If Mozilla was smart (and sadly, they are not) they'd be using some of their millions of outreach money to blast-advertise everywhere that firefox lets you have "the internet, your way" or some...
If Mozilla was smart (and sadly, they are not) they'd be using some of their millions of outreach money to blast-advertise everywhere that firefox lets you have "the internet, your way" or some such tagline.
This may be the last chance they have to get a massive spike in new users. Working adblocking is about the biggest pull you could ask for to get someone to switch their internet life.
Right now all I'm seeing in the browser space are ads for OperaGX, which is a chinese browser based on chromium. So no hope there.
Google has begun showing alternatives for MV2 extensions that are marked for deprecation. Here's the alternatives they suggest for uBlock Origin. While uBlock Origin Lite is shown first, I'd like...
Google has begun showing alternatives for MV2 extensions that are marked for deprecation. Here's the alternatives they suggest for uBlock Origin.
While uBlock Origin Lite is shown first, I'd like to clarify that it's not the same product. Lite is an intentionally stripped down version that doesn't use any permissions. If you want a more direct successor to uBlock Origin (which uses many permissions), you probably want AdGuard MV3 instead. It supports more of the features that power users are used to like cosmetic filtering.
There's a number of MV3 adblock options available though. The Chrome web store now has a page dedicated to privacy and security extensions.
Permanently switched to Firefox a few years ago and the impending incoming watering-down of adblock extensions due to the move to MV3 was a key reason, among many others (such as deGoogling my...
Permanently switched to Firefox a few years ago and the impending incoming watering-down of adblock extensions due to the move to MV3 was a key reason, among many others (such as deGoogling my life as much as possible anyway).
I don't expect even the best MV3 adblockers to work as well as the MV2 ones, because they literally cannot have the same access. That said, this and a million other reasons will keep me on other browsers. If I need a "secondary" browser, I may use something Chromium based, but it will certainly not be anything directly from Google. It will still be, by nature of being Chromium, a second-rate browser, but for very short temporary use cases it's fine.
That said, I don't feel Firefox in 2024 is a "worse" experience so I have almost no reason to ever use something else. I historically have used two different browsers to separate two different experiences (daily driver, and then a secondary for particular types of content) but I can probably do that with containerized stuff in Firefox now or something
Yeah, same here. I knew they were going to go directly for Ublock and co. the moment I heard about the MV3 initatives. Outside of Google Translate, it was a pretty smooth transition. I only end up...
Yeah, same here. I knew they were going to go directly for Ublock and co. the moment I heard about the MV3 initatives. Outside of Google Translate, it was a pretty smooth transition. I only end up using Chrome if I have a MS Meets meeting, because for some reason I just had so many issues on Firefox starting it up.
If you want a Chrome-based “secondary” alternative, I can highly recommend the de-googled base/stock Chromium project. It’s about as clean as it gets. I use it for testing sometimes… preferably on...
If you want a Chrome-based “secondary” alternative, I can highly recommend the de-googled base/stock Chromium project.
It’s about as clean as it gets. I use it for testing sometimes… preferably on sites that don’t run ads.
Random (maybe dumb) question: is there a plug-in or something for Firefox that'll give you live updates on if a place is busy? That's literally the only thing I use chrome for anymore, because I...
Random (maybe dumb) question: is there a plug-in or something for Firefox that'll give you live updates on if a place is busy? That's literally the only thing I use chrome for anymore, because I can't seem to find that functionality on Firefox (but see above re: I may just be dumb).
What are you asking for exactly? I’m not familiar with the sort of feature you’re describing but it sounds out of scope for a web browser to me. Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d use a site or an...
live updates on if a place is busy
What are you asking for exactly? I’m not familiar with the sort of feature you’re describing but it sounds out of scope for a web browser to me. Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d use a site or an app for?
You click a place on Google Maps, it shows you a live estimate of how busy a place is. It also collects that data in aggregate, so some commercial/business districts will be marked as "busy areas"...
You click a place on Google Maps, it shows you a live estimate of how busy a place is. It also collects that data in aggregate, so some commercial/business districts will be marked as "busy areas" during peak hours.
is that not just opening a "place" on google maps? im assuming you mean the "less busy than usual" thing with a bar graph of the expected footfall traffic at different times of day? bc if so then...
is that not just opening a "place" on google maps? im assuming you mean the "less busy than usual" thing with a bar graph of the expected footfall traffic at different times of day? bc if so then yeah thats just a google maps thing.
i sometimes see it if i search for a place and google decides to embed a widget on the search page, no clue if its something entirely different as ive not used chrome for quite some time.
