using another web browser after 15 years

[cp]

I don't know if there's a better way to give feedback to the firefox product team (I didn't find an email address) but I just found it fair to give feedback after using firefox so many years so here it is.

I never chose firefox because of its big plugin ecosystem, it was simply the best choice for me 15 years ago and it was good enough all the time. I tried some alternatives for a short time like chromium, opera and vivaldi and some of the more exotic browsers that were preinstalled on some linux distros like midori but it never came to mind to go away from firefox because it was simply good, and good enough.

I like to use the same browser on all the devices and the reason I became unhappy recently were the changes to firefox on android. It is very rudimentary at the moment and it seems some features have just been removed for no apparent reason. Sometimes I'd like to see details about https certificates e.g. when they expire, and I googled and found out you can't do that with firefox on android. Sometimes I'd like to see a website's source code and I googled and found out you can't do that with firefox on android. I have a bigger number of tabs open on firefox for android, about 30 to 50 usually. Some time ago someone decided it was a good idea to hide "unused" tabs which does not work well for my use case. No I have to touch the drop down to see these tabs and then they're designed differently from the active ones (as a list, not as a grid). At that point I didn't bother anymore because that "firefox is good enough for me" feeling started to fade. I also noticed I couldn't drag tabs around, like when one was in the 3rd row of the grid to move it to the 5th. There might be a way to do it but again I didn't bother anymore.

The straw to break the camel's back came yesterday. I have an internal web application running on http and firefox (on mac) refuses to display it, trying to redirect me to a https version which doesn't exist. I am a developer! It's perfectly fine to have some internal sites running on http. I googled and found instructions with about half a dozen possible causes for this. I followed these instructions and only after restarting firefox I managed to get it working. Why isn't there just a toggle in the UI? It's a nice idea to redirect by default but there are perfectly fine use cases where this is not wanted and there should be a simple configuration option in the UI to definitely turn this on and off (globally or for a list of domains at least).

The above reasons are not all. I didn't make a list, there were several small reasons that all summed up. From today on I'm using another browser and maybe I'll return to firefox one day, I hope until then that firefox android is significantly improved or at least users have a choice to install either a light or a fat version of firefox on android.

Cheers!

[cp]

I forgot, there was another thing yesterday: A colleague of mine recommended brave and I haven't decided yet, but I googled firefox vs. brave and I wanted some honest opinions from end users. The first result on google however was an article by mozilla what could only be described as propaganda.

Firefox "of course" fulfils all selected criteria while brave fulfils all but a few. The conclusion of course is that for the majority firefox is the better choice. This is not objective and this article is from firefox, it should at least be marked as advertisement and there should be an option to comment it. Because it is not, it just looks like propaganda to me and honestly firefox that's a very bad move and imho one far below your level.

If you want to make a fair comparison, have a look at how gitlab did it. That is still biased but ten times more fair than the mozilla article.

And well, this was the final reason I went away from firefox, because I'm a big fan of transparency and honesty and a strong adversary to misinformation and manipulation.

[Anonymous]

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could only be described as propaganda.

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or  "competitive marketing" ... so nothing new 

Examples: https://vivaldi.com/compare/  or https://privacytests.org/  (made by a brave employee AFAIK)

[cp2]

Agreed, Vivaldi is just as bad.

I don't see a problem with privacytests.org. Brave is the first browser in the grid because they're sorted alphabetically. There are quite a few options that Brave fails, e.g. the fingerprinting resistance tests (which would be one important category if I was super concerned about privacy/tracking). The author also disclosed that he's now a brave employee. He started the project before though and its open source. I also don't think this site would mean much to the broad majority that is not technically versed (and anyone using platforms like facebook, many google products or the microsoft ecosystem).

[jscher2000]

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@cp wrote:

I have an internal web application running on http and firefox (on mac) refuses to display it, trying to redirect me to a https version which doesn't exist. I am a developer! It's perfectly fine to have some internal sites running on http. I googled and found instructions with about half a dozen possible causes for this. I followed these instructions and only after restarting firefox I managed to get it working.

