[davidp]

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing.

[0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

[Someone1234]

The best thing about Firefox is Mozilla's Multi-Account Container tabs[0].

Essentially it allows you to put different tabs into different light-weight profiles, with their own session, cookies, and state. That means if you want to log into Facebook but don't want Facebook following you online, just give Facebook its own container.

Mozilla has anti-tracking already baked in, but Multi-Account Containers are a whole other level of isolation, but without sacrificing usability (like traditional multi-profile/multi-user browsing).

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

[daveFNbuck]

They're quite practical even if you don't care about tracking. I have different containers for my work and personal Google accounts and they make things much easier than relying on Google's support for multiple accounts.

They're also great for development. I have different containers for each user I use while working on logged-in flows. I can just go from tab to tab to test different user experiences or switch between users in a multi-user interaction.

[Splatter]

Totally share the love regarding container tabs.

I don't, however, like how the UI/UX is implemented. In particular, the management of containers -- why do I have to dig so deeply to add new containers? Also, as a color-blind person, the slightly colored thin bar above the tab is not a sufficient identifier. It just seems all sort of after-thoughty and jumbled to me.

Having said that, I converted to FF being my primary browser from being a long-time Chrome user and am happy about the change.

[m-p-3]

I wish the addon would sync its container configuration accross Firefox Sync. Setting my containers manually on the multiple computers I use daily is a real pain in the ass.

[baby]

No, the best thing about Firefox is Tree Style Tabs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

[WeAreGoingIn]

The best thing about FF is about:config. It tunes in to the legacy of Netscape and Amiga where you could and can configure everything to how you like it. This is freedom, unlike chromium.

[thehenster]

I tried to move from Chrome's profiles to Firefox's container tabs. I prefer Chrome's take on it where sessions are shared across all tabs in a window rather than across similarly styled tabs in the same window.

.. I just went to find the github issue for other people with a similar need[0] and found someone has posted a link to an extension called sticky containers. A new tab opens in the same container of the last one. It's actually pretty close to what I'm after..

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

[0] https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...

[npunt]

Containers are such a great idea.

My one wish is if you could set a default container. I use FF to browser Facebook primarily and want that to be default, but instead I have to load Firefox then load a container then load Facebook. Wish it were just open FF -> Facebook is homepage.

[therealjumbo]

So at work we have a jenkins instance, which uses github (on prem) OAuth to sign in, and it logs you out after a very short period of inactivity. Except that jenkins or the way we have it configured or the way we have the reverse proxy in front of it configured is buggy, so sometimes when you try to log back in, you are just redirected to the front page, and you're still not logged in. To workaround this, I had to clean out my browser cache + cookies + other bits of history whenever this happened in order to log in.

Your comment just gave me the idea to: install the container tabs plugin, tell the plugin to always open our Jenkins site in the "Jenkins" container, and then when the bug happens, I can "clear cookies etc" on that container, without destroying my history and login sessions in the rest of my tabs.

After playing around with it for 5 minutes, it seems you can't clear cookies on a container basis. Also apparently only cookies are isolated, but other bits of history aren't. So this might not work. Alas. I almost found a solution. I did find that ctrl-shift-del opens a clear history popup though, instead of going through that wretched menu.

[ww520]

Container is great. I have to toot my own honk. The addon Session Boss supports container seamlessly. I have multiple GMail accounts that I put in different containers with their own logon and cookies. Session Boss saves the tabs and containers in a session and easily restore them the next time I need them.

[asavadatti]

Chrome has this too. I doubt its effectiveness as there are ways to fingerprint your browser without using cookies/sessions

[tptacek]

This has been a first-class Chrome feature for years, for whatever it's worth.

[kossTKR]

Too bad it completely kills your CPU on a Mac.

I tried switching completely a month ago for the third time.

Sadly absolutely nothing has happened in a 5 year time-span. The performance on my high-spec i7 Macbook Pro is abysmal. ( same across several company Macbooks ) The fans speed up constantly like they have done it for years. It's completely unusable for "professional" work or just regular multi tab browsing and drains the battery in no time.