Everything's closed where I am now, so it's just the average traffic per hour, but I swear sometimes the graph is marked "live," isn't it? Am I misunderstanding that, is it place-specific (like...
Everything's closed where I am now, so it's just the average traffic per hour, but I swear sometimes the graph is marked "live," isn't it? Am I misunderstanding that, is it place-specific (like they have a deal with Walmart or something), is it just lies? But yeah, it's just a widget thing.
yeah closed places for me always show the averages, but i think its also got something to do with how much gps data they can fetch at the time. when we had a big carnival in my town i noticed that...
yeah closed places for me always show the averages, but i think its also got something to do with how much gps data they can fetch at the time. when we had a big carnival in my town i noticed that places along the route had 'live' traffic but things more than a few streets away just showed the historical average despite being open
my theory is that its set up so that it needs to hit a certain threshold of gps updates for it to become live? like they can only peek at people with googles 'location services' enabled with wont be everyone. so if theres 0 updates in an area - that could just mean no google devices were nearby, not that its empty.
but if theres loads of activity on the street and in other stores, but not this one. you can assume that its a more accurate reading and update the widget/rolling averages. it could also do with the reliability of gps data indoors and around metal boxes like cars (it gets VERY noisy when unfiltered) and if its constantly jiggling around then you cant really trust it
Quite close. It's based off Location History from those who have opted in. Historical data was roughly based on the last 4-6 weeks during the pandemic. Behind the scenes: popular times and live...
Quite close. It's based off Location History from those who have opted in. Historical data was roughly based on the last 4-6 weeks during the pandemic.
nah yeah i get that the average will be historic. i was talking about the live updates part which uses opted in data. your gps data is still gonna be spotty even with location history on. they...
nah yeah i get that the average will be historic. i was talking about the live updates part which uses opted in data.
your gps data is still gonna be spotty even with location history on. they wont wanna use noisy gps data to update stuff if theyre not actually sure - so you run it through kalman filters and try to get more confidence in it before you trust it. idk if youve ever seen the data straight out of a cheap gps smartwatch but standing still out in the open will still have you jittering 1-3+ meters randomly around your actual point.
this gets more exacerbated when youre in a semi obscured area (trees, buildings, glass, cars, etc) and it becomes quite hard to tell WHICH shop someone is visiting, or if they just stopped in the parking lot. the longer you jitter around a certain area, the more we can assume you're somewhere in the middle of it but by definition you cannot know how much noise there is without already knowing for certain where someone is. they could be stood still in a noisy environment or they could be walking around in a quiet one.
with the carnival thing i mentioned for example. my town isnt huge to begin with but even small corner shops would have enough traffic to push it into 'live updates' territory, except during carnival. it was just the stuff on the main road until about 8pm when it finished, and then all the corner shops were slammed as they were they only thing open past 8pm on a sunday.
Already switched from Vivaldi to Firefox as my primary browser because of the MV2 situation. Vivaldi may keep extensions based on MV2 for a while, probably as long as they can, but I suspect they...
Already switched from Vivaldi to Firefox as my primary browser because of the MV2 situation. Vivaldi may keep extensions based on MV2 for a while, probably as long as they can, but I suspect they will be forced to comply eventually by changes in Chromium.
As for Firefox, I've always had it as a backup, so I'm used to it as well, and haven't had any issues.
I've switched back to Firefox after using Vivaldi for a few years. The one big thing I miss is how easy Vivaldi made it to turn literally any website into a self contained process like normal...
I've switched back to Firefox after using Vivaldi for a few years. The one big thing I miss is how easy Vivaldi made it to turn literally any website into a self contained process like normal PWAs. Firefox has an addon for this but it requires installing seperate software and every PWA uses the same seperate Firefox install so I can't have sandboxed cookies/addons per app.
No, Servo was originally built as a new browser, then focus shifted to integrating parts of it into Firefox (so e.g. they dumped Gecko's old CSS and layout functionality and imported Servo's),...
No, Servo was originally built as a new browser, then focus shifted to integrating parts of it into Firefox (so e.g. they dumped Gecko's old CSS and layout functionality and imported Servo's), then later Mozilla abandoned the Servo project entirely.
So basically the status is Gecko and Servo share some modules, but there's no current plans to integrate more, and the people working on a servo browser are separate to Mozilla.
Some aditional context: after Mozilla abandoned the Servo project, it was taken up by the Linux Foundation. It is now in active development again and the project now focusses on being a good...
