I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems".
For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve.
Never had problems with font rendering. The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different.
I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox".
Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc.
(I'm replying to the original version of your comment.)
How can you have different bookmarks, extensions, and maybe even a different theme (so you know you're using the right window) with containers?
The answer is: you can't. Because containers and profiles are different things.
That's the "sacrifice" you're asking users to make. To change the way they use browsers, to adapt to something that is useful, but not a complete replacement for the features they want. You're asking them to mix stuff and to be careful not to type personal stuff on a work container (or something like that).
Yes, changing from Chrome to Firefox (and vice-versa) means that you need to make some sacrifices. I moved to Firefox and lost good profile support, have a higher battery drain, and have to deal with Firefox's inconsistencies (UI, ctrl+click behaving differently on links vs bookmarks, etc). I'm okay with the trade-off, but PR talk and positive outlooks don't make these annoyances and downsides go away.
Okay, so what's the logical conclusion here? That the person is lying?
The font rendering is very much off, some people just don't notice or don't care. Denying something others see with their own eyes doesn't help anybody.
>For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve.
I would do that if I could get separate history for a different containers.
I will say the process for creating a new container per website is bad.
* Create new container "target"
* Open new Target container
* Go to target.com
* Click the container menu and choose "Always open in..." and if you have a lot of containers, scroll down to "Target"
And then, you still get asked "Hey, you told us to open this in the target container, is that correct?" even though I have *explicitly* said that's exactly what I want.
---
I would like a shortcut button for any site that isn't assigned to a container, where I could click the container menu and say "Create new container and assign this site to it" where it all happens at once. Boom, site isolated.
> [containers are a] better solution to the problem profiles solve
If this problem is persona/identity/account isolation, then yes.
If you want multiple parallel settings and add-on combinations, then no. I use profiles in firefox for this specific reason.
I've no idea about chrome because I don't use it, but I haven't found any problem with firefox profiles for this purpose anyhow - I just configure the desktop to start firefox with -new-instance -ProfileManager and choose the profile at startup.
If I want multiple profiles simultaneously, I just start them up on different virtual desktops.
The Firefox documentation says to Enable Containers through General Settings -> Tabs [1] but there is no such checkbox [2]. Going into about:config and changing privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled to true [3] enables the checkbox in the settings page [4]. This is Firefox Version 116.0.3 under Ubuntu.
I use Chrome and Firefox interchangeably so I don't have a dog in this fight. Containers aka Personalities needs to be made a first class feature in Firefox and not require the above steps to make it useful to the less tech savy end user.
I disagree here as an avid user of containers. Profiles are still a better separation between personas I have my "home" profile and "work" profile in FF and they are trivially launched with `firefox -P "name"` and keep all data completely separated.
The thing that keeps me from using Firefox is that it doesn't use certain standard macOS interface methods.
That keeps me from using macOS's built-in keybinding system to change tabs with the touch of a function key.
Every other program I use from Finder to my database manager allows me to switch tabs with one button. Firefox has no way to accomplish this, which would make it an interruption to my muscle memory and therefore my productivity.
Duck allows it, so that's what I use instead of Chrome.
As a happy, longtime Firefox user, have to hard disagree here.
> It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems".
Well yes, that was apparently the OP's feeling, along with the belief that overall, the "sacrifices" are worth it. So whether or not the issues felt important (or real) to you, they evidently were for the OP - and possibly other people who are considering switching but as of now are used to Chrome's way of doing things.
> For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers.
If some issue arises because a user hasn't adapted their workflow to the new software and there is in fact a different way of doing things that will result in the same features, that's a legitimate thing to point out. But as the sibling comments make clear, that doesn't seem to be the case here, as containers are missing lots of features that profiles have.
> Never had problems with font rendering.
That's just "works on my machine". OP did have problems, they posted screenshots.
> The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different.
FF's download manager is missing a feature that OP actively used, which is drag and drop of downloaded files. So from that point of view, it's clearly a downgrade.
> I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox".
Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc.
If users have issues with a software, I think it makes a better impression to pick them up from where they are than to do some "there are no problems, move along, citizen" approach.
