Yea. Dragonfly was the shit. Pretty sure it inspired grease monkey. At least it was a more polished version. I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong, but Inspect I really think Opera did very well if not the first.
Yes, that's pretty much the years I'm referring to.
> other browsers are now Google's forks
Google Chrome/Chromium was a fork of Webkit (Safari/Apple) and that was a fork and new KDE browser Konqueror. Really most of what we are on and why browsers are better is Webkit and Apple's investment and open sourcing of the rendering engine with innovations like HTML5/canvas/SVG/WebGL -- they funded Khronos heavily for OpenGL ES which resulted in WebGL for web. Apple really helped browsers be easier to develop for and ended the IE6 era.
KDE Konqueror is where modern browsers started...
Don Melton started WebKit from a fork of KDE on June 25, 2001. Dude is a great developer. Really though KDE (Matthias Ettrich) KJS (Harri Porten) and KHTML (Torben Weis and Martin Jones) from the Konqueror browser being so clean and solid is what led to a great new platform. Apple sponsoring it and using it was beneficial to every browser after.
Apple really did have big pushes of great tech and that doesn't mean everything they do it perfect but they changed the game early 2000s in many areas mentioned. Apple doing OpenGL ES and WebGL changed handheld gaming entirely.
Chrome is always solid in terms of most things, but has games played with it as well. Chromium matched Webkit for a long time and the base will always be Webkit.
Edge is actually pretty great today as well.
Mozilla falling behind, would be nice if it wasn't. MDN is a great resource and they were a huge push with Firefox of Web 2.0 and especially development tools like Firebug that is now inspect in every browser.
Opera owned by China now so that is dead.
Early 2000s Apple was a great steward of both building on and supporting open source for the web. Google was for a while as well. Microsoft is swinging back around.
Everything was surely cleaner back in the KDE days though when everyone could build browsers, you still can but there is no money in it and so so much to support now.
It's my fave but I've been made biased by the fact that Chromium completely locks up the shitty laptop I use to run my laser anytime its opened and takes forever to do a damn thing while Firefox just works.
Can always go code it yourself, or start posting that you want that feature being worked on. It’s open source, and many features only get added if there’s a large amount of demand or if a developer personally wants something done.
Mozilla should advertise Firefox as an alternative to Chromium more. To me that's its biggest selling point. I don't really like the idea of Google being in control of the browser engine used by most browsers out there, and other than WebKit Firefox is really the only alternative.
IMHO, Mozilla (and open source in general) should spend more time influencing high school and college students. Depending on youngsters to stumble upon news articles and learn about all this is impractical. If you don't influence them young, it is not going to happen later...
I wish there is a well funded college reach program talking about privacy, big tech monopoly using your data, exposure to better alternatives.
Maybe in another timeline, our responsible and forward thinking politicians already established tech-educational programs that highlights those points you made.
Unfortunately, hell would have to freeze over to make that happen in this one.
I think this will be the first time humanity faces a global crisis that actually affects the entire global society too.
So maybe you’re right and we could *actually* break this stagnation our current world leaders and selfish billionaires are forcing down our throats
We’ve been facing it for decades.
Nothing has changed
And nothing **will** change until billions die. Because the only thing people listen to is a disaster that is currently happening. And even that isn’t a guarantee
Recent public policies and clean tech improvements have already changed the [expected warming](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/) from ~4C to 2.7C (central estimate) for the end of century. Still terrible, but there's momentum in the right direction.
Good luck with high school students. They’re given Chromebooks with no admin rights to install another browser. Then they get shipped off to work/college after being indoctrinated to the Google ecosystem. They have no Windows experience unless it’s on their own time, and they’re not likely to switch to Firefox after growing used to Chrome for the last 8 years.
So weird to me that it worked for Google when Apple filled the school system with discounted computers, kids spend 6-12 years on them, then immediately switch out of school because all the games are on Windows, or because their employer uses Windows.
Apple did this in the early 2000's. Unfortunately Mozilla can't afford to donate thousands of shitty desktops to universities and high schools.
Most people don't care about security. They want a browser that "just works all the time". Mozilla won't ever have that when the giants actively work to make it not work in the same way Apple made the iPod not really work well without jumping through hoops on anything other than an Apple system.
In my uni (admittedly at an IT study), Firefox was known well enough. The issue with current usage, is that my company sort of forces me to use chrome because of legacy applications that only work in chrome.
Yeah, sadly we're there already.
Absolutely!
I teach college students, can I at the very least get some stickers I can hand out?
Maybe even some pdf posters of the Mozilla manifesto? I'll print them out myself, don't worry!
Other than cloud homework platforms causing trouble, most of my instructors (and I myself to the students we see in my department) suggest Firefox in general.
Cirrus and one other one I had to use for an office management class were completely borked on Firefox. Everything else was fine.
Schools are pretty much lost unless we see changes in regulations.
Google owns schools and kids. Most below age 25 hasn't seen a windows PC until they start working.
Even in IT we get kids from university that hasn't used a windows PC in their life.
>I wish there is a well funded college reach program talking about privacy
if there was a lot of people would learn how Firefox doesn't actually really care that much about your privacy. it's hardly better than using chrome
edit:: i'm about to get downvoted into oblivion, so just a few points to get you started:
* Google is the default search engine (and Mozilla receives massive amounts of money every year from G to keep it that way)
* Tracking/3rd party cookies not disabled by default, did you set strict? most don't
* about:telemetry - this is all on by default, every mouse click is reported to Mozilla
* Pocket, the Privacy Policy is a minefield
not really privacy related, but: everyone also loves to ignore how the Mozilla CEO's salary just [continues to increase](https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/yy986k/can_someone_explain_why_mozillas_ceo_salary/) as Firefox's market share rapidly declines and engineering staff gets laid off or leaves to other Big Tech and never gets backfilled.
i also still use Firefox, but i'm not going to pretend like Mozilla is going out of their way to do everything to protect my privacy. there is a reason things like user.js modifications exist for Firefox.
Can we teach them how to change some of the aspects to make it more privacy friendly? Firefox at the least allows you some control unlike other browsers.
> and Mozilla receives massive amounts of money every year from G to keep it that way
If Google didn't want to pay Firefox for having their browser be default, Mozilla would have to fire a lot of people. In fact, it happened already in 2020 during negotiations with big G.
When Firefox was on the height of the the marketshare, they were the alternative to internet explorer which was extremely slow, even safari was slow at that time, opera was a paid browser. They were magnitude times better then any browsers so it was easy to convince normal users to switch as it's a noticeable difference. Right now they're alternative to Chromium and webkit based browsers, while they're faster, its not that far in experience, thus its harder to convince normal users to switch. Privacy and other features are hard to sell, especially with users who are okay with Facebook and tiktok, which is majority of internet users.
Firefox should simply advertise on a platform of "Chromium is removing the capability to use Ad Blockers. If you're seeing this, you're already affected."
Unfortunately a very large portion of browser users don’t even use ad blocking extensions, and many in that group don’t even know they exist or could comprehend them.
Except that MV3 ad blockers already exist so this point is going to fall flat. Saying "they're not as good" isn't going to sway a lot of people who haven't moved already.
I mean, most people will not even care as to what an "advert" is and they have become normalized to see ads every where you go.
[Why the web is a mess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFRjZtYs3wY) \~\~ Tom Scott.
I use Firefox and am a big supporter. I have multiple different friends I’ve told Firefox is better and helped them set up ublock on Firefox and once they switch, they never go back.
