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I work at a small company - absolutely everything from work macros, accounts and shortcuts are all intertwined in Chrome, they’ve been using it like that for ten years - it’d be faster for me to find a new job then to unclog that mess from the entire office. I still installed firefox for personal use though.
in my previous job we were allowed to install some old version of firefox through the companys own portal. but we couldn’t access internet with it because “firefox is vulnerable”. they use google suite so chrome was the default browser, but edge worked too and even IE…
Most companies now are being shepherded into Microsoft 365’s walled garden by their security teams. Edge is the only “secure” browser now, Teams the only “secure” chat app, Microsoft Authenticator (specifically Microsoft’s app, not DUO or anything else) is the only “secure” way to implement MFA, etc.
It’s genuinely sad how many security professionals have been shanghaied into Microsoft salesmen.
By secure they mean “the only way we can easily see everything you do”
We had IT people in at our shop to migrate us over to 365. They wanted me to install Microsoft Authenticator on my personal phone, so I said no. They were able to bypass MFA to sign me up.
I asked them what would happen if someone didn’t own a smartphone (crazy I know), they had no answer for me. They basically just looked at me like I asked them the square root of pi.
I was in the same boat. Selenium with gecko driver was a pretty simple swap, just needed to Ctrl f replace a few things.
I keep going back and forth with Firefox and Vivaldi. The chrome based browsers just tend to run better. I love firefox on mobile but on desktop it’s tougher for me to stick with. Also Mozilla seems to have a different goal for the future with all the other products and ai weirdness they recently announced.
All chromium browsers are supporting Google’s grip on the internet.
This is true. Which is why Mozilla needs to focus on making a better browser instead of adding their own ai bullshit.
Mozilla has frequently pointed their efforts into the wrong direction. We need to politely encourage them to focus on the things that matter.
Are those fractions of a second really worth your privacy?
some small problems i face is that
while i use youtube it runs slower.
and the quick image search feature using google lens is not present.
and telegram voice call does not work.
Where as,
youtube = googlie
google lens = googlie
and
telegram via web requires chromium api, so = googlieHmm, proprietary things that are totally under the control of the corpo in question run slower or not at all on the corpo’s competitor’s browser. I wonder if that isn’t exactly what avoid a monoculture is all about preventing?
Ah yes, google nerfing its own services under another browser for its own gain definitely isn’t the issue here.
You can use a different frontend for YouTube. You’ve got Freetube for pc, Yattee for MacOS and iOS and piped on any platform. These solutions also protect your privacy and block ads.
If only they actually worked. Never understand how they get recommended constantly and yet repeatedly I try to use them and they don’t work.
I’m using Freetube on Windows, it works like a charm. Feel free to dm me if you need help.
Is that one a desktop app? I primarily use pop_OS and would prefer a web solution. I’ve tried piped, invidious, peertube, and libretube iirc
I’m with you, and would prefer a browser based frontend for yt that doesn’t brick. I see no reason for standalone apps anymore whenever the data is exclusively online. On the other hand, I hate how webapp versions of Excel/Spreadsheets (for instance) are pushed for office software, where the data has no need to live in the cloud. At home I stick with LibreOffice, as the only issue I’ve had with switching over to it was VBA scripts and macros I wrote over a decade ago not working - and those really needed to be updated anyway.
My problem with these is that the quality is always bad. Usually 720p max and only H.264 instead of VP9. YouTube quality is already bad enough as it is and nerfing it even more feels awful.
That’s because YouTube detects the browser you are using, and slows it down for browsers that aren’t their own.
Would changing the user_agent be helpful here?
and the quick image search feature using google lens is not present
There’s an addon that not only adds that back into the right click menu but also adds support for other image searching services!
Its called “search by image” and it works very well ime
You use TG in a browser?
I once commented saying something like, except for work, all Linux users should be using Firefox. And this was the reply. Some people are just fucking hopeless:
"Firefox has only ever been a sometime back-up browser for me…ever since Chrome appeared in 2007. Prior to that, I used it because it was the sole usable alternative to Internet Exploder…
The Mozilla devs, for far too long, spent more time stabbing each other in the back than they did writing code and fixing the tons of problems that were always inherent in the code. It’s the only browser I’ve ever used that used to regularly crash & burn at least a dozen times a day. And ya wonder why people flocked to Chrome?"
