Its only killer feature to me is that websites are designed and tested with a Chromium-first attitude. As a regular FF user I might stumble upon a website that’s quite buggy or straight up doesn’t work, which forces me to use Chrome for that specific website. Other than that I don’t really feel like there’s anything, and Edge is currently a better Chrome than Chrome anyway.

EDIT: and for the record, I’m still upset Microsoft didn’t choose FF and willingly increased Google’s grasp

I've been an FF user and developer of many frontends for years and the amount of times I run into serious differences between browsers is somewhere near zero.

...in the past decade, for me.

It once was a serious problem. No more

I've been on team FF since the switch from IE like 20 years ago- I agree sometimes there is additional jank, but I also want to add that it is rare enough that it's been a non-issue 99.9% of the time.

Even then, I expect some of it is the fact I use an obscene number of plug-ins to break most social media sites (to prevent overuse).

I built an extension[1] so that I could choose which sites are opened in Chrome... so that whenever I need to use Google Meet, it automatically opens it on Chrome.

[1]: https://onchrome.gervas.io

Thanks this sounds exactly what I need! Pretty much only use Chrome for Google Meet.

Microsoft had a huge hit with VSCode. They like Blink/chromium.

Can you explain that for those not familiar with VSCode?

Visual Studio Code is built on Electionjs like Microsoft Teams. Electionjs is built on the chromium rendering engine.

Yeah I'm still surprised MS did that too.

> Is there really a killer feature of Chrome that justifies its use over FF?

I log into Chrome with my Gmail account and my browsing history+passwords are carried across all the devices I use in a typical week, Windows, Mac, iPhone. This is huge, as I rely on history a lot.

My last 3 jobs also had Google-based accounts, which means I'm able to maintain two browser contexts where I don't dirty up my personal history with boring work stuff.

I assume Firefox probably offers account syncing, but there's no reason to switch at this point. They lost me more than a decade ago, I loved Chrome's out-of-the-box interface. It made Firefox seem ancient and cluttered with all the unnecessary buttons, and massive borders and tabs consuming precious screen space.

edit: And I'm now reading that Firefox supports multiple browser contexts but requires some effort. No thanks.

Firefox also supports multiple browsers including the Android Password-Fill API. So you need to sign into your Sync account rather than your Google account but then you get a nearly identical feature set.

Plus it is all end-to-end encrypted unlike the Google one.

Yikes. What if they ban your Google account? They have no customer support to speak of.

What if they don't and I spent time micromanging my computer for nothing?

Then you would have only spent an hour over the year for the security of not possibly losing your livelihood.

The chance of losing your account is so low that the overall expected value is still not worth it for most people.

You get account support with Google One or a Google Workspace subscription. There are other support avenues as well. Account bans do happen but for the most part it appears that when it does, that the person who got banned doesn't share the full story and people are more than happy to jump on the Google hate train. Google is a successful company and it annoys a lot of people that others don't have the same hate that they do.

If someone gets banned from google, they probably deserve it even though I have no idea why it happened.

This is such a bad attitude to take.

I had my paid GAFB account suspended years ago without explanation, could not get in touch with support, and as it took so long to get in touch with support, my data had been deleted by that point, meaning I lost many, many, many years of irreplaceable photographs from my Drive. Haven't touched cloud storage since.

Lesson learned: Drive is not a substitute for backups, nor is it a place to keep the only copy of important information. Now running Unraid.

Yell on them on Twitter and hope you start trending.

Ask for support on hn when a Google post trends.

If you use the Multi Account Containers extension [1] built by Firefox and use the built-in Firefox account sync, then you'll get that same functionality in Firefox across Windows, Mac, iPhone. That doesn't seem like a whole lot of effort and you get more functionality.

The biggest improvement over the account-based Chrome experience is that you could even have contexts (containers) for several things if you like - a container group for social media, a different container group for banking, work, shopping, etc.

All in different tabs, color-coded / labeled by container group, each with isolated cookies, etc but shared bruiser history in the same window just like in Chrome (I'm assuming) but with better privacy.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

I do the opposite. Always wipe all history whenever browser is closed, never sync anything, and never prompt to store passwords. I find it much more manageable.

