Now that Firefox is getting in-page translation capability, Chrome does not offer any features I am missing anymore. As long as they don’t start performance wars, like the shit that happened with Youtube a while ago, I’ll be fine
you can also set browser.translations.enable to true in about:config for full-page translations. it’s kinda slow and the languages are limited compared to google translate, but other than that it’s fine. also, it works offline if you install the languages support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
That's fantastic if the quality is good. I only use chrome now for pages purely in Japanese that I need to deal with and can't properly read in full yet (which, living in Japan, is a fair few, heh). EDIT: Bah, no Japanese support. Oh well; some day.
Anyone know a good Google Chrome replacement on Android that is chromium based? Wanna a basic browser that I’ll use when Firefox does not work correctly
Kiwi browser is my chrome workaround, been working really well when needed. My primary browser is Fennec, a Firefox variety with fully enabled add-ons.
I’m more concerned by the update my android just did. Got a notification that they are now enabling more ad tracking. I use Firefox on my phone but looks like that doesn’t matter
Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.
this probably still won’t make people switch to Firefox.
As a seamonkey user - aka mozilla, the flagship product that Mozilla deemed was too hard to maintain - I’m just surprised Firefox is still going. We joked at the time that Mozilla would find a browser too hard, then a rendering suite, then a library, then an algorithm, and finally a line of code.
(tribalists - I’m not picking on Firefox, so calm your knickers. I’m still just picking on Mozilla)
there’s a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don’t know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.
even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. “but everyone use it”… gosh. then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don’t care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.
anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.
I blame these “tech youtubers” who don’t understand anything technical and keep repeating the script which the company provides them. I saw this idiot MKBHD telling his viewers how a phone has a “beast mode”. Wtf is a beast mode? ! Non technical guys eat shit like this and proceeds to buy because the phone has beast mode lol.
These are exactly my thoughts about tech YouTubers. They have no idea what they’re talking about and encourage mindless consumption. Glad I’m not the only one who’s thought about this.
I work in tech, and I’m still using Chrome. I don’t like it, and I know a lot of other tech people are in the same boat, but I can’t just switch. That’s what I’m working towards, but the amount of tooling we use every day that depends on specifically Chrome is, significant to say the least. This is tooling we built internally to help ourselves, that depends on Chrome-specific APIs that are either different, or do mot yet exist in Firefox.
We’re working to port this stuff over to Firefox, but that takes time, and not everyone can just drop what they are doing to reimplement the tooling they already have in a different browser. On top of userspace tooling, we also have tens of thousands of unit tests based in some part on chrome (through tools like jest and puppet) to validate certain aspects of massive distributed web platforms that cannot easily be unit tested in normal code (though we have high coverage where we can). These also need to be ported, and are VERY specific to Chrome (or Chromium in some cases) in particular. We’re talking entire teams of people, and tens of thousands of man hours.
A lot of users truly can just switch at the drop of a hat. The UI switch is annoying sure, but its doable. For a lot of users in the tech space though, it’s just not feasible to drop Chrome overnight. We’ve started the process to be clear, but it’s going to be a very long transition.
That was completely expected. You give any company monopoly over anything and they will abuse it. This was Chrome dominating browser market. Microsoft did it with IE back in the day. Now Google is doing it again.
As much as Micro$oft sucks they at least have a revenue stream independent of data mining. Still won’t use Edge, mostly because it isn’t great but partially because the verb form of it is edging.
While true, Microsoft didn’t do it because of revenue. They did it to maintain monopoly and force people into depending on windows for corporate use. Thing they did rather well and it took us good part of the decade to break the spell.
Meh. You know I use that as a “casual” conversation question when I am dealing with a new client. Hey what kinda browser and email client does your work make you use? If I hear Edge and/or Lotus Notes I know what I need to know about that company.
Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.
No, Mullvad browser is built from and in conjunction with Tor browser, which is built from Firefox. It works really well if you leave it stock, which is the whole purpose. Blending in with all users.
That’s hard to qualify. The question needs to be more specific. Is Mullvad better than Firefox* at what*? Firefox is a great general browser with decent security and privacy in mind. It allows you theme and modify to your desire. However, any time you add theming or extensions it makes your browser more unique and identifiable. The more you add, the more unique. Stock Firefox is a little promiscuous for my liking and I usually install UBlock Origin and add a little css, like Betterfox. You can create a new Firefox profile which you can swap between depending on the purpose of the window. Or, you can just add a user.js file to your existing Firefox profile. This is called “hardening”, and there’s many different hardening css available. Some make most things unusable, so a balance is recommended. If you’re on Linux you could just use Librewolf which is a sandboxed Flatpak app that is built from Firefox, and, has a great balance of security and privacy tweaks out-of-the-box. Then we have Mullvad browser. Is it better? Maybe it isn’t as fast. Maybe it doesn’t open some web pages that stock Firefox would. However, Mullvad is brilliant at making you blend in. Mullvad have created the browser with a great balance of privacy and security tweaks that harden it somewhat. What it does, just like Tor browser, is make your online “fingerprint” look like thousands of other people’s browsers. As long as you don’t identify yourself somehow there’s a better chance at anonymity. Identifying yourself could include logging in a known account, adding themes or extensions or using social media. Read more about it here. I recommend you use both. A lightly hardened Firefox that you use for general purpose, and a Mullvad for browsing, searching and shopping (not purchasing). Mullvad browser is best used with a VPN that lumps your IP in with many other VPN users, like MullvadVPN or IVPN.
Except websites that will tell you “Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page”.
This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I’m genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.
99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren’t web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers
I’ve been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this message?
There has been a handful of times when a page just won’t work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions
the feature they just implemented will start to trigger this. there is a hardcore push for corporate to go all in on chromium for tracking/drm reasons similar to how IE had that market in the past. as a firefox user im kinda terrified were out of options.
were not talking about what the experience was, but what it will be
Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won’t be tracked by either?
Probably because most people use google for everything. Not to mention chrome is practically synonymous with speed, although I got sick of it for its shit reliability
It’s frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it’s too late, and we’re all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.
I’m probably going to get downvotes for this, but I seriously don’t understand why you care whether other people care. If you don’t like Chrome and it’s approach to privacy, don’t use it. But man am I sick of people being so preachy about it. Just make your own choices and stop forcing your choices on others yeesh.
This line of thinking only works if you live as a hermit at the edge of the forest. Living in a society means dealing with consequences of the choices of others.
As far as browsers are concerned, having Firefox is pointless if 95% of websites will refuse to serve you content because you don’t have some cryptographically signed chrome web DRM enabled.
However deep the public at large deems is acceptable for raw sewage to puddle in the street is exactly how much sewage I have to wade through on my way to the store.
The whole point of the Privacy Sandbox is that Google is NOT sharing your browsing history with advertising partners. All that’s shared is information about whether or not your usage of Chrome suggests an interest in specific topics. The current list of topics is here: github.com/…/taxonomy_v1.md
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