But it’s true.
To be fair, chromebooks are great devices for kids, and the family link platform makes keeping them “secure”, easier… a lot easier!!!
Even on Chromebooks you can install Firefox.
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It grinds me a bit, as I did have a Linux version if Firefox installed on my Chromebook, but because the book is just a sofa device and doesn’t get any love (especially from the little shits), it runs dog slow, so I end up just using chrome on it, and suffer the pain of not having things synced between devices. Thankfully the most important thing, bitwarden is syncing, so I can manage the suffering.
Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??
I run into compatibility issues and weird bugs with firefox a lot. I’m still using it as my primary browser, but I have to keep a chromium based browser ready for times when a website won’t work in firefox. I can put up with that personally, but I wouldn’t want to set up firefox on family/friend computers because I don’t want to get a call whenever something doesn’t work and they don’t know why.
Chrome based browsers also have some super useful features (like tab groups) that firefox doesn’t have a good alternative for.
Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.
Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying
People inevitably bring up compatibility issues in Firefox when this subject comes up, and nobody ever has specific examples.
This was the case back when Chrome was starting out too. Everything was made for IE and you’d have to keep it around for the odd time you needed it.
Eventually those old sites were replaced and now Chrome is the new de facto standard.
For the overwhelming majority of users, they won’t know the difference between using the two. People here are on a high inhaling the air in this echo chamber.
I’ve used Chrome on every device imaginable since Chrome was a thing. I’ve had a negligible amount of problems, in all my years. I absolutely hate that Google shuts services down when they get bored. And I absolutely hate what they did with Google Music and Google Chats, and Domains.
I move off Google services when they shut down. Besides that, I’ve no problems with the ones I use (minus nitpicks and the above products).
So to anyone here feeling bad and are afraid to comment on here because they don’t want to lose Internet points, fret not. There are millions of us perfectly satisfied using Google, PAYING for their services where we see fit, and generally not worrying at all about any of this.
What about the ad blocker changes they’re making? That’s pretty much the line for me. I use chrome everywhere but when ublock stops working well that’ll be me jumping ship. The web is a fucking unreadable cesspool without a solid adblocker running.
Chrome is great at multi-user switching. FF in comparison is @$$ in that respect… I went back to FF around a month ago after a decade long hiatus.
Horses and water
Because normies were using IE, then enough of them had their “tech enthusiast” grandson show them Chrome in 2010 and now that’s all they use.
No lie, I actually had to shift to Chrome from Firefox today. Some websites are straight-up broken on Firefox, while others load painfully slow (e.g. try arc.net on Firefox vs any Chromium-based browser). Not to mention the massive shame of Mozilla leadership treating its own flagship product as a second-class citizen in favour of “AI initiatives” or whatever the fuck those C-suites want to stud into their resumes.
Some websites load faster in Chrome. But the reason why Chrome is so ubiquitous is because for normal people, Google is still the plucky user friendly company they were in the early 00s.
Firefox is right there and is a better browser to boot. I genuinely have no idea why
I used to use mozilla by Mozilla, too. THAT’s why.
Okay I’m happy to switch, I used to use Firefox years ago until Chrome came along and it’s a great browser, but can I integrate my Google accounts with it?
I want it to sync all my stuff to my Google accounts, and so far I’ve not found another browser that can do this :-(
I’m also not sure if all the plugins I have would have Firefox implementations, maybe they do. I use Darkreader, some password vault stuff, uBlock, SponsorBlock and the other YouTube one they make (I forget the name) are an absolute must, too.
Firefox sync will do the same without spying on you.
What do you want to integrate with your Google account? Imo that’s something to specifically avoid, not something to seek out. But I may be not understanding what you mean
All my bookmarks, search history, browsing history (so I can type a portion of a URL into my address bar, say a word or so, and have it find the page I want even though my own memory fails me), that sort of thing. Plus it works across all my devices.
And casting pages or my desktop or such to my Chromecast is really handy too, and so is the Chrome Remote Desktop feature that I use sometimes to remote in to my PC. I don’t know how many of those things Firefox has, maybe it casts and stuff too.
