I'm not jumping ship to go to Chrome because Firefox got a bug.
I understand what the bug is, but I have no intention of leaving a robust browser system like Firefox to go to a wolf-in-sheeps-clothing, thinly-veiled, Chrome browser that constantly spies on me, tracks everything I do, hogs disc space and disc writes and reads, and has excessive memory usage. Firefox's functionality, with its add-ons and themes, is exceptional.
Yes, I was irritated cause all my add-ons died, but there's not a chance that I'm going to go into Google's world. We should stop crying about Firefox making A mistake, and appreciate it for what it is. So much more than Chrome will ever be.
Vivaldi looks pretty promising.
Firefox Klar in the meantime for me
I also am not leaving, for my own good. It’s disappointing though this happened. For sure they won’t get any “extra appreciation” from me _during this time_.
I’m not switching either, I’ve been using Firefox since its inception, but it hasn’t been the same since they disabled the ability to change the default tabs on top to tabs on bottom.
Yes, I found a css file fix that some kind person posted online, but it really pissed me off that Mozilla took away that option when so many users wanted it.
At least they fixed this problem. It was fixed before I knew it had occurred but if I had been using Firefox at the time, well, I’m kind of freaking out just picturing it!
Waterfox
Opera has been my backup browser for some time. If you are really considering *Chrome* of all things, give it a try instead.
Lynx.
No Ads.
No Addons.
No DancingBabies.
I use both browsers for different situations. Oddly I find Firefox to use much more memory and CPU, but it has better backwards compatibility and renders emojis better.
The spying does bother me and I’m still on the lookout for a browser that does it all.
This reads like the browser version of ‘staying together for the kids.’ “I can’t get a divorce, I’m nearly 40. I’m so fat, I’d never get another date. Besides, our savings is a joint account.” Come on now, don’t be so down on yourself. You’re worth it.
And while Chrome is Firefox’s drunk brother in law in this scenario, thus not even worth considering, the answer to “Huh, this browser is doing some bad/shady shit.” should never be “Well, it’s the one that sucks the least so I guess I’ll stick with it.” This isn’t time to settle, this is time for a new browser to come in and start reminding Firefox that it ate Netscape to take it’s place, but that just means it’s still sitting on that plate.
I imagine at this point I’ll probably switch to nightly so I can disable addon signatures, and then find what appears to be a good night to just stop updating at
[Waterfox](https://www.waterfox.net/). Yes, it’s better. It’s a Firefox fork but much closer than Pale Moon was, with drop-in extension compatibility. The features and UX seem to be the same as Firefox except:
* No phoning home data
* Unsigned and legacy extensions supported (you can install them directly from the browser using [this extension](https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases)–click on the .xpi file).
* No Pocket
* No locking down settings in about:config (this “feature” prevented some Firefox users from utilizing a workaround for today’s glitch)
I’m glad this happened today. Finally gave me reason to jump ship and come to find out, it’s not like Pale Moon at all. So much nicer than either PM or FF. Right now, I’m using the latest extensions right alongside awesome old extensions that I haven’t been able to use in years because they were so insistent on pushing this Webextensions thing. (Don’t give me that “security hole” argument. It’s only a security hole if you’re doing really dumb and unsafe things. If I wanted a lock-down browser I would’ve gone with Chrome anyway.)
I appreciate Firefox and the Mozilla team but they really should at the very least make a “Firefox Advanced” or a “Firefox for Non-Morons” or something. If they’re not going to listen to their users, we really should leave for greener pastures. **Waterfox IS that pasture.** I promise I’ll be the first come back if I ever hear they’re making a new power user oriented browser.
What is Pale Moon
Let’s be clear – Firefox was the browser of power users. The primary reason to choose it over Chrome is that Chrome’s design philosophy is explicitly that the user is too stupid to have options.
Let’s be doubly clear – Firefox **was** the browser of power users. Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome. Users are stupid, so take away their options and put the browser on lockdown. Firefox is not “so much more than Chrome will ever be” – it is *marginally* more than Chrome is *for now*.
So no, I won’t be jumping ship to Chrome. I’ve tried to do that every time Firefox takes away a feature I was using or otherwise kicks me in the balls (so that’s once or twice a year these past few years), and I never manage because Chrome is truly an awful, uncustomizable pile of junk. But I probably am going to jump ship to Waterfox, because Firefox is on a downward spiral and this was sufficiently annoying to make me seriously consider what my other options are – and Waterfox looks exactly like what I wish Firefox was.
