are completely valid approaches.
I think you should look more in to FF financials. They are not exactly as liberated as you are thinking.
There is the Mozilla Foundation which holds all the IP, governs development, and provides supporting infrastructure.
Then there is the Mozilla Corporation-- the profit seeking portion of the conglomerate. They are guiding product development and contracts which will either bring profit now, or in the future. Think about their big forced Pocket feature. This is a future profit driver, if it is not already.
Source where FF gets the lions share of their funds.
I'm not saying they are bad, but use some critical thinking and stop making corporations heros, generally. Hold them accountable.
Be aware, use your voice, vote with your patronage.
Vanilla firefox is slower than chrome but WebRender is noticeably faster than chrome. Chrome on a 4K monitor slows down to a crawl, but WebRender handles it like a champ. It can be easily enabled with a flag.
- Can you please fix text rendering on mobile? Sites like reddit render at desktop resolution on mobile screen, and there is no clear text sizing that works. With Chrome I just set my size option and move on with life.
Can we just say it? Reddit's redesigne has made it measurably less performant and harder to us. Nothing happens when u press a link for about half a second. They clearly switched to some kind of spa but I don't understand why.
I have webrender testing enabled and three days ago I opened Firefox Nightly and the UI was completely wrecked due some unexpected WebRender bug that was fixed after updating. So I’m glad they’re testing it on expert users first :)
EDIT: Nope, I’m not one of the default-on “safe” configurations.
Hey, I think this site's audience is technical enough that it's okay to just give them the name of the option: about:config -> gfx.webrender.all -> true
Go to about:support and search for WebRender to check if it worked.
Works great for me with Kubuntu 19.10 / Mesa / AMD. It didn't work when I tried it a couple of months ago.
I can't notice any real difference, having been using Nightly (dev) edition for a full year now. Incidentally, my company (one of the largest tech in the world) uses Firefox by default (and nobody had any reason to switch).
Google simply can't be trusted with all that ads stuff
Have you tried a fresh profile as a test? It’s possible you have about:config settings or other random hacker detritus that may be leading to slowness.
I recommend using the "Open With" extension with mpv. This allows you to right click on any sort of video link that youtube-dl supports and launch that link in mpv. mpv has a "stay on top" feature that can be enabled by default when mpv is invoked in this way. The result is picture-in-picture that supports virtually every video site on the net.
"I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard statements like the following.
Firefox crashes ten times a day for me.
I don’t understand how anyone can use it.
There’s a simple answer: for most people it doesn’t crash ten times a day. But the person making the statement hasn’t realized that what links the first sentence to the second is an assumption — that other people’s experiences are the same.", quoted from https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/01/02/yeinu-your-e...
I have some sympathy for those complaints: I've been using Firefox since 2004, but for whatever reason I can't use it on my lab computer. It's a ThinkPad t430 running windows 10, and on that machine Firefox will slow the machine to an absolute crawl even with only 3 tabs open. I spent an hour trying to diagnose it to no avail (I can't just install Linux, I have some serial hardware that is windows-only) before just giving up and switching to chrome.
However, this is the only time I've encountered this issue, and I tend to think it's more likely an issue with the windows installation than Firefox. I'm just too lazy to reinstall, this isn't my main computer after all.
I feel exactly the same when I read people saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome. It's been exactly the opposite for me and for everybody else I know on all kinds of computers and mobile phones.
I'm so used to scrolling by keypress (i.e. any of the vim-like extensions), with smooth scrolling disabled and a higher scroll step, that I just recently noticed that this reduces resource usage/heat.
Not sure if its representative, but I am extremely picky about framerates and jitter. On Ubuntu 19.10 Beta with Firefox 69.0.3 it feels noticeably faster than my Macbook.
It's smooth as butter on my early 2015 macbook air too. I suspect the issue is related to "retina" screens, which I don't have. (a 2009 mbp doesn't either iirc, right?)
Firefox is really dying compared to Chrome but I honestly think this is going to cause it to rebound.
People aren't going to be happy without uBlock and Ad Block...
Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. What's a NEW Google product that you actually like (that they didn't acquire)?
They literally CAN NOT build new products that people like.
... all their hardware products suck. New things like Google Allo exist for like a year and then they are killed.
It seems like they give a half-assed attempt at creating new products as a way to keep skilled talent at Google rather than having them leave to work for Facebook or Apple.
They're actually DECENT at large acquisitions but that's the only thing that's saved them.
It's really a shame because Chrome is actually a GREAT browser but I won't use it without ad blocking.
I've already migrated to Firefox on my phone and it's been pretty great so far. It also supports extensions on mobile which is huge!
Not sure what you mean about Firefox dying; the software is the best it's ever been, relative to other browsers. The market numbers are still down though.
> Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years.
Nope, they're in the advertising biz now. They aren't so much "dropping the ball" as playing a ballgame (extremely well) that you dislike (because it's harmful and exploitative and destroys the tools you love).
They're just a new microsoft. Or since they're in a particular phase of that development, let's say a new M$. Embrace, extend, exploit.
> What's a NEW Google product that you actually like (that they didn't acquire)?... It seems like they give a half-assed attempt at creating new products as a way to keep skilled talent at Google rather than having them leave to work for Facebook or Apple.
What new products have Apple or, seriously?, Facebook created that you actually like?
Pretty sure people aren't leaving Google for Apple & Facebook because they want to build good new products.
The free unlimited high quality storage is great, but as someone who just switched to iOS after many years with Android, the implementation of folders/albums is REALLY poor compared to iCloud.
There's absolutely no mapping between folders and albums. If you sync your photos and don't organize them into albums manually every time, the folder structure is lost completely.
Pretty much all Android apps will only let you pick images from folders. There's usually an option buried in the hamburger menu to pick images from Google Photos, but you can only see ALL your photos lumped together, no option to choose from an album.
Sure, you can use the share feature in Google Photos, but that doesn't work if you need to use the image in a specific context, for example replying to a specific tweet.
With iCloud this all works seamlessly, my only gripe is that album order does not appear to be synced and even if I reorder them on my device, many apps appear to list albums in creation order. But overall it's still better.
Firefox also offers the Tree Style Tab extension. If you’re working with limited screen real estate (e.g., smaller laptop) it may not be ideal, but on a full-sized monitor browsing the internet without it feels downright antiquated.
My hierarchy of browsers looks like this. FF is my default, along with an extensive suite of security and privacy extensions including uBlock Origin. Very rarely, I’ll encounter an issue with a site, and I’ll fall back to Brave. Exceptionally rarely, I’ll fall back from Brave to Chrome, but I can’t remember right now the last time I needed to do that.
I’m really surprised no one is mentioning the new chromium-based MS Edge (still in Beta). They removed all the Google tracking and login nonsense, and it’s fast.
Edge Beta on macOS has been my daily driver (and dev browser) for a month (switched to it from Firefox, actually), and my only gripe is the extension story isn’t yet complete. The MS store only has a few extensions, and you have to jump through a couple of hoops to install from the Chrome store.
To be fair, that’s a bit of a false dichotomy when it comes to the new MS Edge (or any other modern browser, for that matter). It’s open source as well.
I used Firefox before Chrome and have tried to swap numerous times in the past (and have been using it for the last few weeks).
Advocates for Firefox often say "Firefox is better, just try switching!" yet when people point out reasons it's not better the response is "Oh those don't matter, you're just being nitpicky!"
But it's not a very gentle push back, it's forceful.
In this thread someone says "I don't like how much ram Firefox uses" and the response is
> I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage.
and
> Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs.
Firefox, as a product, has many issues when compared to Chrome. Why does everyone spend so much of their breath arguing against the real concerns and problems people have with it? Chrome has been getting worse in lots of major ways, Firefox has a chance to be the better product for a wider audience.
But Firefox won't become better with a culture of downvoting and arguing against criticism rather than trying to understand it. This is not the culture of Mozilla as far as I know, but it's the culture of many Firefox advocates all across the internet.
When I switched to Firefox from Chrome I certainly encountered some bumps in the road which almost caused me to go back. A few functionality gaps (I really the double-tap to zoom to a 'block' of content), but I think the biggest thing was that some of my day-to-day workflows couldn't be exactly replicated in Firefox.
Of course, now I'm used to Firefox, and my routine is centred on it - so now when I fire up Chrome, I have the same experience in reverse.
I don't think Firefox advocates should under-play the amount of time and disruption the shift to Firefox involves: but I do think it's worth doing. While there are a few things I miss, Firefox meets all my needs and more.
Clearly a lot of people like Firefox and enjoy Firefox.
The point of my comment is a lot of people have various real issues with Firefox that make them prefer Chrome and those people should be listened to rather than dismissed. The tone of Firefox advocates responding to critics is often aggressive and dismissive.
Even my comment, which says "Don't dismiss the critics!" is presently in the negative.
It's no skin off my nose if you want to feed Google, but personally I have no idea what you're talking about as there's never been something I couldn't do on firefox.
You don't have to feed Google though if you want to use a Chrome based browser. While probably not as safe as Firefox, there's privacy conscientious options such as Ungoogled Chromium, maybe even Brave if you're keen on the Chrome experience but also care about your privacy.
Arguing and downvoting is just how people and internet work. This has nothing to do with Mozilla culture. Rest assured the engineers of Mozilla are doing their best to make the product superior, independent of the principles difference.