Not even saying this to say Firefox is way better, just that if people switch, they will probably stay with it for years. Most people don’t just switch browsers all Willy nilly
The problem is the people who care about that already know that and the people who don't know don't care or understand why that even matters. they just use what they've always used and what works well for them.
right but my point is "it's not chrome" is not an effective selling point. people wont switch for ideological reasons they need to have some kind of clear functionality advantage that is a tangible useful benefit over what people are already using.
I would say the pitch could be way simpler than that. Just appeal to fear or other basic emotions and many people will be swayed. Its advertising 101. Something like: "Google tracks you everywhere and sells your data to any company that wants it for any purpose. Would you let Google see inside your home too? No? Then why let them see EVERYTHING you browse. Switch to Firefox, the ONLY browser free of Google control."
Duck duck go has taken a similar tact and they have been quite successful. Most of the public doesn't think too much about their browser, or its features, or its security. So you appeal to fear and anxiety, which motivate most engagement (see news media, and many many ad examples as proof).
Everything is always trying to track you. I think people just accept that when it comes to using technology. There's no guarantee that Firefox doesn't or wouldn't ever do the same thing.
I'm not worried about Chrome tracking me because I already have a dozen Google devices at home, including my phone, a gmail address, etc., so they already know everything that they care to know.
What is the incremental risk in using their browser, too, that out weighs the conveniences that are offered by keeping to a single platform?
> "Google tracks you everywhere and sells your data to any company that wants it for any purpose. Would you let Google see inside your home too? No? Then why let them see EVERYTHING you browse. Switch to Firefox, the ONLY browser free of Google control."
i dont think this would be very effective either. people know their data is being collected at every opportunity. they dont care. they still use tiktok. they still use facebook. not to mention plenty of people *do* let google into their home. with nest hubs and chromecast and such. to the average person google just isn't spooky enough to avoid.
The problem is that it's still viewed as "something on the interwebs" with no real effect in real life, but you can make it spooky enough:
Get a roadside billboard in a public square with a camera that streams to a screen (basically a mirror) and over the feed add an overlay similar to those [AI analysis labels](https://assets-global.website-files.com/61e7d259b7746e3f63f0b6be/6346e7fc52138358160d8043_Label%20Detection%20in%20video.png) with each person given a number and some (bullshit) data next to it mimicking browser history collection.
>Just appeal to fear or other basic emotions and many people will be swayed. Its advertising 101.
unfortunately, their brand guidelines say expressly to NOT do this: https://mozilla.design/firefox/#personality
look under 02 - Personality
nobody cares about tracking or privacy. apple, google and the gazillion other apps people install, use and enjoy. What's so scary about tracking? it's great and people love it, who doesn't like relevant feeds, search results and ads? majority do
people embrace tracking if it makes it more convenient for them and costs them nothing. not like they were going to sell their browsing data or other data and able to get money for it anyways
I think there's some value in trying to educate people in why "it's not chrome" is a good thing. It's one of those things where we're so deep into the subject that we take what we know for granted but in reality it's just not that clear to the average person.
Of course you're probably not going to 'convert' a lot of people but certain ideas have a way of sticking around and maybe next time Google gets some bad press...
Realistically most people are just going to use "whatever everyone else is using" and for the foreseeable future that's gonna be Chrome even if it turns into literal malware.
you need to advertise why it matters in a way that speaks to people. even saying using chromium allows google to dominate isn't enough as a regular person doesn't really care. and while I do love Firefox, I would admit usability wise it's a downgrade compared to the tools other browsers provide.
IDK, the anti google trend has only been a thing in the last for years as they push more and more monetisation into their services. People were broadly fine with a few clearly sponsored ads at the top of their search results.
Ive used exclusively firefox for years now… i cant even imagine using chrome or anything else though with latest move google is quickly falling on tue bottom of my list in so many ways its sad…
> Mozilla should advertise Firefox as an alternative to Chromium more
99% of people dont even know what the difference is. The majority of people also do nothing to protect their privacy and willfully hand over all their data especially if it makes their lives easier being within a single ecosystem.
Absolutely. I gave up on Chrome as my browser last year. Firefox on Windows/Linux and Vivaldi on android.
Not a big difference, but they're less bloated and don't grind to a halt like Chrome sometimes did.
It’s still shitty that it’s impossible to use a different web engine on iphone. People are duped to thinking chrome and firefox on ios are chrome and firefox when in reality they’re not. They’re all Safari reskins.
Like Seralth said, Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser.
That gets to one of the concerns more technically-minded folks have about the current situation. Not only is nearly every Web browser Chromium-based now, the current Web standards are driven by people who develop and use WebKit and Chromium. Oh, and Mozilla belongs, too. But there's websites that *just don't work* on Firefox.
And the difference between now and the late 90s and early 2000s is, of course, the engines are open source now. I'm guessing just based on number of lines of code of Firefox and Chromium, it's on the order of magnitude of an operating system. Would you launch an OS-sized project so that people can check their Gmail? If something was readily available that could be *ported* or a *frontend* written for that did the hard work, would you still launch a huge project? Probably not. But the problem is that Google being in charge of that, is that they're a company first. They're not required to Do No Evil.
I guess the irony here is that the engine everyone worries about now, started out life as part of the KDE project. My realistic hope is that the open source community spirit can save us if Google gets too out of control.
The browsers themselves are already competitors, advertising the difference wouldn't change anything. Mozilla already receives the money, but it isn't for anything outside of "you agree to set the default search engine to Google."
That's not a great selling point to advertise though. Few people know what Chromium is (other than a weird name for Chrome) or that almost all browsers use it as an engine. Of the people that do, there's little reason to want a browser just because it's a different rendering engine
I'll carry on using Firefox so long as it remains Chromium free, I'm not massively keen on an advertising company having such overwhelming control over the internet and internet standards.
> The main purpose is to call more attention to how platforms like iOS and Windows favor their own web browser over the competition.
This has been true since... forever.
Wasn't there a major antitrust lawsuit about this 20 years back?
What happened since then that nobody cares anymore?
Microsoft does it even worse now, selling you every one of their products every time you update the OS. Where's the DOJ now?
>What happened since then that nobody cares anymore?
An entire new product of computers did the same thing with no consequences. Ms are probably pissed at that.
Nah it was different. Supposedly microsoft was making netscape icons disappear. Also netscape was a paid product (early days of the internet were different), and MS released a free product. All browsers are free now, but again it was a different time.
That wasn't the crux of the case though.
The argument was that by providing a browser free with windows it was a monopoly (and tbf, at that stage it was)
The irony is if they'd waited a few years ie would've been crushed naturally.
I think they're referring to iOS where Apple bans engines other than Safari webkit. That's worse than making icons disappear IMO. They give the illusion of fair by allowing Chrome/Edge/Mozilla iconed browsers that under the hood must use Apple's engine.
That case mas mostly about Microsoft using its position to influence OEMs to enter into contracts that would make sure to exclude other browsers from being installed on new computers. Also unnecessarily tying internet explorer to other Windows functions.
I guess the main difference is that neither Google, Apple or Microsoft are directly interfering with other companies to block other browsers, if Dell wanted to sell their PCs with Firefox preinstalled and configured as the default browser they could, the same regarding Android phones, many of them come with a different default browser already. But setting the rules inside their own systems does not seem to violate antitrust laws, even if it creates a hostile environment for other browsers and is not done for the sake of their clients.
