Switch from Chrome to Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/switch/ <comment><USER3> Major, recent, related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562)

</comment><comment><USER4> Google will keep locking down Chrome and using corporate talk to hand wave it away, only recourse is to leave.

First it's "sign in" with obtuse ways to turn it off. Then block Adblocking, once again with obtuse ways to disable... the end goal is pretty obvious, get the majority of Chrome users to turn on ads and tie their real names to their Chrome browser.

Of course let "power users" (who'll turn that crap off anyways) have their switches to do so. It gives Google plausible deniability.

——

To those who say just fork Chrome adfm had a good article explaining why that doesn't work:

> And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new > browser won't work with most internet video unless you license a proprietary > DRM component called Widevine from Google. The API that connects to Widevine > was standardized in 2017 by the World Wide Web Consortium, whose members > narrowly voted down a proposal to change the membership rules for the W3C to > require members not to abuse the DMCA to prevent DRM from becoming a tool to > undermine competition.

[https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software- freedom....](https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom.html)

<comment><USER5> You know what's horrifying about the idea of "just fork Chrome"? Google can still hurt you by blocking your browser's access to their prime properties (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc). Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned experience for absolutely zero reason.

<comment><USER6> > Just look at YouTube denying Chromium-based Edge the new redesigned > experience for absolutely zero reason.

The reason is almost certainly a new user agent (compared to non-Chromium Edge) that YouTube didn't expect. Chromium-based Edge is still not stable, and therefore, not properly supported by YouTube.

I don't have time to test this, but I'm willing to bet that you'd get the same result by using any indie browser that happens to send a user agent that YouTube doesn't recognize.

<comment><USER7> Do you remember when almost all sites worked fine without internet explorer but refused to work without it unless you faked the user agent? Why are you defending round 2 of best with IE?

The web is a standard. Auto failing based on user agent is a sign of developer incompetence.

<comment><USER8> > The web is a standard

If only that were true. The web is, at best, a series of suggestions. See also [https://caniuse.com](https://caniuse.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is so clear to me that we need to support and promote mozilla and Firefox. They're not perfect, but they, wikipedia, eff, archive.org (who else?) are such an important part of the Internet guardianship in the face of the monopolies, that it's our duty to support them. Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product.

<comment><USER10> > Doesn't hurt that Firefox is actually a great product.

Arguably.

On these threads there is always a handful of complaints about the state of Firefox, mostly on macOS. On my machine, I can't even launch Firefox in headless mode without the fans turning on, which never happened on Chrome. While I haven't benchmarked it, for normal browsing it does _feel_ slower than Crome.

But what kills it for me is their crippled AppleScript support. Firefox is the worst major browser (even worse than smaller browsers) for an automator on macOS. I rely on browser control every day, so Firefox is useless to me.

I'd sooner switch to Safari, which despite laughable controls (can't even disable JavaScript on a per-website basis) I can do something with.

<comment><USER11>
        On my machine, I can't even launch Firefox in
        headless mode without the fans turning on, which
        never happened on Chrome. While I haven't benchmarked
        it, for normal browsing it does feel slower than Crome.

I believe you, but I'm always so confused by hearing this. I use my Mac (2015 MBP) 10+ hours a day, evenly split between FF and Chrome.

Truly is close to an even 50/50 split -- FF is my personal browser and I use Chrome for all work-related tasks.

And they are subjectively indistinguishable in terms of performance. The _only_ exceptions to that statement are, well, Google properties where Google has clearly invested time and money into optimizing things for FF.

One other possible sorta-exception is when I'm using a scaled resolution mode on an external 4K monitor. MacOS warns me, straight up, that these modes will cause performance issues for me and my modest Intel Iris graphics. The whole system's a little sluggish in those modes, and I think FF fares worse than Chrome, but I won't hold that against FF.

FWIW, Safari does feel subjectively more responsive to me when it comes to scrolling and navigating. And I recently spent a few bucks upgrading my PC gaming rig to a 120hz monitor, which makes a massive difference. And I'm one of those weirdos who keeps CRTs around for his old consoles because he enjoys that true zero lag experience. So I am not exactly insensitive to latency. I don't have magic professional gamer golden magic eyes or anything, but it is an area of interest for me.

<comment><USER11> Too late to edit my post, but "where Google has clearly invested time and money into optimizing things for FF" should read "where Google has clearly invested time and money into optimizing things for Chrome."

Sorry.

<comment><USER12> Makes more sense :-)

Personally I feel it is worse than that: there have been som issues so bad that I hardly get Hanlons razor to work at all, notably one where just having a search result page open in Firefox would consistently spin up my CPU for no good reason twice a minute.

(Of course there were a number of other weird lagging issues as well.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On top of uBlock Origin / uMatrix, some of the _other_ Firefox's trump cards to me are:

* Tree Style Tab: makes tabs much more manageable, no parallel in Chrome. If you open dozens of tabs, after using this, you can only pity the traditional tab management [1].

* Containers and container tabs: it's a bit like having separate Chrome profiles for separate contexts, but you can also have them as tabs in the same window.

* Sync / sign-in server that is open source and that you can run on your own if you choose.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

<comment><USER14> Container tabs have made my life much easier, as I'm managing a number of Amazon accounts, and being able to do that side-by-side is a life-saver.

<comment><USER15> I really enjoy the Containers. The only problem is that you can only have a single container tied to an individual site. I'd rather like it to be tied to a subpath or url "root" so I could use it with GitHub.

<comment><USER16> Only for the automatic association you mean? You can manually open a tab into any container.

<comment><USER17> I recommend the Search and Switch container[1] extension for that. You open a new tab, type 'co <container name' and it reloads that tab into the given container. For example, I have a container for all things Google, called "Google", and the extension use would go like this 'co google', or even 'co goo'. It's smart enough to figure it out.

Plus, you can also move existing tabs into a given container the same way, not just new tabs, all at the cost of a single tab refresh.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-and- sw...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-and-switch- containers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why Mac users use Chrome. Safari seems to be out of fashion: people just assume that it should not be used for some reason, even though it is actually a great browser.

I use Safari for both my own browsing and for development (a fairly large ClojureScript application), and it is by far the best browser on the platform by all measures (speed first and foremost).

The only place where Safari falls short is 3D CAD programs (like OnShape), where Chrome is faster and better.

<comment><USER19> How's the dev tools (aka whatever the equivalent of Chrome "dev tools" is)?

As a web dev, the main reason I don't switch is I know how to use Chrome dev tools, and hate spending time I could be producing code instead learning new tools for something like this. But eventually I'll get myself to (prob to FF rather than safari, as long as I'm switching).

<comment><USER20> I prefer Safari's dev tools, actually. The UX is far better, Chrome's dev tools UI is so incredibly cluttered. The only area I find where Chrome's dev tools outshines Safari's is JS profiling — that tree chart graph is pretty useful. The other 95% of the time I stay in Safari.

<comment><USER21> I agree, I love profiling JS in Chrome. I'd switch to FF or Safari in an instant if they compared. Last time I checked, they were both nowhere near as easy or productive to use.

The other day I had to shut down a chrome tab that was utilizing 1.5 gigs of ram though. That's crazy. There's definitely no perfect browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I switched a couple of months ago because Chrome is just a bloated piece of garbage. One of my favorite features in Firefox is containers, which I used to have different users for in Chrome. Maybe Chrome has something similar now but it's one of the things I liked when I switched over. Haven't had any issues so far, glad I did

<comment><USER23> I don't understand how it's better than multiple profiles. I use multiple accounts for the same services (Asana, AWS, email, etc.) how can I manage that with containers?

<comment><USER24> Containers helps keep things sandboxed and lets you use the same window with different tabs representing different sessions.

So in your case you could have say a "work" container and a "home" container. Each of these could persist logins for all of the services you are using without having to switch between users and have different windows open you just have the 2 tabs.

What I think people find more useful is the ability to make a container for say "facebook". Anytime you open facebook it puts it in a new tab with a sandboxed browser session. It's similar to having a separate profile but it's just for facebook use and you don't have to think about it so much. If you click a link to facebook it opens it in your new container already logged in meanwhile facebook does not see you as authed in any of your other tabs.

<comment><USER25> Firefox developers even make a specific Facebook Container add on that I recommend and use.

Instead of you needing to know all the tricks and tweaks needed to make it work well, they're in the box.

I don't even know it's there until it does something unexpected but necessary. For example the Facebook Container has no idea I pay YouTube not to show adverts. So inside Facebook any inlined YouTube video has adverts. If I follow a link to YouTube, I appear outside the Container and have no adverts but don't get followed by Facebook (they'd need YouTube to co-operate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Firefox is back where it was back in like 2005, but instead of fighting IE/Microsoft, it's fighting Chrome/Google. Although now it has a bit more of a checkered record than it once did. Everything old is new again.

I really wish Microsoft would open source the Edge/Titan engine. There can't possibly be any NSCA code in there they don't own the rights too anymore.

<comment><USER27> I really wish that if Microsoft was going to abandon having their own engine that they'd gone to Mozilla instead.

<comment><USER28> No thanks. Keep Embrace, Extend, Extinguish away from my user agent.

<comment><USER29> Jeez not this trope(|tripe) again. It's boring and it's tedious. It's in the past. Under different management. Sure MS are no angels, but they seem to be doing far less harm these days than Google/Facebook et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Firefox banned Dissenter[1], a plug-in that did nothing nefarious - <USER2> enables browser users of the plug-in to chat / comment with each other about webpages.

They did this for political reasons. Regardless of what kind of trash talk takes place on Dissenter, the point is that nobody is forced to use it.

My point: neither Google nor Mozilla should be trusted and both seek to be your totalitarian Internet overlord.

1\. [https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36490/firefox-and-chrome- ban...](https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36490/firefox-and-chrome-banned- dissenter)

<comment><USER31> But it looks like they didn't "ban" it, they just don't want to host it on their store [1]. As long as they don't refuse to sign these "problematic" add- ons, this is fine (although it's worrying that they are able to do so because of this signing-required-crap).

[1]: [https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech- bans-f...](https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-free- speech-commenting-plugin-dissenter-from-its-extensions-gallery)

<comment><USER32> At least one extension maintainer (yappy, a pushbullet alternative) says that they are unable to sign their extension because of the 3rd party library they use, so while they have both firefox and chrome extensions, only the chrome one works.

<comment><USER31> That would be very disappointing from mozilla! I only found a support-thread from yappy in 2016 but if this is still up-to-date there should be an outrage on HN's frontpage.

I also made a simple, private(!) extension before I learned about the signing- requirement and that it won't work without uploading it. So I canceled my career as an extension-writer and just went to bed angry.

They really fucked this up (without even mentioning the "armag-addon").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hope so because almost every bug I run into during webdev is Chrome, and usually I'm told it's intended behavior or a WONTFIX.

