
Switch from Chrome to Firefox - WisNorCan
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/switch/
======
dang
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)

------
marricks
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)

~~~
kumarharsh
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.

~~~
r3bl
> 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.

~~~
michaelmrose
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.

~~~
Godel_unicode
> 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)

------
dror
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.

~~~
latexr
> 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.

~~~
JohnBooty

        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.

~~~
JohnBooty
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.

~~~
eitland
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.)

------
nine_k
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/)

~~~
bastih
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.

~~~
kaffee
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.

~~~
jzl
Only for the automatic association you mean? You can manually open a tab into
any container.

~~~
oAlbe
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/)

------
jwr
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.

~~~
jrochkind1
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).

~~~
andrethegiant
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.

~~~
steve_adams_86
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.

------
intothev01d
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

~~~
itwy
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?

~~~
pixelrevision
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.

~~~
tialaramex
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)

------
djsumdog
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.

~~~
fencepost
I really wish that if Microsoft was going to abandon having their own engine
that they'd gone to Mozilla instead.

~~~
dTal
No thanks. Keep Embrace, Extend, Extinguish away from my user agent.

~~~
teh_klev
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.

------
gonational
Firefox banned Dissenter[1], a plug-in that did nothing nefarious - only
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)

~~~
jackewiehose
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)

~~~
the_jeremy
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.

~~~
jackewiehose
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").

------
soulofmischief
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.

~~~
dclowd9901
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.

~~~
soulofmischief
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.

~~~
JoshMnem
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.

~~~
soulofmischief
The nature of a stable computing environment is not to randomly delete user
data.

~~~
JoshMnem
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.)

------
reilly3000
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.

~~~
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/)

~~~
sound1
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 :-(

~~~
house9-2
Seems fine on my imac retina screen and retina mbp.

------
ethanpil
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...

~~~
bshacklett
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.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
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.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
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.

~~~
radamadah
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))!

~~~
huy-nguyen
Please stop using AdBlock/AdBlockPlus. Use uBlock Origin instead.

~~~
throw0101a
How come?

(I tend to use uMatrix.)

~~~
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.

~~~
b3n
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.

~~~
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.

------
Hextinium
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.

~~~
gravy
Chrome's "Press Tab To Search" is way too useful for me to switch...

~~~
tapoxi
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.

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

~~~
JoshMnem
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.

~~~
inyorgroove
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.

~~~
JoshMnem
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

~~~
inyorgroove
I guess I just need to choose better "keywords"

------
kpremote
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.

~~~
Ayesh
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.

~~~
kpremote
thanks for the tip.

------
diafygi
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.

------
jrochkind1
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?

~~~
nostalgk
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.

~~~
rocqua
How far does the DMCA reach in europe? It feels like we need some reverse
engineering of widevine.

~~~
holtalanm
an open-source implementation of DRM that is compatible with widevine would be
a step in the right direction.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Is it patented ?

------
BuckRogers
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. :)

------
dpedu
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.

~~~
cityzen
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.

~~~
ihuman
If you use that method, don't they uninstall themselves if you relaunch
firefox?

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

------
holoduke
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.

~~~
asdff
Not the most active sub but useful:

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

------
xvf22
Already switched to Firefox and couldn't be happier.

~~~
chronogram
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!

~~~
orhmeh09
If you’re switching to full time use or Firefox, I cannot recommend going with
Nightly; developer edition is a good choice.

~~~
chronogram
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.

------
mattfrommars
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

~~~
worble
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?

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

~~~
chris_wot
Do you know if there is a Mozilla bug for this?

~~~
WorldMaker
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)

------
brento
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.

~~~
taneq
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.

~~~
lucb1e
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).

~~~
taneq
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...)

------
bithavoc
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.

~~~
satysin
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.

~~~
asdff
I made my view compact as possible, removed bookmark toolbar, etc. Pretty
native looking now aside from tabs on top.

~~~
satysin
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.

------
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?

~~~
mcstafford
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)

~~~
techntoke
Firefox sync needs a well-maintained Docker image.

~~~
matthew-wegner
And iOS support for a self-hosted sync server :(

------
Hamuko
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.

~~~
jolmg
> 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.

~~~
Hamuko
>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.

~~~
jolmg
> 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.

~~~
Hamuko
What's wrong with a fixed tab bar? Like the one in Chrome?

~~~
mindcrime
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.

~~~
Hamuko
>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.

~~~
mindcrime
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_

~~~
bradlys
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.

------
betaby
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.

~~~
mattlondon
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.

~~~
betaby
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.

~~~
jabedude
I'll have to try to reproduce this. I've never noticed it. Is it only with
Netflix or when viewing any video?

~~~
techntoke
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)

------
bloopernova
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.

------
HeavyStorm
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.

------
aloer
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

~~~
b3n
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?

~~~
dom96
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.

------
Ayesh
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.

------
submeta
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.

------
innocentoldguy
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.

------
kuon
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.

~~~
sfink
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.

------
jasonhansel
Today in 90s reboots, Chrome is becoming the new IE6.

------
humility
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/)

~~~
mda
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.

