Forum Discussion
Edge container tabs
Websites have a plethora of techniques and tactics that can track and uniquely identify you. They can track you based on your time zone, installed fonts, CPU cores, RAM capacity, OS version, screen size, the way you type, the device orientation, available sensors in your hardware etc.
Firefox container does not protect you from any of those things.
Your best bet is to use Windows Sandbox, change your timezone in it, and then browse the Internet, that way you still more secure and also more anonymous.
- As others have stated, it's not being used as a "privacy" feature (because it's not). It's used for productivity. For example, I tend to be signed into multiple AWS Accounts throughout the day because of my day job. Being able to switch among AWS Accounts by simply switching tabs in my browser is a huge time saver.If it were only 1 or 2 accounts, then I could just have a couple of browsers open (e.g., Firefox and Chrome/Edge) but I tend to have more open than that.
I also use this for multiple Google accounts, which can be a huge time saver.
While Edge does come preinstalled on my Windows laptops, I only use it to install Firefox. I do open Edge from time to time to see what's new, but I don't ever see it becoming my default browser without this capability.- Spoiler
jsbramwell wrote:
As others have stated, it's not being used as a "privacy" feature (because it's not). It's used for productivity. For example, I tend to be signed into multiple AWS Accounts throughout the day because of my day job. Being able to switch among AWS Accounts by simply switching tabs in my browser is a huge time saver.If it were only 1 or 2 accounts, then I could just have a couple of browsers open (e.g., Firefox and Chrome/Edge) but I tend to have more open than that.
I also use this for multiple Google accounts, which can be a huge time saver.
While Edge does come preinstalled on my Windows laptops, I only use it to install Firefox. I do open Edge from time to time to see what's new, but I don't ever see it becoming my default browser without this capability.For profile switching, Edge has this edge://settings/profiles/multiProfileSettings
you can configure it to auto switch for you. I use it to manage multiple Azure and M365 identities.
- Do you recently have an issue with viewing CloudWatch log in Firefox? Like you, I like container feature in Firefox but it is very painful when Firefox becomes nearly hanging when opening CloudWatch
HotCakeX wrote:
Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.Most don't expect it to do anything about privacy or tracking as people think. They just want the productivity benefit of it, nothing else.
Jokes aside, I and many others are fully aware that it's all containers do, that's all we want them to do, so that you can have 2 sessions on the same website without having to resort to private windows or secondary profiles, which accomplish the same goal but with a lot more inconvenience.
Think of this request as nothing more than not having to create separate profiles for the browser and just let us have separated cookie sessions so that YouTube Music can just run in a tab without us having to go switching profiles when we decide to go watch YouTube videos.
HellDuke wrote:
HotCakeX wrote:
Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.Most don't expect it to do anything about privacy or tracking as people think. They just want the productivity benefit of it, nothing else.
Jokes aside, I and many others are fully aware that it's all containers do, that's all we want them to do, so that you can have 2 sessions on the same website without having to resort to private windows or secondary profiles, which accomplish the same goal but with a lot more inconvenience.
Think of this request as nothing more than not having to create separate profiles for the browser and just let us have separated cookie sessions so that YouTube Music can just run in a tab without us having to go switching profiles when we decide to go watch YouTube videos.
Well since the goal is not hiding your alternative account, most websites offer account switching capability, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Discord, Facebook etc. all have it, so might as well use that feature.
There are also lots of PWAs in Microsoft Store, they have separate cookie storage than Edge browser so they can be used too.
Windows also natively supports Android apps so YouTube, Spotify, Discord, Telegram etc. can have their own native apps running next to other programs.
And of course there are Edge profiles. The point is that there are lots of alternatives already available and they are much better than waiting for container capability to come to Edge, if at all, specially since it barely offers any security or privacy benefits.
Usually the teams working on a feature must evaluate its benefits to see if it's worth the time and money to develop it, security is a great justification, privacy is next in line, containers, at least the way Firefox implements them, don't satisfy either of them, just saying.
HotCakeX wrote:
HellDuke wrote:
HotCakeX wrote:
Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.Most don't expect it to do anything about privacy or tracking as people think. They just want the productivity benefit of it, nothing else.
Jokes aside, I and many others are fully aware that it's all containers do, that's all we want them to do, so that you can have 2 sessions on the same website without having to resort to private windows or secondary profiles, which accomplish the same goal but with a lot more inconvenience.
Think of this request as nothing more than not having to create separate profiles for the browser and just let us have separated cookie sessions so that YouTube Music can just run in a tab without us having to go switching profiles when we decide to go watch YouTube videos.
Well since the goal is not hiding your alternative account, most websites offer account switching capability, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Discord, Facebook etc. all have it, so might as well use that feature.
There are also lots of PWAs in Microsoft Store, they have separate cookie storage than Edge browser so they can be used too.
Windows also natively supports Android apps so YouTube, Spotify, Discord, Telegram etc. can have their own native apps running next to other programs.
And of course there are Edge profiles. The point is that there are lots of alternatives already available and they are much better than waiting for container capability to come to Edge, if at all, specially since it barely offers any security or privacy benefits.
Usually the teams working on a feature must evaluate its benefits to see if it's worth the time and money to develop it, security is a great justification, privacy is next in line, containers, at least the way Firefox implements them, don't satisfy either of them, just saying.
Therein lies the problem: the websites do not have this capability, not in the sense that is sought after with containers. Think of it this way, you have 2 tabs open of the same page. You are logged to account1 on the first tab. Now you go to second tab and switch profiles to account2. What do you think happens to tab 1? Can I still navigate to other pages using account1, or will clicking the link suddenly display information from account2? Unless it's a rare edge case scenario, it's going to be the latter.
Skipping over to android apps, that does not cover 100% of the possible websites even if that was a feature that you could use, alas Android apps is not a released feature for Windows yet so it's a moot point.
And as I said, profiles are a workaround. It's basically saying why implement a solution when you can use a more cumbersome option that is meant for something entirely different as a workaround?