Safari, Chrome, Opera, whatever, doesn't have these problems. I actually haven't experienced an application that feels so sluggish and unoptimised in OSX as Firefox. Something is seriously wrong and the dev group must not be prioritising it?

I checked their subreddit and loads of people are fleeing the Mac version, even on the newest nightly builds of quantum - seriously what the hell is going on? Why hasn't "the bug" or whatever been found or defined in clear termes in over 5 years?

The day the app works without serious CPU issues i will uninstall Chrome and go to Firefox, but the handling of this problem makes me worried about the dev groups competence.

When i talked to devs in the subreddit many of them were like "Hey, that sounds weird, should be better in the new nightly, are you sure it's not ..." - an absurd answer in the light of the constant stream of people saying this for years and years - even in this thread i see multiple people saying it's useless on OSX.

To the dev group: Get a Macbook (many devs use them), open Firefox, identify the problem - should have happened 5+ years ago.

[konart]

> Why hasn't "the bug"

As a frequent /r/firefox visitor - while I do agree that Fx team should spend more time investigating this, I still have to note that this is not a bug or something ssimilar that can be easily reproduced.

I have late 2013 MPBr and 2014 iMac and never had any issues of a sort ever since quantum release. The only problem (performance wise) were videos on Youtube, but it seems to be fixed already. So it is there for some people and it is not for the others. With dfferent Macbooks\software\setups etc.

[daxhuiberts]

I have the exact same issue. I'm using a fully specced MacBook Pro early 2015 with a Retina screen in a scaled mode (1.5x) and Firefox is extremely slow to use. Scrolling isn't fluid at all and CPU usage is very high. When I put it in the normal Retina mode (2x) it's much better, but still not as fluid as using Chrome, which even on 1.5x mode works and scrolls fluidly.

I'm also using Firefox on an underpowered Ubuntu machine and it works wonderfully there though (no HiDPI screen).

[nindalf]

FWIW I’ve used it on a low spec MacBook Pro for a year and a half without a problem. Never had any complaints, and it’s only gotten better after the Quantum changes.

[1ris]

I have no idea what you people are doing. I use FF with my mid spec, 4th generation i5 with 500+ tabs and haven't experienced any of your problems.

[Yoric]

I know about ~100 Firefox developers with Macbooks and none of them experiences the issue, so that's probably harder to reproduce.

Would you be interested in help to profile the issue and file a detailed bug? This would help fix it.

[inferiorhuman]

I use the nightly builds and I definitely do not have that problem with around 750 tabs open on my non-retina MacBook Pro. It does suck down memory though.

[hellofunk]

I’ve had the same problem for years, a few months ago someone suggested it might be because I don’t use my screen at the default resolution. I have a slightly lower resolution setting on my retina MacBook Pro. And that somehow this causes firefox to go insane and have a nervous breakdown. Is it possible that you are also not using the default display resolution? If everyone who has the problems shares this particular setting, that might point to something.

[rerx]

Late 2016 15 inch Macbook Pro, LG 5k screen with the scaling set one tick into the "more space" direction. With Firefox performance is still significantly worse than with Chrome. This is a real bummer, I really miss tree style tabs.

[nishanmiranda]

I have been using Firefox on my Macbook Pro 2015 for the past years without any problems and seriously it consumes a lot less memory compared with chrome

[cheeze]

Firefox has never been good on Mac. It kills me :(

[raverbashing]

Interesting. Works fine here

1st step to trying to debug would be removing your old profile completely, maybe try to disable extensions and HW rendering acceleration

[fetbaffe]

Just a few weeks ago I tried Firefox as my main browser for a while. I had to give it up because of battery life. This is on Windows 10.

Edge preserves my battery the best, however Edge is not practical to use, so Opera with the battery saving option is currently the best bet.

Firefox is still my main development browser though.

[Manishearth]

IIRC this bug is known (something about compositing and rounded corners on Mac because of how Core Graphics works) and there's work going on to fix it. The Webrender stuff helps here too, I think.