It's the users who decide what the important issues of a software are, not the developers.
> I feel this article almost do more harm than good. It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems".
Your comment is roughly of the form “that detailed article lists poor solutions to the problems you’ll likely encounter when switching to Firefox, so please instead follow my detailed instructions about alternate ways to fix the problems you’ll likely encounter when switching to Firefox.” It hardly makes anything feel simpler or more enticing!
> Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks).
What exactly does Firefox do differently? I find that the Chrome bar learns very quickly which results to prioritize, based on my input.
Yes. You need to sacrifice. Almost zero of my banking and credit card websites work flawlessly on Firefox which does so on Chrome. So that’s a huge enough sacrifice for me — the end user.
Something I didn't find mentioning is increasing the number of parallel connections in Firefox. When I inspect the network and responses of FF, I often find connections were "blocked" (for several hundreds ms). Thus, increasing the number of persistent connections to a server will unblock those connections and allow the website to render much faster.
Go to about:config and change:
This setting is a classic in the "tweak Firefox" blog posts.
Increasing connection count will make HTTP 1.1 websites faster, but they'll also cause random rate limiting errors if you increase the value too much. How high you should set this value is up to you, but it's one of the first things you should reset when websites start acting weird in Firefox but not in other browsers.
I love Firefox. The only time I struggle it's because it is the only browser today that correctly implements CORS. This is a good thing. But it means broken middle boxes and MiTM enterprise tech (like Zscaler) should fix their stuff rather than pointing their smelly fingers at Firefox.
Mozilla should up its game in educating the public that Edge and Chrome aren't following the standards correctly. This seems IMHO pretty important in a world where everything relies on the browser to sandbox things.
> Mozilla should up its game in educating the public that Edge and Chrome aren't following the standards correctly.
I don’t think most people care about this. What they may care about is whether something works on their default browser, which is likely to be Edge or Safari or Chrome. Mozilla should instead target Microsoft and Google on the standards tracks and in forums where discussions on standards (and on security) happen.
One of the problems with promoting standards is that standards are made by imperfect committees. And they can solve a different problem than exists in the real world.
The font rendering problem is very interesting to me because I have always found Firefox to use the same font rendering as the rest of my system, meanwhile Chrome has this universally thin and conspicuous font rendering across all systems I have attempted using it on.
I currently use Mac OS and I see no difference between text rendered on Firefox and text rendered in other Mac OS applications, but there is a world of difference between Chrome and anything else.
So if I had to make a bold claim without evidence, I would guess Firefox uses the OS default font rendering (i.e. it will be as bad the rest of your OS), meanwhile Chrome's font rendering is universally bad (i.e. it does not follow what your OS uses, on any platform, and if you don't like it, then there's not much you can do).
I agree. While Chrome's rendering may make the fonts more "elegant" and almost seem to be higher resolution/softer somehow, they are also harder to read and have less contrast.
Do people live in their browsers like that? I find it useful to keep both.
95% of the time I'm in Firefox, as one should be -- with all the good adblockers etc.
And for the 5% unavoidable garbage of "things I must use/sign up for in life" that don't implement things properly, including Zoom, I keep Chrome around.
If you or a random reader is on MacOS, try out Orion - a Safari fork that has support for both Chrome AND Firefox plug-ins. I can't stop using Safari... I know, I'm a dying breed, and people at work were (and still are) a bit weirded out by it, but if you're like me, Orion is a very nice alternative if you want "real" adblockers (and 10000s of other plugins) at your disposal!
Chrome is now scanning every file on your computer and sending back metadata to google unless you opt-out in the name of "we made our browser an antivirus too!" but nobody sane believes that stuff.
At least use a different chromium based browser instead of chrome itself. Brave is a fine option.
I hear this now and again, but haven't had Chrome installed for years now without issue. I'm made to use things like Zoom et al. too, but everything "just works" for me?
It would be interesting to see performance figures for Firefox + uBlock Origin vs Chrome and all the advertising/tracking junk it has to drag down to render some well known sites.
I'd bet the cost of all those network calls outweighs anything else in the rendering pipeline.
