For anyone who thinks they’re “stuck” with chrome, Firefox has gotten it’s shit together massively in the last few years.
Which is why Google’s next step is to effectively require chromium browsers for any websites wanting access to Google services and products.
Feels bad but I can’t condone this behaviour anymore and I feel ashamed that I haven’t seen the greed Google is capable of doing.
In the coming months I will do my best to migrate away from the Google system, even if I end up paying a tad more, maybe just in time to set up a home server for photos.
Sounds like a good reason to stop using Google services and products. Some examples (note, I haven’t used some of these yet):
Search - DuckDuckGo
Email - ProtonMail
Drive - Dropbox
Sheets/Docs - Zoho
Some of these examples may not the best for everyone, but my point is that we do not have to let Google continue to push us around.
No, it sounds like a good reason for anti-trust regulators to make an injunction to stop Google from doing it.
It’s time for this fantasy bullshit notion that boycotts are worth a damn to end. In reality, it’s nothing but pro-corporate propaganda designed to make people think they’re “fighting the man” or whatever when they’re actually completely ineffective.
Now, don’t get me wrong: by all means, please feel free to quit using Google’s shit! That’s 100% a good thing and I fully encourage it! Just don’t delude yourself into thinking it represents even the slightest shred of a solution to the systemic problem Google’s anticompetitive strategies represent.
It’s not you and me. It’s the websites. They’re not going to give up on having anyone with Chrome or using Google services from being able to access their sites. We’d end up with 2 Internets - one with Google and one without. And we all know that the one with Google will win.
If you like ChatGPT/care less about privacy, Bing is a great alternative.
Oh, but it will not be GOOGLE’s next step. I dont think it is the goal anyway. They only need to help site owners to sign up to their WEI thing, and there will be oh so many incentives. Google will be happy to license it out, or even make the toolkit fully opensource, to whoever wants to implement it in their browser, regardless of the engine used. Their obvious ultimate goal is to show the ads with no interruptions, which also happens to be the desire of most of the websites. And many websites will willingly implement it on their side, they do not really need too much encouragement.
I dont understand when people think Firefox didn’t have their shit together. Been using it since 2006 and never had an issue. Ya’ll must be doing some serious browsing.
Been using since release. I never felt like I was making some kind of compromise by using it. Firefox always had their shit together from my experience.
Now, it’s on par with Chrome or better than (tradeoffs and personal preference), even for developing web apps. Firefox dev tools pull ahead of Chrome’s, then Chrome catches up and does something new and useful, then Firefox catches up, and so forth.
Firefox is good. It’s not like “I’m leaving Photoshop for the GIMP” kind of thing-- It’s like “I’m leaving Honda for Toyota.”
When chrome was released, Firefox felt bloated visually and slow. I switched to chrome with the initial release, then tried to come back to Firefox some years later. Still felt like it was slow.
Im back trying it again. The desktop browser seems to work alright, but I’m growing weary of the Android app.
Now you can use desktop extensions on firefox mobile. They stepped up big time.
Did they lift the “only curated extensions” bullshit yet? I’m on Kiwi just to be able to run my own (unpacked) extensions that FF doesn’t let me do so.
Firefox has never not had it’s shit together. It’s worked fine. I never understood people having issues with it, unless they were running like 50 extensions and a bunch of grease monkey scripts along with a crusty old profile with a massive cache of old data.
Meanwhile everyone is complaining about Chrome eating up all their RAM
Funnily enough Chromium actually consumes less RAM and is safer due to better sandboxing.
But neither of these concern the average user. However, the main difference between the browsers user may notice is how pages that are still loading behave. Firefox has the correct behavior. Aka waiting for vast majority of the elements to finish loading versus Chromium just going “if it’s rendered it’s intractable.” This unfortunately means that Firefox feels slower even though it’s actually faster.
Also, on behalf of the dark mode enjoyers, flashing white for a moment while launching, loading web pages or updating contents of a webpage is incredibly annoying. None of the Chromium browsers flash white on dark mode.
Any idea if Firefox has a good translation extension? Like Chrome has Google translate that actively translates the sites you enter into English.
