
Firefox 78 - agurk
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/78.0/releasenotes/
======
Santosh83
Great. Unlike many, I walk my talk and have always used Firefox since more
than a decade with no exceptions. The very commonly given reason that DevTools
are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other
general browsing. Unless we support alternatives we really shouldn't complain
when they gradually die off in a space that is increasingly coming under the
control of giant corporations with bottomless pockets.

~~~
burtonator
Love that FF exists but one of the things that always strikes me is that if FF
is successful in their mission they will cut off their major revenue channel.

Google is still the majority of their revenue is it not? The reason they're
making that money is off the backs of other consumers who are NOT benefiting
from the privacy features that you guys want to see everywhere.

Willing to be totally wrong here and would love to see more FF advocates speak
out here but FF wouldn't be financially viable without Google and many FF
advocates say Google is the problem...

~~~
coldpie
Yes, I wish there was a clear way to fund Firefox development. You can (and I
do) donate to the Mozilla Foundation, although the funding relationship
between the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox isn't clear. I believe that if
Google's funding were to become insufficient, then the Foundation would step
in to fund it if they have the funds, which is why I donate to them. But I
don't know if this is actually the case.

~~~
cxr
> the funding relationship between the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox isn't
> clear

It's not really an unknown. Donations to Mozilla Foundation do not and cannot
fund Firefox development.

> if Google's funding were to become insufficient, then the Foundation would
> step in to fund it if they have the funds

There are two assumptions here that are off. One is that the Foundation could
come up with the kind of money that the Corporation spends on Firefox. The
other is that the Corporation is somehow in a tight situation financially.
Reality is opposite to both.

First, the Corporation is not strapped for cash. It brings in a lot of money.
Like, in-the-neighborhood-of-half-a-billion-dollars-a-year a lot. It spent
something like 29MM acquiring Pocket (which is still as closed source now as
it was 3 years ago), and it manages to spend 50MM on its marketing campaigns
that most people aren't even aware exist. Under the current arrangement the
Corporation funds the Foundation, paying a percentage of its revenues to allow
the Corporation to trade on Mozilla's name. (If that sounds like a weird way
to put it, consider revisiting your other assumptions about Mozilla and
Firefox.)

~~~
pabs3
Any idea why donations to Mozilla cannot fund Firefox development? I'm told
other orgs like FSF/EFF/ACLU do put donations towards software development.

------
noisy_boy
I am a pretty ardent Firefox supporter and prefer it over Chrome but some of
the issues are still jarring and really affect the user experience. E.g. this
10 year old bug which I still have to deal with multiple times every month
where if you have couple of windows open with one having pinned tabs and close
the other one first, the pinned tabs are not restored upon restart:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587400](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587400)

Mozilla needs to shift focus, atleast briefly if not long term, to work on
squashing such common issues instead of racing to add new features.

~~~
izolate
Agreed. I'm tracking a 7 year old bug to support `<input type="month" />`
that's probably an easy win, given the foundation work is completed by
supporting other date input formats.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320)

~~~
clairity
yah, i would _love_ it if mozilla focused on all kinds of form controls,
bringing them to parity styling-wise, adding more hooks for things like
validation/more complex interactions, adding common controls (like month),
etc.

basically, they should look at the various web ui toolkits like bootstrap and
integrate all the controls and behaviors common across all of them. it would
be such a major win for developers and users.

~~~
agumonkey
Maybe Mozilla should stop the features and branding for a little while and
make a revamp sprint ?

------
agurk
Of note for those using Wayland/Mutter Firefox 78 now has the option of
Partial Present[0] and better supported VA-API for video playback.

Interestingly there was a recently discovered Mutter bug[1] where the Culling
code to prevent rendering of windows that were not visible was not working.
This fix will need to be deployed to see the biggest benefit of Partial
Present.

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1620076](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1620076)

[1] [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-
Br...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Broken-
Culling-Fix)

~~~
guerrilla
When did they start supporting VA-API? I didn't notice. Lacking that was one
of the reasons I got a new computer.

~~~
techntoke
With this release