On Linux you may also want to consider an alternative browser for performance and battery saving. The recent addition (Firefox 115 I believe) of hardware accelerated video decoding should make things better, but I'm still regularly seeing 50-90% CPU for a tab just playing a Youtube video that my Intel GPU should be decoding. I can tolerate that on desktop, but on my laptop I want to preserve battery life.
I'm not sure why but Linux also seems slower in Firefox's benchmarks. My guess is that Mozilla is optimising for their most common users (and Linux users have a high probability of picking Firefox anyway). Hopefully more Windows features will make it into the Linux build soon.
FF is definitely my fave on Mac (containers/no history mode), but Safari isn't that much worse and I have almost zero problems with ads using Wipr content blocker.
> A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, […], their rejection of JPEG XL
The part about JPEG XL seems strange, given that the article linked in the blog post says Mozilla too is rejecting JPEG XL:
> Mozilla's Martin Thomson wrote that while JPEG XL "offers some potential advantages," it wasn't "performing enough better than its closest competitors (like AV1F) to justify addition on that basis alone."
They do half of what profiles do: they isolate cache, cookies, sessions, etc. But they do so in a very light manner and fast manner. The UI is better too. So for things that don't need getting different settings or extensions and so on, containers are the way to go.
I wish people would stop mentioning benchmarks, even when Firefox is wins one.
It is like evaluating bicycles based on their towing capacity. Any website that requires a high performance JavaScript implementation is already doing so much wrong that you should just leave.
Warning for people who use or install Firefox UI Fix on other people's computers:
Mozilla occasionally breaks everything with new Firefox releases, and you can end up with a non-functional tabs bar until you reinstall the newest version of Firefox UI Fix. Not so much a problem if you're a techie, but a big problem for the non-techies you install it for.
Firefox used to have a pretty Chrome-like tabs bar with curved trapezoid corners and a lighter highlight for the selected tab.Then one day they decided that's bad, made it all flat rectangles and inverted the color scheme. Someone on the UX team had to justify their existence I guess. So my muscle memory was telling me that the tab that is selected is not selected and I couldn't get anything done.
Okay not a problem, set up some flags that revert the old scheme, done. A few months later, Mozilla breaks that functionality because fuck you. Okay still not a problem, find and install a custom theme that makes the task bar look normal again.
Half a year later they release a new patch that breaks the custom theme by sliding the tabs bar roughly 50% up so it's being clipped by the fucking window. I no longer have any clue what file changes I made to mod in that custom theme so I'm stuck with a broken install of Firefox unless I nuke my profiles. Yaaaay.
sigh
In my probably decade+ of using it, Chrome has never been this annoying.
Firefox has actual browsing history! You can search your real browser history unlike chrome, which allows you to search your google web history, which does not contain all websites.
Nobody mentioned "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" Firefox option that is almost impossible to replicate on Chrome even with extensions. And there is huge user need for this option as there are bunch of Chrome extension for this, mostly using external executables to achieve this.
> I like Chrome’s download bar at the bottom of the screen, as I need to download and handle many files for work. The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it
Is there a way to re-enable this in chrome? It’s been replaced with the dreaded Firefox downloads butt Next to the address bar.
> The fact that it is always visible, in every tab, until you close it
You can also keep it visible in Firefox. Right click the menu bar, click Customize, right click the downloads button, then unclick the hide when empty button.
> Firefox’ built-in profile switcher is far worse than Chrome’s. To open it, you need to start Firefox with the -p parameter.
You can also just go to `about:profiles` in the address bar, without having to launch Firefox with the -p switch. I even have `about:profiles` as my homepage so when I launch Firefox, I then decide which profile I will be using.
1. You can have multiple profile sessions running at the same time.
2. It is best to theme your alt profiles with a different color so you don't confuse them. For example, green one is for one profile and the red one another.
3. "firefox -p 'profile-name'" launches directly into a profile
4. "firefox -p 'profile-name' -private-window" launches a profile in a private window
5. I use keybindings on linux to auto launch different profiles.
As for why you should consider multiple profiles. It gives you the ability to separate concerns. I use a main account, one for work, one for testing stuff, another that has no extensions, and one for anything NSFW.
Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests.
> Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests.
Umm, I keep NSFW stuff off my work computer. I'm not really comfortable with less separation than this.
I use Mozilla's Container Tabs extension for most of this. Unless you specifically want to keep settings/extensions/etc in specific, separate profiles, they're a good in-between solution. In my case, having a single FF instance is desirable as I would juggle between too many profiles which would need similar extensions for completely switching profiles and windows to be a good experience.
I still find it very confusing that the active tab does not 'extend' to the content, but is separated by a shadow. I often mistake the inactive tab for the active one, because it's background is almost closer to the content.
I've always found the Firefox devtools be a little less 'quality of life' like. Just my opinion. Haven't used it in a few years. But for me, I just live in devtools, you know. As most of you here, probably. Opinions?
In my opinion this is one of those "use what you're used to" things. Firefox's dev tools are amazing for me and Chrome's seem difficult to use. They both have very similar features, but the UI of the dev tools is different enough that it is difficult to regularly switch between the two.
I prefer the Firefox dev tools, except for one thing: Chrome's websocket debugger is better. Firefox seems to miss some websocket messages and sometimes they don't show up at all for me.
The CSS dev tools for things like grids and flex in the Firefox dev tools are much better than Chrome's. The debugger is a tad slower if you need to prettify obfuscated Javascript but both do a good enough job at it.
I also prefer the theme Firefox applies to the dev tools, they feel more native and less like something slapped onto the browser.
I havent been able to uninstall Chrome. Everyone makes sure they test their website for Chrome. Firefox/Safari just don't have devs testing on them.
I currently have Firefox for most things, but I seemingly always have chromium open to check to see if a website isnt behaving correctly.
What a terrible time for computing. Chrome is in total control of web. Nvidia + M$ have complete control of high performance computing, and M$ sucks. Apple captures tons of attention and time with their marketing but has low quality products.
What power does MS have over high performance computing? Perhaps some fields use Windows specific applications, but most high performance computing I see uses Linux by default, with WSL for the Windows equivalent.
I use Chrome as a fallback too when the measures I've taken to protect my privacy break websites I can't get around, but in most cases websites just work in my experience. Almost all of the issues I run into are caused by addons messing with websites, like content blockers.
I have a considerable number of tweaks I apply to my Firefox installs, too and the process is a little cumbersome.
I wonder if it would be a reasonable task to set up an “opinionated” fork of Firefox with all the changes being UI/UX-related and keep it up to date with mainline… that would make fresh installs more effortless and allow improvements that aren’t practical with regular Firefox.
I'll throw this advice in as well, about Firefox' disk cache. Not related to Chrome but mainly as a generic way to make Firefox a bit snappier and less grindy/bloated:
It's a failing of the article that they didn't mention it, however it is not true that they do identical things, and some people need / live in those differences.
The Firefox UI for profile management is just awful. If it were as good as the MAC UI it wouldn't be a point of contention.
I use File > Quit to close my browser and all of my windows restore just fine.
If Firefox doesn't restore all your windows on startup, try hitting ctrl+shift+n, that should reopen the last (non-private) window you closed. In my experience this works across sessions, as long as you don't erase the browser history.
AltGr (the right alt key) essentially translates to ctrl+alt on Windows and some Linux configurations. It also acts as a compose key on some configurations, making it quite unreliable for navigation as the system IME may intercept the key before sending it through.
You can rebind it back to a normal alt key at the operating system level if you don't care about the AltGr functionality, that'll probably fix a whole bunch of unexpected problems you may be having in other programs. I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest.
Is this an AltGr thing? On my (US, in Linux) keyboard right-alt-left-arrow works fine, and I'm pretty sure I do the same thing in Windows (again, US keyboard layout).
Someone decided that websites need "hero images" and all the default themes now have it, and if you're asked to load an image, you load an image (many people don't bother changing default themes).
The settings provided do indicate that Firefox has picked a different default subpixel layout than what the monitor has.
This can be because of a bug in autodetection but it can also happen when you orient your monitor vertically, which many people do with secondary monitors.
