my issue with firefox atm is that both twitter extensions I use have been hobbled/removed by it for what looks to me to be spurious reasons.
https://github.com/kheina-com/Blue-Blocker/discussions/294
https://github.com/dimdenGD/OldTwitter/discussions/752
inb4 “lol @ using twitter in 2024” I just steal memes from it, and mastodon/bluesky simply aren’t up to speed yet.
Weighing options though I’ll go with Firefox and shitty twitter experience rather then Chrome and the ads everywhere experience. Not really a contest there. Just idle complaints.
Floorp for power users
I’ve been curious about Floorp. Are you using it as your daily driver? And pros and cons?
The biggest pro for me is the vertical tabs. It’s got the same vertical tabs that Edge has which are great. I only use Edge at work but it’s great especially when you have a web based production environment like nCino that you work in all day and have dozens of tabs open. You can group them up nicely and keep yourself organized. Floorp is based off of Firefox ESR so it’s on an older build (but up to date security). The current build is based off FF 115 while FF is on 129 now.
Have you tried Tree Style Tab or Sidebery?
I’ve tried but for some reason, I can never get them set up correctly and I’m not technologically illiterate. Its been a while since I tried it though since Floorp just works.
I moved from vivaldi to it. Move the the side bar to the left and it felt just like home
Source: I made it up
I guess Anonym, PPA, Cliqz, pocket, the default telemetry that is non-trivial to disable, and whatever this latest nonsense is are all just hallucinations.
That doesn’t seem to be a source for OP’s message.
Mozilla’s slowly creeping in the surveillance with adding integrated crap like Pocket and AI driven Fake Spot. I’m really glad Librewolf’s made a privacy focused fork of their browser without all that nonsense.
a lot of sites are unusable with librewolf for some reason
A lot of sites? Or more like just a few? Personally, the ratio of working vs broken sites is like 100 to 1 and when a site is broken, its usually one of those shit pile SEO listicle sites or some absolute trash heap of ads. Every time I’ve disabled the protections I’ve regretted it.
A lot of the web is useless trash nowadays and Librewolf has done a good job of filtering that for me.
Related announcement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution
TLDR: Mozilla wants your data and it’s opt out. If you’re on FF 128 it’s already on and you will have to turn it off manually. Shame how they have fallen this low. The LEAST they could have done is show a pop up announcement when the user upgraded to 128.
Also: +1 to Librewolf. Mozilla is definitely going to try more scummy crap like this in the future. Definitely the better option over Firefox.
atleast its opt out
I’ve read the announcement. Sounds reasonable and sufficiently private to me. So saying “Mozilla wants your data” sounds misleading and like an overreaction to me. Also might help to mitigate the arms race in privacy protection versus tracking for ads and worse stuff.
Mozilla is definitely going to try more scummy crap like this in the future.
How do you know that?
Even if, there will still be alternatives. But right now, Firefox is the best browser with regards to privacy and security. It even passed minmum ratings by the german IT security authority, contrary to other widely used browsers.
Respectefully disagree. Reasonable would’ve been making it opt in, not opt out and justifying it with “would be too difficult to explain”.
I’m with you on the opt-out vs. opt-in part. That’s not a nice move. Regardless of that, Firefox is still the best choice. I hope they will continue to improve.
Can’t wait for ladybird to come out! Finally something that speaks our language.
I think Servo is a better option, it’s also being written in rust.
Wasn’t Firefox supposed to incorporate Servo in some way or another before Quantum was developed?
I think the Quantum release was what integrated some major components of the servo project.
So long as it survives rusts complexity and lack of portability. I’m always down for more options!
rust is complex and non-portable?
i’ve never heard of this, do you mind explaining what you mean better?
You joking? 😆 I don’t want to discourage you from giving rust a try but come on. Have you ever talked to a developer that spent any real time with rust, anyone that got as far as multi threading?
Looks really cool. I hope we don’t have the overreliance on one rendering engine in the future. Once one or the other comes out I’ll definitely try it out.
Damn, 2026. I hope you CAN wait.
That or the free internet as we know it will be dead by the time it reaches production.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I just read that whole article and it sounds like a good implementation? Companies want to know how effective their ads are, and I like their approach of trying to find a way to provide this without wholesale personal data collection. They even say at the end that they don’t get the data either. It sounds like a reasonable thing to try and standardize.
I’m not commenting on implementation itself but rather on how Mozilla went about with an opt-out approach into the collection program (even if it was for testing) to a community they have cultivated with the promise of privacy.
