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Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

211–220 of 266 posts

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

#211
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest creating a new profile in Firefox and checking it again. I use Firefox with tons of tabs and don't notice any lag in tab switching. I also don't have multiprocess enabled automatically (when I tried it about a year ago or so it was slower, but it has improved quite a bit in my reading).

Google never made me do anything with profiles. It just worked.

Well, if there's one thing to always keep in mind about technology and software, many things can go wrong in different ways for different people. For me, Firefox has always "just worked" too, but a response like that to the GP would've been completely useless.

For me, Google Chrome has always been a resource killer that's sluggish and consumes almost all system RAM (on 8GB total) with just 10 or 20 tabs. I see Firefox consuming a lot less with a few hundred tabs. While your response states your experience, it also sounds like you're meaning to say that Google Chrome is better solely because of your experience. So I don't see how such a response is helpful, overall.

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

#212
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more important today with a share of around ~70% instead of ~60% back then ( http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/ )

I'm not surprised with 70% for Chrome. Every Android phone comes with a Chrome browser. Too bad Mozilla mobile strategy didn't work. times and times again I said to whoever was in charge with the project :"Target hipsters, and hackers, not emergent economies and low hand devices, make it the phone for those who can afford a third one with good specs and are trend setters, or engineers, they'll develop cool shit for F…

I wonder why countries aren't pursuing Apple and Google about the monopoly of their browsers on their platforms as they did with Microsoft over IE. Apple in particular is obviously extremely anti competitive, at least you can install a gecko based Firefox on Android, on iOS it's webkit based.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal biggest problem with FF is that it uses too much screen real estate compared to Chrome. For example, the tabs are really fat, and the address bar is much thicker, leaving less space for actual content. Perhaps FF should include a "look-like-chromium" option to win over users (since chromium is open-source, I guess they will not run into copyright issues there).

Personally - and this isn't for everyone - I use vimperator, which allows me to just hide the url bar and do everything from the keyboard. I end up feeling the opposite; that the viewport is small whenever I have to test in Chrome.

This... :set gui=none

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

#214
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it. This is a totally disingenuous interpretation of EME. I think you mean when Google, despite their ~open source bona fides~ with Chromium, collaborated with Microsoft and Netflix to introduce DRM to the browser and used their crushing market dominance to force Mozilla to comply or fall even further behind?

I'm perfectly aware that they didn't want to. But if Mozilla can be bullied into implementing it anyway, then how does using Firefox stop Google from doing whatever they want?

[deleted]

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Firefox for Android has ad blocking.

Probably better to block ads on your cellphone via hostfiles or a custom nameserver that blocks ads. Try turning your phone on and sniffing its packets with tcpdump on a notebook (use Wireshark to decrypt if WPA). You'll be surprised by the amount of servers from ad companies that are contacted before you even unlock your screen, if you let apps start at boot.

I suppose that requires root access?

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

#216

I've been using Gecko-based browsers for... well, more or less since Gecko became a viable alternative to its predecessor (whatever the rendering engine in Netscape Communicator was called). I sometimes use Chromium for sites which insist on using a webkit/blink-based browser but I never stick around them for the simple reason that sites look better on Gecko than they do on Webkit/Blink, mostly due to (in my opinion)…

Huh? I'm still running my own sync server and it was really easy to setup.

https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html

Working fine with Firefox on macOS and Android. You can even setup the authentication server, but I didn't see why I'd need that. Having the data on my own server is enough for me.

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

#217
I understand that a lack of competition almost always leaves users/consumers worse off, but I really find value in a lot of the integrations Chrome seamlessly provides with other Google products, especially my chromebook.

Is this article asking me to sacrifice these benefits just to oppose the imminent monopoly? If the only difference between chrome and firefox was the market share then it might make more sense for me to switch. The problem is that I don't want to give up the extra benefits of chrome just to be one additional user for firefox.

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

#218

I've been using Gecko-based browsers for... well, more or less since Gecko became a viable alternative to its predecessor (whatever the rendering engine in Netscape Communicator was called). I sometimes use Chromium for sites which insist on using a webkit/blink-based browser but I never stick around them for the simple reason that sites look better on Gecko than they do on Webkit/Blink, mostly due to (in my opinion)…

> sites which insist on using a webkit/blink-based browser

Does a user-agent switcher addon not help?

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

#219
post #141
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stats give FF at 45% market share, before Chrome got heavily advertised and took over. Chrome didn't beat IE. Firefox fought an all-out war and was not going anywhere either. What beat IE is an antitrust lawsuit actually.

I've never seen stats placing Firefox much above 30%, where are you getting 45% from?

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/

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

#220
post #146

Firefox has a serious performance issue. The difference with Chrome is really noticeable after only a few minutes of browsing. Less responsive, huge memory comsumption. Try d3.js for instance, the rendering speed is horribly slow on Firefox. I won't be switching to Firefox unless its performances get closer to Chrome's. As a developper I wish I could contribute to make a better Firefox, but I'm pretty sure the techni…

You can contribute to Servo, Mozilla's new rendering engine written in Rust (which should also fix those performance problems that you mention): https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is a stand-alone project, but Mozilla will replace some big parts of Firefox with Servo code: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum - So most contributions to Servo will end up in Firefox eventually.

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