It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#1

Post by Tomte » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance
theverge.com

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#2

Post by sofaofthedamned » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

I have done - and it's awesome on Windows / Fedora. But it's so janky and slow on Android, this is on a Pixel 2 XL. What is so wrong with the Android version?

For the record i've tried to move across for ad-blocking which Chrome doesn't provide, and I do need the account sync. Firefox is just as janky without any plugins on Android.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#3

Post by 8xde0wcNwpslOw » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

It's odd to see Firefox being called a memory hog just a few years back. As far as I can tell, Chrome has used more memory pretty much always if you have multiple tabs open.

(Firefox may have been slower on slow hardware, but that has never been an issue for me.)

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#4

Post by shmerl » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

> If a friend were to ask me what the best web browser is, I’d answer “Chrome” in a heartbeat

It was always Firefox for me.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#5

Post by bluejekyll » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

I’ve been using Firefox as my primary browser now for approx. the last six months. I used to flip-flop between safari and chrome (chrome needed generally for work and Linux).

I’ve gernerally been extremely happy with it. The battery life is not as good as Safari, but it feels faster. I do run into issues with some extensions, specifically google Meet (I think that is being fixed?).

The biggest annoyance, and I didn’t look too deeply at how to fix this, is custom cert mgmt. The system certs appear not to be used (I think?) and for custom CAs, they must be associated both in the browser and on the OS (macOS and Ubuntu). I’ve also noticed some sites cause, or did cause, very large CPU usage, Travis-CI was one.

Anyway, I’m generally very happy, and am glad that I now have a primary browser experience that I enjoy across all platforms. (If Apple had a safari version on Linux, this might have been a bigger question, I think they would do well to release one)

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#6

Post by homero » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

It was my primary browser until the new version killed all my critical extensions

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#7

Post by Vinnl » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #2

I have done - and it's awesome on Windows / Fedora. But it's so janky and slow on Android, this is on a Pixel 2 XL. What is so wrong with the Android version? For the record i've tried to move across for ad-blocking which Chrome doesn't provide, and I do need the account sync. Firefox is just as janky without any plugins on Android.

On Android it's supposed to still be getting better, although it's taking quite a while now and I feel it's not the main focus (apparently it's hard to fix the codebase, so IIUC they're getting there through a detour by first focusing on the embeddability of Gecko - which will take a while). That said, Nightly is already somewhat better, so I've been using that to relative satisfaction for a while now. You might want to give that a try.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#8

Post by thegreatpeter » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

Firefox Quantum is extremely fast and feels much faster than Chrome / Safari.

I encourage everyone to try it for a full 5 days M-F and see if you feel the same way!

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#9

Post by zeta0134 » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

I switched to Firefox as my primary browser a couple of months ago, and have been happy enough that I haven't looked back. It is significantly more smooth and performant than it was; the work on Quantum cannot be understated, and the minor fiasco with their extensions ecosystem, though painful, I feel was the right move. With that said, a few anecdotes keep jumping out at me:

- Pocket integration. Dive into about:config, turn it off, lather rinse repeat on every device and every fresh OS install. I have about a dozen.

- The default theme has two large "spacer" elements that shrink the address bar towards the center. These might not bother anyone else, but they drove me nuts; fortunately they can be removed with the customization menu.

- Bookmarks sync well (yay!) but don't always retain the same ordering on each device, which gets a bit confusing. I can work around this easily enough, but it's not quite as smooth as the same feature on Chrome.

- JavaScript performance is not as fast as Chrome. This is normally a non-issue, but occasionally I'll run into someone's ShowHN demo here and find that while it technically works, the performance is sometimes quite slow. Ditto for anything using WebGL. Again, mostly a non-issue, but I do find myself firing up Chrome to run the odd app.

Most of these issues are relatively minor, and fortunately Firefox still has a fantastically intelligent community, so any time I ran into an issue the solution was a quick search away. I think the value add in feeling like I'm in more control of my browser is well worth it, and I hope Mozilla continues moving in this direction. More competition is good!

Re: It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

#10

Post by Proven » Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

I don’t think so.

It’s time to try spinoffs/mods of major browsers, especially those with enhanced privacy. I use two of them and I’m very happy with my approach. I uninstalled FF which came with the OS, use Chrome with some picky work apps, one privacy-enhanced mod for personal browsing and another for work with non-picky work apps.