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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

#121

Post by levosmetalo »

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 ?

Adblock plus with real filtering.

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

#122

Post by jcbrand »

q_revert wrote: post #102
jervisfm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

vimperator is probably the most useful web extension i've ever used.. and it doesn't have a good chrome equivalent http://www.vimperator.org/vimperator

I've used Vimperator before but I now use Vimium on chromium and very much prefer it.

When you navigate via keyboard (by pressing "f"), Vimperator marks links with numbers, Vimium marks them with letters, from ("a to "zz'). Letters are much nicer when you can touch type and your hands are already on the keys.

Vimperator used to do silly things like hide the address bar and force you into doing everything in a kind of "command mode". It never felt very smoothly integrated with the browser and it was always a pain to try and open a new site via command mode instead of just using -L and typing it in the address bar. Invariably I would try to type something in a textbox or use some keyboard shortcut, only to find that Vimperator hijacked it and I'm now typing in command mode.

Vimium doesn't give me these problems because it doesn't have a command prompt/mode. Besides that, it's integrated very nicely with chrome, in such a way that I can use normal keyboard shortcuts as far as possible, but have vim-like shortcuts for the things that matter (e.g. "/" for searching, navigation via keyboard etc.)

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

#123

Post by dblohm7 »

Nursie wrote: post #72

I love FF and use FF mainly because of the range of plugins available. However I agree there are problems with it. One of them is disk access - if you have a machine (say a netbook) with a slow disk, firefox seems to stop responding for a few seconds every once in a while. This is exacerbated by an ever growing places.sqlite, but still happens even with that flushed regularly (or chattr +i'd)

Mozilla's Performance Team is doing a lot of work on eliminating I/O from the main thread which is the cause of many of these problems. We're also assisting other teams with this as well.

In fact, right now I am working on adding a new feature to the Gecko Profiler that identifies such I/O and makes it easy for platform devs to easily pinpoint the offending code.

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

#124

Post by bti »

cromwellian wrote: post #112

Chrome DevTools are much better. I recently had to use Firefox's devtools, and they're woefully behind both in UI, capability, and speed.

This is so true. Compared to Chrome's, Firefox's tools are just so clunky and an eyesore. I love the fact that Google is putting so much work into their tools and constantly improving them. I will give Firefox credit for having 3D view, that's pretty cool.

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

#125

Post by jclos »

cytzol wrote: post #116
jervisfm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is honestly the only thing keeping me on firefox. After getting used to it horizontal tabs just seem so... wrong.

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

#126

Post by josephlord »

dragonwriter wrote: post #54
AshleysBrain wrote: post #47

Mozilla are leading the way in other areas. Firefox OS is entirely based on HTML5 - even the UI. Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology. They've done a lot with emscripten to compile large native engines to the web, complete with WebGL and Web Audio support. Chrome looks to follow Mozilla's lead by adding asm.js s…

> Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology. Native Client isn't proprietary, its open -- no other browser vendor has adopted it, but that doesn't change the fact that its open. Backward compatible is a real issue with asm.js vs. NaCl, there is no reason to obscure the real issue by throwing a fake one in with it.

Can one company change the next version of the spec without the collaboration of other users? If they can then it is proprietary even if it is open.

Was it developed by a collaborative effort across the market or was it dropped as a complete solution that they then tried to get approved by a standards body? Then it is probably proprietary even if open to everyone to use.

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

#127

Post by pcwalton »

dragonwriter wrote: post #71
AshleysBrain wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, fair dos. But I think asm.js is so much of a better idea that there's no reason to support NaCl - asm.js does everything it's supposed to do but better. I think it was a pretty nice move from Mozilla.

> But I think asm.js is so much of a better idea that there's no reason to support NaCl - asm.js does everything it's supposed to do but better. A key focus of NaCl and asm.js is performance, and IIRC most benchmarks are showing NaCl with somewhere between a 25%-33% additional overhead over native C, and asm.js with somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% additional overhead, so I don't think I can quite agree that asm…

Those statistics are misleading. The asm.js numbers count compilation time, while the PNaCl numbers don't.

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

#128

Post by zetafunction »

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…

Multiprocess is also important for security. It means that simply finding a renderer exploit isn't enough to pwn your system if the renderer processes have no privileges to write/execute arbitrary files.

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

#129

Post by numbsafari »

pja wrote: post #91
numbsafari wrote: post #58

He gives a bunch of "ways" in which FireFox is (in his opinion) behind Google Chrome. The only "reason" (why) he gives is mentioned very briefly: > With so many former Firefox developers now working on Chrome at Google, perhaps it makes sense that the innovation has been happening in Chrome, not Firefox. The real question we should be asking is what happened to investment in FireFox? Why has mozilla had a hard time r…

Non-profits find it culturally difficult to pay Google-level salaries to developers perhaps?

That's certainly part of it. Non-profits generally cannot compete with Google in terms of cash.

But are there other ways for them to try and attract or otherwise develop talent? Perhaps their current model is insufficient.

It's interesting to see that Mozilla has become more involved with Samsung as a technology development partner. Perhaps that is one model.

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