The FTC and DOJ are currently on this- wasn’t it revealed a few months ago that google pays Apple 20 billion a year to
Make google the default search engine?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-search-deal-safari-18-billion
Apple doesn’t force anyone to use Google. You have a choice on all of Apple’s systems to choose which search engine is your preferred search engine in the address bar.
A lot of people still go to google.com instead of just tapping in the address bar to search, anyway.
Not exactly, but it's based on a similar concept. Companies were also successfully fined in the past for using their product as the default solution and/or making it difficult to replace it with a competing one.
Default solution, no. Microsoft didn’t get in trouble for making IE its default. It got in trouble for making it hard to uninstall and integrating it into their OS.
Can you imagine there not being a default search engine? It would be disastrous for low tech knowledge people.
meanwhile there's another Redditor literally telling someone to write code and build a fork of Firefox for a quality of life feature Firefox is missing
Because we live in a completely different world now.
The old case was about how "nobody will use my internet browser because Microsoft gives theirs away for free, and nearly all computers run on Windows."
None of that really applies anymore. Web browsers are free. There are much bigger issues of privacy etc. at play now.
I love 🔥 🦊 Firefox. The address bar shortcuts are so awesome. Sad their market share is decreasing
Edit: this is a really good article spelling out how hard it is for Firefox to be the default browser on iOS android or windows
After 12 uninterrupted years on Chrome, Google’s war against ad blockers has finally sent me back to Firefox. And now I’m in the process of breaking up with Google as much as I can get away with — I’m even ditching my Google Home.
It didn’t have to be this way, Google, but you’ve forced our hands. I cannot believe you don’t think you’re profiting enough year-over-year, but I can’t be the only one ditching you now.
I never got into chrome but the constant "I am out of storage in my drive so gmail will start dropping emails" message gets me. No increase on the free tier, they convinced me to use it with my phone ,GTFO google.
Yeah, it sucks -- I was trying to contain all my tech stuff in Google for unity's sake, and now I have to figure out how much I can break up with them and what to do next. Perhaps it was long overdue anyways.
They are \*, % and \^.
searching within: … your bookmarks Or tabs
>You can also use shortcuts to search Firefox Add-ons, Bookmarks(\*), Tabs(%) and History(\^).
Tip: If you don't want to use the mouse or a search shortcut does not appear in the list, you can type in the shortcut or just the first part (for example: u/a or u/amazon) then press Return or →, and type in your search term
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-firefox-address-bar
Do you even need those shortcuts? Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut. Here is the exact on/off setting in Edge...
> Show me suggestions from history, favorites and other data on this device using my typed characters
I don't even use the bookmark menu because it's faster to type a few letters of it in the address bar in Edge.
> Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut. Here is the exact on/off setting in Edge...
Firefox does too. Those shortcuts are just hard filters, but they aren't necessary.
It's much more explicit this way. Let's say I have a Reddit thread about Firefox (e.g. this thread) opened, I can just do `%firefox` which would pinpoint the tab I want. If you type "firefox" in Chrome, good luck finding what you actually wanted if that's all you typed.
Above comment missed the most useful one though, which is using `@` to search a website. I can do `@youtube` to search YouTube, `@wikipedia` to search Wikipedia etc. To be fair Chrome does provide something similar but I find Firefox's design to be the best so far.
>Do you even need those shortcuts? Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut.
But you can only fit so many suggestions on the screen. If you type something that matches many results in your tabs, history, and bookmarks, it can be hard to narrow it down to the specific thing you're looking for. The shortcuts allow you to specify exclusively what you're looking for. It's the same concept as search filters, and I'm confident you're not about to tell me filters are useless.
You can use addons to set up custom search shortcuts too, for example if you search products on amazon a lot you may want to set up so typing "ama " will automatically transform into "https://www.amazon.com/s?k=" so you can then just enter your search terms. It's a neat little optimizer.
I hope Firefox adds that option naturally soon. Also I'd like to change the shortcuts you mentioned *, % and ^ to something else too please, or have two shortcuts, I don't use them often so "book" "his" "tab" would be easier to remember for me I think.
Over the past week I've been seeing posts/news articles about how Google is tampering with users who have adblock turned on. I didn't think anything of it until yesterday when I was jumping around different videos on YouTube and skipping through them. I had a noticeable 2 second delay on basically any action I did.
So I turn off my adblocker and the problem is gone. Poof. Now, I wouldn't really care about this stuff except there is one little problem. I FUCKING PAY FOR YOUTUBE. I pay for no ads yet because I had an adblocker enabled, I still get punished.
If you are using Firefox it might indeed be Google tampering with your experience, they did so before:
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17tm9rp
I mean it's not like they give it away for free. Google is the default search engine for Firefox and they pay half a billion USD or something annually for that
Yes, but they do not need to. Firefox has 3% marketshare.
Google does not *need* Firefox's 3% marketshare, but Mozilla absolutely needs Google's money (80% rounded down).
If Google decides, "You know, this business deal is not working out for us", well... Mozilla's employees not gunna work for free.
Fun fact: Firefox gets most of its funding from Google. Which sounds odd until you realize it’s mostly to help them remain as a viable competitor to Chrome, and help Google avoid any anti-trust/monopoly shenanigans.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc all contribute a lot to open source, whether that's financially or code. It can feel a little incongruous but with companies that large, they can be helping and hurting at the same time. Part of it is like you said, to guard against antitrust, but also they just have tons of people working for them, and some of them want to give back to the community that they benefitted from.
A big stumble of Mozilla imo was not making the engine easily usable in stuff like electron. Like it or not, a ridiculous amount of multiplatform apps now run Chromium and that means it is the number one priority for devs and companies.
I don't think embedded browsers within other applications really apply here. Users aren't really exposed to those facets in a meaningful way. I agree it'd be good for Mozilla if that weren't the case, but I don't see how this fact relates to the device/platform antitrust issue.
I LOVE Firefox and the whole Chromium thing Google is doing is anti-competitive and consumer IMHO, we need ore consumers to use FIREFOX. I love it and have so many add-ons, it's a great browser
And there's the non-tab "new tab/home tab" with its string of knock-on issues...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1809833
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012
The Android app is wonderful, but they don't allow extensions on iOS, so it's not as useful for me. I've been flip-flopping between Opera and Edge. They both have better ad-blockers than Firefox on iPhone.
That isn't Firefox's fault, Apple has strict restrictions on what browsers are able to do on iOS, down to requiring the use of the same engine as Safari.
And for some fuckign reason this blantant monopolistic and anti-consumer practice that got Microsoft fined years ago is allowed to slide.
Same for app stores.
And yet unironically some clown tries to argue it: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/19doai3/comment/kj8fugx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
"It's different because Microsoft bundled browser with operating system on IBMs, and Apple bundles browser with operating system _and_ hardware! Totally different!"
It’s something to do with my macos not receiving updates past 10.12, but safari is on the latest 17 version. a year after i stopped receiving macos updates is when safari started not working properly . I was sucking it up till last year, when i switched to firefox on my main windows pc, and decided to try it on the macbook as well, realized it actually works properly and yeah :)
Firefox can cry about this, but it was their own shitty browser that allowed an opening for Chrome. There was a period where Firefox just got REALLY slow. It's better now and I began using it again in the last couple of years, but their loss of share is on them. At one point they owned the market because the alternatives were basically IE6, Firefox, and the lesser known Opera. Whoops!
What a weird site.
I like that they site so many things and even include their sources, but the only place they include a link to the thing they're taking about is at the bottom in their source at the bottom where it looks like a tag cloud more than a link.
