Firefox’s popularity around 2010’s

When I was growing up, Firefox was the browser to use. It was the most popular browser (at lest in Poland), with a market share above 50%. It was fast, secure, and customizable. It was the browser that you could trust. It was the browser that you could make your own.

Fast forward to 2024, and Firefox’s usage has been declining for years and years and its users are often seen as a dying breed. But I still use Firefox as my default browser. Why?

Customization

Firefox is still the most customizable browser out there. You can change almost every aspect of it, from the way it looks to the way it behaves. You can make it look and feel exactly the way you want it to. You can make it yours. It is true that developers are trying to make it more difficult to customize Firefox, but it is still possible to do so if you know how.

About:config

Firefox has a hidden configuration menu called about:config that allows you to change a lot of settings that are not available in the regular settings menu. Once these settings are changed, they are saved in a file called prefs.js in your profile directory. This file is a simple JavaScript file that you can edit manually if you want to. If you have a firefox account, it also syncs these settings across all your devices. These settings allow you to increase your privacy and security.

userChrome.css

If you want to change the way Firefox looks, and I mean if you don’t like any elements of the UI, you can use userChrome.css file. This file allows you to change the appearance of Firefox’s UI using CSS. You can change the colors, the fonts, the sizes, the positions, and the visibility of almost every element of the UI. You can make Firefox look exactly the way you want it to. You can make it yours.

I use a dynamic tiling window manager, so for many years I had a custom userChrome.css that removed the title bar as well as the tab view (I opt for vertical tabs which I’ll get to later on).

If you search on github, you can find many userChrome.css projects with thousands of stars. Lately, I’ve stumbled upon Lepton. This projects aims to make the Firefox UI more minimalistic and modern. It’s a great starting point. I only removed the title bar and the tab view from it.

Speaking of using window managers, Firefox has this annoying feature where the settings and right click menus show an ugly border around them. To fix this, you need to add the following to your picom config (assuming you’re using X11 based window manager and picom as a compositor):

shadow-exclude = [
...
"class_g = 'firefoxdeveloperedition'"
...
];

Some other Reddit threads say that you need to add more parameters like so (assuming that you’re using standard Firefox):

shadow-exclude = [
...
"class_g = 'firefox' && window_type = 'utility'",
...
];

Add-ons

I use a few add-ons that make my browsing experience better.

Privacy and security

First and foremost, I use uBlock Origin to block ads and trackers with the help of Privacy Badger. To limit the amount of data facebook collects about me when I am forced to use it, I use Facebook Container. I also installed Firefox Containers, which allow me to separate my browsing sessions into different containers. This is useful when I want to log in to the same website with different accounts.

Look and feel

I use Vimium to navigate the web using only the keyboard. Tree Style Tab to have my tabs on the left side of the screen. My start page is set to Tabliss, which is a beautiful new tab page that shows a random wallpaper from Unsplash. I also use Dark Reader to make websites dark, which is easier on the eyes in dark environments. For spell checking I use LanguageTool, which is a grammar and spell checker that works in multiple languages.

Youtube

To limit my usage of YouTube, I use SponsorBlock to skip sponsored segments in videos. I also use Enhancer for YouTube to make the video player more minimalistic, without recommendations, play next, and playlists.