[sackofmugs]

This is honestly one of the first time I'm convinced in a technical sense to consider Firefox over Chrome. uBlock Origin feels as core to me to web browsing as Saved Passwords and Incognito Mode. That uBlock Origin can work better is like the browser itself being better.

[voxic11]

Yeah, I want to point out that uBlock Origin is fully functional on mobile firefox which makes it by far the best browser on Android. Plus with firefox you can do fun things like disable the Wake Lock API on youtube so that you can listen to audiobooks or music with the screen off and ad-free.

[the_duke]

My only complaint on mobile is that the UI for customizing settings is annoying, eg for allowing JavaScript.

But that's the fault of Firefox.

I'm always astonished how bad/slow the mobile web experience is without Ublock with JS blocked by default.

[amluto]

The desktop experience of clicking the drop down is not fantastic: no tooltips and no real explanation of what clicking the empty boxes does.

[Semaphor]

yeah, it's the primary reason I still use the (undeveloped) uMatrix. ublock supposedly can do the same things, but umatrix has an amazing interface that's clear and straightforward while ublock is like one of those mobile first (but also only) websites

[ukyrgf]

And you have to actually click submenus to expand them, you don't just hover. And of course other menus like bookmarks open submenus when you hover, so it's a gamble every time.

[jdubb]

I agree, ublock origin was my single most important reason to finally switch from chrome mobile to firefox mobile.

There are some quirks though, minor annoyances that every so often get introduced in updates. For example, when closing the last private browsing tab it doesn't automatically show the regular tabs any more, but instead requires three more taps. But I'm happy to ignore those for the sole reason of having fully functional ad-blocking.

[ineptech]

Same experience here! The only problem I have is that the Android search bar seems to ignore the default Browser setting, but avoiding it (opening FF rather than using the search bar widget) is a small price to pay for avoiding ads so effectively.

[NathanielK]

You can use the launcher too. If you set the launcher to open a new tab, it'll bring the keyboard up too. This means you're one tap from searching your query in the browser.

If you have a good keyboard, you can even use DDG !bang syntax. I find this very helpful for finding what I want fast.

[jdubb]

Another option you have is to put the firefox search widget above you google search widget in your home screen. It's a bit ridiculous that the Google search bar can't be removed, but this is second best.

[pmontra]

I did remove the Google search bar from all my phones. An old and defunct Samsung Galaxy S2, a Sony Xperia X Compact (Android 8) and a Samsung A40 (Android 11).

Which phone / OS do you use?

Btw, to search for something I open Firefox and type in the URL bar.

[kiwijamo]

That's strange I don't have any Google widgets on my home screen. Perhaps it's the Xiaomi variant of the Android UI that allows this?

[caoilte]

I like to use newpipe app on Android for YouTube.

[jackewiehose]

> you can do fun things like disable the Wake Lock API

How? Is there a hidden about:config?

[Knufen]

I second this, if anyone knows how to configure this or has a guide it would be much appreciated!

[breput]

Install the "Video Background Play Fix" add-on.

[mhitza]

I gave it a shot on Android, but the fact that it doesn't support userscripts (Greasemonkey), it makes old.reddit.com unreadable. For some reason Chrome increases the font size for that site, whereas on Firefox I have very tiny text and constantly have to zoom in. As I mostly read reddit/hacker news on my phone I had to drop Firefox on Android :(

[boring_twenties]

For reddit specifically there is more than one free-as-in-freedom app available. I use Slide, and am happy with it, but these days Infinity seems to be recommended more (never tried it myself). Both are GPL or AGPL and available from the main F-Droid repository.

[Causality1]

Depends. If you've also blocked ads with pi-hole or the Android hosts file Firefox and Chrome get closer. Ublock on Firefox is absolutely indespensible for sites that may be actively hostile like piracy or porn, but for casual browsing the UI of Chrome is a lot better.

For example, I prefer the address bar at the top. Firefox doesn't like that, so the new tab button stays on the bottom, meaning I have a six inch stretch between where my finger was to hit the tab manager and where it has to go to open a new tab. It's full of little things like that where the only explanation that comes to mind is that Mozilla decided they couldn't do it the best way because Chrome was already doing it that way.

[dredmorbius]

Fennec Fox (Firefox for Android) can be configured with controls (navbar, menus) at the top. Bottom is merely the default.

