
Ask HN: Why continue to use Firefox? - jkabrg
Now that Firefox&#x27;s UI is becoming more and more like Chrome&#x27;s, why should anyone continue to use Firefox?<p>I&#x27;m thinking the reasons might have something to do with:<p><pre><code>  - Lower memory usage compared to Chrome [1]
  - Increasingly more of it being written in a fast and memory-safe language, Rust [2]
  - Not belonging to a for-profit company [3]
</code></pre>
Would also be nice to know what plans Mozilla has for Firefox in the longer term. Once Firefox becomes a near Chrome clone written in Rust, what comes next?<p>[1] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;firefox-uses-less-memory-chrome-edge-safari&#x2F;<p>[2] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.mozilla.org&#x2F;Oxidation<p>[3] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mozilla
======
sharmi
1\. Firefox 58 has considerable speed improvements

2\. Firefox has much better support for tab customization like tree style tabs
(not yet supported in 58, I think), multiple tabs, where you can close, move,
reload multiple tabs together, copy url of selected tabs in custom format etc.

3\. Reliable session recovery. With chrome , if you have more than one window
each with multiple tabs, recovery of all windows is not guaranteed. Firefox on
the other hand has a versatile session restore process. I sometimes have 6 or
more nested session restores. Only thing affected is your sanity, when going
through all the tabs. Also, in firefox, when recovering, the pages are not
loaded unless the user purposefully navigates to the page, saving memory.

Firefox also supports hundreds of tabs easily. It is THE browser for tab
hoarders.

4\. Chrome on android does not allow extensions. So no ublock origin on Chrome
mobile. That leaves a bad taste in the mouth. For that and other reasons cited
by other answers here, I do not trust Chrome on desktop either.

5\. Certain features on Web developer tools are better in firefox. I use both
firefox and chrome for this interchangeably.

6\. I like that typing in address bar checks only in history and bookmarks and
the search bar is separate. In chrome, I often notice that search is given
more priority over history. What is one hop in firefox becomes two in chrome:
first to the search page, then the actual website.

~~~
ksec
Sorry, why 58? Nightly is on 57 only. What is landing in 58?

~~~
hobofan
I don't know either. Might be the first release with Stylo, the new CSS engine
written in Rust, but I can't really find any references to that.

~~~
steveklabnik
Stylo is on by default for 57 at the moment.

WebRender is upcoming, but I don't think on-by-default anywhere.

(That said looks like maybe OP just mistyped.)

~~~
hobofan
Does that also mean that Stylo will be the default in the release version of
57, if everything goes smoothly?

~~~
steveklabnik
That's my understanding, yes.

------
Davidbrcz
\- To promote and foster diversity between browsers. You don't want to end up
with a new Internet Explorer called Chrome.

\- Google has already its hands on so many things. If I can prevent it from
controlling my browser, I'm good.

\- I HATE chrome UI and look & feel

\- With FF, I can syn my tabs between several devices while hosting my own
sync service .

\- Google is not beyond Firefox. I like more Mozilla than Google.

~~~
drdaeman
> while hosting my own sync service

A late reply but I thought I'd chime in.

You also need to host your own accounts service and all its dependencies
(assets, tokenserver, profile), unless you trust Mozilla to be not
forced/coerced to compromise your security. Even with auto-updates disabled,
the Firefox Accounts login form is served from the network, so a paranoid user
must be very cautious if any of their browsers suddenly asks to re-
authenticate.

Also, note that Sync is now consists of two pieces: there is Sync 1.5 server
and there is Kinto (which is used to store WebExtensions data). This is
usually not mentioned in the "host your own Sync 1.5 server" articles, but
here are the details:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Sync/ExtensionStorage...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Sync/ExtensionStorage_Design_Doc)

If you're fully self-hosting you need to install the latter as your tokens
aren't working for Mozilla's one (so basically your WE-based extensions can't
sync anything). If you're only hosting your own Sync but not Accounts, you
should be aware that some of your data is stored at Mozilla's services instead
of your own server.

