to surf the web?
Tech illiterate here: I used to keep it as a backup for when my two hundred tabs of chrome would freeze (tech. illiterate.), but switched after a while because it was faster. I do kinda care about privacy, but not enough to sacrifice much convenience (I’d never get Alexa, but I play Pokémon go, if that is helpful), so Firefox being faster than chrome is perfect.
It's software used to browse the Internet.
It has a cooler logo than Chrome or IE.
a browser that won't cripple your machine. It used to be the opposite case, but the tables have turned.
Also, you can also use firefox on android and have all extensions (adblockers etc) available on your phone too!
@DangerousInternet @vrighter not with manifest v3 rolling out though. I can still block every ad and block ad blocker blockers meanwhile my chromium friends seem to be crippled in this regard.
Those "normal browsers" almost always get their extensions from the Chrome web store still. Supporting v2 won't mean much of those extensions are unavailable.
The timeline has been pushed back, but hiding and later removing them is already the plan.
@DangerousInternet what browsers are you referring to, the only chromium based browser that I know blocks ads without an extension is brave. apart from the rest need extensions and the major ones (chrome, edge etc) plan to end manifest v2 support
@DangerousInternet vivaldi is closed source though, brave I've found in my expirrence to be slow however do use their mobile browser. Fact is though V3 will become more prevalent as support for v2 drops from google it turns into a ticking time bomb. Overall relying on chromium is a ticking time bomb with all of googles web DRM bulshit.
Idk i just find chromium browsers to be slower and fear the all chrome future
that's.... the exact opposite of what i said
your comment started with "i agree". It could not have been the point
man i'd like some of that stuff you're smoking
Normies tend to absorb what's trendy among specialists, regardless of area, without necessarily absorbing why. They hear positive bits about firefox and negative bits about chrome, and add firefox.
It's important to note that you must be willing to learn what things are when interacting with technology.
People want to help, but they don't want to help someone who might ignore their advice because "it's too hard!"
Firefox is much faster than Chrome, it uses less memory and it works with everything; unless the website operator has some vendetta against Firefox and intentionally codes their website to work slowly on Firefox. (Google is notorious for this, you should ignore Firefox performance issues on Google owned sites)
With the right plugins you can even defuse the bad code and it is never an issue. uBlock Origin for example is a good plugin.
Ok, I'd say it's biggest selling point is not being owned by Google - the company with the business model of violating privacy. But if you don't care about that, think about how short is the battery life on your phone. It doesn't have to be that way. That's because of Googles and Facebooks of the world that convert your money that you spend on charging your phone to make money on the data they collect.
It's tough to answer with anything nontechnical... Best I can cook up off the top of my head is that we all expect the internet to work the same, whether we're visiting YouTube, or a blog, or... Whatever.
How are those pages coded? Like any human language, we all agreed on what certain mouth sounds mean and do, and don't agree with just one person getting to define how the language works.
Similarly, why does only Google/chrome get to define how a website's code works? I don't know how old you are, but there was a time where sites were just broken based on if you'd used Internet explorer 6, or literally anything else.
Lot of background, but that's why we care about which browser engine to use. Firefox uses less ram, follows the web's standards better, and actually gives you control in a way Mozilla can't undo.
Normie here. I used Firefox with uBlock origin, then used Chrome on the same website.
Now I only use chrome when the website breaks in Firefox. Oh, and for Google services (mail, maps, calendar, docs)
Have you tried disabling uBlock origin when websites break? That fixes a ton of things for me, and is easier than switching browsers.
Some sites legitimately don't work on FF (sucks) or need a user agent spoofer (i.e. pretend you're Chrome), but I honestly don't expect average users to do that (not hard, you should consider looking into it if you prefer FF).
Usually it's niche company websites that have issues with Firefox. And, I cannot stress this enough, normie here. For the few edge cases I just switch to Chrome. I don't have the time, patience, or knowledge to troubleshoot crappy websites from locksmith tool distributor companies whose IT department consists of "Dave from sales". You're absolutely right, I'm an average user and uBlock is about as deep as i go with add-ons. Thanks for the tip tho
It'll be a cold day in hell before I turn off uBlock for any website lol Alt-tab bay-bee
The better option is to not use chrome or that website
Well that's a great idea! Why didn't I think of that?!
My dude, sometimes work leads us to dark places to which we would rather not go
Firefox has been my daily driver for five or six years now, and I think the only reason people still use chrome is habit. Getting people to change is hard, simply because habits have inertia.