Certainly it is how the internet work, but I always hope for a little bit better!
Generally I've written off arguing on the internet, but sometimes (like today) I slip up when it's too tempting to respond.
> Rest assured the engineers of Mozilla are doing their best to make the product superior, independent of the principles difference.
Even if it's obvious it is always nice to hear that an organization cares about doing the best job they can. I'm very appreciative of the work Mozilla is doing even if here I'm defending the critics of their work.
I also recognize your name from the massive contributions you're making to the Rust ecosystem. Thanks!
> Mozilla are doing their best to make the product superior, independent of the principles difference.
Last time I remember trying to discuss an issue in Firefox was when they dropped ALSA support and started requiring PluseAudio for sound. When people complained, a manager silenced everyone by locking the bug report. This was not surprising, as other problem reports in recent years have been met with similarly obstinate responses.
It's nice to think that at least some of their engineers are genuinely trying to improve things. (If you're one of them, thanks for trying!) It is nevertheless discouraging when problem reports are silenced by both the internet public and the company's own managers.
Sadly, the current situation is that both major browsers have made themselves deficient in one way or another. I manage to get things done by switching between them, but really, I'm ready to drop them both if a good alternative shows up.
For issues like ALSA/Pulse, at some point all the arguments have been heard and there is no point in letting people continue to spam Bugzilla with the same arguments repeated. At that point it makes sense to lock the bug report.
This is a pattern that shows up in other contexts as well. Linux on the desktop, git etc. have communities of advicates that tend to dismiss complaints and criticism far too strongly. That isn't to say that there are more reasonable people in these communities - there are plenty - but the forceful pushback is very visible and tends to be quite offputting.
Yes, those absolutely feel similar. It's a real shame because I think it holds back those communities and products enormously.
The person who takes the time to complain isn't an enemy, they're making an effort to bring something to attention for the community. You want more complainers instead of people silently rejecting your community and product.
The 'argue against the messenger' first reaction of many projects creates insular communities and insular communities create worse products.
I'm using Firefox for a while now (both on desktop and mobile) and I love it.
The only missing part for me on Android is that Firefox doesn't open native apps (YouTube, maps, Instagram etc..) when you open a link. The integration with built in apps like chrome has is not there.
That functionality is actually there. For any website that you visit where your phone also has an app to open those links in, a little Android head will appear in the address bar you and you can touch that to open with the app. Not intuitive really but it always works well once you get used to it.
I wish it was possible to configure Firefox for Android to automatically launch the native app instead of showing an Android head. It's one additional step that annoys me and slows me down, as it will needlessly load the page in Firefox instead of loading the content in the app.
Both of these features are available in YouTube on chrome if you pay for YouTube. I know paying for web services isn't something people like, but there it is.
Try long-clicking on a link to YouTube. If you have an appropriate app installed (either official YouTube or sth like Newpipe) the last item in the menu popping up should be sth like "open with $APP"
I highly recommend Firefox preview. It's really fast, no ads and trackers blocked without extensions. They also put the address bar at the bottom which is so much better.
It's really annoying. If you have a matching app installed there's an Android icon in the URL bar to open it in that app instead, but it's an extra step.
I'm glad it behaves like that because for me it's really annoying when the browser throws me out to another app (especially youtube, which is so much better with adblock in the browser).
Maps is the main app that I wish would open automatically. Each time someone shares a location with me or if I need to drive somewhere it's very lengthy to open the native app. Sometimes the address doesn't stick and I need to type it again.
There are some sites that don't work well in Firefox, like Cisco's WebEx. The web client will disconnect and reconnect causing everyone to constantly hear a disconnect and entry beep when your audio cuts out. On Chromium there is no problem on the same machine. This is on Xubuntu Linux.
I switched (back) to firefox after the quantum update and havent looked back. I haven't used chrome in years so im not able to compare performance but I've had nice issues in that department with ff. I use brave for mobile.
I see this all the time and I think it is unhelpful to make these kinds of statements. I can make a counterpoint that I've used FF on Android for years and never experienced any issues whatsoever. I am not trying invalidate your experience, but want to point out anecdotes don't really paint a fair picture for either side of the argument.
For example, how do we know my good experience and your bad experience are not easily explained by hardware differences? If so, what does that say?
But, the comment wasn't speaking in a generalization, just why they themselves don't use Firefox on Android while also indicating the exact device. It doesn't seem there was any argument being made, just that they seem a little disappointed that it doesn't work well on their specific device and they wanted to add that to the conversation.
Honestly, every bug/glitch/criticism is important, even if it doesn't affect a large portion of users. Ideally, it should be reported in Mozilla's bug tracker if it hasn't already, but still important nonetheless.