But yeah I use all that kinda stuff, and of course it keeps me logged in to all the Google services I use, like my emails, YouTube, Drive, Docs, Maps, etc, and facilitates using that stuff seamlessly without issues, which is great.
I’m deep in the Google ecosystem basically, and I’d be happy to switch browsers just so long as that deep functionality remained, know what I mean?
Some people here really hate Google (like, specifically on Lemmy people seem unusually angry about them existing), but they seem no worse (or better) than any of the other companies that offer all this stuff, so I might as well pick my poison as it were. They’re all evil at the end of the day, haha.
Sure, I could run 20 different individual open source services on a server to do everything I use Google for, albeit without integrations and likely a bit more muddled and less feature complete, requiring ongoing care and upkeep, and that IS kinda appealing, I do get why, I used to do the homelab/home-sysadmin stuff for fun, but I just don’t have the time or patience to do that stuff these days, you know?
I got older, and now I just want a functioning service that I don’t need to fiddle around with these days, and that way of life extends to my browser too. Give me a good browser that lets me do what I want with all the integrations I like, and I’m happy.
Right now I’m not happy with Chrome because of their ad blocker policy, and how locked down plugins are in general. And I want to theme it! Firefox used to let you change everything in a themed all the colours, icons, element sizes and so on, it was dope. I assume they still do that, I’d love that.
Anyway, I hope that answers your question :-) Sorry if it is a bit muddled, I blame ADHD brain :-P
Firefox has Firefox Accounts which will do just the same. All those extensions are also available. You may find the odd extension is missing but there is usually a decent replacement about.
All work on Firefox.
While you can’t use Google password-manager easily on Firefox (probably there is a plugin for that) the Firefox password-manager is better in my opinion.
The Google account stuff works mostly, but I don’t know what you exactly want to do. You should try it out.
Firefox is not the better browser in anything but privacy. Maybe it could win in customisability, but that’s something only a few percent of users care about.
It has longer load times and sometimes breaks sites entirely while using about the same resources. Yes, the reason for that is that website creators don’t deliberately support it, but the normal user only cares about functionality.
I still use it and recommend it to anyone that asks, but saying that it’s the better browser is just delusional.
Chrome’s developer tools are better, and having two browsers open at the same time while programming is a strain on RAM resources, especially since Visual Studio Code needs to run in its own Chromium.
Have you checked recently? Chrome devtools have been getting steadily worse the last few years, and Firefox’s keeps getting better.
I haven’t seen anything getting worse, but I agree that the Firefox dev tools are now barely usable. They weren’t before.
FF dev tools haven’t been shitty for like more than 10 years
I honestly have no idea what this guy is talking about. I use dev tools in Firefox all the time and they’re pretty much the same as Chrome.
Right, they’re great. They were a little janky in 2012 and before or something but yeah Chrome only enjoyed maybe 1-2 years even back then of being better
… strain on RAM resources? What year is it?
Idk, twenty twenty-something. But Chromium with the YouTube homepage takes less RAM than GNOME Software and GNOME Shell, which either says I should move to Xfce or that Chromium has improved. Can’t speak on VS Code though since I run that in a distrobox and podman is broken for me rn.
The year where a browser can easily eat up 10GB of RAM.
On my Mac mini with 8GB, just having Visual Studio Code open is enough to fill up the RAM. No other programs necessary.
A Mac mini with 8Gb of ram is sadly not an appropriate config for programming anymore.
8gb of RAM? What year is this?
A lot of more budget devices still have 4 and 8 gigs. Not to mention all the older devices.
yeah, but thats not an development environment (at least not an acceptable one for anything serious)
Genuine question (I am not a developer): if you don’t use a bloated IDE, what do you need this much RAM for?
Your WORKstation is for working. Budget devices are not for working.
It’s 2024. 32GB is a min requirement. I roll with 128GB because it’s a couple hundred bucks to never have to worry about RAM.
“But Chrome is slightly more convenient! Why would I suffer tiny inconvenience today in order to save me from way greater inconvenience later? Who am I? Some reasonable person?” - typical Chrome user.