~~~
guerrilla
Oh that's wonderful. I'll get back some of the CPU of my new computer. I've
pretty much have a core dedicated to it.

~~~
agurk
It's slightly more complex as there are some hardware/software combinations
that don't work. This article gives some good steps to make sure it's enabled:

[https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-
fedor...](https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-
finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/)

I've also had to disable media.ffvpx.enabled in previous versions to enable
VA-API for more than just VP9 (I haven't yet been able to verify if it's
needed for this one).

------
jiggawatts
Wow, they finally got around to fixing a certificate-handling issue. That must
have closed a bunch of decade-old bugzilla issues.

Now if they could just get around to supporting intermediate CA certificates
and _all_ of the Windows certificate stores, not just a couple of randomly
chosen ones, that would be swell.

Also, IPv6 support in PAC files would be nice.

If any Mozilla employees come to YC News: Unimportant-seeming stuff like this
is why Chrome _crushed_ Firefox in the Enterprise.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
> Unimportant-seeming stuff like this is why Chrome crushed Firefox in the
> Enterprise.

This isn't why. At work I deal with two different vendors who refuse to
troubleshoot any issues with their products on anything but Chrome. To this
day, the issue has never been a browser compatibility issue, but we have to
actually temporarily give the user a Chromium-based browser just to get a
modicum of decent support these days.

Both vendors, of course, tell us we should just use Chrome because it's the
only browser they support. (Even though other browsers work fine.) And
unfortunately, most IT staffers end up getting directed by superiors to follow
said instructions.

~~~
acdha
> This isn't why. At work I deal with two different vendors who refuse to
> troubleshoot any issues with their products on anything but Chrome.

This is the case now but a decade ago, in the period the original poster was
talking about, it was because of things like what they mentioned: Mozilla
needed some attention to detail on those tickets, a robust MSI install
package, and a polished policy deployment system. Lots of large shops deployed
it but it wasn't loved because there was always some wart to work around.

------
akerro
Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger
a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I
embraced it and it's great for bookmarking, syncthing tabs, reading news as
podcasts on mobile etc. It's great.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Something being spyware and you embracing it seem orthogonal. Are you saying
it is spyware (not an argument I've seen before) but you choose to use it
anyway?

~~~
akerro
I said other people will call it spyware, because they don't understand how
and it works and what it does.

~~~
blendergeek
I think the biggest complaint with Pocket is Mozilla's broken promise to open-
source it. After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether
Pocket is spyware. I look forward to that day, may it come soon.

~~~
akerro
>After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is
spyware.

Who watches the watchers? How do you know what's running on the servers?

------
jadbox
Just tested Firefox 79.0b1 with webrender.all and surprisingly it's performing
leaps over Chrome on Win10 Intel GPU. In the below image, left side is Firefox
Developer Edition and right is Chrome 83.0.4103.116 on Windows 10 on a Dell
XPS.

[https://i.redd.it/6gaj12tlh2851.png](https://i.redd.it/6gaj12tlh2851.png)

------
Someone1234
If anyone at Mozilla is reading, your Security Fixes link 404s.

It will be here when it is released:

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-2...](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-24/)

~~~
coldpie
I think this happens every release, although I don't know why. Probably just
different teams pushing the button at different times.

------
caution
New in Firefox 78: DevTools improvements, new regex engine, and abundant web
platform updates

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/06/new-in-
firefox-78/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/06/new-in-firefox-78/)

------
Yizahi
Does it still have UglyBar from v77? Seems like that.

~~~
vvillena
Is there any specific thing that makes it ugly? I'm curious because I don't
see the ugliness.

Since I use Firefox 99% of the time, I just opened Chrome and Edge to check
out their address bars. All three are extremely similar. In Chrome and Edge
the borders are more rounded, while Firefox opts for a more square look. All
three feature a "popup" effect that makes the bar slightly bigger when
interacting with it: in Firefox this effect activates when clicking the bar,
while the other two enlarge when inputting data.

~~~
zozbot234
It uses a non-native look for no good reason, and the "popup" thing obscures
other parts of the browser UI.

~~~
deathanatos
I've seen numerous people discuss this, so I can only presume that there is
some itch here, but I'm not getting it. Hasn't the location bar been non-
native since pretty much forever, since it has to display icons and colors and
all sorts of other stuff that I think most native drop down widgets just
won't?

As for obscuring other parts of the UI … such as? (That it wasn't since the
dawn of time; I mean, it drops down and obscures part of the browser window,
sure? But it's done that since the idea of having it autocomplete was first
added.)

The only recent change seems to be that it swells up by a few pixels when you
focus it. (I'm not a fan, but it honestly doesn't seem to matter much. It
_has_ started to not show the carat, and _that_ is definitely annoying, and
I'd agree more with a native widget argument there, I just don't think one
exists.)

