I donate to the Mozilla foundation, and I love Firefox a ton. But I can’t seem to like the UI by installing a theme, and when I change it to look better the browser slows to a crawl. Does it really matter all that much if I use Chromium?

P.S. To the people from my last post regarding something similar, Firefox was too slow, I’m sorry, but I use Vivaldi instead of Brave because Brendon Eich can suck my dick.

  • rhymepurple
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    1 year ago

    tl;dr: A notable marketshare of multiple browser components and browsers must exist in order to properly ensure/maintain truly open web standards.

    It is important that Firefox and its components like Gecko and Spidermonkey to exist as well as maintain a notable marketshare. Likewise, it is important for WebKit and its components to exist and maintain a notable marketshare. The same is true for any other browser/rendering/JavaScript engines.

    While it is great that we have so many non-Google Chrome alternatives like Chromium, Edge, Vivaldi, etc., they all use the same or very similar engines. This means that they all display and interact with websites nearly identically.

    When Google decides certain implementation/interpretation of web standards, formats, behavior, etc. should be included in Google Chrome (and consequently all Chromium based browsers), then the majority marketshare of web browsers will behave that way. If the Chrome/Chromium based browsers reaches a nearly unanimous browser marketshare, then Google can either ignore any/all open web standards, force their will in deciding/implementing new open web standards, or even become the defacto open web standard.

    When any one entity has that much control over the open web standards, then the web standards are no longer truly “open” and in this case becomes “Google’s web standards”. In some (or maybe even many) cases, this may be fine. However, we saw with Internet Explorer in the past this is not something that the market should allow. We are seeing evidence that we shouldn’t allow Google to have this much influence with things like the adoption of JPEG XL or implementation of FLoC.

    With three or more browser engines, rendering engines, and browsers with notable marketshares, web developers are forced to develop in adherence to the accepted open web standards. With enough marketshare spread across those engines/browsers, the various engines/browsers are incentivized to maintain compatibility with open web standards. As long as the open web standards are designed and maintained without overt influence by a single or few entities and the open standards are actively used, then the best interest of the collective of all internet users is best served.

    Otherwise, the best interest of a few entities (in this case Google) is best served.

    • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Yep, good explanation; but to add to this…

      The important factor here as far as what an individual uses is the tracked metrics. When a browser looks at a website, it identifies itself and its engine. Therefore actually using an engine other than Chromium is important because it goes into use stats across all websites the individual visits.

      And like with all collective endeavors, while an individual contribution is insignificant, the whole is made up of those individual contributions. It also only takes a few percentage points of users for a business to in theory want to avoid excluding those users and thus keep them developing for multiple browsers.

      • oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Or to recap from history, Internet Explorer has no incentive to follow web standards and web design was a stagnant table-based layout until Netscape shows up. Wouldn’t have complete separation of text and style the way we do today if css never took off.

  • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You don’t even make sense. Themes slowing down the browser, what?? That doesn’t happen.

  • pimento64@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Chromium is a dead end, I use Firefox because it respects my privacy but also because it works better.

  • khannie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hmmm. Hard to get over that dislike of an interface. I have found one plugin killed Firefox performance for me but I’m generally happy with the layout so haven’t messed with it.

    On how important it is: I used Chromium for a while but went back to Firefox because I read someone somewhere say “If you don’t use Firefox, there eventually wont be a Firefox to use” and that was enough for me to switch back.

    If you’re donating to Mozilla though, I guess they’re more than happy with that even if you’re not using the product.

    • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      That’s the same reason I don’t complain about having to pay taxes for schools, even if I don’t have a child in school right now.

  • deleted @sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Use what you like and don’t give a fuck about strangers on the internet deem the holy grail of browsers.

      • deleted @sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The average person won’t give a fuck about the implications of using said browsers, which “strangers on the internet” make them aware of.