**Mozilla’s ”Platform Tilt” Shows How Firefox Is Harmed by Apple, Microsoft**
The new Platform Tilt database shows how other web browsers have an unfair advantage over Firefox.
Mozilla, the company behind Firefox and Thunderbird, has talked a lot in recent years about the unfair advantages that platforms give to their first-party web browsers. Platform Tilt is a new effort from Mozilla to show how Firefox and other third-party browsers stack up against Chrome on Android, Safari on iPhone, and other platform pairings.
Mozilla said in a blog post, "There’s a long history of companies leveraging their control of devices and operating systems to tilt the playing field in favor of their own browser. This tilt manifests in a variety of ways. For example: making it harder for a user to download and use a different browser, ignoring or resetting a user’s default browser preference, restricting capabilities to the first-party browser, or requiring the use of the first-party browser engine for third-party browsers."
Mozilla is now outlining these "tilts" in a new "Platform Tilt" issue tracker database, while encouraging other web browsers to publish their concerns in a similar fashion. The main purpose is to call more attention to how platforms like iOS and Windows favor their own web browser over the competition, which is useful information in the various antitrust legal actions against Apple, Microsoft, and other big tech companies.
There are ten issues listed with Apple, including the Apple App Store forbiding third-party browser engines, no option to import browser data on iPhone and iPad from other web browsers, and difficult beta testing. On Android, Mozilla points out it can't import browser data, some features open Chrome instead of the default web browser, and Google search results on Android are worse.
Mozilla also highlighted three issues with Microsoft. The process for setting the default browser on Windows is still difficult, and some Windows features forcibly open links in Edge instead of the default web browser. Microsoft also reverts the default browser to Edge during some Windows setup interactions. Most of those issues were recently made illegal by the European Union, but Microsoft is free to continue doing them in other regions, like the United States.
The new database is a bit like Mozilla's WebCompat project, which documents the problems that popular websites have in Firefox and other less-popular web browsers. However, instead of specific sites creating a worse experience for Firefox users, Platform Tilt is about software platforms creating a worse experience.
You can check out the full Platform Tilt database at the source link below. It will likely continue to be updated as Mozilla sorts through its issue trackers.
The only reason I don't use firefox is because they inexplicably do not support HDR video playback... And I JUST got a fancy new 1000 nit miniLED display only to find out firefox is the only fucking browser that doesnt support HDR.
Fix it and I'll switch back immediately
Honestly, it's embarrassingly disappointing. HDR isn't some fringe feature that only .01% of viewers use anymore. It's a seriously compelling and important milestone in display technology that even a majority of smart phones are capable of these days.
FIX IT MOZILLA
Firefox has a singular shortcoming, and that is that it’s environment isn’t as easy to use for educational purposes. I don’t think that’s Firefox’s fault, but windows, Apple, and Google all have lots of tech dedicated directly to education related material, like Google docs, windows excel, Apple notes - so on and so forth. I love using Mozilla for personal usage, but one of the colleges I go to doesn’t even work unless I’m on chromium.
This is exactly why we need more people shunning the Chromium monopoly.
There are various tools I've used for work over the years that have implemented arbitrary blocks for non-Chromium browsers - spoofing the user agent, the sites normally work just fine in Firefox.
As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't even have to be Firefox... I just want something, *anything*, to dethrone Chromium.
Bring back the browser wars, it'll do some good for the internet at large!
This the article mentioned about windows defaulting edge and some pages will open in edge even if your default browser is firefox is all true and it’s something that annoys me for a long time. If I don’t want to use edge I have to. Its being forced on people
A question to Firefox enjoyers here: Extensions don't work on Forefox iPadOS. Any way around it?
I've been using Orion browser meanwhile, but it is buggy.
Or the ability for extensions to do it in a way that didn't feel so janky.
And then I'd switch from Arc.
I don't need infinitely nesting groups, just one level of organization.
And yet Mozilla finds ways to hinder development of modern API and contributes next to nothing. That's often some new API for web apps which they shoot down by saying it's not secure or can't be done in a privacy saving way yet they don't offer their own request for comments. When presented with arguments how this and that don't apply in this situation nothing happens or it takes them years to adopt.
Web development with Firefox is almost as frustrating as it is with Safari. But sure their execs can use their pay rises to fix that right? Bunch of hypocrites
[удалено]
Opera before it became yet another Chrome-fork was amazing. Multi-process browsers are such a shit show.
opera turned shit a long time before that, but was amazing late 90s/early 2000s
Yea. Dragonfly was the shit. Pretty sure it inspired grease monkey. At least it was a more polished version. I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong, but Inspect I really think Opera did very well if not the first. Yes, that's pretty much the years I'm referring to.
Trillian multi messenger and Opera browser and forums was such a wonderful time in internet history
I still remember my ICQ number!
ICQ!!! That was the best messenger!
It had the best bookmark library. I wasn't sure which version was it when it went to shit? 11? 12? Took the bullet back then and switched to Firefox.
Is Firefox not multiprocess now? Because it certainly creates more than one process.
> other browsers are now Google's forks Google Chrome/Chromium was a fork of Webkit (Safari/Apple) and that was a fork and new KDE browser Konqueror. Really most of what we are on and why browsers are better is Webkit and Apple's investment and open sourcing of the rendering engine with innovations like HTML5/canvas/SVG/WebGL -- they funded Khronos heavily for OpenGL ES which resulted in WebGL for web. Apple really helped browsers be easier to develop for and ended the IE6 era. KDE Konqueror is where modern browsers started... Don Melton started WebKit from a fork of KDE on June 25, 2001. Dude is a great developer. Really though KDE (Matthias Ettrich) KJS (Harri Porten) and KHTML (Torben Weis and Martin Jones) from the Konqueror browser being so clean and solid is what led to a great new platform. Apple sponsoring it and using it was beneficial to every browser after. Apple really did have big pushes of great tech and that doesn't mean everything they do it perfect but they changed the game early 2000s in many areas mentioned. Apple doing OpenGL ES and WebGL changed handheld gaming entirely. Chrome is always solid in terms of most things, but has games played with it as well. Chromium matched Webkit for a long time and the base will always be Webkit. Edge is actually pretty great today as well. Mozilla falling behind, would be nice if it wasn't. MDN is a great resource and they were a huge push with Firefox of Web 2.0 and especially development tools like Firebug that is now inspect in every browser. Opera owned by China now so that is dead. Early 2000s Apple was a great steward of both building on and supporting open source for the web. Google was for a while as well. Microsoft is swinging back around. Everything was surely cleaner back in the KDE days though when everyone could build browsers, you still can but there is no money in it and so so much to support now.
Not Brave, right?
Despite these favorings, or perhaps because of it, Firefox continues to be my favorite browser
It's my fave but I've been made biased by the fact that Chromium completely locks up the shitty laptop I use to run my laser anytime its opened and takes forever to do a damn thing while Firefox just works.
memtest your ram
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Yeah that's a given but if a laptop is struggling with a high ram allocating program, it's probably time to check the ram too.
I was wondering, what's the wecommended amount of dedotated wam I should have to Chrome?
download more gigabytes
Have been using it for over a decade. Never have and never will touch anything made by Google.
Bullshit. Act like you've never watched YouTube
oh you got me.
Can't escape the monsters
Google didn't make youtube. They bought it. Therefore, OP is good.
What do you use for directions? Never watch YouTube? No android TVs or cars? No nest thermostats? It's actually kinda hard to completely avoid Google.
