A bunch of people have already mentioned a few extensions, like Tree Style Tabs, that I consider important, but there is another big thing keeping me on Firefox: inertia. I have been a user since it was "Phoenix". If I wanted, I could change to another browser, but for now I would rather not have to go through the trouble. I have everything as I like it, more or less, so I will continue using FireFox ESR until it is impractical.
Why do you use Firefox?
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#52No 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 h…
>No processes
From my understanding, the initial rollout of multi-process has a single render process (in addition to the main browser process). There are ongoing experiments to determine the optimal number of processes, so it's likely to increase soon. In the future you can force this to 1 by using the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref if you don't want your process manager to resemble Chrome.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#531. Addons. Google has censored YouTube Center because it allows people to download youtube videos. Pentadactyl is also important and not really possible to such a depth in Chrome (though I will admit I haven't had it installed in a while due to constant breakage). Tab groups is another that is unlikely to be available in WebExtensions, at least for a while. Call it insulting if you will, but it is the reality.
2. Open Source, both in long-term direction and not just code. Recent moves have dampened this though (Hello, Pocket, blocking addons from outside AMO, unsigned extension blocking)
3. I don't trust Google. Once upon a time, this was not the case.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#54Does someone has also issues with heavy-loaded JavaScript pages, e. g. using React or Angular? It's a pain to use/scroll on those sites. The most awful website I know using it is Facebook. It is so damn laggy, even with uBlock and Disconnect enabled. When I start having more than one Facebook tab open (together with WhatsApp Web) I sometimes grow the will to switch to Chrome. I could resist yet because I don't like Google's approach for restrictive extension web store.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#55Tree Style Tabs
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-styl... or https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...
Thanks for the suggestions, and last year I dedicated a six month trial to using those "separate-window" implementations in Chrome, but I'm very sorry to say they remained clumsy.
I group my work into topics by desktop; one browser instance per desktop, with an average total of 200+ tabs across eight windows. Restarting Firefox means sorting eight browser instances, one hotkey to snap them to half-width. Restarting Chrome required sorting sixteen browser windows, then manually aligning each primary window plus its tab window using the mouse. I tried, I really did, but that never became less of a pain.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#56In addition to things already mentioned:
* Doesn't put all extension icons in menu or toolbar, without option to hide them.
* Empty page on new tab.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#57I use it as my "IRC" browser because it supports whatever audio APIs Discord uses for chat. Slack goes on the same browser window because it's similar to Discord.
I use Safari as my main browser, though.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#58I'm trying it out for a while, having mostly used Chrome in recent years. Perhaps oddly it's climate change that has prompted this. Where I live each summer is hotter than the last, and Chrome's persistent high cpu use this year has been making my macbook worryingly hot. Safari is more efficient but lacks many useful extensions.
Firefox is pleasing so far. The laptop is far quieter and cooler. I've found all the extensions I need. I like not being bound to an ad company's product. The one thing I do miss is good support for keyboard shortcuts.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#59I think the argument misses the point. Most of the people who are using Firefox without extensions are doing so because someone who likes the freedom of the browser -- including the ability to run all current extensions -- suggested it. >> In fact it's insulting to all those contributors who work so hard on Firefox to say that extensions are the only thing keeping them from switching to Chrome. The ability to run ext…
> why are they stopping with that mentality?
Because, in practice, officially giving unfettered access to Firefox's internals to third-party developers makes changing anything in the Firefox codebase a potential quagmire. It's taken five or six years for electrolysis to begin seeing the light of day, and that's because such a drastic rearchitecture of the browser ended up breaking basically every popular addon in the wild. In the meantime, the inability to evolve the browser has hampered its ability to compete with Chrome, whose deliberately-specified addons API leaves it with no such baggage. Not to mention that the greater scope of Firefox addons has more severe implications for user security, which means that Mozilla has to spend resources to further vet every addon on AMO, which leads to even more complaints at the sluggishness of the apparent bureaucracy.
Addons were absolutely a great way to differentiate Firefox from IE back in the day, but in the context of modern web browsing having such a free-for-all addons interface is a lose-lose proposition. It's absolutely a shame, but the market of browser users has been inexorably making this decision for years now.
Re: Why do you use Firefox?
#60No 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 h…
> Chrome developers are crap developers and they hide behind processes because they don't have the chops to do threads.
This might undermine the rest of your argument. Chrome developers are pretty damn sharp, and they use processes so they can add features the fastest while maintaining the best security profile (and record).
But I agree with your overall point. I'm saddened by the need for the browser to suck up more and more of my computer's resources - more gigabytes of ram, more cores - in order to enable web developers to develop ever-flashier applications faster. The balance has swung way too far, web applications (and even static content sites) need to be less flashy, and spend more time on reasonably sane implementations and libraries.
I'm also sad that Firefox is pressured into just doing what Chrome does. But I can understand, they don't see an alternative, they have to "keep up" with websites and user bases that can't be trusted.