(I don't know the exact details, I have a vague recollection of pcwalton explaining it to me)

[Manishearth]

Does setting gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config fix the problem?

[rusk]

just to confirm, did you get the "Developer Edition"? I've been using it on Mac (2014 MBP w/ Retina) for a while and it's fine. That said, I haven't been using it as my main browser ... yet.

[wishinghand]

Electron apps like Slack and VS Code tend to eat up my RAM capacity and CPU cycles. Whenever I quote everything except for Firefox my MacBook Pro calms its fans down.

[gog]

I had this same issue on my late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina, but it didn't stop me from using it :)

Since I switched to 2018 Macbook Pro Retina the issue is gone.

[sarreph]

Is it at least a couple of years old with a GPU? There have been serious electron bugs since last year in these machines.

[tomphoolery]

Firefox is a way better experience than Chrome these days. Google, you constantly add new features that nobody wants, and furthermore, make it WAY more difficult for those of us who care about privacy to turn your tracking BS off.

Google Chrome can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.

[adontz]

Firefox added Pocket, and kind of nobody wanted it. So it happens in FF too.

[ethanpil]

The only thing I miss in Firefox is the ability to Chromecast directly. It's useful.

[tptacek]

Does it prioritize privacy? I haven't used Firefox in a long time, so my impressions of it are based on news stories, like them launching a partnership with sketchy VPN services or building in "easter egg" advertisements for television shows.

[lucideer]

Firefox is still very imperfect in their prioritising of privacy, but when we're looking at the question of "use Chrome or Firefox", that's hardly significant in comparison.

I'm curious what you're using currently if Firefox's privacy imperfections are of concern? Safari?

[berbec]

I'm not a customer so I dont have skin in the game, but is ProtonVPN really considered sketchy? [1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18608041

[nachtigall]

Yes, Tracking Protection https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection will be ON by default in Firefox 65.

They will also block all third party cookies effectively blocking most ads. Chrome or Chromium would never build in such a feature and make it ON by default. Because tracking and personalized ads are there business model.

[bad_user]

Firefox is the best browser for privacy.

Lately it introduced the ability to do "Multi-Account Containers". They behave like light profiles. But you can use containers to box social networks. See:

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

2. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

3. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

This ability is currently unmatched in other browsers.

It also has built-in tracker blocking. Nothing you can't get with uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger, but it's nice to have it on by default, especially in Private Mode.

Note that people complain about the "strict mode" of that tracker blocking not being enabled by default. However I can tell from my experience that the strict mode breaks websites.

See also the design of Firefox Sync, which was designed to not leak data by default, as compared with Chrome's Sync: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/

[vrazj]

Don't forget when they sent your data to Cliqz.

[dredmorbius]

Sgnificantly more than Chrome, yes.

Not sure relative to Safar or Edge.

[Rebelgecko]

It's not perfect but IMO it's better than Chrome. Logging in to my Gmail account in Firefox doesn't do the same obnoxious stuff it does in Chrome (changing browser profile, start synching lots of stuff with Google).

Of the problems I've had with Firefox, some of them are actually due to it being _too_ privacy focused, and not having good UX explaining why common operations don't work as expected. For example I couldn't save a file onto my computer and was pulling my hair out until I did a binary search through every version of Firefox, found the first version that didn't work, read deep into the patch notes, and discovered that I needed to set the magical flag of dom.ipc.plugins.sandbox-level.

[selrond]

I want to love FF, I really do! But the fact that it causes my CPU usage to go through the roof every couple of minutes for no apparent reason makes me want to pull my hair out...

[gronne]

funny, I could say the same about chromium (except the wanting to love it part)

[mixmastamyk]

Try vacuuming the sqlite files in the profile directory.

[eitland]

Have you looked at about:performance to see which tab is responsible?

[toddsiegel]

Same here. I have been been back on FF for a few months and have been very happy. It's fast and works great in every respect.

I did experience a glitch the other day in dev tools where a pane blanked out on me. I may have had a crash too, but that's it.

