Live data from Hacker News

Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

howtogeek.com

61–70 of 175 posts

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#61
post #5

I began using Firefox a long time ago (when it was called Phoenix) but switched to Chrome. A couple months ago I switched back to Firefox because Chrome lost my open tab session in some cases (hard crashes when loading the old session), due to privacy issues and because it often triggered long swaps (locking the process) when dealing with lots of tabs (I usually have like 50-60 tabs open in several windows). Also bec…

I too recently tried to switch back from Chrome to Firefox, but gave up. Lots of tabs highlighted the single process model. I love Certificate Patrol. Ctrl-W closes tabs with Flash just fine in Chrome, but required a click outside of Flash first in Firefox. And while Chrome went it alone with Pepper, at least they did something to really isolate and contain Flash. The final straw though was wanting my vertical space back - Chrome's tabs in the title bar is excellent at that. I eventually discovered that you can't do it with Firefox on Linux, and the relevant tickets were full of nasty comments about how Firefox should never do that. Oh well.

I originally switched from Firefox to Chrome because of some web code I was developing where I accidentally made the server send unlimited data (it was supposed to send one line of status information every 15 seconds - I forgot the sleep). Firefox's single process model resulted in a hung browser while Chrome let me find the cause.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#62
post #23

Also: Firefox seems to discourage you from messing with cookies. For example: I can't select cookies by TLD. I have to painstakingly go through the list, clicking each host and clicking "Remove". Compare the cooking management functionality with the next tab over, password management. There you can filter the list as you want. So it is possible.

One of the more important plugins when doing fresh installs are some kind of cookie jar. Mozilla should really pull one of the nicer plugins into the project and just make it default.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the really small things that annoy me about Firefox. For example, in gmail, when writing an email, I can't hit cmd+right arrow to go to the end of a line. And because links are set to open in a new window, I can't cmd+click them to open them in the background.

[deleted]

Probably the one feature I dislike most about firefox. Having to go to about:config to make changes to my browser behavior.

Example, recent install puts tabs on top of address bar. I prefer the old method. Its not a setting I can access through Options, I have to load up about:config, click past the "world is ending" dialog.

Then comes the game of guessing what they named this item!

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#65
It seems the author is either simplifying things too much in their text or does not know what threads are. Not having multiple processes does not mean a program cannot execute things in parallel, and Firefox uses threads liberally. As far as I know, the multi-process architecture of Chrome is mostly about sandboxing, not performance.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#66
post #5

I began using Firefox a long time ago (when it was called Phoenix) but switched to Chrome. A couple months ago I switched back to Firefox because Chrome lost my open tab session in some cases (hard crashes when loading the old session), due to privacy issues and because it often triggered long swaps (locking the process) when dealing with lots of tabs (I usually have like 50-60 tabs open in several windows). Also bec…

I too recently tried to switch back from Chrome to Firefox, but gave up. Lots of tabs highlighted the single process model. I love Certificate Patrol. Ctrl-W closes tabs with Flash just fine in Chrome, but required a click outside of Flash first in Firefox. And while Chrome went it alone with Pepper, at least they did something to really isolate and contain Flash. The final straw though was wanting my vertical space…

[deleted]

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#67
This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care.

* I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better.

* I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linux. Have we seen an attack against Firefox which would have been stopped if it utilized this Windows feature? The article provides no evidence of this.

* I don't want a desktop app store. addons.mozilla.org is, for all intents and purposes, Firefox's app store. mozilla.org is Mozilla's "app store". This is kind of a silly request.

I use Firefox for the following reasons:

* There are extensions I like which have no equivalent (that I know of) in Chrome

* Inertia

* I like the Mozilla Foundation better than I like Google

I don't expect these reasons to convince you. They are sufficient for convincing me. I'm not going to pretend like they present a compelling argument.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#68
post #15

With all the nice items recently implemented in Chrome and all the lagging behind and alleged slowness of Firefox, I still see "aw, snap! crash!" in Chrome an order of magnitude more frequently on my screen than Firefox crash reports. However the slowness of Firefox when Firebug is on when loading resource-heavy pages starts really bothering me.

I just switched back to Chrome again from Waterfox. It's crazy how even with only a few tabs open(Facebook, a few HN threads, some reddit and YouTube), Waterfox alone will bring my Core i7 with 8GB of RAM to a crawl. Even before I switched to Chrome, I was using IE 10 in tandem with Waterfox so that it wouldn't bog down my system so much. Edit: Maybe it's just me? I'll have a look at my settings. Thanks!!

Huh, it's always as many opinions as people regarding Firefox vs Chrome. I only experience Firefox crawling when opening looots of heavy tabs. Probably it's heavily a matter of 1) an operating system and 2) config. I use Windows XP / 7, lots of add-ons with customized settings and super strict AdBlock rules.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#69
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more than a 100 tabs open at once, it DOES add up.

So you're for or against Firefox using a multi-processor architecture? For me, FF becomes unbearably slow when I have about 15-20 tabs open.

That's got to be an addon problem. I can't remember the last time I had less than 15-20 tabs open. I have to get to 80-100 before I start feeling any misery.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#70
post #48
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History > Recently closed windows?

Wow, thanks. I kept looking for this in Firefox's home.

I also discovered recently that if Firefox crashes and then presents the "recover your previous session" tab and you accidentally click "new session", you can get your previous session windows back by going to the Recently closed windows menu too!
Post reply on HN