Collecting my data is a big deal. It doesn’t matter how it is used. I should at least consent to it.
I feel like this argument is fair enough. I think a pop-up informing the user about it and how to opt out is sufficient.
What does chromium-based browsers on pc have that Firefox doesn’t have? Like I don’t understand why people use Chrome instead of Firefox.
One thing for danish people is the “online government id” (MitID) everyone has and needs to use for online purchases and logins to banks and various other things.
It straight up only works on chrome for mobile :/
I easily use Firefox and mitID and there is no problem, but if I’m wrong or using a special version it could be different for us
I really wish Mozilla would focus on these missing bits and bobs like WebUSB and this one you mentioned instead of whatever the fuck it is that they’re doing now
I really hope there’s a significant rise in Firefox -and derivatives- usage share. It will be good for everyone, even those stuck on Chromium browsers.
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brave promised to continue using v2 so that every brave user would continue having the freedom of choice to use ublock and umatrix if they so desired.
Then there’s also the adblocking brave has built in and also adguard for windows.
Also, firefox is full of tracking and telemetry from advertising spyware now. If you want to use a firefox based browser, use Librewolf instead, all of the best parts of firefox with none of the bullshit firefox has in it now.
Just be sure you enable the letter boxing feature inside of librewolf.
Firefox feels so much slowwr than chrome when loading sites for me
I’ll take slower over ad-bloated every day.
If you’re talking about Google owned sites, there’s circumstantial evidence that Google sets their sites up to do that intentionally in order to gimp competitors.
That’s weird, something is definitely wrong. Are they set up in a similar way? The first thing that comes to my mind is: Are you using the same DNS server on both? Differences in DNS response time should be more noticeable than rendering time on most hardware. And I think Firefox doesn’t use the system DNS by default but I might be wrong. Do you mind checking? I’m curious now.
For me, switching from chrone to ff around 3 years it felt the opposite. Ff opens so much faster. Also scrolling is way smoother.
Mozilla is about to collapse due to the Google antitrust ruling though.
Um, what makes you think that?
The Google antitrust decision will result in Mozilla losing 90% of their revenue since Google won’t be allowed to pay them to use their search engine anymore.
Mozilla makes about $590m a year.
$510m of that is from Google paying for the search engine default spot.
Well I for one hope they figure out an alternative income, like a premium subscription? Or perhaps look to get acquired by proton and get some integration going with those services? I’m no expert here, I just think that they have a lot of happy users, and there must be some way to figure this out financially.
They need to reform as a non-profit with user membership, an elected board, and fundraising like Wikipedia.
I’m not aware of any non-profit with staffing the size of Mozilla. The problem is that you need to be able to make money and to set it aside for bad times, so you don’t have to fire employees the moment the donations falter.
The 501©(3) non-profit form of tax-exempt non-profit, which is what the Mozilla Foundation continues to be, is not allowed to do so. That’s why they opened up the for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary that does most of the Firefox development.
On the plus side, the only shareholder of the Mozilla Corporation is the Mozilla Foundation, which therefore essentially cannot accept any of the profit the MoCo might make.
This is the real answer
That’s a ridiulously low amount of money given the amount of users. I’d happily pay 10-20 bucks a year to keep mozilla alive. Not that I like it much, but more so than the big alternatives
Yeah, Apple seems to be able to fetch a little more than a billion per percent of the browser market (18% at 20B), but Mozilla is only able to score 0.5B for 2-3% of the market. Mozilla is getting a quarter of Apple’s rate.
That said, Apple has a lot more leverage than Google, and they can strong arm a better deal. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Safari users are just a more valuable marketing cohort. Firefox’s user base is going to have a lot more people who opt out of and or block targeted marketing.
Mozilla and its murder/suicide pact with Google falling apart may be the best thing that could possibly happen to Firefox.
The antitrust case is about Google and Apple, not Mozilla. It doesn’t mean the antitrust case will have any impact on Mozilla, because it’s not a major player, unlike Apple.
I don’t think you realize where and why Mozilla gets its funding.
the number of forks says ff is next. the ad machine needs your money.
I mean unless Mozilla starts getting sued by Ad companies to force them to ban ad blockers, I don’t think that will happen because being able to have ad blockers is a major selling point.
But even if it does happen, Firefox is open source and has been forked, so the next alternative is LibreWolf.
The ad machine doesn’t need my money. They never even asked. I am the product to them.