Assuming the author has set up ClearType right on their computer, I believe this may be a Firefox bug. ClearType on Windows should take care of this stuff already.
"A growing uneasy feeling about Google’s approach to user privacy, Manifest v3, Googles’s WebDRM plans, their rejection of JPEG XL and the omnipresence of Chromium-based browsers nowadays – Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and some others are basically the same programs in different clothes."
He hits the nail on the head. Why support the fascist empire when you can support those making it better. That said, if you really wanted a privacy focused browser then the Bromine, Waterfox, Opera, DuckDuckGo and Tempest browsers should all be investigated.
matsemann|2 years ago
For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers. Hundred times more smooth than profiles. Hence why no one cares about making profiles in Fx better, there is already a better solution to the problem profiles solve.
Never had problems with font rendering. The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different.
I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox".
Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996287
luuurker|2 years ago
How can you have different bookmarks, extensions, and maybe even a different theme (so you know you're using the right window) with containers?
The answer is: you can't. Because containers and profiles are different things.
That's the "sacrifice" you're asking users to make. To change the way they use browsers, to adapt to something that is useful, but not a complete replacement for the features they want. You're asking them to mix stuff and to be careful not to type personal stuff on a work container (or something like that).
Yes, changing from Chrome to Firefox (and vice-versa) means that you need to make some sacrifices. I moved to Firefox and lost good profile support, have a higher battery drain, and have to deal with Firefox's inconsistencies (UI, ctrl+click behaving differently on links vs bookmarks, etc). I'm okay with the trade-off, but PR talk and positive outlooks don't make these annoyances and downsides go away.
dataflow|2 years ago
Okay, so what's the logical conclusion here? That the person is lying?
The font rendering is very much off, some people just don't notice or don't care. Denying something others see with their own eyes doesn't help anybody.
jklinger410|2 years ago
Except for those of us with profile specific extensions, which containers don't help with at all.
KptMarchewa|2 years ago
I would do that if I could get separate history for a different containers.
unethical_ban|2 years ago
* Create new container "target"
* Open new Target container
* Go to target.com
* Click the container menu and choose "Always open in..." and if you have a lot of containers, scroll down to "Target"
And then, you still get asked "Hey, you told us to open this in the target container, is that correct?" even though I have *explicitly* said that's exactly what I want.
---
I would like a shortcut button for any site that isn't assigned to a container, where I could click the container menu and say "Create new container and assign this site to it" where it all happens at once. Boom, site isolated.
ttctciyf|2 years ago
If this problem is persona/identity/account isolation, then yes.
If you want multiple parallel settings and add-on combinations, then no. I use profiles in firefox for this specific reason.
I've no idea about chrome because I don't use it, but I haven't found any problem with firefox profiles for this purpose anyhow - I just configure the desktop to start firefox with -new-instance -ProfileManager and choose the profile at startup.
If I want multiple profiles simultaneously, I just start them up on different virtual desktops.
dano|2 years ago
I use Chrome and Firefox interchangeably so I don't have a dog in this fight. Containers aka Personalities needs to be made a first class feature in Firefox and not require the above steps to make it useful to the less tech savy end user.
1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-firefox-contain... 2. https://imgur.com/a/mX1P25J 3. https://imgur.com/a/fNyRnLk 4. https://imgur.com/a/GjxJwIP
deadbunny|2 years ago
gnicholas|2 years ago
reaperducer|2 years ago
That keeps me from using macOS's built-in keybinding system to change tabs with the touch of a function key.
Every other program I use from Finder to my database manager allows me to switch tabs with one button. Firefox has no way to accomplish this, which would make it an interruption to my muscle memory and therefore my productivity.
Duck allows it, so that's what I use instead of Chrome.
xg15|2 years ago
> It paints a picture that you need to "sacrifice" something to use Fx and lists various "problems".
Well yes, that was apparently the OP's feeling, along with the belief that overall, the "sacrifices" are worth it. So whether or not the issues felt important (or real) to you, they evidently were for the OP - and possibly other people who are considering switching but as of now are used to Chrome's way of doing things.
> For instance it mentions how troublesome it is to use profiles as a "problem". Don't. Use containers.
