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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#201

Post by Thorncorona »

e40 wrote: post #193
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

FF just came out with multi account containers about a month ago ->

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#202

Post by fiatjaf »

e40 wrote: post #193
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

Firefox 58 has "persona" tabs. Coloured tabs that keep their own sessions. You can just configure multiple personas and work on them all simultaneously from the same window (or you can use different windows, if you prefer).

It's good even for creating fake accounts, test accounts, testing apps from the perspective of different user sessions etc.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#203

Post by kodablah »

mariusmg wrote: post #5
theduality wrote: post #2

I have been using 57 in beta, and I have to say, I'm impressed. It is a huge improvement. Whether it keeps me off Chrome in the future remains to be seen though!

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 ?

Embeddability. I've mentioned it on this site before, but Chrome's embeddability story (Electron, nw.js, CEF, Qt, etc) affects adoption more significantly than Mozilla prioritizers are giving credit for. Sure it's not an effect of Google itself, but that it exists only on one browser is something Mozilla should actively target. Of course there are a few attempts here and there, e.g. positron, but there needs to be a real effort to make the entire browser easily buildable and embeddable w/ an easy C API (doesn't have to conform to CEF like Servo was/is trying). Provide prebuilt libs and the headers and you will see adoption go up.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#204

Post by DiThi »

acqq wrote: post #188
DiThi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I've just installed 57 for me. The English Dictionary is gone -- now all the words I type here are with wiggly lines, I see "add dictionaries" but I had the darned dictionary already and what's the use trying to add the same? I don't know what to do next. The extensions are all gone, including the NoScript for which the developer claimed that he's adding support for new Firefox -- I checked noscript.net -- I have had…

I was rather asking about performance for your girlfriend.

Regarding addons, I'd say give it time. It's a chicken and egg problem that will be solved with time. I was not expecting to switch until end of the year.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#205

Post by iwascurious »

mtgx wrote: post #87
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

For those who don't know, if you sign in to your Google account in Chrome, Google will automatically save all the searches you've done in the omnibox. I don't remember Google ever warning me specifically that this was happening in the background, and after I checked https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and noticed it was doing that, I was so furious that I deleted all the data Google kept on me there, and paused…

I am so vexed by your complaint that I had to create an account just to ask what you thought signing in to Chrome does. What did you think it was going to do? The fact that it syncs your history to your account is front and center in the description, not buried in some legal document:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277

"When you sign in to Chrome, your info is saved to your Google Account so you can get it whenever you need it."

It is literally the first sentence. I also support some of the various EU privacy initiatives but I don't support them because I think users should be militantly ignorant about what they're doing.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#206

Post by ghostcluster »

e40 wrote: post #193
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies?

It was locking out journalists drafting stories!

How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mountain View.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#207

Post by r3bl »

eliben wrote: post #199

Did it? With FF 56 on Ubuntu lately I have to restart Firefox once in a day or two because its memory usage balloons out of proportions (> 1 GB for 4 open tabs) and it starts getting sluggish. It felt speedier a few months ago

The entire premise of that article is that it applies to v57, which is going to be released tomorrow.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#208

Post by fiatjaf »

Ok. It is indeed great. I've switched to Firefox completely since 57. But it is not as fast as Chrome yet.

There was a page with performance charts comparing it with Chrome from the FF dev team somewhere. Where is it?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#209

Post by dralley »

aapjesverkoper wrote: post #12
heliostatic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Firefox Multi-Account containers are great: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... Multiple profiles within a single window, visually distinguished by tab highlight color.

It looks like this doesn't allow you to separate history, addons, bookmarks, or move your current tab to a container. I am sticking with google for now.

You can use multiple profiles with Firefox, the UX for doing so just isn't as fleshed out as Chromium.

Create a new profile by going to about:profiles, and thereafter when you start Firefox it should present you with an option to pick which profile to use.

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