firefox

non-chromium branch

There's a chromium branch‽

FIREFOX FOREVER

People complain about Firefox performance and site compatibility all the time and I have no idea what they are talking about. I use both it and other browsers all the time and Firefox for me is the better one.

It is a common misconception, they perform functionally identical across multiple PC's and updates. People are just slow to change their minds.

Also browsing the web with the uBlock Origin installed, will signifiy improve the speed. Meanwhile protect you from various bad stuff, adds being nonexistent. :)

Check this app & also tick all the boxes within its Settings.

I used to to think the android mobile app was slow. It's gotten allot better though. Now that it supports uBlock I think it's the best browser for Android.

I think there were some bad releases many many years ago, but right now Firefox works great. But unfortunately that reputation lingers, and people don't like changing their browsers often.

It's not slow, people are slow in their heads. Chrome may feel a bit faster but it's not even what matters when picking a web browser. Will it protect your privacy online? Yes or no.

Firefox is slower on synthetic benchmarks compared to Chromium ones but I've never seen a noticeable difference while surfing sites.

@blotz @siriusmart, speed of browsers are very relative and the differences relay often to certain webpages, security soft or extensions. Anyway we are speaking of miliseconds. But its a fact that most webpages are optimized for the most used engine and this is Blink. This in turn is fed back, so most browser companies in turn use Blink, which is a path of no return.
If you go for speed, neither Gecko nor Blink can compete with, for example, the Otter Browser with an alternative engine and QT5.

@blotz @siriusmart I have like 32 gb of high speed ram and my browser would still run slow the last time I used firefox. This was a very very very very long time ago and I have like 400 tabs open but that's why I have a computer with 32gb of ram to browse the web.....

Didn't the memes sub on Reddit end up adding a rule that only allowed original memes (that people have "handmade" themselves), to avoid excessive reposts? Heh.

But the point is that they may seem different but really all are using the same engine. So the order is correct.

I just wish chrome wasnt so fucking useful by comparison. its integration into my android phone is equal to none. the firefox browser on android is ok but it does not integrate quite as well as the whole google platform. then there's the performance on linux. I hate to say it but chrome feels so much smoother and nicer to use on linux than even firefox does. I've tried making the full switch to firefox several times, last time I daily drove it for probably almost 3 months but eventually found my way back to chrome, it was just a more enjoyable experience.

then there is the fact that every website builds their code to ensure it works with chrome, that is one advantage of chrome being the vast majority of the browser user pool, web devs can focus on making sure the one thing works really well.

that all said, just like wine and linux, it is important that we have a completely separate alternative so we're not entirely reliant should the ship start to sink. I've already fully converted to linux and its been my daily driver for a few years now, not looking back. I know plenty of people are still on windows but with ever new release it feels like they're doing more and more to punch holes in the SS.Windows ship and i'll eventually be a sinking boat for enough people who see that an alternative exists. Same will need to be said for chrome vs firefox

I actually use Edge as a daily, but I also use Firefox because I want to support them. Unfortunately, Edge and Chrome are superior to Firefox in performance. Edge especially is really really great at resource management, and it doesn't matter if I have 1 or 700 tabs and windows open. It'll manage it without any issues. Firefox however, won't. Sure, it's rich in features and it's very very flexible, but it's not as stable or fast as the former.

Still love Firefox, though!

Single point of failure for everyone with no alternatives is very bad if something nasty happens.

That's not really true since it's open source. We have teams from 10+ browsers paying close attention to the Chromium code base. So while people will put up with some nonsense, the community would eventually fork it if they got too far out of line. Deep down, Google knows this and it's why they have hesitated to implement changes that would negatively affect ad blocking extensions. They are one step away from tons of developers forking their code base.

I think there is nothing like it. It's not perfect but it's damn good still.

a little more work and you can make it to 100! keep going, you can do it!

Really, I feel like in Groundhog Day and click every time hopping something will be different.

sadly, firefox is in fact hte lone bastion against the tide of evil. And even now, we need to abandon MS and IOS. I am not even sure Linux is thsat good. We need a new OS which will defeat all virii. Yes, an OS built on completely new mechanics, to again begin the new pc revolution!

Qutebrowser is chromium-based, and barely anyone uses icecat since the modern web heavily relies on JS, iceraven is a Firefox for Android fork, which could maybe have like 50 users and librewolf is unusable for daily usage because of RFP (resist fingerprinting worsens a lot of sites that rely on canvas). (This is just my opinion)

opera also used to maintain their own browser engine if i remembered correctly, but they all just dipped

Edge used to be unique, and sucked for it.

Only reason is free access to GPT 4 and Dall-e

On the flipside, atm Edge seems to be the better Chromium choice (if you don’t have a Microsoft hate boner).

Yeah it lags behind because Chromium is developed by Google, which is the 4th biggest company in the world. And Safari is obviously from Apple which is the largest company in the world. I don't think the fact that Mozilla lags behind should upset anyone. The fact they can compete at all is impressive I think.