Some aditional context: after Mozilla abandoned the Servo project, it was taken up by the Linux Foundation. It is now in active development again and the project now focusses on being a good embedabble browser as a stepping stone to being a fully fledged one. Another interesting browser project is the Ladybird project. It was a hobby project part of Serenity OS that has now spun of into it's own thjng and also aims to, in the end, become a mainstream browser.
Has anyone given uBO Lite a shot yet? Ad blocking is kind of THE feature I need my browser to do, and if Lite doesn't do it adequately I might finally switch to Firefox on desktop.
Has anyone given uBO Lite a shot yet? Ad blocking is kind of THE feature I need my browser to do, and if Lite doesn't do it adequately I might finally switch to Firefox on desktop.
If ad blocking is what you care about most, why on earth haven't you already switched to Firefox? Continuing to use Chrome just supports Google's anti-ad-blocking behaviour. They've literally been...
If ad blocking is what you care about most, why on earth haven't you already switched to Firefox? Continuing to use Chrome just supports Google's anti-ad-blocking behaviour. They've literally been at this for years!
I use Firefox for 95% of my browsing but since it’s such a minor player, many sites do not optimize for or even support Firefox. If I didn’t like switching browsers, I can see why some would stick...
I use Firefox for 95% of my browsing but since it’s such a minor player, many sites do not optimize for or even support Firefox. If I didn’t like switching browsers, I can see why some would stick with Chrome, which for all its anti-consumer shortcomings, at least always works.
Out of curiosity, what sites don't work with Firefox? I'm not doubting you, just surprised. I've used FF for over a decade as my main browser and I think only twice did I come across a website...
Out of curiosity, what sites don't work with Firefox? I'm not doubting you, just surprised. I've used FF for over a decade as my main browser and I think only twice did I come across a website that gave me issues and had to revert to Edge for those specific uses.
Vanguard's "small business investing" site (aka where u do your retirement if u are self-employed) stopped working in Firefox several years ago. it just white-screens. Vanguard have since sold off...
Vanguard's "small business investing" site (aka where u do your retirement if u are self-employed) stopped working in Firefox several years ago. it just white-screens.
Vanguard have since sold off their small business investing and it's on my todo list to switch to Fidelity, I have had zero positive experiences with Vanguard
I used to have white screens in Vanguard (employment 401k and now a rollover IRA), but it was because I had Dark Reader installed. Even when disabled specifically on the Vanguard site, it was...
I used to have white screens in Vanguard (employment 401k and now a rollover IRA), but it was because I had Dark Reader installed. Even when disabled specifically on the Vanguard site, it was still injecting enough code into the page load to blank the site out.
Removing Dark Reader immediately solved all my Vanguard issues (at least all the issues that aren't created by Vanguard not being great... like for some reason their system cannot seem to successfully email a fastmail address)
THAT WAS BECAUSE OF DARK READER???????????????? wow, I never would've figured that out, I even tried it with UBO disabled sadly I can't use this information ever because they sold off the part of...
THAT WAS BECAUSE OF DARK READER????????????????
wow, I never would've figured that out, I even tried it with UBO disabled
sadly I can't use this information ever because they sold off the part of the site that crashed...
You're not alone. You have no idea how many random weird issues like this I ran into before realizing it was Dark Reader doing it. It breaks so many things in weird and exciting ways that you...
You're not alone. You have no idea how many random weird issues like this I ran into before realizing it was Dark Reader doing it. It breaks so many things in weird and exciting ways that you would not immediately connect to just swapping color schemes.
I’ve run into some of these as well, but I put up with them because dark mode is so much more comfortable for me. Is there a good recommended alternative to Dark Reader?
I’ve run into some of these as well, but I put up with them because dark mode is so much more comfortable for me. Is there a good recommended alternative to Dark Reader?
Chromium has a feature called Force Dark Mode that heuristically converts web pages to darker versions. It's significantly more performant than the Dark Reader extension, but still in testing. You...
Chromium has a feature called Force Dark Mode that heuristically converts web pages to darker versions. It's significantly more performant than the Dark Reader extension, but still in testing. You can enable it through a browser flag right now.
In my testing, it works well on light websites like Hacker News, but doesn't completely nail the ideal contrasts. Some images are also inverted which can make them appear brighter than they otherwise would be. It can have minor effects on websites that already support dark mode (such as Tildes).
I think you're a Firefox user, but it's the only alternative to Dark Reader that I'm aware of.
Based on how you're explaining it I wonder if it would be too difficult to write a userscript to do the same thing. The logic involved seems fairly simple (especially if less than ideal contrasts...
