It's never been a better time to switch to Firefox
• Firefox offers better privacy and security than Chrome, with upcoming support for 200 new add-ons. • While Chrome dominates, Firefox gains ground with user-friendly browsing experience and open-source model. • Mozilla's focus on user privacy and transparency challenges Google's ad-centric approach, making Firefox a viable alternative.
I'd like to formally apologize. I should have never left.
It's cool just come back and bring a friend with you.
Same here. I left for about 10 years but started coming back gradually a few years ago. After everything that happened this year, I made the full switch to Mozilla on all my devices. I'm very happy to be back though!
Why is it such a big deal? I don't regret anything. Back in the days when Google was a cool company and Chrome appeared, it totally made sense to use Chrome. After they gradually started to get more and more hostile, I switched to Firefox. It was just a matter of exporting and importing bookmarks and setting up some plugins. And changing the search engine.
I tried chrome when it released. It was a neat curiosity, but I never found it to perform so much better than Firefox that I needed to switch.
Same, I deeply regret leaving. Mostly happened due to peer pressure in uni, where everybody was thinking google is cool, and you had to use a lot of google products for classwork. Now google has their tentacles attached all over my online life, and switching feels like preparing for a divorce. Though at least I’m not using Android anymore
You are forgiven. It's an adventure.
i feel like firefox used to suck
or did chrome used to not suck so much?
or was i a sucker for bandwagon and marketing
When Chrome came out it was fairly light on resource usage and speedy because of that. Firefox was a resource hog at this time. Chrome now is a show resource hog and Firefox is much peppier overall in my opinion.
Switch? I never left!
I deeply regret leaving.
Growing up, I used Firefox on PC, but switched to Chrome early 2010s due to using a lot of google products for university work, and the general “google is cool” vibe that surrounded me from peers (tech/business student).
Now after a decade, I’m deeply entrenched in Google with bookmarks, passwords and habits. Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Will probably try to make a stronger push to invest some time and switch completely during Xmas break, as it does bother me to be part of the problem, though I hate how convenient not doing anything about it is.
I had a similar history to you.
I finally decided a couple months back to start de-googling and did the following so far:
Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android. Installed Ff on mobile, but didn’t really like the experience, so not really using it.
Well if you switched to iOS then there's not really much point as the browser backend is still the same as Safari there. Apple doesn't allow other browser engines so on iOS Firefox/Chrome/etc are all just wrappers on Apple's browser engine.
Apple is worse than Google in many ways and if you wanted to maintain control over your privacy (and even just de-google) you ironically would be better off staying on Android.
There are many great custom firmwares available for Android devices such as GrapheneOS which can truly de-google your device.
Apple might be the one company that is even worse than Google
To be fair, Chrome was vastly superior to Firefox for ages in the early 2010's
Porting your bookmarks back is easy. I had a similar experience except I switched back to Firefox in 2015.
If you use Firefox sync on PC and your phone, all your open tabs and bookmarks will be synced automatically.
I was in the exact same boat as you. Except I also switched because Bitdefender, the anti-virus I used at the time, was not playing nice with Firefox.
Earlier this year, like a few months ago, I decided to try and switch back. It was seamless. In like half an hour I had every bookmark, most passwords, and even some new extensions that have saved me a lot of work since. I recommend you try it and keep Chrome installed on the side in case you run into some problems, but I think after a few days you'll realize you don't need it for much.
(in my case it's still installed for when I inevitably remember that I forgot to transfer a random password that didn't automatically migrate)
Only progress I made is switching to iOS from Android
"progress"
Exactly. I've been here since Netscape Navigator.
There are dozens of us!
Got here from iCab.
-🗿
Same! The extensions are just to damned useful!
Same. Literally been a user since version 1.
Was always really surprised everyone thought it was a great idea to jump ship to a browser made by the largest dataminer and internet ad company in the world. What's happening right now with Chrome and YouTube is entirely unsurprising. It was just a matter of time.
I did. Chrome updated plugins automatically, Firefox didn't. Also one bad tab didn't kill the whole browser.
Plugins are dead now, so I switched back. I've still had to kill FF in task manager, due to some weird PSN login bug.
Tree. Style. Tabs.
