> We’re rolling out the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension with Mozilla VPN integration. This lets you use a different server location for each container.
This is really cool. I wonder how difficult it would be to allow users to wire this up to arbitrary user-specified VPNs e.g. through WireGuard.
I recently switched from Chrome back to Firefox after the news about Google forcing people to stay logged-in to Chrome for tracking purposes. I’ve switched in the past but always ended up switching back for one reason or another. This time I’ve actually been very happy with it and don’t think I’ll switch back soon.
Better in Firefox:
* Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
* In Firefox the two-finger swipe forward/back works much better. Three-finger swipe works well in both.
* Built-in reader mode that’s instantaneous and works well. In Chrome you need an add-on.
Better in Chrome:
* Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
* Google Docs dictation works. But I never use that.
* Printing lets you scale up past the page size (useful for printing my AYSO team’s lineup).
I'm not familiar with Chrome's tab groups, but I use tree style tabs [0] on Firefox which allows physical grouping of tabs, albeit after a significant layout change.
> Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
This is one of the main reasons why I still use Firefox. Also in my experience Firefox address bar does a better job pulling urls from history based on the words you typed.
> * Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
Have you tried Tree Style Tabs? Presents your tabs as a collapsible, hierarchical sidebar tree. Even when Chrome was kicking Firefox's ass in every other aspect, I stuck with FF because of TST. It's so much better than any other UI for tab management I've ever seen.
If you go through the steps of disabling the top tab bar and sidebar padding elements in user chrome CSS, it's more space effective than anything else too.
Ctrl+Tab recent order is an options in the settings in firefox. Not sure if this is on be default. I got used to this feature from VS Code. Lovely to have it in Firefox!
Heads up, you may lose your tabs when you update. It seems normal tab restoring procedures apply, but if you collect many like me, it means an initial shock of reloading all of them.
"I lost my tabs after the update — What can I do?
You may notice that after updating Firefox to version 94, the tabs from your previous session were closed. To learn how to restore a previous session, visit How do I restore my tabs from last time? Alternatively, following the prompts in the Open previous tabs? one-time notification that will appear after the update will also allow you to restore the tabs from your previous session. "
It would be so, so easy to guard against this if they would just give people:
about:tabs
... which would be a plain text listing of all the URLs of all the tabs you have open.
You could just copy and paste it to a file or whatever.
Instead, we need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people.
Go search for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very, very simple thing.
> On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
I rather they didn't.
EDIT: Ah good, they have an option in the General Settings to disable the background updater.
Why hasn't Microsoft created a system service for this?
It's just inefficient to have each and every installed app run a service… I suppose they take care of it for Windows Store apps, but I don't see why they couldn't make a service for other apps too.
My daily driver is a 2014 MacBook Pro and I just recently switched to Firefox from Safari. It's so much faster it's not even a fair comparison – I feel like I've gotten a whole new computer. Even compared to Chrome it loads pages so much faster on old hardware. Props to Mozilla!!!
I have a 2015 Pro and even if Safari uses less battery, I feel the same thing about Firefox. It is fast and smooth and has less bugs than Safari. However the thing that made my laptop feel cool again is the overwhelming amount of extensions available. There are so many of them and they really improved the ux. Safari has way less and most of them are commercial projects by big techs that collect datas or paid extensions by indie devs that I still can’t 100% trust because they’re closed source. Most of the extensions you find with the search bar on firefox is open source.
Safari was also buggy for me for some of our service web pages like Ambari - for some reason Safari took 1 core to 100% and internet stopped working everywhere. Only solution was to kill the process. With Firefox, everything seems to be working perfectly (albeit Youtube loads slower). I also find the redesign delightful and visually appealing.
For such a dramatic page-loading difference, I wonder if your Mac is using a not very good DNS that Firefox is avoiding because it defaults to DNS over HTTPS.
I wish they'd just give me an ability to delete address bar suggestions/favorites like in the old days. One of their worst old bugs if you upgraded from a previous release.
I am typing this from Firefox, which I switched back to right after Quantum.
I don't want to give an impression that I'm a shill, but I'm getting more and more intrigued by Brave every day. I think they made the right call by focusing on crypto, their search indexing technique is very unique (and it works!), as is their BAT attention token. They are _trying_ to doing something different, Firefox is not.
What I instead get from Firefox for trying to support their monetization, is seductive-looking spammy ads on their New Tab page that come back even after I dismiss them. Brave ads vs Firefox ads would be a tough comparison - the former is more annoying and intrusive, but I definitely think I prefer them. And long term, I think I would bet on Brave _over_ Firefox, unless something changes.
I donate every month instead of dealing with the ads. $20 per month is a lot more money than they'd get by me looking at ads, and I can afford to pay that towards something that makes a big difference for the long-term health of the web!
My long term question is - will there end up being one browser implementation of the virtual machine? Browser rendering engines are basically that these days, a big virtual machine for web apps. Is there value having a separate implementation? Some languages that run inside a virtual machine only have a single implementation. Is that bad?
