Why you SHOULD be using Firefox

opethdisciple · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:21

darael said:
Smooth scrolling is wasted on me. It's one of the first things I disable on Firefox.

You mean on Windows all I have to do is turn on smooth scrolling?

I think it's more than just they have turned on smooth scrolling. The way the webpage is painted seems different. Could be placebo.

---

OK I just checked. Smooth scrolling is on by default in windows.

I'm telling you they have done some magic in Ubuntu. Firefox on Ubuntu feels like it's superior now to the Windows version.

loftie · 25 Oct 2020 at 13:29

opethdisciple said:
OK so it did actually happen again on my 3570k machine.

No issues with the chromium browsers though. They feel much smoother to browse on this old PC.

Humble Bundle is a CPU hog for me on FF. The animated background hammers my 4690k, load up in any chromium browser and it's fine (no hardware accel on any). My solution, block the image with uBO.

opethdisciple · 25 Oct 2020 at 20:46

Quite concerning article on privacy with the likes of Edge and Chrome.

opethdisciple · 25 Oct 2020 at 23:55

I'm just listening in to this and the first min he says something interesting.

Apparently according to Snowden the data Google has on you which is collected via Chrome and their app ecosystem is data that is also available to the likes of the NSA!!

*The title says best browser for privacy

The issue is with the lack of market share and money Firefox could be going down the pan especially with all the recent layoffs. Lets hope Firefox can survive and strive after their reorganisation.

darael · 26 Oct 2020 at 10:41

Has anybody enabled DNS over HTTPS in Firefox? If so which provider do you use? My ISP is Virgin Media, so would it make sense to use VM's own DNS if it's over HTTPS?

Rainmaker · 26 Oct 2020 at 11:20

darael said:
Has anybody enabled DNS over HTTPS in Firefox? If so which provider do you use? My ISP is Virgin Media, so would it make sense to use VM's own DNS if it's over HTTPS?

I've been using encrypted DNS for years, so it was handy when Firefox implemented it. It's definitely worth doing, and you definitely don't want to use VM's DNS (not that they support DoH or DoT anyway). You'll also want to enable encrypted SNI for the full benefits.

I run my own encrypted DNS server (AdGuard Home) but you can use Quad9 or Cloudflare. For example, in about:config do:

network.security.esni.enabled (true)

Then in Preferences scroll down to General > Network Settings and click the Settings box. Tick 'Use DNS over HTTPS' and either choose Cloudflare in the Provider menu, or enter your own (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query is decent and arguably a little more private).

With those settings you'll bypass any censorship of sites from VM and your site visits (if HTTPS and ESNI/Cloudflare based) will be invisible to anyone but you.

opethdisciple · 26 Oct 2020 at 11:41

^ Follow those instructions.

I use cloudflare.

darael · 26 Oct 2020 at 13:04

Rainmaker said:
I've been using encrypted DNS for years, so it was handy when Firefox implemented it. It's definitely worth doing, and you definitely don't want to use VM's DNS (not that they support DoH or DoT anyway). You'll also want to enable encrypted SNI for the full benefits.

I run my own encrypted DNS server (AdGuard Home) but you can use Quad9 or Cloudflare. For example, in about:config do:

network.security.esni.enabled (true)

Then in Preferences scroll down to General > Network Settings and click the Settings box. Tick 'Use DNS over HTTPS' and either choose Cloudflare in the Provider menu, or enter your own (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query is decent and arguably a little more private).

With those settings you'll bypass any censorship of sites from VM and your site visits (if HTTPS and ESNI/Cloudflare based) will be invisible to anyone but you.

opethdisciple said:
^ Follow those instructions.

I use cloudflare.

Thanks, have done enabled DNS-over-HTTPS and enabled encrypted SNI - will test to see if this breaks any sites.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ssl/encrypted-sni/ gives me the message "Your resolver does not appear to validate DNS responses with DNSSEC".

Rainmaker · 26 Oct 2020 at 13:27

darael said:
Thanks, have done enabled DNS-over-HTTPS and enabled encrypted SNI - will test to see if this breaks any sites.

It's just DNS, nothing to do with the actual sites you visit. It won't break anything.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ssl/encrypted-sni/ gives me the message "Your resolver does not appear to validate DNS responses with DNSSEC".

What's your OS? This won't be a problem, try running the test again (it glitches sometimes). It's also worth going back to about:config and changing network.trr.mode to 3 which forces DoH all the time (no fallback to native DNS).

opethdisciple · 26 Oct 2020 at 13:30

darael said:
Thanks, have done enabled DNS-over-HTTPS and enabled encrypted SNI - will test to see if this breaks any sites.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ssl/encrypted-sni/ gives me the message "Your resolver does not appear to validate DNS responses with DNSSEC".