------
dkobran
Taking a stand against companies fighting to undermine privacy is a good
reason to choose a product like Firefox. I don't think it's as much about
being a for-profit [3] as it is about the intentions of the company, its
influence, and the way it makes money.

~~~
velobro
I want to switch to Firefox because, lately, I've been trying to lessen my
dependence on Google and Google services. All I need is a method to easily
switch browser profiles!

------
daenney
Container tabs[0] (currently an experiment) will hopefully stick around. That
alone is reason enough to use it from my point of view. Paired with Cookie
AutoDelete it is the most control I've ever had over my privacy in a browser
and it feels good.

Fx's new CSS pipeline and the other stuff they're porting from Servo is
amazingly cool. Not just tech wise that they can pull this off but the
benefits it brings means Fx has a decent chance surpassing other browser's
performance, in a few places it already does.

I have control over my data. With Chrome I don't, I'd have to rely on Chromium
to be sure and keeping Chromium up to date is tedious.

I used to only use Safari but ever since Firefox 57 showed up (the curently
nightly) it's been my daily driver and it's absolutely awesome.

[0]:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)

~~~
yoasif_
Container tabs are live in the latest nightlies (without addons), so signs are
good that it will make it to stable.

~~~
aibara
Container tabs are already in stable. Just activate them with the
privacy.userContext.enabled preference in about:config.

------
twobyfour
Privacy. Not wanting to encourage Google's monopoly positions any more than I
wanted to encourage Microsoft's back in the bad old IE6 days. Inertia.

But yeah, I'm disappointed they're changing the UI to one I dislike, and at
the same time removing the ability to customize it. Kind of fuming about that,
actually.

But the alternative will be to stay on a browser that won't get any updates,
and gets left behind by websites using newer features, and hacked when it
doesn't get security updates.

Maybe some enterprising open source developer will find a way to hack the
Servo rendering engine into a different browser chrome UI - just as Firefox
(then Phoenix) did with Gecko back when the Mozilla suite was dying.

------
mixmastamyk
I'd never consider using a free browser from an ad network, and don't have
windows or a mac. That pretty much leaves Firefox as my daily driver.

Not to mention I've been using it since Netscape 0.9 or whatever it was first
released as. Started on Mosaic ;-).

Have appreciated the kick in the pants from chrome and keep chromium around
for testing. Shame about the dumbing down of the UI but extensions have mostly
saved me so far. I prefer traditional widgets, a single OS theme, and hate
skinz.

------
lovelearning
Chrome stopped all updates (including security) for older Windows versions
some years ago. Firefox gets security updates just fine so far (I believe
Vista support will get dropped soon). Windows 7 support will continue for a
while. I switched my parents' Windows laptops to Firefox 2 years ago.

Firefox on Android (and the new Firefox Focus) feels faster and lighter on
resources. I prefer Firefox on my Android devices.

For me, a third reason is that Chrome has started segfaulting big time on my
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS laptop. This started very recently. Switched to Firefox.

Aside from all that, for me it's just the principle that it's better to
encourage multiple excellent feature-rich cross-platform browsers instead of
ending up with a monopoly.

------
saheel1511
Chrome won't allow AdNauseum. I also hate how it collects all my data^#. I've
started using Waterfox, a Firefox based browser that won't collect my data and
allows all extensions.

# admittedly, I don't quite understand what all data it gathers and how. But I
know it does because my FB feed is littered by ads based on my chrome
browsing. And I feel sooo exploited when that happens.

------
dezzeus
Why should you dismiss Firefox based on UI similarities ? :/ And, by the way,
it's not Firefox being like Chromium in terms of UI…

I've been a long time Firefox user until the early days of Google Chrome and I
remember doing the switch just for the amazing startup time of the latter and
then being acquaintanced to it. Nowadays I use the Opera (beta) flavor of
Chromium due to the team effort in providing a slightly (but appreciable)
better experience.

Firefox seems to be in period of internal renaissance which I greatly
appreciate; something that remind me of the hype around it during it's 3rd
major release.

I tried the Nightly release last week and, being on a laptop, the only thing
that currently hold me back is it's lack of a battery-friendly mode – like the
one I use daily with Opera – and other little details.

------
johnpython
Because Mozilla is not an ad company and actually cares about users' privacy.
I do not trust Google and do not want to enable them to vacuum up more of my
data.

------
brimstedt
Firefox allows non tabbed browsing, leaving window management to the window
manager of the desktop environment.

This feature alone is enough for me.

/L

------
EpicEng
A lot of the things being said here are true. I gave FF a chance again (after
nearly a decade) last month. I switched back to chrome for two reasons:

1\. After a couple of days of use, page interaction began to 'stutter'. Every
2-3 seconds the page would lock up. 2\. They still don't sand box tabs, so a
crash brings down everything. I lost work because FF locked up on one tab
while I was working in another. Everything came to a screeching halt.

That was enough for me to forget FF all over again. #1 consistently happened
on two different machines, but I couldn't find a fix (just similar issues
related to graphics HW acceleration from two years ago.) I have no idea how
isolated these incidents are, but if I can't rely on FF to work > 99% of the
time I can't use it.

------
owebmaster
Now that Firefox's UI is becoming more and more like Chrome's, why should
anyone continue to use Chrome?

I use it mainly because I like Mozilla and dislike Google. You have to put
your money where your mouth is.

------
infogulch
Because it's _fast_. Nightly 57 is very very fast.

------
leephillips
Firefox's typography is more advanced than Chrome's. Chrome has improved a lot
in recent releases, but is still behind. This is from a few years ago, but
still relevant: [https://lee-phillips.org/google-
chromeBadKerning/](https://lee-phillips.org/google-chromeBadKerning/)

Also, Chrome's resource usage is out of control, at least on my Linux laptop.

------
gregmorton
[3] Yes, we should never use anything from google, facebook, amazon, microsoft
and apple. (Don't ask why, or I'll be more talkative than a vegan).

------
pps
I'm using it (Nightly on OS X with stylo enabled) now, for the first time and
I love it, it's faster than Chrome or it looks like it's faster, anyway, I
simply want to use it even when almost all best plugins doesn't work
currently. In the meantime stable version is almost unusable, I tried it
couple of times, it was always lagging on page scroll.

------
BeeOnRope
Because I need FIFO ordering for tab switching with Ctrl+Tab, and every time I
check, Chrome doesn't support it and extensions can't offer it (because they
cannot override the shortcut).

Firefox supports it via extensions, although the author has noted it will stop
working in 57.

