[eulers_secret]

> Why bother using FF at this point?

Lots of reasons: familiarity, it works for your use cases, preventing a Chrome hegemony (though we're already there), their focus on privacy, important add-ons still work great. The fact FF isn't owned by an ad-run business who's main concern is figuring out a more effective way to make you buy stuff.

> Most sites don't work as well

Citation definitely needed. This is worded without precision, you could claim "work as well" to mean nearly anything. Do you have specifics, with data? Performance? Functionality? Features? DRM? What is it? I haven't encountered any broken web sites with desktop Firefox. But, I also don't look at all the internet, so I'm curious - what's broken?

What alternatives are there? Chrome is a no-go, Brave is off doing it's URL redirect and bitcoin weirdness (that I don't need in a browser) Edge is just Chrome. There's some de-googled Chrome options and I guess some weird special-build Firefox options, but really, out of all the options I see, FF is best for me.

I'm not changing because they removed one tiny feature used by a very vocal minority, and it's a mistake to assume that FF has no value or no "sell".

[freebuju]

> I'm not changing because they removed one tiny feature used by a very vocal minority

Seems you have trouble keeping count. Let me remind you how many features FF has nuked in recent times

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25589177

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24231017

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24554393

[dralley]

Literally the top comment on each of these was something along the lines of "this is 1) not true 2) not a big deal"

> "Some of these are a bit spurious. I mean, Venkman was replaced by Firebug, which was much better. MXR was similarly replaced by DXR."

> "CNET (and Mozilla)[1] say that Firefox still has a fully functional security team. The source for this is an unsourced tweet. I'm going to flag it because HN does not seem like a good venue to hash out rumors."

> Kind of misleading title – what isn’t planned to be supported is installing PWA:s as standalone apps on desktop Firefox: https://twitter.com/englishmossop/status/1344428028315590656...

Try harder.

[thayne]

> what isn’t planned to be supported is installing PWA:s as standalone apps on desktop Firefox

That is still something that I very much wanted.

[toyg]

The XUL argument is the only significant one; and it was years ago, and there were very clear technical trade-offs.

[addicted]

And security trade offs.

[antman]

And the Firefox Android addon ecosystem disaster. A big thank to an HN user that once pointed me to Kiwi Android browser that accepts Chrome addons.

I had stuck to firefox 68 because after that https over ssl could be disabled remotely for corporate computers but now I switched to Chrome.

I think the end result will be Firefox removing itself from the browser pool.

[ProAm]

> Lots of reasons: familiarity

Not when they constantly change the general way it's used. I am personally tired of having to relearn how to use a tool. Address bar, lockwise, shared passwords, to start.

[rurp]

Exactly. If the interface in my car or the layout of my keyboard changed constantly, and even lost functionality regularly, it would drive me crazy. Fortunately, that doesn't happen. Unfortunately, I use Firefox so my interface to the internet is an ever changing mess.

[nitrogen]

The most obtrusive recent UI change was the new tab switcher that tries to mimic the OS app alt-tab overlay bar. It was taking 30 seconds (not an exaggeration!) to load the first time I hit ctrl-tab on my fast desktop, and would randomly pause up to 5 seconds after that. It also turned what was a rapid-fire muscle memory action with an ergonomic behavior, into a slow and unpredictable chore. To top it off, it would always display full-screen, outside of my never-maximized browser window. Just glad it could be disabled.

If you work on Firefox, or are new to development -- this is not Luddism, and don't let this attitude discourage you. Let it be a lesson that you need to understand your users and not just assume that everybody uses a maximized window on a 13-inch laptop screen with all day to wait for slow code to load.

[lokedhs]

That one annoys me as well. Would you mind sharing how it can be disabled?

[nitrogen]

I think it's about:config -> browser.ctrlTab.recentlyUsedOrder set to false. If that doesn't work, try searching the web for "firefox disable new tab switcher" or similar.

I also saw a browser.engagement.ctrlTab.has-used key in there; didn't know the config store was also tracking usage...

[lokedhs]

That's the one. Turns out that option is actually included in the main configuration menu: "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order"

I have to say that the name doesn't explain what it actually does. Thank you for the assistance.

[charlesdaniels]

> Citation definitely needed. This is worded without precision, you could claim "work as well" to mean nearly anything. Do you have specifics, with data? Performance? Functionality? Features? DRM? What is it? I haven't encountered any broken web sites with desktop Firefox. But, I also don't look at all the internet, so I'm curious - what's broken?

Mostly JS-heavy sites by big companies. But yes, I admit that I don't have hard data to back this claim up.

> What alternatives are there? Chrome is a no-go, Brave is off doing it's URL redirect and bitcoin weirdness (that I don't need in a browser) Edge is just Chrome. There's some de-googled Chrome options and I guess some weird special-build Firefox options, but really, out of all the options I see, FF is best for me.