With the way Google tries to strongarm standards and at the same time defy them, it's the modern Internet Explorer and it's a PITA to develop for.

<comment><USER34> What the heck bugs are you running into that surface as a result of chrome being chrome? I'm no google fan but I find chrome to be far and away the most stable and enjoyable browser to debug with.

<comment><USER33> Don't get me wrong-- on the Firefox side of things, it's been the user experience of the browser itself which has been suffering.

Every single update since Quantum has made things worse. Three days ago I opened up Firefox to find out _all_ of my settings had been nuked, 200+ tabs, themes and extensions lost, about:config reset, search settings reset (hello again Google) etc. I'm still _fuming_ mad about this.

I don't feel like drudging up old history but my most recent bug was that Chrome doesn't properly bubble mouse click events when some UI elements fire.

WONTFIX of course, apparently I should just use event.preventDefault() even though _every other browser_ handled this particular mouse event correctly. Chrome was the only outlier. So now I am writing code specifically for Chrome.

Two years ago I had an SVG rendering bug that turned out to be so deep that I had to spend two weeks debugging and come up with an incredibly convoluted scheme for loading dynamic SVG icons because `<use/>` is broken hot garbage on Chrome. Bug report dead in the water. More code just for Chrome.

You get the picture. I now have to develop _on Chrome_ as much as I hate it, even though FF has better debug messages and stability, just because it saves time testing every little thing out.

<comment><USER35> It might just be the nature of computers. A similar thing happened to me on Chrome during a recent update. I was using it as a backup browser and lost everything there when Chrome stopped working. I deleted it from my laptop and haven't missed it at all. I now use multiple Firefox profiles to work as alternate browsers.

If you go into your profiles directory is the old profile still there? It might have just created a new profile for you.

<comment><USER33> The nature of a stable computing environment is not to randomly delete user data.

<comment><USER35> Chrome did it to me too. I had many links saved in onetab that are now lost. No software is completely stable on all computers in all situations.

Did you double-check your profile folder? Firefox might have created a new profile for you while leaving the old profile there. If you're on Linux or Mac, try typing this in a terminal:

        firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote &

Then, if there is more than one profile listed there, try each one to see if it's the old profile.

(I'm not sure how to find the profile folder on Windows.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> That page is just missing one critical thing: 4. Migrate my extensions.

It would be great if they developed a graph mapping Chrome extensions to Mozilla equivalents. Then the user could confirm installation of the ones with 1:1 parity, like LastPass, allow users to select similar extensions, or skip installing an equivalent.

There are some Chrome-Exclusive extensions that keep me hooked. That and Firefox's Storage inspector is terrible, there isn't a native way to clear localstorage during development.

<comment> house9-2 Have you checked out Brave browser?

Fork of Chrome and most if not all Google extensions work.

[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

<comment><USER37> Last time I checked Brave looked awful on 4k screen on linux Kde, may be 6 months back. Have they fixed it? I wanted to like it so much but no luck :-(

<comment> house9-2 Seems fine on my imac retina screen and retina mbp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wish MIcrosoft would have worked off Firefox for the new Edge instead of Chrome. Just doesn't make sense why they would feed into a direct competitor. Bagging Edge off Firefox would have made it a real option for me as well as creating an opportunity now with all the ad blocking stuff going down...

<comment><USER39> On the plus side, we now have another large player working on Chromium, which may help prevent Google from forcing design decisions which benefit them alone.

<comment><USER40> This is going to become massively important. As Brave gains market share and Microsoft Edge becomes the defacto browser on Windows machines, Google Chrome could easily become the new IE6 if Blink strays too far down the path on upstream compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It would be nice if there was also something in place which allowed Firefox to detect when an addon like uBlock Origin is also available on Firefox, then suggest installing the Firefox version during the upgrade.

<comment><USER42> I use Adblock Plus ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- plus/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/)), and I also have AdBlock installed ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-f...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-firefox)), just in case the first one doesn't work. They are two of the most popular adblock plugins on Firefox.

Or you could just use uBlock Origin on Firefox ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock- origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin))!

<comment> huy-nguyen Please stop using AdBlock/AdBlockPlus. Use uBlock Origin instead.

<comment><USER43> How come?

(I tend to use uMatrix.)

<comment> GuB-42 uBlock Origin uses less RAM than AdBlock plus to do the same thing.

AdBlock plus also has the "acceptable ads" program that most people dislike but it can be easily turned off. The rest is mostly politics.

<comment><USER44> Is less RAM really a selling point? I have a lot of spare RAM, I'd prefer it get used to cache more if it can speed things up.

<comment> GuB-42 Generally, yes. A little less so if you have spare but still important.

The main reason is, as you said, cache. The more unused RAM you have, the longer caches will be kept. It includes disk cache, browser cache, etc... But it can also make the CPU cache more efficient. L2 cache is about 10 times faster than RAM, and the less RAM you are using, the more cache will be used. L1 cache is even faster but here, access patterns matters as much as raw size, if not more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Am I missing something here? There is no article just a download link correct?

I use Firefox exclusively because of the sidebar tab extension and will probably use it until Firefox dies a slow death.

<comment><USER46> Chrome's "Press Tab To Search" is way too useful for me to switch...

<comment><USER47> In Firefox you can find the search field on a page, right click, and 'add a keyword for this search'. Then you can just type that keyword in the address bar, for instance 'wp searchtermhere' for wikipedia.

<comment><USER48> That is great and all. Why do I have to type of the full keyword? tab completion on chrome is killer for this.

<comment><USER35> There's a better way in Firefox.

In Firefox, go to Preferences -> Search and click on "Add search bar in toolbar". Also uncheck "Show search suggestions in address bar results".

Then ctrl-l will only autocomplete URLs and ctrl-k will search. Once you're in the search box, press TAB to cycle through your search providers. You can add additional search providers easily.

<comment><USER48> Slightly better still not there. If I have 15 search providers I have to press TAB 15 times to get to the last one, that is tiresome. I can search amazon/ebay/npm/rubygems/mdn/etc without looking at the screen or keyboard with chrome. I have probably >10 search engines I use daily.

<comment><USER35> You can set custom keywords that are the same as on Chrome. You just won't need to press TAB. I don't use that feature, but it's described here:

[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches)

I didn't think about adding sites like rubygems and mdn, but that's a good idea.

Edit: I just tried it and it works. Example: create a bookmark in Firefox and change the URL to the one below. Set the keyword to "r" in the bookmarks editor. Then you can type `r devise` in the address bar to search rubygems.

        https://rubygems.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=%S

<comment><USER48> I guess I just need to choose better "keywords"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In case Firefox developers read this,

Can you please make the popped up bookmark dialog box much much bigger? Please!

When clicking the star icon at the end of the address bar, the bookmark dialog box pops up. But it is too small! It only shows very few folders and choices. In order to locate a desired bookmark folder, people have to click and scroll many times. The whole dialog box is $^%&*& too small! Please make it bigger to show much more folders! Like three times bigger! Chrome has the same problem. Firefox can do better!

Also, please make the last used bookmark folder as the default folder at the next time when the bookmark dislog box opens, because people often bookmark many related/similar pages consecutively in one short period of time. Thank you. I love Firefox.

<comment><USER50> Did you try with userChrome.css? It won't help with the last used ookmark folder, but I think it will help with the bookmark popup.

<comment><USER49> thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> For years I have been working with my mom to get her to be suspicious of any pop-ups in her browser. Many times she has texted me a photo asking if some pop-up update box was legit (almost always a shady ad). When she got her new computer, I set up Firefox in a fairly locked down state: uBlock Origin, third-party cookies disabled, and clear all cookies and history when firefox closes.

It's been amazing. With the ad-blocker she almost never texts me now with suspicious stuff. Also, it was super easy to teach her that if she ever gets into a situation that feels shady, just close the browser and open it up again. Starting from a clean slate every time in a well protected browser makes her feel a lot safer because she knows that if things get scary, she can just close the window and start over.

Having to log in every time hasn't turned out to be that much of an inconvenience either. See actually feels safer because of it. It makes perfect logical sense to her that the website ask her to login every time. "My bank asks me for my ID every time I go in to deposit a check, so of course it makes sense to ask for my password every time I open my browser and visit the website."

Anyway, my takeaway is that Firefox + uBlock Origin for parents is really a wonderful thing.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you forked Chrome, how hard would it be to change it do DRM'd video however Firefox does?

I'm not saying forking Chrome would be easy, it's complicated software, I think it would require a lot of labor to keep it competitive over the long term, which is the real barrier.

But I'm not sure if the DRM is an insurmountable barrier, Firefox plays that same video _somehow_ , it should be at least theoretically possible to get a forked Chrome to do it the same way?

<comment><USER52> Mozilla uses Google Widevine as well, I believe. The path forward is to license Widevine from Google, and they've already shut down other FOSS projects by refusing to give them licenses.

<comment><USER53> How far does the DMCA reach in europe? It feels like we need some reverse engineering of widevine.

<comment><USER54> an open-source implementation of DRM that is compatible with widevine would be a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER55> Is it patented ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I never left! I've been using Firefox nonstop since 2002. For the most part, I was a Netscape Navigator user prior though had nothing against IE and sometimes used it. Since Firefox was 'Phoenix', I've stuck with it and only randomly (once every few years) checked in on Chrome. I never really did care for it, and can't say I've ever had any issues with Firefox, even in the supposed dark ages. It has been impacted with Google's use of the Shadow DOM v0 API, and probably Mozilla's own mistakes, but I never felt it was "slow".

To roll out the welcome mat for any new or returning users, I have some general suggestions.

Consider the following extensions: Containerise; Decentraleyes; HTTPS Everywhere; Livemarks; Privacy Badger; Redirect AMP to HTML; uBlock Origin.

For privacy settings: set custom privacy settings to block trackers 'in all windows', block cookies from all unvisited websites, block cryptominers and fingerprinters. Of course enable 'Do Not Track'. Then block all new permission requests for location, web cam etc. Lean towards whitelisting sites that you do want these settings, as stringent privacy settings like this can in rare instances, break sites. The only example I've ran into is during NCAA March Madness and the site used to watch the games, but you may find others.

Random bits: I'd also suggest enabling the dedicated search bar for quick DDG bang updates. I also give Mozilla some information so my preferences can be added to the collective as to not be removed at some point down the road. Yes to 'Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla', 'Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations' and 'Allow Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf'. Can't say I suggest Firefox Studies though, that's one thing Mozilla rubbed me the wrong way with.

With all of that and your own further customization to make it yours, you should be a happy Firefox user. :)

</comment><comment><USER57> I'd love to switch but the technique of having one browser import another's bookmarks, settings, and autofill just isn't good enough anymore. I have no fewer than 28 extensions installed on my Chrome installation and while not all of them are enabled all the time I do use them regularly. For me, the "cost" of switching to Firefox is, for each of these extensions, finding and vetting a firefox-compatible replacement.

