[stonewareslord]

What do you mean meme storm? Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this... I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.

As a Firefox user, articles like this are just noise, not a possible attack on my personal privacy. When was the last technical scandal with Firefox? Adding an optional bookmarking service? How are people still defending chrome?

[therealmarv]

Security (not privacy): Firefox has shown in Pwn2Own contests and in security circles that it is not as secure as Chrome. Mainly because of overall security architecture and sandboxing techniques involved (remember the Chrome comic, I think even current Firefox has not implemented all security sandboxing which Chrome had from day 1). Firefox is trying to catch up but is overall behind. So there you have your technical disadvantage. I feel personally saver to visit unknown sites with a current Chrome based browser than with Firefox.

Also if you compare from a fingerprinting side of view then Brave is better than Firefox+uBlock (and all privacy lists involved). You can compare that easily between your Firefox and Brave here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

For me personally I also don't want to miss Chromecast capabilities (it's a nice system and unfortunately there is no good alternative) in my mobile browser.

[dsissitka]

I tried to make the switch after last week's uBlock Origin Lite post but there are just so many rough edges. For example:

1) You go to https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.gifv.

2) You decide to skip the beginning so you "Right Click > Show Controls" and use the controls to skip the beginning.

3) You decide to skip to the end so you move your mouse over to where the controls should be but they don't reappear.

4) They're gone and the only way to get them back is to "Right Click > Show Controls" again.

There are a lot of rough edges like that. I'd almost rather not use browsers than use Firefox in its current state.

[stonewareslord]

Is it not this way in chrome too? I know imgur messes with the ui for no good reason.

Your other commentmentions i.imgur.com being the case? Maybe libredirext can help you never hit the i. Site?

[dsissitka]

> Is it not this way in chrome too?

Afraid not. In Chrome and Safari the controls reappear in step 3. In Firefox step 4 is required.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was an imgur thing but I have seen it in non-imgur embeds on reddit.

> Maybe libredirext can help you never hit the i. Site?

That could work. Thank you!

[Arnavion]

It's an imgur thing. It disables controls on every interaction with the video by doing `.controls = false` on the video element.

Chrome seems to ignore this attribute being set to false and continue to show controls anyway, which appears to be a spec violation from my reading of it. Of course it ends up being a desirable behavior in this case.

[kevingadd]

imgur is intentionally disabling the controls in order to show their custom buggy ones, I don't know what you expect Firefox to do here.

[dsissitka]

Sounds like you're getting redirected to https://imgur.com/vuUyLnz. Make sure you end up at https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.gifv.

[yoasif_]

This is weird. Why not just go to https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.mp4 ?

[dsissitka]

I mostly encounter them on reddit and it seems they just happen to use gifv.

Just skimming through the first few pages and it looks like all of the videos are gifv:

NSFW

https://old.reddit.com/domain/imgur.com/

[bobsmooth]

>Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this.

cough Proton cough

That being said, most of the extensions I use have survived the last two years of Firefox development.

[stonewareslord]

Yes quantum was rough... I still miss vimperator. Though the speed increase was nice. Thank you, I did forget about this actually

[cetahfh14615]

> cough Proton cough

I'd take Proton any day over a neutered ad blocker

[bscphil]

Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done. You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear, but Mozilla can (and has) introduced new on-by-default ads with version upgrades, so that only lasts so long as your current browser version is supported.

I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.

[dont__panic]

Absolutely true. That's why I use Librewolf. I can control updates when I want them via my system package manager. The developers don't really maintain a separate browser from firefox, just a distribution that removes Mozilla trackers and a few user hostile decisions (like those ads). Works very well for me!

[cetahfh14615]

> You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear

It's like one setting in about:config

> Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done

Google might not build ads into the browser, but if you use it as they intend and log into the account all of your activity gets tied to your account. I would rather have pocket then not be able to sign into a google account without google signing it in across the browser

> I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.

Yeah mozilla has a shitty track record I'll admit and firefox is a lower quality product, but at the end of the day it's still the lesser of two evils

[bscphil]

> It's like one setting in about:config

Oh really, which one?

> at the end of the day it's still the lesser of two evils

Never said it wasn't.

[cetahfh14615]

extensions.pocket.enabled

[latexr]

> Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this

Unfortunately it does not, as other replies and plenty of HN Firefox posts demonstrate.

> I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.

There are several important areas where Firefox is lacking. Automation on macOS is one of them (it’s the sole major browser without AppleScript support) but in every thread I see people complaining of something different.

I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. I don’t want to support Google, but it’s also not feasible to use Firefox as my daily driver or to support it in the tools I release.

[vdfs]

Actually even firefox is switching to V3 and deprecating V2, they are keeping request blocking (main problem with v3) but why are they just following google?

[perryizgr8]

> why are they just following google?

Mozilla gets 95% of its revenue directly from Google.

[justanorherhack]

The extension management ui is terrible in Firefox and I haven’t been able to figure out how to disable or manage many multiple extensions.

[stonewareslord]

You can't in bulk as far as I know, but can't you just go to about:addons in the URL bar? I don't use more than 5 anymore. How many do you have?

[pineconewarrior]

Firefox memes have been trending on reddit.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

> Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this

No it fucking doesn't. Firefox have been aping chrome since version 4 and really sealed the deal with version ... 29, I think.

[pas]

what does this mean in practice?

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

It used to be that firefox would copy chrome's ui, then they started copying the extensions, then they eliminated their better extensions. Now I expect they will fully embrace the latest gimped api from google.