~~~
wtallis
> As for obscuring other parts of the UI … such as?

Bookmarks toolbar, for one. Open a new blank tab, the URLbar has focus by
default and is now partially obscuring the bookmarks right at the moment
you're most likely to use them.

~~~
deathanatos
Curious. So, this is what I see:
[https://imgur.com/a/IJBlT4q](https://imgur.com/a/IJBlT4q) The actual dropdown
doesn't happen on a new tab. (It will if I click on the bar or start typing,
though.)

I'll admit, I did not think of the bookmarks bar. (I don't use it, myself.)
Thanks, too, for responding.

------
kleiba
OT: I would like to write an extension that restores the previous clicking
behavior on the title and search bars but I have never written a Firefox
extension before. Does anyone know if this kind of functionality change would
even be possible with the current extension framework?

~~~
jraph
I would not expect this. One of the main points of removing the old way of
doing extensions was to stop allowing extensions to arbitrarily modify the
browser's UI, which was difficult to maintain.

------
interfixus
So ... "Close tabs to the right" and "Close other tabs" moved from top level
context menu to submenu "Close Multiple Tabs".

This is the kind of ungraceful UI degradation which would send me packing if
there was anywhere else decent to go.

~~~
mmphosis
Wow. Right-click on a tab. I didn't even know that menu existed.

------
abmobi
Firefox has slowly crawled back into my daily workflow of development as well
as general browsing with the 67.0 release mid last year or so, that brought in
major performance improvements.

Though there is one caveat that bothers me a lot. When auto restoring sessions
after I've closed Firefox and launch it the next day, it restores the same
tabs, but with the old data (for eg., youtube or twitch live channels /
searches). Every tab needs to be refreshed manually to get the new data, which
Chrome automatically does.

~~~
clairity
i prefer this behavior, as i often want to see the "old" version of pages that
i had been looking at before and avoid a barrage of network requests at
startup. in any case, i'm pretty sure there's an about:config setting to
change it.

------
alibert
FYI, the 78 update has been pulled off (0) due to a bug (1).

[0]
[http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3062694](http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3062694)

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649393](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649393)

------
Aissen
Bitter-sweet seeing new Pocket features in there, knowing that the service is
still proprietary more than 3 years after its acquisition. If Mozilla wants to
become a service company, it should just say so:

[https://github.com/Pocket/extension-save-to-
pocket/issues/75](https://github.com/Pocket/extension-save-to-
pocket/issues/75)

------
atombender
I switched from Brave to Firefox recently, and I'm very happy! I perceive it
as faster, and feature-wise it's pretty much equivalent. It's made some
enormous performance improvements.

Firefox still has some rough issues. It doesn't always feel like a native app
(e.g. form fields, toolbar, preferences), and its visual touches (e.g. the
main toolbar) are sometimes heavy-handed. In other areas, such as the
"omnibar" behaviour, it's still catching up to other browsers, but at least
it's catching up.

Another thing I dislike is just how much tweaking I had to do to remove
quirks. For example, Firefox has some really excessive animations, which
fortunately can be turned off ("ui.prefersReducedMotion" in "about:config").

Firefox has some ways to go, but I'm a lot more optimistic about its future
than I used to be.

~~~
Munky-Necan
I tried to use Brave for a little bit, but it felt like I was apart of a meme.
The browser is fine, but it felt invasive and awkward. I can't put my finger
on why it made me feel this way; something was just... off.

Firefox and Safari are my two main stays now. Both have privacy focus,
although one takes privacy significantly more seriously. They are both
phenomenal browsers in my opinion.

------
DanCarvajal
I see their still pushing Pocket recommendations, I still find that choice
baffling.