Passwords go in the password manager.

Instead of history I use tagged bookmarks or a notes file (obsidian.md) with actual notes about why I wanted to save that link.

If I actually ever want to sync anything between work and home PC or to/from my phone (rare), it's an explicit choice to plug into USB and drag it over, or intentionally put it in dropbox. Not just something that just randomly implicitly happens or sometimes doesn't.

But different strokes for different folks.

I would say that it is the other way around.

Firefox provides essential functionalities that are altogether missing in Chrome:-

1. dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled - Enable copy paste

2. dom.event.contextmenu.enabled - Always enable context menu (right-click)

3. First party isolation.

Those experienced with web dev around here will tell you Chrome is the main (or only) browser tested with most websites these days. Some things might be slow or broken in Firefox. One example situation that comes to mind is you can't scroll to the bottom of the page on some sites in Firefox due to terrible spaghetti layout design, so the submit button is not normally reachable. Or it loads under a banner and becomes unclickable.

There's also some sites that seem to actively make things worse on purpose or refuse to load even if they otherwise do work. I think YouTube was noted for doing this a few years ago.

In other areas, small company sites may claim Firefox just doesn't work on their site. Sometimes prompted because an ancient version once was broken and the browser entry list was never updated, or they simply forgot to account for it in the grouping of "Internet Explorer or Other." I see this more often than I would like.

I only had one site in recent memory that failed to load. I put in a call to the support line and they fixed it.

Tbh this whole idea that the web is broken on ff is not true, tho it is true some web assembly apps fail to work properly in my experience.

I challenge anyone here to give an actual useful site that fails to work properly in ff.

A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge)

This is just the most recent example I remember, unfortunately there have been enough at this point that if I'm doing anything important (such as filling and submitting some important form), I do it in Chrome because I don't want it to silently break in FF and cause other issues with invalid or corrupt data submitted to the service.

> A recent example I found: https://tools.usps.com/rcas.htm (the "Initializing Services" modal never goes away in FF, works almost immediately in Chrome and Edge)

I can't reproduce this in FF 104.

The current release is 102.0.1, 104 is Beta: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar

I'm using 102.0.1 and I couldn't reproduce it either.

Submitted a bug report :o)

I build for Firefox and then bugfix chrome and safari. Safari usually requires a touch of tomfoolery after the fact. But otherwise it's dev butter.

I'm a longtime Mozilla contributor, so I’m probably biased toward Firefox, but there are still a few Chrome features that I wish Firefox had, like:

- Easier to create and use multiple profiles (somewhat mitigated by Mozilla's multi-container add-on)

- Google Translate integration

It’s not built-in, but you can get Google Translate browser extensions, and these are promoted on Firefox marketing pages.

Also, there’s an offline translate extension being worked on in open source: https://blog.mozilla.org/mozilla/local-translation-add-on-pr...

You can also make a bookmarklet that loads Google Translate into the page. It isn't quite as nice as the auto-detect in Chrome but very close.

With the new offline translation support I actually prefer this setup as I can try the local translate first, then if the quality is bad or the language isn't supported I can make the decision if I want to upload the page to Google.

I use the Right Click Search addon, select text, and "search" with Google Translate.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-s...

The profiles is what gets me. I have a personal bad professional profile on my device and whenever clicking on a link, it will open the page in the latest chrome window (re: profile) that was last accessed and it works wonderfully. Firefox profiles are a completely different process/app/structure and it just really does not work gracefully in any scenario I’ve tried.

This is also what keeps me from considering FF for a daily driver. I have the same workflow and it's very easy to keep straight.

I have hotkeys assigned to each profile via macOS shortcuts. Cmd-shift-# focuses a given profile. Or opens a new window of that profile if there wasn't one already.

Links from other apps always open in the most recent profile.

This makes it very simple to ensure links I click in Slack/iMessage/etc open where I want them to.

(Took the time to write this out in the hopes some Firefox folks see this..)

There's a profile switcher extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...

Which requires Homebrew and additional configuration.