Best damned extension ever. It's amazing to me that all browsers don't have this style of tabs.
Thanks for the recommendation. I need to organize my 100+ tabs.
Tree Style Tab also lets you bookmark whole trees. I'm often jumping between different coding languages, or different areas of DevOps on a weekly basis, and tree bookmarks help. I can "file away" a bunch of research and load it all back later, and still have the tree! Very useful for context switching.
Use Vimium add-on and have a pop-up to search your open tab.
Or if you prefer no add-ons or don't know how to use Vim keybindings then type your search query in the search bar like this:
undefined
% my tab title
I'm not a fan of hoarding tabs, so with them being short lived I don't see benefits in having a tree. But I do use sidebery + custom userChrome.css to have exclusively vertical tabs, which save quite some space when collapsed.
If you work from home and you have go through a bunch of web resources, it's really nice. Most of the time you're opening new tabs, instead of being in the same tab. That way you still have the old web page for reference.
Specifically any job over the phone, it's almost mandatory. I love closing all the tabs at the end of the call, though.
You can still group better.
Right?
The ability to drag them into specific trees to keep them organized, and the also Tab Renamer so the top tab is named sensibly and you can find other tabs
Just wanna jump in here an md mention sideberry as an alternativ, does the same thing, but better imo and has tons of customisation options
Combine that with their multi-account containers and you got yourself a stew, honey!
internet explorer has a similar feature where tab background colors were different for each tree, though it doesn't have the tree view :p
I wish it was the default (or at least a built in option). It's a bit annoying to still have to use workarounds to remove the default tab bar.
It's this on Firefox Android?
I could never get used to tab managers like these IF the tabs are still shown in the top of Firefox.
Simple Tab Groups is something that I can get used to, because it works pretty similar as it does with Safari.
There's CSS you can apply that hide the tabs, but it's not a straightforward process to apply it.
I wonder if I could script it? Hmm. (I've written a developer environment setup script at work that I could add that to...)
Just because Google broke the most trafficked site on the internet for Firefox doesn't mean its a bad browser. Hell that's a ringing endorsement.
which site is that? Google search page? it works fine for me in every browser I've ever tried it on.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 19 years ago when it first came into existence. The 2nd best time is now.
my cubicle wall poster I sent money for. yw
For a few years there I was on the border, extensions used to make firefox extremely unstable, along with it being primarily multithreaded rather than multiprocess. Now it's much better. I know a lot of people don't like what the "quantum project" did, but I love it. Now a tab might crash because of some shitty plugin or something but the rest is fine.
It was never a good time to switch to Chrome.
When it was released, Chrome was revolutionary. Sandboxing individual tabs into their own processes was a stroke of genius. Until then, if a single site ate up all your memory and crashed your browser, all your tabs/sites died and you had to start again.
It really was the best browser for a hot minute before others copied the idea.
Totally agree. I also knew this was Google's modus operandi. The early versions of their software can be amazing and they slowly monetize over time.
I never understood why so many people thought it was a good idea to hand Google the near monopoly power we had just prevented Microsoft in keeping. And that was AFTER we saw how bad it was that Microsoft had that power.
Too many people go for short term gain for way greater long term losses.
That's because 99% of people don't care, exactly the same as with Microsoft. Average person will understand why monopoly is bad when there's only a single company that sells them gas and suddenly he has to pay $100 per gallon. With tech stuff they simply have no idea. It's not like they were using IE and thinking 'It would be so much better if this could pass Acid test'. With Chrome they don't think 'it would be nice if this could block youtube ads' and don't understand what Google controlling the internet really means. Even governments don't care about it for the same reasons we do. We don't like monopoly because of technology and standards. They don't like it because it slows down economy.
Google took a novel approach of trying to give people a free product that had value to them and features they wanted in a way that was easy to use. Such a product gave a better experience and only at the cost of someone looking over their shoulder, something that people have grown accustomed from their governments.
most people don't give af which browser they use. they trust the brand of google because the search engine was "the best" so they moved from firefox/edge over to chrome thanks to an advertising blitz and deals with vendors to put chrome on laptops, at the time was a better browser and much more stable since it silo'd tabs into processes (which is what almost all browser do now).