<comment><USER58> Surprise! Chrome extensions work on Firefox! This was a big one for me as well, namely Tab Wrangler.

[https://www.howtogeek.com/346981/how-to-install-any- chrome-e...](https://www.howtogeek.com/346981/how-to-install-any-chrome- extension-in-firefox/)

I can't recall if I used that Chrome Store Foxified but I do know that i'm using all of my chrome extensions and firefox and don't miss chrome at all.

<comment><USER59> If you use that method, don't they uninstall themselves if you relaunch firefox?

<comment><USER58> How do you mean? My firefox extensions work just like chrome. If I quit firefox or restart my computer they're still all there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It would be awesome to create somekind of quide on how to switch from the Google ecosystem to something different. Mail, browser, agenda, drive, photos etc. I would seriously pay 50 bucks per month to have something different without bullshit companies like Google behind it.

<comment><USER61> Not the most active sub but useful:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/](https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Already switched to Firefox and couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER63> Same! Had Developer edition installed for testing, but switched fully today (Uninstalled Developer, installed Nightly). The fonts look nice, it's got wayland support on my Linux partition (on Fedora), and it's just really pleasant!

<comment><USER64> If you're switching to full time use or Firefox, I cannot recommend going with Nightly; developer edition is a good choice.

<comment><USER63> Ah how come? It's being great to me so far! Back before the Chrome days, '00s and early '10s, every geek like me used to use Nightly, so I went with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I like to switch from Chrome to Firefox but only thing keeping me with Chrome is its superior web development tool. One my the dev here recommends us to use Chrome because of its better Javascript debugger - something to do with the output in the web console takes you to the corresponding Javascript line & instance where it is invoked on the web page. I am not entirely sure what it is.

Whatever it is, its not in Firefox.

<comment><USER66> The "magic" is Source Maps. Firefox supports Source Maps just fine, it's just pickier about their formats. It was supposed to be a standard and all the browsers supported it (Edge and Firefox have had support for as long as Chrome has). Chrome allowed some Source Map formats that didn't exactly follow the standards/specs, and a bunch of tools started using Chrome-only Source Maps by default accidentally because so many devs were using Chrome. If you use webpack or similar tools check the various format options for Source Maps until you find one that works in non-Chrome browsers.

<comment><USER67> How strange, this is the first I've heard of this. I've never had to touch source maps config in my webpack and it's always shown fine in Firefox. Is it just specific circumstances/specific code patterns that have source map problems in Firefox? Or is it when it's transpiling from TypeScript or JSX or something?

<comment><USER66> From what I've investigated so far, webpack likes to use the webpack:// pseudo-protocol for file references in most of its Source Map modes, including its defaults, and from what I've seen that seems to be the single biggest issue of cross-browser Source Map compatibility in the webpack ecosystem (other ecosystems have different problems). Chrome seems to be able to figure things out from the pseudo-protocol in just about all cases, but Edge and Firefox seem to be confused more often than not.

In some cases it looks like Chrome takes extra efforts to find physical files on disk from bad URLs, and in other cases Chrome does more with virtual file structures included in the same bundles (the webpack:// pseudo-URLs often point to other "sections" of the same JS bundle) creating a virtual file tree from them that looks close enough to the on-disk file tree as to seem effectively the same to many developers.

<comment><USER68> Do you know if there is a Mozilla bug for this?

<comment><USER66> Some of the Issues I've seen/sort-of-bookmarked on various webpack-related Source Map problems:

[https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/3603](https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/3603) [https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194](https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194)

That last one does mention at least one already fixed Mozilla bug:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1177329](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1177329)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I think link forgot to mention a step 4.

Step 4: Spend weeks getting used to new shortcuts, finding equivalent extensions/plugins and getting used to their dev tools.

<comment><USER70> Does it really take you weeks to get used to a new environment? WEEKS? That kind of thing bugs me for a few hours, maybe a couple of days.

<comment><USER71> If you don't take more than a few hours to get used to a completely different browser, editor, desktop/mobile OS, etc., you probably just didn't use all its features. I know that I still had Firefox reflexes after I had been using Chrome for a few weeks (this was a few years ago when Mozilla made some poor decisions, I tried voting with my feet).

<comment><USER70> There's a long sliding scale from "knows how to use most features of the new software" to "uses every single feature maximally and never, ever presses the wrong hotkey because an old muscle memory happened to fire". I don't think the latter is a reasonable bar to set for "get used to the new software".

Then again maybe I'm being unfair here because if I'm really honest about it, the reason I didn't switch over to Chrome was that you couldn't start an in- page text search by hitting the / key like I was used to doing in Firefox. (I've since found many other reasons to keep using Firefox but at one stage that was the sticking point...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I've been using Safari on Mac for months, I only open Google Chrome when React Native debugger launches it.

I'm not sure how hard it would be for the RN team to switch to another browser such as Firefox or the new Edge so I can uninstall Google Chrome from my computer.

<comment><USER73> I want to use Firefox on my Mac but it just _feels_ so out of place. Are you using any extensions to get a more true macOS feel? While Chrome isn't perfect it doesn't feel anywhere near as "multi-platform" as Firefox does.

<comment><USER61> I made my view compact as possible, removed bookmark toolbar, etc. Pretty native looking now aside from tabs on top.

<comment><USER73> But what about things like pinch zoom, elastic scrolling and such? I know there are some extensions but all that ones I have tried (the top 5 that come up in search) are all janky.

While not a deal breaker it would be nice to have a more native macOS feeling version of Firefox but I guess Mozilla have other things to work on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mh-cx What some probably consider a privacy nightmare is a Chrome feature I like very much: It syncs all my history, bookmarks and passwords across devices via my Google account. That's especially convenient whenever I get a new device.

Is there something comparable for Firefox?

<comment><USER74> Yes

* [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/accounts/)

* [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/sync](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/sync)

<comment><USER75> Firefox sync needs a well-maintained Docker image.

<comment> matthew-wegner And iOS support for a self-hosted sync server :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Too bad it takes a lot more than "a few minutes" to get used to Firefox and all of its quirks. Like the fact that I can have like 20 tabs open at the same time before they start hiding themselves from me.

<comment><USER77> > Like the fact that I can have like 20 tabs open at the same time before they > start hiding themselves from me.

I didn't like it either at first, but then I realized it was just because it was different than Chrome. In time, I liked how Firefox did it better. You're always guaranteed to see the favicon and 3 or 4 letters of the tab's title no matter how many tabs you have. In Chrome, you're eventually looking at triangles or lines with no way to differentiate them.

<comment><USER76> >You're always guaranteed to see the favicon and 3 or 4 letters of the tab's title no matter how many tabs you have.

But I can't see the tab's favicon or letters because they're 100% hidden from me.

I currently have 49 tabs open in Chrome. If I set Firefox to be the same exact width as Chrome, I can open 27 tabs at the same time. If I open up the 28th, it starts hiding tabs.

I actually have no issue with how Chrome does it. Just seeing the favicon is enough when dealing with a large number of tabs.

EDIT: Just tested opening 49 tabs. None of the tabs show anything more than just the favicon and about 90% of the first letter. Not really sure how this is better than what Chrome does, which is show 49 favicons without scrolling.

<comment><USER77> > But I can't see the tab's favicon or letters because they're 100% hidden > from me.

You can scroll on the tab bar.

<comment><USER76> What's wrong with a fixed tab bar? Like the one in Chrome?

<comment><USER78> There's nothing inherently _wrong_ with it, but it doesn't work well once you get beyond a certain number of tabs (the number will vary depending on your screen size, etc., blah). At some point, all the tabs are scrunched down to being indistinguishable blobs. Firefox, at least, doesn't have that issue, thanks to the scrolling tab bar. And the drop-down that shows all your tabs is, to me, a sufficient answer to the "my tabs are hidden from me" concern.

I understand that some people will feel differently of course. And it's less of an issue in the first place if you don't keep ludicrous numbers of tabs open.

<comment><USER76> >At some point, all the tabs are scrunched down to being indistinguishable blobs.

I don't know what you're on about. I opened the maximum number of tabs that my browser window can have visible (~90) and at no point were they indistinguishable blobs. Every single one still had a favicon.

<comment><USER78> To me, nothing but a favicon is exactly "an indistinguishable blog" since it does nothing to help me distinguish between the 10 arxiv.org tabs, or 7 or 8 Youtube tabs that I have open. _shrug_

<comment><USER79> This is something that bothers me when pair programming or working with co- workers who use a lot of tabs. I have to watch them fiddle between 10 jira tabs until they find the ticket. God forbid they misclick a few times (every time!) and then you get to see them hit a few other websites while all in the search of that only holy jira ticket tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Firefox experience on Linux is lackluster. No hardware acceleration, neither on opensource video drivers, nor on proprietary(Nvidia and AMD). On the same hardware on Win10 Firefox experience is definitely better.

<comment><USER81> I've not found it to be an issue on Linux - seems to be about as performant as Chrome for me.

The only wrinkle was when I tried to watch Netflix the first time I had to click a button to let me watch DRM'd Netflix streams.

<comment><USER80> HW accelerated video do work in Chrome/Chromium on Linux, while does not in Firefox, thus visibly loading the CPU and CPU fan on laptop. There is a visible tearing while quickly scrolling in Firefox, while no such problem with Chrome.

<comment><USER82> I'll have to try to reproduce this. I've never noticed it. Is it only with Netflix or when viewing any video?

<comment><USER75> Works in Chromium, but not Firefox:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_accelera...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration#Application_support)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I switched to Firefox about a month ago.

Initially I ran into problems because I took on too much at once, I tried enabling uMatrix at the same time as I switched over. Once I removed uMatrix I was doing much better, and I'm saving it for another month or two.

Several features of Firefox are real killer apps for me. Adding a taxonomy to my bookmarks has really helped as I've moved more heavily into org-mode. I've started adding a couple of tags to every bookmark I save, that really helps with organization and recall. Beyond tags, the container tabs feature has been pretty amazing. Being able to sign into multiple Office 365 accounts is great, plus the obvious use case of "keep those few times I use facebook in their own special sandbox".

I've donated a few bucks to Mozilla, and I recommend everyone do that. Google seems to rapidly be heading towards 1990s Microsoft territory, with the added "bonus" of discarding apps that they lose interest in.

</comment><comment><USER84> Thanks but no thanks.

There isn't enough functional parity for me - although I'm certainly an outlier - so I've attempted the switch and went back to chrome.

One of the issues is that I spend a lot time writing in English and then a lot in Portuguese. Chrome can spell check both and ff needs me to tell which language I'm using.