[Causality1]

Yes that's the way I have it. Because I have it at the top there's a massive stretch between the tab manager button and the new tab button that makes me have to shift my grip on the phone.

[725686]

Is it? Last time I tried, here where a bunch of sites that just didn't work.

[411111111111111]

I haven't encountered any issues since I switched almost two years ago.

[themgt]

Google intentionally crippling their own free, market-dominant browser in a way that just-so-happens to make ad-blocking difficult honestly reminds me of the Microsoft anti-trust case back in the late 90s. Google is an ad company doing embrace-extend-extinguish on other markets just to optimize selling your eyes/attention to advertisers.

[matheusmoreira]

Google's changes actually make a lot of sense. 99% of extensions out there should not be able to touch user data at all due to the simple fact they'd abuse this privilege.

uBlock Origin just happens to be so incredibly important and trusted that an exception should be made for it.

[paxys]

Yet on Google's other large ecosystem (Android), they will happily let apps collect way more private data than this with zero limits in the name of user freedom. In both cases, they made the decision that best serves the company bottom line, nothing more.

[atomicnumber3]

I just recently (few months ago) switched over to FF from Chrom(e|ium). What pushed me was Google, on short notice, revoking all Sync API keys from all Linux distros, and I'll be damned if I'm going to use software that's as important as my browser from a source like the AUR. The AUR is great mind you, and for a small number of things I accept the risks and burdens that come with using it (auditing the PKGBUILDs on updates etc), but for browser software I just won't on principle. I want that from my distro's packagers.

It's been fine so far. The biggest annoyance is that Firefox on iOS struggles a lot with form autofilling, and I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all. You'd think this would be a minor annoyance (don't most sites save your payments methods?) but it's honestly been a big issue. So many sites are so broken on mobile that I actually can't create an account from mobile, and barely function well enough to get through the guest checkout flow.

Examples: Jersey Mike's (sub sandwich shop), and another local deli place that's too local for me to name without letting everyone know I live in a cornfield.

[maccam94]

Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox, it's Webkit with a Firefox skin (because Apple won't allow any other web engines on iOS).

[simfree]

From whar I have experienced Chrome and Chromium act differently FYI. I would discourage lumping them as one in the same.

[Yoofie]

> I don't think credit card autofill is allowed at all

I would consider this a feature, not a bug.

[tomc1985]

It amazes me that a consensus seems to have formed around this conclusion that Firefox is technically inferior. I have always been using it and it has always been a fantastic browser relatively free of Google's icy tendrils. The technical issues that people bring up about it are usually nonexistent for me, and while I am troubled at its direction it remains an unusually solid and reliable workhorse given the stakes involved and the size of its userbase

[kaba0]

Well, in js performance it is unfortunately behind in some benchmarks as far as I know. And some major non-standard website refuses to run under firefox, like teams unfortunately (definitely the fault of Microsoft)

So I am an FF user by ideology, but sometimes do use Chromium (basically only to not have to run electron).

[f1refly]

Being "behind in some benchmarks" is not an argument at all. You're implying that

1. Those test convey any useful information leading to

2. The average user is able to notice the difference in the real world

I think that things that are not js execution time for actual site functionality are much worse for the overall web experience, namely js execution time for ads/trackers and overall latency caused by bad connection quality or bandwidth. The overall experience on firefox with ublock is en par with chrome with ublock for your average mom.

[kaba0]

You don’t have to convince me of Firefox being all around better, but I think it is important to note the areas where it could improve.

[kiwijamo]

I am certain that I've used Teams in Firefox? I regularly use other 365 webapps as well with no problems (apart from troubles that are also present in every other browsers).

[kaba0]

I think joining a meeting itself is what doesn’t work (for me at least) under linux. I can log in and use other features.

[kiwijamo]

Ah I see. My employer uses teams quite heavily for its other features but we use Zoom for meetings.

[Enginerrrd]

On a PC I don't have any issues with firefox. On mobile I do. I also am still pissed that they killed almost all the extensions for firefox on mobile.

[paxys]

I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome.

I also recently started using Firefox full-time on my work machine despite IT strongly mandating that all our tools only work on Chrome and everyone should use that. Have had zero problems (and we use every Google service under the sun).

[karaterobot]

> I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome.

Really? It happens to me all the time. I can't log into my U.S. Bank account in Firefox, I can't submit a delivery order on Doordash in Firefox, and (just this morning) I couldn't validate a credit reporting form in Firefox.

