• Firefox offers better privacy and security than Chrome, with upcoming support for 200 new add-ons. • While Chrome dominates, Firefox gains ground with user-friendly browsing experience and open-source model. • Mozilla’s focus on user privacy and transparency challenges Google’s ad-centric approach, making Firefox a viable alternative.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 19 years ago when it first came into existence. The 2nd best time is now.
my cubicle wall poster I sent money for. yw
For a few years there I was on the border, extensions used to make firefox extremely unstable, along with it being primarily multithreaded rather than multiprocess. Now it’s much better. I know a lot of people don’t like what the “quantum project” did, but I love it. Now a tab might crash because of some shitty plugin or something but the rest is fine.
Exclusively used chrome browser for ~10yrs. Switched to Firefox last week, cause google being evil.
That behavior deserves more internet points
okay but listen to how evil Google actually is, they have disabled my Firefox browser. It’s simply doesn’t work. It was my default for years and now only Chrome works on my phone 😡 Is anyone else experiencing this?
I never left 😘
It was never a good time to switch to Chrome.
When it was released, Chrome was revolutionary. Sandboxing individual tabs into their own processes was a stroke of genius. Until then, if a single site ate up all your memory and crashed your browser, all your tabs/sites died and you had to start again.
It really was the best browser for a hot minute before others copied the idea.
Totally agree. I also knew this was Google’s modus operandi. The early versions of their software can be amazing and they slowly monetize over time.
I never understood why so many people thought it was a good idea to hand Google the near monopoly power we had just prevented Microsoft in keeping. And that was AFTER we saw how bad it was that Microsoft had that power.
Too many people go for short term gain for way greater long term losses.Chrome was much faster and more stable than Firefox for a time, but they’re similar now.
Personally I’ve never left Firefox. Used to develop on it when it was still called Mozilla, and I’m happy it’s still around. Privacy is a major strength of it compared to other browsers.
there was a while there if you used more than a few extensions you’d have a lot of issues. Also there were tons of issues over the years where there were some massive memory leaks. It has gotten much better since then with quantum and electrolysis.
your memory might not works very well since it was never called plain “mozilla”
Erm yes it was But here is a more or less chronological ordering of getting to Firefox today.
- Netscape Navigator
- Netscape Communicator 4.x (a suite of email, browser, calendar, HTML composer)
- Netscape Communicator 5.0 is abandoned as a commercial product because engine is getting old and Microsoft is being anti-competitive
- Netscape open sources Netscape Communicator 5.0 as Mozilla with the proprietary bits & crypto stripped out. BTW Mozilla was the internal name of Netscape exposed in the user agent and easter eggs like about:mozilla
- Netscape / Mozilla starts NGLayout which is a rewrite of the HTML engine
- NGLayout becomes Gecko
- Mozilla suite is based on Gecko using extensible XUL architecture
- Netscape themed browser released based on Mozilla with proprietary AOL stuff like AIM client
- A bunch of other things happening at this point like versions of AOL, Compuserve using Gecko
- Microsoft pays AOL a huge amount of money to not use Gecko in AOL client and make a lawsuit go away
- AOL lays off most of the Netscape staff & tosses some money to get Mozilla Foundation going
- Mozilla foundation splits the browser into Firefox which doesn’t use so much XUL in the browser but is still the Mozilla / Gecko code base. It proved popular because it was more focused and loaded a bit quicker.
- Mozilla foundation also splits email into Thunderbird along similar lines
- Firefox progresses to where it is today.
So yeah it’s a continuation all the way back. I also worked at Netscape at the time so I got to see much of this transition.
I was today years old when I learned that the first web browser I have ever touched (NN) was, in fact, the great grandparent of Firefox.
Very little though, almost all that code has been replaced/rewritten over the years along with all the new stuff that has been added.
Yup. Not much of it survives in the code since it was mostly rewritten from scratch but I guess if you looked at the nspr (portable runtime) or nss (crypto) code that there are remnants of those early days still in there.
I recall the switch from Mozilla to Firefox as being a huge improvement not just in loading time, but the user interface felt much less sluggish overall and keyboard navigation was better. To me it felt like they had ditched 80% of the code base to make a lean, mean browsing machine. Both browsers were around for a couple of years so Firefox seemed more like a fork than a rebrand.
The way Mozilla worked and Firefox still works is there is a cross platform front-end implemented in XUL which is XHTML, CSS and Javascript. The engine underneath is the same (Gecko) but the frontend app over the top is what the user sees and controls buttons, menus, functionality.
Firefox was basically a fork of Mozilla stripped of the not-browser stuff and a cleaned up UI. It proved popular as a prototype so it grew into its own thing and Mozilla suite was abandoned. There is still a Seamonkey project that keeps Mozilla suite alive but it’s outside of the Mozilla foundation.
