A little admiration of how easy UI customization is on Firefox, and how shitty Chromium looks.

  • just another dev@lemmy.my-box.dev
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    8 months ago

    Personally I find it far more important that it’s not run by a company that will try its hardest to track your every movement on the web, but to each their own, I suppose.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      8 months ago

      I am also pretty sure Firefox is equally if not more secure than Chromium. They just got some really bad reputation for not sandboxing everything.

      • Para_lyzed@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The only issue they have with sandboxing is on Android, as they have yet to implement per-site process isolation despite it being present on desktop Firefox and Chromium Android for many years now. I’ve been tracking the development of Project Fission on Android (Firefox’s per-site process isolation) for years now and it still isn’t even ready for testing. Additionally, Firefox Android does not use Android’s isolatedProcess flag for sandboxing, which is another area in which it is behind Chrome. For that reason, I cannot recommend Firefox on Android, and instead recommend Cromite (fork of Bromite after its development was abandoned) which is based on Chromium.

        • ferralcat@monyet.cc
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          8 months ago

          Firefox shipped sandboxing on Android years ago (before chrome) and then removed it. I’m not sure you gain much from it on Android. It eats up ram making performance crap on cheap phones and apps already run in their own app user context to isolate what they can access.

          • Para_lyzed@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            If you’re referencing an isolatedProccess implementation, the benefit is that each site is isolated in its own process, and any exploit would only have access to its own process (the data that the site sees anyways) without further escape (kernel exploit or meltdown, for instance). Without this isolation flag, sites are not sandboxed from each other or from the browser’s process itself, meaning an exploit could access any data from any other active site or from the browser’s process (such as accessing browser settings, bookmarks, history, or the built-in browser password manager). This has a massive implication on security. I’m unaware of the sandboxing you mentioned before Chrome, so I can’t comment on that, but you gain a lot of security from proper per-site process isolation. Yes, the app lives inside its own sandbox, but there’s plenty of data within that sandbox that you may not want a site to access, hence the importance of the isolatedProcess flag.

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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          8 months ago

          Yes very poorly true. The lack of any sync makes other mobile browsers hard to use for me though. Often start stuff on mobile, and continue on a real browser on Laptop.

    • FatCat@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Ah yes the trust worthy browser without tracking that comes with Google search by befault. lol

    • stuckgum@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      When I was running it every other website would break, switched over to Mullvad Browser instead.

      • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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        8 months ago

        Mullvad Browser is the same but worse.

        If you have websites break without noscript, you visit some really shady websites.

        Be happy they break and dont claim the browser.

        For my websites nearly never cause problems, and if they do Firefox tells me that they want to read my canvas data, send push ads and more, so its obvious.

        • auth@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          If you have websites break without noscript, you visit some really shady websites.

          not necessarily shady… probably designed specifically for Chrome.

            • auth@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              Google, for example, did many demo websites that only worked on chrome in the past… I’ve also seen government website that only worked in Chrome… but unfortunately I don’t keep a list. A company I worked at in the past also had a training website that only worked in Chrome (I’m not revealing this one though…).

              Edit: Just stumbled on this website: http://Thai5sushibar.com … not sure if it’s my extensions, but it doesn’t load in Firefox and loads in Chrome. Good rainbow rolls.

              • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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                8 months ago

                Uhm that site has no https and redirects somewhere else, dont feel like enabling javascript for that one.

                And Ublock blocks it too. So yeah not a positive example

                • auth@lemmy.ml
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                  8 months ago

                  I just came about it today… but still, it works in Chrome and not Firefox. I have seen many others in the past though.

    • dillydogg@lemmy.one
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      8 months ago

      When I was using Librewolf maybe 4 years ago, it was never up to date with Firefox. I thought it could be a potential security risk, sometimes it took months to incorporate Firefox security updates. Has that improved recently?

      • Lesrid@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I had the same impression at least 4 years ago as well. More privacy maybe but less security definitely.

  • HouseWolf@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I actually started using Firefox in my early teens just because I liked the look of the Ui and themes better than Chrome.

    I’ve also recently switched to Librewolf ;)

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      I started using it in my early 20s when it was still called “Firebird” because I was still salty that Netscape was dead and using IE sucked donkey balls (There was stuff like Konqueror and Lynx on Linux, but Konqueror and Lynx were…well they were Konqueror and Lynx). Mozilla 4 lyfe. “Technically” (with huge quotation marks) I’ve been more or less using the same browser since 1997.

    • IYeetKids@reddthat.com
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      8 months ago

      Similar reason for me except I was like 10-11. Also another reason was browsing the web with firefox just felt much better to me back then.

