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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#271

Post by Myrmornis »

taway12340x0 wrote: post #227
e40 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. Don't do that. On one hand you mix work and personal related issues (not recommended) on the other hand it makes it easier to track you (as your accounts can be correlated). As a dev I have my own (personal, work, ...) users/accounts even at home (if I do remote) to separate the stuff - maybe that's paranoid, but for m…

Yes, it's paranoid, but I respect your decision to do it. However the imperative mood used in your first sentence is totally inappropriate. That's exactly what Profiles are for; the vast majority of people are going to want to process personal issues and work issues without signing in as a different user.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#272

Post by whatever_dude »

dogprez wrote: post #100

Somewhat tangentially, I really like the cartoons Lin has made. I’ve found I’ve naturally anthropomorphized code. Often when I start working with someone new they get confused when I start talking about constructs like people. I think it’s given me a different perspective on encapsulation and concurrency than most people. I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with someone that thinks the same way. When I work on code that…

I feel I've always done that because I learned programming through Usborne's books, and her work reminds me of that. Usborne books helped me grok difficult things very fast when I was about 10 years old. For a while, when using variables and arrays, I would always think of robots grabbing things from shelves.

Examples and PDF downloads (!): https://boingboing.net/2016/02/07/usborne-releases-free-pdfs...

I wish those were still around when I was learning about pointers. Would have made things so much easier!

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#273

Post by anirudhan »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #212
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.

Firefox does have some distinct features that are important to me. I want to open links from Gmail or Inbox without being logged in to my Google account. Firefox containers are perfect for that. I also like snoozing tabs and quick tab switching by typing % into the address bar. Some of these things can be done in other browsers using third party extensions, but I am extremely reluctant when it comes to third party ex…

I didn't know we can switch tabs by typing '%' in the address bar. Helpful indeed.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#274

Post by bowlich »

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…

Latest one seems like it has a memory leak on linux. Starts off fast, but I've found that I need to close out all of Firefox about once a day. Not sure if that's the vanilla build, or the multi-account containers extension that's causing the issue.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#275

Post by fauigerzigerk »

callahad wrote: post #128
lvh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, Chrome has better sandboxing support on most platforms (especially Linux), though Chrome's catching up quickly. I'm generally optimistic about Rust code having fewer exploitable defects, although it's a reasonable argument to suggest that the previous C++ parts had a lot more public scrutiny. Also, for me personally: I use a lot of different profiles and using multiple Firefox profiles simultaneously is a mes…

Hey lvh. As imron suggested, I've found containers have largely replaced my need for multiple profiles day-to-day, with the main exception of throwaway profiles, which `firefox --profile $(mktemp -d) --new-instance` handles well enough. I'd love to talk to you more about the ergonomics of containers / profiles for your use case. You know how to reach me. :)

Containers are great, but there needs to be an easier way to open a link in a new container. Right now it's burried in a sub menu of the context menu. Lifting the menu item to the top level of the context menu would be a great improvement. Ideally there should also be a configurable keyboard shortcut.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#276

Post by eli »

Thorncorona wrote: post #201
e40 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And prior to that you could run multiple Firefox instances with different profiles. Not super hard.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#277

Post by chipotle_coyote »

jorvi wrote: post #232
nerdwaller wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It looks like people are downvoting this. Perhaps it's because of the tone of the first sentence; if we rephrase it to "If you're on macOS, why not just use Safari?" I think it's a reasonable question.

There are reasonable answers -- Safari's extensions aren't quite as capable as the other two, so it's possible you're relying on an extension that Safari doesn't have and can never duplicate, and of course if you need to sync bookmarks and other browser data across OS platforms, Safari falls down in the way all iCloud-backed apps do. But Safari does focus a lot on battery conservation, and if you're on a laptop that can make a big difference. And, while I'm sure there are benchmarks out there to quibble over, in practice Safari seems to be just as fast and just as compliant as Chrome and Firefox are.

I've been using Safari as my main web browser for years without feeling like I'm missing out on either performance or killer features. I keep copies of Firefox and Chrome around and keep them up to date, mostly for web site testing purposes; neither of them have added features compelling enough to make me want to switch back. I doubt Firefox 57 is likely to change that equation, although I'm happy to hear that they've got their groove back, as it were.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#278

Post by deong »

orbat wrote: post #258
ghostcluster wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mount…

People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we…

> If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it?

Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools.

Corporate censorship is entirely under your control. You can always stop the censorship by simply not saying it using that corporation's tools. Corporations can control how you say something, but not what you say. Governments can control the act of saying it. One is far worse than the other.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#279

Post by frik »

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…

Firefox 56 is actually pretty good. It's now fast again. I am using a fresh new profile.

Please let me increase "content process count" higher than 7. Chrome opens hundreds of child-processes (no problem at all on my PC).

And I am still keeping an older Firefox 48 around, as it's the last version that runs Firebug and other good but now unsupported addons. Firebug had this "DOM" panel which showed the non-default DOM attributes in a different color and showed them as first few entries, and the rest below. The DevTools in new Firefox has a less useful DOM panel (it shows all attributes not grouped or colored differently, makes the DOM panel useless and chaotic) - please improve the DOM panel to be feature-equalent to the old Firebug DOM panel!!

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#280

Post by callahad »

Myrmornis wrote: post #266
fiatjaf wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can I check I understand: Firefox has - Profiles - Containers - Persona tabs ?

Just two things: Profiles and Multi-Account Containers. The original poster was referring to Containers when saying "persona tabs."
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