I personally use Firefox on all my devices but I can't help but think that they are just changing things for the sake of it now. They aren't gonna increase any marketshare by these pointless UI redesigns. All the stuff I hear about Mozilla execs isn't very promising, either.
All we can do is just promote Firefox and hope for the best I guess.
The ideal solution we should work toward (somehow) is to separate the Firefox developers from the parasite that is Mozilla. Unionize them, make it into a co-op, etc.
https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/
Without it Chromium, and Google, would have a monopoly basically. Microsoft's new browser Edge is based on Chromium for example. Firefox comes with tracking protection built in and it's great for privacy. It's anti fingerprinting stuff that it got from Tor for example. Firefox on Android supports extensions so you can use uBlock Origin (adblocker). These are just some examples. What do you use?
I use Chrome because it's what I've used for years and it's convenient. I guess I'd be open to switching, I just never gave it much thought.
This is a really nice write up on why I should switch. I'll install Firefox tonight. Thank you!
I was on chrome for a long time and gradually made the switch, now I only use it for logging into my google accounts so I don't pollute my Firefox sessions with them. Been really happy with it so far, i was dragging my feet forever about it
You can use Containers on Firefox for that... it's like having different profiles/browsers.
Oh nice nice nice, that's just what i needed thanks Pirate!
That also just jogged my memory of a security tip from Swift On Security to setup the first profile as an unused one and actually use the second/third/etc one for your main ones since a lot of scripts just check the first one. Not sure how up to date that is relative to where Firefox is now though
Firefox is fast and being a different engine helps set itself apart from almost every other browser out there. It also has a lot of customization, it's got a lot of different things you can do with extensions, like vertical/tree style tabs you can see a few here, there's also gesturefy which lets you navigate the browser with mouse gestures. Like @Pirate said there's also container tabs which are now in the base browser, but extensions can use it to do more like facebook containers which isolates facebook related tabs and trackers into a facebook container seperate from everything else, or temporary containers which is like a mini incognito tab, or google containers among others. There's a lot more but that's what I can think of off the top of my head. Lastly, since most browsers use the WebExtension API extensions are mostly cross compatible which makes it possible to run chrome exclusive extensions on firefox based browsers as well, you will probably have to compile it yourself or get a converter but waterfox even goes so far as to let you use the chrome web store if you want, though obviously it's better to use extensions from firefox extensions when possible because it has better moderation and the extensions are guaranteed to work.
Firefox also has a thing called userChrome (which is called that because of chrome=new look, it came out before the chrome browser lol) which lets you basically change the whole look of the browser, you can see some examples here. Those are a few examples but if you want more you can check out /r/firefoxcss. There's a redesign for firefox coming soon so they might need some reworking after that but I'm sure they're aware and working on them.
Outside of customization firefox has other nice things going for it. The firefox accounts system isn't locked to firefox itself. I can use waterfox at home and firefox on my work computer and fennec on my phone and they would all sync up with the "tabs from other devices" button if I'm using the same firefox account. There's also firefox profiles which are basically completely different firefox instances and while the interface for changing them is normally pretty rough there's an extension (and a little piece of software) that makes it just as easy as chrome.
Yes. It’s being demoted to a config option in this upcoming release now.
Yeah it sucks but at least it's still gonna be around and they are gonna collect telemetry on how many use it.
On first look I was pretty critical, but I just downloaded Nightly and tried it out and it's... fine. Like I don't see the point, but it's not actually that different, especially functionally. It's basically just a bit extra negative space, some different colors, and rounded corners.
I changed
browser.compactmode.showto true, but I don't see any difference, even after restarting. There's no option in the regular settings, even after changing that config option.Edit: ahh, it's in Customize (which they hid under More Tools for some reason). Now it looks even less different. I wasn't a fan of Quantum's compact, but Proton's compact is basically Quantum's normal size.
I really like how this bring firefox more in line with their mobile browser, which looks amazing. The tabs are a bit large but I didn't like the awesomebar either until I used it for a week. I like the more rounded look of everything.