Firefox for life! Well as long as they don't go evil or bankrupt. I am not surprised at all though.
/r/firefox is also still closed and opened up on https://fedia.io/m/firefox. So firefox people are cool in general. 🦊
Maintaining a browser is an insane amount of work. Without Mozilla working on Firefox, LibreWolf will stagnate and become unusable.
Firefox for life
It's not just a Chrome-, it's a Google thing. If you want to install F-Droid or Exodus on Android today, you have to get past Google's warning that you are putting malware on your device.
as they don’t go evil
Well... anyone who packs their advertising through third-party sites has long since defected to the dark side. It seems to me that the ghost of Brendan Eich is still haunting Mozilla.
To be somewhat fair there, side loading an app should really have a giant warning, otherwise it would be really easy to trick less knowledgeable users into installing actual malware. It would be nice to have an easier way to install third party app stores, but to install an APK from a website/browser really should have a giant warning.
Worlds better than the competition that outright bans side loading other than a weird "only x number of apps" and "must reinstall every x days".
I mean, they've already started cutting some features I have used... So I've got Firefox and Pale Moon on my PC to cover the loss of ftp support. And since some pages don't work in Firefox in either instance of engine, I have to have Chrome installed...
It genuinely sucks that some websites don't bother to support Firefox! When you encounter one, you might want to complain to the devs and open a webcompat issue.
So it's like that thing the Internet Explorer is Evil! website complained about back in the day, but now instead of Internet Explorer, it is Google Chrome...
I have already encountered some websites which didn't work with Chrome very well, but did with Firefox. They mentioned it's because of how Chrome now handles audio, the audio doesn't start.
Their recent advertising of their VPN has set some worrisome trends; here’s to hope they stop that nonsense before we have to move to a fork.
I mean, it's not great, but it's also not the worst. You can also disable it. Chrome gets money by collecting your data to use for advertising purposes. Firefox doesn't do that, so I don't see much harm in them advertising some of their products a couple times a year. Even wikipedia advertises their own donation period, trying to encourage users to donate.
If it were a persistent banner, that would be different. But a one time closable window, that can also be disabled, is really not that terrible. Companies need money, after all.
Fun fact, did you know that google deliberately makes their products run worse on browsers like Firefox so users will think the browsers are slow? Please support Firefox, it's the only real browser not based on Googles technology (like Brave is), and it's actively fighting Google's monopoly on web browsing.
Librewolf is a fork of Firefox, and is absolutely better for privacy and security; way more based than Firefox, you should check it out m8 :)
Using LibreWolf right now! The experience is smooth most of the time, although you do need to switch to Firefox when you need to view DRM-controlled content (like when participating an online course, for example).
Yeah DRM content is why I'm on Firefox instead of Librewolf. I may look into hardening FF in the near future
"The job isn't done, until Lotus won't run" - attributed to Bill Gates/Microsoft
Remember when the FTC actually did- well anything. I 'member (actually i don't cos i wasn't alive when they did)
User experience is actually better if you're not using chrome since you won't be subject to Google's a/b tests
Sorry to disappoint you but it does. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo if you check out the Browser section, it literally says DDG browser is using Blink, which is the Chromium engine.
sorry, i was refering to the desktop browser, that if I am correct is just based on WebKit and it's build from scratch. also didn't know that the mobile ones were using chromium thanks for the information :3
duckduckgo browser is just a webview2 wrapper, which is a edge wrapper, which is just a chromium wrapper, which is........
I'm usually vehemently anti-furry. Like, irrationally so.
But this? This I can get behind.
Our website works best with Chrome so they want us to use Chrome. Blame the people we outsource to in India, I guess.
Use Vivaldi then. It's Chromium based, but they care about privacy and there's tons of ways to configure it
For starters, Teams doesn't work in Firefox. And good luck convincing your company (or its clients) to stop using Teams. And the native teams client on Linux is even worse than using it in the browser.
It's a terrible mobile browser...
I honestly gave it a go, and I liked that I could run ad blocking, but the constant crashing and poor website rendering shoved me back to chrome on mobile a couple weeks ago. I'd rather deal with ads and have the browser be stable apparently.