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This would have been a good case for the Mozilla Support forums. What turned out to be the reason that Firefox wanted to use HTTPS with your internal site?

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Why isn't there just a toggle in the UI? It's a nice idea to redirect by default but there are perfectly fine use cases where this is not wanted and there should be a simple configuration option in the UI to definitely turn this on and off (globally or for a list of domains at least).

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There is a toggle on the Settings/Preferences page for the optional "HTTPS Only" mode and Firefox allows site exceptions. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/https-only-prefs 

Private windows have a non-optional "HTTPS First" mode but usually that only upgrades your connection if the server can handle it. It can be disabled through `about:config` in favor of the more manageable HTTPS Only" feature.

Forced use of HTTPS with hosts that previous served a Strict Transport Security header over HTTPS are not removable through the UI. This can be an issue of you run multiple apps on the same domain under different subdomains, some of which require HTTPS and some of which don't support it. This is pretty rare and tends to affect developers rather than end users.

The built-in Strict Transport Security preload list can be disabled through `about:config`, but it's not editable on a site-by-site basis. I can't recall a case where a user needed to disable it (in posts on Mozilla Support).

[cp2]

I followed these instructions: https://itadminguide.com/disable-https-redirect-in-firefox/

https only mode in the UI was not enabled and I had no plugins involved in this behaviour, so I guess it was the two about:config entries. However I find it very poor that there was no sort of feedback after the changes. I don't know what else these entries imply nor did I know that they'd only take effect after restarting firefox. I just want my tools to work, I'm not a firefox power user and for settings like this I expect to have a UI flag that works (I don't care about other default settings in about:config, I didn't change anything there before). And if it takes a restart to change some settings I want firefox to let me know about it.

[jscher2000]

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@cp2 wrote:

I followed these instructions

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Thank you for the link. This compilation doesn't give much context, so I'll briefly summarize:

(1) In-URL-bar autofill suggests HTTPS for the site's top-level address as you start typing in the address bar

This fix is useful if regular links to the http page work, bookmarks to the http page work, clicking a history suggestion to the page works BUT you want to be able to type or paste the name of the site in the address bar without Firefox using a remembered https address. Otherwise, this feature is not the problem.

(2) Delete your entire history?!

This "fix" is not needed. The only thing you might need to clear is the browser cache if Firefox has retained a redirect from the server in the cache. If the problem is not caused by a redirect from the server, the cache is not the problem.

I suppose it's possible that the cookies from a particular site might include an instruction to redirect, but since it's your server, I assume that is not the issue.

(3) Disable HTTPS-Only mode

This definitely is a thing to check.

(4) Edit or delete the SiteSecurityServiceState.txt file

This is the file where Firefox stores the instruction it previously received from the server over an HTTPS connection to always use HTTPS (Strict Transport Security). This could be needed in some cases as mentioned in my earlier reply.

[Anonymous]

If you knew how Brave was developed, you would understand what the real propaganda is. The "discussions" that fill this place are also questionable.

[cp2]

Sorry I don't know how to make sense of your post. "If I knew" - why don't you tell me then? I also don't understand the second sentence. How are they questionable? I'm not sure I even want to know  but I don't think your post contributes much if you keep so vague.

[cp2]

Thanks for your feedback to my feedback. I'm not using firefox anymore for the moment and primarily I wanted to leave my feedback here, if anyone cares, because I used firefox for many many years (and again I still may use it again in the future). I'll not leave any more posts here because my intention was not to get convinced to return for firefox, just to leave my feedback.

Btw I used some ten minute mail service to post, that's why my "username" is now cp2. I don't want to leave my email address everywhere just to give feedback. I wouldn't have minded to use my email address to write an email, but I don't want to leave it in a forum software.

Cheers. 😉

[bigun79]

I share your experience plus..after every upgrade, Firefox gets slower and when a function fails and Firefox either comes down or has to be restarted, it takes me right back to the failing issue?? I am seriously looking into using another browser also

[marinermama]

You also can't turn off private browsing on Android. After many years I'm removing Firefox until I have the option to turn it off permanently.