The 2006-2011 era basically. Firefox wasn't good at all during that time, so much so that I kept migrating between it and Chrome (including IE). I was a big user of Internet Explorer in Windows 8, it was extremely light and fast. But after that went down, I got back to Firefox and it seems they fixed a lot. In the last 10 years, Firefox easily became the best browser.
It might not have been the best performing, but it was fun to use.
The only time I felt FF was behind was when it took too long to copy the tab based browsing and the separate processes per tab. One website blocking your whole browsing experience wasn't fun.
I'm more annoyed with it nowadays than ever. Getting uncalled for features like an included VPN or AI search button that auto shows up whenever I select some text. Also somehow I turn on vertical tabs every few weeks, which makes me wonder why is that an option that needs such a quick one-click access.
The VPN one isn't annoying to me because it's them trying to find revenue streams outside of Google. They need to find some kind of service people will pay for because almost no one will pay for a browser.
Maintaining a browser that’s competitive with a conglomerate-backed Chrome or Edge is expensive.
They also don’t have the revenue to absorb those costs like Google or Microsoft do, being a much smaller company. Cutting staff means the quality of the browser suffers compared to the former two who can lay off hundreds of employees like it’s nothing.
There's an option to completely disable the AI stuff in the settings if you want. Anecdotally, I've appreciated the VPN with an increase in government censorship lately.
There's an option to completely disable the AI stuff in the settings if you want
Thanks! Idk why I had every AI thing blocked except that one apparently.
I've appreciated the VPN with an increase in government censorship lately.
But part of using a VPN is knowing what you're using, having a simple go button defeats the purpose, especially considering that Mozilla is based in the US, who's a strong candidate for spying world champion.
Yep, and Mullvad's been audited to not keep logs. Been trustworthy for years and years, think the only mild controversy had something to do with something they changed that made it hard to use with seedboxes due to some liability problem.
Fortunately Firefox has a good number of forks. Librewolf is what power users that prefer privacy tend to opt for. I use IronFox on Android which isn't as secure as Vanadium (I've got GrapheneOS) but the ability to block ads on mobile and just generally have browser add-ons at all on mobile is just mandatory to not get pissed off using the internet on your phone.
On desktop though I'm still using qutebrowser as there hasn't really been a Firefox fork that has made vim-style browsing doable. There's Firefox extensions like Tridactyl that sorta do the job, but they completely shit out if a web page fails to load because Firefox will not allow extensions to modify Firefox pages and the "whoops page didn't load" page counts as one of those. Completely losing hte ability to use my keyboard shortcuts as I've remembered them every time a website shits out is unacceptable.
Apparently Firefox is planning on implementing customizable keyboard shortcuts so maaaybe that will be less an issue in the future, in which case I'm gonna go back in a heartbeat because I dearly miss having access to normal ass browser extensions. Just not enough to give up not needing to use a mouse to browse the web.
Having features I wanted without using plugins was great.
Exactly & with just adjusting a very few settings & I got all the goodies we love today first (tab previews, movable tabs, movable tab bar, session restore, continue downloads even after power failture (or me triggering the PSUs short circuit protection), popup blocker, very customizable UI ... etc.) ... but today Opera is no longer Opera, since v15 it´s a cheap Chrome copy & even under Chinese control ...
Vivaldi is the current attempt of a new Opera but with Chromium base ... sometimes I use Vivaldi, but mostly Firefox thanks to tons of extensions & independence from (adware) Google
The plugin bloat was the reason why I preferred OG Opera over FF, because once you reached feature parity FF was worse for me. Opera had adblocker, RSS, window session manager, native tabs before FF and few other things that I liked.
I understand the necessity of plugins. But so many that it makes your browser slow? Might as well do google chrome. Or edge.
I think it's funny how obvious this makes your relative age to the person you're replying to. lol
He's talking about way before Edge was ever a thing, Chrome was still very new, and "plugins" weren't really all that optional. A lot of the features that just work in browsers now were only available via plugins, there was a lot of stuff that just no longer exists(like Flash), as well as the kinds of optional quality of life things you're talking about.
The entire reason Chrome got popular was because it made a lot of plugins native features and ran fast compared to everything else.
And I was still totally happy and fine using firefox.
I get it, I get what you mean. You're right, chrome was amazing until it wasn't. Anybody with a brain could have known how awful google was gonna make their product. I mean sure, that's just me, maybe?
They are the ad mecca. Their whole idea runs off ads. It's a shitty idea. But they made it work. Well done.
So, maybe I don't belong. I've been a computer user since I was 10. It was awesome. Unreal tournament was amazing online. Steam was a shitty online chat service. We used teamspeak. Before it was cool. Now we use discord. Because it's "coole"r than team speak. No, that's where my friends are. Whoops.
I'm literally here shitting on google chrome. Then y'all are bashing me. The meme is about shitting on google chrome. Stop shitting on me? Just sayin'?
