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I use Firefox for development, but I use safari (privately) and edge (professionally) for browsing, and see no real advantages to using either Firefox or Chrome

I use Firefox for development, but I use safari (privately) and edge (professionally) for browsing, and see no real advantages to using either Firefox or Chrome for that. I think modern Firefox is a much better browser than Chrome though, but Mozilla certainly lost the PR war and to no fault but their own, because Firefox sure sucked for a long while.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
Do you use Safari for private browsing because each private window is sandboxed between each other unlike Chrome? I find it intriguing that each incognito window in Chrome is not sandboxed between each other. Am I missing anything here?
kajecounterhack 8y ago
The advantage of Firefox / Chrome in general is that if you develop habits / shortcuts you can use them in any OS. Safari only works on macOS and edge on Windows. Both their plugin ecosystems are significantly less robust as well e.g if you want to use any popular tools e.g shodan, google data saver, edit this cookie, etc
11235813213455 8y ago
What I like in chrome is search shortcuts, example I start typing "thes" then press TAB, then I'm brought directly to https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hello https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hello (possibly with little configuration). I don't think Firefox has similar things, last time I checked we have to use bookmarks or something
- lisper 8y ago
  Seriously? You would sell your soul to the devil to save typing four extra characters?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kiro 8y ago
    If you think using Chrome is selling your soul to the devil I wonder what you think about me who is fully integrated in the Google ecosystem with Google Home and everything.
    - lisper 8y ago
      At least in that case I can see what you might think you're getting out of the deal. But typing "thes" instead of "thesaurus"? Seriously?
- d4l3k 8y ago
  Firefox has almost the exact same thing. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...
- Dunedan 8y ago
  In Firefox you can add a bookmark and set a keyword for that bookmark. If the URL of the bookmark contains "%s", it'll get replaced by everything you type in the URL bar after the keyword. For example I have a bookmark for Wikipedia with the keyword "wp". So when I type "wp Y Combinator" I end up on the Wikipedia page about Y Combinator. I really enjoy this feature and even catch myself regularly trying to use it on other computers, which obviously don't have such keywords defined.
  - lorenzhs 8y ago
    Yeah, but the indicator that you’re using such a bookmark when typing “wp Foo” in the address bar is really poor. When you use the OpenSearch search engine integration you can also set a keyword but it’s highlighted properly. Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click. I recently switched from chrome to Firefox but the search engine situation is something I’m not really happy about.
    - yorwba 8y ago
      > Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click. Nope, you can just right-click the site's own search bar, which is how I've been doing it forever.
      - QasimK 8y ago
        I think that adds it as a bookmark which is not the same thing as an OpenSearch provider because it doesn’t give you the blue highlight when searching with it. Actually this is exactly what lorenzhs said, and it is my experience too. I know this because I spent half an hour trying to get a “blue search” for BBFC.
        lorenzhs 8y ago
        Yup that’s what I meant. The right click -> add as search engine creates a bookmark which doesn’t get the blue highlight when using it. That distinction just doesn’t make sense to me.
- kristerv 8y ago
  Yeah this is the worst in firefox. I'm desperately trying to stick to firefox out of principle, but Chrome is just sooo much more comfy beacuse of like 3 features. Firefox actually has 2 domain specific search-shortcut features, but both take time to set up and then is not intuitive at all. Chrome just blows it out of the water. Also wtf - if I type "hello" and press enter in the search bar in FF, it puts a "www." in front and ".com" at the end.. like holy hell, if I knew the domain I'll write .com myself, it really is no problem. I even went ahead and googled for 15 minutes and disabled this in some deep settings somewhere, but it still does it when I press enter too fast... damnit, it frustrates me every single day. I hope they see this and fix this very-frustratingly-obvious anti-UX behaviour..
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Typing a word or words that don't look like a url or file has so far as I can recall always searched the default search engine for the word or query. This so far as I can recall has always been the case. Can you replicate this in a fresh profile to ensure this isn't just something you have set?
    - snlnspc 8y ago
      I run into the same thing somewhat frequently. it's the only real issue that I have with firefox. it's definitely not related to the profile, and it only seems to happen with fast enough input+enter. it's really jarring to be sent to a random domain when looking up something in a hurry.
- vatueil 8y ago
  As others have mentioned and I believe you were referring to, Firefox does let you create bookmarks with keywords to accomplish the same thing. Funnily enough, I've often seen Firefox users unaware that they can do the same with custom search keywords in Chrome, so the problem runs both ways. As someone who uses these features in both Firefox and Chrome, I do think it would be nice if Firefox copied how Chrome automatically adds these search actions, and perhaps a bit of the UI polish too (like how Chrome's omnibox will recognize you're performing a keyword search and adapt accordingly). It doesn't make much of a difference for existing power users, but it could help new users discover and use the feature.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    Firefox now highlights the search keyword and limits history matches to just that site.
