Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#181

Post by akanet » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 9:49 AM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #131

akanet wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opposite viewpoint as a web developer: Chrome is faster and renders better than Firefox is pretty much every way. Safari delivers faithful color reproduction and speed. I spent 10x as much time fixing Firefox rendering issues compared to every other browser, including Microsoft Edge. Firefox has lost its edge. I do miss tree style tabs, though.

Firefox has been my primary browser since 0.93, so I am naturally biased, but here is my anecdotal position. I develop sites in Firefox and then go for compatibility checking in other browsers. Edge is normally fine. Chrome is horrible . Atrocious. Abysmal. It implements lots of new features, but they are just so regularly buggy or badly implemented. To select the example I remember the clearest (there have been many…

I really can't agree - one major area is CSS 3D transforms. Firefox recently broke stacking order (again) context in 3D in the 49 release, and continues to have very poor aliasing artifacts. Chrome/Safari/Edge have pretty solid implementations.

Here's just one of the many bugs filed on the topic: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1187209. Firefox can have major (breaking) paint bugs filed and have "Status: NEW" for basically an entire year.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#182

Post by morganvachon » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

verroq wrote: post #132

chrismorgan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox can cope with hundreds of tabs just fine. Way better than Chrome can cope with a similar workload, both in terms of memory usage and UI (Chrome winds up with tabs only a few pixels wide, with no information visible!). Firefox’s reputation is because of its history: when Chrome was new it did perform really well and Firefox did have serious performance issues. Chrome has been marvellous for Firefox. The sad th…

Firefox performance has been miserable on Linux and still is.

Here's what I find interesting about that: I tend to run Linux on a bunch of older hardware for various purposes. One of those devices is a netbook with an Atom N450 CPU, in other words a single core dog of a processor that struggles with the lightest of loads. With it running Slackware (which actually makes the netbook usable as a mobile daily driver) Firefox runs circles around Chromium. Granted, neither browser is nowhere near as fast as it is on my daily workstation, but on such an underpowered machine Firefox surprisingly outperforms Chromium by a measurable margin.

Typically it takes about three seconds for Firefox to open on a fresh boot, whereas Chromium takes nearly 20 seconds. This is with the same extensions installed on both browsers, so that's not the issue. Having about five tabs open in either browser, with Firefox switching tabs is nearly instant, whereas in Chromium it takes several seconds to redraw the canvas for the newly selected tab.

Then there's multimedia performance. Firefox can play videos (both webm and Youtube HTML5) without stuttering at 480p and lower resolution, while Chromium chokes on even 360p content in either format.

For these reasons, even though Chrome/Chromium is my normal daily browser in Windows, I happily use Firefox on Linux and other OSes as it just performs better for me.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#183

Post by jplayer01 » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 9:51 AM UTC

It's too bad Firefox becomes more terrible each year. Just today I was struggling with the god awful history sidebar.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#184

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

pitay wrote: post #168

moxie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Google has market leverage. However, when IE was Firefox's competitor, MS was in just as powerful of a position, and Firefox was a success. They were a success because they clearly had the better browser. These days, that's no longer the case. I know that I certainly did not switch from Firefox because of Google's marketing efforts or underhanded tactics. But what if you're right? In a world where, I agree, it t…

What did cause you to switch? What follows here are my observations on what are the advantages/disadvantages of the two browsers: The biggest advantage to Chrome that I can think of is it has its own implementation of Flash in it, rather than using the Flash plugin. This allows Chrome to not have another container process, unlike in Firefox which does spawn a container process for Flash, which uses a ton more CPU cyc…

> What did cause you to switch?

I'm not GP, but I switched because Chrome had better dev tools. For a while, I was using Firefox for browsing and Chrome for dev, but I ended up using just Chrome. It also didn't help that Firefox dropped its 1st party browser sync (Weave) and Chrome had bookmark & history syncing natively

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#185

Post by jplayer01 » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #121

blub wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is good. It has support for modern standards, is performant, has tracking protection built in and plenty of extensions. Google is winning because it's bundling its browser just like Microsoft used to and is aggressively advertising it on all of its web properties, which might have a reach of close to 100% of the web-using population. Firefox also has a reputation for being slow, gotten probably from people do…

Firefox can cope with hundreds of tabs just fine. Way better than Chrome can cope with a similar workload, both in terms of memory usage and UI (Chrome winds up with tabs only a few pixels wide, with no information visible!). Firefox’s reputation is because of its history: when Chrome was new it did perform really well and Firefox did have serious performance issues. Chrome has been marvellous for Firefox. The sad th…

Hundreds? No way. It runs like crap with a few dozen tabs and I always have to restart it so it doesn't start slowing down and behaving badly.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#186

Post by inian » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC

The article is from 2014. Though I understand the sentiment, most of the facts are false now

IIRC, Chrome was using the FileSystem API which was supported only in Chrome - hence the partial support for offline functionality in Google docs..Only recently have the specs behind Persistent Storage API and Service workers have matured. I would love to see Google docs to make use of these APIs to make the functionality available across browsers.