[tehbeard]

From my experience it's not a glitch, ff Dev tools are slow and second class compared to chrome.

Quantum made it viable to use ff on my old laptop, but a daily driver for a web dev it still is not.

[pureliquidhw]

I moved away due to the battery drain issues on OSX, has that been addressed?

Based on this bug and some of the related ones, the answer seems to be no.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

Until then I'm stuck with Opera/Safari/Chrome, mostly in that order.

[wonthegame]

Try viewing Imgur.com on Safari. Just scroll a bit until you get a couple gifs displayed and check the CPU usage on the imgur.com tab. Just insane that a few gifs destroy an i7. Is it bad video compression? I notice imgur attempts to make gifs from mp4 files and vice versa but damn. A 5 year old iPhone has no problem with this task.

It'd be nice if you could throttle processor usage. I'd rather have a choppy experience on the occasionally website than constant fans and having my Mac turn into a heater.

[itchynosedev]

It was unusable for me too, afaik it had to do with scaling more than anything else, so if you toy around with scaling factors it might help.

[blitmap]

I think Servo is going to be a massive Good Thing (tm) for Mozilla, but they have messed up a few times with UI anti-patterns and sneaking extensions into updates that users didn't opt for. They have seriously breached our trust like Google and it will take years to earn back that trust.

I switched to Firefox away from Chrome recently. I am happy with this but I wish they had a friendly UI you could bring up to expose cookies to be shared between tabs on an opt-in basis. Cookies should be isolated per-tab by default. Cookies and other persistent data should be forgotten as soon as the tab is closed. I don't like container tabs, I think it gets confusing to manage tab groups by profile. I want to quickly mouse over and say "expose this tab's cookies to this other tab".

I'm still sad I can't get perfect "tree tabs" going. I have a plugin I use to show parent and child tabs in a tree arrangement but nothing looks sexy about it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/?sr...

I want an actual tree of lines shown to each row/tab to quickly visualize how the tabs were created from parent-to-child. How it currently looks is too busy with borders everywhere. It's functional but not what I envisioned. I can't hide the tab bar at the top as far as I know. I'm just frustrated that I remember trying to make this work in like 2002 and it's soon to be 2019. I feel like browsers aren't made for workstations, but casual consumption. They should enable so much productivity.

I also wish they focused on minimizing and isolating references to various Web APIs, so it would be easier to unreference and orphan them - unreachable from advertisers.

(Unrelated rant?)

[chmln]

I'm afraid our hopes of Servo resurrecting Mozilla were short lived. From what I understand, work on Servo for Desktop has been phased out considerably.

See https://blog.servo.org/2018/03/09/servo-and-mixed-reality/

[Sylos]

> sneaking extensions into updates that users didn't opt for.

If you have auto-updates enabled, Mozilla, like Google, has complete control over the source code that runs on your system. Had they wanted to sneak new source code in, they would have specifically not packaged it as an extension, which made it user-visible and limited to the extension API in its capabilities, and instead just patched the Firefox code to include it. So, they were decidedly doing the opposite of sneaking it in.

[Vinnl]

> They have seriously breached our trust like Google

Mozilla has made some mistakes, absolutely, but it really is not anywhere close to being "like Google". It's still the far superior choice, personal freedoms-wise, over Chrome.

[nachtigall]

> I can't hide the tab bar at the top as far as I know.

It could be easier, but still doable in 5 minutes (that's how long it took me) with some CSS, see https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... on how to do it.

There seem to be some security concern or it's not so easy UX wise, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 for all the discussions and progress.

[dan-robertson]

It is possible to hide the top tab bar but extensions are not allowed to do it. You have to write some css file to set the tab bar to display:none. I think there’s a description of the process somewhere in the github repo for that extension (maybe in an issue)

[rehemiau]

Many people won't switch because either Firefox is slow on their platform (MacOS) or stuff they use are slow on Firefox (Google ecosystem, many other webapps optimized for Chrome)

[irrational]

I use Firefox on MacOS. It is easily as fast as Chrome for me (and I have tons of tabs open in multiple windows). And I use Google Docs/Sheets/etc. all day long with zero slowdowns.