If some issue arises because a user hasn't adapted their workflow to the new software and there is in fact a different way of doing things that will result in the same features, that's a legitimate thing to point out. But as the sibling comments make clear, that doesn't seem to be the case here, as containers are missing lots of features that profiles have.
> Never had problems with font rendering.
That's just "works on my machine". OP did have problems, they posted screenshots.
> The download manager being different isn't a "problem", and even Chrome is changing it to become more like Fx's [0]. So it's not like Fx's version is "bad", just different.
FF's download manager is missing a feature that OP actively used, which is drag and drop of downloaded files. So from that point of view, it's clearly a downgrade.
> I'd rather have an article on "Switching from Chrome to Firefox? Here are some tips on great features in Firefox".
Like how to use the multi-account containers I mentioned. Or how the address bar ("awesome bar") in Firefox is so much greater than Chrome's in finding stuff (probably because Google wants you to do a google search, not find stuff from your own history or bookmarks). On how Sidebery or other tree-style tabs can make the experience so nice. etc.
If users have issues with a software, I think it makes a better impression to pick them up from where they are than to do some "there are no problems, move along, citizen" approach.
It's the users who decide what the important issues of a software are, not the developers.
tshaddox|2 years ago
Your comment is roughly of the form “that detailed article lists poor solutions to the problems you’ll likely encounter when switching to Firefox, so please instead follow my detailed instructions about alternate ways to fix the problems you’ll likely encounter when switching to Firefox.” It hardly makes anything feel simpler or more enticing!
boredhedgehog|2 years ago
What exactly does Firefox do differently? I find that the Chrome bar learns very quickly which results to prioritize, based on my input.
crossroadsguy|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
cvladan|2 years ago
trallnag|2 years ago
sinuhe69|2 years ago
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
from the default value of 6 to 24 or 32.
Experimental results for a website: (time until finish loading)
No of Conns Prime Cache w/o Cache
6 (default) 25 s 257 s
12 21 s 212 s
18 18 s 190 s
24 15 s 147 s
jeroenhd|2 years ago
Increasing connection count will make HTTP 1.1 websites faster, but they'll also cause random rate limiting errors if you increase the value too much. How high you should set this value is up to you, but it's one of the first things you should reset when websites start acting weird in Firefox but not in other browsers.
janc_|2 years ago
Sardtok|2 years ago
cvladan|2 years ago
pseudotrash|2 years ago
Mozilla should up its game in educating the public that Edge and Chrome aren't following the standards correctly. This seems IMHO pretty important in a world where everything relies on the browser to sandbox things.
jefftk|2 years ago
What's the difference in their CORS implementations? As far as I know all three major browser engines follow the modern spec.
AnonC|2 years ago
I don’t think most people care about this. What they may care about is whether something works on their default browser, which is likely to be Edge or Safari or Chrome. Mozilla should instead target Microsoft and Google on the standards tracks and in forums where discussions on standards (and on security) happen.
sneak|2 years ago
Ultimately we have already passed the point where the web is defined by what Chrome (and to a limited extent what MobileSafari) does.
cozzyd|2 years ago
freedude|2 years ago
koito17|2 years ago
I currently use Mac OS and I see no difference between text rendered on Firefox and text rendered in other Mac OS applications, but there is a world of difference between Chrome and anything else.
So if I had to make a bold claim without evidence, I would guess Firefox uses the OS default font rendering (i.e. it will be as bad the rest of your OS), meanwhile Chrome's font rendering is universally bad (i.e. it does not follow what your OS uses, on any platform, and if you don't like it, then there's not much you can do).
matsemann|2 years ago
jrm4|2 years ago
95% of the time I'm in Firefox, as one should be -- with all the good adblockers etc.
And for the 5% unavoidable garbage of "things I must use/sign up for in life" that don't implement things properly, including Zoom, I keep Chrome around.
jeffhuys|2 years ago
LightHugger|2 years ago
At least use a different chromium based browser instead of chrome itself. Brave is a fine option.
ghusto|2 years ago
haunter|2 years ago
KptMarchewa|2 years ago
Synaesthesia|2 years ago
On Mac I still use safari for the performance and battery saving.