While it works kinda OK, Profiles switching is such a core element to using a browser for Work & Personal use. Chrome makes this simple.

Or bookmark about:profiles.

Chrome has support for casting to Chromecasts. While not enough reason to daily drive Chrome, it does come in handy for the random video player that doesn't natively support it.

There are a couple of features in Chrome that I use every day for web dev.

1) when the console is open, you can right-click on the reload page button and choose hard reload.

2) when inspecting CSS properties, you can change many of them by dragging them with the mouse left and right. That makes positioning elements so much easier than guessing and adjusting a dozen times.

1. You mean ctrl-shift-r?

Ctrl F5, no?

You can drag CSS properties in Firefox too.

Its in the ff dev tools settings. If the tools are open it reloads everything.

There's a potentially a killer feature of Firefox that justifies its use over Chrome: it seems to be impossible to prevent youtube ads from playing on Chrome while in Firefox just having ABP installed does the trick.

(this claim is based on rather limited testing so please correct me if I'm wrong)

DevTools I think... although FF's are solid, Chrome's are just that much better.

The killer features is the developer tools panel. It's so packed with features it might as well be an IDE. I use Firefox on all my devices for personal browsing, but I still use Chrome for webdev works.

What web dev tools do you find valuable that Chrome has over Firefox?

Multiple profiles, so that I can keep personal and work related stuff separately. Firefox has containers, but it’s not really a first class support baked into the browser. For example, I use OneTab extension which lets you suspend tabs to save memory. This doesn’t work well unless you have profiles support.

Even with containers, when I suspend a tab, when I unsuspend I would want it in the same tab group

Firefox had the chance to remain relevant when it still had some significant market share and if they had gone all in on ad blocking (basically something like merge ublock origin directly into Firefox). Unfortunately, since most of their revenue is from Google, it could never happen due to conflict of interest.

Do you think major websites that are funded by ads would simply block Firefox with merged ad blocker?

At this point, probably, but in the past when FF had 30% market share? It would've at least forced a serious discussion in the industry on what are acceptable ads. Or maybe it would've been the impetus for a working microtransaction system built into the browser. Instead, they did nothing with their influence.

Chrome works better with google crap, by design. That's about the only reason I ever use chromium.

I have to use laods of Google Crap at work.

I use Firefox. It works OK. Is that why I think the Google docs are not very good?

I am on a Mac (for work) so in reality I am using Safari it seems from what I have been reading!

On the Mac, Firefox is Firefox, with Quantum and all. It's iOS where Firefox, like every other third party browser, is mostly just reskinned Safari, because third party browser engines aren't allowed due to apps being restricted from running outside code.

For me, it's simply the grouping of tabs. I use both, but if I ever want to keep my tabs organised (which is often) I cannot use Firefox.

Really? There are extensions for that sort of thing. Your extension list can even be synchronized across devices.

Tree Style Tab, for example, allows control over how new tabs are opened in relation to existing tabs if you don't like FF defaults. Even if you don't like the tree view, you get a UI that adds settings for how your tabs should open and stay grouped.

Not exactly "killer" but the ability to customize the keyboard shortcut to focus the URL bar (to Cmd+D) is what keeps me from switching to Firefox:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130168

I would pay $100 for fully customizable keyboard shortcuts in Firefox. Especially if they were Vim-like or could bind arbitrary JavaScript to a key.

I miss vimperator so much.

Chrome profiles. I need a distinct browser environment for each of my clients.

Firefox supports multiple profiles, though the UI is not as streamlined as Chrome’s. In Firefox, open about:profiles to create and open new profile windows.

The Firefox implementation is clunky. If they fixed that then I'd readily switch to FF.

Video playback is janky for me in Firefox on Linux on some sites (like IGN), but not on Brave. Actually, now that I mention it, I bet I haven’t installed a codec or something.

Happened to me too starting a few weeks ago. What solved it was to turn off Bluetooth, and prevent from activating on start.

Firefox has traditionally given a Bronx cheer to IT making it more difficult to manage updates and configuration.

Maybe it’s changed but I wrote them off years ago as a result.

They added good GPO support a year or two ago AFAIK. And if you can send a config file to your Mac/Linux boxes it can be easily managed there too.