I just wish I could *stand* the UI of Chrome. Everything’s so watered down, and *big*.
>I’m not jumping ship to go to Chrome because Firefox got a bug.
This is not a bug. This is Mozilla knowing better than the users. This is the sort of shit that people were predicting.
No, I won’t jump ship. Not even close. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to complain about this crap. I donated a significant amount of money to the Mozilla foundation in the past.
My willingness to forget mistakes is relative to the size and severity of the mistake. This is a big one, and every hour it continues unresolved makes it bigger.
its not just a bug, its a trend, firefox is now a wanabe-chrome with ads on new tabs, phoning home, and murdered extinsions so everyone would have to use the chrome styles addons.
I swear, the alternatives are so trash, Mozilla would have to set my PC on fire before I consider jumping ship.
What I still love about FF…
* containers
* still better privacy than others
* still can customize the GUI (for now)
* addons are still good, and some have even gotten better
* I trust Firefox’s security
* most flexible tab management
* they didn’t abandon tab mute unlike Chrome
* best bookmark management in town (could be better)
* sidebar
* sidebar
* sidebar
Exactly my thoughts. Consider donating for FF so they can have more admins in their team for housekeeping.
It’s also **TEMPORARY**. Geeze, you’d think with the way people are reacting that Mozilla was doing this intentionally and thought it would be a good idea for no add-ons to be available in the browser.
I just want a browser, Mozilla. Not a complex 10-layer certification verifying entity.
I’m not leaving FF either. All the alternatives are MUCH worse. And have been for years now.
Even with all the mistakes over the last few years I still think Firefox is the best option. I do wish there was more non-chromium competition in the browser market though, it would be great if a large organization with proper funding started a browser from scratch that was dedicated to privacy, security, and freedom (and open source of course). I do worry that Mozilla (due to their management) might continue to falter until we’re really only left with chromium.
Brave is my backup. I hope it will get fixed.
/r/waterfox
This is a bit more than a bug this is gross negligence. And honestly, it deserves harsh criticism. Mistake like this isn’t something you say sorry for and move on. I am extremely unimpressed. not to mention have bad in the state this is to begin with the worst part is they haven’t even fixed it yet. Something this major should have had a quick patch, even if the patch was a temporary work around (like disabling xpi cert requirements, or whitelisting etc). Quite despicable. However that being said. You’re kind of right that there’s nothing better aside from at this exact moment. Being a power user yes I can get by and continue using it right now. But no one else can (elderly people technologically unclined people, etc). at this point if I was going to install a browser on someone’s computer that I knew wasn’t super technological brained… It’s going to be chrome from now on. The rest is just going to be too difficult for the average user. I will continue using Firefox for now but I am quite pissed
Yeah im not switching. I manually loaded my addons and while its very annoying, I know firefox will come out with a fix soon enough.
downvoted for being a fanboy
Aside from the philosophical agony of actually using fucking Chromium and contributing to its unhealthy world domination, unfortunately there is something that’s at least as good, and possibly better, and it’s called Vivaldi. I’m using my Vivaldi install (was using it as a secondary browser anyway) now and just added the addons I need and migrated the config across. Took 15 minutes and I have basically the same experience, except maybe more since Vivaldi is customizable and has features Firefox doesn’t, like notes. And night mode doesn’t suck either, especially combined with RES night mode, all black all the time…
I’m going to go back to Firefox once a version comes out that just gives me back the fucking extensions without shenanigans, but until then I’m enjoying Vivaldi.
The add-ons are back up and running as of today
I’ll be using Vivaldi until they fix it.
Just try cyber or water fox. Was able to get add-ons back using those.
Pale Moon. Pretty good browser. Forked from FF before it became shit.
” a robust browser system ” > proof that not.
But firefox is open source, so I’m just gonna rebuild it and block all firefox ips in my host so that they don’t bother me anymore forever
If the concern is privacy, go for Brave. It’s backed by a Firefox founder (Brendan Eich), run on very customized chromium (mostly toards privacy), it’s freaking fast and opensource.
Nice try, ff dev
Give r/brave_browser a try, it’s basically Chrome with all Google stuff & ads removed.
