[bijection]

I've finally switched (back) to firefox today.

I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up.

Everything old is new again!

[echelon]

This is why we need to break up Google.

Google is a de facto monopoly. They own the entire web. The gateway, the browser, the protocols, advertising, discovery.

Google is too big.

[ragnese]

Sure, but we saw this coming a mile away (as in, people have been saying this about Chrome for about a decade). People--especially tech nerds--didn't have to switch to the closed source, conflict-of-interest, browser. But, everyone did, and this is what we get for it. We now have proprietary DRM built in to the web standards, and all kinds of other bullshit, because a bunch of people decided to not learn any lessons at all from Microsoft and Internet Explorer.

But, every time Mozilla does something slightly abrasive, HN users pile on about how Mozilla is ruining their privacy-respecting reputation, and then go back to using Chrome... The double-standard is really something else.

Maybe instead of getting someone else to break up Google for us, we could just... stop using their shit? I'm typing this from Firefox, I use Proton Mail (and pay for it!) for email, and I mostly search with DuckDuckGo (I know that's not perfect, either). I certainly don't feel like I'm living like a caveman...

/rant

[ethagnawl]

I was going to make a joke about giving Firebug a look but (TIL) Firefox's Devtools actually subsumed Firebug a few years back. That's pretty cool and a nice note for that project to end on.

https://getfirebug.com

[Izkata]

They make it sound nice, but the last release of Firebug was after that page says they were unified, and only about half a year before Firefox Quantum removed XUL, which would have killed Firebug anyway. I was still using Firebug because its console was still better than the built-in devtools.

[ttt3ts]

IMO they are still not as good although they have improved. I just develop in chrome and use Firefox for everything else.

[aftbit]

I use a little `chrome-new` script to develop (and sometimes take video calls or use buggy apps) against a totally clean fresh Chrome profile, then I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and uMatrix for daily driving.

    #!/bin/sh
    [ -z $CHROME ] && CHROME=chromium
    TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d /dev/shm/chrome-XXXXX)
    $CHROME --user-data-dir=$TMPDIR --no-first-run --no-default-browser-check "$@"
    rm -rf $TMPDIR

The first line lets me override which Chrome version I launch if I want to try instead google-chrome-stable or google-chrome-beta for example. I keep them all installed from the AUR on Arch.

[KTibow]

What makes them less good? I'm used to Firefox and while the Chrome devtools have more features they're harder to use (eg smaller touch targets, can't accept JS suggestion with enter key)

[ezst]

I know chrome dev tools are capable, but to me they feel much more dumb and convoluted. There's lots of convenience and golden nuggets in Firefox dev tools that makes you feel they've been designed by and for developers.

[knowitnone]

Same. I use Chromium for dev and firefox for browsing

[knowitnone]

their dev environment is still pretty bad

[huhtenberg]

Have you seen Mozilla leadership team though? That is something else altogether.