[ziftface]

I'm on macOS and Firefox is at least as fast as Chrome. Granted, I'm on nightly with WebRender turned on, but that will be in regular Firefox soon enough.

[tyteen4a03]

Yep, can confirm that FF is still killing my 2014 MBP.

[dewiz]

Other than some Google sites optimized for Chrome (which reminds of sites working only in IE...), Firefox on MacOS works pretty well, better than Chrome on average. Safari on MacOS is probably the winner, because Apple invests a lot on battery saving and performance of its sw.

[RandomInteger4]

The whole Google ecosystem is slow on any platform, including Google platforms (Chromebooks).

[marssaxman]

I haven't noticed Firefox being any slower than Chrome on MacOS. Then again, I only use Chrome to browse facebook.com, so who knows.

[MrHorsetoast]

What about developer tools? As a front-end dev I'm very pleased with the tools Chrome offers. I only tried Firefox's dev tools briefly but can they compare?

[p49k]

Their dev tools are comprehensive and have a very similar UI to Chrome. Personally, it wasn't hard to pick it up and I haven't (yet) run into any limitations.

[leppr]

Yes, they're mostly the same. On some points Firefox is better (e.g. DOM Inspector, Network tab, animations, dark theme), on others Chromium is (e.g. Profiler, sources). I use both.

[st3fan]

Yes they are first class. Give them a try.

[llampx]

If you are a developer I'd think that you would use both, along with Safari on Mac if that's available to you.

[speedplane]

Sadly, Google Chrome has moved beyond just providing good performance. They now nicely manage all of your google accounts, which is really nice when you have a work account, personal account, etc. These nice small but nice features can really lock you in, especially if you use Chrome on your phone as well as your computer.

It's clear that the current round of browser wars isn't just about speed and standards compliance, but also feature lock-in too.

[hacknat]

I’ve been contemplating this for a while, and I just took the jump today. You’re right it’s just as good. Especially since google s-canned inbox, I’m feeling pretty vindictive (switched to paid proton mail as well).

[macspoofing]

Performance. Firefox still lags in performance. Granted you may only see the difference in edge cases, but I work for a company that creates a performance-sensitive web-app and the difference is big.

I do agree however that the entire industry standardizing on Chrome is not great for anyone (including Google). I'm surprised that Microsoft isn't continuing Edge development, even only as a hedge and to have a sensible default for Windows - especially if you're building Windows Apps and you need a browser control. Why give that up to Chrome? And it isn't like Microsoft can't afford it - they are almost a trillion dollar company.

[thiagowfx]

Firefox 3 was much better. No Pocket. No article/news recommendations. Panorama view. Firefox used to be my favorite until it started to get bloated. Prioritizes privacy? Then let me turn recommendations and Pocket permanently off.

[c0nducktr]

Funny using Panorama as an example of when Firefox was better, and then criticizing it for Pocket, in context of bloat.

I'd bet Pocket is more useful to more people than Panorama was.

[kayamon]

The weird thing about Pocket is it was actually better _before_ they integrated it, when you installed the separate Pocket extension.

[Draiken]

I tried and simply couldn't do it. Although I know in my case it's a very specific issue with multiple profiles.

I have a work and personal profile for Chrome and even tho I could make that work on Firefox, one very simple thing makes it completely unusable to me: clicking a link always opens on one particular window/profile.

On Chrome whatever window you last used will be the one opening the url, which is extremely necessary when using multiple profiles.

Perhaps one day that's going to be implemented and I can go back to the good old FF.

[dewiz]

If understand your scenario, you can do that with FF, if you don't force a url to be always opened in one profile. For instance you can have sites hard-linked to specific profiles (e.g. social networks) and others that are not, so they stay in the current session (e.g. paypal, which otherwise is broken by the multi account feature).

