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Hang on to Your Firefox

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Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#31

Post by glaucon »

theamk wrote: post #3

I am using firefox, but it is pretty hard to keep using it. I don't want the whole world to converge on one browser engine, but I also want things to work, and Firefox does not make it easy. Firefox on my laptop has a propensity for eating lots of RAM, and constant CPU usage, even if nothing is going on. Task manager is useless. Profiler just shows "GC collecting". Mobile firefox is OK, it simply feels like it's desi…

I don't know why but I have a different experience. My daily driver is a 13 year old Thinkpad with 16Gb memory, I use Firefox all the time, I routinely have 50+ tabs open, I really have no complaints.

I also use Firefox on Android, I have less experience of using other browsers on mobile but what I've got is fine for me.

I'm not questioning your experience but I would like others, who might be considering using Firefox, to know that different people have different experiences.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#32

Post by layer8 »

glimshe wrote: post #29

I gave Firefox a chance as my PDF reader as it has a pretty efficient engine. But that didn't work out as I don't need to read PDFs often so every time it launched, it ran an update that added 10s to reading the PDF... :/ My current main browser across desktop and mobile is Brave. Pretty happy with it. Overall more efficient and with a better UI than FF. I've used FF for many years, but I feel it's simply not as good…

I’d recommend using a dedicated PDF reader in any case.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#33

Post by cyberax »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #14
senfiaj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and when you think about the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine, we are very unlikely to see a new browser engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink i…

Ladybird is steadily progressing: https://ladybird.org/

The last time I checked the source code, it was filled with horrible unsafe C++. They also re-implement everything whether it is needed or not.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#34

Post by kova12 »

soperj wrote: post #15
nubinetwork wrote: post #5

Firefox used to be amazing, but they squandered their market share with bad decisions and stagnation. Maybe one day they'll see the light, but not likely, given their recent ai additions...

They were competing with the biggest advertiser in the world who put an ad about their own browser on the front page of the biggest search engine in the world. Not sure it was entirely their own doing.

Wasn't something in their new ToS that turned many of us against them? I don't think advertisement was the issue

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#35

Post by bluebarbet »

palata wrote: post #2

People just don't care. They are happy with monopolies and surveillance capitalism. Once in a while someone talks about digital sovereignty, but much like climate change, nothing will be done (successfully) about it. That's how it is, I've come to terms with it.

Agreed. All the more reason to do what we can to make things better than they otherwise would be. Outcomes are never black and white.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#36

Post by peri-cl »

mingus88 wrote: post #18
theamk wrote: post #3

I am using firefox, but it is pretty hard to keep using it. I don't want the whole world to converge on one browser engine, but I also want things to work, and Firefox does not make it easy. Firefox on my laptop has a propensity for eating lots of RAM, and constant CPU usage, even if nothing is going on. Task manager is useless. Profiler just shows "GC collecting". Mobile firefox is OK, it simply feels like it's desi…

I don’t know you, but most people I work with for some reason keep so many tabs open, the tab bar is squeezed so you can barely see a favicon Probably due to my age, I religiously close every tab after I read it. If that gets more than a dozen, I literally quit the browser and declare bankruptcy because it’s not worth it to sort through the mess of tabs I clearly am not using. Firefox is old too. I’m sure it could ma…

I wish I had that level of executive functioning. I open tabs at a high branching rate, and faster than I have the impulse control to (for lack of a better word) run a garbage-collection pass over what I'd just done.

When it balloons into the low thousands and starts hurting performance, I dump Firefox's open-tabs store (file called recovery.jsonlz4) into a different file and start over. At some point I'll point an LLM at that junk pile and see if I missed anything important. (Probably not).

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#37

Post by cyberax »

senfiaj wrote: post #10
hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

Yeah, and when you think about the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine, we are very unlikely to see a new browser engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink i…

Servo exists, and it's making steady progress: https://servo.org/

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#38

Post by happytoexplain »

hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

Only? No. Best? Yes, it's not even close.

I got the Chrome extension that adds the "Open in Firefox" option to the hyperlink right-click menu. That's how I view all YouTube videos.

I'd switch completely to Firefox except for all my data being on Google. It's clear that eventually I will switch to Firefox completely.

Google is pure evil.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#39

Post by 1970-01-01 »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #11
nubinetwork wrote: post #5

Firefox used to be amazing, but they squandered their market share with bad decisions and stagnation. Maybe one day they'll see the light, but not likely, given their recent ai additions...

Rumors of Firefox's death have been circling for at least 15 years now... somehow it's kept going despite odd incentives and bad corporate decisions.

Both can be true. Progressing without innovation only works when your product is Coca-Cola or Bic lighters. FireFox as a name or brand is nowhere near it's former v1.0-3.0 glory days.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#40

Post by grebc »

hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

NoScript works well enough just wholesale blocking js.
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