Comment by sensanaty a day ago
> Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used to Chrome
I find this notion completely baffling. I use Chrome, Firefox and Safari more or less daily cause I test in all 3, and other than Safari feeling clunkier and in general less power-user friendly, I can barely tell the difference between the 3, especially between chrome and FF (well, other than uBlock working better in FF anyways).
I'm sure they exist, I've just never seen them. I use banking and websites like Netflix, too. And, if I had to wager, you could bypass a lot of this "doesn't work on Firefox" by just changing your user agent.
I think it's a case of yes, it does work, but web developers don't think so, so they implement checks just for kicks.
> And, if I had to wager, you could bypass a lot of this "doesn't work on Firefox" by just changing your user agent.
Indeed, even in the codebase at $JOB that I'm responsible for, we have had some instances where we randomly check if people are in Chrome before blocking a browser API that has existed for 2 decades and been baseline widely available. These days 99% of features that users actually care about are pretty widely supported cross-browser, and other than developer laziness there's literally no reason why something like a banking app shouldn't work in any of the big 3.
I guarantee you that if you set your `userAgent` to a Chrome one (or even better yet, a completely generic one that covers all browsers simultaneously, cause most of the time the implementation of these `isChrome` flags is just a dead simple regex that looks for the string `chrome` anywhere in the userAgent), all problems you might've experienced before would vanish, except for perhaps on Google's own websites (though I've never really had issues here other than missing things like those image blur filters in Google Meet, which always felt like a completely artificial, anti-competitive limitation)
What part of the Verizon website doesn’t work on Firefox? I am curious if it’s actually the browser or its the aggressive privacy options.
> a well known kindergarden
I am baffled by the choice to include this laughably obscure example alongside a major telecom. Surely there are better options less likely to be the fault of a random lazy web developer.
Youtube, for example seems deliberately hampered on non-chrome browsers.
For Verizon, it's one of their log in forms that doesn't work on Firefox, even with ublock disabled. Works just fine with Chrome. I was able to reproduce the behaviour on both my and my wife's laptop. (I haven't tried disabling the FF privacy features)
> I am baffled by the choice...
Rereading what I wrote, I see the unintended humour in my association.
That being said:
1. These are both websites where I don't have much of a choice whether I use them or not
2. I actually expected Verizon to have a terrible website based on the sum of my interactions with them (both online and over the phone) and how uncompetitive the market is. But I was surprised the kindergarden had a needlessly restrictive website because I thought they'd care more about their online presence. And, to be clear, the kindergarden's website is fancy and expensively designed, so their lack of Firefox support can't easily explained by laziness.
I get serious slowdown with multiple (3--5) youtube tabs open in firefox, but not chrome. Seems to happen when tabs are open for a long time (weeks), so probably some leak. Lots of others mention it on forums.
Google has a history of sabatoging Youtube on Firefox. See for example https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delaye....
It isn't unique to youtube either. Gmail offline mode only works on chrome, even though other browsers have the necessary APIs. And menu copy and paste in google docs uses a special chrome-only extension that google pre-installs in chrome, instead of the clipboard API that works in other browsers as well.
Firefox has multiple, user-affecting, memory leaks related to Youtube (unconfirmed if just youtube), going back at least 7 years. Tab scrollbar as no option to be disabled, so I had to write CSS to get tabs into a form close to what I would like similar to chrome. Tab mute icon has no (working) option to disable the click event, so I had to write CSS to remove it.
I made some other changes, but I forget what. At least FF still has the full uBlock Origin.
I'm pretty sure the memory leak applies the longer you navigate the same youtube tab. If I browse a lot in one day it gets to the point of crashing if I don't open a new tab/window.
I can confirm the youtube issue. No idea if it might be some edge case with my distro or hardware. Forcing a GC collection helps but input events to the entire browser still feel laggy until I restart it. It's been going on for years now.
It occurs to me that it could be a pathological edge case triggered by ublock and youtube interacting. I'm not going to disable it to find out.
Bro you probably have a monster mac pro with 256gb unified ram. I'm typing this on a N100 minipc. We're not the same. I just tried to switch to firefox (with 3 tabs including HN and youtube) and my load topped out at 2.5. I'm back to chrome now with the same tabs (and a couple more) and it's hovering at 1.
16gb of ram also? I think it's youtube more than anything else. I am having a lot of problems with youtube, my other machine is a netbook which crashes while listening/watching to videos on youtube. Not sure why we put all our content (software engineering, etc) on that platform. It's awful.
Firefox now has vertical tabs built in. Not as feature filled of course though tab groups and vertical tabs together replaces all the functionality I needed from Tree Style Tabs.
"memory leaks related to Youtube"
News to me.
If this is even true, in the end it's still "so what?" Meaning, the alternative is even worse so, let's say granted there is this problem. Where is the better alternative that does not have this problem? Chrome doesn't have other equivalent or worse memory problems? Even if not leaking, it simply uses so much it's the same end result.
I've never consciously noticed a problem with youtube so if there is a problem, it's not one that necessarily matters.
Chrome has never crashed on me from Youtube memory leaks. Firefox has.
The stuff INSIDE the viewport is pretty much the same across them all, but on the daily it makes a big difference how your other services integrate with the browser. Someone who is all-in with iCloud, macOS, iOS etc might find it annoying to use Firefox without their personal info like password and credit cards and bookmarks. And the same would be true I guess for Google fans switching to Safari and not having those things.
I agree, there's little to no friction in switching to Firefox and I have never, not even once, noticed a difference with websites. The same is not true for Safari.