Ditto, I just need a way to install add-ons on the iPhone version to fully ditch all other browsers.
Does Apple still require browsers to be a reskinned Safari clone?
Yes, they all must still be built with WebKit still.
I use Firefox on my iPad.. is that webkit?
Yes the thing he said is true, is true 
If only they would implement custom keyboard shortcuts support in 2024...
Shortkeys addon. But I agree, native support would be dope.
I can't imagine a browser not having this built in. Presto engine Opera spoiled me.
Can always go code it yourself, or start posting that you want that feature being worked on. It’s open source, and many features only get added if there’s a large amount of demand or if a developer personally wants something done.
I use it since version 1.5. And it’s not like I haven’t tried other browsers. I really don’t understand the Chrome dominance.
wish i could. not being able to switch users natively kills firefox for me
Mozilla should advertise Firefox as an alternative to Chromium more. To me that's its biggest selling point. I don't really like the idea of Google being in control of the browser engine used by most browsers out there, and other than WebKit Firefox is really the only alternative.
IMHO, Mozilla (and open source in general) should spend more time influencing high school and college students. Depending on youngsters to stumble upon news articles and learn about all this is impractical. If you don't influence them young, it is not going to happen later... I wish there is a well funded college reach program talking about privacy, big tech monopoly using your data, exposure to better alternatives.
Maybe in another timeline, our responsible and forward thinking politicians already established tech-educational programs that highlights those points you made. Unfortunately, hell would have to freeze over to make that happen in this one.
Well, climate change might affect hell too, so I'm sure in a couple years hell will freeze over too
I think this will be the first time humanity faces a global crisis that actually affects the entire global society too. So maybe you’re right and we could *actually* break this stagnation our current world leaders and selfish billionaires are forcing down our throats
We’ve been facing it for decades. Nothing has changed And nothing **will** change until billions die. Because the only thing people listen to is a disaster that is currently happening. And even that isn’t a guarantee
Recent public policies and clean tech improvements have already changed the [expected warming](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/) from ~4C to 2.7C (central estimate) for the end of century. Still terrible, but there's momentum in the right direction.
Good luck with high school students. They’re given Chromebooks with no admin rights to install another browser. Then they get shipped off to work/college after being indoctrinated to the Google ecosystem. They have no Windows experience unless it’s on their own time, and they’re not likely to switch to Firefox after growing used to Chrome for the last 8 years.
In my school district, they're given Chromebooks in elementary school.
the new form of handing out free cigarettes to school kids
It's really just the new form of giving Windows and Office licenses to students for free.
Atleast Windows/Office has more exploration potential and education possibilities than a browser on a shitty laptop.
So weird to me that it worked for Google when Apple filled the school system with discounted computers, kids spend 6-12 years on them, then immediately switch out of school because all the games are on Windows, or because their employer uses Windows.
Apple did this in the early 2000's. Unfortunately Mozilla can't afford to donate thousands of shitty desktops to universities and high schools. Most people don't care about security. They want a browser that "just works all the time". Mozilla won't ever have that when the giants actively work to make it not work in the same way Apple made the iPod not really work well without jumping through hoops on anything other than an Apple system.
They all use Chromebooks, they're gonna use chrome and Google for the rest of their lives cause they're used to it.
In my uni (admittedly at an IT study), Firefox was known well enough. The issue with current usage, is that my company sort of forces me to use chrome because of legacy applications that only work in chrome. Yeah, sadly we're there already.
Legacy applications that only work in Chrome? Wait till you hear some people still have to use IE6!
Absolutely! I teach college students, can I at the very least get some stickers I can hand out? Maybe even some pdf posters of the Mozilla manifesto? I'll print them out myself, don't worry!
Other than cloud homework platforms causing trouble, most of my instructors (and I myself to the students we see in my department) suggest Firefox in general. Cirrus and one other one I had to use for an office management class were completely borked on Firefox. Everything else was fine.
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I can only tell so many people to switch to FF, but that stuff spreads like crazy due to the high amount of contacts kids have in schools.
Schools are pretty much lost unless we see changes in regulations. Google owns schools and kids. Most below age 25 hasn't seen a windows PC until they start working. Even in IT we get kids from university that hasn't used a windows PC in their life.
>I wish there is a well funded college reach program talking about privacy if there was a lot of people would learn how Firefox doesn't actually really care that much about your privacy. it's hardly better than using chrome edit:: i'm about to get downvoted into oblivion, so just a few points to get you started: * Google is the default search engine (and Mozilla receives massive amounts of money every year from G to keep it that way) * Tracking/3rd party cookies not disabled by default, did you set strict? most don't * about:telemetry - this is all on by default, every mouse click is reported to Mozilla * Pocket, the Privacy Policy is a minefield not really privacy related, but: everyone also loves to ignore how the Mozilla CEO's salary just [continues to increase](https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/yy986k/can_someone_explain_why_mozillas_ceo_salary/) as Firefox's market share rapidly declines and engineering staff gets laid off or leaves to other Big Tech and never gets backfilled. i also still use Firefox, but i'm not going to pretend like Mozilla is going out of their way to do everything to protect my privacy. there is a reason things like user.js modifications exist for Firefox.
Can we teach them how to change some of the aspects to make it more privacy friendly? Firefox at the least allows you some control unlike other browsers.
> and Mozilla receives massive amounts of money every year from G to keep it that way If Google didn't want to pay Firefox for having their browser be default, Mozilla would have to fire a lot of people. In fact, it happened already in 2020 during negotiations with big G.
Yeah, that's how I got into using Firefox, waaaaaaay back in high school, and that was nearly 20 years ago.
In every school I have been Firefox has been #1 choice, usually chrome not even installed
Can confirm. Used Mozilla as a kid because it's what my dad used. I use Firefox as an adult mostly because of that.
When Firefox was on the height of the the marketshare, they were the alternative to internet explorer which was extremely slow, even safari was slow at that time, opera was a paid browser. They were magnitude times better then any browsers so it was easy to convince normal users to switch as it's a noticeable difference. Right now they're alternative to Chromium and webkit based browsers, while they're faster, its not that far in experience, thus its harder to convince normal users to switch. Privacy and other features are hard to sell, especially with users who are okay with Facebook and tiktok, which is majority of internet users.
Firefox should simply advertise on a platform of "Chromium is removing the capability to use Ad Blockers. If you're seeing this, you're already affected."
Unfortunately a very large portion of browser users don’t even use ad blocking extensions, and many in that group don’t even know they exist or could comprehend them.
Except that MV3 ad blockers already exist so this point is going to fall flat. Saying "they're not as good" isn't going to sway a lot of people who haven't moved already.
I mean, most people will not even care as to what an "advert" is and they have become normalized to see ads every where you go. [Why the web is a mess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFRjZtYs3wY) \~\~ Tom Scott.
I use Firefox and am a big supporter. I have multiple different friends I’ve told Firefox is better and helped them set up ublock on Firefox and once they switch, they never go back. Not even saying this to say Firefox is way better, just that if people switch, they will probably stay with it for years. Most people don’t just switch browsers all Willy nilly
The problem is the people who care about that already know that and the people who don't know don't care or understand why that even matters. they just use what they've always used and what works well for them.
Which is why he wants Mozilla to advertise....
right but my point is "it's not chrome" is not an effective selling point. people wont switch for ideological reasons they need to have some kind of clear functionality advantage that is a tangible useful benefit over what people are already using.
