Paul, do you still endorse Firefox?

Paul, your name even appeared in the 2004 New York Times ad for Firefox. Firefox is arguably more important now than it was back then, but you don’t seem to be endorsing/promoting Firefox these days. You have a real platform and we need your voice! Yes, Chromium is open source but Google ultimately controls what happens in Chromium, it’s Google employees that make the decisions and that’s not good

Conversation 51 comments

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    29 January, 2019 - 3:27 pm

    <p>I respect what Firefox is doing for sure, and completely understand why someone would choose this browser over Chrome or anything else. Plus it syncs between PC and mobile, which is great.</p>

    • james_b

      02 February, 2019 - 1:29 am

      <blockquote>But you dodged the question subtly. Do you still endorse it? And for that matter, is it your default?</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    30 January, 2019 - 1:34 pm

    <p>I believe that instead of using Chrome, we should instead simply pray to Crom. Here are my main reasons.</p><p><br></p><p>1) Crom is your god</p><p>2) Lives in the earth</p><p>3) Battle pleases him</p><p>4) He fought the giants</p><p>5) If he does not listen, then to Hell with him!</p><p><br></p><p>Edit: Had to fix a misquote. There is no profit in misquoting "Conan The Barbarian."</p>

  • 6e80a240

    30 January, 2019 - 1:40 pm

    <p>Firefox is my daily driver and I would highly recommend it over Chrome. I do not experience performance issues, crashes, etc. The only disadvantage I know of is when a website requires flash, like directvnow or espn, and because Firefox does not support flash at all, I need to fall back to Chrome. Edge has the same issues with those sites. </p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      30 January, 2019 - 2:08 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#400675">In reply to 6e80a240:</a></em></blockquote><p>You just need to install the Flash player and it will work in Firefox.</p>

      • jimchamplin

        Premium Member
        30 January, 2019 - 3:35 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#400684">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>That's like saying to the doctor, "I have this minor pain in my left arm sometimes when I do strenuous work." And instead of being told ways to help alleviate the pain like a compression sleeve or a good OTC pain reliever, the doctor says plainly, "Take a large dose of strychnine."</p><p><br></p><p>:)</p><p><br></p><p>Edit: It's a joke insulting Flash. I had to add this because clearly at least two people don't understand humor.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      31 January, 2019 - 12:36 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#400675">In reply to 6e80a240:</a></em></blockquote><p>I turned off Flash about 4 years ago on all my machines. None of the sites I visit regularly have Flash at all, if they do, I look for an alternative.</p>

      • lvthunder

        Premium Member
        31 January, 2019 - 1:41 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#400772">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>For some sites there isn't a legal alternative. The only site I use that uses Flash is NHL.TV. I use the app on mobile, but if I want to watch a game on my desktop then it's Flash in a browser. Flash is going away in a year or two so they should switch to something else sooner or later.</p>

  • scj123

    Premium Member
    31 January, 2019 - 7:25 am

    <p>Back in 2004 you recomended people use Windows XP, do you still recomend this now?</p>

    • StevenLayton

      02 February, 2019 - 11:28 am

      <blockquote><a href="#400793"><em>In reply to scj123:</em></a><em> Its as if you're suggesting that, with the passing of time, opinions might change. ;)</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • scj123

        Premium Member
        02 February, 2019 - 4:45 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#401375">In reply to StevenLayton:</a></em></blockquote><p>:)</p>

  • minke

    31 January, 2019 - 7:43 am

    <p>I keep trying Firefox, but Chrome just works better most of the time. Plus, Firefox is so horribly ugly with that putrid purple theme and those ugly tabs with square edges that look like they are skewed. I also find that the syncing of bookmarks, passwords, etc. works much better in Chrome. The biggest reason is that 100% of websites are designed to work the best on Chrome and most of them do.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      31 January, 2019 - 1:36 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#400798">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>My Firefox isn't purple. It's black and dark grey. Maybe that's because I use Dark Mode in Windows 10. I also don't run across websites that don't work in Firefox. I don't think it's wise to give one company everyone's browser history. Let's split it up among several different companies.</p>

    • Daekar

      04 February, 2019 - 11:41 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#400798">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'm not sure what browser you were using, but it doesn't seem to have much in common with the Firefox I use every day…</p>

  • misterstuart

    Premium Member
    31 January, 2019 - 8:53 am

    <p>I use different browsers for different purposes because, honestly, they all have strengths and weaknesses depending on use case. That said, Firefox has been and remains my default browser mainly out of habit, but also because I just like them as an organization. </p>

    • Tim

      Premium Member
      31 January, 2019 - 2:18 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#400827">In reply to misterstuart:</a></em></blockquote><p>Same. I can't help myself from swinging back to FireFox from time to time; it runs really well. But development stuff is just easier to me in Chrome. And generally Chrome is good enough.</p>

