Some Firefox Shortcomings

Reader View can’t paginate documents (like, for example, Instapaper).

Reader View’s parser is worse (on average) than Safari’s Reader.

Reader View only has three font options: Sans-serif, Serif, and Monospace, yet lots of other fiddly options.

And Serif defaults to “Times” (similar to, but not the same as, Times New Roman). You can change the default, but Apple’s system fonts, San Francisco and New York, aren’t options, and I don’t want to have to change the default for all websites to change Reader View.

Safari’s Reader starts at your scroll position (usually), Firefox’s Reader View takes you back to the beginning (losing your spot).

Reader View’s keyboard shortcut, Command-Option-R, differs from Safari’s, Command-Shift-R, so no muscle memory. (On the other hand, Reader View is one mouse click vs. Safari’s two.)

Reader View’s settings panel persists on scroll. (Annoying.)

Reader View uses an algorithm for whether or not it will let you use it. It’s too picky, but I want to decide. (Compromise: don’t show the address bar icon, but keep the menu bar option available — like Safari.)

You can change the color of links in Reader View, but you can’t remove their underlines (“text-decoration”).

I don’t like the styling of Reader View’s <blockquote> border.

The cursor isn’t hidden (like it is with Safari) when you scroll with the arrow keys or Space bar (Page Down).

No first-party RSS button or first-party RSS extension, and currently there’re only two “recommended” and/or reviewed third-party RSS extensions, Feedbro and Livemarks.

Thunderbird still exists and still has an RSS reader. Last I checked, it wasn’t very good, but maybe there’s a synergy opportunity. But according to its roadmap, improvements to Thunderbird’s RSS feeds are “out of scope” (low priority).

“Roadmap” @ Thunderbird.net

Firefox, by default, will auto-download about half the RSS feed files on the internet. For these types of feeds, Safari will ask me, “Do you want to allow this website to open ‘NetNewsWire’?” (Chrome will show the feed’s source, but without the syntax highlighting they apply to “headerless” feeds.)

(My understanding: these feeds are prompting Firefox and Safari with an “HTTP header” message.)

You can get Firefox to ask, “What should Firefox do with this file?” instead of auto-downloading, but although I can pick “Open with NetNewsWire,” it still just downloads the file.

The Firefox “release notes” web-page has no RSS feed.

“Firefox Releases” @ Firefox.com

There’s no “Look Up” option in the context menu.

Sometimes web-page text seems to warp when I scroll (in a way that I find hard to describe or reproduce).

Deleting a “Find in page” search (Command-F) doesn’t stay deleted.

“ ‘Find in Page’ Input Persists Even After Being Deleted” r/Firefox @ Reddit.com

And “Find in page” searches “leak”: if you Command-F search in Firefox, then Command-F in Chrome, Chrome automatically makes the same search.

Turning off vertical tabs doesn’t hide the sidebar, even if the sidebar was hidden before you turned on vertical tabs.

Turning on vertical tabs opens the expanded sidebar, even if the sidebar was collapsed the last time you had vertical tabs on.

And you can’t hide and show a collapsed sidebar (only an expanded one).

The History menu (in the menu bar) has only 15 items; the extensive history in Safari’s History menu is often useful.

The Bookmarks menu (in the menu bar) has the Bookmarks Toolbar items in a folder (harder to get to).

In Chrome, they’re easier to get to.

(But with vertical tabs on, the star button in the sidebar is close enough to being as easy as Chrome.)

Firefox: (1) View → (2) Toolbars → (3) Bookmarks Toolbar → (4) Always Show . . .

Chrome: (1) View → (2) Always Show . . .

Safari: (1) View → (2) Show . . .

No toolbar Share button [ꜛ].

Firefox made a bunch of flag themes, but no United States.

The “Internet Culture” included in the Mozilla blog feed.

Firefox’s “Library” (History, Downloads, Tags, Bookmarks) has an old design style and can’t be opened as a tab.

In the menu bar, settings are “preferences,” but in the application menu and elsewhere, they’re “settings.”

If you close all the windows or tabs, then click “History” → “Clear Recent History…” in the menu bar, the “Clear browsing data and cookies” window that opens has a different window style than normal.

Tabs don’t close in order of last used. (Opera has an option for this.)

(Firefox has a “CTRL+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order” option.)

There’re no “Open Image” or “Open Video” context menu options, you can only “Open Image in New Tab” or “Open Video in New Tab,” which, by default, open in the background.

You can change the default, but that applies to links too, and then you’d have to Command-Shift-click instead of Command-click to open a link in the background.

(Safari has “Open Image in New Window” and “Open Video in New Window,” which do open immediately.)

You can’t open an e-pub without a third-party extension.

“[O]rientation info in PNGs isn’t used” Bugzilla @ Mozilla.org

Despite support articles saying otherwise, Space bar isn’t a “Toggle Play / Pause” shortcut (for the native media player). (And there’s no option to make it one.)

It can toggle play/pause, but only if it was your last click. If your last click was full screen, it toggles full screen. If it was mute, it toggles mute.

“Media Shorcuts” @ support.Mozilla.org

“Keyboard Controls” @ support.Mozilla.org

On Safari, when a link (target="_blank") opens a new tab, hitting back closes the tab.

If you type “refresh” in the address bar, there’s an option (with a gear icon) to “refresh Firefox to its default settings,” but if you search “refresh” in Settings, “there are no results in Settings for ‘refresh.’ ”

In Safari, Command-Z (Undo) will (usually) reopen a closed tab.

(In Safari and Firefox, Command-Shift-T is the dedicated shortcut for reopening closed tabs.)

Some Observations

DropBox has about four times the revenue of Mozilla Corp.

There’s no iCloud equivalent for Linux (there used to be something called Ubuntu One).

Framework may be giving Linux some momentum.

Mozilla has a VPN, Thunderbird is getting web-mail, I pay for iCloud+.

If I was going to switch to Ubuntu, I’d probably try to use DropBox.

I don’t want to use DropBox.

The only reason I had to use Pocket was because I have a Kobo Libra 2, but if Pocket had pagination, it could’ve competed with Instapaper. If it had pagination and RSS, it could’ve competed with Readwise Reader.

Pocket on Kobo was replaced by Instapaper on Kobo, but Kobo says their “beta” browser is “not officially supported.”

If their browser was Firefox, and Firefox had an RSS reader and Reader View with pagination, I might be able to delete two apps.

(Pocket had pagination, but Mozilla removed it.)

(A problem with Pocket was the default tab, “Home,” was recommendations, not “Saves.” I might want recommendations, if they were good, but not till I run out of things to read.)

(In principle, a good recommender might have to be willing to recommend nothing.)

Automattic’s revenue is now higher than Mozilla Corp. Squarespace’s is higher than Automattic’s.

Cloudflare Pages has a GUI folder upload.

I’m using Cloudflare Pages and its GUI folder upload, but Cloudflare announced they won’t be updating Pages anymore.

I probably should try to go somewhere else, but there’s nowhere I want to go.

If _mdn had something, even if it cost money, I might want to go there.

Maybe the economics don’t work, but if you want to upload a larger file, like a video, without being on a meter, there isn’t just nowhere I want to go, there’s nowhere to go.

If I was going to try to do this today, I’d probably try to use Cloudflare R2. I probably wouldn’t have to pay, but I’d be on a meter.

I don’t want to be on a meter.

(A possible reference point: you can upload 3hrs/month of audio on Libsyn for $7/month, unmetered.)

Sep 2025

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