Lio|2 years ago
I'd bet the cost of all those network calls outweighs anything else in the rendering pipeline.
jeroenhd|2 years ago
I'm not sure why but Linux also seems slower in Firefox's benchmarks. My guess is that Mozilla is optimising for their most common users (and Linux users have a high probability of picking Firefox anyway). Hopefully more Windows features will make it into the Linux build soon.
r00fus|2 years ago
hk__2|2 years ago
The part about JPEG XL seems strange, given that the article linked in the blog post says Mozilla too is rejecting JPEG XL:
> Mozilla's Martin Thomson wrote that while JPEG XL "offers some potential advantages," it wasn't "performing enough better than its closest competitors (like AV1F) to justify addition on that basis alone."
Could someone maybe clarify this point?
BiteCode_dev|2 years ago
I would add: embrace tab containers (https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/utiliser-conteneurs-firefo...), especially if you love chrome profiles.
They do half of what profiles do: they isolate cache, cookies, sessions, etc. But they do so in a very light manner and fast manner. The UI is better too. So for things that don't need getting different settings or extensions and so on, containers are the way to go.
bryanlarsen|2 years ago
luuurker|2 years ago
Containers are nice, but you can't have different bookmarks, extensions, settings, etc. It's not a replacement for profiles.
asicsp|2 years ago
asciimov|2 years ago
Main account, one for testing (no extensions installed), one for work (with work extensions), one for nsfw content.
Keeps everything nice a separate.
moribvndvs|2 years ago
bee_rider|2 years ago
It is like evaluating bicycles based on their towing capacity. Any website that requires a high performance JavaScript implementation is already doing so much wrong that you should just leave.
Dwedit|2 years ago
Mozilla occasionally breaks everything with new Firefox releases, and you can end up with a non-functional tabs bar until you reinstall the newest version of Firefox UI Fix. Not so much a problem if you're a techie, but a big problem for the non-techies you install it for.
moffkalast|2 years ago
Firefox used to have a pretty Chrome-like tabs bar with curved trapezoid corners and a lighter highlight for the selected tab.Then one day they decided that's bad, made it all flat rectangles and inverted the color scheme. Someone on the UX team had to justify their existence I guess. So my muscle memory was telling me that the tab that is selected is not selected and I couldn't get anything done.
Okay not a problem, set up some flags that revert the old scheme, done. A few months later, Mozilla breaks that functionality because fuck you. Okay still not a problem, find and install a custom theme that makes the task bar look normal again.
Half a year later they release a new patch that breaks the custom theme by sliding the tabs bar roughly 50% up so it's being clipped by the fucking window. I no longer have any clue what file changes I made to mod in that custom theme so I'm stuck with a broken install of Firefox unless I nuke my profiles. Yaaaay.
sigh
In my probably decade+ of using it, Chrome has never been this annoying.
dblohm7|2 years ago
datadrivenangel|2 years ago
crazygringo|2 years ago
whalesalad|2 years ago
This makes old reddit, HN, and google cloud console all dark mode friendly and it really "just works"
cvladan|2 years ago
donatj|2 years ago
Is there a way to re-enable this in chrome? It’s been replaced with the dreaded Firefox downloads butt Next to the address bar.
jmholla|2 years ago
You can also keep it visible in Firefox. Right click the menu bar, click Customize, right click the downloads button, then unclick the hide when empty button.
jeffbee|2 years ago
spieglt|2 years ago
DieBruderBauer|2 years ago
WallyFunk|2 years ago
You can also just go to `about:profiles` in the address bar, without having to launch Firefox with the -p switch. I even have `about:profiles` as my homepage so when I launch Firefox, I then decide which profile I will be using.
asciimov|2 years ago
1. You can have multiple profile sessions running at the same time.
2. It is best to theme your alt profiles with a different color so you don't confuse them. For example, green one is for one profile and the red one another.
3. "firefox -p 'profile-name'" launches directly into a profile
4. "firefox -p 'profile-name' -private-window" launches a profile in a private window
5. I use keybindings on linux to auto launch different profiles.
As for why you should consider multiple profiles. It gives you the ability to separate concerns. I use a main account, one for work, one for testing stuff, another that has no extensions, and one for anything NSFW.
