Firefox
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
39 points (88.2% liked)
Technology
59217 readers
2900 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
All day every day
Firefox! This is the way!
What better features? Firefox has pretty much everything nowadays, and is as fast as Chrome.
From the comments I'm noticing a trend
- Google Chromecast issues
- Not allowed to do background effects in Google meet
and from personal experience:
- issues using the store to update add-ons on Google docs
- can't authenticate desktop Google drive
I use a lot of Google products, but avoid Chrome because of nonsense like this. Firefox works fine for everything else EXCEPT certain Google products. Feels intentional
100% intentional. If you spoof your browser signature most work just fine
Google Meet background effects actually work in Firefox if you spoof Firefox user agent to Chrome, I kid you not.
It should work soon without it. Google is just being google and takes its time to fix the problem they created in the first place.
The only time I use chromium is to attach a debugger to GWT (yes, the "G" stands for Google). It runs like absolute trash in Firefox.
Everything else runs better in FF.
This is exactly why companies spend money on marketing, people remember these ideas and internalize them as their justification long after it stops being true. And Chrome being fast hasn't been true for a long time.
It doesn't have translations. I use it anyway, but it's a minor inconvenience as I live in a foreign country.
Translations might be coming soon
Done locally on the device, so no risk of personal info going to some company
Nice!
Native procedural dark mode, Developer CSS Overview, browser extension file access.
I use Firefox exclusively except for when the second one is useful. I really wish Firefox had those three though.
Chromium browsers have only 1 feature I need: access to the Chromecast API. I have 3, Firefox can't connect to them and the last 2-3 times I tried the listed 3rd party methods (fx bridge, etc), I could never get it to work.
Were it not for that, I'd be back on Firefox.
Have you tried setting browser.casting.enabled = true in Firefox's about:config settings?
Trust me, I've tried everything there is. For hours, literally. Nothing worked.
(Casting from Firefox (beta) on Android.)
That's a bummer. Personally, I use an app made to cast web video on android because it has better casting experience (including subtitles support) and wider range of supported websites. The dev is also responsive and would push a fix if you report any site where it doesn't work: Web Video Caster
Agreed, it's an amazing app, well worth the price for premium version.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely try it out.
Edge's vertical tabs and grouping. Every solution on Firefox feels half-baked.
even more you can import google addons into firefox ( right now only in nightly builds but it works )
I generally install chrome to people who have no idea what they are doing. But since you are tech-savy enough to be in the fediverse, I'd recommend firefox without a second thought.
I generally install chrome to people who have no idea what they are doing.
Why? It's not like Firefox is more complicated for the end user than Chrome.
True. However, when something goes wrong with an ignorant person's machine, they are quick to blame it on the "unconventional" choice someone else made.
Fair. I might do the same now, because that is such a good point.
Good point. No one knows what a Mozilla is, but if you say it's Google’s problem everyone shuts up.
That's very true.
I went to Firefox as soon as manifest v3 got announced, rather do it sooner rather than later.
Firefox is a much better choice than most other browsers
Firefox, but if you do need a chromium based browser try ungoogled chromium
Do not use any Chromium based browser. Full stop.
- If you are on Mac, I recommend Orion (Webkit based, but Mac only ATM).
- For every other platform, including Linux, Firefox.
Honestly, Google has gotten so aggressively evil I'd strongly recommend cutting yourself off from all their products entirely. Consider Kagi instead of Google search and Proton instead of GMail. Other offerings also have alternatives that won't spy on you, steal your information, or treat you like both a criminal and a product instead of a customer.
Orion is available on iOS and iPadOS as well, and I second Kagi search
If you want to have choice in the future you should go with Firefox. Google is close to (or maybe already did) make Chrome equivalent of the Internet Explorer.
The better thing to what was with IE is that majority of websites still work fine in Firefox and people who stick to Chrome just do due to mostly ignorance.
Firefox if you take the time to harden it. You can also use librewolf which is hardened OOTB.
I only find Chromium useful for very browser-intensive things like browser games
Unless you really like things like CSS Overview and Sleeping Tabs and the intuitive extension bar you should switch to Firefox. It has container tabs and is a lot more resource efficient.
Is it, though? They seem very comparable to me these days.
That, and I'm pretty sure one of the multiple extensions I use to make Youtube watchable has a memory leak, because I do end up having to restart it periodically.
And yeah, I do miss the automatic tab grouping feature, trying to replicate it is such a hassle on Firefox.
Crucially, though, I still main Firefox despite all that, so... I guess that's my vote.
I've never encountered such issues and when they do happen they're very random and not "periodically". I have no idea what you mean by "automatic tab grouping" but that did remind of two more features I miss from chromium which I've added.
To me my CPU usage has definintly gone down after switching to waterfox. Edge kept crashing periodically for me.
BTW, do you use any other extensions besides Enhancer, Annotations Restored, SponsorBlock and DeArrow?
Enhancer and a downvote revealer. To @gigglybobble 's point below, I would argue Enhancer is part of Firefox at this point.
And while I do understand that's not your experience, I assure you the issues do occur, and the overall weight and performance of Chrome and default Firefox is about the same. I still prefer Firefox, but I'm not gonna lie about the issues I've found for the sake of promoting it, either.
I would not say Enhancer is a part of firefox; the same extension also exists for chrome. However an early 2021 guide did say Firefox wasn't less resource consuming, thanks for that.
Yeah I also have Return Youtube Dislike, forgot to mention that.
Also, I forgot to mention this, but Google didn't really support WEI yet. It's all from two engineers' private opinions, though it's also strange that they haven't made an official statement yet.
Sure, let's test the waters and keep deniability. It's called a weather balloon.
I use Firefox on high privacy settings but that breaks some sites so, when necessary, I use Iron. Iron is a less spy-y version of Chrome which has all the same apps (and a handful of its own).
I go for firefox. If a particular site is broken in there I open edge just for that task and I'm done with it
Absolutely. Vivaldi is great. I prefer it to FF. They definitely won't incorporate DRM changes unless it's completely not modifiable from the chromium core, and if they do how big a deal is it to change browsers? Switch then.
Personally, i'd day neither. Mozilla is on Google's payroll, so if you're trying to battle Google's monopoly, it won't matter if you pick Firefox or Chrome (or any forks or derivatives)
If you need to pick, i would say Firefox, and Librewolf if you want a browser which is more privacy friendly and has saner defaults.
If you want to battle the monopoly, you should pick a browser that's not based on Gecko, Blink or Chromium. Something like Ladybird, BadWolf, LuaKit or Lynx if you're into that
Mozilla gets Google's money only because Google wants to avoid antitrust charges, so they have to help keep Mozilla alive as competition. It doesn't mean Mozilla is in Google's pocket or has any strings attached at all.
How isn't Mozilla in Google's pocket, if the only reason they're still around is because of Google funding them?
view more: next ›