------
mastrsushi
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.

~~~
taneq
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."

~~~
sp332
It's in the "Enterprise" Chrome fork. I don't think they charge money for it.

------
PascLeRasc
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?

~~~
asadotzler
Can you share some screenshots? IMO, text looks somewhat _better_ in Firefox
than in other browsers.

~~~
PascLeRasc
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.

------
ilovecaching
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.

------
roryrjb
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.

~~~
lucb1e
> 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).

~~~
roryrjb
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.

~~~
lucb1e
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.

------
lordnacho
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.

~~~
yoklov
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.

~~~
lordnacho
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.

------
xtrimsky1234
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.

------
dbg31415
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.

------
naasking
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.

------
unnouinceput
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.

------
calferreira
Still there's one thing that Firefox can beat, Chrome dev tools are just the
best, period.

~~~
lucb1e
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?

~~~
calferreira
Different people, different tastes :)

------
nycticorax
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.

------
Mistri
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.

~~~
wmab
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)

~~~
Mistri
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.

------
rkangel
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.

~~~
ProAm
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?

~~~
glaurung_
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.

~~~
mdhen
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.

~~~
ProAm
Is Fenix the same as Firefox Focus?

~~~
mdhen
Different, but focus is using the same engine that fenix does.

~~~
ProAm
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.

------
JohnJamesRambo
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.

------
brightball
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.

~~~
jdhawk
BitWarden

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

~~~
brightball
I’m making the switch now and everything seems good so far.

------
soheil
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.

------
bgentry
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!

~~~
Bonooru
Cmd+Shift+N reopens the last closed window

~~~
bgentry
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.

------
numbers
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.

------
jmondi
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)

------
anoplus
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?

~~~
Springtime
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.

------
billysielu
I did switch to Firefox and then they broke all extensions so I switched back.
Chrome just works better.

~~~
rc_kas
That was a major upgrade to Firefox. Most extensions have since done the fixes
needed to handle the upgrade.

~~~
techntoke
No, Firefox forgot to renew their certificates and it broke all extensions.

~~~
rc_kas
Oh yeah, that was a separate instance. I did forget about that.

------
benfrain
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)

------
daniel_iversen
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).

------
chucksmash
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.

------
rigorman
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?

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

------
terrycody
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!

------
the_jeremy
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.

------
dheera
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.

------
mrbonner
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?

------
pnathan
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.

------
sam0x17
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.

------
bluescrn
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?

~~~
ajudson
Did they block it, or just ban it from their store? I thought people could
still install it themselves.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
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.

------
cracauer
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.

------
mark_l_watson
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.

------
wmock
I would switch off of Chrome if Firefox has better developer tools.
Unfortunately, as a developer, Chrome's developer experience is just
significantly better.

~~~
brink
Use Firefox for everything but work.

------
iscrewyou
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.

------
appleflaxen
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.

~~~
sfink
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/)

------
quadrangle
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!

------
snake117
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!

------
TylerE
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.

------
runn1ng
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.

------
sudhirkhanger
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.

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

------
ipoopatwork
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.

------
csharpminor
> 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?

------
an4rchy
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.

------
bin0
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.

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

------
m0zg
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.

------
maxwellito
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

~~~
0az
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.)

~~~
jrochkind1
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.

------
meerita
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.

~~~
BenElgar
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/)

------
SilasX
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)

~~~
MrRadar
> 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.

~~~
SilasX
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.

~~~
MrRadar
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.

~~~
SilasX
>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.

~~~
MrRadar
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).

~~~
SilasX
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.

------
allanbreyes
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)

------
mushufasa
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?

~~~
pps
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)

------
deviantfero
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

~~~
Bakary
What do you think of the approach of using Firefox for your personal life and
Chrome for your work life?

~~~
deviantfero
I'm always doing web development with webrtc, having two browsers open
simultanously? Not an option

------
chiefalchemist
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.

------
Synaesthesia
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.

------
chrischen
People have this idea that Chrome is the fastest browser... is this even true
anymore?

------
atishay811
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.

------
mrhappyunhappy
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.

------
stdclass
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.

~~~
TimTheTinker
I’ve been using Firefox (quantum) on my 2016 retina MBP for years and haven’t
ever noticed any performance issues.

------
newnewpdro
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.

------
darepublic
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.

------
BinaryIdiot
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).

~~~
MrOwen
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.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
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.

------
johncoltrane
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.

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

~~~
johncoltrane
We will see. Thank you for the link.

------
ChikkaChiChi
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.

------
scotu
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?

------
Endy
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.

~~~
Bakary
What would be the benefit of doing this?

~~~
Endy
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.

~~~
Bakary
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)

~~~
Endy
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.

------
pensatoio
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.

------
rc_kas
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.

~~~
unsignedint
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)

~~~
mtgx
He was asking for the reverse -- what does Chrome offer extra?

~~~
unsignedint
Oops ;-)

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

~~~
rc_kas
I use the apple Screen Sharing

------
CWuestefeld
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?

------
Vijayenthiran
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.

------
rudolph9
Already made the switch. My workflow has hardly changed at all.