I use it on mobile just for uBlock. As far as I know it's the only mobile browser that supports extensions. If you use their nightly version it can use any extension that you can get on desktop. The base version only supports a few extension, but uBlock is one of them.
What's not working? Most broken websites are fixed by having it flag itself as chrome mobile, which is telling that your falling for what Google wants right now. And what crashes are you getting? I get one no more than once a week if that and I have over 100 tabs open
Wait, you guys get crashes on Firefox Mobile? Like legit, I was using Firefox for months, in fact, nearly a year, with over 100 tabs opened constantly (it showed up as an Infinity sign, lol) and I don't remember ever having Firefox crash on me. That's unusual.
I didn't have a list of every website that screwed up, but when one did I'd have to close the tab and reopen and it'd work, which sucks when you are actually navigating the Internet.
It wasn't that the stuff wouldn't load on Firefox it's that it would freeze and need to be dumped and retried. This happened very frequently.
Actual crashes were almost daily for me (with maybe 5 open tabs running on a Samsung flip 4, so pretty decent hardware)
Which sucks because I'd like Firefox to work on mobile, setting aside privacy and ads, the UI is much better in general. But it's bad at being a browser.
When was the last time you used it? A few years back it was terrible, but it's gotten much better.
Wish Firefox goes with Vivaldi direction. I can't try another browser since I 'm so addicted to gestures. Plus a lot more customization is available.
It's actually 4%, see https://radar.cloudflare.com; websites like statscounter are not accurate because they rely on trackers blocked by Firefox enhanced tracking protection.
On desktop the market share is somewhat higher.
I switched back to Firefox ever since the Quantum release and have been loving it.
I wish Mozilla would spend their resources on the browser instead of wasting time and money on so many other useless projects.
Chromium is absolutely massive, and it's very hard to be sure all the nasty Google telemetry has been ripped out.
Brave is also run by crypto shills, and they were caught auto-editing URLs to be referral links (!) a while back.
Damn, I've never actually used it but have heard good about it. Just another Firefox win though.
It's based on Chromium. Chromium is developed by Google and is the base of Chrome as well.
Chromium is FOSS though.
Aside from it being made by Google, it supports a monoculture/monopoly in browsing. We've been down the path before. It isn't good. Even if you are using Brave, you are still supporting the Blink monopoly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA8O97U1Pbc but also the "crypto crap" is very controversial, and settings are not synced properly when using Brave sync? For some reason, when I had to distrohop and I had my settings synced, I never got the crypto crap disabled automatically. And I had to redo a lot of my front page settings, every. single. time. That's what I don't like about it. But my opinion is my own, and I myself use Vivaldi because I'm a customisation freak and Firefox doesn't cut it for me.
Such a baseless statement. Ad blockers actually improve performance by removing random junk videos, and images from running on the site.
I'm so glad to have switched to Firefox.
Yes, but if I remember correctly, the UBlock Origin devs said that the current restrictions in Chrome prevent some of the performance improvements seen in FFx because the filtering is done after the element is downloaded. So, it still has to transfer, but isn't rendered or executed. I could be mistaken, though.
Came to say the same. My low-end laptop is only able to browse the internet thanks to adblock.
You should switch from chrome to firefox. Less tracking built in to the browser. Also chrome is planning to deprecate manifest V2 which will break all adblockers.
Adguard is russian spyware. Also it wouldn't matter if they have a manifest v2 compliant addon as manifest v2 is going away in less than a year. Manifest V3 breaks adblockers.
Yes, they were developed in Russia and moved to Cyprus a few years later. Their software also installs a root certificate so that's fun. Here is a primer on why that's a bad thing. You should use ublock origin if you care about adblocking and privacy.
well damn, I've been using adguard for well over 3 months now, thanks for the heads up I'll install ublock origins
When you uninstall it make sure you go find that root cert and verify it was deleted as well. You don't want that hanging out on your system as it can be used to compromise your security via man in the middle attacks.
Unless you use a browser that uses its own ad and tracker blocking. I get fewer ads on Vivaldi without adblocking then I get on Firefox with ublock origin.