Also, PNacl -> Web Assembly which Google has supported.

Of course Android OSes are going to ship with Chrome as a default browser - at least you have the choice of installing a different browser if you want to. Unlike Apple, where all browsers are forced to use the same JS engine provided by Apple.

Google has been pushing web standards for a long time now - instead of platform specific APIs and saying that the internet is going to be only accessible from Chrome is stretching it quite a bit..

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#187

Post by qplex » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 10:01 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #144

ookdatnog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative. I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for peop…

Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a com…

People are far removed from seeing the actual results of their decisions.

Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen.

Same goes for Google stealing your data or Apple making pretty phones with slave labor.

Basically pretty much everybody needs to be smacked hard with a stick now and then and told what kind of picture they are really painting.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#188

Post by pitay » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 10:11 AM UTC

apatters wrote: post #91

vectorjohn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point. I for one can't stand the chrome dev tools. I use Firefox largely because i prefer the dev tools there. So, the point is, it's possible there is no real difference and it just comes down to personal preference or what you're used to. At least, that was the commenter's point which you didn't address.

You could say the same about Coke vs Pepsi, but that doesn't stop either one from trying to maximize their market share. I think the dev tools in Firefox and Chrome are much more distinct from each other than Coke vs Pepsi, though. The last time I used the FF dev tools (which was admittedly over a year ago) they were much slower and their support for changing attributes on HTML tags inline was more limited. I think t…

Even if the only difference is personal preference, what's wrong with Firefox trying to accommodate more users' preferences?

Neither of the comments you replied to said anything about 'Firefox trying to accommodate more users' preferences'. So I don't think they had anything against Firefox accommodating more users preferences. They were just saying what people prefer is different, some people like Chrome's web developer tools more, some people like the web developer tools in Firefox more.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#189

Post by edcastro » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 10:11 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #104

apatters wrote: post #35

This article convinced me personally to switch back to Firefox, but I'm disheartened by seeing a number of comments here which amount to "Firefox is fine," "Firefox is just as good," "The Foundation is fine," and so on. That attitude is a recipe for shrinking market share. FF is competing against extremely well funded, extremely aggressive and competent competitors. You don't get to stop listening to the market in an…

Firefox is good. It has support for modern standards, is performant, has tracking protection built in and plenty of extensions. Google is winning because it's bundling its browser just like Microsoft used to and is aggressively advertising it on all of its web properties, which might have a reach of close to 100% of the web-using population. Firefox also has a reputation for being slow, gotten probably from people do…

I use exactly 3 extensions and hardly EVER have more than 2 or 3 tabs opened. In this scenario, using Firefox over Chrome, at least on Linux, is gruesome. The startup time is terrible, the constant stuttering and delays opening things is terrible. I wish I was able to use Firefox, I tried many times, but the performance nowadays is just subpar.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#190

Post by sametmax » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 10:29 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #144

ookdatnog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative. I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for peop…

Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a com…

> vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large

That is just a question of habit and education. If you are used to veggie food, the meat is not appealing to you. Tastes are things we build, not stuff we are born with.

Vegetarianism will not become a norm, if it does, because of one factor only. For such a strong cultural habit, you need several factors. It may happen under a combination of the following:

- meat production is costing too much ressources (land, water, energy, etc) compared to the food it produce - meat production does manage to feed the growing propulation; - mass meat production will revealed to be more and more unhealthy, either by nature, because of the artificial products we use for it, or because of the pollution it causes; - it's effect on global warming will trigger a similar reaction as the one we had about CFC.

I doubt it though. I see more and more people consumming less meat around me, I'm a vegetarian myself, but I can't see a shift happening any time soon.

BTW, morality is a very weak factor. It never stopped people to drink and do something stupid, it never stopped people from bying iphones built by children, and it never made them choose a proper president.