Too many of you don't keep NSFW stuff off your work profiles, I'm embarrassed for you during your zoom meetings when the url autocomplete briefly betrays your interests.
planede|2 years ago
Umm, I keep NSFW stuff off my work computer. I'm not really comfortable with less separation than this.
folkrav|2 years ago
francocalvo|2 years ago
rho4|2 years ago
jackbrookes|2 years ago
neals|2 years ago
unregistereddev|2 years ago
noman-land|2 years ago
jeroenhd|2 years ago
The CSS dev tools for things like grids and flex in the Firefox dev tools are much better than Chrome's. The debugger is a tad slower if you need to prettify obfuscated Javascript but both do a good enough job at it.
I also prefer the theme Firefox applies to the dev tools, they feel more native and less like something slapped onto the browser.
SushiHippie|2 years ago
bebop|2 years ago
hospitalJail|2 years ago
I currently have Firefox for most things, but I seemingly always have chromium open to check to see if a website isnt behaving correctly.
What a terrible time for computing. Chrome is in total control of web. Nvidia + M$ have complete control of high performance computing, and M$ sucks. Apple captures tons of attention and time with their marketing but has low quality products.
jeroenhd|2 years ago
I use Chrome as a fallback too when the measures I've taken to protect my privacy break websites I can't get around, but in most cases websites just work in my experience. Almost all of the issues I run into are caused by addons messing with websites, like content blockers.
TechPlasma|2 years ago
My only gripe is the loss of Tab Groups (I'm a tab hoarder) and I haven't been able to find a decent replacement.
Liquix|2 years ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
jwells89|2 years ago
I wonder if it would be a reasonable task to set up an “opinionated” fork of Firefox with all the changes being UI/UX-related and keep it up to date with mainline… that would make fresh installs more effortless and allow improvements that aren’t practical with regular Firefox.
intelVISA|2 years ago
eviks|2 years ago
Is Firefox embracing JXL?
daneel_w|2 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35168625
samsquire|2 years ago
jwrallie|2 years ago
Aissen|2 years ago
luuurker|2 years ago
We just have to look at what profiles and containers do to understand that while useful, containers can't replace profiles.
BeefWellington|2 years ago
The Firefox UI for profile management is just awful. If it were as good as the MAC UI it wouldn't be a point of contention.
bad_alloc|2 years ago
jeroenhd|2 years ago
If Firefox doesn't restore all your windows on startup, try hitting ctrl+shift+n, that should reopen the last (non-private) window you closed. In my experience this works across sessions, as long as you don't erase the browser history.
sfortis|2 years ago
adithyassekhar|2 years ago
jeroenhd|2 years ago
You can rebind it back to a normal alt key at the operating system level if you don't care about the AltGr functionality, that'll probably fix a whole bunch of unexpected problems you may be having in other programs. I think Firefox altering the ctrl+alt+left/right behaviour would break more workflows than it fixes, to be honest.
phs2501|2 years ago
GrumpyNl|2 years ago
bombcar|2 years ago
doublerabbit|2 years ago
adastra22|2 years ago
51Cards|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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tlhunter|2 years ago
JJMcJ|2 years ago
erichdongubler|2 years ago
hamdouni|2 years ago
steakscience|2 years ago
ptman|2 years ago
zagrebian|2 years ago
You guys have two Google accounts? I didn’t know that this was even possible.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
nathias|2 years ago
KingLancelot|2 years ago
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veave|2 years ago
jeroenhd|2 years ago
This can be because of a bug in autodetection but it can also happen when you orient your monitor vertically, which many people do with secondary monitors.
Assuming the author has set up ClearType right on their computer, I believe this may be a Firefox bug. ClearType on Windows should take care of this stuff already.
freedude|2 years ago
He hits the nail on the head. Why support the fascist empire when you can support those making it better. That said, if you really wanted a privacy focused browser then the Bromine, Waterfox, Opera, DuckDuckGo and Tempest browsers should all be investigated.