Now, despite those and many other examples, I continue to use Firefox as my primary browser, because Chrome has bigger issues in my opinion. I don't blame FF for this, I blame the websites. I just think it sucks that places do not test in or support Firefox better.

[jamespullar]

Is it possible you have an extension blocking scripts or redirects? I'm able to use Doordash just fine on Firefox.

[karaterobot]

At the risk of this being a tech support comment, I have definitely tried disabling all my extensions, but no luck. It might be some setting I have flipped on in Firefox, but in general I am about as paranoid about my privacy/security settings in both browsers.

[linknoid]

The only two places I use Chrome are Netflix and Costco. Costco's behavior is just plain weird:

"Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.costco.com/" on this server."

Is this from running NoScript? Or does it affect all Firefox users? (Also the URL is https://, not http://, so the error message doesn't match the URL).

[wccrawford]

I've used Costco's site plenty of times on Firefox. I just double-checked Windows right now, and I'm pretty sure I've used it on OSX/Firefox in the past.

[linknoid]

I cleared my cookies in Firefox for everything Costco related, and it works now. Thanks for pointing out that it works. No clue how it got in that state.

[roca]

Does Netflix not work in Firefox for you? Mozilla and Netflix have worked together a lot to make sure it does work.

[linknoid]

Nope, I get Error Code F7701-1003. I have Wildvine enabled, and I tried completely disabling NoScript. It's easier to just use Chrome for that one thing than have to troubleshoot the problem.

[roca]

I suppose that's true but it would be helpful for Mozilla if you filed a bug about it.

[kiwijamo]

Netflix has worked fine on Firefox on Mac, Windows and Linux for as long as I can remember.

[JackC]

Don't know if this is your issue, but it could be Enhanced Tracking Protection -- I have it turned up pretty high in Firefox and find that a lot of sites won't work until I turn it off. One example seems to be sites that use "Google Tag Manager."

[boring_twenties]

Interesting, I blacklist googletagmanager.com in NoScript and have never had that break a single site.

[paxys]

Can't say about your bank, but I have used Doordash on Firefox regularly and never had any issues.

[Qub3d]

Not sure about U.S. Bank, but my brokerage, bank, and Doordash work great on FF. I'd try starting the browser in "safe mode"[0] to see if you have a setting or extension causing issues.

[0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-is...

[boring_twenties]

I use DoorDash with no issues on Firefox, with both uBlock Origin and NoScript running, some but not all stuff whitelisted in the latter.

I also have some "unusual" settings in about:config that I mostly don't even remember, for instance disabling service workers outright.

[Hiopl]

Why disable service workers?

[boring_twenties]

They sound scary, I found the explanation as to what they actually are on Mozilla's site to be rather lacking, and I don't see any need to have them -- I've had them disabled for at least a year, and everything works fine.

The question becomes, why not disable them?

[depressedpanda]

Service workers are used to cache a web app locally in order to make it load faster, and (if appropriate for the app) even run entirely offline. They also enable push notifications, though only after you explicitly allow them. You can read more about this under the umbrella term 'Progressive Web App' (PWA).

I am not aware of any attack vectors specifically related to service workers -- it's just normal JavaScript, but with more restrictions.

[milesvp]

I have to add my anecdata here as well. I’ve used firefox on *buntu for 8+ years as my primary browser, and have found I only need to open chrome ~1/mo for the rare case where I need chrome (and I suspect my issues may be more tied to linux than firefox specifically).

[caoilte]

I keep chromium for Google meet exclusively. I got awful performance on Firefox... not that chrome is much better - but at least I can kill it after every meeting without losing other tabs.

[magicalhippo]

Used Google Meet just yesterday, only a small meeting with five people, but all with webcams and of course audio. Flawless and smooth with Firefox 86 on Windows 10.

Clearly not a universal thing then I guess.

[kiwijamo]

I have also noticed better performance on Firefox compared to Chrome. Quite surprising but worth a try. Meet only really works well for small meetings though. Any bigger and it slowly starts to fall apart.

[caoilte]

These things change frequently. I'll give it another go.

[jay_kyburz]

On my own videogame Neptune's Pride, I have noticed that the performance of canvas rendering on Firefox noticeably worse on OSX and Plasma. I still use Firefox for everything though.

[u801e]

The only website I regularly use that doesn't work with Firefox is Google voice.