The feedback of "Android version of Firefox is unusably crashy on my phone" is not something any developer can take action on. There are no example sites, no steps to recreate. I agree it should be in the bug tracker, but adding anecdotes without specifics does not add much to the conversation nor does it help to move FF forward. Are we arguing all users of this specific device experience the same issues as this user? If not, not even the device model is helpful. As I pointed out, I was not trying to stifle feedback but to point out that for every "FF is too slow" complaint there are just as many "works fine for me comments" that are equally useless. How is FF slow, in what use cases, how cane we recreate these problems? That is worthy of a bug report and if that information is available submit it to FF to make the software better rather than complaining on a thread about Chrome removing a useful extension that FF supports fully across platforms.
All points I generally agree on, except that this isn't a discussion with Mozilla about improving Firefox. This is a discussion about Chrome that diverged into a discussion about Firefox in a very general manner. You may not be stifling feedback, but you're riding on the assumption that feedback is the purpose of the discussion going on, which it is not.
You keep bringing up this point about feedback that is irrelevant to the actual conversation at hand. Nitpicking feedback is kind of useless and pedantic when the purpose isn't to be feedback.
I've been a mostly FF user on Android for years and it does crash routinely for me, and also will do a thing where it doesn't crash but every page renders blank until I restart it. I've always assumed both items might be related to memory management either for graphics or in general.
I sent crashlogs with information on what I'm doing. This, not being the Firefox bug tracker, is not the place I'm going to post stacktraces and detailed discussion of the difficulty in reproducing the bug.
That's good to know, thanks. The descriptions I read only mentioned blocking ad trackers, not the ads themselves. If only I had known sooner. I'll have to correct my previous post: already switched.
No, I'm a BGA repair tech that has had to deal with the bad RAM chips on that model of phone, among others.
The RAM will appear to pass hardware checking in our testers, but you hit it hard and suddenly the frequency becomes unstable, often dropping down to DDR1 speeds. Plenty of room for error, there.
Ugh, I'd suspected something like that because it behaves very badly sometimes, but it's intermittent. Is there any recommended test for this? Or is it too ephemeral to test for?
You need a dedicated BGA removal/reflow tool (like a Metcal) a compatible RAM board to mount the removed BGA upon for insertion into a RAM tester, then you need a hardware RAM tester like RAMCHECK LX.
I switched to Firefox for Android after several attempts by DoubleClick to infect my device with malware. Funnily enough Chrome does ship with a setting which makes this kind of hijacking a lot harder. It was off by default and hidden in an obscure menu that wasn't accessible via the UI. Enabling it for everyone would probably lose them too much ad revenue I suspect.
I like Mozilla's principles in theory, but this warning from the user guide for GrapheneOS [1] (successor to CopperheadOS) is alarming, and applies to more than just Android:
> Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox runs as a single process on mobile and has no sandbox beyond the OS sandbox. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux, where it can hardly be considered a sandbox at all) and lacks support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole.
So, despite concerns about monoculture, I guess Chromium-based browsers other than Chrome are the most practical solution for now.
The Linux desktop Firefox sandbox is pretty strong AFAICT. All the usual namespace protection, pretty good seccomp filter. I wonder what the issue they're referring to is and whether that comment is up to date (the sandbox has improved a lot over the last few years).
The WebView argument is basically an argument for monoculture: you should only have one browser engine installed because that's less attack surface than two, and since Chromium must be installed for reasons, it must be Chromium. That's actually kind of a weak argument since it's not that common for users to load a specific attack in both browser engines.
So this is timely. I was just testing out something I'm working out that creates, uh.. A LOT of DOM elements. Original dev work was in Chrome and I went over to Win 10 to test other browers. I was COMPLETELY blown away by how much faster FireFox was at recomputing layout.
I tried several times to use Firefox as my default browser, but eventually I switched back to Chrome, due to some weird issues I got at some sites.
I still hate what Google is doing for Chrome and I'm now using a dual browser strategy... I use Firefox and Chrome at the same time, with a preference to Firefox.
I've been trying to do this but for some odd reason it's really slow on Mac. Been trying to figure out why but I don't see any solutions. Perhaps someone here knows.
If you're a vim user, try qutebrowser. It has some quirks, but with the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts and call upon scripts it's hard to move back to a "normal" browser.
Brave looks really cool, but it uses chromium so its hands are forever tied to google. I remember they considered Gecko but rejected it for some reason.
Only downside to Firefox mobile is its crummy tab management. Especially when browsing in landscape mode it takes an incredibly long swipe to dismiss a tab. I don't think I go a week without yelling "oh my God, go away!" at my phone after failing to close a tab after multiple tries.
The most surprising thing is that the Android version of Firefox is excellent. So good that I switched from Chrome a few months ago when this expected news first dropped. No ads on mobile is awesome.