</comment><comment><USER85> I tried Firefox coming from chrome. Two things were dealbreakers for me

1) I'm a heavy window/tab user. 300+ tabs across 10+ windows is normal. I have not been able to recreate the same tab bar overflow behavior as in chrome, default ff will keep tabs at fixed width and scroll horizontally, making it impossible to see how many tabs there are in the window. Changing css helps but there are still enough problems with small width tabs not showing favicons, always showing (and overlapping) close tab button etc.

2) performance when switching videos e.g. on yt to full screen and back is terrible. Latest MacBook, external uwqhd screen, took upwards of 3 seconds every single time from pressing f to having the video show. Might not sound like a lot but it adds up. If everything else is fast this will just feel extra slow

<comment><USER44> With 300 tabs why do you want your tab bar horizontal? Doesn't it make more sense to have your tabs in a vertical sidebar so you can easily see them and scroll through them, like you can do in Firefox?

<comment><USER86> Yeah, this is actually one of the main reasons I use Firefox instead of Chrome. I really dislike Chrome's tab minimizing behaviour, not every website has a clearly distinguishable favicon and even if it did, I often have multiple tabs from the same website open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I never Switched to Chrome in the first place. It felt like an uphill battle sometimes when Firefox deprecated the old add-on APIs, which made add-ons like CTR die.

However, in the past few years, Firefox has been improving left and right, with it's Rust components, containers in core, and it's new dialect in design. The recent improvements alone should convince someone to switch.

The reason why I stayed with Firefox is because Chrome is from, well, Google. It boggles my mind to see someone praising a browser that is from a an advertiser. They never put ads on the browser (I'm looking at you, Opera), but systematically did a lot to track it's users and make money out of it.

You can clearly see the difference in motivation when Firefox removing a whole API of add-ons vs Google removing one particular API feature.

</comment><comment><USER87> I tried to switch two years ago, but back then Firefox was very resource hungry on my MBP so I stick to Safari. Chrome - with Google's approach to privacy - was no option at all, even if their browser was magnitudes better (which it was not; the differences are marginal in my perception). A few months ago I tried FF again. This time I was amazed. No CPU spikes. Super fast startup. - I cannot explicitly express my arguments and my sentiment, but my gut feeling says that Google's approach to privacy is totally wrong. So I don't want to touch any of their products. That's why I migrated my emails to fastmail.com, am using duckduckgo.com instead of Google.com, switched to Firefox from Chrome, to Dropbox from Google Docs. Abandoned Google Photos.

</comment><comment><USER88> I don't really like Mozilla as an organization. I don't like Google either. Recently, I've started using the Brave browser ([https://brave.com](https://brave.com)). So far, I like it quite well.

I like Brave's concept of Shields, which block ad-trackers. I also think one of the more interesting concepts in Brave is the Rewards ad-revenue-sharing program. I haven't turned it on yet, so I don't know how well it works (if at all) but I find the idea interesting and outside the box when considering the major browser players.

The developer tools in Brave are exactly what you would expect.

Brave has worked well for me so far, so I'll continue with it for the time being.

</comment><comment><USER89> I see a lot of people here complaining about firefox performances and other things/bugs. But we are on hacker news. Many devs are here. Firefox needs us, we need a strong alternative. Instead of complaining, we need to participate to the open source effort.

<comment><USER90> Sure. Though as a firefox developer, I also appreciate those bugs and reports of performance problems!

A good bug report with solid reproduction steps can often be more useful than a mediocre patch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Today in 90s reboots, Chrome is becoming the new IE6.

</comment><comment><USER92> I seriously don't understand why people have been gravitating towards Chrome for years despite Google being synonymous with surveillance, even on Linux. Google chrome is the fifth most popular download on Arch User Repository[1].

Alternatives like ungoogled chromium exist, but aren't as powerful/stable as the real thing, so why not use Firefox. Call me overly optimistic, but augmenting the firefox/mozilla community with participating/privacy conscious users can only lead to good down the line.

1\. [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/)

<comment><USER93> Fwiw, I don't see it as surveillance, it is trusting your data with them, might seem similar but a little bit different. Google in general a very good steward of private data if not the best. They don't sell it and provide tools to manage it So far I find it an acceptable bargain.

As for Chrome, the latest announcement is a bit troublesome, but i still find it better than alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Can someone remind me what will happen to all the chromium derivatives that support ad block? Will Google restrict their functionality? If Firefox and Safari are the last browsers to support ad block, then they totally stand a chance.

<comment><USER70> The changes which impede ad blocking are in Chromium, not in the commercial Chrome fork. And Google will continue to force anti-ad-blocking, pro-tracking changes into Chromium until they reach their ultimate Shrodinger's Privacy- Friendly Browser which exists in a superposition of "showing few ads" and "allowing all tracking."

<comment><USER95> It's in the "Enterprise" Chrome fork. I don't think they charge money for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I really want to switch to Firefox. I don't need it to be better-performing than Chrome on my work PC or Safari on my home machine - I want to support free software. But Firefox's text just looks bad, like really bad. On both a retina Mac screen and 24" 1080p monitors on Windows at work, the fonts look pixelated and blurry, like there's something around the edges of the characters. Contrast seems off too, much lower than Chrome or Safari presents text, which makes it hard to read. PDFs in the browser are especially awful to look at. Has anyone else had this experience and found a fix?

<comment><USER97> Can you share some screenshots? IMO, text looks somewhat _better_ in Firefox than in other browsers.

<comment><USER96> Here's an example: [https://imgur.com/a/fWRwTf7](https://imgur.com/a/fWRwTf7)

Chrome is on the left, Firefox is on the right. In my opinion, Firefox's text looks terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Firefox still has the same issues as Chrome on my MBP, namely it uses a lot more battery than Safari. It seems as though Chrome has been keeping a small performance edge over FF as well, but they are so close now it makes sense to use FF to support the brand.

One HUGE issue over Chrome is that many websites break for me due to broken JS that was only tested on Chrome, including internal sites for work. Ugh.

The visuals of FF including their website are beautiful. Wish they would put that same design team on Rust, which has a website made by a clown now.

</comment><comment><USER99> As of Firefox 67, it is actually very fast and performant for me on Linux. Every time I have tried Firefox Quantum it has been noticeably slower than Chrome. I really want to use Firefox because Google is basically evil and I'm trying to migrate from every service I have with them; slowly but surely; but I used Hangouts Meet the other day with work and it was very very unstable. Of course I don't blame Firefox for this, I blame Google, but this is literally the only thing that is stopping me from migrating.

<comment><USER71> > As of Firefox 67, it is actually very fast

(You probably meant 57, when quantum was introduced (alongside breaking the entire add-on ecosystem).)

I noticed no speed difference whatsoever when I upgraded from Firefox 55 to 66 a few weeks ago. The difference between 55 and 66 is that a bunch of useful add-ons are gone, some of them are no longer possible due to missing APIs, and I had to find alternatives for most that were rewritten (and spend time reconfiguring everything). In the end, the design didn't really change after I removed the tab bar on top, and speed is also about the same. Which is fine for me, I never understood the slowness complaints, but I guess I typically work on relatively high end laptops (well, this particular one was only 700 euros and is now 1 year old, it's not terribly high end, but I think I got good value on this one and it's probably more than what most people spend... though maybe not HN people... yeah, I don't know where the slowness complaints come from).

<comment><USER99> No I mean 67. I tried every version of Firefox from 57 to 67 and only 67, the latest release feels "as fast" as Chrome.

<comment><USER71> Oh, weird. I expected it to be faster after upgrading from 55 and tried to notice it, but didn't find any difference. Now that I'm post-quantum, I'm keeping up to date, so I'm also on 67 now (upgraded somewhere last week if I remember correctly), again didn't notice any difference when going from 66.0.4 (I skipped ..5) to 67.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I tried to do this, and I had to switch back. My setup is that I have loads of tabs open, with a vertical tab manager on the side. And FF has a pretty nice extension for that, plus you can take back some screen space by removing the top tabs using some css.

Anyway, when I have the same tabs and extensions in FF as in Chrome, the FF CPU usage is huge. I tried several things from the web, but nothing helped. Now I'm back on Chrome, which is less nice looking and less convenient, but the CPU usage is barely anything.

<comment><USER101> I think this is mainly an issue on macOS if you use a vertical sidebar, having to do with supporting it's translucency.

I think there's away to turn this off too, but I don't remember how, sorry.

<comment><USER100> Where did you hear about the translucency hint?

[https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)

Not trying to turn HN into a bug hunting board, but I found this:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042)

Might be useful to someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> I love Firefox's features, but I've tried it for a week and I just have a too big loss of performance. My 2017 Macbook pro with 8gb of RAM just doesn't cut it. The browser is something I use +6 hours per week, I can't handle it being laggy.

When I try it a little bit it seems fine, but after using Firefox for a week going to Chrome seemed like a relief in terms of performance. I'm missing some cool features from Firefox like containers, but performance is more important.

</comment><comment><USER103> Yes, I want to switch... but I have something like 25 plugins and many of them don't have corresponding plugins on Firefox.

For example, when I press Apple + Shift + C, I copy the URL and save it as markup. I want this functionality in Firefox -- it's not good if I can't keyboard shortcut.

Also... and this one is a bit more painful... we use Lighthouse for a lot of testing. Contractually, it's an easy thing to build in, "We'll meet scores of at least 85 on Lighthouse for accessibility..." and I can't run that out of Chrome. Any similar tool suggestions?

I found a lot, but I haven't found suitable replacements for:

* Lighthouse - Chrome Web Store || [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdconlkpinefehnmjammfjpmpbjk)

* Create Link - Chrome Web Store || [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/create-link/gcmghdmnkfdbncmnmlkkglmnnhagajbm) (need to have keyboard shortcut and export link to MarkDown for easier pasting into GitHub issues).

Also... I'd love a good replacement for Xmarks. If Firefox wrote a plugin for Chrome that lets me keep my bookmarks from Firefox sync in sync with Chrome I would be happy. I have to have multiple browsers... and I miss how easy Xmarks made it to go between them.

</comment><comment><USER104> Google had said they wanted revise the way advertising and tracking is done on the web to address the many issues with the current train wreck. I would be more open to sticking with Chrome if they had done that first before breaking ad blockers.

Ad-driven content should be a viable business model, but the way it's currently done is simply unacceptable, and Google shouldn't crack down on people's conscientious objections via ad-blockers without providing a viable alternative.

</comment><comment><USER105> I did it. I switched from Chrome to Firefox this week. Problem was that I broke my advice I give to all my friends/customers : "reinstall Windows at least every 6 months". And I had Windows for the past 2 years watching it becoming more and more bloated, with more and more quirks. At the same time I had Chrome. Sure, I had Firefox in the past too, but was slower then Chrome. For reasons unknown to me it seemed Firefox loved flash, and I was watching in Task Manager how Flash component of Firefox was growing more and more in memory until it ate all of it and required me to restart Firefox entirely. Which I hate it to do that. Hence why I used Chrome instead. With ad blockers and DuckDuckGo as default engine. But once I've reinstalled Windows I was like "OK, time to see Firefox again".

