this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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I don't really understand why more people don't use Firefox. I've been using it almost exclusively for probably a decade without any compatibility issues, aside from the very few sites that specifically request IE or Edge (which I usually just bypass by changing User Agent anyway).
What do you mean by change User Agent?
The user agent tells the page what the browser is, so the page can tell whether you're runnit Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. The intent is for the page to change behavior depending on the browser since each have different capabilities (web standards change quickly). Unfortunately, pages rarely get updated in a timely fashion when browsers implement web standards so the engine check is frequently inaccurate.
Changing the user agent means changing what web pages think you're running. If a page uses an optimized API on Chrome and a slower one on Firefox because Firefox was slower to implement it, then you can get a speedup by saying your Firefox is Chrome. Some pages refuse to run unless it's a specific browser, so lying can make those pages work.
I hope that makes sense.
Might I ask... how?
There's add-ons in Firefox for it
Yup, look for "user agent switcher." This isn't something you should try to DIY in the settings, because user agents are complex and a small deviation can mean looking like Chrome or being unintelligible.