📚 Going back to Firefox after a decade!

Disclaimer: English is not my fist language.

Remember when Firefox was awesome?

In the early 2000's Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 6, and it was fancier and shinier than the previous version. I had been a Windows user since Windows 3.1 and this was by far the best update in the Windows ecosystem... but then it came along Firefox, advocating for web standards, tabbed browsing, themes, and a faster engine. It was glorious!

Prior to HTML5, those were the days of the ActiveX, Adobe Flash, and sometimes Java applets, but truth be told, ActiveX websites looked very obsolete even by those days standards. ActiveX did not work well with Firefox, but I did not care, because that technology is for old business people anyways and I still got to rip all the aforementioned benefits.

Why I went the Google Chrome route

By the end 2008 I went full-Linux user (and I still am) with no dual-boot. About that time I first came across Google Chrome, but it was not anything shiny or better from what Firefox already had to offer on Linux. Then came streaming services became popular and the first difference became apparent: Google's browser offered support for privative sound codecs and then video too. No worries, as it was not too hard to make them work in Firefox too, also HTML5 was becoming a thing so I hoped that somewhere down the line every audio and video format alongside their secure streaming service would become open.

For years I patiently waited until 2015 when it finally happened: I could only watch Netflix on Google Chrome and not on Firefox. That was it for me. During the following years I witnessed with a lot of sadness a couple of websites that would work out-of-the-box just fine with Chrome and not on Firefox. It got worse when I joined the workforce in 2017 and had to use Microsoft Teams; there was no official Linux support, and the web app was designed to work only on their horrible MS browser. With a couple of hacks (including changing the user agent) I managed to get it working in Google Chrome, but the video calling was completely broken on Firefox.

Microsoft Edge enters the Linux space

After years of trying going back to Firefox I had decided that it would never happen. The last time I gave Firefox a change was when Firefox Quantum was announced, it was faster alright, but incompatible with the web apps that I needed. On the other hand Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft products worked mostly fine in Chrome out of the box. So when I learned that a version of Edge for Linux was coming, my first thought was “Great, now we will need to use a Microsoft browser just to get full support in their web apps”. But I was not counting of Microsoft slowness: it took them 2 years to get full support for work accounts in Linux and full support for Microsoft Teams!

In case you are wondering why it makes sense for me to use Microsoft Edge at work: - Because Microsoft's logging system is trash: I have two work accounts (from two jobs) with them and switching between both is horrible! I have to delete all the cookies and other privacy files just to get it done. It is easier to just have two accounts on the browser. - Because, just like the old ActiveX technology, Microsoft products require non-standard technology for old business people... like the one I am turning into.

It had nothing to do with blocking the ad-blockers

In the last few days I heard that many people are returning to Firefox due to a controversial Google decision that would make ad blockers stop working. I have never complained about unobtrusive ads, but there are some web pages that I swear cover more than 75% of the screen with them. I you know how to use the /etc/hosts file like the one from StevenBlack this won't be a problem, however. You can even block ads system-wide in Linux with just a single command (this one is assuming Ubuntu):

bash sudo wget --output-document=/etc/hosts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts

So what happened

After setting up both of my work accounts in a business-oriented web browser I decided to give Firefox one last chance: and it finally works! When I opened Netflix I did not have to enter a single command in the Terminal to get to watch something. I had no issues with messaging web apps, and my other streaming services are supported out-of-the-box. This is the experience that I have been waiting for a decade now, I am sorry that it took so long and possibly many legal battles just to get here. I am so happy and feel like I have reconnected with an old friend, so I had to share.

Firefox still has some features that I kind of miss from other browsers, like Opera's side bar, Chromium's ability to create web apps in just a couple of clicks, and of course the Bing search from Microsoft /s.