Switching to Firefox was super easy for me. Just import all my bookmarks, passwords, etc and I was done. Completely set up in probably 5 minutes, including the installer.
Privacy, Customization, better for Adblock. Or just to have a alternative if you’re main browser fails
I work in a university. Our web based services bork surprisingly frequently after Chrome updates and the IT Helpline's go-to response is 'have you tried turning it off and on again Firefox?'.
Maybe this is the reason
Nice, usually it's the other way around for me... An update to an app borks on FF, so I need to use Chrome until it's fixed (i.e. they only test on Chrome).
english please
oh alright
They only know Edge because MS shills it hard and Chrome due to years of using it with OEM installs on Android, familiarity with Google services.
Since ads can be really terrible on mobile, then FF + uBO can be suggested to them.
I've gotten most of my friends to switch to it by showing them cool customization features
I have Firefox, Chrome, and Brave installed but use Firefox most of the time. I have Brave for websites that need chromium. I have chrome because I'm too lazy to uninstall it. I think you're probably looking too far into this. It's easy to install something. Disk space isn't really at a premium. They easily could've installed it in a whim.
Why not ask them directly if you're curious?
If you know them, just ask. If you don't know them, don't assume people are tech illiterate just because they've made different software/hardware decisions from yourself.
Everybody except Richard Stallman is a normie. It's a stupid word and even dumber concept.
I use Firefox with ad blockers to watch YouTube. Chrome seems to be allowing them to block my ad blocker
Having a browser that is not controlled by a company where YOU clearly are the product? Firefox works just fine. Is just as fast as chrome...
I have chrome installed too since there are websites that use features that only work in chrome or to test things. But that is like 0.1% of the time.
I've used FF almost always. There was a hiatus, a long time ago, when i heard claims that chrome was faster, so i switched to chrome for a bit, but went back to FF very soon. I was very much a normie/tech illiterate person, but i just really liked firefox
Not being google's removed ?
Unfortunately right now nothing over the default. Obviously is better than chrome but the default browser on any os is good enough for a tech illiterate. Maybe except for safari, that's the worst browser that I ever used in my life, it's too dumbed down
So they install it for see if it's that better, then when they notice it looks and behaves like Chrome without any evident different feature, they don't switch
The only thing that's different between Chrome and Firefox for the average user is that WebGL doesn't work (yet) in Firefox, which I know is technical, but it means some websites that need more graphics processing won't work in Firefox. Since WebGL is fairly new, I haven't run across it much, only once or twice.
Huh?
I've built simple WebGL renders in Firefox several times. The websites for TWGL and three.js, the two most popular JS libraries for WebGL rendering that contain several demos, also load and work correctly and have for years. It clearly works in Firefox to a significant extent.
There must be something Firefox is not quite compliant with, or less performant at, than Chrome, though. If you look at Patreon's website since their logo change, it runs fine in Chrome but chugs in Firefox. I don't know if it's WebGL related but I wouldn't be surprised.
I'm a normie who uses firefox because it's the default in my Fedora machine. On windows I just use edge. While on my Android phone, I use it because I like having extensions.
Are you a normie if you’re using Linux though? (I’m on Silverblue…. Not a normie)
I think most people who have found themselves on the fediverse are probably not normies, even if they might think so.
Yup, agreed
For me, I want to switch fully, but I'm missing a key extension - it's a trivial one, but it's important to the way I work and organize information. It's called tabnotes (I think?) and it lets you turn your new tab page into a blank note pad where the first 10 or so characters actually rename the tab they occupy. It persists in memory through crashes and has become integral to my daily workflow. It's offline, no accounts/login needed and it's a different note in every tab, not the same note persisting.
This extension allows me to cleanly, easily label windows full of tabs by subject so I can quickly jump between them and reference at a glance. There are things that come close to this functionality on Firefox and some browsers working on native tab groups functionality (last I'd checked wasn't fully baked), but none I've seen that fully recreate it, so I'm still struck on chromium browsers for now.
Edit: I think this is the version I use, credit to Maciej Szafraniec https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-notes/mhgiefelomcdfcdbknkkohpibdpbdhmo
If its at University a lot of online classwork requires Chrome, especially proctored test-taking. They might have installed Chrome for that and just kept using it to avoid any problems and having to switch back and forth between browsers.
Not a tech illiterate user, but Firefox is installed on my girlfriend's pc because I've used it once. So maybe that's a consideration?
Normies have no reason to use Firefox. Only people who browse internet a lot like us use it.