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Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

wired.com

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Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#181

Post by remir »

menacingly wrote: post #170

I bet it was 2009 since I last used firefox, other than testing for reported bugs in it. I've been using it exclusively since the Quantum launch, and I really enjoy it. I liked the idea of having real browser diversity before, but it wasn't practical for me. Now it's practical and awesome.

Same for me. I tried to switch back to Firefox a couple of times in the past and couldn't do it. Performance wasn't there and the UI would often hang without response.

But Quantum changed everything. I've been using Nightly since this summer and it's wonderful. I now use it as my default browser.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#182

Post by criddell »

agumonkey wrote: post #37

Used Nightly for a few weeks before and after Quantum. Definitely a huge improvement. The web response showed it. But I went back to chrome for the last few days. For 2 windows / 20 tabs it's definitely faster in just enough places to make a difference.

I really like Quantum's UI, but for some things (esp Google Inbox) it's significantly slower than Chrome.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#183

Post by mdip »

On my end, I never actually stopped using Firefox after Chrome came out. I had Chrome installed and used it mostly for testing and validation of web code, but my day-to-day was Firefox. I had my extensions configured and setup in it and my large collection of bookmarks was there (I guess I was just too lazy to import them into Chrome). I think the main reason I stuck with Firefox was because I used Android and the Firefox browser on Android supported my extensions -- the most important being uBlock Origin, so the browsing experience was better even though the overall performance wasn't great -- and since my bookmarks were synced, it just worked out better for me that way.

I ran Developer edition, so I received the updated that killed most of my extensions earlier than most and I realized that the main reason I used Firefox was because of my collection of extensions -- many of which now didn't work. So I abandoned Firefox on all but mobile earlier this year and switched to Vivaldi (chromium based)[0].

Now that my most important extensions are available (though still haven't found uBlock Protector), I've started using Quantum again. I'm really enjoying the fact that HTML5/Flask autoplay can be disabled in "about:config" (and that it works, unlike the myriad of extensions I installed for Vivaldi claiming to do the same but which mostly broke things like gifv playback and random non-YouTube video sites that would still autoplay or would simply refuse to play). Firefox Quantum is faster and I'm back to being a (mostly) happy Firefox user, again. Last night I removed the icons for Opera and Vivaldi from my task bar to keep me from accidentally starting them due to muscle memory (and therefore adding bookmarks in a place where I will lose them).

[0] No, I don't have a thing against Google, I just preferred the high-degree of customization that Firefox/Vivaldi gave me over Chrome. I don't like Chrome's opinionated configuration panel -- I'm a developer and I like knobs to turn. Though Vivaldi lacked the conveniences of syncing things between my various machine so I ended up on Opera rather regularly.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#184

Post by staticassertion »

cat199 wrote: post #173
DiThi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me wonder where things went wrong, as I recall the Firefox of ~2005 being snappier than the one of ~2015. If you visit any page made in 2005 with any recent browser it will be unbelievably fast. Pages became more bloated in the last decade because they could.

this + stuck js + single threading.. chrome's day-one multiprocess support was really the big shift since it allowed js bloat to not kill your session, which in turn allowed more js bloat to exist, which in turn made ff slower..

Yeah, when you think about Chrome's being selling points - a browser that won't crash just because one tab does, sandboxing, and responsiveness - it's literally all just from their multiproc architecture. It bought them so much to have that from the state.

But, like Firefox, they now have a big codebase to maintain and it's not so easy to get massive perf improvements because changing up architecture is painful.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#186

Post by agumonkey »

criddell wrote: post #182
agumonkey wrote: post #37

Used Nightly for a few weeks before and after Quantum. Definitely a huge improvement. The web response showed it. But I went back to chrome for the last few days. For 2 windows / 20 tabs it's definitely faster in just enough places to make a difference.

I really like Quantum's UI, but for some things (esp Google Inbox) it's significantly slower than Chrome.

I wasn't even asking for fancy + perf. Even average website would take a second to show their tab.

I don't have a recent machine, but chrome (even stable) has no issue at all flying with my x200.

I wonder how firefox perf will evolve with more and more rewrites (rust modules etc)

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#187

Post by subbz »

Firefox is a great browser, but what bothers me:

- Design: On Windows it integrates better but on MacOS the header is just somehow ugly. Chrome just feels more stable in this point. Also the scrolling to top when Chrome goes over the 0px line and bounces back - that's just a nicer behaviour.

- Clearing history and cookies: I yet didn't manage to find a fast solution to do this in Firefox.

Please, dear Firefox team, if you read this, improve it and you got me back!

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#188

Post by coldtea »

spystath wrote: post #18
zerocrates wrote: post #2

> I can't use the Conde Nast CMS in anything other than Chrome, so I can't switch completely. Highlight of the article tucked in at the end there.

You'd think that a technology-oriented magazine like wired would at least try to aim for cross-browser compatibility in their infrastructure. But why bother, make your CMS Chrome-only a policy and free yourself of extra testing. And it's not only wired. I've come across a lot of internal sites and intranets that are poorly tested on anything but Chrome. I know, it's not exactly the same thing as the old IE/ActiveX bu…

>You'd think that a technology-oriented magazine like wired would at least try to aim for cross-browser compatibility in their infrastructure. But why bother, make your CMS Chrome-only a policy and free yourself of extra testing.

Makes total sense as an engineering tradeoff if you're not in the business of saving the web but publishing a magazine.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#189

Post by the8472 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #168
eitland wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. We've been pushing this since IE6 ruled. :-) Cross browser compability should be easier than ever so it should just be a matter of being a professional developer.

There are a different and arguably smaller set of warts in 2017 compared to 1999 but that doesn't mean that it's easy to reproduce the exact layout, pixel for pixel, across Firefox, Edge, Opera, UC Browser, Safari, Chrome and other browsers in use.

There is a difference between "it works" and pixel-identical results. Those are probably impossible due to font rendering differences anyway.

Re: Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017

#190

Post by lol768 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #164
Drdrdrq wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but those 12% (didn't check the numbers, I take your word for it) are much more sensitive about such discrimination. That's IE all over again...

I'd be more sympathetic if there weren't examples of Mozilla explicitly fighting against features supported by the other vendors. The classic example is Web SQL, an immensely useful API that Mozilla fought hard against and successfully lobbied to kill off. Chrome and Safari still support it. So for a wide swath of problems, you can either use WebSQL and drop FF support or hack around with a slurry of third party libr…

And on the flip-side, we have MathML which the Chromium team decided to drop, fighting against an incredibly useful and performant (in comparison to other Javascript-based implementations) feature supported by Firefox and Safari which made mathematics a first-class citizen on the web.
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