Un-googled chromium is one. I suppose that I trust Mozilla marginally more with my user data than Google.

But yes, I agree, the browser landscape is pretty lousy right now.

> I'm not changing because they moved one tiny feature used by a very vocal minority, and it's a mistake to assume that FF has no value or no "sell".

I perceive this to be the continuation of a trend.

I think FF still has value for now, but it seems like that value is pretty quickly dropping - as a piece of software, if not from a philosophical perspective (supporting the open web and all that).

[cle]

The killer Firefox feature for me are multi-account containers. I haven't found another browser with that feature, and they make it SO much easier to deal with multiple accounts on the same site (Google, Facebook, AWS/GCP/Azure, etc.).

[robertlacok]

To me, they’re a worse version of People in Chrome. I had two windows open, one for work and one personal, one light one dark, easy to distinguish. Never any issue with multiple accounts.

With Firefox, opening a new tab in a non default container has a terrible default shortcut, and you can’t remap it to anything sensible (like cmd + some letter).

I’m sticking with Firefox because I want to support them, but I miss Chrome dearly.

[nitrogen]

With Firefox, opening a new tab in a non default container has a terrible default shortcut, and you can’t remap it to anything sensible (like cmd + some letter).

Just out of curiosity, have you tried creating a shortcut based on the menu name in the macOS global settings? As a Linux user who sometimes works for companies that issue Macs, that functionality goes a long way to preserving my sanity, but sometimes apps just hard-code a shortcut instead of using the OS.

[SilasX]

It's especially bad when they killed the ability remap keys with the extension update in 2016 and haven't replaced the functionality since.

(Extensions can do it, but they only take effect after the current tab is loaded.)

[paulryanrogers]

Firefox has a profile manager and can run separate profiles. It's just a bit awkward to set up.

[alcover]

>> Most sites don't work as well >Citation definitely needed.

Cite me. Impossible to pay my elec bill w/o chrome on my country's biggest energy provider.

Silent errors on many sites.

FF-esr on Debian

[foepys]

"This site works best on Internet Explorer 6 at an resolution of 1024x768."

[CivBase]

You know what they say about history repeating itself...

[webmaven]

> Impossible to pay my elec bill w/o chrome on my country's biggest energy provider.

I've had similar experiences with various bills over the years (though fewer recently), so these days I default to dealing with those by 'pushing' the payment from my bank to the utility rather than having the utility 'pull' a payment from the bank.

It would be nice if the bank could poll a utility to discover the payment amount rather than having to enter the amount manually from reading the bill, but as inconveniences go that's fairly small potatoes.

[Y_Y]

I find it odd that anyone would have to manually pay an electricity bill these days.

[alcover]

I refuse to get auto-debited. This thing is obscene : you let a company debit any sum at will from your bank account.

[jcims]

People were getting five figure debits in Texas because of this. There should be some guardrails in bill pay arrangements.

[cgriswald]

My electricity provider has absolutely no trust from me after a number of experiences which I won’t describe here. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find they’ve overcharged me. The process to deal with them in any regard is always byzantine. So, I suppose it depends on what you mean by “have to.”

[neiman]

The world is big my friend, it happens where I live.

[pixard]

I find it odd that anyone would give permission to a third party (any third party) to at will withdraw money directly from your bank account (and if I'm understanding correctly how it works in the US without even being able to set limits on it, neither in frequency nor amount).

[mikepurvis]

I switched to FF on Windows 10 as my daily driver a year and a half ago in order to adopt a multi-account container workflow. MACs aren't perfect [1] and overall I definitely sense that FF is not as power-efficient as Chrome, especially when in a Meet call, but overall I'm very happy with it and the power thing is not a huge issue if I'm sitting wired in all day anyway.

[1]: My criticisms: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/1...

[hn8788]

On FF, Spotify frequently freezes for a minute or more with 100% CPU utilization, Amazon won't play videos in higher than 720p, and a lot of sites only show alternate text instead of graphical buttons. I switched over to Brave for a few weeks, and was suprised at how much smoother major websites run on a chromium based browser.

[temac]

> Lots of reasons: familiarity, it works for your use cases [...]

Yes indeed... until not anymore. And will this be an enormous change? Oh no but an annoying one for some people, and completely switching browsers might be perceived as only marginally less familiar than just having some of your settings suddenly disappearing in FF.

[thayne]

> What alternatives are there?

This is my problem. If there was a real option to go to I probably would leave Firefox because of the things they've removed or haven't added. But then I look at the alternatives, and they are all worse.

[ekianjo]

> it works for your use cases

Until they remove the feature you used for years. But hey, they are the champion of the Free Web so anything goes.