Would it be bad if Mozilla used the internet-vm (why even call it Blink at this point?)
> Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command. This should cut back on unwelcome notifications which is always nice--however, if you prefer a bit of notice, you’ll still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings.
I'm going to re-enable that. I appreciate choice, but just because I use three-key commands, doesn't mean I'm infallible. That dialog has saved me several times from having the wrong window in focus and accidentally trying to kill the whole browser.
One could argue the only controversial decision here was changing existing user's settings without post-update warning. Since in the previous version this warning was always "on" and now it is "off" after update, and you aren't notified of this unless you're in the demographic that reads Firefox release notes.
In general though still appreciate more choice/control.
Fission site isolation is not enabled by default in Firefox 94. Since this is a huge change, it's being slowly rolled out to all Firefox 94 users over the next four weeks to watch for bugs. It's already been enabled for 60% of Firefox Nightly users and 40% of Firefox Beta users for a few release cycles.
To answer my own question: it doesn't, at least not on my system.
I can see the Firefox child process count maxing at around 10 processes with the default fission.autostart set to false:
> ps aux | grep "firefox.*childID" | wc -l
> 10
Also the about:processes page shows some processes containing 'Shared tabs'.
As soon as I flip fission.autostart to true it creates proper separate processes for each tab with the above ps aux command increasing the count as I open up tabs.
Quick question (and a bit of an aside): let's say I'm interested in a specific feature being implemented (profile switcher like in chrome, built in feature as in [1], not an add-on as in [2]). How do I go about getting more attention to potentially have this prioritized?
Making an account in their bug tracker and spamming the threads sounds annoying, I'd personally get upset if someone did that to my repos or issue trackers so I don't want to do it to others. Also I'm not capable of contributing that feature myself so I'm kind of stuck.
Still, version after version of Firefox gets released and posted here, highlighting new things that get developed, and I see no progress there and the more time goes by it gets frustrating. I am using the profile functionality right now, it does work, and does what it's supposed to, just wish it was exposed to me via the same UX as in chrome and from the basic, default install, without needing extra add-ons or config.
> Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command.
Why would anyone want this? On macOS it is infuriantingly easy to press CMD + Q by accident. Why would you not want to confirm that you actually want to close ALL your tabs?
I'm not enthusiastic these days. Which aspect of the UI will they change this time? Is there an about:config hack to get it back? And how long is that gonna work?
I think i'll have to ship a userchrome.css with my dotfiles soon.
So, uh, how do I undo my colorways selection? On opening after the new update it gave me a little panel to choose from, and I picked one, but I don't like it now... but I can't see anything in the settings to revert, or to try a different one? I don't see anything about it in the "Colors" section of the Settings, and searching at the top for "colorways" doesn't return anything.
edit: Found it! In the settings on the bottom left you can choose "Extension & Themes", and then you click "Themes" in the new sidebar, and scroll down a bit.
I am wondering what it would take to seriously fork Firefox (like the MySQL/MariaDB fork), if there is so much discontent with Firefox in the HN community?
To be competitive with Chrome and Safari, Firefox needs the following table stakes:
- Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :(
- A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase.
[+] [-] dopu|4 years ago|reply
This is really cool. I wonder how difficult it would be to allow users to wire this up to arbitrary user-specified VPNs e.g. through WireGuard.
[+] [-] orastor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BMorearty|4 years ago|reply
Better in Firefox:
* Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
* In Firefox the two-finger swipe forward/back works much better. Three-finger swipe works well in both.
* Built-in reader mode that’s instantaneous and works well. In Chrome you need an add-on.
Better in Chrome:
* Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
* Google Docs dictation works. But I never use that.
* Printing lets you scale up past the page size (useful for printing my AYSO team’s lineup).
[+] [-] kd913|4 years ago|reply
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
How about the fact that ublock origin is more effective on Firefox?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24212176
Then there are the other features like TRR, first party isolation, ECH, actual video hw decoding support on Linux...
[+] [-] poidos|4 years ago|reply
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
[+] [-] perfectstorm|4 years ago|reply
This is one of the main reasons why I still use Firefox. Also in my experience Firefox address bar does a better job pulling urls from history based on the words you typed.
[+] [-] oorza|4 years ago|reply
Have you tried Tree Style Tabs? Presents your tabs as a collapsible, hierarchical sidebar tree. Even when Chrome was kicking Firefox's ass in every other aspect, I stuck with FF because of TST. It's so much better than any other UI for tab management I've ever seen.
If you go through the steps of disabling the top tab bar and sidebar padding elements in user chrome CSS, it's more space effective than anything else too.
[+] [-] tpm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kixiQu|4 years ago|reply
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@page
[+] [-] afarviral|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Throwthrowbob|4 years ago|reply
"I lost my tabs after the update — What can I do?
You may notice that after updating Firefox to version 94, the tabs from your previous session were closed. To learn how to restore a previous session, visit How do I restore my tabs from last time? Alternatively, following the prompts in the Open previous tabs? one-time notification that will appear after the update will also allow you to restore the tabs from your previous session. "
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
[+] [-] rsync|4 years ago|reply
about:tabs
... which would be a plain text listing of all the URLs of all the tabs you have open.
