Mozilla Firefox Update Makes Me Give Up Chrome – Here’s Why
In the monopoly world of browsers, Mozilla Firefox has competed while being at a constant disadvantage. While Apple’s Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Google Chrome have thrived on their own computing platforms, Firefox’s market share has fallen from double digits a very long time ago to a meager 2-3% today.
But as companies like Google strive for greater control and begin to dictate their own rules for the open web, the need for independent, open-source browsers is greater than ever. And Mozilla has been mind blowing, with a series of compelling privacy-focused updates to capture this growing niche of people.
A clutter-free and quieter Firefox
For its latest attempt at persuading users, Mozilla Firefox relies on simplicity. Its upcoming update materializes the long-awaited Proton overhaul that cleans up the many visual transitions Firefox has undergone over the past two years and underpins the browser’s efforts to end invasive third-party trackers as well as cookies.
One of the main goals of Firefox’s new look, Mozilla tells us, is to promote a quieter web experience. After spending a week with it, I found it to be true in more ways than one.
Prompts no longer divert what you’re doing at any time to ask if you want to turn on website notifications, and alerts have been changed to take up as little screen space as possible. Menus and additional lines that could be omitted have been omitted. It extends to almost every boring aspect of the web. Autoplay sites, for example, are silenced in the background and a silent indicator appears on the tab to notify you of the action.
Mozilla Firefox’s updated design language also echoes this theme. The rigid and rectangular toolbars and tabs have been replaced by floating elements with still slightly curved edges. The result is an app that feels more inviting and eliminates the overwhelming feeling that users face when switching to a new browser app.
The browser theme now seeps into more corners and crevices of its interface to showcase these visual updates. In earlier versions, for example, tabs were grouped together with no spaces in between and only their top edge was highlighted. Firefox 89 frees these spaces. Under the new design, the tabs are much more prominent and easier to navigate, especially when you have dozens of them lined up.
On paper, these additions seem too trivial to matter, but taken together they add the modern and subtle touch that Mozilla Firefox sorely needs. Plus, the extra spacing, lighter typography, and simpler aesthetics provide comfort in an increasingly crowded web experience.
A browsing experience favoring confidentiality
What convinced me the most about setting Firefox as default was its extensive suite of privacy tools. Over the past two years, Firefox has stepped up its commitment to user privacy to tackle new emerging threats known to slip through traditional browser protections.
Take the example of third-party trackers. These little pieces of code keep tabs on your every move online and allow advertisers to essentially build a case on you. Every browser has safeguards to block such activity, but some websites refuse to work without their tracking scripts, which often leads to rendering and performance issues. With its SmartBlock feature, Firefox generates local dummies that act like a regular tracking script and trick websites into believing their built-in trackers haven’t been blocked.
Likewise, Firefox Total Cookie Protection maintains a separate area for each website’s cookies so that they cannot share the data they have collected about you. Platforms like Facebook take advantage of cross-site cookies to spy on you even when you’re not actually browsing Facebook’s own websites.
There are a handful of additional Firefox privacy tools that I got used to over the past week. HTTPS-only mode ensures that websites built with outdated and insecure technologies communicate exclusively with their servers through an encrypted channel.
With “Container Tabs” you can run multiple isolated sessions of a website in the same window. This allows you to multitask between your work and personal accounts, for example, without opening a new private window. Since container tabs are completely isolated from the rest of your browser data, they are also useful for surfing websites that you don’t trust and therefore don’t want to risk compromising your existing browsing information. .
Additionally, in my superficial testing, I found Mozilla Firefox to be easier with my computer’s 8GB of memory, consuming at least 1GB less than Google Chrome, regardless of the task. Overall, however, there is little difference between the performance of Firefox and Chrome, which was not the case a year ago. On my last attempt, I found out that the old one was seriously behind the competition.
In defense of the open web
Another factor that prompted me to switch to Firefox is Google’s recent Chrome updates. At the end of last month, the search engine giant began testing its controversial proprietary replacement of third-party cookies – a move that allows Google to exercise a monopoly on an uncomfortably large part of the web and the web industry. advertising, which he already dominates. Mozilla Firefox, among several other browsers like Safari, says it has no plans to adopt it.
âAdvertising and privacy can coexist,â a Mozilla spokesperson told Laptopmag, âAnd the advertising industry may operate differently than it has in recent years. We look forward to playing a role in finding solutions to create a better web. “
Mozilla Firefox has always been the browser I wanted to switch to, but I couldn’t for reasons ranging from performance shortfalls to lackluster visuals. However, with the Firefox Proton update and the rest of Mozilla’s privacy services like VPN app and disposable email generator, it’s never been in a better position to be the browser of choice. for just about everyone. It’s secure, its internal engine (read non-Chromium) has caught up with Apple’s Google Chrome and Safari, and its new design overhaul, due for public release on June 1, is a refreshing take on the browser experience. modern.