Firefox is behind in some areas, but ahead in others - eg. privacy/tracking.

I see it the other way around. I have a feeling that FireFox follows the specs while Chromium kind of has its own plan and directly introduce new behavior without much care for standards.

Since Chromium based browsers have the majority of the market share, you have the feeling that FireFox is awkward/lag behind. Now look back at Opera when they still have their own engine and you will see that while they try to introduce new behaviors just like Chromium, their limited market share means that people don't feel the need to make use of these "innovations".

You want an even more unpopular opinion? I use WebKit based browsers for web developing because of the clarity of the devtools, performance and Interop.

You can go take a look at the web inspector documentation on WebKit.org to check the features.

So one and only thing I miss from Chrome is Lighthouse.

The problem is the lack of diversity. Google controls Chromium and almost all browsers are Chromium based so Google controlls the supported web features of almost all browsers, giving them the power to decide which web features are supported on the internet and which aren't. They use this for example to push their own file formats for the web instead of better alternatlives. Remember when everyone was mad that ublock origin wouldn't work on Chromium browsers anymore? Same thing. They get money from ads so they make it harder to block them. Google shouldn't have that much power over the web.

One big life-changing thing will be something like Manifest V3, limiting ad-blockers capabilities. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Rules for thee and not for me kind of stance when it comes to who is collecting all the sweet data from its users, it wont be possible to block every tracker and ad from Google in the future because every add-on will have a limit of how many domains they are trying to block.

I mean what could possibly go wrong if the biggest data collector and ad provider has a monopoly on web browser?

Why is it bad to use chromium base browsers? If the market is essentially only Chromium and Safari, Firefox compatibility will be even less important and broken sites will only lead to a bigger monopoly because users will switch.

Mostly having the centralized backbone of chromium makes people uncomfortable since it can do a lot from behind the scenes if it wanted to. But the raw base form is pretty much fine AFAIK, it's just very rare among browsers to do so.

i literally saw it on discord a few seconds ago lol

It's web builders deliberately building their sites and webapps for chromium based browsers only, because it has over 80% market share. They only test on firefox rudimentally. The experience is subpar and people use chromium instead because of it, cementing chromium as the most used browser. Some site builders do this because they don't have the time to extensively test a browser with low market share, others, like Google, do it deliberately.

Depends on what sites you are using, google sites are slower for me, others are faster.

Also looks like chrome is better at looking faster somehow, probably starts to render page sooner.

And of course: wgich extensions do you have in firefox and how old is your profile. Try it out with new, clean profile and than you will feel it.

Arc is real fun. I’ve been using it quite a bit lately

Gnome Web is neat but the lack of any extension support is a deal breaker.

Hopefully not for much longer…

Yep

Arc has been an experiment when I got a Mac for work and it really is super helpful managing information and contexts. It really helps. For my private stuff, I changed back to firefox recently. That thing was super slow but now works like a charm again.

YSK that donations to Mozilla don't go to FF developement (which is done by Mozilla Corp.), but are used by Mozilla Foundation for... other things:

https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq/

How will my donation be used? At Mozilla, our mission is to keep the Internet healthy, open, and accessible for all. To learn how your donation is put to use, click here.

You can find more details about Mozilla’s expenditures and governance here.

Don’t Mozilla products, like Firefox, earn income? Firefox is maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. While Firefox does produce revenue — chiefly through search partnerships — this earned income is largely reinvested back into the Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, which span several continents and reach millions of people, are supported by philanthropic donations.

It is funny to me how the first link doesn't actually tell you how you money is used, but just points to Mozilla Foundation home page.

In short, if you donate expecting that your money helps Firefox, you're doing it wrong.

Same. Containers are what Firefox has and chrome just doesn't.

Nothing happened, it's just always been chromium

Same. I just keep Brave around for that. I hope Firefox gets get support when Linux also starts supporting HDR.

it's kinda lacking in features and unideal for the same reason I don't like safari

I don't know if it's just ethical or their unwillingness to improve but they have left a lot of issues open for several years.

Issues like -

• Auto dark mode for web pages - they removed it when Chrome for Android dropped it, but never picked it back up. All other browsers have it now
• Geolocation on Mac. Their argument is weird for this and the issue is still there for over 5 years
• A lot of changes nobody asked, something like address bar auto complete, which they forcefully changed to top sites without even giving options
• Slowdown because of bloat - while a lot cliam that it isn't the case, Vivaldi has brought my M1 Mac to its knees, even with brand new instace. Again only one to do so

absolutely proprietary

Truly ahead of its time

I'm assuming you're talking about Firefox? When has it ever been paid???

crypto chrome Microsoft Edge also pays u for seeing ads, but that's just stupid

I use an add-on called Retainer to setting your own shortcuts (https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/retainer/) maybe it can solve your problem.

If only it was FOSS...

absolutely proprietary

Isn't Vivaldi a bit overkill/bloated? It has so many utilities integrated (mail, calendar, …)

But, Brave doesn't do FTP either? And it's full of crypto nonsense.