[BenjiWiebe]

I use it in Firefox a lot, for several years now, with no problems. I'm using Fedora + KDE but I doubt that makes much difference.

[u801e]

It works for checking messages and sending them, but I've never been able to get audio to work for making or receiving phone calls. Then again, I even have similar issues with chrome, but it works most of the time.

[ravenstine]

I think Firefox's shortcomings are overstated. Often they're actually Mozilla's rather than Firefox's.

There are other things I consider superior about Firefox that Chrome has yet to implement:

  - Multi-account containers is a killer feature IMO.  I have different containers for banking, Facebook, a container for every email, a container for every Google/YouTube account, and so forth.

  - The option to enable canvas permission prompts and canvas obfuscation. (though there are some arguments that those make you *more* trackable)

  - Autoplay blocking and permission prompt

  - Pop-out videos (aka picture-in-picture) are awesome and make it easy to keep videos on screen while browsing other tabs and apps.

  - Built-in anti-fingerprinting

  - Blocks tracking cookies by default

I simply won't use a browser that doesn't have these things.

[catlifeonmars]

Privacy considerations aside, containers are great for using multiple AWS accounts simultaneously. Since we use an AWS account as a deployment container, it’s typical to have 10s of different accounts you have to jump between and it’s just not possible to effectively do ops with another browser.

[VWWHFSfQ]

Mutli-account containers is really a game-changing feature for me. I switched from Chrome back to Firefox about 3 years ago (even before containers were available) and at this point there's no going back. I keep chrome around for some sites that require it, but that's it.

Now how do I get Chrome to stop auto-installing itself in my login items on macOS everytime there's some kind of update.

Edit:

Also, if you're on Android, set Firefox Focus as your default browser! It's amazing to not have to think about the tracking consequences everytime you click a link somewhere on your phone. It's basically a new "container" for every link click. If you need the cookies, then there's a handy "Open With" menu to let you re-open the page with regular Firefox, or Chrome.

And uBO works on the regular Firefox Android browser.. Again, game-changer for me.

[jdfellow]

This is honestly a killer feature! I use Temporary Containers and load the AWS console in a fresh container automatically, making it very easy to switch between accounts and have multiple open at once. (Caveat emptor: be sure which account you're using at any given time!)

[pablodavila]

It really is. I think this is one of the features they (Mozilla) spend some more resources into. It's really unique and could drive non-tech savvy users to it.

[paranoidrobot]

I really wish AWS would figure out multiple accounts on one session.

Even with multiple containers, it still means logging into AWS SSO multiple times and selecting the right account.

[rshm]

By any chance you are using nightly. I am not able to login as IAM user in firefox nightly. For last couple of months always get 403 from AWS.

[dexterdog]

You can use the aws switch roles addon that lets you do that in one container.

[paulryanrogers]

Strong agree on multi account containers. Keep in mind though if you disable them they drop all settings, unlike every other add-on ... ever. Bug is three years old but maybe we can push it over the top: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/1...

[jabroni_salad]

There is also no way to rearrange your containers aside from deleting them and making new ones in the desired order. Since I am using this for o365 administration it is a little annoying that I can't keep them in alphabetical order to find them easily.

[jedberg]

Are you on the latest version? I can rearrange them on mine. If click on "manage containers" there is a gray on gray bar on the right. If you hover it, your cursor should change to an arrow to rearrange them.

[gxnxcxcx]

That allows for visual rearrangement of that particular menu, but as far as I can tell the new tab button's list does not change and the extension keyboard shortcuts are still limited to the first 10 containers, which are bound by their creation order.

A non-sanctioned way to mitigate this might be achieved by editing containers.json, but I'm wary of inviting sync shenanigans.

[FalconSensei]

This is something that I don't like about firefox. They have a ton of cool stuff, but I feel that they are always lacking a few things.

What I always give as an example, is how to add custom searches (Amazon, Reddit, HN, etc), you save the query url and add a keyword. Works very well to type `rdt something` and have the results. But: there's no option in the menu to see all keywords/search engines you have registered.

[quesera]

My workaround for this is to title the bookmark, e.g. "kw:rdt Page Title".

Imperfect, but the convenience is worthwhile for the dozen-or-so keyword searches I use.

[FalconSensei]

Yeah, but that's kinda the point: seems that there's always a need for a workaround. Also, I know I'm going to forgot to rename a bunch :/

[fn1]

Yes there is. Saved keywords are just (Parametersteuerung) bookmarks so open the bookmark manager and you will find them.

