this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I donate to the Mozilla foundation, and I love Firefox a ton. But I can't seem to like the UI by installing a theme, and when I change it to look better the browser slows to a crawl. Does it really matter all that much if I use Chromium?

P.S. To the people from my last post regarding something similar, Firefox was too slow, I'm sorry, but I use Vivaldi instead of Brave because Brendon Eich can suck my dick.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (2 children)

tl;dr: A notable marketshare of multiple browser components and browsers must exist in order to properly ensure/maintain truly open web standards.

It is important that Firefox and its components like Gecko and Spidermonkey to exist as well as maintain a notable marketshare. Likewise, it is important for WebKit and its components to exist and maintain a notable marketshare. The same is true for any other browser/rendering/JavaScript engines.

While it is great that we have so many non-Google Chrome alternatives like Chromium, Edge, Vivaldi, etc., they all use the same or very similar engines. This means that they all display and interact with websites nearly identically.

When Google decides certain implementation/interpretation of web standards, formats, behavior, etc. should be included in Google Chrome (and consequently all Chromium based browsers), then the majority marketshare of web browsers will behave that way. If the Chrome/Chromium based browsers reaches a nearly unanimous browser marketshare, then Google can either ignore any/all open web standards, force their will in deciding/implementing new open web standards, or even become the defacto open web standard.

When any one entity has that much control over the open web standards, then the web standards are no longer truly "open" and in this case becomes "Google's web standards". In some (or maybe even many) cases, this may be fine. However, we saw with Internet Explorer in the past this is not something that the market should allow. We are seeing evidence that we shouldn't allow Google to have this much influence with things like the adoption of JPEG XL or implementation of FLoC.

With three or more browser engines, rendering engines, and browsers with notable marketshares, web developers are forced to develop in adherence to the accepted open web standards. With enough marketshare spread across those engines/browsers, the various engines/browsers are incentivized to maintain compatibility with open web standards. As long as the open web standards are designed and maintained without overt influence by a single or few entities and the open standards are actively used, then the best interest of the collective of all internet users is best served.

Otherwise, the best interest of a few entities (in this case Google) is best served.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, good explanation; but to add to this...

The important factor here as far as what an individual uses is the tracked metrics. When a browser looks at a website, it identifies itself and its engine. Therefore actually using an engine other than Chromium is important because it goes into use stats across all websites the individual visits.

And like with all collective endeavors, while an individual contribution is insignificant, the whole is made up of those individual contributions. It also only takes a few percentage points of users for a business to in theory want to avoid excluding those users and thus keep them developing for multiple browsers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Or to recap from history, Internet Explorer has no incentive to follow web standards and web design was a stagnant table-based layout until Netscape shows up. Wouldn't have complete separation of text and style the way we do today if css never took off.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago

Ff is faster for me

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago

You don't even make sense. Themes slowing down the browser, what?? That doesn't happen.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

Chromium is a dead end, I use Firefox because it respects my privacy but also because it works better.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmmm. Hard to get over that dislike of an interface. I have found one plugin killed Firefox performance for me but I'm generally happy with the layout so haven't messed with it.

On how important it is: I used Chromium for a while but went back to Firefox because I read someone somewhere say "If you don't use Firefox, there eventually wont be a Firefox to use" and that was enough for me to switch back.

If you're donating to Mozilla though, I guess they're more than happy with that even if you're not using the product.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's the same reason I don't complain about having to pay taxes for schools, even if I don't have a child in school right now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Use what you like and don’t give a fuck about strangers on the internet deem the holy grail of browsers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Same applies to alot of things online and offline such as movies books video games music operating systems art and so on best to male your own mind on things

Temple os is good stay mad glowies and libruls

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have a wording problem at the end of your comment, but exactly.

