Chances are more and more of what you do when you use your computer is done through a browser (keeping in contact with friends, jobs, and even organizing).
So the importance of browsers cannot be understated. And having one piece of software do all of this means you have to be able to trust it.
Which brings us to Google & Chrome. Google Chrome has come to dominate the browser usage share, but even that is an understatement. Every single browser you have heard of, with the exception of Firefox, uses a version of Chrome (Chromium) in the background. Opera, Edge, Brave, you name it, they're all based off of Chrome.
Most people know Google is shitty already; if we're just talking about the web, they are regularly caught sabotaging Firefox to boost Chrome usage and, as any corporation would, continue to strengthen their monopoly by making it harder for alternative browsers to rise up (hence why Firefox is the only alternative right now). This is of course without mentioning the crimes they commit outside the web, e.g. how they help build the US's drones, or how they work closely with the NSA.
It goes without saying then that the authors of this post all urge you to switch from Chrome, or other Chrome-based browsers, to Firefox. This article shows you how quick & easy it is to switch, and transfer all your bookmarks, passwords, and other browser data to Firefox too!
Firefox isn't just the only viable alternative to Chrome, though. It also has a bunch of cool tricks and features up its sleeve.
Great Extensions
Firefox is very easy to customize to your liking via the settings or extensions, you can have vertical/tree style tabs via one of these extensions, there's also Gesturefy which lets you navigate the browser with mouse gestures.
There's also the Containers feature which "lets you carve out a separate box for each of your online lives", it basically provides you with separate profiles/browsers... and extensions like Facebook Container use it to isolate facebook related tabs and trackers into a facebook container seperate from everything else, or Temporary Containers which provides you with disposable containers, or Google Container among others. There's a lot more but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.
Firefox also comes with built-in tracking protection and anti-fingerprinting features plus tweaks you can apply.
Extensions on Chrome are actually much weaker than on Firefox because of Manifest v3 and other things, check this post for more on this.
Build Beautiful Firefox Themes
check https://color.firefox.com/
Firefox for Android
Unlike most browsers, Firefox supports extensions on Android so you can use uBlock Origin (adblocker), Dark Reader and other extensions.
It also comes with built-in tracking protection and an option to have the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
Plus you get syncing between your browsers and firefox has a feature to show tabs from other devices in the customization settings.
You should get Firefox from F-Droid instead of Google Play. It's called Fennec on F-Droid
Firefox for iOS
Firefox ship both the standard browser, as well as Firefox Focus with extra tracking protections and a built-in adblocker
More detailed technical info about Firefox
Firefox is a unique browser in a lot of ways. Firefox runs on an engine called Gecko, as opposed to Apple's web engine called WebKit or Google's fork of WebKit called Blink.
Firefox was originally a spinoff of mozilla internet suite, which itself was a continuation of the netscape communicator project. Firefox then underwent the quantum update which made it much faster and made it easier to develop for while also dumping the XUL extension system. This means that the Gecko engine is entirely independent from chrome/safari. It is also a lot more tightly integrated into the firefox browser, which is one of the reasons why most browsers are based off of blink/webkit.
There are firefox based browsers though, the most notable of which is the TOR browser, which protects users by routing all traffic through the TOR network and it's also designed to be as difficult to fingerprint as possible.
Custom CSS styles that can change the whole look of the browser
Firefox also has a thing called userChrome (nothing to do with Chrome) 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.
god this shit pisses me off like no other.
:wojak-nooo: you're using an unsupported browser!! you can't do that!! you need to switch now or our site will go fucky wucky
:gigachad: no
For fuck's sake we're going back to the 90s when websites told you what version of Internet Explorer to use and what to change your screen resolution to.
Don't forget to donate to the open source projects you use. Otherwise they die or rely on chasing corporate grants
Would upbear this multiple times if I could. Containers rock, and I don't get why Mozilla doesn't market the feature more.
Make multiple accounts in different containers and you can :wink:
I love Firefox, and want to use it, the problem is, it doesn't have an extension like Seizafe. Microsoft Edge is the only browser that allows me to completely stop videos and GIFs from autoplaying and use Seizafe. Once Firefox gets Seizafe or an extension similar to it, I will move over, but I'm not risking a seizure just to use Firefox as much as I love Firefox and want to use it.
Any recommendations on what Chromium fork?
Oh, thanks for their email.
I know, I should have made more clear that I know that autoplay can be stopped through Firefox, but I cannot also use Seizafe on Firefox. I've gone through about:config on Firefox and manually set the autoplay features. There's a great extension that stops GIFs on Firefox called "Toggle Animated GIF" and it stops all the GIFs. Unfortunately, the lack of any extension similar to Seizafe is a killer for me. If it had an extension that monitored videos for potentially triggering things, than I would be on Firefox right now. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It only analyzed GIFs to see if they were potentially triggering and everything I've heard is that it was never that great even when it worked.
I've been using firefox exclusively since like 2007, now that i don't have a pc i use firefox for android with uBlock & noscript add ons and it fuckin rules
I haven't seen an ad on a website in so long i honestly can't even remember what it looks like
That's literally one of many attempts of Google trying to kill Firefox through breaking standards
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_and_Directory_Entries_API/Firefox_support
Browsers shouldn't have so many features. Building houses on sand isn't a good thing.
Aren't they planning to disable adblocking soon in chrome? I don't know the details tbh, since I'm using the fiery foxbrowser
they are making the extensions worse by removing an important API they use. uBlock Origin will be affected by this
idk
actually i'm not even sure if it's possible to disable adblocking. Even if they remove the extension, you'll still be able to install it from a crx file
i guess if they remove it, I'll consider switching to something else. Chrome is fine until then
All this punk and core stuff is getting really tired.
Solarpunk too, with vegetation everywhere and other impractical ideas. Socialism realism needs to come back
Every single browser you have heard of, with the exception of Firefox, uses a version of Chrome (Chromium) in the background. Opera, Edge, Brave, you name it, they’re all based off of Chrome.
That's not entirely true, Safari isn't Chrome.
Safari is fine. The main benefit is tighter integration with the (Apple) devices it runs on. In terms of breaking Google's monopoly, it's better than pretty much any browser other than Firefox, since the rest are all Chromium.
I used Firefox on Android but battery life was horrendous.
Chromium based browsers or safari if you're on IOS are pretty much your only option on mobile. Not using Chrome itself though, I really don't like it
I switched to iOS Firefox a few months ago and I’m super happy with it. I was lucky enough to switch before Safari switched the url bar to be at the bottom which I hate
Ah. Well at least it’s a nice reskin and works with my computer’s browser :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah a few months ago with ublock origin and everything.
:downbear:
Firefox + Firefox focus for adblocking have been great for me on iOS. You're using a whole ass spyware phone though, you should at least degoogle it
Yeah because Firefox is just a reskinned safari on iOS. On android it's different
Firefox Nightly is way better on battery for some weird reason
also checkout librewolf and firefox nightly, you can never have too many versions of firefox on the same computer.
yeah and you can use the Google Container extension for more privacy