    • SeekPie@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I would probably still be on Librewolf if Floorp’s Tree Style Tab integration wasn’t as good as it is.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    8 months ago

    Source: One person’s opinion on their personal Fediverse account

    … Not that I disagree, mind. I’ve been on FF since like. 2007? Which was the moment I figured out that other web browsers besides IE7 existed?

    Never saw reason to hop to Chrome(ium) even before I knew/cared about datamining or enshittification or any of that stuff. Back then it just looked like “another browser, that does things a bit different but has no features that entice me that Firefox lacks”. Then as I learned about the political side of things I was like “Huh, guess I’m glad for myself then!”

    • eclipse@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I used Netscape “back in the day”. With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.

      I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven’t looked back.

      Everything in this industry is circular I guess.

    • abbenm@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      What would you consider an authoritative source on if something looks nice?

  • dutchkimble@lemy.lol
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    8 months ago

    You know that famous The Dude meme? Applies here.

    Not a chrome fan and I use Librewolf and I like how I’ve customised it. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

  • katy ✨
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    8 months ago

    i love firefox but honestly right now i find edge to be much more aesthetically pleasing, especially with vertical tabs and grouping. if firefox can add these two items, i’d switch to firefox in a heartbeat (and they’re already adding tab groups)

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      8 months ago

      Somewhere in this thread is a userchrome.css file on how to remove the “tree style tabs” header bar.

      Install that addon.

      Place that file in ~/.mozilla/firefox/XXXX-default-release/chrome as UserChrome.css (create that folder).

      Enable legacy customization in about:config

      • katy ✨
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        8 months ago

        there is sidebery but i just like the edge version more. the extension wasn’t as fluid, plus i like how i can have native profiles for work, uni, and personal built in without extensions like profile switcher, which relies on a third party program. nothing against it; and i still donate to mozilla and firefox. i’m looking forward to seeing mozilla’s approach to tab groups though.

        • delta@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          yup vertical tabs are the dealbreaker for me, edge got me hooked. Floorp is a fork that has it, haven’t used it a ton yet but i keep hearing more about it. I’ve been using Arc which i’m enjoying.

  • Wappen@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Never heard of LibreWolf but they say on their website that features like DRM are disabled, what does that mean if I want to view DRM content in my browser? I may be confused but currently with Firefox I already have problems with DRM sometimes. For example on Dell’s website I had difficulties viewing product videos on there, will they simply not play on LibreWolf or how does that work?

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      There is a toggle for DRM in both Firefox and LibreWolf that is off by default. It will prompt you when site would like to use it, so you can happily say no and launch your favourite file sharing software.

    • anon5621@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      It means that any website which using drm for playing content will not work by default,but u can enable it a again by modyfing config file.

      • briefbeschwerer@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        from my experience there will be a popup asking to enable drm for this site when it requests it. no need to modify a file.

      • HouseWolf@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Don’t even have to edit the config file anymore, it’s a checkbox in the options menu now.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      8 months ago

      Create a second profile that you only use for DRM crap and enable DRM in the settings. Firefox also doesnt have DRM pre-enabled so that claim of them makes no sense.

      See my post on konsole on how to make a desktop entry in Linux, where you can put profiles on the right click actions with icons and all.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      Yes, Librewolf is basically a fork of Firefox that makes different trade-offs, where it accepts more breakage than Firefox does, to gain a bit more privacy.

    • Zacryon@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      It’s objectively worse than Firefox. For example, Firefox recently passed all minimum security requirements by the German Federal Office for Information Security. No other browser meets them.

      • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        If you use Edge than you probably use Windows, which means that Microsoft can already mine your data. I guess it’s better to have your data mined by only Microsoft than to have it mined by both Microsoft and Google?

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          8 months ago

          Not sure of this is still true, it often feels like edge is the main spyware feature of windowless in general, integrated into windows search.

          Everytime you search for an app or file it doubles as a edge search query to present in the results. You can try disable all the spyware on windows if you want. Edge still stores it in the microsoft cloud so you can sync.

          Copilot is a golden ticket for them now. Its literally an edge based application.

        • Custodian1623@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Mozilla literally doesn’t do that. If you’re concerned about them lying about it you can compile the browser yourself.

            • Custodian1623@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I can packet inspect and watch them sell data? No lol they collect telemetry but you can use a derivative that doesn’t because it’s open source. That’s not the point though, the point is they don’t sell data. You can look at the finances yourself https://stateof.mozilla.org/

              • Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                8 months ago

                Hmm guess they’re running a charity then. Your tracking is not data? I guess you and I have different definitions of what data is. Sure, you can lock it down if you really want. But so can every other browser.

