#Firefox is by far the best browser on desktop. Let me be clear, I am not saying that because I am ideologically opposed to using Google products. I use YouTube and Google Workspaces. Chrome genuinely has nothing to offer over Firefox. If your website doesn't work in Firefox then I'm not using your website.
@Gargron I assume you have never tested Vivaldi, then
@Gschloessl @Gargron +1 on Vivaldi :) .
Was an Opera user back in the day when @jon was still CEO, and followed him to @Vivaldi .
Hard to beat the mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. Also the most usable implementation of speed dial. Even the address bar continues to get better/more customizable.
It was also the first commercial software company to start a Mastodon instance, if I'm not wrong :D .
@louiskhor @Gschloessl @Gargron @jon @Vivaldi
"It was also the first commercial software company to start a Mastodon instance, if I'm not wrong :D"
For real?
@paninodesu Absolutely for real :) . This is Jon's blog post from Nov 15th 2022 announcing it - and they were testing it even before that. I don't think Mozilla had their instance till some time in 2023. And Eugen knows this, he was there and celebrating it at the time.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/vivaldi-social-a-new-mastodon-instance/
@paninodesu Mozilla didn't launch it's "private beta" of Mozilla Social until May 4th 2023 - so 5 months later. To be fair, Mozilla likely has a much larger audience, etc. But Vivaldi was absolutely first/fast.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-social-mastodon-private-beta-announcement/
@louiskhor @Gschloessl @Gargron @jon @Vivaldi I switched to Opera because of the mouse gestures, but somehow I have a hard time picking them up again.
Firefox is just the best browser, should not even be a discussion
@Gargron too bad Mozilla doesn’t seem to care about it anymore
It's open-source, so why is it not on Github? Do we need Mozilla for Firefox to survive? I'm sure the thriving developer community can take care of it, no?
@pinkcreeper100 Oh yhea I always forget about that
@Gargron Like Google Maps :-/ Most of the times it works, sometimes it does not load tiles in Firefox. Then I use OSM instead.
@tessarakt I've never had an issue with Google Maps in Firefox
@tessarakt @Gargron I sometimes noticed some newer satellite-tiles on chrome for the same region displayed on firefox.
just a minor issue and just dumb shenanigans of google
@ndlhlz @tessarakt @Gargron Sounds pretty much like a caching issue...
@tessarakt
@Gargron Google Maps are just an advertisement holder and data collector. If you want a real map, try to use Mapy.cz (it's based on OSM outside Czechia)
@tessarakt @Gargron To get a better YouTube experience on Firefox, one has to change one’s user agent to Chrome (or Edge or DuckDuckGo)
@tessarakt @Gargron heck yeah, google maps so fucking laggy in firefox. basically unusable for me (but i use osm most of the time anyway)
@Gargron I swapped most of my life over earlier this year and haven't looked back.
The one thing I really wish they would prioritize is better support for PWAs. Chrome and even Safari have it beat there.
@Gargron I wish more people would be that comfortable to say no to Chrome-only websites.
@Gargron Same. The browser I'm building is based on WebKit, but I would have chosen Gecko in a heartbeat if there was a library available.
@Gargron You forgot: Mozilla hasn't had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for deceiving people and logging their private mode browsing.
@Gargron I'd love to switch to Firefox but there are some extensions on Chrome that I absolutely need to use for work that aren't developed for Firefox.
@ThomsenDrake @Gargron Like which ones? (honest curious question here)
@Ockham @Gargron specifically the Salesloft Connect extension. It helps connect Salesloft to Gmail inboxes and quickly edit contact info. I work for an agency where I have to use the same email provider as our clients so it’s not like I can just switch to Outlook where they have a native Outlook extension.
@ThomsenDrake @Gargron Thanks for the clarification. It's indeed sometimes useful to split needs between pro and personal use. On the first one, you often have to convince others for the switch. Your are in this not free to go free and I sadly get it.
@ThomsenDrake @Gargron I had the same problem - Vivaldi @Vivaldi is the next best option, great browser (Chromium based).
@mario_angst_sci @Gargron @Vivaldi
Yeah, I currently use Arc or Brave for most tasks. I'd love to be able to just completely move away from a Chromium-based browser though.
@ThomsenDrake @Gargron @Vivaldi yeah I feel you on that. Although Vivaldi seems like a legit, ok company. I mean Mozilla also has some weird stuff going on, I only recently learnt about how much they pay their CEO, which is pretty crazy when they ask for donations to support them on the other hand.
Brave had some weird crypto stuff going on, I am seriously confused by that company . Have to check out Arc!