[FalconSensei]

I know they are bookmarks. But the point is that there is no way in the bookmark manager to filter bookmarks that have keywords.

[diroussel]

Let's not forget Tree Style Tabs, no other browser can do it. Great for the tab hoarders amongst us.

[jamespullar]

I don't often keep many tabs open, but still vastly prefer Tree Style Tabs. I primarily work on a widescreen monitor and would rather give up horizontal space rather than vertical.

[boring_twenties]

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't use a widescreen monitor these days?

Out of all my computers the only one I have is a Thinkpad T60, manufactured in 2006 if I'm not mistaken.

[Zardoz84]

Simple Tab Groups awesome complement. In special with Firefox, not loading tabs that you not have opened. And if you combine with Total Suspender... Like having infinite tabs with paying any price.

[trevor-e]

I had some serious performance problems on my MBP last year, back when a lot of the major Rust changes came out (no idea if that's relevant). Was super laggy trying to play videos. Gave it another try a couple months ago and everything is fixed! Very happy user now, won't be going back to Chrome. The features you highlighted are some nice added bonuses on top of removing another layer of Google tracking.

[EMM_386]

> Pop-out videos (aka picture-in-picture) are awesome

Agreed on all points. It's funny, I've been using Firefox 20+ years and when I saw them recently boasting about PiP I thought "another useless feature".

Until I decided to try it out. Now I use it constantly.

[JonTarg]

I love FF. It's fantastic on macOS and the customization beats every single other browser out of the water. BUT, and I know this is controversial, and I know the foundation is not the same as those who manage the browser, after the events on the capitol they released and statements saying something like "deplatforming is not enough" and even though I asked several times, I could never get a confirmation from anyone within the Mozilla Foundation assuring me they would never use telemetry data to spy on "undesirables" or that they would never try to block content they deemed harmful.

I get the situation is different, but my parents escaped from two civil wars in Central America in the 70s and the stories they told me about political persecution were scary enough to make me distrust organizations that don't seem to understand nuance when it comes to politics.

[sfink]

I certainly can't offer any official word, but telemetry doesn't have enough data to spy on anyone, and the privacy policy spells this out pretty clearly. And if something snuck in, it's all open source and I imagine people would raise a big stink pretty quickly (whatever their political leanings were).

I remember that post, and I think you're mischaracterizing it. The point wasn't that "deplatforming is a good start, but we need to go even farther"; it was "deplatforming is not the right solution, we need something better".

As for trying to block harmful content -- Mozilla is already doing that, all the time, so you're certainly not going to get any promise there. Firefox blocks malware, sites with expired/mismatching certificates, things on the (un)safe browsing list, 3rd party cookies in some configurations, etc. Whether any of those constitute censorship is up for you to decide. Right now, it feels fine to me, but I agree that there's reason for concern. All the browsers have all the mechanisms necessary for censorship, and there's no way to crisply define "harmful".

[ravenstine]

I feel very much the same way. I don't particularly like the direction Mozilla has taken, both in terms of current day politics and the "resignation" Brendan Eich. Granted, it's part and parcel with today's mainstream, but that blog post they published last year was kind of chilling IMO. Their statement was totally out of the bounds of what Mozilla should be responsible for.

I still use Firefox not only because the browser is not necessarily the same as the foundation, but the alternatives are organizations with far, far worse track records. (putting aside the advantages I mentioned)

[katsura]

> Pop-out videos (aka picture-in-picture)

Chrome has this.

[krisdol]

No it doesn't? I'm on Chrome right now and cannot pop out vimeo videos. Youtube appears to have a "pseudo" pop-out that I suspect is their own js-driven miniplayer thing. Just a fancy change to the DOM. You can't resize, drag the video around, or watch it from other tabs or with chrome unfocused/minimized.

[nvrspyx]

> You can't resize, drag the video around, or watch from other tabs or with chrome unfocused/minimized

Umm...you can do all of those things. You might have to right click the video twice to get the picture-in-picture option (to get around the contextual menu of many video players including YouTube) or you can use the official extension that you click to popout whatever video is on the webpage.

[wlesieutre]

Multiple pop-outs simultaneously?

I know it sounds silly but I've used it for SpaceX launches to keep an eye various official and unofficial streams.