Runs about half the resources that Firefox takes up too.
Ad block on chromium was supposed to break in January when manifest v3 came around and it doesn't seem like much has changed on browsers that were prepared for it like Brave and V.
Edge and Chrome are fucked, but who cares about them anyways.
I used vivaldi for a period, but it's still Chromium. I'm trying to support the only non-chromium option out there. The more users Firefox has, the better. Chrome and Chromium are so dominant, it's seriously problematic.
Unless you were running Firefx with outdated uBO filters, I doubt that. Vivaldi is a memory hog for me.
Windows 10, 3200MHz CL16 32GB, Ryzen 5 3600XT.
Extensions on Vivaldi are Bandcamp volume control, Bing unchained, and tubebuddy.
Extensions on Fox: Firefox color, DDG privacy essentials, Ublock Origin.
Same tabs open on each browser.
YouTube, Spotify, Lemmy.world, and FB messenger.
Methodology: played YouTube videos in each with all other tabs idle to ensure they were actively using system resources.
FF: 1361MB (active) V: 764MB (active)
That's literally half. Also Firefox never seems to want to give back RAM, whereas Vivaldi drops back down by a factor of 1/7 when the video is paused. Fox only managed to give up a measly 60ish MB of it's 1361.
FF: 1306MB (idle) V: 628MB (Idle)
Edit: I believe ublock being installed on FF is justified since I find the native ad blocking of Vivaldi to be just as good, namely in YouTube which is my primary concern. If you want an AdBlock free test that only wins points in Vivaldi's favor for packaging it into the browser.
I just tried it and Firefox ESR uses ~800MB with a bing tab, a youtube tab focused and playing a video, a lemmy tab and a github tab. I’m running it on GNU/Linux, and I toggled dom.suspend_inactive.enabled in about:config. Edit: it also doesn’t really matter how much RAM it uses, it’ll unload tabs if the system is low on memory. Firefox is also faster for me.
https://support.mozilla.org/nl/questions/988854
philipp Moderator
the name "firefox" comes from the red panda & the icon apparently from a fox, so you're both right in a way. a little bit of ambiguity and people discussing the brand of the browser seems to be quite a likeable thing to maintain ;-)
Chrome plating (less commonly chromium plating) is a technique of electroplating a thin layer of chromium onto a metal object. A chrome plated part is called chrome, or is said to have been chromed.
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
They have done some shitty things before, like the Mr. Robot and Pocket stuff, but nowhere near as bad as Google.
If you didn't know, firefox has 'containers' where you can open a tab in, for example, a 'work' container and it won't carry the cookies over. Lets you log into multiple accounts on 1 browser (like personal email & work email etc).
Doesn't have seperate history though.
I learned about containers less than year ago and kicked myself for not learning about them sooner. Containers in Firefox truly are a godsend.
Actually there’s one better - if you go to about:profiles in the URL bar you can make a new profile that is COMPLETELY separate, including history. Only annoying thing is that you have to go there every time you want to open a window in a profile other than the default
If storage isn't a concern you could always use multiple portable Firefoxes. Of course that means maintaining multiple FFxes, but once you configure one, you can just copy-paste the folder.
I work in marketing, and with all the tons of accounts we have Containers is a LIFE SAVER
I'm in IT, and same. The fact I can log into multiple 365 tenancies at the same time and not constantly clearing cookies and shit is life changing
Do containers allow you to have separate bookmarks lists? TBH, I don't trust myself to always use the same container for the same "stuff" different browsers serves to idiot proof it for me.
You're lying to yourself if you think Mozzarella Foxfire doesn't have telemetry. I'd recommend Waterfox if you're wanting no telemetry
Edit: this comment is stupid, read replies
I use Waterfox because Firefox actually does steal my data but Waterfox doesn't.
Honest questions: what data does Firefox steal and why Waterfox over others like Librewolf?
Firefox has telementary on by default which you can easily disable in settings.
