this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
1200 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
59756 readers
3314 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Firefox gang
I personally switched back to Firefox after 13 years earlier this year and was surprised just how easy it was. All my main extensions exist on Firefox and it gave me an opportunity to remove some extension bloat at the same time. Highly recommend.
Try container tabs!
They have separate sessions so you can be logged in to the same site on multiple accounts. This is extreamly useful for stuff like being logged in to github using work account and company account or other sites where you just need many accounts. Aws is another good example.
There is also temporary containers that leave no trace at all.
Containers are one of the best features Firefox has gained in recent years. They make managing multiple website accounts so much easier than trying to use multiple browsers or browser profiles. They are also useful for developers in lots of ways.
I don’t know why Mozilla doesn’t promote Containers more, they can’t even be used out of the box because they have to be enabled with an extension. It’s a far better feature than many of the other recent gimmicks like time limited colour schemes.
just in case someone is looking for that feature: it's a Firefox addon
omg i've left my 'work' stuff on edge because of this reason but i guess i'll migrate this to firefox too 🤯
Firefox is great, so sounds like a win to me. :)
You can also use that to separate spying websites. Eg. Any site with Facebook integration will think you are logged out, but when you go to facebook.com, it's open in a different container where you are in fact logged in, cuttin on Facebook spying on third party websites.
current firefox silos cookies to the website now. other sites can't look at your cookies now and it's automatic
I didn't know this, that's really cool.
Oh that’s fantastic for AWS. I have a dozen chrome profiles for this type of behavior and it’s always sucked
Container Tabs sounds so useful, but fair warning to anyone else looking to check it out... I think it's kinda buggy. My sessions got all fucked up when I tried using it. I ended up removing it entirely and just going without.
I've never encountered them being buggy, but I have encountered them being confusing and frustrating, like if a site wants to use Facebook to log you in, but you have Facebook running in a separate container, so it doesn't work no matter how many times you sign in to Facebook. It's easy to have happen in you forget you're using containers.
been using it for years without issue. What you experienced is a fluke
I mean… ok. Doesn’t change my experience.
I love Firefox but It’s not as good as chrome profiles. You can’t just have a container with Honey and whatever tracking extensions just for shopping. It’s all or nothing.
Firefox Profiles work like Chrome profiles, although the UX is a little cliunky without an addon like Profile Switcher.
You have Firefox profiles too though.
But they are not as integrated as Chromes and requires a restart of the browser I think.
Nope. You can have multiple enabled at once. Switching the default profile will require restart. You can also make shortcuts to open specific profiles.
This, I didn't move from chrome for so long because I had my passwords stored on the google password manager, but then I started using bitwarden and I could move to Edge, and then I found a speed dial extension that could backup every dial and its properties and is available on every browser, so I moved to Firefox and it was so easy and fast. The only thing I miss is being able to make apps or shortcuts from websites that will open on their own fullscreen window, but it is not a big deal.
Yea when I started my Degoogle thing a few months back, I also switched to Firefox and it's been great.
How has your degoogle process being coming along? For Google Photos, I've just switched to Immich and it's perfect
I switched over what probably was a small thing, but is big to me.
I like to have my tabs in a list, and google enforced the grid and kept breaking ways to put it back to list.
Once they blocked me from being able to revert, that was it.
I still use it on my work machine as I find the syncing works beautifully, important as I have need to swap between desktop and laptop occasionally, and there are other desktop features I enjoy.
But as for mobile - I am done.
I adored the fox when I used Mozilla everything back in the day, so it's like coming home.
I switched over what probably was a small thing, but is big to me.
I like to have my tabs in a list, and google enforced the grid and kept breaking ways to put it back to list.
Once they blocked me from being able to revert, that was it.
I still use it on my work machine as I find the syncing works beautifully, important as I have need to swap between desktop and laptop occasionally, and there are other desktop features I enjoy.
But as for mobile - I am done.
I adored the fox when I used Mozilla everything back in the day, so it's like coming home.
Wait, will Firefox be immune to this whole website DRM thing Google is trying to pull? That would be awesome. Fennec on Android gang.
The issue is less about which browsers will roll this out and more about which websites will require it. How soon until we can't access banking information? Will filing taxes require this?
Oh, bummer. Got my hopes up and then dashed them quite expertly, sir. Bravo!
Well we will see. There will be a lot of demand for websites that doesn't go along with this shit. So maybe we get a web where individuals again are contributing on their own sites while big tech goes the DRM way.
The same people who today run Lemmy instances are the kind of people that are also interested in seeing that kind of a web, and can help build it. We don't do it for money.
You see it to some extent on regular sites when browsing on mobile. Like if you go to Crunchyroll on safari or brave on iOS and try to stream a video it refuses to and tells you to download the Crunchyroll app. It is capable of streaming it though, since I can do so in Safari on Android.
So imagine that but more ubiquitous which locking out specific devices or refusing to let you login in a bank account by saying please download chrome or edge to access due to requiring DRM.
Safari on Android huh?
Yea, but you can't read news, cause they want to remove scrapers, you can't watch youtube, since they want to block downloaders etc etc. It's a procentage game. If enough of people won't have the DRM enabled, it won't be worth for websites to use it. Not implementing it yet, means that firefox won't be contributing to the amount of users, but if high enough procentage of websites starts using it, firefox will be forced to implement this DRM or they will be killed off by browsers that support all the websites you want to browse.
What's the Firefox equivalent to:
Brave.exe --app="http://lemmy.world"I use this a lot as I detest electron based applications. Mozilla dropped prism years ago and before that there was xulrunner and you cant open a JavaScript popup window without clicking a bookmark.
When Firefox has this very basic function perhaps I'll consider moving.
This just changes the OS chrome on a browser tab right ? I generally dislike electron apps, but when they're literally just a browser tab I'd rather just leave it in the browser.
No this just opens the website in it's own window so it looks similar to an electron app, another way to do this is to open chrome://apps, drag any bookmark to this window/tab and right click to create icons.
It does nothing to the "OS" of the browser.
Dude, "os chrome" refers to the window, as in the frame around the webpage.
So yes, it's like a browser tab with a hidden url bar. Amazing.
Well TiL some programming terminology.
Thanks
I would recommend this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
It adds support for PWA in Firefox. I use it because Firefox dropped native support for PWA in Firefox.
I used this for awhile but it's more of a framework that requires vcredist and a local install of pwaforff binary to work around the short comings of mozilla pulling the plumbing out of the browser.
It's a good workaround can have it's issues when one part receives an update that the rest isn't aware of.
You can use ferdium for that. I also made a profile, that has hidden all possible buttons and I made links to open website in that cut down profile. You can also use user.js to make it really slick.
I use brave and this is built in and still gives me the protections offered by Brave.
What protections does this offer?
Additionally I see mention of electron in the code!!!!!!!!!
Ferdium is based on electron. But it actually uses it to render websites. It's slick and handy. When talking about profiles, I mean in Firefox, which will grand you all the protections you need. If you need to add addons or change settings, with the user.js config, you will need to type about:setthings or about:addons rathet then cluck on a few buttons, but if all you use it for is just a few sites working in a single window, it's fine.
Sorry but the less electron in my life the better.
I see no need for ferdium if you have a good browser. It's just something else picking up more mozilla shortfalls.