Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/28/reasons-to-switch-to-firefox.html
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I never stopped using Firefox for one primary reason (well, other than the fact it never gave me reason to want to switch): the NoScript extension. None of the other browsers support tools that give you as much control over how script is run. It can be a pain to manage sometimes (which is why I rarely recommend it to people in my life) but I find it’s worth it and as I result I’ve rejected all the other options.
I do keep Chrome installed for when I just can’t figure out what domains to enable on a page to get it to work but I rarely need it. Also it used to be what is switch to when I needed Flash since I never installed the Flash plugin for FF.
Long live Firefox (for desktop at least…Brave is my mobile choice).
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pity the devs so locked into Chrome Dev Tools they cannot imagine their daily workflow without it
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Unfortunately, Firefox is busy eliminating all the features that distinguish it from Chrome. Reason #7 “Firefox Supports Chrome Extensions” really should be “Firefox eliminates the openness and customizability that gave us ad blockers, Greasemonkey, and many other great innovations.”
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As a web dev/designer there’s nothing more that I hate than Firefox.
Anything remotely graphical sucks when compared to Safari/Chrome where everything would be fast to render, and run smooth as butter.
While Firefox makes you feel like you have an ancient computer.
This is because of its inferior rendering engine. /rant
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I’d like to think the web is a place for experiences, not just blobs of text.
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The list actually contradicts itself in parts 7 and 8. With the move to e10s (multiprocess firefox) all of the extensions that really matter are dead; the things which Firefox could do which Chrome never could like the tree tab addon shown there.
This is because under the single-process model, addons had access to all of Firefox. This is why we had things like Tree Tabs and Panorama, which changed the UI in major ways. I’ve had several addon popups (I run LTS firefox so this hasn’t affected me, I plan on moving to PaleMoon when I’m forced to,) with new versions saying “Hey, Mozilla’s requiring me to totally rewrite these addons I’ve maintained for years, except their new API literally doesn’t provide access to the things I need and so I have to abandon it.”
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Does Firefox still come with BoingBoing.net preloaded as a bookmark? It used to!
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They got rid of it when they purged the fun from the web 
The only bookmarks which come with firefox these days are links to tutorials.
Huh…I wonder if that’s how I originally found Boing Boing.
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N00b island of the weirdnet?
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While on the other hand many of us prefer simple web pages that are not overloaded with “content”.
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I would like the complete opposite, thank you very much. Well, not just blobs of text, a tastefully sized image once and a while is ok too. Mostly, I just want clear, easy to find information.
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Well put. I’m told that commercial web developers despise NoScript, because it “interferes with monetization” or somesuch crap. They also hate the tracker blockers like Ghostery and Privacy Badger. Google “code evangelists” supposedly go around badmouthing NoScript and encouraging devels to “find ways around it”. And that is why so many web pages do not work properly if you have NoScript.
In the last 15 years I would swear that the Web has become fully balkanized on the lines of commercial “clickbait/track” sites, and noncommercial sites. The clickbait is slowly winning–with Google a major contributing factor. They are now the AT&T of the internet and really should be broken up by consent decree.
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Not even a web dev, and as much as I love the functionality of Firefox, good god there’s no excuse for it to crawl along on a 12 core CPU with beefy graphics card.
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My father-in-law still uses Thunderbird as his email client.
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I used it for many many years past it’s expiration myself.
Number 2 hasn’t been true for me. I’ll open 40 tabs in Chrome and not run into an issue (nor hear my PC fan whirring too much), but Firefox will start to stall out before I get to 20.
The primary benefits of Firefox over Chrome that I’ve found are that the web developer addon has some features that don’t work in Chrome and the Chrome addon that allowed me to hover and save images died, but a Firefox equivalent still works.
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To which I add 10: Fuck AMP.
Yeah.
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AMP is really bad, first of all, but might I humbly suggest that Boing Boing stop using it? Because I get it every time I tap through from Twitter to a BB article.
I want to like Firefox but the performance is falling drastically behind. Take a gander at http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/ …
Windows 10, Kaby Lake i7-7700k
Chrome 59 220
Edge 40.15063 130
Firefox 53 92
Macbook (2016)
Chrome 59 101
Safari 10.1.1 69
Firefox 53 39
They really need to step up.
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I’ve found with RSS if I click on the title link I get AMP, but if I click on the “go to website” button at the bottom (maybe that’s just a Feedly thing?) I get the mobile site. Maybe Twitters has something similar?
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