I live in a country that I don’t speak the language of, so I often need to use websites and translate them to English, which is why I’ve been stuck with Chrome.
There are 36 pages of translation extensions. The official one works without the cloud, which is pretty unique.
Personally I like the Immersive Translate extension. You can select your preferred translation engine (cloud based, but it supports many) and it shows you both the translated text and original text by alternating the paragraphs.
Sadly the only thing it’s lacking. Saw a couple of years ago they were looking at different technologies to implement it client side for privacy reasons.
Before post edit:
While looking for the source i found this:
Firefox Tests Privacy-Friendly Web Page Translations
It’s coming bby!
@NamesArrHard @clearleaf, better than a extension is to use this one for Desktop, so you can use it independent of the browser.
It’s FOSS, multiengine for 125 languages, customizable shortcuts, Windows and Linux
I don’t think FF supports PWAs yet. I need to use Chromium to turn some sites like Discord into PWAs, as the desktop Linux version doesn’t screen share on Wayland. I also like having YTM as an app.
I believe that there is an extension for Firefox pwa support, but the Android version definitely supports pwas natively.
Yes, FF Android does, the extension for the desktop was very janky last time I used it. Mozilla just needs to support it natively IMO.
There have been quite a few questionable decisions by Mozilla though, they have focused on some very weird things, not to mention scandals about management salaries (No idea how it is now). I really really hope they will not follow suite which honestly is not as far fetched as one could think.
Does Firefox support multiple windows on iPad OS yet? That was the reason I stayed with Chrome for so long, and also is why I’ve more recently switched to Edge as the only other cross-platform browser I could find that had that.
I’m not sure, but Firefox on iOS isn’t true Firefox. To my knowledge, Apple doesn’t allow browsers to use anything but their Safari engine. As another user put it, “Firefox on iOS is barely more than a skin for Safari.”
I can speak to Firefox on desktop and Android, however: they’re fantastic!
tl;dr: If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
Nope, not in this case. iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same app for years now (since 2018 or 2019), and Safari naturally supported it out of the gate. Google supported it in Chrome very quickly, and Microsoft got around to it with Edge last year.
It turns out that while the rendering part of all browsers on iOS is Safari, the skin and UI elements (the “chrome” that Google’s browser was named after) are all custom to each app. And Firefox has been very poor at upgrading theirs.
I mean this with no personal enmity: piss off with your iPad. (Don’t expect power user features to actually be good)
Umm, why? With all due respect, why would you expect me to stop using a device that does everything I want it to perfectly well? I use Edge and it syncs with my Windows desktop and Android phone perfectly well. Both Edge and Google Chrome have supported this feature. It’s only Firefox that is being a laggard.
This is not an iPad problem, it’s a Firefox one.
Nah, Apple doesn’t allow any other browser engines on iOS other than their own, so every browser available on it is just safari.
Sure, but that’s not actually my point.
Since 2018 or so, iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same application, but only if the app developer supports it. Safari, of course, supported this immediately. Google got around to implementing it pretty quickly on Chrome. Edge took years before they finally got there last year or maybe the year before.
Firefox, last time I checked (which was admittedly a few months ago) still did not support it. Plus, on their GitHub page, there was some talk about trying to implement it in a really dumb way, with each window sharing all the same tabs—completely defeating the point of the feature, in my opinion.
When wanting sync between my desktop (Windows), phone (Android), and tablet (iPad OS), I don’t really care what renderer is used under the hood. I care what name brand is on the browser and what it’s able to sync with. Firefox syncs with Firefox, even when Firefox is secretly Safari.
Firefox is the only browser on Android which still doesn’t have tabs. Wrangling multiple tabs on a tablet or foldable is just a pain on Firefox. Chrome on standard screen sizes even has tab groups. Until then, Firefox is a no go for me.
Uhh what? I’ve been using Firefox on Android for a looong time and there are tabs…
I’m speaking of an exposed tabs bar. Like all modern browsers have… except Firefox for Android. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/tablet-amp-mobile-ui-tab-bar-for-android/idi-p/333