I use Chrome for development purposes only. Dev tools in Chrome are much better still. Firefox dev tools used to be a complete mess, they are better now, but still not a match to Chrome.
But for everyday browsing it's Firefox for me.
I've been using Firefox on desktop and mobile exclusively for a number of years now. I will say the experience isn't perfect but it's better than using a browser made by a company that is actively hostile to its users.
It is important to take note that you will experience issues with some websites. For example, https://astro.build/ Try scrolling quickly up and down on this page on Firefox vs Chrome (on mobile).
What's wrong with that page? I'm not seeing anything in particular.
I'm scrolling an have absolutely no issues. Android 12 and Firefox 120.0b9 (Build #2015985090),
What refresh rate is your display running?
That's jittery. What's causing that?
I honestly have no idea of the root cause. Different users are reporting different things. It seems to manifest differently for everyone. At a high level I would say it's due to the use of a JavaScript framework as a purely static HTML/CSS only site should not be doing this.
exactly this..
i started out in firefox back in early 2000s.. then made the switch to chrome and never looked back..
im not the biggest google-groupie but for me to make the switch, google really had to f up in my eyes.. and they did
What were the main pain points?
Menu doesn't open in landscape mode
Tab overview page not working consistently - this one is hard to capture right now but what happens is when you have a large amount of tabs open (say over 30), when you hit the tab overview button it doesn't take you to the currently open tab in the list, instead it takes you to the very top. This is not the normal behaviour. If you open and close it a few times it will randomly work properly 1/10 times.
Exclusively used chrome browser for ~10yrs. Switched to Firefox last week, cause google being evil.
That behavior deserves more internet points
okay but listen to how evil Google actually is, they have disabled my Firefox browser. It's simply doesn't work. It was my default for years and now only Chrome works on my phone 😡 Is anyone else experiencing this?
I never left 😘
Personally I've never left Firefox. Used to develop on it when it was still called Mozilla, and I'm happy it's still around. Privacy is a major strength of it compared to other browsers.
there was a while there if you used more than a few extensions you'd have a lot of issues. Also there were tons of issues over the years where there were some massive memory leaks. It has gotten much better since then with quantum and electrolysis.
your memory might not works very well since it was never called plain "mozilla"
In the early days when it was first created from the Netscape baseit was definitely branded as Mozilla. Source: I’m old enough to have used it then. Check its wiki page. Covers its early days as an app suite which included the browser.
Erm yes it was But here is a more or less chronological ordering of getting to Firefox today.
So yeah it's a continuation all the way back. I also worked at Netscape at the time so I got to see much of this transition.
Ooof you thought you were clever, but you just look like a fool on the internet!
Container tabs are hands down the best add-on I have ever used. Being able to use multiple accounts across tabs is fantastic. Alot of my colleagues have switched due to this alone
Earlier, I tried Google Chrome's "profiles" but damn, how inconvenient they are. I ended up opening multiple windows.
Firefox, on the other hand, only uses a single window for multiple tab containers and accounts.
That's one reason I like Librewolf so much, it has containers by default
which add on do you use?
I use Facebook Container which isolates any webpage that connects with facebook from the rest of my tabs. It also has separate containers for things like work, shopping, etc you can optionally use for whatever.
It's very convenient to just open a "shopping" container tab to check my spam email address instead of opening a private window and needing to sign in each time.
When Firefox announced that a ton of their add-ons/extensions were coming to the mobile app, it got me to switch from chrome after almost 15 years.
The mobile experience of Firefox with ad block is so much better than Chrome. Using chrome on mobile makes the Internet feel broken to me. I can't go back.
Brave has the best mobile experience IMO. Built-in dark content (this is gamechanger, dark reader is broken on FF mobile, slow and breaks pages), background playback (though this has FF also), very fast, more than FF. Powerful rust-written adblocker (though UBO is better but is slow and broke some pages on mobile). The only thing that could improve more is extensions capacity.
Since version 120 is coming to mobile soon with about 200 extensions (as mentioned in the article), can anyone recommend some good extensions that are newly added? I have ublock origin, HD YouTube, Google search fixer, clear url fixer, dark reader, privacy badger, and ghostery
Try libredirect, it automatically redirects links from twitter, youtube, imgur and many other spying platforms to alternative privacy friendly frontends. It is also very customizable: you can turn only some redirects and configure what particular site to use for each platform.