[abdusco]

Firefox puts the option right in front of me, and I regularly use it. But I have to hunt for it / even google it to find the option in Chrome.

[starik36]

Multi-account containers are a killer feature for sure. There is an ancient bug out there to provide "home page" for the container. That would truly make it a home run.

[croutonwagon]

I had to remove multi-account containers due to issues with syncing, namely on a windows 8.1 install, and it causing a TON of browser bloat and CPU usage on MacOS and Linux and my windows 10 desktop in a fairly recent past.

It’s unfortunate. Plan to try it again but it was borderline burdensome that x containers or place settings wouldn’t sync or that the Mac mini or linux box would start sounding like a jet engine.

[cat199]

> box would start sounding like a jet engine.

Not sure about the container connection, but Firefox also now has 'about:performance' which is pretty much like 'top for browser tabs'. When things start getting bogged down I can now find the culprit and nuke it.

about:memory is also useful, it allows you to force garbage collection on the browser as a whole.

[croutonwagon]

That’s super interesting.

Was not aware of those. My observations were mostly noted while trying to figure out why one specific browser wouldn’t simply not sync any custom containers. And then I noticed my fans spin up on my macmini. I only used system monitors at the time before just disabling the add-on.

I’ll definately look at those in the future. Didn’t even know they existed.

[sfink]

about:performance is a little limited, especially if you have a single window, because switching to it makes it the foreground tab and all the other tabs background tabs. Background tabs can be throttled, and generally behave very differently.

(There's an experimental sidebar extension that works better and gives a graphical history, but I'm pretty sure it's unfinished and unavailable for general use. Hopefully it'll come out sometime.)

[bilekas]

Firefox does seem to have really improved over the last few iterations, performance also when large numbers of tabs open.

I cant find the link right now, but there was a nice timings done where Chrome was using less CPU at lower tab counts, but when it increased count, the CPU utilization was considerably higher than FF.

I'll be giving it a fair shake for a few months.

[alpaca128]

Yes, Firefox is pretty much unbeatable in performance per tab. I just installed the tab counter addon and it reports that I currently have >1500 tabs open in Firefox. I know from experience that if I run just a tenth of that in Chromium the whole system will basically lock up. And as pretty much every other more conventional browser is based on Chromium nowadays there's no alternative really unless I get a RAM upgrade.

[diroussel]

You can see the tab count without an addon. It's not pretty, but you can do it.

Go to: about:telemetry#scalars-tab

Then look at: browser.engagement.max_concurrent_tab_count

[sfink]

Ah, but if you use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stats/ then you can not only get the count, but also be able to mass-close large numbers of tabs (eg specific duplicate URLs, or everything for specific domains). A tab hoarder's best friend.

(Pretty clever to use telemetry for this, though.)

[solarkraft]

I use Firefox out of principle and because of Sidebery, but WOW, Chromium is faster by a lot from my experience. That is fresh Chromium vs. configured and used Firefox, though.

[scotu]

thanks for getting Sidebery on my radar! I tried treestyletabs and unfortunately it felt somewhat disappointing given how much people seem to like it.

At a first try Sidebery looks and feels more modern/slick! Might be what I was looking for!

[whatshisface]

Firefox recently rolled out an update that broke up the big GC passes into small GC passes. That contributed to a huge improvement in responsiveness.

[sfink]

That sounds great. But as someone who works on the Firefox GC team, I gotta say: what?

Or more specifically, I'm wondering what change you could be referring to. We've had incremental GC for many years now, which does exactly what you describe. It's true that we keep splitting up more of the uninterruptible pieces into smaller chunks, but I don't recall any major change there recently. (I'm not very good at marketing, am I?)

And according to telemetry, the incremental slices have been working quite well for most people, at least within the last dozen releases or so. We have a budget, and it's rare that we go over it. Not that I fully trust telemetry; if you have counterexamples please file a bug. (I'd love to have a nice set of scenarios that are problematic for the GC. Our telemetry errs strongly on the side of privacy, as it should, so I can't get URLs automatically.)

[kaba0]

May I ask you about the “big picture” of how Firefox’s GC work? How does it compare to something like OpenJDK’s ZGC?

[whatshisface]

It might not have been that recent. Incremental GC was not new in the patch, what changed was the tuning. It happened some time in the last six months and was a huge improvement for the use case of realtime rendering. At the time I was comparing performance between release and nightly, and it was night and day.

