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I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

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Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#221

Post by sparrc »

binarymax wrote: post #44

I don’t intend to diminish the article itself, since yes ditching chrome and Google is a win for personal privacy. But I can’t ignore the irony of this article loading dozens of trackers. Like, is the cognitive dissonance that bad in web publishing? Do the teams writing the content not know about the way the publisher presents the data? Is this just pure hypocrisy? I’m at a loss.

It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an article about privacy and web tracking. The business people want ads on the website to keep the lights on.

And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#222

Post by Tagbert »

jlokier wrote: post #206
invalidname wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. I've been on Mac for more than a decade so no idea. Notice that this only became a thing with Quantum so if you used an older version of FF it wouldn't apply.

I'm with the GP on this: FF is unstable with lots of tabs. It's a big memory hog, and it's been like this for about 2 years in my experience so far. I'm using a Mac with 16GB RAM, and it's not enough for Firefox any more (something changed, it used to use less memory). Using current FF (103.0b9). Lot of tabs, but auto tab-unloading so there shouldn't be a large number active. Reported memory use (in Activity Monitor)…

Oddly, I also use FF on a 16GB Mac and experience none of those slowdowns that you mention. On my work machine, FF typically has around 100 tabs grouped into 4-6 tab groups by project and it is solid.

I do find that some websites end up using 1GB+ of memory if you leave them running for an extended period of time (looking at you MacRumors forums) but that happens on Safari and Chrome, too. HN is usually the safest one that uses the least memory. Sites with lots of ads load all kinds of crap and can use surprising amounts of memory.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#223

Post by jlokier »

invalidname wrote: post #211
jlokier wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with the GP on this: FF is unstable with lots of tabs. It's a big memory hog, and it's been like this for about 2 years in my experience so far. I'm using a Mac with 16GB RAM, and it's not enough for Firefox any more (something changed, it used to use less memory). Using current FF (103.0b9). Lot of tabs, but auto tab-unloading so there shouldn't be a large number active. Reported memory use (in Activity Monitor)…

I think this is due to specific sites. I try to avoid Google Docs and have a separate instance of Chrome only for that. I updated to the M1 Max with 64gb so even if FF slowed down at some point I wouldn't know at this point. But it was OK on my previous air which was pretty weak.

"about:performance" does not show any pages or add-ons being memory hogs. The memory use per page that it shows is surprisingly small, and the total comes to And I see the real memory usage grown, eventually to crashing size, even when I'm just reading around HN, clicking many article headings and comments but remaining within the HN text-only site.

I agree it's probably made worse caused by specific sites, but I haven't been able to figure out which ones, or perhaps it's wide range of them, which defeats browsing in general. However, I now avoid Telegram Web, because that does consistently crash Firefox for me eventually (I've seen reported memory use grow to 67GB when TW was open, about three times).

Whatever it is, it doesn't look like site JavaScript holding data in large JavaScript objects or DOM trees, because minimizing memory use with "about:memory" reduces the size to workable levels without any other observable effect on open pages.

So I'm inclined to think of the Firefox as having a severe reclaimable-but-not-reclaimed memory leak or cache problem of some kind, that is outside the world of JavaScript data.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#224

Post by bombcar »

sparrc wrote: post #221
binarymax wrote: post #44

I don’t intend to diminish the article itself, since yes ditching chrome and Google is a win for personal privacy. But I can’t ignore the irony of this article loading dozens of trackers. Like, is the cognitive dissonance that bad in web publishing? Do the teams writing the content not know about the way the publisher presents the data? Is this just pure hypocrisy? I’m at a loss.

It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an article about privacy and web tracking. The business people want ads on the website to keep the lights on. And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?

Sometimes the only moral act is to die.

"Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil."

At some point a company may have to make a decision that results in their death if they want to continue to act morally.

But much, much more often they simply modify their morals slightly and continue on. We humans are great at that.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#225

Post by GekkePrutser »

thegabez wrote: post #205
GekkePrutser wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every feature removed by Google will have to be maintained by the open source community instead. That's going to be a workload that I'm not sure who is going to pick up. After all Chromium right now is maintained by Google. There's some forks like degoogled chromium but they are mainly focused on removing features, not rebuilding ones that have been deprecated. Brave is an option but I don't really like where they're…

The crypto aspect is opt-in

I know but it's a core integrated part of the product.

If you don't care about that, firefox with uBO is really much better IMO.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#227

Post by js8 »

alex_sf wrote: post #216
wnevets wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds of "You say you want to improve society and yet you live in one, how interesting"

I still don't understand why that's a bad argument. In context, it's generally used to oppose hard leftist ideas (Marxism, etc). It's rarely a criticism leveled at reasonable reform or change; more when it nears outright revolution. In that case, it's not an unreasonable criticism.

It's a bad argument, because validity of a critique is not predicated on critic's life choice. It's like arguing that you cannot critique a movie because you have never made one.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#228

Post by alex_sf »

lolinder wrote: post #198
chiefalchemist wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black and white? Or is the publisher + author being a hypocrite? Feels like the latter. "Do as I say, not as I do" is rarely forgivable. One or two lingering trackers? Maybe. But that's not the case here.

OP's point is that we're all hypocrites to some degree. Expecting someone to be doing everything right before they can comment on how we can all improve leaves us waiting for deity to resolve our problems.

I don't think it's ever fair to expect someone to do everything right, but if you want to pontificate on a specific issue, you should act in congruence with that.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#229

Post by lolinder »

bombcar wrote: post #224
sparrc wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an article about privacy and web tracking. The business people want ads on the website to keep the lights on. And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?

Sometimes the only moral act is to die. "Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil." At some point a company may have to make a decision that results in their death if they want to continue to act moral…

What good would dying do in this case? There will be no shortage of other publications that will fill in the gap and happily embrace invasive advertising. If an organization keeps the lights on with ad revenue and teaches its readers to protect themselves from trackers, they've done more good than if they never existed at all.

Re: I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome

#230

Post by agumonkey »

lordnacho wrote: post #95
dmytrish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree Style Tabs solved the tab grouping problem for me. I like to put it on the right and I'm looking for a way to have the tab bar hidden. Tab search exists: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-open-tabs-firefo... , also you type % into the address bar to start searching over tabs. Not sure if this covers your needs, though.

TST is literally the killer feature for FF. It's actually the only reason I went to FF, it was getting out of hand to have all my tabs across the top, and it makes little sense with modern screens being so wide that giving up a little horizontal space to get legible titles is absolutely worth it. Someone in Chrome/Edge/Safari must be thinking about doing this, I don't know why it hasn't been cloned. Can't be too hard…

I never got to leverage TST, something about the UX bothers me. I have better flow with Tab Stash. Also TST suffers with my hoarding habits and the subtree features have bare naked UI.
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