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- Hacker News
- I'm a web developer and I have a deep love of Firefox. I've been on it since version 3 and I'll be with it to the bitter end. I love that uBlock Origin is still available and while the news of Firefox's declining market share can be quite concerning, I hope it will be around for a long time.by thrusong
- I've been using Firefox for over 6 years now and I've never regretted it.by Heidaradar
- I have been using Firefox for 20 years and the regrets kept accumulating till I switched to Chrome 3 years ago.by TiredOfLife
- I’ve never felt so old as I did reading this commentby talon8635
- 20 years and counting. :)
Thanks for every day that this browser works.
Sometimes I had to test something in Chrome - and it’s painful experience.
But it really depends on personal view - I have tried to convert my friends and they don’t feel it.
by sixtyj - Haven’t tried it but apparently there is an unofficial port of the full version of uBlock Origin to work on manifest v3, the largest challenge being that, on manifest v3, the webRequestBlocking permission is only available to enterprise sideloaded extensions: https://github.com/r58Playz/uBlock-mv3by tech234a
- Great but as soon as Google decides to completely strip the `webRequest` API from the codebase, it's game over. Now that it's deprecated it's only a matter of time. This also means Brave, the last Chromium-based browser to support it, will also be unable to support itby culi
- Support Firefox. F** Chrome.by imagetic
- +1 *by imagetic
- You either don't use the f-word at all, or just write the whole word, uncensored. It's not that hard: fuck Chrome.by allarm
- Fix?by nullhole
- Seriously.
The web is completely unusable without UBO+FF. Any time I have to use a clean browser, I feel assaulted and dirty, plus wonder what malware just got injected into my machine.
If it were to go away, I would probably accelerate retiring to an analog, offline life.
by imglorp - For those who use uBlock Origin Lite, have you noticed any issues/deficiencies in what ads are blocked? I haven't.by ivraatiems
- It seems to block most, if not all, ads but I wonder whether it blocks tracking as well as uBO.by timbit42
- Same here. although these days i prefer the mix uBlock Stripped + 3P-Matrix-lite.
[uBlock Stripped]
https://github.com/Kees1958/uBol-stripped
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-stripped-%E2...
[3P-Matrix-lite]
https://github.com/Kees1958/3P-Matrix-lite
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/3p-matrix-lite/olji...
by XzetaU8 - In the short time I've used it I haven't noticed any appreciable difference.by hn_submit
- Haven't noticed any issue, the main limitation is the lack of mobile support on Chrome, but that has always been the case.
I'm so grateful for Firefox on Android
by Recursing - I’ve found uBlock Origin Lite (and every other non-uBlock Origin blocker) to struggle with websites using Ad-Shield. (i.e. the entire website breaks.)by Marsymars
- My experience using uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is that some particularly intrusive ads will figure out a way to load, like local news sites from the US, and many sites will be fully broken (missing entire content portions, content doesn’t scroll, entire page can’t be interacted with). These issues simply don’t occur on uBlock Origin but only exist as an artifact of aggressively blocking elements without applying fixes to unbreak sites.by Shank
- I have not really had any issues with ads using uBlock Origin Lite. It's like the complainers live in an alternate reality or just listened to some influencer and never actually checked.
I do miss the rules that let me remove stuff based like CSS like selectors. The strange thing is, even though uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support that feature it's still totally possible to make an extension that does that. Maybe the specific thing uBlock Origin was doing is not possible but making an extension that follows rules and hides/deletes elements with different rules per site is still fully possible under manifest v3
by socalgal2 - I use Firefox with (non-lite) uBlock Origin, and occasionally fire up Chrome (with uBO Lite) for testing. The main issue that I run into is that uBO lite filters can't vary per-domain, so in order to rule out an ad-blocking-false-positive on something I'm developing, I have to turn it off for _all_ sites, not just localhost. (Actual false positives are rare, but needing to check is not so rare.)by jimrandomh
- There's a mystery here. People hate ads. Firefox is the only major browser (save Brave?) that properly blocks ads. Yet people don't use Firefox (indeed its popularity is in free-fall).
Why? Is it because they don't know about it? Or they won't go to the trouble of using any browser that isn't the one provided by default by the OS?
I'm not sure. I just don't get it.
by bambax - 1. Firefox is behind on enough of web features that is hurts. Mozilla is explicitly against implementing some, which is even worse.
2. Nobody tests on Firefox anymore, so random sites can break.
There're some features unique to Firefox which I miss, but I like being on the be bleeding edge of tech.
Firefox has been getting noticeably better recently, so maybe I'll get back to it. If Mozilla changes its stance on local fs access and stuff, it'll be a strong signal.
by Athari - "That's the way she goes"
> Or they won't go to the trouble
Some people don't even ask why the thing on the ceiling is beeping.
by neRok - Most people hate ads, but they don't hate them as much as they hate having to learn how to do something for themselves. Therefore, the default almost always wins.
It's a cynical view, but I'm confident that it has a great deal of truth.
by ekjhgkejhgk - Firefox is also the only "major" browser not installed on any device by default. People with windows use edge, people with mac or ios use safari, people with android use chrome. People with linux use firefox but those are extremely few since none of the machines you buy at the store have linux.
It's really that simple. Marketing realism wins over technical excellence every single time.
Do you know why Valve invested so much into Linux? It's because Microsoft threatened to blacklist Steam from Windows unless they gave Microsoft a 30% cut of all sales. Why would Microsoft do that? Because they can, and it makes money on average (failed this time in particular though). Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog world.
by inigyou - The pattern I've seen is that people move to a new browser due to speed and bloat. When IE was king, people started moving to Firefox, because it was fast and lean. Over time, it didn't feel so lean anymore, and then Google launched Chrome with TV ads showing how fast it was. Now everyone makes fun of the system resources Chrome requires, but people probably don't see a viable alternative to move to. Firefox is likely seen as old, Safari is only viable on Apple platforms, and everything else is a coat of paint on either Chrome or Firefox. Maybe Ladybird will take users from Chrome when it's ready for general use.by al_borland
- Back when I first moved off of Firefox the answer was performance. A lot of users mass-migrated to Chrome because it supported a very similar set of extensions and was significantly more stable and performant. People like me evangelized switching to Chrome for everyone. Many copies of Chrome were installed by me.
Now the performance still hasn’t caught up to Chrome but it has improved, and uBlock Origin Lite does a decent job at a baseline level of blocking for most people.
by Shank - I use Brave. I want Chromium under the hood.
Firefox on mobile is not good, tried it many times. I also don't trust Firefox Mobile security as much as I trust Brave/Chromium on Android.
by therealmarv - It's a damn shame. Using FF on android with a fully fledged uBlock Origin is so good. Makes the web usable. I don't know how people stand browsing with chrome.
I recommend FF whenever the topic of ads comes up and hope that word of mouth with eventually do its thing. Most people don't know about it in my experience.