And imo waterfox is worse than Librewolf as it was sold to system1, a advertisment company
Librewolf lags very far behind in staying up to date with security patches. Use regular Firefox hardened with Arkenfox’s user.js
Firefox "steals" the kind of data that tells them how people actually use the product. And they only do that if you don't turn it off.
Waterfox was sold to system1, an advertising company. It also doesn’t immediately release patches that are released in upstream Firefox.
Use a hardened Firefox with the Arkenfox user.js
If you wanna keep using adblocks you should start moving away from Chrome/Chromium-based browsers as soon as possible!!
That's what they said in January too and Vivaldi is still working just fine at blocking ads with internal ad blocking. I don't even have an ad blocker extension installed.
They pushed the deadline to January 2024, that's when Chromium is officially dropping support for MV2. As of now, new MV2 extensions can't be uploaded to the store. Built-in adblockers won't be affected by that change because they're not extensions.
Well, I already have Firefox set up so if and when the ad block stops working on V I'll just open up Firefox and use that.
Until that very moment, I'll be using the browser I prefer that runs at half the memory for equivalent services and tabs.
Not sure why people are downvoting you. I agree with this sentiment. Results are better than DDG and even has bangs. They even have their Brave AI like Google's small pop-up boxes when searching for questions, etc.
I suppose Brave is a sketchy company itself, but I've read the privacy policy and ToS for brave, and I see nothing sketchy. It's nice and private, as search engines should be.
Eh, its just their built-in cryptominer that makes folks insecure. Other than that, its a pretty gucci browser.
And regarding downvotes...? Something something "(Any sort of negative behavior) is the best form of flattery."
It's a built-in cryptominer, it's the ideological concerns about the crypto-bros in charge, it's the insertion of their own ads, it's the insertion of their own referral codes into users' links, and it's the fact that aside from all that under the hood it's just the Chromium browser so why not just use plain-ass Chromium if you're into that.
Brave is better equipped than even Ungoogled Chromium against most online fingerprinting and stuff. I don't like Brave Rewards and the crypto stuff but then most of the them are either opt-in by default or easy to disable. You can even disable the VPN feature entirely using a chromium flag (about:flags). Also, the BAT stuff isn't based on mining, just ads. The affiliate link thing was scummy for sure though.
...I was about to post about it -- "Embrace the lion side of the force" but yeah, doubleduck isnt that great anymore and you should use brave search engine for both pc and mobile instead. That also goes for the brave browser.
And some sites are trying to load them again, and again, and again, so the poor plugin has no choice than to go hard on resources.
Fun fact, aside from the annoying "this page is better in Chrome" messages on multiple Google sites, Google literally serves a totally different page to Firefox mobile users than mobile Chrome users. It's not a compatible issue, because of you take the user agent settings to claim it's Chrome, magically you get the full Google site. Also add much as I hate to reference Edge... it had significantly better performance on YouTube until magically it didn't anymore. It's almost as if Google purposely made competing browsers slower on their sites, when Edge and more recent Firefox releases work faster on non Google sites. Microsoft even gave up on the original Edge and just forked Chrome.
I use Google maps in a web app that my company has developed. Google maps is much slower in Firefox and Edge than Chrome. It's no accident.
That hasn't been my experience in many many years, but it was an issue at one time. It's possible that proper content filtering is making up for the difference in performance.
So I've heard good and bad things about Firefox in this thread. The bad things being mainly the performance, and some sites just don't load...
So my question to you is, If I'm comfortably browsing on Brave with uBlock on, is it really worth the switch right now?
Firefox had some issues like a decade ago on their old engine. In the past few years, they seriously stepped up their game.
If you're a normal user, you probably won't even notice the difference between Firefox and Chomium-based browsers. Sometimes I come across a weird website that doesn't want to load properly, so I'll open a Chrome tab for a few minutes to access it, but that's increasingly rare.
For web development, I generally prefer Chome's debug tools, but do all my normal browsing with Firefox.
Yeah, I am a normal user, I don't do web development or anything like that so I'll probably hold off on a decision until the new manifest. Thanks for your input. :)
You're posting on Lemmy and you joined seven days ago, so it's a safe bet that you have some opinions about Reddit. So I'll put it this way: if you have a problem with the way Reddit concentrates power in the hands of u/Spez and want to support alternatives because of that, then you should also have a similar problem with how Chromium-based browsers concentrate power in the hands of Google and reject Brave in favor of Firefox.
