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Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

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

#111

Post by korethr »

kaoD wrote: 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…

- Tab groups suck. They're useless and there's no way to disable them once you activate it by mistake. You have to mess up with about:config (see above). Talk about a great UI.

I disagree. I find tab groups to be very useful.

I tend to keep multiple tabs open at once, and for multiple tasks. The tab groups lets me easily organize those tabs around a single thought or task. I can keep my music streams in one tab group, and my daily webcomics in another. News feeds go in their own group. The Python standard library reference and whatever tutorials or How-Tos are relevant to my current project get their own group. You get the idea. I can then quickly swap between these groups and the tabs within with hot keys without having to reach for the mouse and scroll through what might otherwise become a cumbersome number of tabs in a single window.

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

#113

Post by auvrw »

nathanb wrote: post #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 Linu…

good reply.

i use iceweasel firefox for the same reasons, specifically:

* pentadactyl (formerly vimperator)

* xul and xpcom took time to read about

* i like that the entirety of the codebase is free, not just the big blocks of C++

oh, and might be worth noting that the mobile version of firefox is multiprocess, and there's always the -no-remote flag (if you want to debug something w/o potentially crashing the 20 tabs of docs, bug reports, mailing list archives, and stack overflow you had to dig through to find the thing that maybe, possibly created the bug in the first place), although i totally agree about this thing where solving the problem of stability has somehow been conflated with running more than one process.

to each their own. having more browsers promotes a healthier "ecosystem" or something like this.

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

#114

Post by antihero »

jevinskie wrote: post #100
mtgx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you want a multi-process architecture? It's bad enough that so many apps can utilize the quad core CPU's we have in our PC's. At least the browser is one app that can fully take advantage of multiple cores, unlike most apps out there.

You can take advantage of multiple cores using a single process with threads.

But don't threads generally share memory? So therefore if a thread crashes, it can totally screw up all the other tabs still.

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

#115

Post by paulrouget »

We are working on multiprocess tabs (again). We paused our effort a couple of years ago for Firefox Desktop. Some other things were more important (we fixed most of our memory issues and improved the global responsiveness of Firefox). And some work was needed before getting multiprocess tabs ready in Firefox Desktop:

- we managed to get multiprocess tabs working for Firefox on Android and for Firefox OS. The inner architecture is now here. Basically, it was easier to start with mobile.

- we worked hard on an even-more threaded architecture in Gecko ("Off-Main-Thread everything"). This makes Firefox much more snappier these days, and this will make things easier for a full multiprocess browser.

So now, with all that done, we are restarting our work on multiprocess tabs on Firefox Desktop.

A multiprocess architecture will probably improve the responsiveness of Firefox, but keep in mind that this is not a magic bullet. Improvements can be made in other areas. Firefox 24 is much more responsive than before and will get more and more snappier in the months to come.

Also - on a related note: "we need a more parallel browser" http://dbaron.org/log/20120827-specification-style

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

#116

Post by cytzol »

jervisfm wrote: post #99
nathanb wrote: post #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 Linu…

> There are extensions I like which have no equivalent (that I know of) in Chrome Can you give an some examples of useful extensions you use that are available in Firefox but not yet in Chrome ?

Tree Style Tab - tabs should be a tree, not a list.

The last I heard, Chrome had a vertical tabs feature for a while, but that didn't allow nested tabs.

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

#117

Post by olog-hai »

bengillies wrote: post #14
kaoD wrote: 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…

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.

Agreed about the small things. I'll never understand why they decided to put the ctrl+F find dialog at the very bottom of the window. It trips me up almost every time I use Firefox, which isn't often. The vast majority of computer users are not conditioned to look down immediately after invoking find.

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

#118

Post by wolfgke »

antihero wrote: post #114
jevinskie wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take advantage of multiple cores using a single process with threads.

But don't threads generally share memory? So therefore if a thread crashes, it can totally screw up all the other tabs still.

mtgox was talking about scalability, not stability.

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

#119

Post by TheEskimo »

rogerbinns wrote: post #61
kaoD wrote: 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…

Vertical space on linux? That's simply not true. Exhibit 1: The default firefox and chromium running on my linux (ubuntu, i3wm). http://i.imgur.com/paE173H.png . 6 pixels by default in favour of firefox.

The real problem though is chrome's interface really is completely inflexible. I like a thinner browser than either of those. Hence, my firefox setup: http://i.imgur.com/XAyc8Tu.png .. 17 pixels more space than chrome can be gained easily (firefox with only the extension 'pentadactyl'). And further more, since firefox's appearence is all just XUL it can be styled to be as thin or thick as I like.

So yeah, firefox you can change the ui to be vertically thin. It's simply impossible to do that with chrome.

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

#120

Post by mistercow »

mtgx wrote: post #82
nathanb wrote: post #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 Linu…

Why wouldn't you want a multi-process architecture? It's bad enough that so many apps can utilize the quad core CPU's we have in our PC's. At least the browser is one app that can fully take advantage of multiple cores, unlike most apps out there.

>At least the browser is one app that can fully take advantage of multiple cores, unlike most apps out there.

Nope. The vast majority of web pages and web apps do work either on page load, or in direct response to user input. While in the background, they almost universally sit idle. Multicore has no benefit in this scenario.

The exceptions are games and media, but music is the only case there where you are likely to have something actively running in the background. Unfortunately, audio decoding is so incredibly cheap now that the gains from using a separate core are negligible.

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