~~~
foepys
You can just remove them from the start page. I did and they never came back
by themselves. My new tab page is completely empty aside from the cogs icon to
configure it.

~~~
DanCarvajal
Always the first thing I turn of on a new install of Firefox.

------
lucb1e
Anyone know what this means?

> We fixed bugs in the search results quality composition and improved search
> result texts based on recommendations by our partners.

It sounds like Firefox has its own search engine? Do they mean the browser
history+bookmark search feature? Or the search query suggestions when you have
third-party autocomplete turned on? What "partners" (this sounds very markety)
is this about?

------
adrian17
> Wasm Multi-value is now supported, meaning that WebAssembly functions can
> now return multiple values, and instruction sequences can consume and
> produce multiple stack values

The linked description, while great, is half a year old and focuses on
technical aspects of parts of the toolchain. How far are we currently from
being able to enable this in normal builds of Rust or C++?

EDIT: seems like I can enable this in nightly rustc by passing `-C target-
feature=+multivalue`.

------
emerged
Does anyone know if there's a way to stop Firefox giving me
"[http://weather/"](http://weather/") as the first suggestion when typing
'weather' in the address bar? I have never in my life wanted to visit
weather.com but I can't seem to make Firefox stop suggesting it. It doesn't do
this for other keywords.

~~~
msclrhd
If you have that in your history, you can highlight that entry in the search
results (e.g. using the up/down arrow keys after typing "weather") then press
Shift and Delete to delete it from the history. If you don't want search
results, you can go to the options/preferences, select search, and uncheck the
"Provide search suggestions" option.

~~~
impassionedrule
This key combo doesn't work

~~~
toyg
try searching for the item in your History sidebar, then right-click -> Forget
about this site.

~~~
jniedrauer
I've done this and the OPs suggestion, and the incorrect autocomplete
persists. In my case, I went to a random person's blog that starts with the
same two letters as a website I use frequently.

I've given that random person's blog thousands of hits over the last year...

~~~
msclrhd
If it is in your top sites, you need to add that widget to the home page to
get access to the menu to dismiss the result. (See my reply to the grandparent
post for details.)

I don't know of an easier way to do this.

------
syspec
Ironically it's kind of a shame, but I feel that the success of Firebug ended
up hurting Firefox in the long run.

Firebug was really a pioneer in the devtools, but for so long Firefox just
allowed it to be the defacto Dev tools that google ended up lapping them. And
they we made to play catch up

Once developers started jumping, they convinced slowly got their relatives or
non techs friends to switch.

~~~
kjsingh
My mom got new Win10 laptop and I made her install Firefox only

------
furbyhater
"We've disabled old TLS connections and insecure cipher-schemes, so websites
which used to work will now display an error" doesn't really sound like an
improvement for the user. I'd rather see a warning detailing the situation and
asking me if I want to proceed (maybe I don't care about encryption when
visiting the particular site).

~~~
kbrosnan
There has been a bypassable error for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 for several months.
There have been error messages in devtools. In October of 2018 the browser
vendors jointly announced that this change was coming. [1][2] This is
happening in coordination with Chrome. The sites that are affected by this
have had nearly 2 years to sort out their upgrade to TLS 1.2 or 1.3.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/10/15/removing-old-
ve...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/10/15/removing-old-versions-of-
tls/) [2] [https://blog.chromium.org/2019/10/chrome-ui-for-
deprecating-...](https://blog.chromium.org/2019/10/chrome-ui-for-deprecating-
legacy-tls.html)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> The sites that are affected by this have had nearly 2 years to sort out
> their upgrade to TLS 1.2 or 1.3.

... or are hardware appliances with a management interface, segregated on an
internal VLAN, that will never be updated, but which were helpfully "forward
thinking" enough to force HTTPS.

------
Wowfunhappy
My Firefox's About page says I'm running Firefox 77.0.1, and that my browser
is up-to-date.

Is it because I'm running OS X 10.9, and they're planning to migrate me to ESR
but the ESR build isn't out yet or something? Because I'm on 10.9, and I know
my system is vulnerable, I always try to update to the latest release very
quickly.

~~~
Hemospectrum
According to IRC rumors, automatic updates are delayed for a bit after the
release is announced. Not sure if this is due to CDN replication or some other
issue. At any rate, you can get the update faster by downloading and
installing it manually.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I expected some delay as it was rolled out, but it's now five hours later and
I still haven't gotten it.

I think I will indeed need to do a manual download, although I'm kind of
curious how long it will take at this point.

------
akulbe
Interesting.

I don't see anything about it in the Release Notes,

but Help > About Firefox would normally offer the latest update.

Mine is saying 77.0.1 is up to date.

------
jaipilot747
On Firefox for Android Beta, the default seems to be to opt-in, to share
"Marketing data" with their mobile marketing vendor, Leanplum.

This caught me by surprise and can be changed in the Settings -> Data
collection menu.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
Firefox is great. All I want from it now is to have tabs smaller than 50px and
to have CSS property backdrop-filter finally enabled to have those niiiice
blurred backgrounds.

------
vehemenz
Firefox shows the full URL, fully supports multiple Google accounts, and is
the only browser that has temporary container tabs. I'm surprised Chrome users
tolerate soft paywalls or having to constantly clear their cache. It's a basic
feature every browser should have in 2020.

------
oblib
My old Mac Mini is getting left behind here.

I dread the thought of buying a newer one but everyday it's getting closer to
a necessity.

------
logie17
Very nice - the PIP functionality is something I've been looking forward to
with more browser support.

------
bzb3
Firefox 78 will be the new ESR. That unfortunately sets the new, ugly omnibar
in stone.