Plus, YOU get paid for watching ads, if you like
I’m still running 56.0.2 bc of Classic Theme Restorer among a few others.
I hated the new look, bc that’s not what Firefox was. It always felt different to Chrome. They want to be Chrome so bad they are becoming Chrome 1.5.
I really hope they fix our old versions by Monday. Because if not, fuck it. I don’t want to switch, but if you treat some of your users like shit, i’m not going to take it.
you are wholly uninformed if you think it’s down to “chrome vs firefox”. ok google tell me what is “iridium browser” SEARCHING… iridium browser is an open source chromium-based browser that gets rid of all the metric-collecting and bullshit from google thank you google assistant lol
you are a brand worshiping drone, you can criticize companies you like when they fuck up big time by **letting their fucking ssl certs expire lol** LIKE what???
Man people in this sub are being wayyy over-dramatic. Yes, it’s a dumb issue but even Google’s let a crucial cert expire before.
Mozilla have been working on it non-stop since it happened. You’re not in the room with them. You don’t know what challenges they’re facing.
Threatening to switch to Chrome? Go for it. If it takes that little to convince you to switch and give up your privacy to Google I’m not sure why you were using FF in the first place.
That’s real neat to say, but a *lot* of people switched browsers over this. That’s a process that takes hours for a lot of people, with constant frustrations over the next few weeks/months as you encounter issues you hadn’t yet taken care of. Those people aren’t likely to come back soon. Or ever.
Mozilla made a terrible decision, one in a growing series of missteps that keeps costing them marketshare. They really need to reorient themselves as a user-focused browser again.
I’m not jumping ship but, when market share is in the single digits, this kind of things hurt Firefox, badly.
All of this hooting and hollering, parading and grandstanding by the community…
I just watched Firefox unfuck itself in less than a minute.
Sure, would’ve been nice if someone paid the bill on time, and we never encountered any of this. But I’m reassured knowing they at least had the foresight to put in a system that allows them to fix such problems quietly.
This.
Chrome doesn’t have basic functionality that I use everyday.
I need a warning when closing multiple tabs. I’m a PhD student who often has multiple library tabs open that I log in via proxy. You can’t restore these tabs if you close the browser by accident. There is no way to add this functionality to Chrome.
I also need bookmark tagging. What’s the point of bookmarking pages if you can’t find them later? This functionality you can add via extensions in Chrome, but it’s clunky and I’m not sure if it gets backed up with the bookmarks.
Until another browser gets these features, I have no choice but to stick with Firefox. I’m shocked that FF is the only major browser with this functionality. There might be some smaller browsers, but they won’t be compatible with my Zotero plugin (which I need for my research).
There is… but your just not allowed to talk about it in this subreddit because they shadowbanned the name of the browser.
Open and transparent… ha.
edit, last night all my posts mentioning it were nuked. Get brave browser… Made by the original CEO of Mozilla until a twitter mob demanded he resign.
i agree on this one, but having to test other firefox forks like waterfox seems to be a better choice in a future if a decided to move away from oficial firefox. the advantage of waterfox its amazing the speed of quantum + legacy addons….
I’ll be jumping ship if my ad-ons don’t come back. Not going to completely redownload and reconfigure everything.
If they come back, I’ll stay. None of the fixes that have worked for others have worked for me so i’m not confident in mine coming back officially either
Firefox uses more memory, just to let you know.
You can always use Chromium.
how long will it take to fix this?
Same here.
Everything else is either a Firefox rework (like running Mint not Debian) or Chromium based. Hopefully someone will correct me if I’ve erred.
Must take huge resources to write the rendering engine so..
I have a issue with why this was a thing to begin with? did QA miss this or are we the QA department
its not a mistake its a reason to get some juicy ass telemetry data
I don’t get why so much anger, if Firefox didn’t have this system and a malicious add-on you’ll be complaining about lack of foresight.
A centralised certificate service for add-ons makes sense, yes someone fucked up but shit happens. Chrome does similar things, Google has fucked up heaps in the past.
Sorry but I’m gonna be a bit more reluctant than you to give Mozilla full absolution here. I’m not considering switching browsers just based on this fuckup, and as a software developer, I fully respect that mistakes happen and shit can go wrong. But this particular mistake reeks of amateurism so badly that it’s not even funny. I was beyond pissed at the IT service at my last place of employment for forgetting to renew a certificate that we relied on, it was amateurism at it’s worst, and that was a small IT service comprising less than a dozen people. Such a mistake for an organization supposedly as serious as Mozilla just boggles the mind.