Let me tell you brothers and sisters, it was a blessing to see Firefox having the same speed as Chrome, and no bloating. Sure, for each tab opened it alos creates a firefox.exe in task manager, but so does Chrome. I can live with that. Now all I need is to move my entire productions from Windows to Linux and I'll be really free. But that's gonna be at least an order of magnitude harder then switching from one browser to another.

</comment><comment><USER106> Still there's one thing that Firefox can beat, Chrome dev tools are just the best, period.

<comment><USER71> As someone who uses Firefox 98% of the time, every time I open the Chromium dev tools I'm just lost. Could it be personal?

<comment><USER106> Different people, different tastes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Does Firefox have an equivalent of Chrome's [...] > More tools > Create shortcut... these days? With an option like Chrome's 'Open as Window' checkbox? I would love to give up Chrome, but that's a really important piece of functionality for me. I hugely prefer webapps that mostly act like normal apps in my desktop environment. I want then to show up in the window list, have their own icon, be alt-tabbable, etc.

</comment><comment><USER108> I have 6 profiles that I like to keep separate, and the only browser that supports seamless switching in the toolbar is Chrome. That's the only reason I continue to use it. If Firefox were to implement this, I'd immediately switch. I know there's addons that try to simluate what Chrome does, but they just aren't as easy to use and don't do exactly what I want.

<comment><USER109> Have you looked into Containers to see if this will work as you want profiles to? [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/containers](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers)

<comment><USER108> I have. It simply sorts tabs by profile, rather than sorting whole windows. Think about it this way: I want to have 6 separate instances of Firefox running at the same time, where I can seamlessly switch between them. Each instance has its own theme, bookmarks, cookies, etc.

Firefox can do this, but it's not intuitive and it opens 6 different Firefox apps on my Mac, so it isn't easy to distinguish between each profile. On Chrome, I simply click the person switcher at the top right and I can switch between sessions very easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> What is the _actual_ performance story these days? Last time I tried Firefox (soon after they were making a fuss about Quantum) I was fairly disappointed. I'm including performance of the Android browser here (because they work in concert as far as I'm concerned).

Also, what pain am I going to hit with DRM and online video? I use the usual suspects - Amazon, Netflix, Youtube.

<comment><USER111> FF is fast on the desktop but still very slow on android. Im not sure what the difference is, but Ive switched to using a chrome fork on android and FFon my desktop and am pretty pleased.

Why do you say they work in concert?

<comment><USER112> I'd guess he wants to be able to sync bookmarks/passwords/etc across platforms. It's nice being able to find something on my phone and then pull it up later on my desktop using synced bookmarks or Firefox's "send tab to device" functionality.

I will say when I first started using Firefox on mobile it did seem slower, but the ability to use extensions like ublock has always made up for it. I think speed has gotten a bit better lately, but there's still room for improvement there.

<comment><USER113> The current build of Firefox for Android is being sunsetted soon, last noon security update is going to be in July. The version they are moving to, Firefox fenix is very fast. At the moment I don't think it has sync enabled (so no sign in) but the future looks good there.

<comment><USER111> Is Fenix the same as Firefox Focus?

<comment><USER113> Different, but focus is using the same engine that fenix does.

<comment><USER111> Nice maybe Ill go back for Android. I couldnt figure out why it was so slow, its seemed almost like a DNS issue because the first page load, even if it was local, took 10+ seconds. Im a huge FF fan and supporter, I'd like to go back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> I should have left Chrome when they started that force sign in to Chrome shit. This latest stuff is the final impetus I need to switch.

</comment><comment><USER115> I want to, but the simple behavior issues of the LastPass extension force me to use Chrome just for it.

I don't know if its LastPass or a limitation of Firefox that's causing it, but it's enough of a headache for how often I use LastPass that it prevents me from switching browsers.

Is there an alternative to LastPass that has a better user experience on Firefox? If so I'll try it.

EDIT: I'll test out Bitwarden.

<comment><USER116> BitWarden

Unfortunately - my company is standardized on LastPass, so it makes it extra difficult

<comment><USER115> I'm making the switch now and everything seems good so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> A few things that still make me not love FF:

\- Going full screen on Youtube takes longer than Chrome at least on OS X and there is a momentarily black screen.

\- Moving the cursor to the top of a full screen video in Chrome brings down the OS X menu bar this is useful if you want to check the time/date/other menu bar activity, in FF nothing happens when moving the mouse to the top of the screen in full screen mode.

\- When a page requests to send web notifications FF basically pretty much blocks the entire browser until you answer whether you want to allow the notification or not, this is very annoying if you visit many sites for the first time that ask for notification permission, which apparently a lot of them nowadays do, making it more apparent now that I switched to FF from Chrome.

There might be settings you can change to fix these, but even if that's the case not having them set as default makes me question whether I made the right choice making the switch.

</comment><comment><USER118> I actually just gave this another try. First thing I did was see if WebAuthn/U2F support finally works well with Google services, which it now does!

Second thing I did was try to open a private window using the universal macOS shortcut of Cmd+Shift+N. Nothing happened, because Firefox decided to use Cmd+Shift+P unlike all other browsers. No problem, this is a macOS app, I'll just change the keyboard shortcut in system preferences and I'll be good to go. Except after doing that, Firefox doesn't actually respect the remapped shortcut (an issue which has existed for _11 years_ ).

And the baked in color management is not correct for a macOS app, and the right click menus are not Mac-like and don't respect dark mode.

I thought it was time to make the switch, but the reality is that Firefox is still an even poorer macOS app than Chrome. Fix that and I'll switch tomorrow, as I really want to ditch Chrome!

<comment><USER119> Cmd+Shift+N reopens the last closed window

<comment><USER118> Funny, that (also non-standard) keyboard shortcut is not shown in the menu anywhere and thus can't easily be remapped using the standard macOS keyboard preferences. I don't know if my Cmd+Shift+N private window remapping is failing due to the conflict, or if it's Firefox just not knowing about the remapping. But either way, it appears I can't easily remap Firefox's reopen last closed window to Cmd+Shift+T like other macOS browsers use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I've been happily using Firefox for about 2-3 months now.

The main difference I've noticed is how easy it is to get the same experience and in some cases a better experience on Firefox just but taking 15-30 minutes to set it up.

Chrome was my browser for almost all of the 2010s and now I'm happy to say I'm not stuck with it.

</comment><comment><USER121> A few months ago I created an alfred workflow to help train quick `⌘ + space` users to use Firefox.

[https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch- fire...](https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-firefox- instead-of-chrome)

</comment><comment><USER122> How much of Firefox success depends on donations?

I have seen successful crowd-funding projects where the budget is always transparent and communicated to the public. I am certain this motivates the masses to donate.

Wouldn't it be better for Mozilla to make their funding fully transparent, to attract the masses?

<comment><USER123> From what I've seen of their recent revenue the overwhelming majority (95%) comes from royalties received from search engine companies (Google, etc), while only a fraction (~1%) comes from donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER124> I did switch to Firefox and then they broke all extensions so I switched back. Chrome just works better.

<comment><USER125> That was a major upgrade to Firefox. Most extensions have since done the fixes needed to handle the upgrade.

<comment><USER75> No, Firefox forgot to renew their certificates and it broke all extensions.

<comment><USER125> Oh yeah, that was a separate instance. I did forget about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER126> Firefox is a great browser. However, the reason I end up back on Chrome is because neither iOS or Android have Firefox as the default browser. Sadly, as a front-end focused dev life is easier to build stuff out for Chrome and to a lesser extent, Safari because you know that's the rendering engine the vast majority of your users will see. I'd happily opt for Safari, as I respect Safaris ethos (privacy, speed, battery perf etc) but their dev tools are lacking so many basic features. Bugs like this don't help: [https://mobile.twitter.com/benfrain/status/11311423923866419...](https://mobile.twitter.com/benfrain/status/1131142392386641921)

</comment><comment><USER127> I've switched from Chrome to Brave.. It's fast, clean, "seems" more minimalist, it's got good default privacy features (blocks tracking and stuff), It's based on Chromium and you can use all your Chrome extensions etc. The only thing I had to do to make sure I stuck with it was delete Chrome so I don't accidentally out of habit or muscle memory start Chrome.. it's worked beautifully and it's the best browser I've ever used I think. (bonus: they also have a cool way that you can pay your favorite websites - it's not super now because it's mostly crypto currency but soon if you can subscribe via credit card that would be nice).

</comment><comment><USER128> Just throwing it out there, this post is currently at 3239 and needs 151 votes to move to the seventh highest rank in HN history and 154 votes to move to the sixth highest rank.

As long as we're saying how we really feel, we should +1 to move it up the ladder.

</comment><comment><USER129> Controversial question from someone not as informed on the state of current as most here:

Anyone thinking of switching to a browser that doesn't have any script- interpretation ability? (Text-only or html/css only?) What options are currently out there?

<comment><USER24> Firefox works just open about:config and turn off javascript. Sadly you will quickly find most of the modern internet breaks under these circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> I will tell my story.

I use Chrome for years, but recently a new update(I dunno the exact version) lags my laptop so much that it can not even used normally, everything delay several seconds, I spend several days and finally found out its the Chrome did this to my computer.Note: I am using an old laptop, but its still solid.

So I have to reinstall Chrome, I have no choice. Then I give firefox a try, to my surprise, with just a few of clicks, all my bookmarks and cookies are all ported to firefox seamlessly, very comfortable feature I'd say.

So yeah, if you are using old PC like me, u may feel lags when using new Chrome browser, and I suggest u to switch to Firefox, I DOES work!

</comment><comment><USER32> I will say I love firefox containers, they are surprisingly simple to set and forget and have it "just work".

My least favorite parts of firefox (switched last weekend) are:

Dark mode. Dark Reader from Chrome is dead slow on Firefox, and none of the 5 others I've tried from Reddit/HN recommendations come close to its usability on Chrome.

Extension / config syncing. I want the same settings and extensions on my mobile device as my desktop, but it seems like only some configuration settings are able to sync, and add-ons/extensions don't sync between mobile and desktop. I know it's on purpose, but I'd like the option to choose.

</comment><comment><USER131> I'd like to add that Firefox on mobile supports plug-ins, and Chrome on mobile does not. This means that you can run an adblocker, or other UI tweaks of your liking, on mobile, where ads hurt (both the UI and UX) the most.

</comment><comment><USER132> I've been back to FF since Quantum release and like the new experience so far. Occasionally, I have to use Chrome since some of the internal websites at work don't work with Firefox. I always get those errors related to cross-site scripting issue like this:

"Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at [https://internal-xxxxxxx](https://internal-xxxxxxx). (Reason: CORS header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' missing)."