- depressedpanda 8y ago
  You could just set duckduckgo as your default search provider. Then you can use their bangs[1] to quickly search on specific sites. "!thes test" will find synonyms for you. It works flawlessly in all browsers I use. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
  - __d 8y ago
    I switched to DDG for the privacy, and a general desire to ensure that competitors to Google survive. But I've found I use the "bang" commands all the time. Typing "w! foo" beats "wikipedia foo" every time.
    - vvillena 8y ago
      Firefox/Chrome: You can right-click any search field on any web you visit and add it as a search engine, with the keyword of your choosing. I've been using "w foo" to directly search on English Wikipedia. It's half the characters! :)
      - Freak_NL 8y ago
        The advantage of Duck's bangs is that you don't have to install or configure anything beyond searching with DuckDuckGo. I've managed to guess the correct bang-abbreviation plenty of times (Urban Dictionary? ud, OpenStreetMap? osm, Hacker News? Guess!).
      - Cyphase 8y ago
        I've also had 'w foo' as a keyword for years and years, along with many others for varying lengths of time. So convenient.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  To add to the comments that show you how to configure something similar yourself, Firefox recently started including search shortcuts by default. This means you can now type `@google <query>` in a recent Firefox installation to search Google. More info here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching-made-faster-the-latest-firefox-exploration/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching... It's still not as smooth and doesn't support as many OpenSearch providers as Chrome's, but might already help a bit.
- nindalf 8y ago
  In Firefox it requires a space instead of a tab. I search wikipedia and google like "w foo" and "g bar" respectively.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox not that long ago this is the only feature I miss. Searching e.g. YouTube involves typing the query and then using the mouse to click the YouTube icon in the address bar dropdown. It's not nearly as effortless.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    Set the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, and just type !yt query in the address bar. No mouse necessary.
AlmaElma 8y ago
I'd love to use Safari privately but uBlock Origin is a mess right now (lots of UI bugs) and won't work at all soon, so FF it is for me.
feanaro 8y ago
> I think modern Firefox is a much better browser than Chrome though, but Mozilla certainly lost the PR war and to no fault but their own, because Firefox sure sucked for a long while. This gets said often, but I've been using Firefox continually since 2003 and I've never noticed it sucking.
- watt 8y ago
  When you log out, Firefox will block it and warn you that you are about to close number of tabs. When you select "OK", your tabs are gone. But Chrome will quietly exit, and when you start it next time, will offer to restore the tabs that were open last time. Chrome approach wins, hands down.
  - sveme 8y ago
    That's a setting in both browsers. Default is "Start with Startpage or empty page" in both browsers as well. You can always select "Restore last session" in both browsers.
    - watt 8y ago
      The problem is that if Firefox is getting this default wrong, what else are they getting wrong? And it should realize user state is sacred, I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input!
      - askmike 8y ago
        I'm very happy that when I close my browser it kills all my tabs. If I really want something back I just view it from the history. > I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input! I'm pretty sure no one expects nor wants this. You're definitely in a minority here. The problem you describe isn't very technical, it's simply that you want something else than most people else and you don't want to take the time to configure your browser to how you want it to behave.
arkh 8y ago
I think it's more like a new generation of people started using Mac OS on which I heard Firefox suck. So being already in a walled garden environment they did not care about entering Google's. Firefox was always good on other OS. And you got noscript there with full access to block everything Chrome does not want you to block.
- sakisv 8y ago
  FWIW, I use Firefox on High Sierra and I don't think it sucks at all. About noscript: Recently I was playing with it, in an attempt to curate which site is allowed to make connections to which domain but I discovered that I cannot do it on a per domain basis and every whitelisted entry was applied everywhere. Apparently that was something that could be configured at noscript's ABE panel which doesn't exist in the latest versions. If you want per domain rules I would suggest trying umatrix instead.
  - GrayShade 8y ago
    uBlock Origin can also do that.
skgoa 8y ago
Firefox sucking wasn't their own fault? I would say it was. I would also say that their continued bloating of firefox and ancilliary projects/services shows that they still haven't return to their original mission.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Yes, that’s why I said it was to no fault but their own.
sametmax 8y ago
> but Mozilla certainly lost the PR war and to no fault but their own, because Firefox sure sucked for a long while. The last part is true, it did suck for a while. But I can't say "no fault but their own". Even if they rocked, they would have taken a big hit: chrome was advertised for a long time, and at no cost, using solicitating prompts directly on the most consultated and trusted web page in the world.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