[atombender]

Adapting a comment I posted in a different Firefox thread:

I'd like to use Firefox. I prefer its ideals to everything else. I've tried it out several times the last year. It's okay. Unfortunately, I always end up going back to Safari. Despite the performance improvements, Safari still feels like a faster, sleeker, smoother, and more user-focused browser.

Firefox is still pretty ugly. On macOS, it feels chunkier and less natively integrated. It does not feel like a first-class citizen of macOS, but rather like a gtk+ or Qt app ported to the Mac.

Safari's "omnibar" is superior to Firefox's. Safari actually suggests web sites (see https://imgur.com/a/dY2SWKB), which I use all the time. Wikipedia is a major one. Start typing "Richard Fey", for example, and the first hit will be the Wikipedia page for Richard Feynman, complete with a short summary and photo. Firefox forces me through a Google search. I use DuckDuckGo and its shortcuts, but Safari's suggestions are more helpful.

I also tried out Firefox on iOS some time ago, and it wasn't as nice as Safari. For there to be a point to this, I'd need the same browser in both places, with perfect syncing of bookmarks, cookies, tabs, etc., just like Safari. I'm not tied to iCloud for this, though it'd be nice to use iCloud and not yet another cloud syncing mechanism.

Lastly, migrating is a pain. There's apparently no way to import my current Safari session (I have probably 60-70 tabs) or history (I keep everything I visit, going back years), which means I'd lose stuff by migrating and would have to migrate tabs over incrementally. Hard to try out a browser in any meaningful way this way.

Here's a few things Firefox could do to interest me:

- Make super-sleek platform-specific UIs that feel native. Do you really need a platform-agnostic GUI toolkit for the chrome? The renderer is the portable part. I don't care about theming myself, and wouldn't miss it if my browser didn't have it (Safari doesn't). I prefer an opinionated browser that knows what it should look and feel like.

- Innovate by addressing actual user pain points. Containers are an innovation, but they target techies and fail the grandmother test. I'd like true containers, where every 2nd-level domain is contained. This means having to be innovative about how to address cross-origin things (Google spreads itself over many domains, and then you have things like OAuth).

Another huge innovation you could bring to the table is to fix the user identity and authentication problem. I use a password manager, but why are we still logging in with user names and passwords these days? Why is the password manager using brittle form fills rather than APIs, for God's sake? Here's my solution: When I go to Reddit or whatever, and I'm logged out, what if my browser showed a little bar at the top that said: "This web site would like to use your profile 'Atombender'. [Accept] [Ignore]". On accept, browser and web site would negotiate through some kind of opaque, cryptographically secure token (via some plugin API so that providers like 1Password and Apple can store your state) so that the browser can prove that I am me, and the web site can prove that it is itself. No more phishing, no more remembering passwords. Web sites can only identify users that you've granted access to your identity to, and like ApplePay your true identity should be hidden behind an opaque identifier. Standard protocols could be defined for things such as email addresses and phone numbers, so that I can edit the email for my profile locally, and it would automatically make an API call to the web site to update the email address on that end. Things like deleting an account, setting up 2FA etc. would be part of this API. Of course, to accomplish this you have to design a standard and make web sites use it. Mozilla used to have enough clout to do this, anything is possible.

Another area where innovation is needed: Fix the tab problem. Bookmarks, tabs, windows -- we can do better. Why isn't a tab and a bookmark sort of the same thing? Why is bookmark editing so bad? Why do bookmarks get broken when the web site disappears or changes? A bookmark should save a complete copy of that page!

And why can't I search my history of visited web pages? I remember reading an article a few weeks ago. It mentioned Charlemagne's reign but the title was about something completely different. I don't remember anything else. How do I find it? Browsers only record the title and URL and visit time. Why can't I search for "Charlemagne" in the browser and get a hit?

- Firefox can interest me with great performance, but Quantum has been disappointing on macOS. I remember the standalone WebRender (?) demo app a few years ago, and it was insanely fast. Maybe because it had less legacy baggage. Firefox could charm me by using significantly less RAM and less idle CPU.