Does anybody know what kind of knob I have to turn on/off in FF to make this disappear?

</comment><comment><USER133> I use cloud profiles heavily. All bookmarks, history, plugins. However, if ads get re-enabled for Chrome, then I am definitely going to have to figure out how to port myself back to Firefox. Very, very, very, annoying.

</comment><comment><USER134> I finally made the switch a few months ago. I have no regrets. I used to use Firefox back in the windows XP days before chrome even existed, but since Chrome came out I've been sort of stuck in it largely because the gsuite integration and the fact that I am part of 7 different google organizations that I have to juggle.

What killed chrome for me is the gradually failing linux support. Had a persistent bug on all my linux machines with chrome (and chromium) would only update the view if the mouse is moving. I actually put up with that for a few months before I switched to FF.

</comment><comment><USER135> While Firefox is pretty great, be under no illusion that it's a utopia of openness. It's plugins are signed and quite tightly controlled. They banned the controversial 'Dissenter' plug-in seemingly for political reasons, and recently had the expired certificate 'oops' that rendered all plugins unusable for a day or so (without fiddly workarounds)

They too could well bend to corporate pressures to limit ad-blocking, they already have the tech that could be used to block widespread use of ad blockers?

<comment><USER136> Did they block it, or just ban it from their store? I thought people could still install it themselves.

<comment><USER137> It's banned from their store, and as of April, at least, it can only be loaded as a temporary add-on and must be manually reactivated each time Firefox is started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER138> The situation follows the "mobile" (cellphone, tablet) situation where Chrome was just not providing an extension API that could be used to implement adblockers (or much else for that matter, e.g. Cookienukers).

This is no surprise at all. Competitive pressure for "desktop" (non-crippled computers incl. Laptops) required providing suitable extension APIs, but the writing was on the wall for a long time.

Some powerful people inside Google consider it theft to browse the web while blocking ads.

</comment><comment><USER139> I happily use Google services inside a separate Firefox container. I do have Chrome installed on one of my laptops but haven't used it for a long while.

Anyway, I am not a hater on Google, I appreciate their open contribution to deep learning tools and I happily pay for GCP, Play books and movies, and I use gmail as a backup email.

But for me, Firefox is just such a better experience than Chrome.

It is also a good idea to have a diverse ecology for Internet infrastructure, tools, and platforms. More choices are better.

</comment><comment><USER140> I would switch off of Chrome if Firefox has better developer tools. Unfortunately, as a developer, Chrome's developer experience is just significantly better.

<comment><USER141> Use Firefox for everything but work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> Chrome is now my mail, calendar, and maps app. It took me a good month to psychologically pivot myself into thinking this way but it's worked.

Everything else is on Firefox now.

</comment><comment><USER143> What I want is a "canned" installer for firefox that has all my preferences saved. Sync is ok, but I'd rather not even give that information to Mozilla. Instead, give me an installation package that will allow me to provide a config file next to it, and the ability to automatically create the config file from an existing install.

I want search engines, home pages, and plug-ins way more than I need my bookmarks.

<comment><USER90> You're not giving anything to Mozilla. It's end to end encrypted.

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync- privacy/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER144> The one hope we have is if enough savvy users not only switch but convince all their network of friends and family to switch as well. DO IT!

</comment><comment><USER145> I have been using Firefox as my default browser for as long as I can remember and after the release of Quantum I have loved using Firefox even more. I still have Chrome for cross-browser testing and the occasional website that loads correctly on Chrome, but not Firefox (for whatever reason). However, this occurs very rarely.

A big thank you to Mozilla. Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER146> What's up with Firefox's font rendering?

It seems pretty bad.

Here is this HN thread in both for comparison (On Win10)

[https://i.imgur.com/ZDVoWXI.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZDVoWXI.png)

Notice how the Firefox sample seems bolder, but with uneven letter weight and generally a higher line height. It's not good for readability. Kerning is a bit iffy also.

</comment><comment><USER147> Try to move passwords from Chrome to Firefox on Mac.

The easiest solution is to install Windows in VirtualBox and do it there, with Firefox Sync on.

</comment><comment><USER148> Some of the current issues I face with Firefox. They are mostly UI/UX-choices that are personal to me.

* No global zoom by default which also remembers per-page zoom changes. * Bookmarking is overly cluttered with with other other, toolbar, menu, etc. * Skype Web doesn't work on Firefox. * User profiles which are as easily accessible as in Chrome.

<comment><USER90> At least for the last, try container tabs. They seem to be generally regarded as superior (in convenience) to Chrome's profiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER149> I switched a few months ago after the forced login debacle. I thought it'd be long to get adjusted, but it was very fast.

</comment><comment><USER150> > Firefox imports your bookmarks, autofills, passwords and preferences from > Chrome.

I can't for the life of me figure out how to do this. I went to File > Import from another browser... and got a dialog that only allowed me to select "Cookies, Browsing History, or Bookmarks". No mention of autofills or passwords.

Am I missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER151> I tend to use both and keep switching between home/work but it just feels like FF is still not as snappy in terms of performance (could just be my perception -- no actual data on this one).

I think the Manifest V3 change on ad-blocking is probably a big win for FF and will likely make many people switch over to FF permanently.

</comment><comment><USER152> Random, only slightly-related question: has any one used suckless' surf? I've seen it recommended by the hyper-minimalist nuts, but am more looking into it so I can tweak it easily. I figure it would be a lot easier than trying to slog through webkit, gecko, servo, blink, etc. as it is so much simpler.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Surf is good at what it does. You might also consider uzbl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> Would love to, but can't, for one simple reason: I like to keep my work and personal profiles completely separated and frequently need to switch between the two. Firefox has profiles, but does not have a low-friction profile switcher. This is why every time I try it I'm back to Chrome a few days later.

</comment><comment><USER154> Does it mean that passwords are stored in clear? If not, how other browsers manage to import this data?

Sorry if the question is silly

<comment><USER155> Passwords are generally stored in the system keyring, or in some system- provided secure storage. I am 95% sure Firefox just reads this.

(It's also possible to CSV export from Chrome's password manager. I used this to import everything into BitWarden.)

<comment><USER19> Chrome MacOS _used_ to store passwords in the MacOS keychain, but stopped. (Not sure if they are stored securely now, but they do not seem to be stored using OS functionality).

Are you positive (not just assuming, cause it would amke sense) FF MacOS still uses the MacOS keychain? Cause that's a plus if so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> I switched Firefox today, after so many years on Chrome. One of the reasons I found valid to use Chrome it was having the browsing history on my phone, but now i felt i really don't care that much. I value more to be controlling all privacy and not eating that many cookies, scripts.

<comment><USER157> Try Firefox for mobile. As a bonus you'll get add-ons as well so you can block ads.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/mobile/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/mobile/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER158> Um, Firefox does the same sorts of thing.

A) Want to use unsigned addons to play around, or tweak your existing ones[1]? Nope, even if you allow them in about:config, you can't; you have to use a special development version and update it separately.

B) Want to customize your keyboard shortcuts? Sorry, that's not safe, you have to use a crippled API that won't take effect until a given page loads.

C) Want to control your setup? Sorry, their "studies" feature is _owned by the marketing team_ and can make _arbitrary changes_ to the app on the fly, all the way up to its cryptographic infrastructure! (As we learned in the recent add-on mishap [2].)

I use Firefox, but they're not obviously better on these matters.

[1] Like, I don't know, if you made a big deal about underprivileged groups getting into coding, and actually wanted to take the concept seriously rather than just get some photogenic token to write hello-world for a photo op.

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826827)

<comment><USER159> > A) Want to use unsigned addons to play around, or tweak your existing > ones[1]? Nope, even if you allow them in about:config, you can't; you have > to use a special development version and update it separately.

Signatures were mandated for add-ons because there was a plague of malware (or near-malware, such as third party anti-virus software) silently installing add-ons that broke Firefox in various ways. If the end-user could disable that requirement then the malware could do that too. The only way for Mozilla to address the issue was to hard-code the signature requirements. I don't think asking power-users to use Nightly/"unbranded" versions of Firefox to load unsigned extensions is something you should count against them.

<comment><USER158> No, there wasn't. No malware was being spread en masse this way. It was an entirely fictitious threat, as it would have required convincing the user to enter a confusing part of the app (about:config) and correctly change a setting.

I can accept that there might have been a malware problem when signatures weren't _the default_ requirement, but that's not the change I'm talking about, where they ignore a user's explicit preference that they're okay with unsigned add-ons.

Remember, Chrome allows you to turn off this setting by just flipping a switch into dev mode. Where's the torrent of compromised Chrome browsers from this vector?

>I don't think asking power-users to use Nightly/"unbranded" versions of Firefox to load unsigned extensions is something you should count against them.

It is when that version doesn't get the same updates and has to be maintained separately.

<comment><USER159> I'm referring to native malware abusing admin privileges to install extensions without the user's consent, not users deliberately installing malware extensions themselves. This was particularly bad in the XP/Vista era (I know I had to remove some rogue extensions from my relative's computers during that time). If the signature check were a flag the malware would just disable it at the same time it installed the extension (remember, it has admin privileges so no user interaction would be required).

Additionally, keep in mind that when the signature requirement was added there were still XUL/XPCOM extensions which could hook the browser much deeper than Chrome-style extensions and wreak much more havok.

<comment><USER158> >I'm referring to native malware abusing admin privileges to install extensions without the user's consent, not users deliberately installing malware extensions themselves.

Ah, so a vector that required code signing doesn't protect against.

<comment><USER159> Signatures absolutely do protect the user in this scenario. With mandatory signatures you can't get (obvious) malware into the browser without having it first approved by Mozilla (who _should_ reject it upon review).

<comment><USER158> Okay I misunderstood what you meant by native malware.

But if your threat model is that extensions can be added without the user's consent, then _that_ is the vulnerability you should fix. And it still wouldn't justify blocking a user who is aware of the risk and chooses to disable that layer of default protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER160> I didn't see this mentioned, but for a bit more customization, check out Firefox Profilemaker, a tool to "help you to create a Firefox profile with the defaults you like": [https://ffprofile.com](https://ffprofile.com)

</comment><comment><USER161> I saw a comment on a previous thread say that WebRender will fix the unacceptable performance on retina MBPs. FF 67 released webrender to stable, but only for Windows 10 per the release notes.

Will WebRender fix the CPU taxing problem, and will that be released for macOS in a subsequent release?

<comment><USER162> Fix for that is scheduled for june 2019 [https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1](https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1) (I'm just waiting for this too, I don't know anything more about it, I hope they will really ship this on time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER163> The only reason I don't switch is that whenever Firefox has control of the webcam, I can't seem to be able to access the webcam with any other software, is this configurable? I work with webRTC a lot, so this is essential for me, I really want to switch

<comment><USER164> What do you think of the approach of using Firefox for your personal life and Chrome for your work life?

