Live data from Hacker News

Why do you use Firefox?

agmweb.ca

21–30 of 121 posts

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#21
No processes. No hangouts. No index service started without asking. Chrome on Windows is a pig. Back when I was using it then nonstop then 25% of CPU usage was pegged to Chrome. I gave up trying to manage Chrome and switched to Firefox.

Recently Firefox said they were moving away from threads to processes. I think that's a mistake. Killing Chrome was a pain at times because when it does hang all the child processes had to be killed independently. It was possible to restart Chrome with orphaned processes. What a mess.

Also, I like the implementation of profiles in Firefox much better. I have a different profile for work, home and various side jobs. Very nice.

Chrome developers are crap developers and they hide behind processes because they don't have the chops to do threads. I hate to see Firefox move in that direction. Maybe Firefox needs to since Firefox is adopting Chrome extensions. But I refuse to use Chrome because it has crappy performance and usability. Hopefully Firefox doesn't move in the same direction.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#24
Generally speaking, I use Firefox because I've always used Firefox. At no point have they ever done something that's made me upset enough with my browsing experience to jump platforms entirely.

It's familiar, it has the extensions I need and it hasn't buggered up in any significant way that I uninstalled it from frustration.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#26
While I long upgrade from Firefox, I imagine most don't change because people hate change. I remember back when I switched I noticed all the little tiny differences, and while there were different and in most cases better ways of doing that in Chrome, I was use to my current way and any change slowed my productivity down. In the long run, I knew Chrome would be a better solution when I finally dove two feet in. But for many they are happy with what they have and while Chrome would offer a superior experience, the change wouldn't be worth it for many. And the rest I imagine fall into the category of I hate company x, so don't want to use it and then end up sticking with company that they believe on the surface is more inline with their values.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#27
> vast majority of users could switch to Chrome and get all the same extensions with almost identical functionality [4]

On desktop, maybe. On mobile, definitely not. Chrome for Android does not support extensions at all.

Firefox, on the other hand, does. If you want uBlock, Ghostery, whatever on your mobile browser, you don't have other choice than Firefox. And if you like your bookmarks synced between mobile and desktop, that makes Chrome on desktop no-go option too.

Re: Why do you use Firefox?

#28
post #18

Goodwill, as I like Mozilla much more than Google. I kind of dislike the Chrome UI, but that's a minor point. A lot of FF is hare-brained, though. E10S solved the unresponsive UI for me, but for the life of me, I don't know how to enable it on my touchscreen Dell. There is no indicator in preferences that tells me whether it is on or off and no button to simply force it. Javascript-heavy websites tend to burn through…

`about:support` will tell you if the multiprocess windows are activated, depending on the add-ons you are using.
Post reply on HN