- Why don't browsers have adblocking built in? I use 1Blocker, and it has a clunky UI where you can point the cursor at a page element to block that specific element. This could be made so smooth.

- To catch more developers' mindshare, Firefox could develop a super-modern, low-resource-usage Electron competitor with some kind of easy (gRPC?) glue for interfacing with languages. Join forces with Slack to make it happen.

Just some ideas. I don't pretend I know better than the Firefox team, and I'm just one data point, of course.

But like many people I see Firefox as being increasingly less relevant. I don't see this as being caused only by the ascendancy of Chrome, either.

[clouddrover]

> Why don't browsers have adblocking built in?

Firefox has built-in tracker blocking, which has the side effect of blocking a lot of ads and makes your pages load faster:

https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/tracking-protection-always-...

Brave also has built-in tracker blocking:

https://brave.com/

> I use 1Blocker, and it has a clunky UI where you can point the cursor at a page element to block that specific element.

uBlock Origin has a similar feature. I think it works smoothly in Firefox:

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

[ken]

I, too, really want to like Firefox, but usability (at least on Mac) is clearly not a priority. Standard keyboard shortcuts are broken, and have been for years. There’s abstraction layers (unique to FF) to figure out how to make a text field work like a text field. The preferences dialog box is gone, for some reason.

When FF wants to be a Mac app, I’ll be the first one in line to use it.

[baby]

This, and get Tree Style Tabs. It's literally the best thing about Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

[chrischen]

A good chunk of people who actually care about their computer/work on a computer a lot use a Macbook, and use it while on battery power. So battery efficiency is a major issue for me and because my browser is basically constantly open and full of tabs, I have no choice but to use Safari.

[esistgut]

After quantum I did my best to switch but I had the following problems: no scrollbar search highlights, terrible Linux/gnome dark theme integration, angular source maps not working. After a couple of weeks I got back to Chrome.

[mixmastamyk]

Looks great on my Linux/mate dark theme. Wonder what the difference is?

[barrongineer]

I tried to switch to firefox a few months ago, but it had no way to view websocket frames in the dev tools. This was kind of a deal breaker for me at the time as I was doing a lot of ws work. Have they remedied this?

[FooHentai]

I just had to switch back to Chrome because firefox couldn't handle multiple (4+) 1080p x264 streams in the same window. Chrome managed to handle 18 of them, across two windows, without a hitch.

[baroffoos]

How often are you streaming 18 1080p streams at once?

[sneakernets]

Firefox 57 is why I switched to Chrome in the first place. If I'm going to use a butchered UI, I might as well use the original from whom everyone copied. And on top of that accessibility was a nightmare.

My grandmother had glaucoma and could not use Firefox 57 in any capacity because the feature to have large chunky Netscape/Mosaic buttons was removed completely. I had to switch all her stuff over to SeaMonkey, which still had the ability to have large buttons, so she could use a web browser.

[OhSoHumble]

Right now I have this bug in Firefox where the results from the drop down menu are incorrect. As in, if I get an autocomplete result that is several lines down - say, foobar.com - and I click on it then I'll be taken to barbar.com. If I click on the result that is several lines above foobar.com then I get foobar.com. I don't know how to explain this correctly.

[natex]

I've been trying to use Firefox at work for years. It doesn't work well in my company's intranet (lots of Sharepoint). Random pieces of the the company website do not show up and I get way too many certificate warnings. Chrome, Edge, and IE work fine. Firefox hasn't worked through 2 iterations of our intranet over the course of 10+ years.

[unsignedint]

I think the reason is probably network.negotiate-auth.delegation-uris and network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris in about:config, and your authentication is failing.

Since Chrome, Edge, and IE uses Windows certificate infrastructure and Firefox uses its own, it won't understand directive perhaps pushed through your company's group policy. You can specify address of your intranet site, in style of https://.example.com (where subdomain of example.com is covered in this case) and it should work.

As for certificate, is it using internal certificate of some sort? If that's the case, you will have to load it to Firefox's NSS.