As a former chrome user it’s so real. Chrome connects every device for you and once you ARE in the loop it’s hard to leave it. Wanna switch to Firefox? Oops suddenly your authentication doesn’t work anymore. Oh what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.
It took me huge effort to switch off chromium based browsers because the longer you use chrome, the more it worms it’s way into all your services making it harder and harder to switch. I still can’t figure out how to seperate my Yahoo account from my Gmail account
A huge reason I left is realising that if google decided I broke their TOS on something like say, YouTube ad blocking, they can just terminate by Google account and every service attached to it suddenly becomes unusable. I’d rather not be taken hostage like that
Edit: for all the wise people in the comments. I was trying to decouple entirely from Google products, not just chrome
What you’re describing sounds more like over-reliance on Google services than the browser. I don’t use gmail or google logins anywhere, I just have Bitwarder plugin to manage my authentication and use masked emails to create accounts. I did the same in all the different browsers I used over the years and never had any issues with it or with switching between browsers.
You’re right, but that’s still a valid concern. Many people are much more ingrained in the Google ecosystem, especially through Android.
We’re seeing this issue with Microsoft in the buisness space, too.
And if course we’ve been seeing it with Apple for decades.
These massive corporations have a great deal of people so ingrained in their interconnected services, it’s next to impossible to convince them to extract themselves.
This is why the EU regulations focus on “gatekeepers”. Because users will not make the necessary changes in their habits to combat the abhorrent practices in the industry. There is no true free market here. So the solution is to regulate the shit out of these gatekeepers to make them open up and play fair.
IMHO unfortunately most people will always go for what’s more convenient, don’t care about their privacy and don’t mind ads and there’s not much we can do about it. Eventually all the content on the web will be locked up behind a paywall and/or accompanied by nu-blockable ads. Most users won’t mind that. We’ll be left with what we can host/support ourselves like lemmy or mastodon.
Yeah that was exactly the issue. When I wanna “Degoogle” I mean not just the browser, I mean step out of the entire ecosystem
Firefox syncs across devices as well, if you sign up for a Firefox account and enable sync. This works for bookmarks, logins, history, and you can even access remote tabs if you want. It’s also easy to send a single page from one device to another.
On desktop, Firefox has an import feature that will pull your bookmarks and logins m other browsers (like Chrome) into your Firefox profile.
Even if you’re neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn’t do anything special.
Yeee I’m using Firefox. It’s just difficult to desynch the Google services with all my accounts tied to it I had to one by one change em or even make new accounts entirely.
The worst is the fucking Google authentication app and how it’s tied into stuff like Discord…At least I’m out of the Google ouroboros now but it was still intensely painful.
the fucking Google authentication app and how it’s tied into stuff like Discord
The one that implements the open standard TOTP that has a bunch of open source implementations?
You don’t have to use the Google Authentication app for 2FA/MFA.
I don’t understand the problem. Google services work in Firefox pretty much the same way, yeah? Does Chrome integrate an authenticator app? If som you might want change your 2FA settings at https://myaccount.google.com/security . If you have an Android phone you can get push notifications on it, or you can also use third-party authenticator apps.
…the problem is that I wanna get rid of Google services lol.
Oh, gotcha. I misunderstood and thought you were describing a Chrome-vs-Firefox difference specifically. Yeah, I can relate. I’m de-googling my life but I’m not sure I’ll ever be 100% de-googled. I’m taking it bit by bit. I sign up for new things with different email addresses now and occasionally I’ll change existing services if it’s possible. But there’s no way I’m going to go through my bajillion web site accounts and move them all.
Even if you’re neck-deep in Google services, Chrome doesn’t do anything special.
Actually, being able to cast to other devices is very easy to do with Chrome, but extremely hard to impossible to do with Firefox, unfortunately.
Chrome connects every device for you
What? Besides debugging things on mobile devices, I’ve never sought to connect any device to chrome. Btw this exact same process works in FF too. You’re talking about chrome like it’s an operating system.
For me it was as easy as download > export bookmarks and passwords. Nothing broke. I even still use my google account to login to some services. It just brings up the google popup and I’m in.