Based on how you're explaining it I wonder if it would be too difficult to write a userscript to do the same thing. The logic involved seems fairly simple (especially if less than ideal contrasts are acceptable), crawling the DOM, measuring element and text luminance and swapping to complementary colors based on the differences between parents and children as needed.
I use Night Assistant for "fading" (like a fake "low brightness mode") and Page Shadow as a Dark Reader replacement. I've tried like 10 Dark Reader replacements, but many of them I didn't like, or...
I use Night Assistant for "fading" (like a fake "low brightness mode") and Page Shadow as a Dark Reader replacement. I've tried like 10 Dark Reader replacements, but many of them I didn't like, or couldn't control in ways I wanted. I'm very particular about how these types of add-ons affect my browsing
A lot of Dark Reader replacements aren't as good, but I think that has to do with how deep they're going with their injection. Dark Reader's deep integration is also it's downside- the things that make it good (fast, no "flashbang" of a site as it loads, etc) mean its implemented in such a way that it seems to have all sorts of side effects just from being installed in the browser at all.
What bothers me so much about it- is that it still affects pages that it's not even enabled on. Just the add-on being installed/enabled at the browser level is enough for it to screw with all...
What bothers me so much about it- is that it still affects pages that it's not even enabled on. Just the add-on being installed/enabled at the browser level is enough for it to screw with all sites regardless of whether it is turned on for said site
It's why it took me ages to figure out what was breaking in the browser. Had to narrow down by disabling add-ons and enabling them one-by-one. I was shocked when it ended up being an add-on that wasn't even supposedly "active" on the site it was breaking
I used to use Dark Reader too, I love the concept. It just caused too many slowdowns and random site breakages, I had to remove it. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.
I used to use Dark Reader too, I love the concept. It just caused too many slowdowns and random site breakages, I had to remove it. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.
It had a problem last year with website slodowns, I've also disabled it that time, but since they've managed to fix it, it works without an issue for me so far.
It had a problem last year with website slodowns, I've also disabled it that time, but since they've managed to fix it, it works without an issue for me so far.
I've said this many times because of LastPass, DarkReader breaking everything is a brand new to me given I default it to off and turn it on only sometimes I can't believe it still injects shit...
I've said this many times because of LastPass, DarkReader breaking everything is a brand new to me given I default it to off and turn it on only sometimes
I can't believe it still injects shit when it's off on a particular site
This is also my experience. Maybe one or two sites in years worth of time. I get that people sticking to Chrome because "it just works" can be a thing- but that choice also reinforces Chrome's...
This is also my experience. Maybe one or two sites in years worth of time.
I get that people sticking to Chrome because "it just works" can be a thing- but that choice also reinforces Chrome's majority and keeps sites only focusing their development for Chrome views. Chicken/egg problem. It's the Internet Explorer of the current age.
The most recent thing I have encountered is Azure Speech Studio, which actually kind of works but pops up warnings constantly about how it doesn’t support my browser. There are some functions...
The most recent thing I have encountered is Azure Speech Studio, which actually kind of works but pops up warnings constantly about how it doesn’t support my browser. There are some functions which seem slightly broken in FF, even if you disregard all the popups.
I’ve run into dozens of other cases though. I used to work professionally in the web scraping business, often using selenium. Firefox was my primary choice for selenium driver, but having to switch to Chrome or other systems like secretagent/kameleo/phantomjs/playwright depending on various incompatibilities was fairly frequent.
Not trolling, genuine question: what are the things for which you find Chrome better than Firefox? I use both, Chrome for gmail and other googly stuff, and Firefox for everything else, and I've...
Not trolling, genuine question: what are the things for which you find Chrome better than Firefox? I use both, Chrome for gmail and other googly stuff, and Firefox for everything else, and I've never noticed Chrome being better than FF for anything.
I'm not the parent, but maybe I can still provide a useful answer. I use both Chrome and Firefox on the reg. With that said, Chrome is my primary browser, and what I'm using right now to type...
Exemplary
I'm not the parent, but maybe I can still provide a useful answer.
I use both Chrome and Firefox on the reg. With that said, Chrome is my primary browser, and what I'm using right now to type from. I consider them both to be excellent software, especially nowadays.
Browsers have come so far over the last fifteen years. While they all used to be crash-prone and full of security holes, both Chromium and Firefox are really modern technological marvels. Firefox has seen significant improvement over time, notably with the launch of Firefox Quantum and the dumping of XUL extensions. Chromium meanwhile was a soft reboot and reinvention of the browser architecture. They still used WebKit for rendering, but made a number of ground-up decisions that let them lead the pack in speed and security for a full decade. It's tough to overcome that kind of momentum.