~~~
tandr
[https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx](https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx)
has some tweaks to make it less annoying.

~~~
amazing_stories
Once I saw the only way to fix this terrible MegaBar was by modifying code
that will break later I realized I was no longer the target demographic and
switched browsers.

~~~
NikkiA
As someone likewise feeling disenfranchised by FF, what did you switch to?

------
jetofff
Does anybody here actually dislike Firefox (as a daily driver or in webdev)?

~~~
jfkebwjsbx
I don't like the constant UI changes, the ugly configuration menus, the new
bar and the bundling of stuff nobody asked for like Pocket.

------
chrisdengso
Killing it

------
batsoupremacy
one of the reasons why i love firefox? the Tracking protection. it makes
webpages faster to load. Cool

~~~
Nextgrid
Firefox's Tracking Protection is a fraud and has a whitelist of domains to
allow, which include Google and Facebook properties despite them being the
biggest threats to privacy.

~~~
Karunamon
Which would break Facebook and Google login for a massive portion of the web
(since those buttons are usually embeds). If you want to block them yourself,
fine, but it's not the browser maker's job to make that decision for the user.

~~~
greendestiny_re
Compared to the decision to integrate Pocket?

------
askjdlkasdjsd
Hate to be cynical, but I feel like they're just releasing a new one every
week just to stay in the news.

~~~
Tagbert
They are on a 6 week release cycle. Every 6 weeks they release the changes
that are ready. Sometimes the changes are large, sometimes small. Over time,
rapid releases tend to get new features out sooner than delayed releases.
Don’t get hung up on the version number. It doesn’t mean this is a major
release, it is just the 78th release in a series.

~~~
executesorder66
They changed it to a 4 week release cycle.

------
defnotashton2
I want to use Firefox but find the plug in system to be unusable and therefore
prefer a chromium based solution. I have 30+extensions, many developer based,
many for privacy and blocking, and many new ones to prevent sites from
dictating my behavior like blocking copy and pasting of text. But the most
important one is a plug in manager that allows me to to toggle on/off
individual plug-ins from the sidebar with two clicks. FFs plug in page is
atrocious. It's a Giant infinite scroll page that takes several clicks to do
anything and I don't think ctrl f works so I have to scroll and look.. Nope. I
just can't.

In an age where the web is becoming more hostile to users by hiding and
controlling the info, and forcing things like amqp, I think plug-ins are
really the only override to enable user agency and Firefox plug in management
is very immature.

~~~
findjashua
you can set keyboard shortcuts to toggle the add-ons. Yes, you do have to go
through the single page as you mentioned, but it's a one-time thing.

Personally, I can't leave Firefox due to:

1\. Sidebery (on Desktop)

2\. Night-mode (on Mobile)

~~~
renjimen
Sidebery - wow! I'd looked for a vertical tab add-on to no avail last year,
but this is incredible. Thanks.

It still boggles my mind that everything is made to go horizontal on default
Windows/Mac UIs when desktops are widescreen and most content we consume now
is tall and thin.

~~~
findjashua
Yep! Firefox supports vertical sidebars (which Chrome doesn't I guess?), so
you find a lot of Firefox add-ons for vertical tree-style tab sidebars.

Sidebery is my favorite by far, because it also lets you organize the tabs in
"panels", and lets you set keyboard shortcuts for navigating across panels. So
you don't end up with a giant list of 50 tabs.

Eg I have 1 panel for email/chat/music, and a separate panel for each task I'm
working on. Makes things a lot more manageable, since each panel usually has
only 5-10 tabs.

------
gganley
So I'm on macOS using Safari for web browsing, chrome for work (web app +
backend). I'm on the younger side so chrome has been omnipresent. I do not
mean to understate the importance of privacy in the modern web, so don't
misunderstand my question. Why would someone, as a developer and a user, want
to use Firefox over Safari (mostly) and Chrome (for work).

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> I do not mean to understate the importance of privacy in the modern web

> Why would someone, as a developer and a user, want to use Firefox over
> Safari (mostly) and Chrome (for work).

You wrote the answer before the question. Safari might have users' best
interest at heart, but anything that stops an advertising company's browser
from dominating the market is a good thing.

