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Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

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Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#661

Post by iamwil »

afranchuk wrote: post #609
radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3. I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed muc…

I've seen other people's browsers with about 40 to 50 tabs open. I think the fact you close them is atypical.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#662

Post by Fuxy »

afranchuk wrote: post #609
radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3. I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed muc…

I have used Firefox since forever as well and fell the same way. I have never run into memory issues or slow loading with Firefox while I kept hearing about Chrome constantly using too much memory recently.

As a developer i noticed some minor default CSS bugs with the new Firefox Quantum that didn't used to be there but that's about it.

I also use Chrome in my development cycle so it does seem to have some neat features that Firefox is lacking but I doubt regular users would ever notice that.

It was just never enough to make me switch although I would appreciate Mozilla putting more effort into their developer tools.

P.S. I end up having over 100 tabs open so yeah... although my OS is Linux not Windows so your mileage may vary.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#663

Post by logicallee »

detaro wrote: post #551
logicallee wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, under actual usage (not ctrl-tabbing around to aggressively force-load things) it is 950 MB vs 5.3 GB. (I imagine for a comparable number of tabs?) ------ EDIT in response to your reply: Please do! I agree that logging would be interesting. Do you know, does Firefox defer/discard tabs again if they do fully load but you don't use them for a long time? Or are the only deferred tabs, ones that you never looked at t…

I don't think you can count a freshly started browser that has only loaded 7 tabs (one per window) as "actual usage". I'd guess tabbing around triggered Maybe I should set up logging for this, might be interesting.

Please do! I agree that logging would be interesting.

Do you know, does Firefox defer/discard tabs again if they do fully load but you don't use them for a long time? Or are the only deferred tabs, ones that you never looked at this session?

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#664

Post by modzu »

radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

absolutely this.

one feature directly related to it is support for extensions. why can chrome run extensions on the desktop (ie ad blocker) but not on mobile? the answer should be obvious.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#665

Post by sli »

radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

> ... and believe that Google should not control the web.

I don't have a whole lot to add to this discussion that hasn't already been said except:

I'm the frontend developer at my job, and my coworkers are slowly discovering that I'm not joking when I say that Chrome is the new IE, for reasons pertaining to this. One example that I think made a few of them realize what I mean when I say that was during that short time recently when Chrome Experiments worked in every browser except Chrome, and the reason why that was the case: a (shady, to me) built in whitelist.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#666

Post by Fuxy »

akoncius wrote: post #649
eat_veggies wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allo works on Firefox now, but before, I used to set my user-agent to Chrome's and it'd work.

it's not a definition of working when you need to cheat system in order to get it working.

If the system is cheating you it's only fair you cheat it back... but I get what you mean; most users won't even know to do that or would be interested in doing it.

It's shady for Google to lie to their users especially when they imply its the browsers fault and not just their dev team being lazy gits and not validating that features work on Firefox.

Because that's the only valid excuse I could come up with that would make sense as to why they don't support it beside being shady that is...

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#667

Post by modzu »

aembleton wrote: post #588
modzu wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for ff on android (because it can run extensions) recommend checking out 'night light mode' for night browsing -- it does some things a little nicer like dims images and uses low contrast (full disclosure: i am the author. feedback welcome!) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/night-light-m...

When I go to https://rideways.com/ it inverts the large background image

thanks for the report! a fix is forthcoming (looks like some kind of css preloading is tripping up the plugin)

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#668

Post by Krasnol »

kbart wrote: post #502
Krasnol wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget about those thousands (millions?) of users who suddenly found Chrome installed on their computer because they updated their Virus Scanner or installed some Freeware where it was bundled with Chrome.

Still an upgrade from IE8 the same group would be using. I'm not advocating bundled installs, but installing secure (compared to old IE) browser alongside antivirus software is one of the very few cases where it makes sense.

From my private IT support perspective: I hate it! My "customers" have FF installed and are every time utterly confused missing their favorites on their "Internet Program".

There is so much wrong with this bundling but yes, it's probably still better then IE...

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#669

Post by ploxiln »

Bartweiss wrote: post #645
afranchuk wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3. I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed muc…

This is an interesting take, since it's so difference from my experience. There's definitely some difference in use cases that had a large impact - whether that's device memory, open tabs, or even choice of websites. I didn't switch to Chrome when it first came out, but over the next couple of years I found Firefox frustratingly slow and crash-prone. When I cut over, everything was drastically faster and more reliabl…

It really depends on the websites. Firefox has long been significantly faster than it was in the Firefox-1.x days, when it was the fastest browser. It's always been perfectly snappy and efficient for hackernews, craigslist, 10,000-line colored diffs in the cgit web frontend ... but popular web sites got many times slower. Chrome enabled web developers to do atrociously inefficient things and just not care.

Even today, Travis-CI really struggles in firefox, it's modern pleasing animations are just so atrociously coded. And remember when the Reason (facebook language) website was unveiled, it really killed firefox, because of some strange shadow effect applied to all letters or something ...

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#670

Post by penglish1 »

Firefox is indeed, much faster and less memory intensive than it used to be. I started using it heavily (again) roughly when Quantum came out after giving up on it for years as unusable. (like many, I think - hence the article).

However.

I still find it very crash-prone. Less so over time, since Quantum came out, but still.. very crash-prone.

Perhaps I use it differently from others?

I use different Profiles to separate concerns (and give myself some small modicum of cross-concern privacy - if nothing else auth cookies are reliably separated). At any given time, I have up to 5 separate Profiles running.

With Firefox, each Profile is a fully separate PID (I assume their newer Containers are not), and there are affiliated PIDs for "Firefox CP Web Content" (similar to Google Chrome Helper, I assume).

On any given day when I log into my system in the am, one or more of those Profiles has crashed, all affiliated PIDs are dead and the Crash Reporter is up.

I don't believe anything I'm doing in any of the Firefox Profiles is particularly unusual, or extreme. No social networking, or anything with infinity-scroll. No video streaming (eg: Youtube).

So Mozilla - what gives?

Despite that complaint, I still happily use it because I believe Mozilla is much more interested in my privacy, and much more dedicated to FOSS, and because I mistrust Google. Thanks Mozilla!

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