Either way, the fact that we have multiple well-designed, cross-platform, open-source options for accessing the web platform is a very good thing. I could easily imagine a world where there was a single, proprietary option instead. Think MSN Explorer, or AOL Explorer. All things considered, we're in the good timeline, here.
I would suggest that anyone would be well-served with either browser, but there are a few advantages of each.
Firefox
Developed by an independent non-profit (with a slightly-complicated governance)
Offers very customizable UI
Containers are more advanced than profiles
Supports (some) addons on mobile natively
Several major components were written in Rust (via Servo) to offer memory safety
Early support of WebAssembly
Easier to compile than Chromium
For me, nostalgia! Offered first serious dev tools via Firebug and was the original cool browser.
Chromium
Slight edge in performance, particularly in page rendering and JavaScript execution
More seamless background updates
Current leaders in web standards support; key contributors to Working Group
Slightly stronger sandbox and process isolation model
Better support of PWAs, especially on mobile
Dev tools are more powerful in most areas (however Fx has made major strides recently)
Portable and easy to fork (see Electron, V8 in Node, various Chromium forks)
Personal preference for tab-based UIs over modals (eg. Download History)
Ultimately though, both browsers are fast, FOSS, and support all major platforms (including mobile). They have strong standards support and security models. I find it very easy to use both, and often switch between them with little friction.
Firefox’s dev tools are good, but Chrome’s are better. As a user, privacy advocate, FOSS supporter, and believer in the importance of a diverse browser ecosystem, I’m 100% onboard with Firefox....
Firefox’s dev tools are good, but Chrome’s are better. As a user, privacy advocate, FOSS supporter, and believer in the importance of a diverse browser ecosystem, I’m 100% onboard with Firefox. But as a frontend developer, gotta be honest: I’d rather get my work done in Chrome. It does pain me to say that.
For now. In my mind, the more time I take to adjust to Firefox, the easier the friction when Chrome becomes unusable as a main browser. Also best to switch while it's in my mind. I don't want to...
For now. In my mind, the more time I take to adjust to Firefox, the easier the friction when Chrome becomes unusable as a main browser.
Also best to switch while it's in my mind. I don't want to forget about the announcement months later and suddenly start blaming the extension for not working or even accusing them of selling out.
I'm pretty sure I won't forget :) Honestly don't think the friction of switching will be too bad for me...just don't want to do it unless I feel I have to. I've switched to FF on mobile because it...
I'm pretty sure I won't forget :)
Honestly don't think the friction of switching will be too bad for me...just don't want to do it unless I feel I have to. I've switched to FF on mobile because it supports (some) extensions....and I hated the change they made to the Tabs management UI. There are still some things I hate about FF mobile. Too much purple, and I can't customize the home page the way I want.
I am stuck using Chrome at work. Hopefully the ads will not be too obnoxious when I need to go to non-work tech sites to research things. At home I will be continuing to use Firefox.
I am stuck using Chrome at work. Hopefully the ads will not be too obnoxious when I need to go to non-work tech sites to research things.
If Mozilla was smart (and sadly, they are not) they'd be using some of their millions of outreach money to blast-advertise everywhere that firefox lets you have "the internet, your way" or some such tagline.
This may be the last chance they have to get a massive spike in new users. Working adblocking is about the biggest pull you could ask for to get someone to switch their internet life.
Right now all I'm seeing in the browser space are ads for OperaGX, which is a chinese browser based on chromium. So no hope there.
I tried
You ran an ad for this?
haha no i just threw this together in figma after i saw the parent comment
Google has begun showing alternatives for MV2 extensions that are marked for deprecation. Here's the alternatives they suggest for uBlock Origin.
While uBlock Origin Lite is shown first, I'd like to clarify that it's not the same product. Lite is an intentionally stripped down version that doesn't use any permissions. If you want a more direct successor to uBlock Origin (which uses many permissions), you probably want AdGuard MV3 instead. It supports more of the features that power users are used to like cosmetic filtering.
There's a number of MV3 adblock options available though. The Chrome web store now has a page dedicated to privacy and security extensions.
Permanently switched to Firefox a few years ago and the impending incoming watering-down of adblock extensions due to the move to MV3 was a key reason, among many others (such as deGoogling my life as much as possible anyway).