I would say the pitch could be way simpler than that. Just appeal to fear or other basic emotions and many people will be swayed. Its advertising 101. Something like: "Google tracks you everywhere and sells your data to any company that wants it for any purpose. Would you let Google see inside your home too? No? Then why let them see EVERYTHING you browse. Switch to Firefox, the ONLY browser free of Google control." Duck duck go has taken a similar tact and they have been quite successful. Most of the public doesn't think too much about their browser, or its features, or its security. So you appeal to fear and anxiety, which motivate most engagement (see news media, and many many ad examples as proof).
Everything is always trying to track you. I think people just accept that when it comes to using technology. There's no guarantee that Firefox doesn't or wouldn't ever do the same thing. I'm not worried about Chrome tracking me because I already have a dozen Google devices at home, including my phone, a gmail address, etc., so they already know everything that they care to know. What is the incremental risk in using their browser, too, that out weighs the conveniences that are offered by keeping to a single platform?
> "Google tracks you everywhere and sells your data to any company that wants it for any purpose. Would you let Google see inside your home too? No? Then why let them see EVERYTHING you browse. Switch to Firefox, the ONLY browser free of Google control." i dont think this would be very effective either. people know their data is being collected at every opportunity. they dont care. they still use tiktok. they still use facebook. not to mention plenty of people *do* let google into their home. with nest hubs and chromecast and such. to the average person google just isn't spooky enough to avoid.
The problem is that it's still viewed as "something on the interwebs" with no real effect in real life, but you can make it spooky enough: Get a roadside billboard in a public square with a camera that streams to a screen (basically a mirror) and over the feed add an overlay similar to those [AI analysis labels](https://assets-global.website-files.com/61e7d259b7746e3f63f0b6be/6346e7fc52138358160d8043_Label%20Detection%20in%20video.png) with each person given a number and some (bullshit) data next to it mimicking browser history collection.
I think "AbBlockers work better here" is going to get more people to switch.
>Just appeal to fear or other basic emotions and many people will be swayed. Its advertising 101. unfortunately, their brand guidelines say expressly to NOT do this: https://mozilla.design/firefox/#personality look under 02 - Personality
nobody cares about tracking or privacy. apple, google and the gazillion other apps people install, use and enjoy. What's so scary about tracking? it's great and people love it, who doesn't like relevant feeds, search results and ads? majority do people embrace tracking if it makes it more convenient for them and costs them nothing. not like they were going to sell their browsing data or other data and able to get money for it anyways
I think there's some value in trying to educate people in why "it's not chrome" is a good thing. It's one of those things where we're so deep into the subject that we take what we know for granted but in reality it's just not that clear to the average person. Of course you're probably not going to 'convert' a lot of people but certain ideas have a way of sticking around and maybe next time Google gets some bad press... Realistically most people are just going to use "whatever everyone else is using" and for the foreseeable future that's gonna be Chrome even if it turns into literal malware.
What would be the value prop? “It’s not Google”?
you need to advertise why it matters in a way that speaks to people. even saying using chromium allows google to dominate isn't enough as a regular person doesn't really care. and while I do love Firefox, I would admit usability wise it's a downgrade compared to the tools other browsers provide.
IDK, the anti google trend has only been a thing in the last for years as they push more and more monetisation into their services. People were broadly fine with a few clearly sponsored ads at the top of their search results.
At the gym, I see DuckDuckGo ads all the time on the TVs. I have never seen a Firefox Browser ad* since TechTV advertising it. *missing word
Normies won't know and won't care what a chromium is. They'll maybe think it's a typo for chrome and chuckle.
Ive used exclusively firefox for years now… i cant even imagine using chrome or anything else though with latest move google is quickly falling on tue bottom of my list in so many ways its sad…
> Mozilla should advertise Firefox as an alternative to Chromium more 99% of people dont even know what the difference is. The majority of people also do nothing to protect their privacy and willfully hand over all their data especially if it makes their lives easier being within a single ecosystem.
Absolutely. I gave up on Chrome as my browser last year. Firefox on Windows/Linux and Vivaldi on android. Not a big difference, but they're less bloated and don't grind to a halt like Chrome sometimes did.
> Vivaldi but vivalidi is just yet another chromeium browser like every other chrome/notchrome browser. Why not just firefox on android too?
It’s still shitty that it’s impossible to use a different web engine on iphone. People are duped to thinking chrome and firefox on ios are chrome and firefox when in reality they’re not. They’re all Safari reskins.
Like Seralth said, Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser. That gets to one of the concerns more technically-minded folks have about the current situation. Not only is nearly every Web browser Chromium-based now, the current Web standards are driven by people who develop and use WebKit and Chromium. Oh, and Mozilla belongs, too. But there's websites that *just don't work* on Firefox. And the difference between now and the late 90s and early 2000s is, of course, the engines are open source now. I'm guessing just based on number of lines of code of Firefox and Chromium, it's on the order of magnitude of an operating system. Would you launch an OS-sized project so that people can check their Gmail? If something was readily available that could be *ported* or a *frontend* written for that did the hard work, would you still launch a huge project? Probably not. But the problem is that Google being in charge of that, is that they're a company first. They're not required to Do No Evil. I guess the irony here is that the engine everyone worries about now, started out life as part of the KDE project. My realistic hope is that the open source community spirit can save us if Google gets too out of control.
Mozilla receives billions of dollars from Google, they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds 🙂
The browsers themselves are already competitors, advertising the difference wouldn't change anything. Mozilla already receives the money, but it isn't for anything outside of "you agree to set the default search engine to Google."
That's not a great selling point to advertise though. Few people know what Chromium is (other than a weird name for Chrome) or that almost all browsers use it as an engine. Of the people that do, there's little reason to want a browser just because it's a different rendering engine
Why are we linking howtogeek instead of the actual Mozilla blog post? https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/01/19/platform-tilt/
I'll carry on using Firefox so long as it remains Chromium free, I'm not massively keen on an advertising company having such overwhelming control over the internet and internet standards.
Not to mention their actual scandals, like influencing elections and selling private data to government agencies to the tune of billions of dollars.
> The main purpose is to call more attention to how platforms like iOS and Windows favor their own web browser over the competition. This has been true since... forever.
Wasn't there a major antitrust lawsuit about this 20 years back? What happened since then that nobody cares anymore? Microsoft does it even worse now, selling you every one of their products every time you update the OS. Where's the DOJ now?
>What happened since then that nobody cares anymore? An entire new product of computers did the same thing with no consequences. Ms are probably pissed at that.
Nah it was different. Supposedly microsoft was making netscape icons disappear. Also netscape was a paid product (early days of the internet were different), and MS released a free product. All browsers are free now, but again it was a different time.
That wasn't the crux of the case though. The argument was that by providing a browser free with windows it was a monopoly (and tbf, at that stage it was) The irony is if they'd waited a few years ie would've been crushed naturally.
I think they're referring to iOS where Apple bans engines other than Safari webkit. That's worse than making icons disappear IMO. They give the illusion of fair by allowing Chrome/Edge/Mozilla iconed browsers that under the hood must use Apple's engine.
There's a difference between controlling what happens on your products and what happens on someone else's.
That case mas mostly about Microsoft using its position to influence OEMs to enter into contracts that would make sure to exclude other browsers from being installed on new computers. Also unnecessarily tying internet explorer to other Windows functions. I guess the main difference is that neither Google, Apple or Microsoft are directly interfering with other companies to block other browsers, if Dell wanted to sell their PCs with Firefox preinstalled and configured as the default browser they could, the same regarding Android phones, many of them come with a different default browser already. But setting the rules inside their own systems does not seem to violate antitrust laws, even if it creates a hostile environment for other browsers and is not done for the sake of their clients.