Do you use Safari for private browsing because each private window is sandboxed between each other unlike Chrome? I find it intriguing that each incognito window in Chrome is not sandboxed between each other. Am I missing anything here?

kajecounterhack 8y ago

The advantage of Firefox / Chrome in general is that if you develop habits / shortcuts you can use them in any OS. Safari only works on macOS and edge on Windows. Both their plugin ecosystems are significantly less robust as well e.g if you want to use any popular tools e.g shodan, google data saver, edit this cookie, etc

11235813213455 8y ago

What I like in chrome is search shortcuts, example I start typing "thes" then press TAB, then I'm brought directly to https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hello https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hello (possibly with little configuration). I don't think Firefox has similar things, last time I checked we have to use bookmarks or something

lisper 8y ago
Seriously? You would sell your soul to the devil to save typing four extra characters?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Kiro 8y ago
  If you think using Chrome is selling your soul to the devil I wonder what you think about me who is fully integrated in the Google ecosystem with Google Home and everything.
  - lisper 8y ago
    At least in that case I can see what you might think you're getting out of the deal. But typing "thes" instead of "thesaurus"? Seriously?
d4l3k 8y ago
Firefox has almost the exact same thing. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...
Dunedan 8y ago
In Firefox you can add a bookmark and set a keyword for that bookmark. If the URL of the bookmark contains "%s", it'll get replaced by everything you type in the URL bar after the keyword. For example I have a bookmark for Wikipedia with the keyword "wp". So when I type "wp Y Combinator" I end up on the Wikipedia page about Y Combinator. I really enjoy this feature and even catch myself regularly trying to use it on other computers, which obviously don't have such keywords defined.
- lorenzhs 8y ago
  Yeah, but the indicator that you’re using such a bookmark when typing “wp Foo” in the address bar is really poor. When you use the OpenSearch search engine integration you can also set a keyword but it’s highlighted properly. Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click. I recently switched from chrome to Firefox but the search engine situation is something I’m not really happy about.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    > Downside is that you need to enable the separate search bar to get the option to add a site’s OpenSearch provider when visiting it because the small looking glass gets a tiny plus you need to click. Nope, you can just right-click the site's own search bar, which is how I've been doing it forever.
    - QasimK 8y ago
      I think that adds it as a bookmark which is not the same thing as an OpenSearch provider because it doesn’t give you the blue highlight when searching with it. Actually this is exactly what lorenzhs said, and it is my experience too. I know this because I spent half an hour trying to get a “blue search” for BBFC.
      - lorenzhs 8y ago
        Yup that’s what I meant. The right click -> add as search engine creates a bookmark which doesn’t get the blue highlight when using it. That distinction just doesn’t make sense to me.
kristerv 8y ago
Yeah this is the worst in firefox. I'm desperately trying to stick to firefox out of principle, but Chrome is just sooo much more comfy beacuse of like 3 features. Firefox actually has 2 domain specific search-shortcut features, but both take time to set up and then is not intuitive at all. Chrome just blows it out of the water. Also wtf - if I type "hello" and press enter in the search bar in FF, it puts a "www." in front and ".com" at the end.. like holy hell, if I knew the domain I'll write .com myself, it really is no problem. I even went ahead and googled for 15 minutes and disabled this in some deep settings somewhere, but it still does it when I press enter too fast... damnit, it frustrates me every single day. I hope they see this and fix this very-frustratingly-obvious anti-UX behaviour..
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Typing a word or words that don't look like a url or file has so far as I can recall always searched the default search engine for the word or query. This so far as I can recall has always been the case. Can you replicate this in a fresh profile to ensure this isn't just something you have set?
  - snlnspc 8y ago
    I run into the same thing somewhat frequently. it's the only real issue that I have with firefox. it's definitely not related to the profile, and it only seems to happen with fast enough input+enter. it's really jarring to be sent to a random domain when looking up something in a hurry.
vatueil 8y ago
As others have mentioned and I believe you were referring to, Firefox does let you create bookmarks with keywords to accomplish the same thing. Funnily enough, I've often seen Firefox users unaware that they can do the same with custom search keywords in Chrome, so the problem runs both ways. As someone who uses these features in both Firefox and Chrome, I do think it would be nice if Firefox copied how Chrome automatically adds these search actions, and perhaps a bit of the UI polish too (like how Chrome's omnibox will recognize you're performing a keyword search and adapt accordingly). It doesn't make much of a difference for existing power users, but it could help new users discover and use the feature.
- pseudalopex 8y ago
  Firefox now highlights the search keyword and limits history matches to just that site.
depressedpanda 8y ago
You could just set duckduckgo as your default search provider. Then you can use their bangs[1] to quickly search on specific sites. "!thes test" will find synonyms for you. It works flawlessly in all browsers I use. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- __d 8y ago
  I switched to DDG for the privacy, and a general desire to ensure that competitors to Google survive. But I've found I use the "bang" commands all the time. Typing "w! foo" beats "wikipedia foo" every time.
  - vvillena 8y ago
    Firefox/Chrome: You can right-click any search field on any web you visit and add it as a search engine, with the keyword of your choosing. I've been using "w foo" to directly search on English Wikipedia. It's half the characters! :)
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      The advantage of Duck's bangs is that you don't have to install or configure anything beyond searching with DuckDuckGo. I've managed to guess the correct bang-abbreviation plenty of times (Urban Dictionary? ud, OpenStreetMap? osm, Hacker News? Guess!).
    - Cyphase 8y ago
      I've also had 'w foo' as a keyword for years and years, along with many others for varying lengths of time. So convenient.
Vinnl 8y ago
To add to the comments that show you how to configure something similar yourself, Firefox recently started including search shortcuts by default. This means you can now type `@google <query>` in a recent Firefox installation to search Google. More info here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching-made-faster-the-latest-firefox-exploration/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/10/17/searching... It's still not as smooth and doesn't support as many OpenSearch providers as Chrome's, but might already help a bit.
nindalf 8y ago
In Firefox it requires a space instead of a tab. I search wikipedia and google like "w foo" and "g bar" respectively.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox not that long ago this is the only feature I miss. Searching e.g. YouTube involves typing the query and then using the mouse to click the YouTube icon in the address bar dropdown. It's not nearly as effortless.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  Set the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, and just type !yt query in the address bar. No mouse necessary.