I don't expect even the best MV3 adblockers to work as well as the MV2 ones, because they literally cannot have the same access. That said, this and a million other reasons will keep me on other browsers. If I need a "secondary" browser, I may use something Chromium based, but it will certainly not be anything directly from Google. It will still be, by nature of being Chromium, a second-rate browser, but for very short temporary use cases it's fine.
That said, I don't feel Firefox in 2024 is a "worse" experience so I have almost no reason to ever use something else. I historically have used two different browsers to separate two different experiences (daily driver, and then a secondary for particular types of content) but I can probably do that with containerized stuff in Firefox now or something
Yeah, same here. I knew they were going to go directly for Ublock and co. the moment I heard about the MV3 initatives. Outside of Google Translate, it was a pretty smooth transition. I only end up using Chrome if I have a MS Meets meeting, because for some reason I just had so many issues on Firefox starting it up.
If you want a Chrome-based “secondary” alternative, I can highly recommend the de-googled base/stock Chromium project.
It’s about as clean as it gets. I use it for testing sometimes… preferably on sites that don’t run ads.
Random (maybe dumb) question: is there a plug-in or something for Firefox that'll give you live updates on if a place is busy? That's literally the only thing I use chrome for anymore, because I can't seem to find that functionality on Firefox (but see above re: I may just be dumb).
If you mean like in google search results, there's extensions for modifying the user agent to tell google to report your browser as chrome.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-fixer/
What are you asking for exactly? I’m not familiar with the sort of feature you’re describing but it sounds out of scope for a web browser to me. Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d use a site or an app for?
It's something Google Maps and Search provides so it's not really out of scope.
You click a place on Google Maps, it shows you a live estimate of how busy a place is. It also collects that data in aggregate, so some commercial/business districts will be marked as "busy areas" during peak hours.
Isn’t that a Google Maps feature? I expect it would work in Firefox too.
It shows up for me in LibreWolf.
is that not just opening a "place" on google maps? im assuming you mean the "less busy than usual" thing with a bar graph of the expected footfall traffic at different times of day? bc if so then yeah thats just a google maps thing.
i sometimes see it if i search for a place and google decides to embed a widget on the search page, no clue if its something entirely different as ive not used chrome for quite some time.
Everything's closed where I am now, so it's just the average traffic per hour, but I swear sometimes the graph is marked "live," isn't it? Am I misunderstanding that, is it place-specific (like they have a deal with Walmart or something), is it just lies? But yeah, it's just a widget thing.
yeah closed places for me always show the averages, but i think its also got something to do with how much gps data they can fetch at the time. when we had a big carnival in my town i noticed that places along the route had 'live' traffic but things more than a few streets away just showed the historical average despite being open
my theory is that its set up so that it needs to hit a certain threshold of gps updates for it to become live? like they can only peek at people with googles 'location services' enabled with wont be everyone. so if theres 0 updates in an area - that could just mean no google devices were nearby, not that its empty.
but if theres loads of activity on the street and in other stores, but not this one. you can assume that its a more accurate reading and update the widget/rolling averages. it could also do with the reliability of gps data indoors and around metal boxes like cars (it gets VERY noisy when unfiltered) and if its constantly jiggling around then you cant really trust it
Quite close. It's based off Location History from those who have opted in. Historical data was roughly based on the last 4-6 weeks during the pandemic.
Behind the scenes: popular times and live busyness information
nah yeah i get that the average will be historic. i was talking about the live updates part which uses opted in data.
your gps data is still gonna be spotty even with location history on. they wont wanna use noisy gps data to update stuff if theyre not actually sure - so you run it through kalman filters and try to get more confidence in it before you trust it. idk if youve ever seen the data straight out of a cheap gps smartwatch but standing still out in the open will still have you jittering 1-3+ meters randomly around your actual point.
this gets more exacerbated when youre in a semi obscured area (trees, buildings, glass, cars, etc) and it becomes quite hard to tell WHICH shop someone is visiting, or if they just stopped in the parking lot. the longer you jitter around a certain area, the more we can assume you're somewhere in the middle of it but by definition you cannot know how much noise there is without already knowing for certain where someone is. they could be stood still in a noisy environment or they could be walking around in a quiet one.
with the carnival thing i mentioned for example. my town isnt huge to begin with but even small corner shops would have enough traffic to push it into 'live updates' territory, except during carnival. it was just the stuff on the main road until about 8pm when it finished, and then all the corner shops were slammed as they were they only thing open past 8pm on a sunday.
Already switched from Vivaldi to Firefox as my primary browser because of the MV2 situation. Vivaldi may keep extensions based on MV2 for a while, probably as long as they can, but I suspect they will be forced to comply eventually by changes in Chromium.