The reason it’s faster is that Mozilla was an entire suite expressed as a lot of XUL so it impacted loading times. XUL also had this neat trick that you could overlay XUL over the top of other XUL so the mail app was injecting buttons, menus and whatnot into the browser and vice versa. This was cached but it still had to be loaded. In addition and probably just as impactful, was that Mozilla shipped as dynamic libraries (DLLs) and a relatively small EXE, so it took time to start. In Firefox, the number of DLLs was reduced with static linking so it was more efficient to load.
If I remember correctly, XUL/XBL is dead. They removed that code a while back after they transitioned to WebExtensions. The current frontend is HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
There are still bits of XUL around but I believe the preference is to use HTML elements wherever possible and they’ve been stripping elements out.
In the early days when it was first created from the Netscape baseit was definitely branded as Mozilla. Source: I’m old enough to have used it then. Check its wiki page. Covers its early days as an app suite which included the browser.
Ooof you thought you were clever, but you just look like a fool on the internet!
When Firefox announced that a ton of their add-ons/extensions were coming to the mobile app, it got me to switch from chrome after almost 15 years.
The mobile experience of Firefox with ad block is so much better than Chrome. Using chrome on mobile makes the Internet feel broken to me. I can’t go back.
Brave has the best mobile experience IMO. Built-in dark content (this is gamechanger, dark reader is broken on FF mobile, slow and breaks pages), background playback (though this has FF also), very fast, more than FF. Powerful rust-written adblocker (though UBO is better but is slow and broke some pages on mobile). The only thing that could improve more is extensions capacity.
Brave is a scam
Reasons and source?
you won’t get one “they heard it” . I prefer firefox because I’ve used it for almost 2 decades and know it inside-out, but brave is solid too. As long as it remains open source I’m fine with it , and it’s my “chrome backup” when a page is designed for chrome
you won’t get one “they heard it” The political bias here is real. Seeking the truth is more important than beliefs.
inb4 “they added an affilliate link to an exchange 5 years ago,”
I need more up to date reasons lol. We are in 2023, on those times brave hasn’t even the 0.0001% of market share…
The CEO of brave is a piece of shit that should not be supported or promoted.
Most of us don’t care as long as the product is good. There are a lot more people involved with brave than him who are doing a great job. Unless you can actively show me a shit post history like Trump, I don’t gaf.
Yeah it’s obvious most people don’t care. That’s why things are as shitty as they are. That’s why corps and billionaires have all the power because collectively people will not give up their toys to ensure everyone is treated fairly.
A bad leader with people under them knowing they’re bad makes them bad too.
Ok I agree, fine. But where is the critic against Mozilla’s CEO that increased her salary up to $5 million dollars? at the same time firing a lot of employees? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ The bias is real.
You equate antisemitism and shitty business? Hmm…
Yes, some guy having racist ideas somehow isnt as bad ad disrupting a lot of lives while taking a pay raise. There’s always a some degree of evil involved with anything at scale. pick the thing that screws you least.
Antisemitism? What? what are you talking about, we are talking about opposition to same sex marriage. You can think whatever you want, we live in a free society. Now, it is different if I approve or not that idea, but who cares???
I care.
But I don’t care what you care
ublock is not slow, the difference between it and rust is insignificant if you look at page load time data with a similar set of block lists.
I am talking about Firefox ANDROID. Brave have native adblocker, it’s not for the fact that Rust is fast (that is), its because it’s native. the same way dark reader slows down dramatically some sites on ANDROID. Chromium have native dark mode for contents.
The best time was 15 years ago
And the second best time is now.
Nice one. 🌲
The second best time was 14 years ago.
What about 14 years 11 months and 30 days?
That’s the 366/365th or approximately 1.0027th best time.
Well, better late than never.
If it weren’t for the dev tools in Chrome, I never would have switched in the first place. But they got me stuck on it. But I’ve had enough of their shenanigans.
Just because Google broke the most trafficked site on the internet for Firefox doesn’t mean its a bad browser. Hell that’s a ringing endorsement.
Personally I’d rather stop using any Google services, than handing them a Chrome monopoly. Google is already way to dominant IMO.
which site is that? Google search page? it works fine for me in every browser I’ve ever tried it on.
How is this going to end?
Google blocks access to it’s services for Firefox altogether? Maybe even ban it from the Play Store? That would finally give me a real incentive to install some CFW.
No, they will simply stop funding mozilla.
I know this isn’t a popular view, but as for me, if Google makes the user experience worse (or blocks services entirely) for Firefox, I’ll just stop using those services. I’ll find alternatives for the essentials, and those that aren’t essential… well, hello, extra free time.
It was a thing of the past, when different browsers rendered websites differently, thus some services didn’t work in certain browsers.
Nowadays all browsers are pretty advanced, they render websites more or less precisely according to standards, so it’s really not hard to make a website work in all major browsers. So if a service doesn’t work in the browser of my choice (whether it’s intentional or not), then that service sucks and isn’t worth my time messing with it.