[speedplane]

Also, scrolling on firefox is awkward and imprecise. They seem to prefer bouncy accelerated/decelerated scrolling where Google Chrome is as sharp as a knife. When I take my finger off the scroll wheel, I want scrolling to stop immediately, I don't want it to keep moving for a handful of pixels to artificially slow down.

[i_live_there]

Check your settings. My scroll works equally on both browsers

[ospider]

I have switched to Firefox two month ago. The only feature I missed about "show initiator in devtools network panel"[1]

1. https://github.com/jingjingke/crontab.git

[wetpaws]

I'm trying to use Firefox both on my home and work machines, but until Mozilla fix their horrendous developer tools I have to keep both browsers open side by side

[fixermark]

I keep them both installed, for the rare occasion when some web app or other only works performantly on one of them.

[eightysixfour]

Except for the battery life on laptops. Edge and Chrime are way ahead here and it is very frustrating.

[andai]

You may have missed a spot: using a privacy conscious browser on an OS designed to spy on you.

[AnaniasAnanas]

> and prioritizes privacy.[0]

It actually prioritizes calling home, stopping ad-blockers from working on Mozilla owned sites, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I am a Firefox user myself, and I do think that Firefox is the most privacy oriented browser when compared to the other popular ones, but nowadays it is a pain in the butt to disable all of their spyware on about:config.

[Steltek]

> stopping ad-blockers from working on Mozilla owned sites

Err, do you mean preventing extensions from modifying critical sites like addons.mozilla.org? Because that's seems like common sense to me.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

I would switch in a heartbeat if the audio issue for sped up videos is solved...

[sobani]

Which audio issues do you experience? I regularly watch videos sped up on YouTube and InfoQ and never noticed any problems.

[mathiasrw]

Try Brave from brave.com - so much innovation in one browser.

[MarcysVonEylau]

One gripe I have with FF is that their DevTools are crap... Chrome is a really unprecedented WebDev platform for me.

[kanon]

What about Chromium?

[bunderbunder]

The whole subtext here, as described in TFA, is that the near-complete dominance of Google's browser engine is worrying.

[firethief]

Using Google's browser engine still gives them a lot of control, even if you aren't using their trimmings.

[sAbakumoff]

Brave

[microcolonel]

Firefox has had its fair share of debacles this year too. Chrome works better on Linux for me, and Firefox is full of strange and unusual bugs which Mozilla shows little or no interest in fixing.

If Mozilla forked Chromium this year, Firefox would be a better browser (even with the very interesting developments coming from the Servo camp, E10S, etc. etc. etc.). Firefox has accumulated bugs, particularly around their implementation of SVG, since about 4.x, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better on that front.

[chadAnon69]

Brave browser is solid as well, built in ad blocking and Tor support. CEO is brandon eich and it's built on Chromium

[bjz_]

> and it's built on Chromium

That's a negative to me - again, too much browser engine consolidation. :/

[mixedCase]

> It's good again

No it's not. It's frequently hanging certain tabs which I'm forced to close and reopen because I get the grey spinner and my 8 core machine grinds down to a halt.

On Android when opening the embedded webview powered by Firefox, whether the page will load without being forced to open it in the full browser is a coin toss.

It doesn't help that Mozilla has lost most of my goodwill by being such a mixed bag when it comes to politics and decision making the past few years.

I still use it, because I like that a part of the company is trying to move the needle forward in browser tech, I find container tabs better than Chromium profiles and up until recently I could get bypass paywalls without workarounds, but unless things improve by the time Brave moves the Chromium fork out of beta, I'm moving to Brave.

[Smithalicious]

Mozilla has a political stance that I do not support, and they openly use Firefox to push it. This doesn't get brought up enough on places that lean liberal such as HN, but it is a reason why I, and several other people I know, cannot use it in good faith.

It's also a fair bit slower than Chrome, which doesn't help.

[mprev]

Can you be more specific about what you perceive to be their political stance, how that impacts your browser usage, and how it differs from that of the other browser vendors?

[llampx]

Google also has the same political stance and they push it very hard.

[gyaru]

And this political stance is?