[whizzkid]

It is funny how my browser preferences has changed over last 5 years.

2014 me as a developer had Chrome as number 1 browser for both development and all rest. Firefox once a month just to check cross browser compatibility. And Safari was just installed without me using it.

2019 me uses Safari for everything except development. Excellent power consumption and UX. Firefox for development. And lastly Chrome for all web apps that only work on Chrome. ( Google Meet etc. ) I feel much much better that I am not dependent on chrome.

[mraison]

It’s nice to see a bit of Safari love around here. Some sites occasionally break, but I really like the macOS/iOS integrations. SMS code autofill on desktop Safari (via Mac <-> iPhone communication) is pretty awesome.

[inferiorhuman]

It’s nice to see a bit of Safari love around here.

The one thing I cannot stand is that fucking URL/search bar (I detest these things in general, but Safari has the worst implementation). Most implementations (e.g. Firefox and Chrome) will encode the space and go on their way, meanwhile Safari translates a space into a search unconditionally — because clearly I want my wikipedia viewing history to end up in my search history FFS. I'm also not a fan of view source opening in a dev tools frame versus a new tab/window like Chrome and Firefox.

Speaking of the dev tools, I was just poking around and saw this in the console:

[Info] Successfuly preconnected to https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/

[Info] Successfuly preconnected to https://aax.amazon-adsystem.com/

Interesting as I'm running uBlock Origin (which is, admittedly, more neutered on Safari). I know I've disabled that prefetching before, but I no longer see any options to turn it off. Speaking of UBO, Safari loves to claim UBO will increase energy consumption and slow down my browsing (HA). I wonder if the "disable plugins to save energy" option means that Safari will kill uBlock whenever it feels like. :/

[jonathankoren]

> Most implementations (e.g. Firefox and Chrome) will translate a space into a search unconditionally.

What would you rather have it do? URL encode it?

[inferiorhuman]

What would you rather have it do? URL encode it?

Yes. I missed a few words on the original edit.

[xfitm3]

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of MFA?

[cortesoft]

No... the computer is a second factor just as much as a phone. Something you know (password) + something you have (computer) = MFA

[chii]

If they already have your phone, you're already pwned.

[mschuster91]

>If they already have your phone, you're already pwned.

No, that's not what GP means. If the attacker manages to get malware on the Mac, for example by exploiting a browser 0day, then the attacker can simply circumvent the 2FA by making the Mac fetch the 2FA code. The user won't notice it.

[gruez]

If the attacker manages to get malware on the mac, they can also wait for you to do a login, and steal your 2fa code as you enter it.

[ViViDboarder]

Or just steal your session tokens. Not all apps are secure enough to prevent session roaming.

[cortesoft]

Same could be said of the phone, right? A zero day on the phone would circumvent the 2FA.

Really, the SMS part is the actual weak link in the chain. Easier to hijack SMS than own a computer or phone.

[mschuster91]

> Easier to hijack SMS than own a computer or phone.

That depends on the country, in Germany it's way more difficult.

[imcoconut]

I noticed this the other day and was very pleased.

Also, if you have touchID then you can use it on safari to autofill login credentials. I just wish safari had an active plugin ecosystem like firefox (or chrome) does.

[toyg]

Apple did their best to kill that ecosystem stone cold. I guess the current situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.

[machinecoffee]

When my bank sends a login token via SMS, Safari can also copy the token out from iMessage and autofill the value - which is quite convenient, but also a little too much for my preference.

[r00fus]

I have mostly switched over to Firefox from Chrome for all work related stuff except for anything Google Drive related (esp. Google "new" Sites - that has resulted in lost data and a failed demo).

So yes Google, Chrome will always likely be running on my system, but in almost exactly the same place IE did 10-15 years ago. Is that something to be proud of?

[toper-centage]

Yup. And even for Gmail and YouTube, Google is trapped in a tab container in Firefox for being naughty.

[kijin]

My preferences haven't changed since 2007 when Chrome didn't even exist. Firefox for everything; Safari once in a while to check browser compatibility; ditto for IE & Chrome; and The Back Button for apps that only work in one browser. It's been a while since I stopped caring about performance and power consumption because I have more performance and battery life than I know what to do with anyway.

I don't regret having stayed with Firefox through the years when Chrome was all the rage. IE6 was the most popular browser in the world when I first tried Firefox, so I know how it feels. Other browsers come and go, but Firefox keeps burning bright.

[j-conn]

Personal use aside, I've been meaning to try out firefox for development after seeing some of their release announcements here. Any tips for people like me who are accustomed to chrome devtools? Are there some things you can do in firefox that you can't in chrome, and vice versa?

I do look forward to the chrome devtools release videos, always learn something new.