~~~
Rondom
Which extension do you use?

------
velobro
Until Firefox has a method to easily switch between profiles, I'll stick with
Chrome.

I have a few different clients that I have seperate logins for and I like to
keep all that completely separate while still only using a single browser.

~~~
Rondom
You should _definitely_ try out container tabs.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/)

------
stephenr
I don't use either (I use Safari) but if Firefox became a more memory
efficient chrome from a company besides google, that still sounds better than
chrome.

Google is and for the foreeeable future will be an ad network first and
foremost.

------
xn--cr8h
My favourite feature of Firefox that I haven't found in any other browser is
the ability to capture, edit, and resend HTTP requests directly from the
Developer Tools. Super useful.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Couple reasons: \- Some of the add-ons which are privacy focused are not
available in chrome (although with the move to webextensions this may go away)
\- Momentum. I resisted switching to chrome when it first came on the scene
because I didn't want Google having access to my browsing history. That fear
has abated, particularly since I owned several Chromebooks, but I've always
used Firefox on my Windows and Linux desktops. It still does what I need it to
do. \- Firefox for Android allows installing extensions, specifically ublock.
This was critical for me, and so since I know I'll keep using Firefox on
mobile, it's advantageous to keep using Firefox on desktop for syncing.

------
romanovcode
Not contributing to googles botnet is good enough reason for me.

------
bachaco
Scrachtpad is awesome for prototyping. It has Vim keymap support.

------
thowaway16737
firemacs

