Matthew Lang

I’ve seen a lot arguments for and against Mozilla’s paid version of Firefox. I wouldn’t be adverse to paying for a service that values my privacy and in turn helps an organisation try to keep the web open, fair and secure.

I do have some reservations about a paid version of Firefox. Privacy shouldn’t be something you need to pay for, but I am hoping that this paid version is very affordable so that it’s accessible for as many people as possible.

I read today that Microsoft is reportedly throwing in the towel with their EdgeHTML browser engine and starting work on a new browser based on the Chromium engine.

My immediate thought was down-heartened. Another Google-backed browser to reinforce the popularity of Google’s own Chrome browser, but the problem may actually be worse than that (depending on your point of view of course).

Andre Alves Garzia explains more in his post:

We already lost the mobile world for a duopoly of Apple and Google, now we’re losing the desktop most used application, the Web Browser, to a monopoly from Google again, how much control do you want that company to have over the future of the Web? All this not counting the many Electron based apps we use in our daily lives such as VS Code, Atom, Slack, etc, which are all Chrome engine again.

— While we Blink, we lose the Web by Andre Alves Garzia

Even though I’m against any one company having too much control over any part of the technology stack, I’m supporting the use of Google, by using some tools that include the Chrome engine. I use VS Code daily as a web developer and of course the company I work for uses Slack as a communication tool between teams. Is there any getting away from the Chrome engine? Perhaps not at work, but I can make a concise decision to use other applications when I’m not at work.

I’ve been using Firefox and Safari as my preferred browsers for the last few years. In fact, I haven’t looked at Chrome since I decided to go Google-free a few years ago. As for the Chrome-based tools, I don’t use Slack outside of work, but I do use VS Code as my preferred text editor.

Perhaps it’s time to look at Vim again?

I have been a Safari user for a while now. Safari’s built-in sharing on OS X and iOS and the ability to store tabs in iCloud means I could easily move between my phone and my latop. Aside from this, there isn’t much else that would make me choose another web browser. As long as I have the right addons for my browser then I’m happy with Safari.

Mozilla recently announced a new way of testing new features in Firefox without having to run the bleeding edge version of Firefox. Their Test Pilot program allows you to run new features in your stable version of Firefox. Not one to shy from trying something new, I decided to start using Firefox again and turn on all the experiments in the Test Pilot program.

So far the biggest impact has been the Tab Center. This moves the tabs from the top of the browser to the left. It’s running for a few days now and I’m still getting used to the column of icons in my browser down the left hand side. Naturally my reaction is to always move my mouse to the top of the screen but with the icons on the left it’s usually a case of “Doh! There they are!”.

So rather than using the mouse I’ve started using the shortcut keys for switching tabs. I do find it alot easier to switch tabs using the “cmd + number” shortcut for my pinned tabs and anything further down I end up just using “ctrl + tab” to open the right tab.

Also with Firefox now available on iOS, I can now share my tabs and bookmarks on my iPhone using Firefox Sync. It’s early days for this as well, as I’ve been using Safari for about three years on my iPhone.

I’ll give it a month and see if I’m still happy with the setup in June.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve finally settled on a browser that I enjoy using. For well over a year now, Firefox has been my browser of choice. Over the years I’ve used Internet Explorer (long story), Safari, Chrome and even Opera for a while. In between those I’ve used Firefox as well. Ditching all Google tools meant that I wanted something that had good development tools, an extensive library of add ons and a few other features that I just like as an individual. Firefox fitted the bill and I’ve been using it for two years straight now.

Firefox has added a number of great features of the years. Cross-platform support, continually improving security and even pinned tabs. They’re all great features, but the single best feature I love about Firefox is this.

Opening tabs in the sidebar.

Expecting something else? Okay, it’s not the ground breaking feature that everyone might rave about, but it’s a feature that I like the most and here’s why.

Ever since I seen split views in Vim, iTerm 2 and Tmux, I’ve seen the benefits of having multiple views open at once. Being able to switch at a glance from one file to another is a major productivity win. You can work on the part of the application that matters while having other parts of the application that you need to know in other views. You can even have your command line open in one view and your code in the other.

In Firefox a similar view can be achieved using Firefox’s open in sidebar property in your bookmarks. What happens is that a second browser window will open to the left of your main window.

I spend most of my day on the web. Feedbin, Trello, Todoist and GitHub are where I spend most of my time. Siwtching between these tabs can be a pain if you require two of them open at once. Using the sidebar in Firefox though means that I can have one site open in the sidebar for taking notes or collecting information as well as allowing me to still focus on the immediate task at hand in my browser.

An understated feature of Firefox, but one that makes a productive difference to my day.