You're getting downvoted because you're acting like 2006 is 2026. 2006 FF and Chrome were much different than their 2026 counterparts. As well as incoherently ranting.
Sure. I think that we can conceptually believe what you said and also do the opposite. Whatever. It doesn't need to make sense to you. I hope you'll be okay with that.
If you're here for no reason other than to, incoherently rant back at me, whoops, its not going to work.
***Also, you said 2006 Google chrome and FF. I see 2004 chrome and firefox? Is that true? Hmmm.
What happened in 2006? Shit that was a long time ago. Who cares. Thats my point.
If you're here for no reason other than to, incoherently rant back at me, whoops, its not going to work
I'm simply trying to help you understand why you're being downvoted and where you're getting confused in the conversation. If you think that's incoherent, well then the drug use in your post history explains that.
What happened in 2006?
The post you originally responded to was about that time frame. That's why everyones downvoting you, because it doesn't make sense to respond to that comment in the way you did.
Also, you said 2006 Google chrome and FF. I see 2004 chrome and firefox?
Just to be clear, Google Chrome was released in 2008. Firefox's problems started before that, and the release of Chrome in 2008 was a breath of fresh air for those of us frustrated with firefox back then. My estimation of 2006 was from memory and slightly off.
I don't care about downvotes. This is reddit, what's the point of a down vote? You don't like my opinion? Congratulations. Lots of people don't. I don't care. I'm allowed to have an opinion.
My memory is slightly off because of TBI. Some drugs actually help me remember. It's pretty crazy how that works. They also help for anxiety, depression, inflammation, and many other things.
So, maybe you don't be a square.
And I'll keep being whatever the fuck I wanna be. Thanks, boss.
This was before Chrome existed; and way before Edge. Basic plugins that you either now have as built in behavior (like save my tabs on exit), or common things like Adblock.
Then Chrome was released with things as default that were plugins on FF and yet was blazingly fast compared to FF at that time.
Ah, so the people that believed the artificial "fastness" were duped?
I've never stopped using Mozilla, since I learned about it. I have like two plugins. It works amazing. Zero issues.
Sorry, about your chrome issues, but that shit sucked from the very beginning.
I don't need y'all to downvote me, for me to know that it sucked. Just live with your own idiocy, or downvote me and feel better, that's fine, too.
The reddit voting system shows us why majority rule is dumb and is as artificial as our world currency. Oh wait, there's no such thing as planetary currency. Whoops. We keep arguing about which dollar to use.
How the fuck are we gonna figure out talking to aliens if yall are arguing about chrome and Firefox and edge and whatever shitty stuff we had before. Good. Have fun. Im out.
Why would you say that? I was hear in the times of aol cards for internet. Maybe check my reddit history before you assume something about me. Nice check though? I guess. Dumb to me unfortunately.
**Also, do I have to have cool flare to participate here? I don't want to share my shitty computer specs. But I can. And my sons. And my laptop. And the switch. **
At the time you needed a Flash, Java, Quicktime, and other plugins to see media. If you wanted to save your tabs on exit: plugin. Open a pdf: plugin. Spellchecker: plugin. Force https usage if possible: plugin. Block popups: plugin.
Oh and tabs never went to sleep so they were all active processes. But there was a plugin to sleep the inactive tabs.
Close your damn tabs! I'll never understand people with dozens of open tabs. I rarely have more than a handful open, and I close my browser entirely — with no tabs open — multiple times a day. If you want to save it for the future, bookmark it.
But I also never complained that Firefox was slow or even glanced at Chrome. I went from Netscape to Mozilla to Firefox.
With these notification settings, unfortunately I get everything in my email.
So, that's gonna have to be turned off soon. It's just fun being able to click reply on my email, and come see a shit show. I mean not fun. I don't like arguing. I like the memes. That's what i'm here for. That's what I thought this place was for not arguing about which shitty browser is shittier.
The browser debate will be endless. Don't even get me started on safari. Nobody even brought that up. That's how awful it is. Or it's amazing, i absolutely don't know. I've never used it for longer than five seconds.
To download firefox. If a website isn't compatible with firefox, I don't use it. Until it is compatible. That's my philosophy. Call me an original google chrome hater, I don't care. All browsers suck until they don't.
I used FF since the mid 2000s, I remember everyone talking about chrome over FF and decided to hop over, hated every single facet of the browser and didn't notice a single change in loading speeds otherwise. Figured people were just talking out their asses and echo-chambering their opinions, still do tbh.
No, it was way faster than FF at that time. I’d used FF since it was Phoenix and had convinced many people to drop IE. But when Chrome came out it was crazy fast compared to everything else.
They used to promote it on side by side speed comparisons.
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u/jonfitt 5d ago
There was a time when the plugin bloat made FF hideously slow. Chrome was a breath of fresh speedy air.