As for Firefox, I've always had it as a backup, so I'm used to it as well, and haven't had any issues.
"Come on in boys, the water is fine."
I've switched back to Firefox after using Vivaldi for a few years. The one big thing I miss is how easy Vivaldi made it to turn literally any website into a self contained process like normal PWAs. Firefox has an addon for this but it requires installing seperate software and every PWA uses the same seperate Firefox install so I can't have sandboxed cookies/addons per app.
Firefox has been great, but it's not on the right path. I am waiting for Servo to become fully fledged Browser.
Isn’t Servo already Firefox’s web engine? How does that become its own browser?
Why is Firefox not on the right path?
No, Servo was originally built as a new browser, then focus shifted to integrating parts of it into Firefox (so e.g. they dumped Gecko's old CSS and layout functionality and imported Servo's), then later Mozilla abandoned the Servo project entirely.
So basically the status is Gecko and Servo share some modules, but there's no current plans to integrate more, and the people working on a servo browser are separate to Mozilla.
Some aditional context: after Mozilla abandoned the Servo project, it was taken up by the Linux Foundation. It is now in active development again and the project now focusses on being a good embedabble browser as a stepping stone to being a fully fledged one. Another interesting browser project is the Ladybird project. It was a hobby project part of Serenity OS that has now spun of into it's own thjng and also aims to, in the end, become a mainstream browser.
Has anyone given uBO Lite a shot yet? Ad blocking is kind of THE feature I need my browser to do, and if Lite doesn't do it adequately I might finally switch to Firefox on desktop.
If ad blocking is what you care about most, why on earth haven't you already switched to Firefox? Continuing to use Chrome just supports Google's anti-ad-blocking behaviour. They've literally been at this for years!
I use Firefox for 95% of my browsing but since it’s such a minor player, many sites do not optimize for or even support Firefox. If I didn’t like switching browsers, I can see why some would stick with Chrome, which for all its anti-consumer shortcomings, at least always works.
Out of curiosity, what sites don't work with Firefox? I'm not doubting you, just surprised. I've used FF for over a decade as my main browser and I think only twice did I come across a website that gave me issues and had to revert to Edge for those specific uses.
Vanguard's "small business investing" site (aka where u do your retirement if u are self-employed) stopped working in Firefox several years ago. it just white-screens.
Vanguard have since sold off their small business investing and it's on my todo list to switch to Fidelity, I have had zero positive experiences with Vanguard
I used to have white screens in Vanguard (employment 401k and now a rollover IRA), but it was because I had Dark Reader installed. Even when disabled specifically on the Vanguard site, it was still injecting enough code into the page load to blank the site out.
Removing Dark Reader immediately solved all my Vanguard issues (at least all the issues that aren't created by Vanguard not being great... like for some reason their system cannot seem to successfully email a fastmail address)
THAT WAS BECAUSE OF DARK READER????????????????
wow, I never would've figured that out, I even tried it with UBO disabled
sadly I can't use this information ever because they sold off the part of the site that crashed...
You're not alone. You have no idea how many random weird issues like this I ran into before realizing it was Dark Reader doing it. It breaks so many things in weird and exciting ways that you would not immediately connect to just swapping color schemes.
I’ve run into some of these as well, but I put up with them because dark mode is so much more comfortable for me. Is there a good recommended alternative to Dark Reader?
Chromium has a feature called Force Dark Mode that heuristically converts web pages to darker versions. It's significantly more performant than the Dark Reader extension, but still in testing. You can enable it through a browser flag right now.
In my testing, it works well on light websites like Hacker News, but doesn't completely nail the ideal contrasts. Some images are also inverted which can make them appear brighter than they otherwise would be. It can have minor effects on websites that already support dark mode (such as Tildes).
I think you're a Firefox user, but it's the only alternative to Dark Reader that I'm aware of.
Based on how you're explaining it I wonder if it would be too difficult to write a userscript to do the same thing. The logic involved seems fairly simple (especially if less than ideal contrasts are acceptable), crawling the DOM, measuring element and text luminance and swapping to complementary colors based on the differences between parents and children as needed.
I use Night Assistant for "fading" (like a fake "low brightness mode") and Page Shadow as a Dark Reader replacement. I've tried like 10 Dark Reader replacements, but many of them I didn't like, or couldn't control in ways I wanted. I'm very particular about how these types of add-ons affect my browsing
A lot of Dark Reader replacements aren't as good, but I think that has to do with how deep they're going with their injection. Dark Reader's deep integration is also it's downside- the things that make it good (fast, no "flashbang" of a site as it loads, etc) mean its implemented in such a way that it seems to have all sorts of side effects just from being installed in the browser at all.