That makes a lot of sense. However, what if I said that Brave hasn't done anything to piss me off?
I've been using Firefox for years now and the only issue I've had is that at work I can't download particularly large files from John Deere operations centre so I use another browser just for that. Everything else, which is literally everything as far as I'm concerned, has been a better experience for me than Chrome ever was. Also Brave uses chromium which is cringe.
I'd say it's worth the switch as if you care about privacy, Firefox just has more tools available to this end
Yeah, I'll definitely think about it web privacy is something I think about when I'm browsing so this is a big factor in my decision making. Though I've used Brave thus far, so may as well stick with it till chromium kills extensions.
On a side note, is setting up Firefox for privacy focused browsing difficult? I've seen in the past that you have to edit user.js files and stuff. If something like that is a one time thing then I'll probably think about switching, but if it's something I have to keep up with then I dunno.
Pretty similar case here Firefox for everything but my primary anime pirate site doesn't work on Firefox mobile so the only time I use chrome is when I want to watch anime on my phone
The founder of Brave had previously been fired from Mozilla due to his homophobia. Firefox is the more ethical choice.
But it's also perfectly fine for most web browsing, and is the only web browser I've seen with extensions like ublock available on mobile.
The founder of Brave had previously been fired from Mozilla due to his homophobia. Firefox is the more ethical choice.
He also inflicted Javascript upon the world, which is... well, I almost want to say "even worse" but I don't want to make light of homophobia, so I guess I'll go with "also absolutely reprehensible."
I get that something like that might sway some people, and more power to you if you don't want to in any way support people like that. But It isn't going to affect me personally. I'm the type to separate the art from the artist, ya know? Plus there's more people making Brave than just that one person, so like. I dunno, this doesn't really affect my decision in the long run. I guess I'll just wait and see when the new manifest happens, thanks for your input though!
Yes. Brave is based on Chromium, which has some limitations on things which can be filtered. If you truly care about your privacy, use Firefox, or a further-privacy focused Firefox variant such as LibreWolf. The so called performance issues of Firefox are greatly exaggerated, realistically you won't be able to notice any difference.
Thanks for letting me know, I'll check it out. Though, I do get kinda skeptical when companies announce that their privacy focused, there's usually some sort of ulterior motive at work.
Brave constantly shoves crypto crap in your face and tries to monetize your web browsing experience. It's awful.
Other than Firefox, you have Vivaldi and also other Chrome alternatives like Chromium too. Firefox preforms plenty fast so don't let rumor or hearsay stop you from trying it either.
Vivaldi is nice. They're a little aggressive in pushing their new features, but their hearts seem to be in the right place. It's run by ex-Opera people, and has a similar kind of feel to how Opera used to be when it was the #3 browser. It does still use the Chromium engine though.
As a former Firefox user that finally planted roots with Vivaldi, I agree with you about developer intent. It's refreshing to hear a team be loudly pro-privacy in this day and age.
I personally am a fan of the constant suite updates and feature creep, but hitting the update button does start to feel like Steam updates sometimes.
The performance bit is a lottery. Some people won't notice any significant difference from chrome. A few will have severe issues. For most the slowdown will be circumstantial or won't even notice.
Sites that don't load properly are few and far between. Mostly poor web developers who are doing something undocumented or applying outdated practices. Often is just targeting some behavior that works on Chrome but is not standard. Firing up Brave to open the odd page once in a blue moon is not too extreme to ask. Specially since it's the result of Google's influence on the W3C standards and forcing their way upon others.
Brave iscool and all. But everytime I open it I fear it's going to backdoor a cryptominer into my machine. It just gives that vibe.
But everytime I open it I fear it's going to backdoor a cryptominer into my machine. It just gives that vibe.
I know right?? I know my data's going to get stolen one way or another, but Brave made me feel like I could potentially lose more than that.