        I never implied that people were being bullied into using a specific browser, just that people shouldn’t give a fuck if they post a picture of their desktop and someone removed about them using Chrome and starts circlejerking Firefox/Brave/[Insert Browser Here].

    • u/unhappy_grapefruit_2@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same applies to alot of things online and offline such as movies books video games music operating systems art and so on best to male your own mind on things

      Temple os is good stay mad glowies and libruls

      • deleted @sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        You have a wording problem at the end of your comment, but exactly.

        Like what you like, if something works for you and you’re fine with it or like it, what you enjoy shouldn’t matter to some fanboy

        • u/unhappy_grapefruit_2@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Exactly that is what i was going for make your own opinion on things. Internet and people be dammed if you like to watch a terrifically bad b movie or like a certain kind of comedy then you should make your own informed opinion on that thing

          You can like a movie or a book or something and still acknowledge all its faults aswell

          What I said at the end was a joke a shitpost not a “wording problem” it’s not a serious take I can assure you that lol

    • BugFinder@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same energy as “I’m not interested in politics”.

      Then don’t complain when Google forces their view of internet on everyone else.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Out of interest what part of the UI don’t you like? You can drag and drop pretty much any button and component where ever you want and you can use the Firefox colours website to apply any colour scheme you want. This is all core browser features so no performance affects.

    What is it that a theme is then adding?

    • Bruncvik@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not OP, but I also prefer Vivaldi over Firefox. My reason may not be the same as OP’s, but for the sake of discussion, here it is. I simply can’t stand having tabs on top of my screen, and I’ll go to great lengths to have them on the bottom. On my private computer, I used to use Firefox with Tab Mix Plus, until Mozilla killed support for such extensions. I later managed to get the tabs to the bottom via custom CSS for Firefox, but every few releases the CSS stopped working and had to be recreated from scratch. So, I switched to Vivaldi. On my work PC, where only Edge and Chrome are allowed, my workaround is to work in separate windows instead of tabs, but that tends to get a little messy.

  • Steve@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    Well, if Firefox does become unusable for you, then I don’t think you would be at fault for switching to a Chromium-based browser, like Vivaldi. Usability is an important aspect to consider.

    Have you considered using a Firefox fork, like LibreWolf?

      • daredevil@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Well, if that extends beyond paying to be the default search engine, I’d be happy to take a look at a source if you have one. Changing search engines is also only a matter of a few clicks.

        Classic…ask for more info and they disappear

  • droopy4096@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Whatever you’ve done to UI must be some atrocity as I do not experience issues with FF. You’ve never specified which FF extension you’ve used that had slowed down your browser.

    Chrome (and by extension) Chromium and all derivative browsers are Google’s lever to truly control and shape internet to their liking. Multiple people said it already.

    Personally I find Chromium UI very cumbersome and dislike it a lot. Which is to say we all have our own preferences for UI.

    In your case you’d have to weigh your repulsion with available performant FF UIs vs future of internet and choose which decision can you really live with.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Remove all your plug-ins and run it standalone. Firefox doesn’t drag ass.

  • darganon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Use what you prefer, except brave, they can go fuck themselves.

    Firefox works great for me, but I have OP hardware.

  • tun@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    using firefox on Linux with i5 6th gen, ddr3 32gb.

    have over 100 tabs. most are suspended. cannot say it is slow.

    edit: running with NVMe

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Browser ram usage will just about always max out the available ram. It’s by design. It’s keeping open as much as it can for a faster user experience. As you run other programs, the browser should be giving up ram (blanking more tabs) to give it to the programs demanding it.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        FF runs fine on my 4gb netbook and 2gb raspi, I think you might have other bottlenecks on your system that are causing your issues

      • tun@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        do your laptop has HDD by any chance? if so, changing HDD to SSD would give your laptop a new life.

      • Bebo@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        Firefox runs better than chrome browser in my very old laptop with 3GB RAM. In fact this was the reason I used only Firefox on my old laptop.