[bilekas]

That might have been related to what I was reading, it looked impressive anyway, I did mean to go check out FF then, I guess now is the time !

[bennysomething]

True but I've gone back to version 68 on Android. Latest versions don't work with s load of extensions I use. Old Reddit being one of them. And I don't care about cookies

[shmerl]

Never really got the appeal of Chrome. Firefox worked very well for me for years.

[sleepybrett]

Back when I first started using chrome it was the snappiest and had less memory usage than anything else on the block.

Then I started to think about what kind of tracking google was doing with it, so I tried out firefox... which was just as snappy and just as memory efficient.

Then I deleted chrome.

[shmerl]

I guess that performance gap didn't bother me at that point to switch to less privacy respecting browser and Firefox caught up well, so I never saw it as a problem.

[stevewodil]

Yeah I never really got the appeal of Firefox. Chrome worked very well for me for years.

[timbit42]

The appeal is not having Google tracking literally everything you do online.

[Noughmad]

Firefox is older than Chrome. Did you use IE before that or are you just that young?

[HenryBemis]

So does the tracking ;)

[stevewodil]

Personally I enjoy being tracked, it's why I got the Covid vaccine

[jdfellow]

Years ago I switched at a time when Chrom[e|ium] had a better developer tools console than Firefox (although only slightly better than Firebug). But, nowadays the console is equal if not better in Firefox to Chrome.

[Karunamon]

I don't trust Mozilla to not break my workflow or remove features I use or ignore debilitating bugs for upwards of a decade in some ham-handed attempt to "keep me safe".

That sounds pithy, and it is, but Mozilla burned every ounce of goodwill they ever had with me over the last 5 years or so.

[kaba0]

I never really understood this point of view. May I ask what browser do you use then?

[Karunamon]

So far, Brave hasn't done any of the things that caused me to abandon Mozilla. My browser is a tool, not a political statement. Mozilla has taken positive steps to make that tool less and less useful and waste more and more of my time.

[broodbucket]

ah yes, good will, the thing we all definitely have for Google

[FalconSensei]

For me:

- command+d will save a bookmark to the last folder used

- command-y will open the history in a new, full tab

- bookmark manager also open full by default

- Recently closed shows windows and tabs together without separating them

- I can actually see and edit a list of all search engines I have registered that use the tab to autocomplete. Firefox's keywords don't

[andoriyu]

Firefox, gecko specifically, performed very bad on Mac OS X when chrome just came out.

That was also an era of websites crashing all the damn time - in firefox it was crashing the entire browser.

Chrome was a significantly better browser for a while. Now it's just "why switch?" to your average consumer.

[AndrewKemendo]

I've been on Firefox since I switched away from Opera year and years ago and I don't know any technical reason I would use any other browser - not even mentioning the other spyware reasons.

What technically do you find missing in FF?

[tkiolp4]

It may sound dumb, but the only reason I don’t use FF is because of its UI. Somehow I think Chrome (and Safari) “look better” and make browsing more enjoyable. And this comes from a “techie” that knows exactly why, objectively, FF is probably better than Chrome in terms of privacy.

Can’t Mozilla “just copy” the look and feel of Chrome or Safari while keeping FF’s internals untouched?

[ocdtrekkie]

I have the opposite view: Google feels so obsessed with pushing Google branding on Chrome users that the UI seems to constantly be suffering because of it. Apart from a recent discussion to remove the densest UI view, Firefox has generally provided a better, more user-oriented UI than Google.

[iaml]

They have a 'proton' redesign landing soon-ish parts of which you can enable via about:config options on dev/nightly that cleans things up a bit.

[AegirLeet]

You can customize the UI using CSS. Look up userChrome.css.

[Sunspark]

It's my regular browser for years. There's a lot of things it does well or differently. For example, one UI thing I appreciate about it is the ability to override a webpage's font type and size choice. Chromium browsers don't let you do that, you only get to pick if the website didn't pick for you.

[fastball]

I like Brave's adblocking better than uBlock Origin anyway.

Saying this as a former uBlock Origin fanatic.

[grayrest]

If you do switch, check out the temporary containers addon. It makes use of the Firefox containers tech to provide the anti-tracking benefits of incognito but maintains history and isn't detected by websites as incognito mode.

[teawrecks]

Interesting, I haven't run into any issues using ff over chrome for the past several years. It's way more common for my partner who uses chrome to have an issue that they avoid by opening ff.