Don’t get me wrong, I like Firefox a lot, but needs polishing.

I like -impopular opinion- the Proton UI (aka rounded tabs), containers are great, but has some flaws:

  • No PWA support
  • Bookmarks and history panels are unpractical (menus for both options are almost unusable)
  • A separate window for downloads, managing bookmarks? Really?
  • Pocket by default?

We need alternatives to Chromium, and Firefox is the “go to” option, but sometimes is disappointing to use it.

  • staticlifetime
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    3311 months ago

    Things feel “weird” when you aren’t used to it. For me, using Chrome is weird. Not a legit argument here.

  • Ben
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    2711 months ago

    Your choice.

    • PWA’s aren’t really a thing. Linux, we has a nice ‘Progressive Webapp’ manager - so I can create PWA’s with launchers for any website, using any browser. I think I have about 4 (Shopee/Lazada/Translate/PlexWeb).

    9/10 times I just open the bookmarks in Firefox…

    • Not sure what your issue is with Bookmarks or History - but they’re perfectly usable. Perhaps you’re just fixed in your ways.

    • You can turn off Pocket. Even when it’s on, it’s not a problem - but Firefox has to have some revenue channels and many folks don’t have any problem with Pocket. I use RSS, so I don’t.

  • @[email protected]
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    2211 months ago

    Eh to each their own, I see almost all those as positives. No problems with bookmark manager. Agreed on pocket though.

    • r2dj
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      311 months ago

      I only wish the would bring back the ability to have notes for bookmarks.

  • @[email protected]
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    1911 months ago

    The only real problem you mentioned is no PWA which is easy solvable by: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/

    same like pocket and downloads window.

    Yeah, other people use Firefox too, it is not made just for you and your preferences. But what is different than in Chrome - you can easily change it. It would take you less time than writing this post.

    Firefox comes with easy to disable Pocket, Chrome comes with impossible to disable Google. And Pocket is a problem? Lol :D

    • @emptyother
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      111 months ago

      They got a PWA addon now? And it works too. Darn cool, thanks for telling me! 🎉

  • r2dj
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    1411 months ago

    I don’t get a lot of the negative sentiment here. To me Firefox is vastly superior to Chrome. Mozilla refactored and optimized performance years ago, which fixed many issues I had back then. It’s open source, not driven by the interest of gathering data for the purpose of selling ads. I’ve set it up in exactly the way I like with some extensions and customizations that aren’t possible in the Google browser. I can have hundreds and hundreds of tabs open without my computer grinding down to a halt. Is it perfect and aren’t there things that can be improved? No. But it’s pretty near to me.

    • JickleMithers
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      311 months ago

      It has been locking up on me but that’s not gonna stop me from using it. It’s honestly probably my fault with the dumb decision to install win11. I’ll probably wipe and go back to win10 while I still can but it has been buggier than usual on win11. Still love it though, fuck chrome.

  • 0xtero
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    11 months ago

    Two of the main features I need from my browser (apart from rendering pages) are the ability to run adblocker and being able to sync my tabs between desktop and mobile. The future of the first seems very uncertain with Chrome and the second never really works when I try it. On Firefox it’s 100% every time.

    So easy choice. And I don’t have to deal with Google’s shadyness.
    But each to their own really - the “browser wars” seem so far in the past.

    • Mike Lockhart :veritrek:
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      111 months ago

      @0xtero @ravnswood
      The worst thing about Chrome, and best about FF, for my work as a web sysop, was Chrome hiding parts of the URL in it’s location bar. First it was the “https://” (which is kinda important to see if you have your TLS configured right), now they are taking away “www” as well (so I have to reload in the network dev tool to see if the request directs to the right subdomain).
      Also Chrome’s dev tools used to be better than FF, but that was more than 5 years ago! And chrome is slow

  • @[email protected]
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    611 months ago

    I don’t understand what could possibly be worse about bookmarks in Firefox? You have every option, you can put a bookmark bar, bookmark sidebar (great to bring up any time with control-B), or the full manager (which I pretty much never use), or just a bookmark menu (which I also never use, but it’s like any other bookmark menu IMO).

  • @[email protected]
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    611 months ago

    I dont know what you feel that need to be polished but Firefox looks great to me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  • rosnovsky
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    611 months ago

    I give Mozilla a pass for a lot of stuff that’s… how do I put it?.. let’s say, “quirky” in Firefox. And I’m willing to experience minor inconveniences every now and then knowing that I’m not using a Chromium-based browser.

    With this being said, I really (and I mean really) like FF Developer Edition.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      Can you expand on what do you like in Developer Edition? Or maybe you have some link with differences?

  • MarshReaper
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    511 months ago

    Yeah. From what I have read, it seems Firefox has progressively gotten worse over the years. I am fine with using it, especially being able to get away from the other horrible choices.

    I use Librewolf on my main computer, but on any other I disable some about:config settings.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    While Firefox doesn’t natively have PWA support there is an addon that I use to add PWA support to Firefox. You have to install a helper program on your computer for it to work though so follow the installation instructions.

    • Deceptichum
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      -111 months ago

      I feel like Mozilla went to shit around the time they stopped doing anything with that email client of theirs and stuff.

      Like it went from cool and exciting growth to boring bureaucratic crap.

  • @[email protected]
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    311 months ago

    Hey, I also did not like the separate window for downloads and preferred a tab, there is an easy trick to avoid it, just add a bookmark with the URL about:downloads and it’s done (been using it for years)

  • JuustoKakku
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    311 months ago

    I’m on the opposite side with separate windows. I don’t like the modern trend of having everything inside the same window as tab or modal window.

    For example the new windows settings “app”. Can’t open multiple different things at once inside it, because everything is a tab. Compared to the old control panel where everything was it’s own application.

    The history browsing is a bit outdated though. Gets annoying to search for specific page from a site, especially when visiting them to look what it is puts it to the top of the history.

  • terny
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    311 months ago

    Being able to create a separate window for videos that stay on top of other windows is too good a feature for me.

    • naunan
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      211 months ago

      The best feature ever. This feature convinced me to switch back to Firefox again. Got some days to get used to it and to find replacements for some specific add ons, but it works great.

    • 8BitFriendly
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      211 months ago

      The feature is called Picture-in-Picture. And yes, it’s very handy.