I didn’t have this experience at all. I switch browsers all the time just so I can know how they are, it’s painless every time. I’ve used non-chromium edge, chromium Edge, Brave, Chrome, Firefox, OperaGX, and probably something else. Chrome is probably my least favorite, as it just doesn’t have any bells and whistles.
Oh I was way deeper than just browser
I unfortunately had an account, my entire phone linked to it, my Microsoft account linked to it and even my authenticator app linked to it which was responsible for 2FA on most of my non Google accounts.
It was all interlinked in a way that made removing it from the root hard
I can’t say I relate to that at all. I’m not sure what you mean by having your MS account linked to chrome, and stuff like my authenticator is on my phone, I didn’t even know you could use chrome as an authenticator.
what about those useful Google logins tied to everything now? Good luck with that.
What? You can still use your Google account without Chrome…
Unless you’re not talking about OAuth. Is it Chrome’s password manager? Because I’m pretty sure that’s easily exportable…
That’s exactly the issue I mean. I wanted to not just move away from Google and Google Chrome
I wanted to move away from the entire Google ecosystem including the accounts
We can’t forget that a lot of people have absolutely no idea that this is happening or what it means. Many folks just think the Chrome icon is how you access the internet and have no idea that there are other options. Helping to educate those folks is going to be a significant part of minimizing Chrome’s dominance.
This comment is 20 years old if you replace the word Chrome with Internet Explorer.
As true now as it was then.
I use Edge. Seems to be working out for me pretty good.
Edge is chromium btw
with microsoft’s crapware added instead.
the vertical tabs are fantastic but can’t stand using MS. then i discovered Arc and never looked back. lots of super cool novel ideas coming out of that team. it is based on chromium though. but it’s sooo niiiice :/
Yeah, I’ll never use Chrome again. Google has always been shady, but this latest round of anti-features is unbelievable. I’m shocked there’s been no anti-trust suits related to what they’re doing with Chrome. Firefox is just a better browser with way more security options and extension support. That alone is enough for me to stick with it.
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And they are too rich and too old to know or care
Security? No. Privacy? Of course (assuming you don’t use vanilla FF). Is it much easier to escape the sandbox in Gecko than Chromium. Doesn’t matter what options they give you in the settings titled “Security”.
If Firefox goes away, I’ll use Epiphany or Konquerer before I subject myself to anything that makes me view ads.
FF has way too much groundwork laid and way too much mindshare currently (especially given the rust language and all…) If, for some reason, thousands of devs just gave up on mozilla, more would continue the path and fork it most likely.
Mozilla is the result of people giving up on Netscape. It will live!
It’s the result of Netscape losing to anti-trust behaviour by Microsoft and open sourcing their code as a final parting gift.
Netscape was struck down Firefox rose.
And that’s surely why it was originally called Phoenix!
I hope that’s true, because I’m hearing rumblings that Mozilla is moving away from it as their core project.
Lots of people can’t just straight up ditch it. I have had multiple websites just don’t work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put. For me I just go into a Windows sandbox, but there’s people who are not that tech savvy and it’s often forced on them. Also iirc most schools have chrome books they let students use. So it’s basically forced onto people.
Do you have any examples? I have used Firefox for years and never experienced this, nor heard of anyone I know who uses Firefox experiencing this.
Not the commenter, but…
I play tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder 2e for those care) online with some friends, and we use a website which hosts the program (forge-vtt.com).
For the life of me, I cannot get it to behave on Firefox. Maps will be pitch black while on Chrome they render perfectly. I’ve tried every permutation of browser setting and extension toggling I can think of to no avail.
Tried switching off hardware acceleration?
Yup, that was the common suggestion I was finding, but no luck with it on or off.
I’ve hit the odd site where a menu doesn’t work the way it should, the payment form doesn’t work, overall form validation is wonky, or the captcha doesn’t work. I attribute most of these to slight nuances in javascript between browsers.
I’m a (old, grey) dev, and I’ve had to shame colleagues into testing in mobile browsers other than Chrome and Safari.
I love iOS, but I gotta bring up that other browsers on iOS are all Safari with a skin.