I just switched to waterfox.
I used Chrome for a few hours, updating bookmarks and addons just in case I have to use it again. I’m going to keep using Firefox, but i will be backing up my addon data more regularly.
On a more positive note, Firefox with no addons is suuuuper speedy. Even than normal.
Why use Chrome if there are alternatives with the comfort of it and without most of the downsides?
I use Vivaldi since Mozilla seems to no longer be able to do a decent job at maintaining their product and the path they have choosen seems questionable at best. And this screwup is at least Meltdown-Level bad.
Nobody should be jumping ship but they need to hurry the fuck up.
Some people take this way too seriously. I just opened my browser today and noticed all my add-ons were disabled, googled and found a fix. The End. On this subreddit I see people freaking out, people talking about jumping ship, going to tell friends and family to use Chrome, etc. Jeez, it’s not that serious..
There’s fundamentally no difference anymore between Chrome, Chromium and Firefox because it’s all based on the same code. And Firefox is financially beholden to them too. This is exactly the kind of royal fuck up that created a vacuum for Netscape to fill in the first place. It’s only a matter of time until something better comes along now, especially since they put android on the back burner for this entire fiasco, and Brave Browser is 10x worse. I think the days of having a general purpose browser to meet every single person’s needs may be over.
> hogs disc space and disc writes and reads, and has excessive memory usage
That’s Firefox, though. I’ve just been putting up with it.
I’ve tried Chrome several times. I don’t like it.
I might use Opera as my back up though.
lol people seriously need to stop with the melodramatics. There was a bug in the security certs and the new security lockdowns did what they were supposed to at nixing the addons.
Now you must wait for Firefox team to fix the issue and for the certificates to renew. Your Addons are fine and unchanged, they are just disabled. They have not gone anywhere.
I’ve used firefox for 15 years, this is not a new thing.
I am. Fuck Mozilla. I’m out. 15 years of use and they fucking blew it. I put up with way too much shit and this is the final nail in the coffin. Mozilla is dead to me.
Yea no totally this is a small but very annoying inconvenience but I’m sticking to my lil fox.
I hate chrome, and I hate when Mozilla takes ideas from Chrome. I don’t want my settings to be a fucking webpage. I want to distinguish between the «browser experience» and fine tuning it.
Agreed, I will gladly stay away from Chrome. I just got the latest Beta 17 for 67 and it fixed the issue.
They keep saying Chrome runs super fast (arguably the fastest) but I never found that to be the case for me. I always stuck with FF. It seems faster and I kind of like the UI better anyways
Firefox has its own issues in which Chrome is superior in some ways (especially a much better selection of addons), but none of them had made me feel a stronger drive to switch back to Chrome until this shitfest.
Find me a single good speed reading extension for FF, I dare you.
I am. their goddamn “fix” didn’t fix anything. I’ve had enough of their sophomoric screw ups to last a lifetime.
Without addons there would be no place for Firefox in Android market
It is disheartening that there are no other alternatives. I expect that Firefox gets better after all this, but it is concerning that if they don’t, we have no other place to go to.
Same, but at the same time I wish that my relationship with Firefox wasn’t starting to become one of “atleast it’s not X”.
Chrome isn’t the only alternative, I’ve installed Opera along with the addons that I was using in Firefox
BRAVE new world with BRAVE new browser
i’ve already jumped ship
I started using Waterfox. I can’t tell the difference.
Yup, I ain’t switching. This may be a mistake, but its not a big deal. The main reason why I am not switching is because the only half-decent alternative on Windows 7 is ***Chrome***. Now I will refuse to use Chrome any day, its only purpose for me to install FireFox. I am that person that would use IE/Edge over Chrome.
Now why do I refuse to use Chrome so much, its because of the massive monopoly that Google holds in many services. Also I don’t like my data being taken. I try to avoid Google services as much as possible, so that means that Google -> Bing (for Bing rewards), Chrome -> FireFox, Gmail -> iCloud mail. The only Google service that I use is YouTube, but you really cannot avoid it, as the competition doesn’t have the content.