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Is Firefox Doomed?

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Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#121

Post by mattmanser »

notatoad wrote: post #95
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not addressing his key point, I'm recommending Chrome to anyone I speak to, many other developers I know are too. Firefox is slow, sluggish to use and confusing compared to Chrome. The edge it had over IE was that it was a better user experience. It's not compared to Chrome anymore. Even IE is better than FF apart from the weird crash like blank screen glitch when opening a new tab that IE has.

As long as we are doing anecdotal evidence here, I work in an office with two other developers. All three of us use and recommend firefox (and did before we started working together) but develop for chrome first because of the dev tools.

You should really get out and meet more then ;) It does wonders for your career.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#122

Post by limi »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #111
notatoad wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cost of frequent updates is breaking add ons that aren't actively maintained, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. The majority of the slowness criticisms that ff receives seem to be caused by add ons.

It's not unreasonable to expect an add-on to work for more than six weeks, especially when there hasn't actually been any real, significant change in the base software. I'd bet the (unpaid) add-on authors are getting pretty tired of this as well -- they're the ones who have to deal with the emails from unhappy users.

It's currently fixed in the Nightly and Aurora channels, and will make it to mainstream Firefox very soon: http://theunfocused.net/2011/11/19/solving-firefoxs-add-on-c...

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#123

Post by limi »

saint-loup wrote: post #86
gkoberger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it. Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies. Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power us…

>>> Try vacuuming your Firefox database [1], syncing everything [2] and/or create a new profile [3] with only the extensions you actually use. That's part of the problem. I'm a huge fan of Firefox, but I shouldn't have to manage these things in order to keep my browser fluid after six months of regular use.

You generally don't have to. Back in the day of 3.6, sure — but not these days. We automatically vacuum your DB and maintain it for you.

However, there are still extensions that cause issues, and the odd bug that is an actual issue with how we do things.

The reason he recommends creating a new profile and syncing stuff over is because it's sometimes easier than to figure out what's broken on a particular system that has a pre-Firefox 4 profile.

Here's a step-by-step instruction on how to do it — if your Firefox is slow, this will most likely fix it: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#124

Post by dextorious »

throwaway64 wrote: post #113
dextorious wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""""not only are the Chrome alternatives awfully lacking in functionality, I also need to have enabled JS for them to work""" Yeah, just like 70% of the modern web, and all of Web 2.0. """Safe?""" Enabling JS? Not to tin-foil-hat standards, but yes. You should also remember that Chrome has a special sandbox security model that FF lacks --and that is often found to be the safest browser in security tests, js and all.

i dont have to enable java script on ever page to have my firefox addons work on every page.

Yes, but you have to have js enabled on every page to get the most of those pages, especially web 2.0 sites.

I'd care less about FF addons not working, and more about major functionality (Gmail for example) not working.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#125

Post by lelele »

gkoberger wrote: post #117
toddheasley wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power users need to clean out Firefox every few years. Maybe I'm asking to much, but this seems totally unacceptable to me -- both things seem totally unacceptable to me. And while it may still be just true, Firefox suffers worse from this problem than any OS, software or other browser that I use.

Uninstall Firebug, which I'm assuming you have installed. That will fix a majority of your problems. Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness.

> Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness.

This is how things go in real-world. I remember reading about how much work went into each new version of Windows because of bugs and clever code in existing software. Otherwise people who upgraded and found their old software not working anymore would have blamed Windows instead of their buggy software.

You can't boast about Firefox being extensible and then blame plugins because they break it. At least, Firefox should be warning about troublesome plugins. The more people have to deal with Firefox being slow and unstable, the more Firefox will be getting a bad rep. Sorry, but you can't fight human nature, you know. You can't change how most users think. If you want to increase market share, your software must be as much dumb-friendly as possible.

On my Linux box, Firefox is crashing lots of times a day without giving me any clues about what could have gone wrong. What am I expected to do? To become a Firefox developer? Switching to another browser is an easier path.

By saying this, I hope I don't seem unappreciative of Firefox developers' efforts.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#126

Post by StuffMaster »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #88
bad_user wrote: post #61

I'm a developer that switched back to Firefox, after I gave up on it during the 3.5 days. Firefox almost died in its transition to version 4, however now it is back on track. I prefer it over Chrome because Firefox is a platform, not a product that treats me like a dumb user. I use it on my Android too. It's a little sluggish and still uses too much memory, however it has a killer feature - it syncs everything with m…

> not a product that treats me like a dumb user I use both Chrome and FF, and I never felt like a browser was "treating me" like anything. They're both tools. Maybe because I AM a dumb user? ... Oh god.

I get the "You're a dumb user" feeling every time I open the options in Chrome.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#127

Post by jyrkesh »

marshray wrote: post #107
jyrkesh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is that Mozilla can't afford to still exist without that 100 million from Google a year. But yeah, I don't see why someone else wouldn't come in and swoop on that.

Last I checked, the statement I read looked like Mozilla had a pile of cash in the bank. Enough to go on for many years if they're not dumb with it. Would be interesting to see if they've put out an updated statement since then.

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, right? So they should have public documents out there somewhere, right?

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#128

Post by robin_reala »

lelele wrote: post #125
gkoberger wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninstall Firebug, which I'm assuming you have installed. That will fix a majority of your problems. Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness.

> Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness. This is how things go in real-world. I remember reading about how much work went into each new version of Windows because of bugs and clever code in existing software. Otherwise people who upgraded and found their old software not working anymore would have blamed Windows instead of their buggy software. You can't boast about Fi…

The MemShrink team, having hit all their obvious targets in Firefox itself, are now reaching out to extension authors to help them fix their own memory problems. Firebug, being a major extension used by millions of people, is on the receiving end of this help already. There are several fixes committed into the 1.9 beta branch that reduce overall consumption, and I’m sure more will follow.
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