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Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

gizmodo.com

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Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#211

Post by Symmetry »

davmre wrote: post #111
Symmetry wrote: post #99

Firefox's performance has improved a lot and that's really impressive. I tried moving back to Firefox but in the end I just prefer the Chrome UI too much. Using a custom search engine on Chrome can be just a matter of a couple of key presses after opening a new tab whereas in firefox I'm either stuck holding down alt and using the arrow keys or switching to my mouse. And adding new search engines is super easy in Chr…

Not sure if this would solve your issues, but next time you try Firefox you should check out Instantfox ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/instantfox/ ). It implements a Chrome-like unified URL/search box and lets you run custom search engines with single-character prefixes (e.g. "w Barack Obama" hits Obama's Wikipedia page).

Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted. I've got Firefox 35 now and if the UI stutters are gone I'll be back permanently.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#212

Post by FilterJoe »

emodendroket wrote: post #193
FilterJoe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is using many open tabs with Chrome. If you use no more than 3 or 4 tabs, Chrome is generally fine. If you use more than that, Firefox has some built-in features to help with tabs such as delayed tab loading and tab grouping. It also has more and better extensions for helping with multiple tabs. Furthermore, it doesn't launch a new process for each tab. In a browser comparison I wrote last month, I includ…

I imagine this has something to do with the sandboxing in Chrome that prevents one tab from causing the entire browser to crash, no?

Yes. Sandboxing makes sense when you think of browser as operating system. Isolate each process to increase security and crash-resistance. Makes sense, but it takes more memory.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#213

Post by moe »

hackuser wrote: post #190
moe wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Firefox because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) and because crashes/hangs would usually take the whole Browser down.

> I left Firefox mainly because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) I have no idea what your experience was, of course. Many people said this for years while Firefox consistently won or tied in objective comparisons. Having dealt with end-user complaints for years, I've learned to doubt reports that rely on subjective perceptions of things like 'speed'. Sometimes the new, cool…

Those "objective comparisons" then probably compared the rendering engines or some other micro benchmarks.

My main problem was the GUI, not the rendering (though the latter probably played its part in slowing the GUI down).

Opening/closing/moving tabs was sluggish.

Just opening Firefox with my ~20 tabs open would take many times as long as opening Chrome with the same number of tabs.

You didn't need a stopwatch to see the difference.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#214

Post by Domenic_S »

jackmaney wrote: post #188
gvb wrote: post #15

I read the article hoping for something insightful, but when I read the paragraph ...a half-dozen tabs that auto-open on launch thanks to the dozens of extensions I've accumulated over the years[...] I had to stop and say "wait, what?" To leverage his analogy that it is like coming home to a new house to find that most of your stuff is already there, it is like not cleaning your house and not taking out the trash for…

I had the exact same reaction. Why would an extension automatically open multiple tabs? That sounds pretty malware-ish.

Happens all the time. "Ghostery is updated!" "Thanks for updating RES!" "More update tabs opening up!"

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#215

Post by frik »

jsheard wrote: post #157
Mikeb85 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running many WebGL demos. Whereas in Chrome only 1 tab will freeze. Also, pretty much anything that's Javascript + WebGL runs like shit in Firefox. Emscripten demos are good though. But Emscripten runs better in Chrome than JS+WebGL in Firefox.

Shadertoy is a good test case for this: https://www.shadertoy.com/browse Compiling all those shaders is rough on any browser, but only Firefox gets its entire UI blocked. Even Internet Explorer manages to isolate the jank to one tab.

Chrome 1+, IE 9+ and Safari 7+ spawn child processes with less permissions ("sandbox") for almost every tab.

Sadly Firefox 39 (nightly) still has no real multi process support. There are only two processes, the main process holds all tabs, the single child process "plugin-container" holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat, etc.). It's a bit disappointing to see such little progress since 2010. Hopefully Mozilla's Rust based Servo engine comes to the rescue soon and replaces gecko and its old XUL (XML based UI framework) with Servo and an HTML5 based UI (like Firefox OS).

I use Firefox as development browser because of Firebug and and the new developer tools. Working with dozens of tabs open for days is only possible with IE11 and Chrome.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#216

Post by joshstrange »

saalaa wrote: post #156
joshstrange wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? EDIT: Ok, downvote me all you want but it's a fact, not opinion. I'd give FF another shot once it's in stable but as it is now I'm not going to waste my time playing on a nightly build.

I don't remember hearing any complaint back when Chrome was all beta and experimental.

This makes no sense at all, I didn't use Chrome till it was stable....

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#217

Post by Morphling »

Unless Firefox opens sites instantly (instead of 1-2 sec wait) then I don't see any speed benefit.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the author probably has a lot of heavy addons that do stuff that is not needed. Biggest example probably is AdBlock Plus which bogs down any browser considerably and poking around with family's and friends' Chromes I see that a lot of them have several ad blocking extensions as well as couple privacy extensions is it any wonder Safari or Firefox with no addons is faster?

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#219

Post by zxcvcxz »

dragonshed wrote: post #174
moe wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Firefox because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) and because crashes/hangs would usually take the whole Browser down.

This. Have the scales tipped the other way recently? Chrome still feels faster to me, but I only have one active extension (Ad Blocker).

I think most people on HN using FF are running nightly versions, I know I was. The nightly versions of FF have always had the edge on Chrome, but I think it's just recently that the stable version of FF has really gotten pretty much on par with Chrome, and I'd say definitely better on the Linux 64bit.

Re: Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

#220

Post by Ar-Curunir »

dragonshed wrote: post #174
moe wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Firefox because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) and because crashes/hangs would usually take the whole Browser down.

This. Have the scales tipped the other way recently? Chrome still feels faster to me, but I only have one active extension (Ad Blocker).

Chrome doesn't work well for me on Linux at all, whereas Firefox functions beautifully.
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