Sonys website immediately comes to mind
Trying to get my account back for my PS5 forced me to use edge for it to work at all
And then to use edge on my wife’s PC because something I have installed REALLY pisses Sony off
Oftentimes, when I use Firefox (Main browser on my phone) things just don’t render/show up. One thing I noticed was when I input my area code to find a package distribution center, and it straight up didn’t show. Iirc it relied on Google maps for showing these places.
It worked in Chrome. Not pointing any fingers, it’s just odd, is what I’m saying.
I use Firefox except for one thing: web serial. Chrome is the only browser that supports it. Luckily you only need it the when setting up an ESP32 for the first time and can do updates wirelessly.
This is the Proxmox console on any of my VMs or LXCs in Firefox. Works just peachy in any Chromium-based browser.
This is fixable. Firefox is blocking HTML5 canvas stuff. I found a screenshot that shows you what to do: https://imgur.com/a/hdvyBtx
Today there was a page on my bank that just would not load in Firefox even though the rest of the site was fine. Switched to Chrome and it worked fine. I only use Chrome in these situations.
If a website or app doesn’t test in Firefox, I avoid it. That’s something I run into like once a year, and I just use edge once if I need to, and avoid that website or app in the future. It’s not hard to support Firefox, it’s just a shitty ass business decision not to
Use a Chromium fork instead if you’re having so much trouble. Thorium is a decent alternative.
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I have had multiple websites just don’t work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put.
Have you tried to change the browser’s user agent ?
I have had multiple websites just don’t work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put.
The exact reason why we encurage to ditch Chrome.
Just another reason to avoid it as much as possible.
We really need more browser engines floating around.
As of now we really only have 3, Webkit,
FirefoxGecko, andChromiumBlink.Everything is based on these 3. And I know, technically chromium and firefox are both based on webkit, but they’re so far gone from webkit they function as their own engines.
tbh i think it would be better if there was a single collaborative engine instead, owned by a non-profit company like The Linux Foundation
maybe the W3C could establish their own but idk if they even do anything these days
In this case I still feel like that’s an improvement.
Embrace extend extinguish
It’s almost already too late at this point
Not going to lie, I really hate when the internet gets a new favorite phrase. Destroys discussion on the subjects and feels like it’s a race for commenters to say the hit phrase.
Lemmy is chock full of stupid people on the right team for the wrong reasons. They treat switching to Linux and FF the same way someone would declare they gave their life to Jesus Christ.
Most of them can’t even explain why something is good or bad without resorting to the catch phrase of the day. “Enshittification”, “EEE”, “Chrome bad cuz capitalism or something, gib updoots.”
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO GOOGLE!!!
PLAY STUPID GAMES,
If what you were gonna say is quashed by people knowing the big corpo tricks and treachery, then chances are what you had to say served no interests but corpo interest to begin with.
Username checks out.
Maybe we’re just tired of sheep. Even sheep that happened to end up on the right side.
At least he’s honest. Props for that.
I mean he’s dead wrong, but the user name is refreshing.
You’re doing an awful lot of Baaaa-ing over there to cry about other people being sheep.
It’s not. In the late 90s it was pretty much just IE after Netscape died. Mozilla came from the ashes.
Literally. It was originally built on the Netscape engine before making Gecko and transitioning to that.
extinguishing Chromium is the goal, isn’t it?
As of now we really only have 3, Webkit, Firefox, and Chromium.
Webkit is the only browser engine in that list; the other 2 are browsers, not engines. Firefox uses the Gecko engine. Chrome/chromium use Blink engine.
Firefox isn’t based on WebKit. Maybe you’re thinking Safari.
Ultimately you really only have KHTML (what Webkit was forked from), Gecko, Triton (IE classic), and I can’t recall what the new (now dead) engine in IE11 was called. The rest are forks, mostly of Webkit/KHTML.
I guess there’s Ladybird and Servo too, but they are a way still from being used as a daily driver.
Gecko came from Netscape. Webkit came from KHTML. Pretty sure Gecko/Firefox are not Webkit based. Blink is though.
We really need more browser engines floating around.
No don’t
Yes, we do. The lack of competition is letting Google consolidate power.
I think their point is that it’s going to fragment things for web developers and make stuff more difficult to manage.