~~~
MayeulC
You made me think of Drew's last blog entry:
[https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/26/Vendor-purpose-
OS.html](https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/26/Vendor-purpose-OS.html)

Maybe we need to coin "vendor-purpose browser" as well? All of the big three
are, to some extent. And now, one has to think of the motives behind each
vendor.

Hint: I'll stay on Firefox. And I even use other browsers sometimes, that just
support some HTML (elinks, dillo...) on underpowered systems. Maybe we just
need more underpowered systems?

------
osrec
I really want to use Firefox, but their dev tools are lacking in so many ways
when compared to Chrome. Fix that, and perhaps even improve on a few things
that Chrome does badly (e.g. JS profiling in the "performance" tab of Chrome
dev tools gives you zero information about which functions are responsible for
the overhead), and you'll have me converted. I've been wanting to ditch Chrome
for ages, but have no suitable alternative for development.

Edit: I've been asked for examples where FF dev tools are lacking, so copying
from another comment of mine below:

1) Chrome CPU profiler will display the amount of time taken against calls in
line in your source JS files. FF does not do this.

2) Memory snapshots in FF are not sortable, and do not show distance.

3) Performance tab in Chrome allows CPU throttling, FF does not.

4) Performance tab in Chrome also captures much more info, such as node count,
heap size, number of listeners, GPU memory.

All the above are very useful if you're building a high performance web app or
library.

~~~
uallo
> their dev tools are lacking in so many ways when compared to Chrome

Like what for example? Please be specific.

~~~
osrec
A few off the top of my head:

1) Chrome CPU profiler will display the amount of time taken against calls in
line in your source JS files. FF does not do this.

2) Memory snapshots in FF are not sortable, and do not show distance.

3) Performance tab in Chrome allows CPU throttling, FF does not.

4) Performance tab in Chrome also captures much more info, such as node count,
heap size, number of listeners, GPU memory.

All the above are very useful if you're building a high performance web app or
library.

------
snide
I recently tried to move to Firefox (again). I try to to this every couple
years. I run into the same three blockers every time.

1\. The omnibar completion isn't as good. Chrome figures out where I go pretty
regularly, and autocompletes extremely well based upon habits. 2\. The dev
tools aren't as good. I mostly work in the frontend, and simple things like
how you write css overwrites with tab completion is just not as good in
Firefox. 3\. I often run with lots of tabs. Although firefox lets you make
tabs smaller, it's default method of "scrolling" tabs isn't as nice as chrome
infinite method.

It doesn't help that I pair this yearly experiment with DDG as my search. With
that pairing I often run into autocompletion / omnibar issues and find myself
just banging !g to get myself out of it.

I really would like to switch, but the gap is too much for my daily tooling. I
say this as someone who recently switched to Linux from OSX and really ran
into no issues outside of having to spend a week setting thing up how I liked.

~~~
lewiscollard
> 1\. The omnibar completion isn't as good. Chrome figures out where I go
> pretty regularly, and autocompletes extremely well based upon habits.

That's interesting, because I have found rather the opposite, for how I use
it. Chrome doesn't seem to remember anything but my most frequented sites;
with Firefox I find it much easier to find that thing I was reading a few
weeks back that I did not bookmark by searching a word from the title. Chrome
doesn't seem to remember anything but my most frequent and/or very most
recently visited sites.

~~~
s9w
Yeah the FF bar completion is lightyears ahead of chromes. Chrome massively
favors searches over history matches. I revisit every couple of months but it
always is comically unusable for me. To the point where I visit only about 3
sites with my chrome, and even when I write the first 3 letters of a 4 word
domain the default action is still a google search (with the correct site
listed beneath but not default selected).

edit: So I just opened my very secondary chrome. I use it for Youtube
listening mostly. When I enter "hand co" to find my often listened "hand
covers bruise" song, I get 7 (!) google searches, and the 8th and last entry
is the Youtube link.