Good suggestion! I haven't heard of this before and it seems like a great tool considering how much things have changed recently on these platforms
You've hit all the great ones, most of which were already available.
Have you added the bypass paywall clean filter list to ublock? Here's the url you can copy paste under "import" in the ublock addon settings: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt
I haven't done this. Thank you so much for this suggestion!
You don't need Privacy Badger and Ghostery anymore if you turn the Enhanced Tracking Protection up to "strict" in settings.
Ghostery has been great for denying cookie pop-ups. I don't think this setting will replace this feature?
Edit...
Nevermind. I just read this comment which suggests uBlock Origin can also handle cookies!
Oh even better! I would rather have settings in my browser instead of relying on extensions anyway. One of the many things I love about Firefox
If LibRedirect becomes available, then definitely that. Redirects links from at this point twenty different services to more privacy-friendly frontends
Thanks for the tip! That sounds like a great extension.
You can also drop ClearURLs filter. Better filters that are more up to date exists exists on uBlock like Adguard URL Tracking Protection and Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool.
The best time was 15 years ago
Don't forget about the Firefox forks like LibreWolf!
This is the first I'm seeing it, and it looks interesting. I'm always up to try a new browser. And it works on Linux too. If the language can be toggled to English I'll definitely try it.
How is this going to end?
Google blocks access to it's services for Firefox altogether? Maybe even ban it from the Play Store? That would finally give me a real incentive to install some CFW.
No, they will simply stop funding mozilla.
I know this isn't a popular view, but as for me, if Google makes the user experience worse (or blocks services entirely) for Firefox, I'll just stop using those services. I'll find alternatives for the essentials, and those that aren't essential... well, hello, extra free time.
It was a thing of the past, when different browsers rendered websites differently, thus some services didn't work in certain browsers.
Nowadays all browsers are pretty advanced, they render websites more or less precisely according to standards, so it's really not hard to make a website work in all major browsers. So if a service doesn't work in the browser of my choice (whether it's intentional or not), then that service sucks and isn't worth my time messing with it.
Well yes but then it would be really really hard to not have an antitrust charge bought (we know that various governments have been trying to not pursue any antitrust so far)
I would say that's most likely ileagal
In the US, without net neutrality I believe it's completely legal. I remember seeing a report on The Steven Colbert show about a year or so after we lost net neutrality about how Comcast deemed Netflix wasn't paying them enough money so they throttled Netflix into the ground. This gave the appearance that Netflix services were crap in comparison to their own services like Hulu. About a month later they came to an agreement and Netflix paid up then magically speeds were restored to about the same as Hulu services.
I can practically hear the EU Commission stoking the furnace as we speak...
that's fine, we'll find a way. I mean they could start some kind of clumsy certification thing, but I'll just move on and open up brave when I absolutely have to, otherwise they get no attention from me. I bet ublock traffic is less than a half a percent of their traffic.
For people asking, add-ons work fine on Nightly.
I switched to Nightly because standard FF doesn't have the add-ons I want. I can confirm they work great.
I use it on desktop and phone and honestly been pretty good no complaints.
Mull for Android is also a really good alternative to Firefox on Android.
how does duckduckgo compare to mull for android?
It's always been a viable alternative. If the Internet was standard-compliant it would have been the best for a long time
Firefox is Awesome
How is it for mobile though? All of my web interaction is through my android
UBlock Origin mobile. Enough said.
UBlock Origin mobile.
uBlock Origin mobile with the EasyList annoyance cookie notices filter enabled. Never see an annoying cookie notice again.
This article is actually specifically about mobile! Yes it's great. :)
I like Firefox on Android, but my chief complaint is strange scrolling behavior and refresh rate issues.
I’ve used it very briefly and had no problems.
Honestly, the differences between browsers performance is almost nothing. I’ve been a long time Firefox user and only ever encountered a compatibility issue once, but that was on a 3rd world countries government webpage for a small neighborhood.
It was more likely that it was a bug.