        • TotalSonic@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Or you can use browsers that can be set to not “phone home” - e.g.Brave, Librewolf - there are in fact a few privacy respecting options in this.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      This is a joke right? There is not a single feature it could have that weights against the fact that its still Chromium-spyware.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Edge works better with specific vm coursework but not sure why. On Firefox I would press a key and it would input 0-2 times. On edge, it worked just… Normal. That’s the one up that edge has had for me.

      Some people Firefox and some people just love to edge. They get close but don’t really get it all the way.

  • Daz@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Librewolf doesn’t respect your choice in system fonts if you uncheck “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above”. I don’t use it for that reason.

      • Daz@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        You can but it won’t be respected. It will continue to default to their included Noto fonts despite whatever font you select. You can test this yourself. I’m sure they do it for some “privacy reason” but if I wanted that trade off I’d simply use the Tor Browser or one of those hardened firefox profiles.

    • F04118F@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      Do you mean Safari?

      Name one other browser that is not based on Chromium. If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.

      I say this as an enthusiastic Brave user. Brave is great at what it does currently, but the more terrible stuff Google builds into Chromium, the more patches they’ll have to maintain. This can make it harder to maintain their fork.

      Worse than that, most Chromium-derivative users aren’t Brave users. Many web apps already don’t work as well with Firefox’ JavaScript Engine (Gecko) as they do with Chromium. This gives Google immense power.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Browsers_based_on_Chromium

        • F04118F@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          That’s a solid criticism. Firefox + uBlock Origin or Librewolf are good desktop alternatives. But what’s the alternative on Android? Last time I checked, there wasn’t any on privacyguides.

          Btw I do always turn off all their rewards and wallet stuff and follow most of the https://privacyguides.org recommendations.

          Thanks for your help in making privacy-focused software available on Linux btw!

          • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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            8 months ago

            Cromite has adblock. Vanadium too but it may break on on-GrapheneOS as it has security patches that break on regular android.

            Mull is very fine for me, I use Vanadium and Mull, Vanadium for crappy sites (because mobile hardened firefox doesnt support as much sites as desktop for some reason). Vanadium is very likely more secure, unlike on Desktop where that is not easily said.

          • Para_lyzed@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Cromite is the best recommendation I can give. It is currently under consideration to be added to privacyguides.org (you can find it on their issues page on the GitHub), and it is expected to be added (as was Bromite, which is where Cromite forked from after development on Bromite was stopped). The main developer of Cromite (uazo) has actually asked the evaluation to be paused until the licensing for aac and h264 are figured out, as licenses are very expensive, and a recommendation on the PrivacyGuides website would likely draw many more users to the project, potentially causing legal trouble. You can track progress on this issue here. It’s worth noting that the dev of Cromite was an active dev of Bromite before Bromite’s lead dev abandoned the project.

      • n2burns@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Of course there’s other browsers! There’s Opera…uhh that now based on Chromium. Oh, how about Edge…that’s Chromium based too now. I know, there’s the KHTML engine!..no, that’s been officially discontinued.

      • RmDebArc_5@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        GNOME Web, qutebrowser, Konquerer and Falkon. While they are pretty obscure, I personally use Falkon regularly on low end systems/RPi

        • F04118F@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          Fair point, but the engine is important.

          I understand their blog post, and if I were to build a browser today, I’d probably do the same.

          But that doesn’t mean this situation isn’t problematic. It’s similar to car-centric infrastructure: in this situation, for any individual, choice X makes sense, but that will make the situation even worse for the whole population. A cumulation of many tiny Prisoner’s Dilemmas.

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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          8 months ago

          I wrote Chromiun in the description too. Chrome is simply what people use.

          Plain Chromium, even with all GUI settings, all degoogle policy configs and flags enabled, contacts Google like hell.

          I tried googeeteller and its scary.

          Have not tried Vivaldi for a long time, but its fingerprinting resistance was nonexistent, it is filled with useless features and has no container support, so nah.

  • WereCat@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Or just use multiple browsers? If one size fits all for you then good for you but there is no Firefox based browser that can replace Vivaldi for me. So I use both, one for my power user needs and other for private browsing (hardened Firefox, normal FF isn’t great for privacy either)

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      8 months ago

      Havent used Vivaldi in some time. Have a look at floorp but of course they dont have all the addons vivaldi has like notes and stuff.

      And yes, regular FF is simply a “just works” browser but with lots of stupid bloat. Librewolf is actually great as they have a modern CI/CD build pipeline and do all the hardening for you, its more sustainable and secure to share effords.