Like what you like, if something works for you and you’re fine with it or like it, what you enjoy shouldn’t matter to some fanboy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly that is what i was going for make your own opinion on things. Internet and people be dammed if you like to watch a terrifically bad b movie or like a certain kind of comedy then you should make your own informed opinion on that thing

You can like a movie or a book or something and still acknowledge all its faults aswell

What I said at the end was a joke a shitpost not a "wording problem" it's not a serious take I can assure you that lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Same energy as "I'm not interested in politics".

Then don't complain when Google forces their view of internet on everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It matters as much as you want it to.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Well, if Firefox does become unusable for you, then I don't think you would be at fault for switching to a Chromium-based browser, like Vivaldi. Usability is an important aspect to consider.

Have you considered using a Firefox fork, like LibreWolf?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of interest what part of the UI don't you like? You can drag and drop pretty much any button and component where ever you want and you can use the Firefox colours website to apply any colour scheme you want. This is all core browser features so no performance affects.

What is it that a theme is then adding?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Not OP, but I also prefer Vivaldi over Firefox. My reason may not be the same as OP's, but for the sake of discussion, here it is. I simply can't stand having tabs on top of my screen, and I'll go to great lengths to have them on the bottom. On my private computer, I used to use Firefox with Tab Mix Plus, until Mozilla killed support for such extensions. I later managed to get the tabs to the bottom via custom CSS for Firefox, but every few releases the CSS stopped working and had to be recreated from scratch. So, I switched to Vivaldi. On my work PC, where only Edge and Chrome are allowed, my workaround is to work in separate windows instead of tabs, but that tends to get a little messy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Remove all your plug-ins and run it standalone. Firefox doesn't drag ass.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use what you prefer, except brave, they can go fuck themselves.

Firefox works great for me, but I have OP hardware.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Whatever you've done to UI must be some atrocity as I do not experience issues with FF. You've never specified which FF extension you've used that had slowed down your browser.

Chrome (and by extension) Chromium and all derivative browsers are Google's lever to truly control and shape internet to their liking. Multiple people said it already.

Personally I find Chromium UI very cumbersome and dislike it a lot. Which is to say we all have our own preferences for UI.

In your case you'd have to weigh your repulsion with available performant FF UIs vs future of internet and choose which decision can you really live with.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I prefer supporting browser alternatives as opposed to supporting Google's monopoly of web browsing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google provides the majority of mozilla's funding

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, if that extends beyond paying to be the default search engine, I'd be happy to take a look at a source if you have one. Changing search engines is also only a matter of a few clicks.

Classic...ask for more info and they disappear

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

using firefox on Linux with i5 6th gen, ddr3 32gb.

have over 100 tabs. most are suspended. cannot say it is slow.

edit: running with NVMe

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Firefox is faster than Chrome for me. Theme isn't an issue for me, but the thing that took me a long time to get where I like it, is getting rid of all the buttons and UI elements and plugin icons that I didn't want to see all the time to get things streamlined down to where I like them. It did take me a couple months to get everything how I like it, but now when I use chrome, it seems clunky.

Trying to switch tools takes a while to get right and to re-learn. There are some things I don't like about Firefox still, but more I don't like about Chrome.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Use whatever browser works best for you. It is kind of dumb to stick to something you do not like just because of ideology.

That said both Firefox and Chromium based browsers have pros and cons, there is no best one. My primary browser at home is Firefox, at work I use Edge, I like both. Some time ago tried to fully move from Firefox to Vivaldi, but went back due to couple things that I preferred on FF.

Your main problem is probably 6GB physical memory. At least on Windows 10+ I would not be comfortable with less than 16GB. Hope you at least have SSD.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Every now and then I just force myself to use different browsers just to see if I like them more or if there are some features I like. For now I have always returned to Firefox because it just works for me best, but I have also really enjoyed Vivald when I have tried it and I could easily also use it as my main browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use Linux, so system memory usage shouldn't be an issue

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use Firefox because Chrome screws up my task bar icons too often. I have to use a PWA extension for Firefox to get that functionality, but once set up it just works.