I like Vivaldi and they are going to keep V2 support for a while. I will switch to Firefox when it’s gone, but for the time being I am happy they are keeping the support.
And even if they don’t keep it: they got browser-level Adblock- and Tracking-Filters that you can just feed the same lists you’d put into uBlock
Sure it’s lacking the spot-blocking, tool if there’s a missed ad or a fine-tuned whitelisting but I think that browser will stay usable even if V3 is implemented.
Hell yeah, best customizable browser I’ve seen
about:config
: “Am I a joke to you?”I would totally use Firefox if they had better first-party tab group support and syncing workspaces. They help with my tab messes which I need to keep organized
How convenient that this happens just a few days after Firefox implements the features that have been blocking me from switching for the last few years.
Still, I’m curious about other browsers. We know Chrome is killing V2, but what about other Chromium-based browsers? I saw below a comment espousing Brave, but I’d rather use Chrome than Brave because of the gross crypto bs. What about Vivaldi, Opera, and Chredge? Will they keep supporting Manifest V2?
just a few days after Firefox implements the features that have been blocking me from switching for the last few years.
Which are those?
Multi-window support on iPad is the main one. Less important, though it would have bugged me if they didn’t have it, is sustained Incognito tabs—which apparently they had until a couple of months ago, then removed without explanation, then added back in just 1 day ago, also without explanation. Found a thread on their forums with a whole bunch of people perplexed and asking what happened.
Your first point at least is an iPad thing. Nothing is fully featured on the iPad. Not even safari. It’s thanks to that exact fact that chrome is at least mostly fully featured on the iPad. If safari had comparable function, you could bank on them blocking those features from the chrome app too. There’s a deal made somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if cash flow from Google is why safari is still the same piece of crap it always has been. “Hey your R&D + return for safari only nets you 1% YOY. We’ll give you 2% YOY if you just don’t even bother.”
They only know raising prices and knee-jerk reactions to competitive moves in their market space. Additional functionality for the user is only granted when it’s being used as a cudgle against their competition. Never for users benefit.
If you’re seeing new functionality on the iPad Firefox app, it’s likely because Firefox figured out a way to implement it without paying apple because they want the user to have that function. Totally different ethos.
If you’re seeing new functionality on the iPad Firefox app, it’s likely because Firefox figured out a way to implement it without paying apple because they want the user to have that function
Nothing at all remotely like that. They just don’t have enough developers to have implemented it sooner. It’s an API that Apple introduced in 2019, that Google implemented within months, Microsoft implemented within a couple of years, and Mozilla finally implemented this July.
Regulations, like the Digital Market Act, are also a big factor.
There are actually no alternative browser on iOS. Before the European Digital Market Act all iOS browser have to use webkit, so while you could install Firefox, Chrome and others, they were actually using Safari’s rendering engine. I believe that’s where a lot of the limitations come from. Now with the DMA Firefox could use it’s own rendering engine but this hasn’t landed yet. I don’t know if any other browser has switched from webkit yet.
There are actually no alternative browser on iOS
Sort of. As you say, it’s more accurate to say that they’re forced to use Safari’s rendering, but everything else is up to them, the same as how any other app would be developed. That’s how they get their own features like bookmark syncing etc.
Being able to have multiple windows of the same app is a feature Apple introduced in 2019, and obviously Safari supported it immediately. Google Chrome added support for multiple windows after a few months. I switched to Microsoft Edge once they added support for it about a year, maybe 18 months later, and have just been waiting for Firefox to finally support it so I can switch to that.
Incidentally, 2019 is also the year Firefox finally added support on their desktop browser for a CSS property (
column-span
) that a site I used to frequent required to work. Though by that time I no longer used that particular site.
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How is libredns vs nextdns on a day to day user?
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I’m really hoping Google’s antitrust case doesn’t kill Mozilla. Over 85% of Mozilla’s cash flow is dependent on Google paying for that search box.
Honestly at least they’d be forced to revamp their business model and focus on their users. I’d willingly donate to them monthly if it went to firefox directly and they acted in our interest accordingly
If Mozilla stopped paying his CEO millions of dollars… and if they actually financed development with people donations…
We don’t know what they pay their new CEO.
I don’t think google wants to get hit with another antitrust lawsuit for web browsing, so I am sure they will figure out some other deal to funnel money to Firefox
Good point. Could be like MS and Apple in the late 90’s. When Apple was on death’s door, Gates invested in Apple so MS would have faux competition for regulators.