I would say that’s most likely ileagal
In the US, without net neutrality I believe it’s completely legal. I remember seeing a report on The Steven Colbert show about a year or so after we lost net neutrality about how Comcast deemed Netflix wasn’t paying them enough money so they throttled Netflix into the ground. This gave the appearance that Netflix services were crap in comparison to their own services like Hulu. About a month later they came to an agreement and Netflix paid up then magically speeds were restored to about the same as Hulu services.
I can practically hear the EU Commission stoking the furnace as we speak…
that’s fine, we’ll find a way. I mean they could start some kind of clumsy certification thing, but I’ll just move on and open up brave when I absolutely have to, otherwise they get no attention from me. I bet ublock traffic is less than a half a percent of their traffic.
Tree. Style. Tabs.
Best damned extension ever. It’s amazing to me that all browsers don’t have this style of tabs.
Thanks for the recommendation. I need to organize my 100+ tabs.
Tree Style Tab also lets you bookmark whole trees. I’m often jumping between different coding languages, or different areas of DevOps on a weekly basis, and tree bookmarks help. I can “file away” a bunch of research and load it all back later, and still have the tree! Very useful for context switching.
Use Vimium add-on and have a pop-up to search your open tab.
Or if you prefer no add-ons or don’t know how to use Vim keybindings then type your search query in the search bar like this:
% my tab title
Just wanna jump in here an md mention sideberry as an alternativ, does the same thing, but better imo and has tons of customisation options
Right?
The ability to drag them into specific trees to keep them organized, and the also Tab Renamer so the top tab is named sensibly and you can find other tabs
Most of my immediate team have switched to vertical tabs. It’s frustrating seeing someone with a couple hundred horizontal tabs trying to figure where that important page was.
Edge does vertical tabs, but no nesting. Even that frees up a good amount of screen space.
It does one level of nesting with tab groups. Just drag one tab onto another to start.
I could never get used to tab managers like these IF the tabs are still shown in the top of Firefox.
Simple Tab Groups is something that I can get used to, because it works pretty similar as it does with Safari.
There’s CSS you can apply that hide the tabs, but it’s not a straightforward process to apply it.
I wonder if I could script it? Hmm. (I’ve written a developer environment setup script at work that I could add that to…)
It’s this on Firefox Android?
Unfortunately no, but honestly I can’t imagine how it would work on such small and
horizontalvertical screen. Though I love that I can run uBO, Privacy Badger, TamperMonkey and CleanURLs.
Moved from Netscape to Firefox and never used IE or Chrome. I never understood the obsession with anything made by Google, glad its going to finally all fall apart for them.
Nothing is falling apart for them. Do you remember IE times? “Everyone” hated it, “everyone” used it just to install Chrome/Firefox/whatever on new devices. And yet - the vast majority never even thought of using anything else.
There was a tiny window of time back before like 2010 where Google was legitimately a good choice. At the time Chrome came out, Firefox was having some notorious performance/bloat issues, and conversely Chrome was light and fast. Lots of stuff that came out around 2000-2010 from Google was legit best in class, and they were still generally in their “don’t be evil era.” That’s obviously gone way out the window and has for some time. I started switching away from Google stuff around the time they killed Reader, and I’m glad I did because they’ve only gotten increasingly awful.
Google dorks are game changer for OSINT things.
You’ve been playing the long game!
Personally I prefer LibreWolf (Firefox fork)
Mull for Android is actually the closest thing to LibreWolf that you can get on mobile, I highly recommend it.
I was looking for that, thanks
I hope you’ll enjoy it
Thanccs :3
Mull always has issues for me, so I’m just running plain old Firefox.
What issues do you have?
The pages stop loading properly or just hangs. Been a problem before, now it’s back after some releases.
+1 for LibreWolf
I’ve been using Firefox on desktop and mobile exclusively for a number of years now. I will say the experience isn’t perfect but it’s better than using a browser made by a company that is actively hostile to its users.
It is important to take note that you will experience issues with some websites. For example, https://astro.build/ Try scrolling quickly up and down on this page on Firefox vs Chrome (on mobile).
What’s wrong with that page? I’m not seeing anything in particular.
I see no difference between mobile chrome/Firefox?
A lot of people have been saying this, some have been saying it lags in chrome, and some have been saying it lags in firefox. I’m interested to know what device you have and perhaps what refresh rate your display runs?
60hz Android 11 Xiaomi
That’s jittery. What’s causing that?
I honestly have no idea of the root cause. Different users are reporting different things. It seems to manifest differently for everyone. At a high level I would say it’s due to the use of a JavaScript framework as a purely static HTML/CSS only site should not be doing this.
Had pentadactyl survived the infamous extension API change (or something like that, don’t remember anymore) I would’ve never left FF. However, I finally made it back, thanks to tridactyl.
tridactyl is good, I need to use it more!
What is that?
Basically vim mode for firefox