Some websites are much worse than others. https://astro.build/ as an example. Try scrolling up and down on that website on Firefox vs Chrome (mobile).
ive switched to firefox for desktop windows for about 1 year now. Firefox is really capable and as swift as chrome. You also get a sense of less intrusiveness. Firefox also has the multi containers widget, though for me it breaks down after a while. The big difference now between firefox and chrome are things like automatic subtitles for anything running in chrome. So if a youtube or other video has no english subs, Chrome can do it. And soon, Chrome i going to go AI too. I'm not sure how firefox will survive that onslaught. I suspect mozilla will have a firefox fork partnering with a major competitor of google (eg: MS).
It doesn't accurately recognize tap on input gestures on Android. It's super frustrating to paste text. Chrome has no problem here 😞
FF is great for mobile with the exception of PWAs. They abandoned support for web apps - they work but performance is terrible. It's a massively requested feature so hopefully they'll add support soon. I use a chromium browser (Vanadium) for web apps but have links open in FF.
Moved from Netscape to Firefox and never used IE or Chrome. I never understood the obsession with anything made by Google, glad its going to finally all fall apart for them.
Nothing is falling apart for them. Do you remember IE times? "Everyone" hated it, "everyone" used it just to install Chrome/Firefox/whatever on new devices. And yet - the vast majority never even thought of using anything else.
There was a tiny window of time back before like 2010 where Google was legitimately a good choice. At the time Chrome came out, Firefox was having some notorious performance/bloat issues, and conversely Chrome was light and fast. Lots of stuff that came out around 2000-2010 from Google was legit best in class, and they were still generally in their "don't be evil era." That's obviously gone way out the window and has for some time. I started switching away from Google stuff around the time they killed Reader, and I'm glad I did because they've only gotten increasingly awful.
You've been playing the long game!
Google dorks are game changer for OSINT things.
Personally I prefer LibreWolf (Firefox fork)
Mull for Android is actually the closest thing to LibreWolf that you can get on mobile, I highly recommend it.
+1 for LibreWolf
I use Firefox Focus as my default browser, and use that to "open in" Firefox if I want my session kept for any reason, or Chrome if it's a Google related thing, sometimes.
For almost everything I click through especially out of an app, Firefox Focus is fully appropriate.
I have the standard Firefox set up to open links in the private tab by default. It seems like what focus would do for me
That makes sense, I didn't notice that setting. I was running focus for a long time before installing normal Firefox, so that's how my habit started. Thanks for the tip
I use Firefox Focus as a plugin for Safari on iOS. This article threw up a full page ad begging me to turn off my content blocker before letting me view the article.
This Blocklist works really well for those and also paywalls
I want to switch to firefox but I haven't figured out how to do the custom searches that I have on Chrome.
Right now I can enter into the chrome bar, for example: s (space) Birds of Paradise (enter) which will translate into https://scryfall.com/search?q=birds%20of%20paradise&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
I know I can right click on a given search and "add Keyword for this search" but that doesn't allow me to do custom URLs (e.g. www.reddit.comm/r/%s to go directly to a subreddit, rather than search).
edit: thank you so much everyone for these responses. I'm gonna make the switch :)
I gotchu!
In about:config type
browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh and press plus (add as true).
Then go to about:preferences > Search Shortcuts > Add
.
More reading: https://superuser.com/a/1756774
Good luck!
Firefox doesn't explain how to do this at all, but it is possible. Make a bookmark with the URL you want, and set the keyword to whatever symbol you want ti start it with.
For example,
Name: Scryfall (or whatever you want)
URL: https://scryfall.com/search?q=%s&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
Keyword: s
Then type "s Birds of Paradise" to get the result you want.
I did the same with Reddit and it worked on my end. If it doesn't work for you I'd be happy to help you figure it out.
It's also possible on mobile, and it's actually even easier: Settings>Search>Default Search Engine>Add Search Engine. Then you can type your search and choose the engine from a dropdown menu.
This is the way. The dude in the comment above the one I am replying to described a different way where you have to change the config, which would be neccesary to do on every new installation. Via the bookmarks/shortcuts method you will have the BANG Search on every new installation just by importing your bookmarks - or if you use an firefox account with synchronisation you will already have it with your login.