@mario_angst_sci @Gargron @Vivaldi
Yeah, nothing against Vivaldi. I think the Mozilla foundation as a whole does a lot to promote an open internet and I'm okay if they pay their people well but I still understand if other people think otherwise. As far as Brave, a lot of their stuff can be weirdly close to crypto but the built-in privacy features are why I use them and I just turn off the crypto-oriented features. If you've got a Mac, I highly recommend trying Arc!
@Gargron On Manjaro Linux Firefox sometimes just stops playing audio. I have not been able to figure out why. I switched to Waterfox and then Librewolf, but sometimes have the same problem. I've been using Brave, which always seems to work. It's Chromium based I know.
@Gargron
I recently made the switch from Chrome to Firefox. The browser itself has been flawless.
The only downgrade from my 100% Google stack has been using Firefox as password manager on my Android phone. It doesn't do autofills for address and credit cards as well. And it definitely has problems getting usernames and passwords into standalone apps.
@PizzaDemon @Gargron I find Firefox on my Android phone pretty problematic - whenever I try to mark text, it tends to suddenly scroll up and mark lots of stuff I didn't want to mark. And reloading a page by scrolling down doesn't work. Still better than Opera, which crashes my phone whenever YouTube videos are embedded on a forum page!
@Gargron also Firefox on Android hasn't implemented the scrolling screenshot, Chrome has.
@noplasticshower @Gargron actually this week my boss had problems with accentuation on chrome, but not on firefox. And firefox works flawlessly with wayland. The same cannot be said about vivaldi or chrome
Looking for independent input, I find that this site
https://www.techradar.com/best/browser
says
1. Mozilla Firefox
(But: somewhat Slow & Memory Hog)
2. Microsoft Edge
(But: Fight for Default, Does Not Work on Older Computers)
3. Opera
(But: Not Fastest)
4. Google Chrome
(But: Resource Hungry)
5. Vivaldi
(But: Excessively Customizable, to the point of Distraction?)
These people
https://www.lifewire.com/top-internet-browsers-4589106
say
1. Firefox
2. for Apple: Safari
3. Microsoft Edge
4. DuckDuckGo - for Privacy
5. Google Chrome - for general Functionality
6. Brave - Most Secure
7. Aloha - best VPN
8. Vivaldi - for Multitasking
9. Documents by Readdle - for YouTube on iPhone
10. Opera - for Diversity
@Gargron I've been telling my friends the same thing for a while now!
@Gargron couldn't agree more!
@Gargron I made a very serious effort to switch a few weeks ago and had to go back to Chrome. The performance hit was just too much. Same workstation, same sites, etc. I'm now considering Vivaldy as an alternative.
The feature set was comparable on Firefox but I could not live with the performance hit.
@Gargron I tried to switch. Serious keyboard queue handling issues are holding me back moving as because of #a11y reasons I need excellent keyboard support.
Hopefully @stevetex gets through their treatments and recovers well (fingers crossed, not just out of experience). After that (health first!) I hope to assist their team in addressing those issues.
@Gargron The only thing I miss compared to chromium browsers is native vertical tabs.
@Gargron I've gone back and forth over the years - when one starts acting up I switch. I've been on chrome a couple of years, so I should probably see if Firefox has improved since then.
@Gargron I use different browsers for different jobs, but FF desktop and especially mobile (ublock w/o root FTW!) are my primary drivers.
@Gargron Probably been a good 6 years since I’ve even bothered to check if a website works on Firefox. I have far more important things to do than worry about 3% of the world
@RemeJuan I'm sorry, I'm not really worried about coming across any of your websites.
@jeremy_list @Gargron If that many, and then from where I am standing is it’s FireFox’s fault, if it works for 97% of the people, then it’s certainly not the developers fault.
@RemeJuan @Gargron these days as long as you're not doing something inadvisable for browser version detection or deliberately preventing Firefox from working (which is weirdly common) it will handle your page. I've been doing web development for over a decade and literally never seen a Firefox-only bug, but I regularly find Chrome-only bugs.
@jeremy_list @Gargron I actually have, back in the days when Firefox was still pretty good and chrome was kinda new, but I probably stopped using Firefox around 2013 already. These days I only have googles chrome installed for the odd occasion I need to use MSTeams as it need me to turn off basically all security and privacy protections to work so may as well launch the least secure and most invasive flavor for that purpose. Dev work I do in Brave.
@Gargron Totally agree!
Firefox has the fastest CSS engine out there!
And have you ever tried to find a website from your history by entering part of characters from the URL path in Chromium browsers!? Chrome and Edge just don't find the address in the history. Their address bar search is absolutely ridiculous!
Whereas Firefox can even find the last query parameter!
@Gargron Let me first close the Chrome tab that has sucked up 5GB of memory for no rational reason, and I can then respond.