Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor@mastodon.social)
mastodon.world
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It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware. Given Google's overwhelming presence in the browser market, this is unconscionable. We should all despise the ad-tech business, and have no sympathy for the companies getting whacked by Google's actions. But we should not permit one monopolist to replace them all. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-googles-corporate-paternalism-browser

Made the switch to Firefox last year. Love, love, love the freshness and versatility of the browser! Also add-ons for mobile!!!

The number of tab crashes in Firefox is way higher than it ever should be. I still use it but it’s def not as stable as the chrome stuff.

I use Firefox all day on both Mac and Windows and this rarely happens. It does seem to happen on Linux for me sometimes though.

@TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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I haven’t seen that happen in possibly two years, let alone regularly.

@hglman@lemmy.world
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What are you using that makes it crash, virtually never happens to me.

No idea. Nothing crazy. Twitch is one that’s fairly regular but it happens seemingly randomly with normal browsing. It hasn’t happened on mobile as far as I remember.

I send in each crash report so hopefully they’ll be able to sort it out.

@kilowatt@lemmy.world
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@ikidd@lemmy.world
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If Firefox goes away, I’ll use Epiphany or Konquerer before I subject myself to anything that makes me view ads.

@TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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FF has way too much groundwork laid and way too much mindshare currently (especially given the rust language and all…) If, for some reason, thousands of devs just gave up on mozilla, more would continue the path and fork it most likely.

@ikidd@lemmy.world
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I hope that’s true, because I’m hearing rumblings that Mozilla is moving away from it as their core project.

I switched to Firefox and using DDG as my search engine about 2m ago and I’ll be honest I really don’t care for it. I’m trying my best but I use my phone for 100% of my browsing and not being able to set a home page sucks and with DDG searching for stuff takes significantly longer to get answers with. I search for a ton of stuff that I just need a quick answer to that when searching for Google would just show the answer instead of needing to open links and such. I’m giving it a bit more time but I’ll probably end up back with chrome.

@eyes@lemmy.world
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It’s not an easy transition. My partner works for DDG and I still don’t use it all the time. To their credit they are working to improve things but it’s a small team (comparatively). Their browser has some good features like app tracking protection just from having it installed and quick throwaway email support but isn’t quite up to Firefox’s standard (yet).

@pathief@lemmy.world
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Try the startpage search engine. It has been much better for me than DDG.

Firefox allows you to select a home page, tho? Not sure what your problem with Firefox is.

How do I do a home page? When I couldn’t figure it out I searched online and it said on android you can’t.

@pathief@lemmy.world
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It’s my bad, I didn’t realize you were talking about the android version. Maybe an extension can do it?

@EarMaster@lemmy.world
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I have switched to Firefox but I’m having a hard time. Firefox feels sluggish compared to Chrome and uses an insane amount of memory. And I really miss tab groups as Chrome had them. There are some add-ons for Firefox that try to imitate this feature but none of them has everything I want (e.g. the ability to collapse a group in the top tab bar). And most of them build on top of Firefox tab groups which come with an isolation feature I don’t want (and haven’t found a way to disable for tab groups).

@TCB13@lemmy.world
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All you said plus Firefox’s rendering looks like total crap. Maybe you would like ungoogled-chromium?

And… for what’s worth Firefox is a privacy nightmare as well, just start Wireshark and launch the browser to see what it does. LibreWolf or ungoogled-chromium always.

Can you share a screenshot? I’ve used both browsers almost every day of my life since they released. They render the web very similar for me.

@TCB13@lemmy.world
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No they don’t. Firefox renders fonts differently from Chrome and ruins the web experience for me ahha

@Phegan@lemmy.world
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Waterfox baby.

ktowner15
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Firefox main since 2020. Love it.

Chrome: First-party spyware.

@jacktherippah@lemmy.world
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I am going to be downvoted to hell for this. I use Mullvad Browser/LibreWolf on desktop but on Android I prefer Chromium. I was using Firefox until a couple months ago when I switched back to Vanadium/Cromite. Chromium on Android is very nice. First it has Material You support so it looks much better than Firefox. Second, it loads website faster and it scrolls buttery smooth unlike the noticeably choppier Firefox. Plus it has 120hz on the privacy preserving forks unlike Firefox which is stuck on 60hz with RFP on. Third, Chromium has per-site process isolation on Android so it has better security. I probably won’t be switching back until Firefox catches up on those fronts.

@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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Cromite can do that too actually.

@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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Also how long till google doesn’t let you use an ad blocker. Ublock origin on Firefox is king.

@ikidd@lemmy.world
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I think people would let every company watch them take a shit if it meant they got dark mode on their app…

Feels like an ad…

deweydecibel
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Counterpoint: uBlock origins.

Good point. But I have DNS adblocking so that doesn’t bother me much.

Works but I always found using both is better.

I couldn’t care less about 120Hz when my privacy is at stake. Even if chrome has per tab isolation, I’m sure Google’s got its mittens in there somewhere.

A second load time difference, meh. Not a big deal to me. Same with materialU

Lenny
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Ok so I really wanna switch, but I need to have multiple Gmail accounts active at the same time for work, as we have various logins tied to various profiles. From what I can tell Firefox doesn’t yet support multiple profiles being active at the same time. Do I have any options here? I need to be able to access the support inbox and login to our platform, while simultaneously being logged in to my own email and my platform login. Chrome profiles makes this easy, annoyingly.

@Dezzorian@lemmy.world
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Yes you can. With Firefox containers.

I often have multiple tabs with different inboxes open in Firefox. No extra features required AFAIK it just works.

Not only do I do that, I have also created separate desktop icons for each Firefox profile

@Dezzorian@lemmy.world
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Yes you can. With container tabs.

@nutsack@lemmy.world
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@ohlaph@lemmy.world
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The new McAfee.

Lots of people can’t just straight up ditch it. I have had multiple websites just don’t work with Firefox regardless of whatever add-ons I put. For me I just go into a Windows sandbox, but there’s people who are not that tech savvy and it’s often forced on them. Also iirc most schools have chrome books they let students use. So it’s basically forced onto people.

@TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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If a website or app doesn’t test in Firefox, I avoid it. That’s something I run into like once a year, and I just use edge once if I need to, and avoid that website or app in the future. It’s not hard to support Firefox, it’s just a shitty ass business decision not to

Firefox has always been great to use for me.

Switched to it recently, have been absolutely loving it! No regrets!

jungle
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I have to restart it once or twice each day as it refuses to play videos or audio after a while. I know it’s not a settings or add-on issue, and I searched everywhere for an explanation. It fucking sucks. I’m this close to going back to Chrome.

@yamanii@lemmy.world
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I came back to firefox after vivaldi and edge when google announced manifestv3, decided to do it already since they would at best delay it instead of canceling it, and that’s exactly what they did.

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