~~~
jmondi
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)

------
zubspace
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...

------
Taylor_OD
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.

~~~
spiznnx
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.

~~~
penguin_booze
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.

------
burtonator
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.

------
macspoofing
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.

------
p0nce
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.

------
gsempe
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.

~~~
codingdave
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.

------
kadendogthing
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.

------
AbitofAsum
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..

------
Reason077
_> "Switch from Chrome to Firefox"_

Yes. Good advice.

------
bogomipz
I'm curious if anyone knows of a means of transferring over saved Session
Buddy sessions from Chrome to something comparable in Firefox.

------
Justsignedup
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.

------
papito
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.

------
cremp
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.

------
bovermyer
I like Chrome. I also like Firefox. I choose, now, to use Chrome. I respect
the decision of others to use something else.

------
hu3
When will uBlock Origin stop working on Chrome? Is there an estimate date? I'd
appreciate if someone could tell me.

~~~
ehsankia
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.

------
NeoBasilisk
I've been using Firefox since 2005. When Chrome came out, I tried it, said
"ok," and kept using Firefox.

------
nmca
Firefox mobile + ublock origin is dreamy :)

~~~
lucb1e
\+ sync for the lazy!

------
spacesuitman2
Been using it since a few months, mainly because it can stop autoplaying all
audio/video and no login nagging.

------
bitwize
Think I'll stick to PaleMoon, at least until Mozilla rethinks their policy on
_requiring_ PulseAudio.

------
y2kenny
Are there anything that help with switching existing session? (I have like 400
tabs opened in 60+ windows.)

~~~
depressedpanda
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.

------
pcl
Does anyone have a good impression about how Firefox's energy consumption
compares to Safari's?

~~~
TimTheTinker
Safari’s is superior, definitely. No problem with using Safari if that’s your
priority.

------
stronglikedan
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.

------
wbl
Passwords didn't work for me in mac, but you should switch now while you have
the choice.

------
suyash
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/)

~~~
dictum
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.

~~~
pwinnski
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?

~~~
asd
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/)

~~~
pwinnski
Today I learned something new. Thank you.

------
PatrolX
Very impressed with FF 67, I've stopped using Chrome.

The sync between devices is very well done.

------
k__
Waiting for Firefox on Android and macOS to become usable here :/

------
benol
Firefox Beta is at 68 now and still not way to set the default zoom...

------
d1ffuz0r
You can use adguard to go around google's changes in browser api

------
mancuso5
other ethical alternatives have been compiled here:
[https://ethical.net/resources/](https://ethical.net/resources/)

------
ryanolsonx
Do you guys use Firefox's password manager? Or something else?

~~~
mattlondon
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)

------
gsich
If Google kicks adblockers, Chrome will be dead within a year.

------
indysigners
I switched only a few weeks ago and am not looking back!

------
kdamken
Sure, as soon as its dev tools aren’t complete garbage.

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

~~~
objektif
Shouldnt we instead promote the major competitor with sufficient funding so
that people are more likely to stick with for longer term?

~~~
ElijahLynn
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.

------
a13n
Support localhost subdomains
([http://foo.localhost:8080](http://foo.localhost:8080)) like Chrome does and
I'll consider it!

------
electrotype
Right-Click + "Customize..." FTW!

------
techrich
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.

------
DiseasedBadger
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.

------
gabrielc
Firefox is the right choice.

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

------
truth_seeker
I switched to Brave browser last year and I never regretted my decision.

~~~
techntoke
Brave is based on Chromium.

~~~
truth_seeker
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.

~~~
techntoke
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?

~~~
truth_seeker
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.

------
pinkflounder
Switch to Brave.

~~~
techntoke
Brave is based on Chromium.

------
coding123
Good timing

------
supergirl
add translation to firefox and then I'll switch

------
Sag0Sag0
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?

------
gzimhelshani
I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHROME'S

~~~
techntoke
And if they supported hardware accelerated video on Linux like Chromium on
many distros.

------
gzimhelshani
I WOULD SWITCH IF THEIR DEV TOOLS WERE AS GOOD AS CHOME'S

------
sorryforthethro
[Deleted]

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

------
Proven
... 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)

~~~
dmit
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.

~~~
pps
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)

------
throwayEngineer
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.

~~~
function_seven
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.

~~~
BuckRogers
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.

~~~
function_seven
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.

------
midnitewarrior
Switch from Chrome to Brave

------
jackconnor
Why is this on here?

~~~
fghtr
Because
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430&p=2)

~~~
jackconnor
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.

~~~
judge2020
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).

------
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.

~~~
jmisavage
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/)

~~~
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.

~~~
ajnin
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.

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

------
o10449366
No thanks.

------
suyash
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.

~~~
athenot
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.

~~~
floatboth
Firefox's sync is better, because it's not tied to the Apple ecosystem :P

------
sneak
Why is leaving the only recourse? Chromium is free software. Forking always
remains an option.

~~~
kevingrahl
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)

~~~
jolmg
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.

------
rhaksw
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)