AlmaElma 8y ago

I'd love to use Safari privately but uBlock Origin is a mess right now (lots of UI bugs) and won't work at all soon, so FF it is for me.

feanaro 8y ago

> I think modern Firefox is a much better browser than Chrome though, but Mozilla certainly lost the PR war and to no fault but their own, because Firefox sure sucked for a long while. This gets said often, but I've been using Firefox continually since 2003 and I've never noticed it sucking.

watt 8y ago
When you log out, Firefox will block it and warn you that you are about to close number of tabs. When you select "OK", your tabs are gone. But Chrome will quietly exit, and when you start it next time, will offer to restore the tabs that were open last time. Chrome approach wins, hands down.
- sveme 8y ago
  That's a setting in both browsers. Default is "Start with Startpage or empty page" in both browsers as well. You can always select "Restore last session" in both browsers.
  - watt 8y ago
    The problem is that if Firefox is getting this default wrong, what else are they getting wrong? And it should realize user state is sacred, I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input!
    - askmike 8y ago
      I'm very happy that when I close my browser it kills all my tabs. If I really want something back I just view it from the history. > I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input! I'm pretty sure no one expects nor wants this. You're definitely in a minority here. The problem you describe isn't very technical, it's simply that you want something else than most people else and you don't want to take the time to configure your browser to how you want it to behave.

arkh 8y ago

I think it's more like a new generation of people started using Mac OS on which I heard Firefox suck. So being already in a walled garden environment they did not care about entering Google's. Firefox was always good on other OS. And you got noscript there with full access to block everything Chrome does not want you to block.

sakisv 8y ago
FWIW, I use Firefox on High Sierra and I don't think it sucks at all. About noscript: Recently I was playing with it, in an attempt to curate which site is allowed to make connections to which domain but I discovered that I cannot do it on a per domain basis and every whitelisted entry was applied everywhere. Apparently that was something that could be configured at noscript's ABE panel which doesn't exist in the latest versions. If you want per domain rules I would suggest trying umatrix instead.
- GrayShade 8y ago
  uBlock Origin can also do that.

skgoa 8y ago

Firefox sucking wasn't their own fault? I would say it was. I would also say that their continued bloating of firefox and ancilliary projects/services shows that they still haven't return to their original mission.

eksemplar 8y ago
Yes, that’s why I said it was to no fault but their own.

sametmax 8y ago

> but Mozilla certainly lost the PR war and to no fault but their own, because Firefox sure sucked for a long while. The last part is true, it did suck for a while. But I can't say "no fault but their own". Even if they rocked, they would have taken a big hit: chrome was advertised for a long time, and at no cost, using solicitating prompts directly on the most consultated and trusted web page in the world.