Some of us find Firefox incredibly useful for this reason. When my company's intranet site is down you can't open a new tab on Edge without it crashing trying to get there.

As a Brit, I've never heard the term "Bronx cheer" before, looked it up and now love it.

Start typing a Web address, hit tab and search that website.

In Chrome it works reliably for me; in Firefox it works for a small subset of the sites that work in Chrome.

I happen to really like the UI of Chrome over Firefox. To me the add bookmark dialog is very clunky in Firefox. Also, I prefer in the in-tab bookmark manager of Chrome over the 'Library' Window Firefox opens.

Also as far as making extensions go I like how in chrome you can use dev-tools-protocol within extensions as you can you cool things like intercept the body of a response with it.

That being said I'm really wanting a better browser but for me Firefox is not it.

I flip flop between Firefox and Chrome constantly and for as long as I can remember, Chrome has always just felt snappier

I have an older Surface tablet (that I recovered from a recycle bin, TBH) and I've been using Chrome on it, but I was annoyed by some of the latency and tried Firefox the other day. It had all the problems of Chrome, plus jittery scrolling and some extra random lags thrown in, so I noped right out of it. I've got nothing against Firefox as a concept, but it's apparently too hardware intensive for that scenario.

Are you sure it isn't the hardware? Perhaps there's a reason it was in the recycling bin. Not my experience whatsoever, even with "old Surface tablets".

I use FF, but I have at times had to switch to Chrome for extended periods of time when performance of FF was bad after a particular release - maybe about 9-10 years ago? I think a lot of people experienced the same thing at the time, moved off and never moved back.

Anecdotally, I know several folks who got retina MacBooks when that was new (2012 or so?) and had to switch off of Firefox. For a while it didn't render correctly, and then once it did the performance made it unusable for daily driving.

I am a faithful user of FF. It was difficult about a decade ago. The performance was not great.

Over the past few years it has gotten much better. Out of sight better.

Is it the Rust project? I do not know. But I no longer have to suffer nobly, FF is just better

After they came out with Firefox quantum (version 57/58 onwards), performance has improved.

Give it a try.

Gmail offline support. This is why there's Thunderbird.

If you are using gmail, syncing browsers with everything in them is very easy. I do feel like the extension library of chrome is also larger.

FF is sluggish to open first time and if there is an update, god help you.

Interesting..I can't even say I notice the update time..it happens but never stand in my way that I'd notice it..under 1 minute may be? Not sure to be honest. What's your experience here?

Multiple profiles in parallel.

Does Firefox support that yet??

So...there are profiles (about:profiles) and you can run them in parallel. But it's not really feature meant for consumers as it is in Chrome.

Multiple profiles in parallel? Sure, you can start multiple instances of Firefox in parallel from the command line and use them with different profiles. I do that (on a Mac) regularly. Works under Windows too, IIRC.

You don’t need to use command line options to open new profiles in Firefox. Just open the about:profiles page.

Yes, Firefox supports multiple profiles in parallel. For a Chrome-like user interface, try the Profile Switcher for Firefox add-on:

- Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...

- Source: https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher

I know they have containers but maybe I’m using wrong as it’s cumbersome.

you have containers that are better that parallel profiles

A few months ago I tried to go back to Firefox and used containers a lot. It works fine, but sometimes I'd pick the wrong container, defeating the point of using containers (eg: using Google Search for personal stuff while logged in to a work Google Account).

Containers are useful and we can do interesting things with them (eg: temporary containers), but they don't replace profiles. With a profile I don't have to mix personal bookmarks with work bookmarks, I can use different extensions/settings, a different theme so I don't use the wrong profile by mistake, etc.

Yes. But launching them isn't as easy as in chrome. Depending on what you are using them for, firefox containers might be sufficient.

Among others, serial port API is missing.

I personally dislike Firefox for its annoying "Looking for updates" pop-up whenever I open the browser. That 3 second stop generated more dislike from me for Firefox than bad privacy policies of Chrome ever could.

I’ve never seen or heard of that. Is this recent? Anyone have a screenshot?