<comment><USER163> I'm always doing web development with webrtc, having two browsers open simultanously? Not an option

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER165> I would use FF more (and GC less) if FF supported multiple users the way GC does. I have a Chrome instance for each project/client. That has its own bookmarks, history, password manager, etc. Everything is silo'ed and therefore neatly organized.

</comment><comment><USER166> There's one annoyance I have with Firefox right now and it's the search bar. When I type the start of a frequently visited site then instead of jumping to that site it googles my half-word. Very annoying and different to Safari or Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER167> People have this idea that Chrome is the fastest browser... is this even true anymore?

</comment><comment><USER168> I remember we used to have "IE Tab" for websites which were so bad that they needed IE and failed otherwise. I think Firefox needs a "Chrome Tab" which runs some website in chromium for the really bad offenders.

</comment><comment><USER169> Firefox UI is absolute shit. Takes ages to figure out what the fucking buttons do because who needs labels?! Chromes is no better, just speaks to the current situation and lack of UX professionals on the dev teams.

</comment><comment><USER170> I tried switching to Firefox so many times but have to go back to Chrome for performance reasons.

There is still an open problem on Retina Macbooks with scaled resolution where the performance drops like 10x over non-scaled versions.

<comment><USER171> I've been using Firefox (quantum) on my 2016 retina MBP for years and haven't ever noticed any performance issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER172> While you're at it, stop using Google products altogether.

This cycle will only repeat itself, Google is an advertising company.

If you work for this company, please quit and ply your talents somewhere less motivated to exploit people.

</comment><comment><USER173> Dunno if it's just me but one thing preventing me from switching is my preference for the chrome dev tools. To me they are just head and shoulders easier to use than the firefox or safari versions.

</comment><comment><USER174> Ugh. Look, I used to use Chrome as my primary browser but I switched to Firefox like a year ago. I tried really, really hard to stay with Firefox. But it just doesn't work as well as Chrome. I get that it's not entirely Firefox's fault. Sometimes it is (for instance when things crash in Firefox it almost always crashes my entire browser, Chrome never crashes that way). But it's hard to tell a user to go use another browser when everyone is testing and using Chrome.

It's IE6 all over again just in different ways.

Perhaps I'll try a chronium fork. Sure it's not as good of a move but maybe I'll have better luck with issues. I'll likely try Firefox again to see if things are better (I usually use Firefox for some things at work anyway).

<comment><USER175> A lot of responses I see on any Firefox HN post talk about bugs/issues which have [mostly] been addressed by Mozilla. This includes separate processes per tab which came out just a few versions ago. The problem is that these issues have been resolved more recently vs a year or more ago. It seems many people tried switching to FF long time ago when those outstanding issues were still there so many didn't left up switching because the bugs put a bad taste in their mouth. At this point in 2019, from my perspective, FF and Chrome are functionally the same at this point so there's really no reason to continue using Chrome.

<comment><USER174> You seem to have not really read my comment, made some assumptions and created some straw-men. I'm not entirely sure why.

As I mentioned before I switched entirely to Firefox about a year ago. I only switched back fairly recently (Firefox shipped separate processes _years_ ago). I also continue to use Firefox daily at work. It still isn't as good, as much as I hate to say it. Some issues have gotten better but not all. They are still not equivalent (especially in web dev tooling) and many sites, like YouTube, still have weird issues in Firefox (full screen mode on my Surface Pro 4 still doesn't work right; it's like it switches to a weird software renderer).

Chrome just _always_ works. And I hate to say it, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER176> Let's talk again when [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042) is fixed.

<comment><USER162> In their roadmap it's scheduled for june 2019 [https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1](https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1)

<comment><USER176> We will see. Thank you for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Brave Browser seems to do everything I normally would use Chrome for, with none of the issues that caused me to leave Firefox in the first place.

FF performance is improved, but still lagging, especially on Mobile.

</comment><comment><USER177> I switched back to firefox little before the quantum release because I was around when we had Internet Explorer 6 (and the many years of fallout from it). What's your excuse for using chrome?

</comment><comment><USER178> I suggest that we instead switch to Pale Moon. Whatever you might feel about Moonchild, the browser is solid and reliable. All it really could benefit from would be a wider add-on dev community.

<comment><USER164> What would be the benefit of doing this?

<comment><USER178> I'm on mobile, so it's not going to be as verbose as usual. In no particular order:

Moving away from large corps, breaking up the homogeny of the web, keeping XUL alive, having a browser focused on the end UX rather than the UI and the corp needs, and having add-ons that can actually affect the browser - not the little playground Google thinks will be profitable.

<comment><USER164> I understand perfectly the need to switch from Chrome, as I've only ever used Firefox. What I meant was to understand the difference between Firefox and this browser (other than the point of breaking up homogeneity, which I agree is a great thing overall)

<comment><USER178> Pale Moon uses XUL, not WebExtentions, and provides (subjective) a better browser UX. Only major concern for mass adoption is that it doesn't support DRM content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER179> I almost switched a few months ago but didn't because Chrome just felt smoother, but I'm sorry, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Firefox supports every extension I care about.

I'm a convert.

</comment><comment><USER125> Does anyone have a single thing that Chrome does that FF does not?

For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone uses Chrome. But if anyone has information on Chrome that I do not, please let me know.

<comment><USER180> Here are ones I find useful myself:

\- TRR (Trusted Recursive Resolver -- e.g. DNS Over HTTPS) \- Add-On supports on Android \- Multi-Account Container (although this is more of Add-on)

<comment><USER181> He was asking for the reverse -- what does Chrome offer extra?

<comment><USER180> Oops ;-)

Well... I have that one, too... Chromecast.

<comment><USER125> I use the apple Screen Sharing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER182> I really like my Chromebook, but also would really prefer Firefox.

Even with Crostini, there doesn't seem to be a good way to get an official FF build onto the chromebook. Or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER183> I use Firefox on mac. One feature that is missing in Firefox is that it cannot do a smooth pan zoom like Safari or Chrome. Hope Firefox developer fix this in future release.

</comment><comment><USER184> Already made the switch. My workflow has hardly changed at all.

<comment><USER121> For me it was hard to train myself to stop using Chrome and start using Firefox. A few months ago I created an alfred workflow to help train quick `⌘ + space` users to use Firefox.

[https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch- fire...](https://github.com/jasonraimondi/alfred-workflow-launch-firefox- instead-of-chrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER185> Is there a good, crossplatform, embedable browser as an alternative to cef? As far as i know there's gecko which is outdated and servo ain't there yet...

</comment><comment><USER186> My issue is extensions. Firefox will never have all the extensions I use on Chrome. I want to switch. I use firefox on my mobile. But I cant do it on my desktops.

<comment><USER187> Firefox supports nearly the same web-extensions API as Chrome. Often porting to firefox means a couple of tweaks are necessary on the part of the author, but try [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome- store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store- foxified/) and see if maybe the extension you want is already usable.

<comment><USER188> From a developer perspective, I'd say bit modern as well. For example, FF extension APIs use Promises, which are relatively pleasant to deal with than callbacks that Chrome uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER189> What they ALSO need to implement is differential sync... so if you continue to accidentally use Google Chrome then Firefox can just snarf in change for you.

</comment><comment><USER190> Here's the secret: Make Firefox faster than Chrome. I'll switch. I'll push Firefox on all my customers, my family, my friends, everybody.

</comment><comment><USER191> I've never switched to Chrome from Firefox. I don't really care that it's 10% faster, when Chrome is wielded as a weapon against freedom.

</comment><comment><USER192> This page does not make clear how to switch back if the user get anything wrong by switching to Firefox. That is probably the biggest blocker right now.

<comment><USER193> Just open Chrome.

'Switching' doesn't stop Chrome from working, it just imports the Chrome data so you don't have to re-create bookmarks, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER194> Ironically, this should be a great gateway for Microsoft to heavily invest in a completely open browser. It would ruin Google's decade long plan.

</comment><comment><USER195> So.. i switched yesterday and the Firefox app downloaded 1.5gb by itself overnight.. no idea why it was using so much data.. had to uninstall it..

</comment><comment><USER196> _> "Switch from Chrome to Firefox"_

Yes. Good advice.

</comment><comment><USER197> I'm curious if anyone knows of a means of transferring over saved Session Buddy sessions from Chrome to something comparable in Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER198> To note, firefox quantum is a game changer. Worth switching to on that alone.

Overall once firefox did process isolation, chrome had no more reason to exist.

</comment><comment><USER199> Why? After trying Opera many times in the past, now that it's using Chromium and supports the plugins, I am now a die-hard fan.

</comment><comment><USER200> Has _anyone_ actually Wireshark'ed a machine with just Chrome running?

I ask because I keep reading about how Google is bad because of their business, but I haven't seen an actual pcap, or any reporting for that matter, on what Google actually sends back home.

If you have, or know of a place that has done that, I'd be interested to read about it.

Until then, Chrome, and Firefox are just more tools in my arsenal; and people trying to get me to ditch one, just because they dont like it, is just outright dumb.

</comment><comment><USER201> I like Chrome. I also like Firefox. I choose, now, to use Chrome. I respect the decision of others to use something else.

</comment><comment><USER202> When will uBlock Origin stop working on Chrome? Is there an estimate date? I'd appreciate if someone could tell me.

<comment><USER203> Most people here already dislike Google and Chrome, and are just looking for an excuse to promote Firefox. Realistically, I honestly don't see a world where there is no way to block ads on Chrome. Right now, it's not clear what the final thing will look like, so if I was you I'd just wait. We probably won't know for sure for months or a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER204> I've been using Firefox since 2005. When Chrome came out, I tried it, said "ok," and kept using Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER205> Firefox mobile + ublock origin is dreamy :)

<comment><USER71> \+ sync for the lazy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER206> Been using it since a few months, mainly because it can stop autoplaying all audio/video and no login nagging.

</comment><comment><USER207> Think I'll stick to PaleMoon, at least until Mozilla rethinks their policy on _requiring_ PulseAudio.

</comment><comment><USER208> Are there anything that help with switching existing session? (I have like 400 tabs opened in 60+ windows.)

<comment><USER209> It's still going to be a hassle, but you should be able to do it fairly easily with the OneTab plugin and its import/export functionality. The plug-in exists for both browsers and I've moved sessions that way before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER210> Does anyone have a good impression about how Firefox's energy consumption compares to Safari's?