Been trying out Edge and I got to say I'm pretty spoiled by having Bing chat on the sidebar as my coding assistance, except it's becoming more temperamental lately, refusing to answer simple questions and flipping me off by saying things like "I don't want to talk about this anymore" before terminating the chat.
Hmm, I see what you're saying but in my experience I have never had anything like that happen. But I get it, it's hard to trust big corporations like the one running Brave, and chromium as a platform.
Performance wise widely depends on the site used. Some sites (notably Google ones) are notorious for implementing anti-competitive behavior, where if their website is visited other than a chromium based browser, it slows down or a functionality stops working.
I mean its the whole reason why Microsoft switch from Edge Edge HTML to Edge Chromium/Blink.
The only good reason right now if you want to stick with Chromium based browsers such as Brave is you're heavily into browser based games as currently Chromium (and it's older brother, webkit) are the ones that have the best webgl performance, Firefox can do it but not as fast as Chromium and performance impact is very noticeable
Sometimes, simply changing the user agent string to that of Chrome is enough to make a site work again. For example Street View lags on Firefox, except when identifying as Chrome.
Noticed a while back that Google wouldn't do direct unit conversions for you unless you're using Chrome.
Some sites (notably Google ones) are notorious for implementing anti-competitive behavior, where if their website is visited other than a chromium based browser, it slows down or a functionality stops working.
I assume you're referring to Google meet (and the screen blur functionally), this is an open issue in Firefox for years, Google is using open standards to implement that, it's an issue in Firefox with how deadlocks work which is an extremely low level part of the browser. So it's not an easy solve.
There's a lot to complain about with Google, but this one isn't their fault. They use non-proprietary implementations and it's not their fault that Firefox will crash if they allowed Firefox users to use screen blur, the issue isn't a high priority for Mozilla.
Nah, what I am referring to is Youtube. See here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-youtube-down-on-non-chrome-browsers/
This isnt the only one too, there is this: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/28/googles-blocking-new-microsoft-edge-from-accessing-new-design/ or this one https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148736/google-youtube-microsoft-edge-intern-claims
First one you linked said Google patched Firefox performance by the time of the article, so that seems more like an oversight rather than asshole design.
Second one: rolling out redesigns is a complicated process. Most companies don't give everyone the new design at the same time, some roll out by geography, some by opt in, this was by browser type, which honestly makes the most sense.
Third one: an empty div is an easy accident to make, it's been removed. I also find it obscene to attribute an empty div to ruining battery performance. I wouldn't listen to that intern...
The worst of those three is number 2, but I can understand the decision from a web dev protective. Though I would've included all chromium based browsers in the rollout.
To me, the answer will always be "containers". Firefox containers were a game changer and I can never go back.
Brave does something similar to containers. It let's you sort tabs into what are essentially folders. I really like it actually.
But does it give you different browser sessions? With containers, you can simultaneously be logged in to different Google accounts, for example. Sure beats logging in and out all the time.
Ohhhh, no it doesn't do that. That's pretty cool. But that's gotta be pretty resource intensive I'd have to imagine.
But does it give you different browser sessions? With containers, you can simultaneously be logged in to different Google accounts, for example. Sure beats logging in and out all the time.
If you're comfortable, maybe not. I've done that recently though because Brave was actually the one giving me display issues on sites I frequent. Issues that aren't experienced on other Chromium browsers or Firefox.
Alright, yeah maybe when the new manifest happens I'll be forced to switch but we'll see. I think for now though I'll stick to my usual browsing. Thanks for the input!
In the next 6 to 12 months Google is removing most adblock functionality - switch to Firefox (also Firefox mobile is amazing with uBlock origin )
They're not allowing remote connections for security , but you need a lot of 3rd party data to keep track of lists of ever changing malicious websites and ads to block
also Firefox mobile is amazing with uBlock origin
ublock on mobile is a total gamechanger if you have a cheap phone with low performance
Yeah, saw the writing on the wall a few years ago and started the switch. It's a bit painful (at least when I switched there were way, way more apps on the chrome app store that weren't on Firefox), but worth it to keep your adblocker and semi privacy.