Be advised that duckduckgo has already some predefined BANG Searches, that you can use without having to change anything. Just type in the search bar:
Definitely possible. Here is a tutorial I've been using: https://superuser.com/a/7374
Lots of people are covering the actual answer, but this is one of the reasons I default to duck duck go on everything - the bang operator. For example:
cat videos !yt or !yt cat videos (or probably even cat !yt videos) will search YouTube for cat videos.
I have a bunch of these that I use all of the time:
I guess they're up to nearly 14k of these now so chances are the thing you want to search is in the list. Aside from that, Google's search results are increasingly garbage these days and filled with ads, so while I used to get a lot of use out of !g and !gi, I really don't any longer.
My biggest thing is all the news stories are msn web links. Maybe there’s a way to change that? It’s super annoying
Oh god turn off all that crap in the settings.
I never stopped. since it was Phoenix.
but really since noscript. i used and abused that add on for more than a decade. coming up on 2. never found anything better.
focus is also used on mobile.
Switched back in the summer for good. Use Firefox in my android as the default browser with DuckDuckGo as search engine. The issue is still relying on the android digital hemisphere as the default OS for my phone.
Edit : The only thing lacking is tab management. I know there is an extension. But it doesn't satisfy.
Tab management is my main reason why I don't switch to Firefox. No, I don't want a whole new window with my tabs, I want them to be collapsible and grouped in the same window.
That's my main issue and keeps me from using it.
For some reason I can't get my Firefox app to actually activate dark mode on my phone. I switch it in the settings and refresh it but it just won't work so I keep using chrome. Any ideas?
Mozilla Foundation fronts Mozilla Corporation which is for-profit and brings in nearly a Billion in revenue.
Don't donate, do harden it.
Mozilla Corporation is technically for-profit, but they are committed to investing all of their profits back into Mozilla Foundation. They have no shareholders. It exists so that Mozilla can make money off of their products and reinvest it, not to make money for its executives.
image.unrelated
That's just us with our super fun kbin shenans! It's a Firefox logo everywhere else.
Edit: It's a pic of some food for us on kbin.
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess how’d ya do that
One big positive for me on Chrome is that I have an Android phone, so a lot of my activity on my phone and computer sync together. How is Firefox with this, if I were to use it both on my desktop and phone?
Firefox sinks everything just like Chrome. They've had that capability for years.
Yup! They have what they call sync. Works the same I believe: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/
I don't know exactly what Chrome does but Firefox lets you sync tabs, history, bookmarks, and saved logins and card information.
Note: The credit card autofill feature is available to users in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.
Moving to Safari for main browser, Firefox for backup. No more chromium engines for me.
This is what I do as well. Fortunately, Apple doesn't really need to make money from the browser, so imo it's still the "cleanest" experience. Meaning, It's just a browser. It doesn't want to sell you a VPN or crypto or get you to upgrade to a paid tier reading service, and integration in the ecosystem is obviously better.
I still really like Firefox, and that's what I use as a backup on Macs, and primary on my PCs. There have been increasing number of rumors though that Apple is going to open up the App Store requirements in some way though that might allow Firefox to use it's own engine on iOS, and if they do that I'll probably switch over for a while and kick the tires.
If you have iOS devices, it doesn't make sense to use Firefox at all. Since the engine is still webkit. Firefox on iOS is also extremely buggy. All browsers on iOS are essentially the same but with different skins. So why not stick to Safari?
Android however is a different story altogether as Firefox can run its own engine, its own add ons etc. And it's frankly the best mobile browser.
Anyone who tried it a year ago, this comment is to tell you that Firefox has improved by orders of magnitude in the past year/years. I recommend trying it again.
To me its currently the opposite.
I use Firefox for personal use, but I exclusively use Chromium for work just because of the amazing Tab Groups feature. I can't work without it anymore
ever heard about browser extensions?
Trust me I've looked at all of them, they're just bad compared to chromium's integration.
Wow tell me more about it!
Have they addressed the security issues with sandboxing and site isolation and added a web view on android yet? I'd love to use Firefox on my phone too, but those issues were big enough for GrapheneOS to recommend against gecko-based browsers (though fortunately they provide their own de-googled chromium-based browser Vanadium):
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
I love GrapheneOS and they tried everything to make Chromium less shitty, but Vanadium still lacks fingerprinting protection as well as support for ad blocking. That's why I use Mull, a hardened fork of Firefox, for everything except banking.