It doesn't break any sites at least I have never come across any that have broken. It's only encrypts the server name you are trying to connect too. If the site doesn't support ESNI I think it falls back to unencrypted.

I also set my local connection to use the cloudflare dns servers:

ipv4: 1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1

ipv6: 2606:4700:4700::1111, 2606:4700:4700::1001

You should get 4 green ticks when it is set up correctly. Via the cloudflare esni checker site.

Rainmaker · 26 Oct 2020 at 13:46

If anyone wants to test my own encrypted ad and tracker blocking DNS resolver (DoH, DoT and dnscrypt with DNSSEC), drop me a trust with your IP address (so I can whitelist it) and I'll send you the details. I keep thinking about setting up a WireGuard VPN + private ad/tracker blocking DNS service with ad blocking for us forumers but I never get around to it.

FredFlint · 26 Oct 2020 at 15:02

Rainmaker said:
What's your OS? This won't be a problem, try running the test again (it glitches sometimes). It's also worth going back to about:config and changing network.trr.mode to 3 which forces DoH all the time (no fallback to native DNS).

That got DNSSEC working for me, thanks.

Rainmaker · 26 Oct 2020 at 15:12

FredFlint said:
That got DNSSEC working for me, thanks.

If you have any issues with DoH suddenly dying, just turn it back to 2 and everything should still work fine now.

Edit: Now that you have it working, if you try to go to a website that VM have blocked it should work fine in Firefox. For example the bay of buccaneers, or the 1337 place.

FredFlint · 26 Oct 2020 at 17:23

Rainmaker said:
If you have any issues with DoH suddenly dying, just turn it back to 2 and everything should still work fine now.

Edit: Now that you have it working, if you try to go to a website that VM have blocked it should work fine in Firefox. For example the bay of buccaneers, or the 1337 place.

Just tried bay of buccaneers, works haha. I dont use that many sites for myself, use more for searching work related things (.net code stuff) but no social media type stuff.

Mekrel · 26 Oct 2020 at 21:31

I know this is the Windows forum but I've setup DNS over HTTPS and encrypted SNI on Firefox for Android (Beta). Obviously Firefox for Android doesn't have as comprehensive UI for options, so I've set everything up via about:config as per the guidance here.

The cloudflare site gives me four green ticks but those aforementioned sites are still blocked By ISP (Sky). Don't get me wrong, I have no interest in those sites and I'm more wondering if the setup is definitely working?

Glanza · 26 Oct 2020 at 22:23

Mekrel said:
I know this is the Windows forum but I've setup DNS over HTTPS and encrypted SNI on Firefox for Android (Beta). Obviously Firefox for Android doesn't have as comprehensive UI for options, so I've set everything up via about:config as per the guidance here.

The cloudflare site gives me four green ticks but those aforementioned sites are still blocked By ISP (Sky). Don't get me wrong, I have no interest in those sites and I'm more wondering if the setup is definitely working?

Have you changed your DNS servers on your phone too or left them on default?

Mekrel · 26 Oct 2020 at 22:34

Glanza said:
Have you changed your DNS servers on your phone too or left them on default?

Set that to 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com but still get the same thing. Oh well, I get the tick boxes on the Cloudflare checklist.

opethdisciple · 26 Oct 2020 at 23:39

Mekrel said:
Set that to 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com but still get the same thing. Oh well, I get the tick boxes on the Cloudflare checklist.

ISP have other ways of blocking sites so if you are getting the for green ticks on the ESNI checker then you are fine.

opethdisciple · 26 Oct 2020 at 23:41

So was any one else been able to replicate the issue I have with this site?

It annoys me that Firefox complains about a slow running script whilst the chromium based browser had no trouble at all.

Rainmaker · 27 Oct 2020 at 01:11

opethdisciple said:
So was any one else been able to replicate the issue I have with this site?

It annoys me that Firefox complains about a slow running script whilst the chromium based browser had no trouble at all.

That site is nasty. I have uBO running in 'hard mode'. After allowing JS and remote fonts, and greylisting (noop) 3rd party and 3rd party scripts (leaving 3p frames blacklisted) the page loads perfectly, scrolls nicely and I had no issues at all. That's on a 2012 MacBook Pro with a cruddy 1.5Ghz dual core mobile i5...

The uBO logger shows an absolute ream of blocked scripts from Google Tag Services, Ziff and so on though, and likely one of those is your culprit.