Made the switch to Firefox last year. Love, love, love the freshness and versatility of the browser! Also add-ons for mobile!!!
My main problem is that I prefer other frontends to Firefox. I mostly use Vivaldi and think it’s great, but of course it’s Chromium based. I read somewhere that it’s just way easier to base a browser on Chrome than it is to base one on Firefox. It would be great if the frontend and backend were separated with a unified API and you could simply choose a frontend/interface (Vivaldi) with whatever backend/engine (Gecko). That’s not how it (currently) works though.
There are Firefox forks, but they’re just that: forks with slight modifications. Vivaldi and Arc are basically completely different browsers. Even Orion isn’t based on Gecko, it’s based on WebKit.
Add to that small compatibility issues with certain websites/web apps that aren’t Firefox’ fault, but rather developers targeting Chrome instead of “100 % web standards”. Still, as a user you’ll likely into (small) issues from time to time.
People saying “just use Firefox” have a very narrow view on how any of this works and I sometimes feel like it’s some form of elitism where the cool kids use Firefox and everybody using anything else are “lesser people”. In reality, people have different requirements and priorities. It’s similar to people posting “just use Linux” under every article talking about problems with Windows.
Yes, Chrome and Google sucks, I agree, but there isn’t a single universal solution to this problem.
People saying “just use Firefox” have a very narrow view on how any of this works
No, not at all. I understand perfectly. Your concerns are valid.
Our point is not supporting Chrome is more important in the long run.
There is no front end in the world that will make up for the loss of true ad blocking and everything else Google pushes down the line.
Let’s be clear about this:
I don’t want to tell you to use Firefox. I want to tell you to use whatever you like. I wish we lived in a world where the choice didn’t matter.
But we don’t
When I’m telling people to use firefox, I’m telling them if you have a problem with the direction the internet is going in, you actually have to do something about it beyond just complaining. Support the competition, the only non-profit in the space, and the only true alternative browser left. Because everything is going to get exponentially worse without competition, and we really really need to preserve the one remaining safe refuge.
Well, you’re not saying just use Firefox, you actually bring up valid points and reasoning. Just look at the top comment of this post stating “Not using Chrome is so easy” when it’s not.
Let me clarify that I don’t hate Firefox, it’s my second most used browser on the desktop after Vivaldi, I just don’t think it’s a great browser with its current feature set. Mind you, as soon as ad blocking becomes infeasible with Chrome and forks I’ll instantly bite the bullet and fully switch to Firefox. But as it stands right now, Firefox is lacking features (some of them almost essential if you ask me, see my comment about passkeys) and compatibility (rarely Firefox’ fault, but rather a result of the Chrome semi-monopoly).
The main problem is that Firefox is the only alternative to a Chromium browser on non-Apple platforms, but it’s not the solution to everyone’s problems. Let’s see if and when Orion is going to get ported to Windows/Linux.
super excited about the future of Orion!!
What features does Vivaldi have that don’t exist in a FF extension?
And using a WebKit based browser is still better than using a chromium fork.
I don’t know. I still prefer having vertical tabs, tab grouping, workspaces, web panels, proper loading information, full page screenshots and way more integrated in my browser instead of having to rely on possibly dozens of different extensions that in my testing never provided nearly as good of an experience.
Implementation details matter.
Also mouse gestures and tab tiling. Vivaldi has so many useful features baked in that I don’t want to give up.
Vertical tabs: Sidebery. It might actually be better than the Vivaldi native. I havent used vivaldi with vertical tabs that much, its just a work/secondary browser for me.
Gestures: Gesturify. This is just better than the vivaldi native one.
Tab tiling: well you got me on this one. This is actually pretty neat.
To be clear, I like vivaldi as well, it is my chromium of choice but with the above two extensions firefox is chefs kiss.
I’ll take a look, thanks. I’m not thrilled with the idea of using a dozen extensions that could break or become incompatible, but I would prefer to get off of chrome!
For me it is only 5 extensions really which are essential. uBlock Origin, Dark reader, Sidebery & Gesturify & User agent switcher (it can come in handy every once in a while).
P.S. There is a little caveat to vertical tabs which i forgot. You have to follow an easy 5 step guide on how to hide horizontal tabs when sidebery is active.