[robin_reala]

Firefox in general has much better CSS debugging, and somewhat less good JS debugging. If you’re going to try it out then I’d suggest looking into its grid / flexbox visualisation.

[sombremesa]

It depends on what you do on a daily basis. There are definitely things you can't do in Firefox - chrome://inspect, for example, which is how a JS dev can debug their Jest tests (though for these workflows you can just pop Chrome or Chromium open for a moment).

Otherwise, Firefox has the better API for add-ons and a more 'open' approach in general, so there are a lot more things you can't do on Chrome that you can in Firefox than vice versa. I have yet to see a decent tree tabs extension for Chrome, for example. (They exist, but none compare to the one available for Firefox).

[chii]

If you dev using the chrome devtools protocol client (like using intellij, see https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/integrating), you won't be able to do the same on Firefox ATM.

Edit: I'm mistaken - apparently you can : https://docs.firefox-dev.tools/backend/protocol.html ... So no reason to use chrome as a primary browser or development browser.

[fraudsyndrome]

I work with both and generally they overlap quite a lot for the basic stuff - for general ones, you probably just have to get used to the colours.

I use firefox for dev and browsing but my job requires me to check out chrome more because it's used the most. One thing I find myself using firefox for is the feature of visualising a flexbox which chrome doesn't have.

[dexterdog]

I use Firefox for meet calls every day

[spullara]

I only use Chrome on Google. Safari for everything else. Best power usage and better protects privacy. No reason to not let Chrome see me use Google...

[nebulaserfer]

deleted

[jtbayly]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

[nebulaserfer]

deleted

[MH15]

I've stayed with Safari for all web browsing mainly due to it's fantastic power consumption. Still use Chrome for development, but I find Safari's UX so compelling I'll still have it open for reference.

Safari needs a duplicate tab button though.

[clumsysmurf]

My favorite Safari UX feature is 'show tab overview'. Its far better than the Firefox overflow menu.

[scoopr]

I duplicate tabs with CMD-L CMD-ENTER combo, which I find passable. I suppose an item in the context menu would make sense though.

[heyoni]

That and a way to turn off transition animations...

[grahamburger]

Google Meet works fine for me in Firefox fwiw. I'm in meetings several hours a day on Firefox nightly on a Mac.

[arohner]

Brave is great for those "it only works in Chrome" sites

[tagawa]

Or Vivaldi.

[PikachuEXE]

I love Vivaldi due to vertical tab bar But I use Palemoon (Firefox fork with XUL) with Tab Kit for vertical tabs too

I think Vivaldi (based on Chromium) is great for one time browsing (open -> close) But I got a bunch of sites I visit daily so I got them opened in Palemoon and open them when I need With another extension you can also unload tabs (manaual or auto, config it as you like) in Palemoon like Vivaldi (called hibernate in V)

[dvcrn]

I also completely switched to Safari a few years ago mainly for power consumption (how can you all run chrome on battery??), but there isn’t really anything I miss in it these days.

It also integrates very well with my other Apple devices, and works with AppleScripts and keyboard maestro to quickly do complex macros and talk to other apps.

[iaml]

Google meet works in firefox (at least dev edition).

[shandor]

It didn't about 9 months ago. Great if the situation has improved. Thanks a lot for the heads up, hopefully this works and lets me uninstall Chrome!

[lscotte]

It works, just not well in my experience. Meet is about the only thing I still use Chromium for.

[komali2]

It didn't today for us.

[dror]

Make sure to enable permissions for autoplay sound, use the microphone and use the camera.

See https://imgur.com/a/1UQiqtQ

[cpeterso]

I think there is an issue where Google Hangout meetings created a long time ago don't support Firefox, but new meetings do.

[akerro]

> It is funny how my browser preferences has changed over last 5 years.

Sure, we're still testing, if stuff works on IE10...

[duhi88]

You shouldn't be! Microsoft has deprecated it and that should be reason enough to get your users off it.

IE11 isn't much better, though...

[akerro]

Tell that to the banking and medical sector, in the UK NHS would still be using IE6 and WinXP if not they were hacked a year ago with that ransomware from NSA.

[fallenatreus]

This looks perfect way to solve the current dilemma of choosing a "daily driver", but isn't it convenient to have stored all of passwords or details in profile in one browser or is there a way to keep everything in sync. I definitely would like to give a try to Safari.

[nuclear_eclipse]

Use something like 1Password and you can have your passwords in every browser or app, on desktop and mobile.

[luckman212]

Better choice would be Bitwarden. https://bitwarden.com

[vinay_ys]

why?

[floatboth]

Bitwarden is FOSS

[fraenir]

Better is a subjective thing, especially when it comes to FOSS. Better when you want to see the source? Sure, if that is your primary need, but for most people that isn't the case.