    • nfeed2000t

      02 February, 2019 - 1:52 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#400827"><em>In reply to misterstuart:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>Each browser has its own strengths and warts. Firefox works well 99.99 percent of the time, I like it, and recommend it. Firefox's built in Reader View is sweet. I also like Firefox's: Cross platform support, syncing, RSS feeds as bookmarks, privacy settings, multiple profile capabilities, XML viewer, strong extension ecosystem, etc.</em></blockquote><blockquote><em>It does seem that developers mostly use and test with Chrome when developing SaaS and enterprise websites and thus most reliable results tend to come with Chrome. In a perfect world developers would test against all major browsers but it simply doesn't happen.</em></blockquote><blockquote><em>I also like Brave for its privacy/security focus but built in ad blockers can often break website functionality. A lot of the websites I visit still work well with all shields up and I can modify the shields per site but I am a nerd that way. I only suggest Brave to those who are savvy, understand technology, and patient. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • james_b

    03 February, 2019 - 5:11 pm

    <p>I think the answer your question is: Firefox is doing admirable things but I (Paul Thurrott) choose to use Chrome for the simple reason that it works best with most sites and has the most useful tools.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      04 February, 2019 - 8:08 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#401571">In reply to James_B:</a></em></blockquote><p>This is accurate. I like the idea of Firefox. But real world—speed, compatibility, capabilities, and battery life—Chrome wins every time. It's not even close.</p>

      • jumpingjackflash5

        27 February, 2019 - 12:04 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#401693">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>recently I switched to Firefox and speed is OK in recent builds. Nearly as good responsiveness as Edge/Chrome. Compatibility is better than Edge, battery life depends on usage patterns, on low end PCs helps to limit the number of content processes to 2 (in standard options). </p><p>I tried Chrome and it is worse for me than Firefox by a huge margin.</p>

        • gregoryp

          27 February, 2019 - 10:59 pm

          <blockquote>I've gone with Brave… Chrome's speed without the Google privacy issues.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • irfaanwahid

    04 February, 2019 - 1:46 am

    <p>Brave? Anyone.</p><p>I have been using Brave past 3-4 months and it is blazing fast. I know it runs on Chromium but blocking of unwanted ads and sheer speed is amazing.</p><p>I used to use Edge and Chrome previously, now I use 90% of the times Brave and remaining Chrome.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      04 February, 2019 - 8:07 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#401659">In reply to irfaanwahid:</a></em></blockquote><p>No need for the "but." </p><p><br></p><p>Brave runs on Chromium, which is preferable. It includes no Google account tie-ins, which will be valuable to some, and no tracking, which will be valuable to many. </p>

  • scoop

    04 February, 2019 - 11:26 am

    <p>One point against Chromium-based browsers I am amazed more folks do not mention is text rendering and readability. I am a writer, a reader and near-sighted. Size and quality of text and fonts makes a difference to me. In this case Firefox and its offshoots are the best, followed closely by Edge, with Chrome and Chromium-based browsers bringing up the rear. I have plain Chromium installed mainly to use gmail for work. That seems to make text easier to read than Chrome, but maybe that's my anti-Google bias showing. </p><p><br></p><p>Yes, you can play with fonts and zoom and DPI and all that. I found that often makes things worse, not better. There was a Firefox extension called NoSquint that allowed zooming of text only, not the entire page, which worked wonders on some sites. </p><p><br></p><p>Since Quantum, Firefox is so close to Chrome in performance that its other pluses, such as text-rendering, make it my top choice. I also use Pale Moon, and on Win 10 I use Edge, which is getting better. Chromium is there if needed. No plans to install Chrome anytime soon. I think some people who flock to it and always go back to it have been sucked into Google as a de facto OS, whether or not they know it.</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    05 February, 2019 - 6:36 pm

    <p>I prefer Firefox. Predominantly because its not a google product, and their bookmark and history syncing works well across all platforms. However, I am noticing that firefox is having issues rendering some websites now. Its becoming obvious that developers are not prioritizing the testing of their website to work correctly with firefox. Just now when trying to cancel my sling subscription I was getting hung at the "reason" for connection screen. Firefox wouldn't render the screen effectively breaking my ability to proceed. </p><p><br></p><p>I had to switch over to edge. This is not an isolated incident. </p><p><br></p><p>I am feeling that a developer mono-culture is developing around chromium, and this is going to be real problematic. I feel like we are getting ready to relive IE 6.0. </p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      06 February, 2019 - 4:11 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#402906">In reply to red.radar:</a></em></blockquote><p>The same is true of Chrome and Edge. </p><p>When I tried using Edge, I couldn't log onto the admin pages for our WordPress site.</p><p>Chrome has problems with Loga3 personnel portal, for example, we have to use Edge or Firefox for that.</p>

  • jumpingjackflash5

    25 February, 2019 - 2:35 pm

    <p>I have recently tried to use Firefox both on desktop and mobile and while there are some drawbacks and "manual tuning" – for example tuning smooth scroll's parameters on desktop and disabling smooth scroll on touchpad (paradoxically), overall experience is very good and now I use it for majority of browsing. I still keep Edge for some web work, though. But sure, for me Firefox is better than Chrome.</p>

    • james_b

      25 February, 2019 - 6:26 pm

      <blockquote>I'm not a fan of what Mozilla has done to bookmarking. Why they felt they had to mess about with something that was not broken is beyond me but in its current form I won't use.</blockquote><p><br></p>

      • jumpingjackflash5

        25 February, 2019 - 10:43 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#407247">In reply to James_B:</a></em></blockquote><p>I know that there have been some changes to the bookmarking system, and that you may have liked the older one. But I have no issues with the current state of bookmarking in Firefox.</p>

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