Personally, I would have preferred the option to hide tabs in Firefox, versus what they’re currently working on… A hidden sidebar that works on only three of America’s biggest shopping websites. Even if they hadn’t developed native vertical tabs to go along with it.
You can get vertical tabs on firefox with custom userChrome.css but it is a nightmare to setup and mozilla is only interested on breaking userChrome with every update lol.
tell me about it! literally the ONE thing keeping me from FF at the moment. vertical tabs are too vital to my workflow at this point to sacrifice.
tell me about it! literally the ONE thing keeping me from FF at the moment. vertical tabs are too vital to my workflow at this point to sacrifice.
I don’t know exactly how to do it, I know you can because when I was in the firefoxcss subreddit there were many posts on how people came up with their own solutions for vertical tabs.
I wanted vertical tabs to save on screenspace, for some reason the default firefox has the biggest top bar of all browsers and it is horrible, this is the userChrome.css that I use, it does what I wanted but it is not vertical tabs:
It is also keyboard centric, I also had to install an extension because firefox (and this only happens on linux) uses alt+number to switch between tabs instead of control+number.
I could never get hardware accelerated video working with Firefox on my Linux laptop, and Google Meet (used for work) doesn’t work well ( but I guess I blame Google for that).
Google meet sucks hard on every browser and piece of hardware I’ve thrown at it.
Why is using WebKit-based browser “better” than Chromium-based one? Neither supports Google’s monopoly. Vivaldi is not just a skin for Google Chrome, it continues to support manifest v2 extensions and proper adblockers. And the company is owned by the workers, which is super cool
It would be great if the frontend and backend were separated with a unified API and you could simply choose a frontend/interface (Vivaldi) with whatever backend/engine (Gecko). That’s not how it (currently) works though.
Arc has floated this idea. Currently Arc is Chromium-based, but they say they’ve designed it to allow for swapping engines in the future.
IIRC, Edge had a similar feature for a while, allowing you to run legacy Internet Explorer tabs if a site required it. Not sure if that still exists.
I tried really hard to use Floorp which fixes most of my problems with stock Firefox but even that just showed me how excellent Vivaldi is compared to other browsers.
Let me add that support for passkeys is becoming more and more important and Firefox doesn’t support passkeys. Yes, it supports forms of WebAuthn (YubiKey and the likes), but not “scan this QR code with your smartphone and use biometric authentication to sign in”.
I’ve used Firefox for years. It’s always been the underdog imo.
If it ever becomes the top dog, I’ll switch! To the next privacy underdog. More competition is good.
FF has always been security conscious and was actually the big dog until around 2007 or so when they had to do a full rebuild of their code and this made it so that a lot of peoples’ favorite plugins stopped working until they were updated. This coincided with when Chrome started to become bigger and people switched. Now people are switching back. I use a combination of FF and Opera GX.
At one point it was the top dog - this was before google was even in the browser market mind you. Then they entered and used a lot of… Shall we say interesting marketing practices to usurp firefoxes dominant position - it wasn’t all due to chrome being better.
Way ahead of you. Been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix.
If I’m forced to use a Chrome browser, I use a deGoogled version of chromium. I can’t think of the last time I’ve had to use it though. Firefox support is a priority for my company’s IT dept.
since netscape navigator here. even used netscape during the dark ages (when aol controlled it).
I was so happy when Netscape 4.0 released for OS/2.
I’ve read so many bs paid-off articles recently how chrome is so much better than firefox, or firefox has nothing left to give to its users
I’m glad I’m in a position to basically never have to touch a chrome or chrome derivative for my work. It was a necessary evil to finally kill internet explorer, but these days it’s just hostile to its users.
I’ve been removing Google services from my life bit by bit over the past year, and I have to say it is crazy how hard it actually is! They have inserted themselves into so many digital workflows, securing monopoly positions and preventing the rise of competitors and open ecosystems. In many areas the only alternatives are other tech giants, or accepting feature downgrades and having to set things up manually.
I’m really glad that the browser is one area where the transition is actually very simple and straight forward!
I’ve been using Firefox since somewhere around 2008, it’s been a dream the whole time.
Highly recommended
