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I had been thinking recently as I've been using Firefox more that Google maps had got clunky. With a little fiddling prompted by your comment, it turns out Maps sniffs specifically to reduce fluid animations on Firefox (and probably some other browsers).


Thnak you, this had been bugging me for a while. Looks like I'll need to permanently install a UA-switcher extension.

Yesterday I saw a HN comment saying you can add the (?|&)disable_polymer=1 parameter to the end of YouTube URLs to make the site much faster - iirc Polymer is extremely slow on Firefox only. This extension was also linked: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-polym...

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any workaround for ReCaptcha on FF. I generally end up opening the website in the GNOME or KDE (Falkon) browser which use something like WebKit/Blink - there it works on the first try every time.


Some advice about ReCaptcha, the audio test is way easier and usually only makes you do it once or twice (as opposed to the 5-10 times you usually have to do when you have disabled tracking). Sometimes it will say you aren't eligible or something, just refresh the page and it will let you try again.


The audio test can also be defeated by ML extensions that do it for you automatically


Hey wait a minute!


I wonder what will be the point of these captchas if most people started avoiding them by installing extensions. If the end goal is to put significant resource constraint on the scrapper or bots, you can do it quite easily by running something to short the usage up for a few seconds if you think someone is suspicious.


I just use the contact site to send them a note to cut it out. There are better ways to prevent spam. Like my password that I just entered in the latest case. I'll go elsewhere in the next, they have competitors that won't be that different in price and easier to use.


I had been having an issue with Google Sheets and Firefox that the app decides to change row height randomly.

On Firefox only. Obvious solution to which being...


It actually insert a line break on enter, make it invisible and can't be deleted only on firefox.

Pretend firefox as chrome makes it works perfectly.

They lock the community thread and fixed that after several days I found the finding and post it there.

Shame on you, google.


Oh my god. I knew it was inserting a line break when I hit enter but I didn't realize it was a FF only issue. gdi Google.


Not the first time. For some reason Google really doesn't like people talking about the games they play with browser detection.

(That's not snark - I really don't get it. They don't appear to mind people talking negatively about a lot of other stuff they get up to. Maybe lingering antitrust fears from the 90's MS suit?)


I mean we are in 2020, none of this should be news, but then a lot of people only discovered them now. They have been doing this since early 2010s.

They have been a hypocrite from the start, but people got too consumed with its free Gmail, RSS Reader along with its Do no Evil they decided to trust them blindly.

The current browser, and Web Tech scenario is pretty much Google's way or the highway. So I am glad Apple kept Safari as the only option on Apple platform. Not allowing them to dictate everything.


I reported this as a Firefox bug [1] in 2015. Google fixed it on their side in 2017, but it’s back. :(

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1205573


Companies are afraid of legal liability much more than they’re afraid of bad PR.


I was hitting that too! I wondered what I was doing. I kept getting these weird fields. That fucking sucks. I'd like someone to explain google's point of view about why this is happening? I do override user agent on some systems so random websites work.


Indeed, I was wondering why sheets was so broken to always randomly insert line returns.


Same... I've been played.


really working hard to shove that poison apple down your throat.


I wouldn’t really shame them on this one. Google docs and sheets uses contenteditable under the hood. Contenteditable isn’t specified or standardized anywhere and varies wildly between browsers, and sometimes between browser versions.


So even that workaround is being phased out with this UA support change?


Oh wait...THAT might be the problem?? I've been having that issue too! I have to cut the cell content, delete the cell, and then paste the cell content back in in order for the row height to appear the same. It never even occurred to me to switch browsers, I thought it was an issue with Google Sheets.


Same except it stopped not long ago. Maybe they fixed it ?


https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069?hl=en

They do, I'm not sure that should be called as a 'fix' though.

Because it even works perfectly on firefox as long as you spoof your useragent to chrome.


Maybe. Still not switching away from Firefox though. I have Chrome installed because WebRTC is a lot better and teleconferencing needs have shot up recently, and because I lock my phone away in a Kitchen Safe and use 2FA with Authy the Chrome app, but Firefox is my daily driver :)


> Obvious solution to which being...

Installing an extension to spoof your user agent? Since we wouldn't want to reward Google being anti-competitive.


Or... quit using buggy app?


Except, that has been pointed out in the parent comments, it's not the application, it's a deliberate bug targeted towards a different browser(hence changing the user agent fixes it).


There's a strong argument to be made here that the "buggy app" is Google Sheets.


Except, there’s always the (Libre)Office!


The browser is not the app I had in mind.


What versions of Firefox and Chrome are you seeing different behavior in Google Maps? I get the same experience in Chrome 80 and Firefox 74 on OSX Catalina.


Wow, that's proper evil.




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