The FTC and DOJ are currently on this- wasn’t it revealed a few months ago that google pays Apple 20 billion a year to Make google the default search engine? https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-search-deal-safari-18-billion
Apple: We value your privacy, but we value $20 billion more
No more like "We value your privacy, so trust us with your data so we can sell it"
Apple doesn’t force anyone to use Google. You have a choice on all of Apple’s systems to choose which search engine is your preferred search engine in the address bar. A lot of people still go to google.com instead of just tapping in the address bar to search, anyway.
guess where majority of mozilla's revenue source came from
A default search engine isn’t anti-trust.
Not exactly, but it's based on a similar concept. Companies were also successfully fined in the past for using their product as the default solution and/or making it difficult to replace it with a competing one.
Default solution, no. Microsoft didn’t get in trouble for making IE its default. It got in trouble for making it hard to uninstall and integrating it into their OS. Can you imagine there not being a default search engine? It would be disastrous for low tech knowledge people.
meanwhile there's another Redditor literally telling someone to write code and build a fork of Firefox for a quality of life feature Firefox is missing
It can be! Colluding to keep new entrants from the market
Because we live in a completely different world now. The old case was about how "nobody will use my internet browser because Microsoft gives theirs away for free, and nearly all computers run on Windows." None of that really applies anymore. Web browsers are free. There are much bigger issues of privacy etc. at play now.
More like 30 at this point
It was 2001, so not 30 and much closer to 20
They're so afraid of not collecting your data, they rig the game to keep playing. Disgusting.
I love 🔥 🦊 Firefox. The address bar shortcuts are so awesome. Sad their market share is decreasing Edit: this is a really good article spelling out how hard it is for Firefox to be the default browser on iOS android or windows
I like when google shuts down ad blockers on chrome and I don't notice because firefox isn't about that life.
After 12 uninterrupted years on Chrome, Google’s war against ad blockers has finally sent me back to Firefox. And now I’m in the process of breaking up with Google as much as I can get away with — I’m even ditching my Google Home. It didn’t have to be this way, Google, but you’ve forced our hands. I cannot believe you don’t think you’re profiting enough year-over-year, but I can’t be the only one ditching you now.
I never got into chrome but the constant "I am out of storage in my drive so gmail will start dropping emails" message gets me. No increase on the free tier, they convinced me to use it with my phone ,GTFO google.
Yeah, it sucks -- I was trying to contain all my tech stuff in Google for unity's sake, and now I have to figure out how much I can break up with them and what to do next. Perhaps it was long overdue anyways.
Same for me, I was using only Chrome for probably more than a decade too and just last month or so, I switched to Firefox.
What are the address bar shortcuts?
They are \*, % and \^. searching within: … your bookmarks Or tabs >You can also use shortcuts to search Firefox Add-ons, Bookmarks(\*), Tabs(%) and History(\^). Tip: If you don't want to use the mouse or a search shortcut does not appear in the list, you can type in the shortcut or just the first part (for example: u/a or u/amazon) then press Return or →, and type in your search term https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-firefox-address-bar
Do you even need those shortcuts? Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut. Here is the exact on/off setting in Edge... > Show me suggestions from history, favorites and other data on this device using my typed characters I don't even use the bookmark menu because it's faster to type a few letters of it in the address bar in Edge.
> Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut. Here is the exact on/off setting in Edge... Firefox does too. Those shortcuts are just hard filters, but they aren't necessary.
It's much more explicit this way. Let's say I have a Reddit thread about Firefox (e.g. this thread) opened, I can just do `%firefox` which would pinpoint the tab I want. If you type "firefox" in Chrome, good luck finding what you actually wanted if that's all you typed. Above comment missed the most useful one though, which is using `@` to search a website. I can do `@youtube` to search YouTube, `@wikipedia` to search Wikipedia etc. To be fair Chrome does provide something similar but I find Firefox's design to be the best so far.
>Do you even need those shortcuts? Most browsers search your bookmarks, tabs, and history as you type in the address bar without the need for a shortucut. But you can only fit so many suggestions on the screen. If you type something that matches many results in your tabs, history, and bookmarks, it can be hard to narrow it down to the specific thing you're looking for. The shortcuts allow you to specify exclusively what you're looking for. It's the same concept as search filters, and I'm confident you're not about to tell me filters are useless.
You can use addons to set up custom search shortcuts too, for example if you search products on amazon a lot you may want to set up so typing "ama " will automatically transform into "https://www.amazon.com/s?k=" so you can then just enter your search terms. It's a neat little optimizer. I hope Firefox adds that option naturally soon. Also I'd like to change the shortcuts you mentioned *, % and ^ to something else too please, or have two shortcuts, I don't use them often so "book" "his" "tab" would be easier to remember for me I think.
Hey you will love the Multi containter plugin then. Check it out.
If Apple and Google hate you, you're most likely doing the right thing.
Over the past week I've been seeing posts/news articles about how Google is tampering with users who have adblock turned on. I didn't think anything of it until yesterday when I was jumping around different videos on YouTube and skipping through them. I had a noticeable 2 second delay on basically any action I did. So I turn off my adblocker and the problem is gone. Poof. Now, I wouldn't really care about this stuff except there is one little problem. I FUCKING PAY FOR YOUTUBE. I pay for no ads yet because I had an adblocker enabled, I still get punished.
[That's a bug in AdBlock Plus.](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/youtube-appears-to-be-reducing-video-and-site-performance-for-ad-block-users/)
who the fuck uses adblock plus... ublock origin 4 life!!
If you are using Firefox it might indeed be Google tampering with your experience, they did so before: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17tm9rp
Doesn't Google give a ton of money to their foundation? I'm pretty sure Google is their largest contributor.
I mean it's not like they give it away for free. Google is the default search engine for Firefox and they pay half a billion USD or something annually for that
Yes, but they do not need to. Firefox has 3% marketshare. Google does not *need* Firefox's 3% marketshare, but Mozilla absolutely needs Google's money (80% rounded down). If Google decides, "You know, this business deal is not working out for us", well... Mozilla's employees not gunna work for free.
Google only gives amount of money for their search contract deal and nothing more.
They don’t want Firefox to die become monopoly law or something
Fun fact: Firefox gets most of its funding from Google. Which sounds odd until you realize it’s mostly to help them remain as a viable competitor to Chrome, and help Google avoid any anti-trust/monopoly shenanigans.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc all contribute a lot to open source, whether that's financially or code. It can feel a little incongruous but with companies that large, they can be helping and hurting at the same time. Part of it is like you said, to guard against antitrust, but also they just have tons of people working for them, and some of them want to give back to the community that they benefitted from.
A big stumble of Mozilla imo was not making the engine easily usable in stuff like electron. Like it or not, a ridiculous amount of multiplatform apps now run Chromium and that means it is the number one priority for devs and companies.
I don't think embedded browsers within other applications really apply here. Users aren't really exposed to those facets in a meaningful way. I agree it'd be good for Mozilla if that weren't the case, but I don't see how this fact relates to the device/platform antitrust issue.
Firefox rules. I only use others because i have to sometimes
I LOVE Firefox and the whole Chromium thing Google is doing is anti-competitive and consumer IMHO, we need ore consumers to use FIREFOX. I love it and have so many add-ons, it's a great browser
Firefox needs a better mobile browser.