[suyash]

I use for Safari for everything including Development.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Are there Chrome-only webapps you use that don't just work with a User-Agent switcher?

[shrikant]

Most Google apps only just about "work" on Firefox. They're clearly optimised for Chromium and it shows.

I use Firefox for all my browsing needs except for Google apps, for which I keep an install of Vivaldi around. I only really fire up Chrome if some stupid internal workplace app refuses to work on anything else. It truly is the new IE.

[zepearl]

> It truly is the new IE

Funny, and true at least in the company I'm working for (officially supported browsers are primarily IE11 and optionally Chrome).

A colleague told me a few months ago that Firefox was not supported because it did not support some Windows "policies" (Windows or Active Directory? Not sure, no clue about that stuff) but that Firefox was going to support them soon... .

[arthurfm]

Firefox 60 was the first release with official Group Policy support [1]. Starting from version 64 you could also configure Firefox for macOS using configuration profiles [2].

Both the ADMX templates for Windows and preference .plist for macOS are available from GitHub [3]. The full list of configurable preferences can be found on SearchFox.org [4].

As of Firefox 67 there are quite a lot of settings that can be managed now. Certainly enough for Firefox to be deployed in enterprise environments.

There was also a really interesting talk at MacADUK 2019 by Mike Kapley on the work Mozilla has done so far to support enterprise deployment [5].

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1433136

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/mac/...

[3] https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

[4] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compone...

[5] https://youtu.be/jB_5h4ihih4

[shawnz]

Likely they did indeed mean Group Policy in the Active Directory sense, although that's been supported in Firefox for over a year now

[zepearl]

Thx!

[bashinator]

For example, I cannot copy and paste text in Google Docs in Firefox.

[roca]

Using the keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V) works for me on Linux.

[themattress]

Not quite the same thing and I know it’s not fully rolled out yet, but I enable u2f support in Firefox and haven’t had any issues with my Yubikey... except when I try to add a new Yubikey To my gmail account in Firefox it makes me switch to Chrome because “u2f isn’t supported”.

At least let me try and if it fails I’ll file an issue with FF so they can fix it and improve instead of locking me out with half-truths.

[floatboth]

In the latest release (67), Google U2F registration should work out of the box.

[whizzkid]

Most of them probably will work on other browsers with user-agent switching. But i do not want to hack it and risk having a problem in middle of my work. They can easily inject something that is only available in chrome and there goes my video conference :)

[iscrewyou]

I would love to switch to safari. What do you use for ad-blocking?

[Wowfunhappy]

UBlock Origin supports Safari: https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.el1t.uBl...

[darek]

It seems like it's won't be working on Safari for much longer. Info from 2 days ago "I can confirm that on macOS Catalina Developer Beta 1, uBlock Origin is completely removed as it is not using the MAS distribution method." Src: https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/151

[xrisk]

This hasn't been updated in over a year (last commit Apr 2018). Personally, I use Wipr from the App Store because it's very cheap. AdGuard is also an option.

[iscrewyou]

I didn’t realize unlock origin works on safari. This is very helpful. Thanks!

[latexr]

It’s deprecated.

[m-p-3]

Pi-Hole is a nice DNS-level adblocker, works with anything.

Otherwise I discovered nextdns.io recently, which seems to work well too.

[mraison]

I find AdGuard pretty good, but I’ve only started using it recently.

[azretd]

I use Wipr both on IOS and MacOS and it’s been great.

[ravivyas]

1Blocker and I also use LittleSnitch as a blocker.

[nisuni]

You could also try ublock origin.

[kreetx]

Given the privacy features Apple is introducing they could also put some more resources into making Safari appeal more to developers.

[o10449366]

I sorely want to switch to Safari but I can't port all of my Chrome extensions over.

[deca6cda37d0]

Which ones are you missing?

[o10449366]

RES and Imagus are the main ones.

[gangstead]

RES is on FireFox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhanc...

[baggy_trough]

The only thing I like about Chrome is the native personas.

[fouc]

It would be nice if right-clicking on links gave an option of opening it in another browser. That would make it easy to stick to a multi-browser setup.

[GeneralMaximus]

I use Choosy for that. See https://www.choosyosx.com/

One of my favorite apps on macOS.

[OrgNet]

A lot of people got tricked into using Chrome.

[joshuakarjala]

What do you recommend for adblocking on Safari?

[edraferi]

uBlock Origin, same as anywhere else.

https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.el1t.uBl...

[kristofferR]

That's depreciated and won't work in the next Safari version, along with all other normal Safari Extensions.

[Spiritus]

Wipr: https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr.html