<comment><USER171> Safari's is superior, definitely. No problem with using Safari if that's your priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER211> If I could just get it to start up as reliably as Chrome, I would. Instead, I have to hope I won't get the "black window" on startup, where I have to play a cat and mouse game of killing the process and restarting it until it works. I do use FF for some things, like HN, but unfortunately, I must use Chrome when I just need things to work right away on the first try.

</comment><comment><USER212> Passwords didn't work for me in mac, but you should switch now while you have the choice.

</comment><comment><USER213> Switch to Safari instead if you're on Mac, if you care about privacy and security: [https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click- att...](https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution- for-the-web/)

<comment><USER214> I like Safari, but its extension system is even more restrictive. Something like uBlock Origin cannot be implemented anymore.

It's an Apple tradition — if you like what's in the box, great, but you won't be able to customize it much later.

<comment><USER215> I was surprised to see your comment, in Safari, directly below the uBlock Origin icon. It seems to be working fine for me. Do you have more details on what you mean?

<comment><USER216> Legacy Safari extensions will no longer be supported. Scroll down to "Safari Extensions".

[https://webkit.org/blog/8825/release-notes-for-safari- techno...](https://webkit.org/blog/8825/release-notes-for-safari-technology- preview-80/)

<comment><USER215> Today I learned something new. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER217> Very impressed with FF 67, I've stopped using Chrome.

The sync between devices is very well done.

</comment><comment><USER218> Waiting for Firefox on Android and macOS to become usable here :/

</comment><comment><USER219> Firefox Beta is at 68 now and still not way to set the default zoom...

</comment><comment><USER220> You can use adguard to go around google's changes in browser api

</comment><comment><USER221> other ethical alternatives have been compiled here: [https://ethical.net/resources/](https://ethical.net/resources/)

</comment><comment><USER222> Do you guys use Firefox's password manager? Or something else?

<comment><USER81> I personally use Firefox's sync to save passwords across devices, but most passwords I store in a normal lastpass/1password/etc service.

It comes in very handy to have a non-browser-based password store for when you are out and about and dont have access to on of your own laptops/desktops but do have your phone handly (where you can look up the passwords)

</comment></comment><comment><USER223> If Google kicks adblockers, Chrome will be dead within a year.

</comment><comment><USER224> I switched only a few weeks ago and am not looking back!

</comment><comment><USER225> Sure, as soon as its dev tools aren't complete garbage.

</comment><comment><USER226> Can also switch to [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/), based on Chromium, with native ad blocking at the lowest level, fast.

<comment><USER227> Shouldnt we instead promote the major competitor with sufficient funding so that people are more likely to stick with for longer term?

<comment><USER226> No, _we_ don't have to align on this and people can have more than one choice. Brave is open source and is trying to fix the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER228> Support localhost subdomains ([http://foo.localhost:8080](http://foo.localhost:8080)) like Chrome does and I'll consider it!

</comment><comment><USER229> Right-Click + "Customize..." FTW!

</comment><comment><USER230> Firefox was lost to me when they removed the dissenter plugin from their plugins site. Using the dissenter browser now. It's fast and it works great.

</comment><comment><USER231> Qt: PLEASE go back to WebKit. QtWebEngine will never be safe. I will just never use it. It's Chrome, and Chrome is Google.

And Google is evil.

</comment><comment><USER232> Firefox is the right choice.

</comment><comment> rajesh-s This feels like the time GitHub was acquired by Microsoft and people started migrating to GitLab!

</comment><comment><USER233> I switched to Brave browser last year and I never regretted my decision.

<comment><USER75> Brave is based on Chromium.

<comment><USER233> So what ? It gives me optimum performance Desktop and Mobile.

On my Mac its upto 2 times faster and in my android phone it's upto 4 times faster.

<comment><USER75> Using Brave will provide no benefit regarding the extension changes you are mentioning, unless Brave forks and stays on an older version of Chromium. Where are you seeing speed enhancements? When it comes to loading pages, or in task manager?

<comment><USER233> Yes. Page loading is faster in Brave

It's even more faster in case if site is full of ads and internet connection is slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER234> Switch to Brave.

<comment><USER75> Brave is based on Chromium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER235> Good timing

</comment><comment><USER236> add translation to firefox and then I'll switch

</comment><comment><USER237> The one thing i really need before i switch to firefox is vivaldi style stackable tabs. Does anyone know if there is any way to get stackable tabs in firefox?

</comment><comment><USER238> I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHROME'S

<comment><USER75> And if they supported hardware accelerated video on Linux like Chromium on many distros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER238> I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHOME'S

</comment><comment><USER239> [Deleted]

<comment><USER3> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052893) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER240> ... or install Edge Dev in seconds and keep most of your Chrome extensions

[https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en- us/welcome?channel=d...](https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en- us/welcome?channel=dev)

<comment><USER241> One of the points brought up about the changes being made to content blocking in Chrome is that it was an engine change. So no, switching to Edge or Opera or whatever might not do anything to help. I'm guessing Brave is the one Blink-powered browser that is likely to become an exception.

<comment><USER162> The built-in ad-blocker in Opera will go away too? [https://www.opera.com/computer/features/ad- blocker](https://www.opera.com/computer/features/ad-blocker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER242> Is this a coordinated ad campaign for Firefox?

I find it odd how there will be Google Hate, and unanimous Firefox support.

I guess I'm looking to hear from users who actually removed Google from their life and are happy. Chrome is only 1 of the Google products I've used.

<comment><USER243> I starting switching away from Google over the last year. The biggest step was moving off my Gmail account, and the trigger for that was the UI terribleness of Gmail. That took a few hours of updating every account I have with my new address. Password manager _really_ helped with this.

I've never been much of a Chrome user. A few years ago, Chrome was unusable for me on my 2GB work machine, and was a battery-killer on my own laptop. So I stuck with Firefox at work, Safari at home.

DDG is a great search engine. I can't remember the last time I used the "!g" operator, and got any results better than the DDG ones.

The one product I still use Google for is maps, and only when I want to see a good street view or areal photo. For mobile, Apple Maps does just fine. For simple directions on the desktop, OSM works great.

I'm totally happy. 10 years ago, Google was putting things out there that weren't possible with other services. Their mapping was tremendously better than MapQuest, their email was so much nicer than Hotmail, etc.

But now they're bloated and slow. Everything seems to lag as you watch the UI components slowly appear on the screen. And the alternatives today for each product (search, maps, email, browser) are all very much competent.

<comment><USER56> Try !sp if you want to see Google results, no need to use !g directly even if you did prefer the results. Google Maps and Youtube are very difficult to replace, if you live in a big city using varied modes of transit (walking, bus/train, driving), Google Maps is really tough to beat. I reduced my Google- coverage, but I don't intend to eliminate it altogether.

What did you move to for email? Fastmail with a custom domain? I've long considered ProtonMail but unlikely to go that route.

I'm between paying for iCloud storage and using that, or Outlook.com The additional phone backup space with iCloud would be very nice anyway, so as a monthly payment, it's a one-stop shop. At this point it's extremely unlikely I'll ever go back to Android so that works for me. Or, just moving to Outlook.com. I'm leaning towards Outlook simply because of the better calendar system. Both Gmail and Outlook support email reminders for calendar items. I could get used to iOS-only notifications, but I really prefer notifications to come through email since I often include explicit instructions.

<comment><USER243> I went with Fastmail, with their domain. If I were to do it again, I probably would use my own domain (and I may do that in the future). I can't say enough good things about Fastmail's UI. It's just as snappy as a native app, and is both consistent and intuitive. Outlook.com is also really nice. I use it for work email, and have no complaints at all.

Thanks for the StartPage tip! I'm going to start doing that whenever I want a second opinion on my search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER244> Switch from Chrome to Brave

</comment><comment><USER245> Why is this on here?

<comment><USER246> Because [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2)

<comment><USER245> It just feels like an ad. No mention of that other article, and it's a REAL stretch to say that these are related. No more ad spam on Hacker News, it's one of the few good sites left.

<comment><USER247> These aren't related whatsoever, but the timing of this submission is.

I personally don't think it belongs on the front page just because of news regarding a competitor, the only discussion this link sparks is the same discussion that's already been had twice this week (20044430, 20050173).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> marquis-chacha I tried to switch just now, looks like uMatrix doesn't work in Firefox? That's a blocker for me... I've spent a lot of time creating a ruleset on uMatrix, not looking to try recreating that.

<comment><USER248> There is an add-on called uMatrix for FF. I haven't tried it so I cn't tell you if it works or not.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix/)

<comment> marquis-chacha Sorry I was unclear, uMatrix still exists, and I used to use it on Firefox, but now I get a message:

uMatrix could not be verified for use in Firefox and has been disabled.

<comment><USER249> It's working for me, make sure you have the latest Firefox version, there was a bug a few days ago which broke addon-on signature verification.

<comment> marquis-chacha That was it. Used to Firefox autoupdating, but didn't this time for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER250> No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER213> For Apple users (MacOS, iOS), I would suggest Safari over Firefox as FF is the most hacked browser and very unsafe. On the other hand, Safari syncs bookmarks, tabs on all your Apple devices very seamlessly.

<comment><USER251> I wouldn't call Firefox unsafe. But Safari's sync for bookmarks, passwords, tabs, handoff... is really the killer feature.

I use Firefox as my "virgin" broswser for testing or when I need to manually override proxy settings for my own MitM purposes. But that's about it.

<comment><USER252> Firefox's sync is better, because it's not tied to the Apple ecosystem :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER253> Why is leaving the only recourse? Chromium is free software. Forking always remains an option.

<comment><USER254> Some other thread yesterday linked to ungoogled chromium [1] which sounded like a good idea to me but in practise I'd have to build it myself which Im not really comfortable with.

I'd probably get it to run but it would need more time than I'm willing to invest in this. Plus would I have to build it new everytime there's an update‽

It's just to much hassle for me.

[1] - [https://github.com/ungoogled-software](https://github.com/ungoogled- software)

<comment><USER77> If you're using Archlinux, there's an AUR package. That means you can build it like any other package with makepkg or a helper program like pacaur. If hardware resources are an issue, it's probably not too hard to rent a powerful linode server for an hour or 2 to build the package and then transfer it to your local machine. I imagine it would only cost a couple of bucks max.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER255> Is it okay for Firefox to maintain a manually curated list of sites it deems to be trackers [1]? Why is reddit on this list and not, say, Gab?

This breaks a site I built called reVddit [2], and after discussing with Mozilla devs [3], I'm unable to come up with a solution that doesn't significantly alter user experience and maintenance costs.

I find it ironic because the intent of reVddit is to increase transparency, one of Firefox's key principles. I'd love to hear ideas if anyone has any insight into any of this.

[1] [https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking- protecti...](https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking- protection/blob/master/services.json)

[2] [https://revddit.com](https://revddit.com)

[3] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84Ezrw...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84EzrwWp0/t3cgc7H-AgAJ)</comment>