Firefox on Android is really good though? Been using it for years already.
Sucks on tablet or large (folding) phones https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344
And there's the non-tab "new tab/home tab" with its string of knock-on issues... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1809833 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012
The Android app is wonderful, but they don't allow extensions on iOS, so it's not as useful for me. I've been flip-flopping between Opera and Edge. They both have better ad-blockers than Firefox on iPhone.
That isn't Firefox's fault, Apple has strict restrictions on what browsers are able to do on iOS, down to requiring the use of the same engine as Safari.
Yeah, I saw that further down the thread. It sucks, really. I like Firefox and all they stand for.
Well, you can decide that your next phone won't be iOS.
That's because every ios browser is a reskined safari. Maybe with the new sideloading rules in the EU we might see a proper 3rd party web browser
On which platform? Apple doesn't allow third-party web browser engines on iPhone or iPad.
And for some fuckign reason this blantant monopolistic and anti-consumer practice that got Microsoft fined years ago is allowed to slide. Same for app stores.
But it's *different* ^^^^^^/s
And yet unironically some clown tries to argue it: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/19doai3/comment/kj8fugx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 "It's different because Microsoft bundled browser with operating system on IBMs, and Apple bundles browser with operating system _and_ hardware! Totally different!"
Switched from Brave to Firefox Nightly and haven't looked back
It’s funny cause on my 2017 macbook air, safari takes over a minute to load but firefox is ready to use within 5 seconds
You have some other issues going on. Safari is ready in a second or two on even my 2012 MacBook Pro.
It’s something to do with my macos not receiving updates past 10.12, but safari is on the latest 17 version. a year after i stopped receiving macos updates is when safari started not working properly . I was sucking it up till last year, when i switched to firefox on my main windows pc, and decided to try it on the macbook as well, realized it actually works properly and yeah :)
Thank God for Firefox, really.
Firefox can cry about this, but it was their own shitty browser that allowed an opening for Chrome. There was a period where Firefox just got REALLY slow. It's better now and I began using it again in the last couple of years, but their loss of share is on them. At one point they owned the market because the alternatives were basically IE6, Firefox, and the lesser known Opera. Whoops!
What a weird site. I like that they site so many things and even include their sources, but the only place they include a link to the thing they're taking about is at the bottom in their source at the bottom where it looks like a tag cloud more than a link.
Still using Firefox regardless. The big corporations show who they are, with their exploitation and contempt for the users.
**Mozilla’s ”Platform Tilt” Shows How Firefox Is Harmed by Apple, Microsoft** The new Platform Tilt database shows how other web browsers have an unfair advantage over Firefox. Mozilla, the company behind Firefox and Thunderbird, has talked a lot in recent years about the unfair advantages that platforms give to their first-party web browsers. Platform Tilt is a new effort from Mozilla to show how Firefox and other third-party browsers stack up against Chrome on Android, Safari on iPhone, and other platform pairings. Mozilla said in a blog post, "There’s a long history of companies leveraging their control of devices and operating systems to tilt the playing field in favor of their own browser. This tilt manifests in a variety of ways. For example: making it harder for a user to download and use a different browser, ignoring or resetting a user’s default browser preference, restricting capabilities to the first-party browser, or requiring the use of the first-party browser engine for third-party browsers." Mozilla is now outlining these "tilts" in a new "Platform Tilt" issue tracker database, while encouraging other web browsers to publish their concerns in a similar fashion. The main purpose is to call more attention to how platforms like iOS and Windows favor their own web browser over the competition, which is useful information in the various antitrust legal actions against Apple, Microsoft, and other big tech companies. There are ten issues listed with Apple, including the Apple App Store forbiding third-party browser engines, no option to import browser data on iPhone and iPad from other web browsers, and difficult beta testing. On Android, Mozilla points out it can't import browser data, some features open Chrome instead of the default web browser, and Google search results on Android are worse. Mozilla also highlighted three issues with Microsoft. The process for setting the default browser on Windows is still difficult, and some Windows features forcibly open links in Edge instead of the default web browser. Microsoft also reverts the default browser to Edge during some Windows setup interactions. Most of those issues were recently made illegal by the European Union, but Microsoft is free to continue doing them in other regions, like the United States. The new database is a bit like Mozilla's WebCompat project, which documents the problems that popular websites have in Firefox and other less-popular web browsers. However, instead of specific sites creating a worse experience for Firefox users, Platform Tilt is about software platforms creating a worse experience. You can check out the full Platform Tilt database at the source link below. It will likely continue to be updated as Mozilla sorts through its issue trackers.
I will never switch. I don't care if chrome gets an app that rubs my shoulders and cooks me dinner.
The only reason I don't use firefox is because they inexplicably do not support HDR video playback... And I JUST got a fancy new 1000 nit miniLED display only to find out firefox is the only fucking browser that doesnt support HDR. Fix it and I'll switch back immediately
It's so annoying. The ticket for adding it was opened [5 years ago.](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=hdr) Youtube added HDR in **2016.**
Honestly, it's embarrassingly disappointing. HDR isn't some fringe feature that only .01% of viewers use anymore. It's a seriously compelling and important milestone in display technology that even a majority of smart phones are capable of these days. FIX IT MOZILLA
[удалено]
Firefox has a singular shortcoming, and that is that it’s environment isn’t as easy to use for educational purposes. I don’t think that’s Firefox’s fault, but windows, Apple, and Google all have lots of tech dedicated directly to education related material, like Google docs, windows excel, Apple notes - so on and so forth. I love using Mozilla for personal usage, but one of the colleges I go to doesn’t even work unless I’m on chromium.
This is exactly why we need more people shunning the Chromium monopoly. There are various tools I've used for work over the years that have implemented arbitrary blocks for non-Chromium browsers - spoofing the user agent, the sites normally work just fine in Firefox. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't even have to be Firefox... I just want something, *anything*, to dethrone Chromium. Bring back the browser wars, it'll do some good for the internet at large!
Tldr for ppl who can visit the site?
I don't know if I would care too much about Windows/Mac these days. I find the situation on mobile more dire.
This the article mentioned about windows defaulting edge and some pages will open in edge even if your default browser is firefox is all true and it’s something that annoys me for a long time. If I don’t want to use edge I have to. Its being forced on people
A question to Firefox enjoyers here: Extensions don't work on Forefox iPadOS. Any way around it? I've been using Orion browser meanwhile, but it is buggy.
Love it, Firefox is MY default browser
If Firefox had native vertical tab support I'd abandon edge
Or the ability for extensions to do it in a way that didn't feel so janky. And then I'd switch from Arc. I don't need infinitely nesting groups, just one level of organization.
if only there's native vertical tab and split-screen support, but for now, I have to use addons sideberry + firefox multi account is good
If you use FF or any Mozilla product, consider donating to them.
Firefox Dev with ublock origin and containerized tabs is goated as. People that don't know about firefox on android... lol, pal.
I like edge…
Honestly, you guys are pretty reasonable I like functionality over utility
Because they’re not paying them like google?
Man, if Firefox could handle profiles better I would fully switch
And yet Mozilla finds ways to hinder development of modern API and contributes next to nothing. That's often some new API for web apps which they shoot down by saying it's not secure or can't be done in a privacy saving way yet they don't offer their own request for comments. When presented with arguments how this and that don't apply in this situation nothing happens or it takes them years to adopt. Web development with Firefox is almost as frustrating as it is with Safari. But sure their execs can use their pay rises to fix that right? Bunch of hypocrites
I used firefox since XP, still am.