What bothers me so much about it- is that it still affects pages that it's not even enabled on. Just the add-on being installed/enabled at the browser level is enough for it to screw with all sites regardless of whether it is turned on for said site
It's why it took me ages to figure out what was breaking in the browser. Had to narrow down by disabling add-ons and enabling them one-by-one. I was shocked when it ended up being an add-on that wasn't even supposedly "active" on the site it was breaking
I have said this A LOT over the years. Web dev is fucking weird.
I used to use Dark Reader too, I love the concept. It just caused too many slowdowns and random site breakages, I had to remove it. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.
It had a problem last year with website slodowns, I've also disabled it that time, but since they've managed to fix it, it works without an issue for me so far.
I've said this many times because of LastPass, DarkReader breaking everything is a brand new to me given I default it to off and turn it on only sometimes
I can't believe it still injects shit when it's off on a particular site
This is also my experience. Maybe one or two sites in years worth of time.
I get that people sticking to Chrome because "it just works" can be a thing- but that choice also reinforces Chrome's majority and keeps sites only focusing their development for Chrome views. Chicken/egg problem. It's the Internet Explorer of the current age.
The most recent thing I have encountered is Azure Speech Studio, which actually kind of works but pops up warnings constantly about how it doesn’t support my browser. There are some functions which seem slightly broken in FF, even if you disregard all the popups.
I’ve run into dozens of other cases though. I used to work professionally in the web scraping business, often using selenium. Firefox was my primary choice for selenium driver, but having to switch to Chrome or other systems like secretagent/kameleo/phantomjs/playwright depending on various incompatibilities was fairly frequent.
Because it still works, and Chrome beats Firefox in all the other things I care about
Not trolling, genuine question: what are the things for which you find Chrome better than Firefox? I use both, Chrome for gmail and other googly stuff, and Firefox for everything else, and I've never noticed Chrome being better than FF for anything.
I'm not the parent, but maybe I can still provide a useful answer.
I use both Chrome and Firefox on the reg. With that said, Chrome is my primary browser, and what I'm using right now to type from. I consider them both to be excellent software, especially nowadays.
Browsers have come so far over the last fifteen years. While they all used to be crash-prone and full of security holes, both Chromium and Firefox are really modern technological marvels. Firefox has seen significant improvement over time, notably with the launch of Firefox Quantum and the dumping of XUL extensions. Chromium meanwhile was a soft reboot and reinvention of the browser architecture. They still used WebKit for rendering, but made a number of ground-up decisions that let them lead the pack in speed and security for a full decade. It's tough to overcome that kind of momentum.
Either way, the fact that we have multiple well-designed, cross-platform, open-source options for accessing the web platform is a very good thing. I could easily imagine a world where there was a single, proprietary option instead. Think MSN Explorer, or AOL Explorer. All things considered, we're in the good timeline, here.
I would suggest that anyone would be well-served with either browser, but there are a few advantages of each.
Firefox
Chromium
Ultimately though, both browsers are fast, FOSS, and support all major platforms (including mobile). They have strong standards support and security models. I find it very easy to use both, and often switch between them with little friction.
Firefox’s dev tools are good, but Chrome’s are better. As a user, privacy advocate, FOSS supporter, and believer in the importance of a diverse browser ecosystem, I’m 100% onboard with Firefox. But as a frontend developer, gotta be honest: I’d rather get my work done in Chrome. It does pain me to say that.
It's been a while since I closely compared them, but other points for me were the speed (loading pages and startup) and some UI preferences.
For now. In my mind, the more time I take to adjust to Firefox, the easier the friction when Chrome becomes unusable as a main browser.
Also best to switch while it's in my mind. I don't want to forget about the announcement months later and suddenly start blaming the extension for not working or even accusing them of selling out.
I'm pretty sure I won't forget :)
Honestly don't think the friction of switching will be too bad for me...just don't want to do it unless I feel I have to. I've switched to FF on mobile because it supports (some) extensions....and I hated the change they made to the Tabs management UI. There are still some things I hate about FF mobile. Too much purple, and I can't customize the home page the way I want.
I am stuck using Chrome at work. Hopefully the ads will not be too obnoxious when I need to go to non-work tech sites to research things.
At home I will be continuing to use Firefox.
Definitely the best move. And.to be honest, I am more than happy for this news - the more unusable proprietary software is the more happy I am.