I'm using jerboa, and any links open in a firefox webview, with an option to (ninstantly, without reloading) opening the page in the firefox app directly
That might be a Custom Tab.
Nice, maybe it has been fixed since that doc was written?
Wow!
120.0 (64-bit) just updated ff. still use chrome borg 1/2 time
No. This whole push feels astroturfed.
I would love to switch to Firefox, but Chrome has a much better profiles management and I use it a lot!
Whaa... Have you tried container tabs?
I didn't know about it! I'll have a look! Thanks
If you want the chrome experience in Firefox download a variant called Waterfox.
I've been using waterfox for years now I can't be half here.
I really like what LibreWolf has been doing
Try Mercury. Absolute beast!
I might be in the very minority crowd here, but I just can't get used to Firefox. I mean once upon a time I was clinging to Netscape screaming foul at Internet Explorer too, old habits die hard. But Chrome just clicks for me, whereas the multiple times I've tried Firefox, it just doesn't click for me. Can't put my finger on it.
Firefox kind of sucks in android though and there are no good forks imo, but this is also true for chromium so idk what to do.
What sucks about Firefox for Android? It's been nothing but good to me for years.
I use Fennec for what its worth, dunno if you have tried that. Its... Imperfect, for sure.
Cromite is a hardened chromium fork, replaced Bromite last year.
I love firefox so much, but at times, I also am ready to ditch it. Some default configurations are just nothing but stupid. E.g.: all ports above 1024 are by default blocked, even with local domains in your LAN. Or, just happened today: ftp is generally blocked. I then had to switch to Chromium to get a file. Or: if on Linux, many video codecs are not by default bundled. Reasons like that make me hate Firefox. But I hate everything else a bit more.
So is there a browser based on Firefox but without strict configs?
That's really strange, I haven't encountered either of those problems. The latter you can blame your distro for. If Firefox was bundled with all of the codecs it would be really big for no reason, and it would be redundant on nearly every system.
Kinda agree, sure it is also a distro issue. Chromium-like browsers worked out of the box, though. In the end, the user should not really experience easy-to-fix problems like „I can‘t watch any Twitch streams“, and I‘m not really on a uncommon distro (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).
Edit: About the blocked ports, check the following variable in your about:config
network.security.ports.banned.override
This one needs to be set, if you would like to use ports, such as 8080.
all ports above 1024 are by default blocked
Not on localhost at least no it isn't.
And why the hell would you be using ftp in currentyear. Newsflash: They also ditched gopher.
Never came across a video on the modern web that firefox couldn't play. Everything post-flash should really be fine.
What actually annoys me about all browsers are the policies around loading certain stuff from file://. Try getting something wasm to run without serving the thing from a web server or, shudder* base64-encoding bitcode into html. I understand there's some valid gripes around ../ and softlinks and whatnot but, wait, hear me out: What about zipping everything up and calling it a webapp, treat the file as a domain.
Oh it was never my intention to use it, but I was playing a bit with OpenAL and HRTF and ended up on a webpage that actually was using FTP to provide some audio files. So I kinda had no other choice.
The video thing is actually a known issue, but might be due to OpenSUSE not providing codecs by default. I still wonder why Chromium was working, though.
Firefox offers better privacy and security than Chrome, with upcoming support for 200 new add-ons.
Also built in spyware and a LOT of snitching to a 3rd party analytics company that can be disable in flags.
If you're serious about privacy use LibreWolf or Ungoogled Chromium if you're reasons that required the Chromium dev tools.
Wait source?
Launch Wireshark and see for yourself. There are probably posts about this as well.
It's getting more and more like chrome.
No home button is absolutely pathetic. I never stopped using FF on desktop, but until FF mobile gets a home button it's not going to be installed on my phones.
In the meantime Kiwi has been the better browser on mobile by far in my opinion. It has access to more extensions and it was the first browser to do things like the bottom address bar among other things. Oh, and it has a fucking home button like every other browser except for FF mobile for some dumbass reason.
It's still there, it's just off by default since people rarely use it these days.
Go to Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars. Pick the Home button or whatever else you want on the toolbar, and just drag it up there. Some items might be in the overflow menu on the right.
