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It’s time to give Firefox a fresh chance

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

#21

Post by orbital-decay »

zeta0134 wrote: post #9

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:con…

Side note to anyone who might like Pocket but don't want to depend on a third-party service (even from Mozilla themselves): try Wallabag. It's a bit lacking in typesetting options, but overall it's a neat self-hosted alternative.

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

#22

Post by kylek »

8xde0wcNwpslOw wrote: post #3

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.)

I really wish https://areweslimyet.com/ was still updated (and more comprehensive, ala https://arewefastyet.com/).

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

#23

Post by txcwpalpha »

mitchty wrote: post #19

Question on those using firefox as a daily driver on OS X. Comparisons batterywise to safari how much less battery life do you get in general with firefox now? That is my #1 reason for sticking to safari for now. That and I need to find out what extensions I need again after the switch to the new extension model.

Both Chrome and Firefox seem to use slightly more battery than Safari on my 2016 MBP. When I say slightly more, I mean that according to Activity Monitor, they both have ~3x more "energy impact", however in practice I haven't noticed a difference in my battery life.

The major difference with Firefox is that on some websites (namely Google Maps, Youtube, Twitch, sometimes Gmail), Firefox spikes my CPU usage/temperature/energy usage to absurd levels (I'm talking 90+ degrees celsius), so much so that I find Firefox unusable because I don't enjoy having a brick of near-molten aluminum in my lap whenever I watch a Youtube video. Chrome and Safari don't seem to have this problem.

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

#24

Post by f4rker »

this is what I see every time I try to switch to FF on my daily driver

- increased hard drive thrashing

- using more memory for less tabs and less addons

I can use chrome all day, open hundreds of tabs, with 6 addons and the system is stable. But after 5min FF is using just as much ram and slowing down my system.

I will use FF more when it can compete with Chrome. Not because some stupid article told me it's time to give it a chance again.

People want you to switch to FF because they are in love with it. I'll love it when the performance can at least match Chrome.

ALSO - the FF addon process takes weeks for approval, which is pathetic. Chrome addons approved in 1 hr.

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

#25

Post by gnicholas »

zeta0134 wrote: post #9

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:con…

I know there was some controversy when Firefox integrated (and then acquired) Pocket, but I don't quite understand why people were so upset. My understanding (from having talked with folks at Mozilla) is that the suggested stories are personalized on the client side—so any info used to customize the stories for you isn't flowing back to Mozilla. Instead, they deliver a bunch of stories to the client, then the client sorts out which ones will be recommended. From a privacy perspective, this seems like a good way to do things. And I personally find the suggested stories to be interesting sometimes, and never creepy/inappropriate.

Regardless, it's good to know this can be turned off.

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

#26

Post by mmsimanga »

Juan_Largearm wrote: post #13

I never left FF. It's been a great browser for me and I've never been tempted to leave. Recently though since the big update that rendered half the add-ons I came to rely on useless - I'm in limbo with no alternatives to them or half-hearted promises that the dev will get round to porting them "sometime". Chrome has a lot of them as well as alternatives available and for me this is where I do consider jumping ship. I…

Can you list some of the addons? I too have been using Firefox since it was called Firebird and had a whole host of addons. Interestingly I just continued using Firefox and now don't miss them much. Addons I used to use include FireFTP, FireSSH and the SQLite addon. I now just use other applications. I am guessing the Vim addon is one the ones you need?

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

#27

Post by ferongr »

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.

Firefox on Android last time I tried it had completely fucked up scrolling physics, the scroll had too much inertia on acceleration and fast flings did not result in the expected scroll speed. Also, as a left handed person I just couldn't use the tab switcher as there were no gestures like Chrome.

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

#28

Post by klez »

torstenvl wrote: post #11
zeta0134 wrote: post #9

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:con…

"the work on Quantum cannot be understated" I agree 100%, which is why I am not switching back.

Why? What's wrong with Quantum?

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

#30

Post by dizzystar »

mmsimanga wrote: post #20

I have been using Firefox since it was called Firebird. Off late one of the reasons, adoption isn't climbing is because Firefox is not included as one of the supported let alone allowed pieces of software in corporate companies. At my last company, security guys went as far as to classify Firefox a risk. They instructed Desktop Support to remotely uninstall Firefox off users machines. Most people I support would rath…

Why did your security classify Firefox as a risk?
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