You could just copy and paste it to a file or whatever.
Instead, we need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people.
Go search for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very, very simple thing.
Here is our $500 bounty for this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28129829
... and no, I don't want to install an extension. This should be built into the browser.
[+] [-] afarviral|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lemoncookiechip|4 years ago|reply
I rather they didn't.
EDIT: Ah good, they have an option in the General Settings to disable the background updater.
[+] [-] m_eiman|4 years ago|reply
It's just inefficient to have each and every installed app run a service… I suppose they take care of it for Windows Store apps, but I don't see why they couldn't make a service for other apps too.
Same on the Mac, of course.
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evilpie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dt2m|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heresaPizza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Suchos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] extra88|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filereaper|4 years ago|reply
I've been manually turning this feature on so this is a welcome improvement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29047339
[+] [-] wartijn_|4 years ago|reply
> And on Linux, we’ve improved WebGL performance and reduced power consumption for many users.
It links to a page with some more info[0]. Exiting stuff.
[0] https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
[+] [-] nullspace|4 years ago|reply
I don't want to give an impression that I'm a shill, but I'm getting more and more intrigued by Brave every day. I think they made the right call by focusing on crypto, their search indexing technique is very unique (and it works!), as is their BAT attention token. They are _trying_ to doing something different, Firefox is not.
What I instead get from Firefox for trying to support their monetization, is seductive-looking spammy ads on their New Tab page that come back even after I dismiss them. Brave ads vs Firefox ads would be a tough comparison - the former is more annoying and intrusive, but I definitely think I prefer them. And long term, I think I would bet on Brave _over_ Firefox, unless something changes.
[+] [-] freeqaz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BMorearty|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calvinmorrison|4 years ago|reply
My long term question is - will there end up being one browser implementation of the virtual machine? Browser rendering engines are basically that these days, a big virtual machine for web apps. Is there value having a separate implementation? Some languages that run inside a virtual machine only have a single implementation. Is that bad?
Would it be bad if Mozilla used the internet-vm (why even call it Blink at this point?)
[+] [-] _bohm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|4 years ago|reply
I'm going to re-enable that. I appreciate choice, but just because I use three-key commands, doesn't mean I'm infallible. That dialog has saved me several times from having the wrong window in focus and accidentally trying to kill the whole browser.
One could argue the only controversial decision here was changing existing user's settings without post-update warning. Since in the previous version this warning was always "on" and now it is "off" after update, and you aren't notified of this unless you're in the demographic that reads Firefox release notes.
In general though still appreciate more choice/control.
[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
[+] [-] wooptoo|4 years ago|reply
[1]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si...
[+] [-] cpeterso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wooptoo|4 years ago|reply
I can see the Firefox child process count maxing at around 10 processes with the default fission.autostart set to false:
> ps aux | grep "firefox.*childID" | wc -l
> 10
Also the about:processes page shows some processes containing 'Shared tabs'.
As soon as I flip fission.autostart to true it creates proper separate processes for each tab with the above ps aux command increasing the count as I open up tabs.
[+] [-] _odey|4 years ago|reply
Making an account in their bug tracker and spamming the threads sounds annoying, I'd personally get upset if someone did that to my repos or issue trackers so I don't want to do it to others. Also I'm not capable of contributing that feature myself so I'm kind of stuck.
Still, version after version of Firefox gets released and posted here, highlighting new things that get developed, and I see no progress there and the more time goes by it gets frustrating. I am using the profile functionality right now, it does work, and does what it's supposed to, just wish it was exposed to me via the same UX as in chrome and from the basic, default install, without needing extra add-ons or config.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
[+] [-] weetniet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheArcane|4 years ago|reply
All right!
> Users of the proprietary Nvidia driver will need to wait a little bit longer as the currently released drivers lack an important extension. [1]
Oh no :(
[1]: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
[+] [-] mawise|4 years ago|reply
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482
[+] [-] arianvanp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwiftyBug|4 years ago|reply
Why would anyone want this? On macOS it is infuriantingly easy to press CMD + Q by accident. Why would you not want to confirm that you actually want to close ALL your tabs?
[+] [-] blueflow|4 years ago|reply
I think i'll have to ship a userchrome.css with my dotfiles soon.
[+] [-] losvedir|4 years ago|reply
edit: Found it! In the settings on the bottom left you can choose "Extension & Themes", and then you click "Themes" in the new sidebar, and scroll down a bit.
[+] [-] Y-bar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Archelaos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebiw|4 years ago|reply
For a limited time only? What the heck? Feels like Starbucks.
Otherwise great release of course.
[+] [-] jitl|4 years ago|reply
- Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :(
- A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase.
Chrome has tons of first-party themes (see https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes), so it makes sense for Firefox to try to drive some engagement here too
[+] [-] nisegami|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|4 years ago|reply
That, plus the fact that this is the lead bullet point for their new release makes me think "way too many marketers, not enough engineers".