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Why do you use firefox? (upload.wikimedia.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Vitaly@feddit.uk to c/technology@beehaw.org

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2514293

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[-] OneRedFox@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago
  1. Mozilla's goals for the web line up quite nicely with my own.
  2. The performance is good for what I want.
  3. The extension API is more powerful than Chrome's.
  4. Outside of the Apple ecosystem, it's the last major alternative to the Chrome skins.
  5. It isn't actively trying to cripple adblockers.
[-] drew_belloc@programming.dev 27 points 1 year ago

Is not chromium, has a good UI, supports manifest v2, is open source and have native support for autoscrolling on linux

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

It also supports MV3 without removing the blocking WebRequest hook.

It's not Chrome or Chromium derived. Google has incentives to mine me for data. Mozilla, not so much. I don't trust Mozilla completely, but I certainly trust them more than Google to have my best interest at heart.

[-] lfromanini@feddit.nl 20 points 1 year ago

There are other reasons, but if I had to point only one word: containers.

[-] lichtmetzger@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Switched to Chrome a few years back when Firefox killed XUL and bundled too much bloatware.

Now I've switched back to Firefox because it's good again and Google is doing too many evil things lately (Web Integrity).

[-] Bobo@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

Supports extensions on mobile

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 13 points 1 year ago

The mobile version has addons like ublock-origin and bottom search bar. Plus, Chrome wants you to enjoy the web, which is full of ads. I don't, that's why.

[-] Hirom@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago

Because it has tabs. Seriously, I first used Firefox back when IE6 was the norm, and Firefox brought tabs and better standard compliance. Haven't turned my back since.

[-] martinbasic@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago
  1. It's faster
  2. It's not chromium-based
  3. It can protect you from trackers and block ads
  4. Chrome may terminates Adblock-functionality extensions in Manifest V3 and Firefox wouldn't, afaik
[-] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 11 points 1 year ago

Container tabs. No more need for separate chrome profiles.

[-] algorithmae@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Oh THAT'S how you do it? That was one feature of Chrome that I couldn't figure out how to do with Firefox. Thanks!

[-] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

Glad I could help.

With treeview tabs it's even more awesome. Really loving Firefox, only recently got it. Only annoying thing is on Android it reloads tabs when I switch between apps.

[-] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago

Ad blocking on desktop and mobile is awesome.

And it's vital to have multiple browser engines in the wild for interoperability. If we go all Chromium-based, we're going to eventually pay for that like IE6.

And Google is kind of an untrustworthy POS of a company these days.

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Because it is fucking awesome.

Plus on mobile, I likes my ublock, dark reader, etc.

[-] bermuda@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Because I like having RAM to spare

[-] fsniper@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

I have been with Firefox, since it's inception. Never left it. And it never let me down.

[-] mojo@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

It's got a cool fox logo

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

Because I hate ads.

[-] BDC@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

One browser ruled by google is not good for anyone.

[-] donio@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On Android it's the only reasonable choice so no question there.

On desktop I used Netscape/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox/Conkeror for many years but switched to Chromium when I had to start over after the XUL-apocalypse. But lately I've been maintaining my Firefox setup more or less in parallel with Chromium and this week as it happens I am trying to make the switch back again. Mostly just to wean off the Google stuff. Will see how it goes.

Another (less-critical) motivation is that Chromium takes over 10 hours to build on my machine. Firefox is under 1 and it gets done way faster even if an LLVM or Rust build is involved too.

[-] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

To get away from Google. Mozilla seems alright in the grand scheme of things.

[-] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Simple, it is from an org that has been FOSS and user focused for decades. Compare that to a bunch of companies which have more or less been doing the opposite. As far as I am concerned, people are just nuts for using anything else. But people are free to do what they want.

[-] GhostMatter@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Tree-style tabs and customizability. Better Android UI and privacy.

[-] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 year ago

TST looks awesome. Thanks for the tip. I just started using Firefox because of container tabs.

[-] GhostMatter@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

It's the main reason I stayed on Firefox for so long.

I spent like a year or two using Chrome more because Firefox was having a rough few years and I wasn't much on my desktop, but that's it.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because it has a built in adblocker on mobile and with the news that Chromium itself is going to be doing shit to stop adblockers, I don't want a chromium based browser period. Only reason I ever switched from Firefox in the first place was that, at the time, it was getting slower and Chrome was the new, fast, hotness in town.

[-] garrett@infosec.pub 4 points 1 year ago

Just a small counterweight to everything being chromium. I’m still having trouble with them not having passkeys yet but I know the feature is coming.

[-] Rentlar@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

I don't want to sign in to my browser, simple as that. I tried Firefox maybe 5 years ago and I simply liked it better.

Chrome's manifest V3 announcement means I'm sticking with Firefox.

[-] fushuan@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because I feel shamed every time I check privacytools.io if I don't.

/s it's great but I need a chromium backup. Brave is the best chromium clone I know.

Btw, if y'all want to download pure firefox, check this, there's a better official download link with less tracking. In any case, I use weakened librewolf with Medium Ublock blocking (block all 3rd party scripts and frames and enable scripts only for logged sites since they are tracking me through other means anyway)

[-] butter@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago

You might check out privacy guides instead of privacy tools. Basically, the owner of privacy tools wouldn't make changes that the community wanted, causing privacy guides to be formed.

Read both, form your own opinion. I don't like how tools has what amounts to ads on it.

Privacyguides.org https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides

[-] fushuan@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

cool, I'm a sucker for privacy reccomendations.

Thanks!

[-] ConsciousCode@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I switched recently as my first baby steps to degoogle, particularly when I saw the writing on the wall with WEI. I was very pleasantly surprised by how customizable it is using XUL.

[-] Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

I don't, tbh. I did, for 15 years, because it was the most customizable and feature-rich browser on the market, but when they killed XUL support all my important shit broke, 15 years of customizations and getting things just how I wanted them, and instead of spending that again I migrated to Vivaldi essentially out of spite.

[-] urquell@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago
[-] ConsciousCode@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

It's an HTML-like language that defines the browser's interface, you can use it to change the shapes, positions, colors, whatever of your toolbars and tabs. Also they do still have customization via userChrome.css and I think you can re-enable XUL if you dig enough? It does get mixed a bit with HTML-namespaced tags too.

[-] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 year ago

Pale Moon still supports XUL, if you want to play with it.

[-] Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Among other things, it powered legacy extensions, and let them do far more than the essentially crippled WebExtensions

[-] Rhaedas@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Because before Firefox I used Netscape. It's had its ups and downs but it's never been bad to me to the point of considering moving to anything else. So a combo of legacy and that it works.

[-] geosoco@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Chrome lost its way years ago. I value not seeing ads or getting personalized content more than I value 99% of the chrome features.

Since Firefox finally fixed that weird memory fragmentation issue, it's been pretty smooth sailing for me. Inspector & Debugger could use a few performance patches though.

[-] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I like the fox theme

[-] gk99@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Because Chrome just stopped working on my PC one day like a decade ago.

[-] gu3miles@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

99 percent of the time, it works 100 percent of the time

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

My work software kept seeing weird bugs in Chrome, so I switched permanently.

[-] pearsche@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago

I don't, I moved to Chrome after a year of using Firefox full time.

[-] datavoid@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Loaded question much

this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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