this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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[–] SeethingSloth@lemmy.world 90 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

I've been hearing more and more about Firefox lately, which seemed to coincide with many users migrating from Chrome. Have there been any major recent changes to the latter which have caused this migration?

Edit: Just installed Firefox and man has it come a long way since I last tried it on Android years ago. Even has ublock origin, page sync with desktop... I think I'll switch for the next couple days and see how I like it on desktop nowadays.

I remember switching from Firefox to Chromium back when it first came out. Nice to go full circle.

[–] ThePhantomGM@lemmy.world 69 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YouTube anti-adblock, Web integrity, mainfest v3, just to name a few. Things just slowly add up and most won't just stand there and take it

[–] Millwiller@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

most - I'd venture to guess less than 1% will take any action, unfortunately

[–] AProfessional@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Well yeah… Chrome has Billions of users. Any percentage is a lot of people.

[–] ripcord@kbin.social 34 points 1 year ago

If you're on Android, using Firefox + ublock origin (or some other browser with AdBlock) is game-changing.

Continuing to use, say, Chrome, makes almost zero sense.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 16 points 1 year ago

Google threatening to take away the ad blockers was enough to make me go back to Firefox.

Manifest V3, Web Environment Integrity, YouTube's recent war on ad blockers.

The main issue is that now people just test their shit against Chrome. Maybe Safari if they're feeling generous. There's a few bits in Firefox Android where things just work a little bit less smoothly than they do in Chrome, and needing extra presses to work in FF. Not sure why, maybe Chrome is making clickable targets that little bit bigger or something.

[–] kartonrealista@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People are becoming more conscious of stuff plenty of us have been aware for quite some time already. The idea that a browser made by a corporation who harvests your data for the purpose of advertising doesn't give a shit about privacy and will try to block adblockers is not something some people weren't expecting - but normies are getting this shoved in their face with YouTube giving them the anti-adblock notification.

Firefox (and it's clones) is basically the only other choice - all the other (major) browsers (that aren't Safari) are based on Chromium, which is developed by Google.

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[–] Resonosity@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For me it was performance. Google Chrome consistently couldn't handle the tab loads I would put on it after around 2022, despite my computer not really showing signs of degradation.

Since switching to FF, I can run the same amount of tabs with almost not hiccups or stuttering - what I'd experience with Chrome. Hell, Chrome would crash randomly and I'd lose all my tabs and would have to reload them.

Plus, sometimes to fix Chrome's poor performance I'd shut the program down entirely, upon re-launch the browser wouldn't even remember all of the tabs/windows I just closed (it used to). So, if I was doing research on something, Chrome would just not open certain windows back up after a hard reset, even if I CTRL + SHIFT + T and I check history. Madly infuriating.

FF opens all windows and tabs upon hard reset, no questions asked. Plus, the compatibility between PC and mobile is awesome: I can load up a tab from my phone that's on my PC super easily, which makes things useful for when I want to share web content with friends or family.

I seem to have woken up from my slumber of tolerating Chrome, and chose a better service instead.

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[–] sarchar@programming.dev 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Got a "disable your adblocker" popup on that article. The third bullet point in the article is about reducing annoyances like ads. Ridiculous.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The site owners have different values and notices than any one writer or journalist. The problem with ads is they became too intrusive. So ad blockers block all, including on respectful websites. It's better for consumers to block all, but journalism does with no revenue and most don't want to pay. We don't yet have a middle ground.

[–] lorkano@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's why adblock wanted to by default allow not annoying ads, but there was a big backlash and other adblockers became more popular like ublock

[–] tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk 5 points 1 year ago

androidpolice have had lots of articles about ad blocking and picking the best one etc.

Then they won't let anyone view the site when they follow that advice...

[–] TCGM@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For anyone who is unaware, Firefox developer edition on mobile, otherwise known as Firefox nightly, never lost the ability to arbitrarily install extensions. You just need to make your own collection on the Firefox website, and link it in the settings on your phone.

[–] INeedMana@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

...
I've spent so much time waiting for Cookie AutoDelete to be available. And you don't even need to create a collection, I just installed it from the mozilla addons page

Thank you!

[–] lorkano@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are also Firefox forks, but you have to install apk manually and then extension are easy to download without developer collection

[–] Octopus1348@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 year ago
[–] NicoCharrua@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have fennec f - droid and can't find how to download them easily. What fork are you using?

[–] elphez@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Beta has it too these days.

[–] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

An about:config toggle to enable unoptimized extensions on your own risk, would still have been nice.

Even now, i see no chance for niche extensions who would work fine on mobile, to be enabled.

[–] Cerothen@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago

https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/

The option to install any extension has always been possible it's just a tad more work to get setup.

I did this ages ago, I just add the extensions I want to the list and then they appear to let me install them

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Use Fennec F-droid, works fine there

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Already had uBlock Origin.

Just need the ones that remove all the stupid cookie/permission popups.

[–] temeela@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

uBlock Origin has cookie/popups filters that you can enable in its settings that work pretty well

[–] K3zi4@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Oh my god, I've been using ublock for as long as I can remember and had no idea about this! Thank you, now I just have to figure out what I'm doing.

[–] endlessmeddler@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

Long time Firefox user here. I'm pretty excited about this

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

God dammit give me grouped tabs already

[–] ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

This, that is the only feature I miss from mobile chromium browsers, but the addition of anyways dark mode with dark reader is outweighing it a little bit

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

About fucking time. I've been irritated since the Fenix update broke extensions. I might switch back from Kiwi.

[–] CatsGoMOW@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I wish they would carry on the momentum and also finally support hardware keyboard shortcuts. This is the one thing that's killing Android tablets for me (I'm not willing to use a Chromium-based browser): https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/need-more-physical-keyboard-support-for-firefox-mobile-on/idi-p/3836

Issue is being tracked here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1794664

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

also at least on my Android tablet, the tabs are hidden behind a button (like on a phone) rather than being displayed in a bar (like on a desktop), even though at least in landscape mode there would be enough space for the latter. This too should be fixed or configurable.

[–] Apollo2323@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago

Game changer!

[–] badnelly123@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only thing I want them to add at this point is for the app to remember the bookmarks position I was in. I use a couple of my bookmark folders almost exclusively on mobile, and every time I want to use them I have to click on bookmarks > Desktop Bookmarks > Bookmarks toolbar > Folder.

I just wish they would at least default to opening to a selected folder so I could just default to the toolbar. It's literally the only thing I miss about Chrome/Brave.

[–] teejay@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is extremely annoying, and it's been a documented enhancement request from the community for years. What's even more confusing is that it's only a problem on Android -- it works properly on all desktop environments and iOS. I have no idea why they won't fix it for Android.

[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 8 points 1 year ago

I've been using Fennec for some time. It's a Firefox fork that lets you install any extension from the Firefox repository. It uses the "addon group" workaround though, hopefully this version of Firefox will work just like the desktop version.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I wonder how they'll implement I am pretty comfortable at the moment with the workaround and Firefox Beta.

[–] magnolia_mayhem@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I just want uMatrix and Bitwarden. WHY CAN'T I USE MY DESKTOP EXTENSIONS???

[–] xkb@aussie.zone 7 points 1 year ago

Bitwarden is there now

[–] spiderman@ani.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

bitwarden has an app, in what cases a bitwarden extension might be better than using an android app?

[–] magnolia_mayhem@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It's integrated into the browser, so you get auto-filling and auto-updating.