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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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171–180 of 713 posts

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#171
I can't remember the last time I thought about how "fast" a browser is except for edge cases like complex WebGL stuff.

I don't think focusing on speed will plug the gap of users leaving for other browsers except for the minority of us on HN. I can't remember the last time a non-technical person I know complained about browser speed beyond a website itself being slow.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#172
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

I still trust Chrome's sandbox - I have less understanding of where Firefox does sandboxing, how it works across platforms, etc. Whereas I have a solid understanding of how Chrome uses seccomp on Linux. While pieces of Firefox are moving to Rust the majority of attack surface is still in C++, so I want a strong sandbox if I'm going to run that browser.

> I have less understanding of where Firefox does sandboxing, how it works across platforms, etc. Whereas I have a solid understanding of how Chrome uses seccomp on Linux.

It's described in detail here:

* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox

* http://www.morbo.org/2017/11/linux-sandboxing-improvements-i...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#173
post #132

Firefox 56 had some kind of performance regression[1], but FF Quantum is a joy to use. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74irm5/is_ff_super...

Yes, for my girlfriend, during some last few months Firefox is much slower than before: she uses it mostly for Facebook and Youtube, she doesn't have any extensions installed by herself (not counting the stuff that is in Firefox because Firefox marketing initiatives, like Pocket) and no adbockers, but Firefox uses so much CPU that it gets completely unusable. And she is not any extreme Facebook user: she has less tha…

Did any of you try FF 57? I also used a lot of extensions, but basically all the ones that mattered to me work again. (For tree style tabs I have to add a bit of CSS in a file to make it not awkward, though)

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#174
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is about more than market share. A state of the art free non for profit browser makes the market much more competitive and better for the consumer. They are there to keep chrome/ other browsers honest. If chrome / google does something too corporate you don't like, there's an alternative.

That is all so very true. But it is also utterly irrelevant if market share drops too much. That will unavoidably lead to incompatibilities which will without doubt ensure that only die hard enthusiasts will use it. Which means it won't be an alternative anymore and it will die.

Very fair point. This is why Firefox 57 is so great IMO, i started using firefox again and now I don't think I'll leave it again soon. I think i'm not alone.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#175
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

Chrome Dev Tools. Firefox’s dev tools simply aren’t as good. There are also many features in Chrome that I’ve come to appreciate, such as right clicking a tab and selecting “duplicate”, which opens a copy of the tab and retains the browser history of the original one.

[deleted]

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#177
I tried Firefox 57 hoping to like it, and I found it's still too alien feeling on the Mac. The scroll bar looks, behaves, and animates differently. Text selection looks and behaves differently. Even the cursor blinks differently. It feels out-of-place.

I wish there were a community effort to build a true native Firefox version, instead of trying to recreate standard Mac behaviors.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#178
post #16

I switched from Chrome to Firefox 57 beta and couldn't be happier. Only issue so far was the ugly black title bar on the Mac, but switching to the integrated 'Light' theme fixed that. Too bad 'Light' isn't the default on macOS. Also note their updated Firefox on iOS. It looks and works just fine now and comes with Firefox Sync which gives you access to your tabs, bookmarks and history.

>ugly black title bar

One of the best thins in the new FF to me though (also macos). I still hope apple will to something to their gray ui. I'd love to have dark theme for the ui, not only for menubar and dock.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#179
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many? I typically have 2 windows with ~30-50 tabs opened in each of them. No problem at all, never was.

I typically have hundreds, sometimes low thousands of tabs opened in Firefox on 8GB RAM and it works well, while ~30-50 is an upper limit of what Chrome can do without bringing the whole system to swapping hell. Plus, Chrome's tab UI makes more tabs completely unusable, while vanilla Firefox works well and can also offer massive improvements like vertical tabs.

> I typically have hundreds, sometimes low thousands of tabs

They should probably ditch all in-memory stuff, and just use the drive, so they can support those cases when you really want to have a "low millions of tabs open."

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