Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Firefox Got Fast Again

hacks.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 713 posts

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#231

Post by acqq »

freeone3000 wrote: post #222
remedan wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has supported multiple profiles for ages. Just run it with -P. It allows you to have separate history, extensions, bookmarks, everything. The new panel containers are also handy. They allow you to have shared history and bookmarks but separate cookies and sessions. You can be logged into the same site on different accounts in two tabs in the same window.

There's no easy way of switching between them, starting a new firefox instance requires running from a command interpreter with -P specified, even the selection window isn't great. The containers feature is the alternative you want to propose here.

You can make OS links (e.g. different shortcuts on the desktop to different profiles) to start with different -p [profilename] then starting different profile is just a click away. I do it all the time using such configurations.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Shortcut_to_a_specific_profile

Also don't forget to add -no-remote option to each of the links to enable starting such browsers in parallel. Sadly it's not mentioned behind the URL above.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#232

Post by jorvi »

nerdwaller wrote: post #141
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…

I've been on Firefox since I can remember it being out, but the latest versions, 56+, have me using it only intermittently due to battery drain issues on Mac[0] :(. I am really hoping they get this fixed shortly. [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

Honestly, if you are on macOS, just use Safari. Most extension you want/need are there (or the are suitable replacements. cVim and sVim are pretty close if you don't dive to deep, for example). Adblocking is actually faster than on any other browser because the blockers use the same Content Blocking API as on iOS Safari. And then the battery life... you easily get 2-4h more just by using Safari.

Which brings me to my other point (which I always keep hammering on in browser threads): why don't 3rd-party browser focus more on battery? If you're on Windows, Edge is king in battery use. On macOS, its Safari. On Linux, none (but then Linux doesn't have good power management in general). We live in a mobile-first world these days, why not focus browser development there?

Edit: I'm not dissing the Firefox or Chrome team their efforts, but almost all the news articles or blogs I see speak about Chrome or Firefox getting faster. And they do, by significant jumps. But when there are battery improvements, they are usually pretty middling (say 10-20m more battery life). So all I'm saying: why not flip the focus?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#233

Post by nindalf »

DiThi wrote: post #161
enraged_camel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried the dev tools in FF 57? As a FF user with Chrome-as-debugger for 3-4 years, I'm honestly impressed. FF 57 also has "duplicate tab" with duplicate history.

Thanks for pointing out "duplicate tab". I loved that feature and really missed it on Firefox.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#234

Post by zeveb »

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?

I use separate Firefox profiles. Try 'firefox --ProfileManager' to create one.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#235

Post by catamorphismic »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #144

I just installed Firefox 57 (thanks jacek for the link) and the first things I noticed are: - The cross to close a tab and the one to create a tab are aligned in a weird way. - Opening a tab is laggy (I'm on a MBP with an Intel Iris chip and 16GB of RAM). - The scrolling still does not feel native (I'm on macOS High Sierra). I'm very impressed by the work that has been done for this release as a dev but this does not…

That's weird, Firefox feels much snappier than Chrome to me. It also uses significantly less memory.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#236

Post by iwascurious »

catamorphismic wrote: post #228
tgb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that it saves it enough that I often perform 'dumb' googles in an incognito window just so it'll never suggest "how do I parallel park" again. But how is this unexpected behavior? It also saves every URL you visit - in your browser history. And those URLs encode the search terms. If you want it to not save what you do, then you use incognito mode.

How is it not unexpected that a piece of software uploads and saves everything you search for on a remote corporate server? When did this become so commonplace that users don't even blink an eye to it? And more importantly, why would anyone find this acceptable?

That's what the feature says it does! When you create a new Chrome profile and it asks you to sign it, it says "Sign in to Chrome with your Google Account to get your bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings on all your devices." That's a valuable feature to many people including myself.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#237

Post by zeveb »

colanderman wrote: post #108
mtgx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's pretty easy to accidentally enable uploading all your cleartext passwords to Google's cloud service too (the dialog to do so is a dark pattern). I similarly was furious when I discovered that. Firefox is now my go-to, and what I recommend to friends and family.

Do note that if you enable Firefox's sync functionality, all of your passwords will be encrypted with a function of your Mozilla Account password, and that Mozilla can target your browser instance with JavaScript to steal your account password at will (their protocol specifies that they never see your plaintext password, but they serve JavaScript to hash the password — which means they could serve JavaScript to send the password anywhere they like).

Firefox is more secure than Chrome, but it's not very secure. The sad thing is that it used to be more secure and Mozilla deliberately weakened their security.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#238

Post by mgbmtl »

sverige wrote: post #218
acqq wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, Firefox is slower for both me and my girlfriend, I am a kind of "typical non-typical" and she "typical typical" user, and it got annoyingly slower for both. And now I've just lost all the extensions too, including NoScript and the dictionary(?!?)! See my other post here for details.

I've been using firefox since forever too. (Actually, since Mozilla 1.0 (aka Nutscrape) in 1993 or thereabouts.) I'm at that point where I'm about to dump it again, as I have periodically in the past. They keep making it more and more like Chrome. If I wanted to use Chrome, I would. It's gotten to bloat maximum. It's slow as hell. It's less flexible and less easy to personalize. They have broken some of my favorite a…

I was feeling the same, but FF57 really is much better.

It does break some extensions, but many have converted. Which are you having trouble with? The main one I'm missing is "Disable Ctrl+Q".

My notes: https://www.bidon.ca/fr/random/2017-10-05-webextensions-supp...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#239

Post by wpietri »

Touche wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that is confused by Firefox's "fast again" narrative? I remember that they launched the https://arewefastyet.com/ site a few years ago to fight the idea that FF was slow. It feels like there's a new blog post that essentially says the same thing "we're fast now" every couple of months. So I find this all confusing. Am I just remembering incorrectly, or haven't they already declared "we're as fast as…

Performance is a Red Queen problem. [1] People keep expecting more from computers. On the web, pages keep getting bigger and more complicated. Firefox's competition isn't going to stop trying to improve performance, and people's baseline for "fast" will mainly be other things they use. If Mozilla isn't always trying to be faster, they're going to be getting slower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#240

Post by catamorphismic »

iterati wrote: post #136
digi_owl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may even be worse than that. They have effectively thrown out all that made Firefox distinct in any user facing sense to achieve this.

This is sadly true. I switched off Chrome 5+ years ago due to the "vim-like" plugins being much better on FF than Chrome (specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages) and since FF56, vimperator and pentadactly no longer function. There have been months of back-and-forth between some developers and the FF team, but the functionality required for these plugins has never been prioritized and I had to disa…

Search for Tridactyl, which is aiming to reimplement the Vimperator/Pentadactyl feature set in WebExtensions Firefox. It's still in early stages of development but there is already an initial release on AMO with some basic features implemented and with a very familiar feel.
Post reply on HN