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Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

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

#241

Post by bmelton »

smt88 wrote: post #228
bmelton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To spin it more positively, he and his ilk more generally represent our users than more "in the know" tech-journalists. I think this is a rough article, but likely one that either many users will empathize with, so the overarching idea that browsers should be doing something to prevent bloat is probably a sound one.

I guess I see journalism the old-fashioned way: you're not an expert on everything, but you do research and distill the concepts for regular readers. This guy clearly didn't do research. Yes, Chrome uses a massive amount of memory, but that was originally a feature . Most people had way more memory than they needed at any given time, so Chrome heavily used memory to decrease processing time and therefore improve rend…

I agree 100%, I think the article is worthless, as a journalistic piece.

However, if you treat it as a blog post, and one that's likely to be parroted by other users of his same ability, it's a decent canary for popular opinion.

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

#242

Post by skywhopper »

I switched to Chrome very soon after it came out, and I've been happy with it for the most part for years. I typically have dozens of tabs open at a time if not more and it's never been a problem, until the last few months when Chrome on Linux has started becoming unstable after running for a day or so to the point that I can't rely on it working for anything but Gmail. Other pages, even simple ones, will blow up with the Chrome BSOD until I completely restart it. I used to be able to leave things up for literally months. How this makes sense with Chrome's process architecture, I do not know. On Windows I haven't had these problems, and maybe it's just a particular combination of libs at fault, but I may soon switch to Firefox on my Linux box at least just to avoid the hassle.

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

#243

Post by frik »

pcwalton wrote: post #39
FreakyT wrote: post #19

Firefox on Mac still has too many visual issues, and the devs often drag their feet on fixing them. Lion (released 2011) added "bounce" scrolling and auto-hiding scrollbars. It took them nearly half a year to fix the lack of auto-hiding scrollbars nightly builds[1], and even longer for it to finally make it to mainline Firefox. Firefox still doesn't have bounce scrolling. To add to that point, the first high-dpi (ret…

> Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] In fact, Nightly now is by default.

You mean one main "firefox" process that holds all tabs and one child process that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat).

So if one tab hangs (e.g. WebGL demo) then still the whole Firefox is slow as hell. Firefox should finally spawn child processes for every other tab with less permissions ("sandbox" technique) so that if one tab hangs or crashes every other tab and the UI still is responsive. It seems we have to wait for Rust based Servo engine to get that feature - but that would also rescue us from XUL based UI (FirefoxOS already has an HTML5 based UI).

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

#244

Post by omaranto »

perishabledave wrote: post #221
omaranto wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as one piece of anecdotal evidence: I only use one browser extension (Vimium on Chrome, VimFx on Firefox) and still find Firefox significantly faster than Chrome. Also, I like using the same browser on my Android tablet as on my laptop and websites that use MathJax render incorrectly on Android Chrome (these sites render perfectly well on Android Firefox and on both desktop Firefox and desktop Chrome). So I'd p…

There is a Vimium equivalent for Firefox?! I'm sold!

Chronologically it's the other way around I think: Vimium was inspired by the Firefox plugins Vimperator and Pentadactyl.

(The one I mentioned, VimFx, is more recent and more minimalistic that either Vimperator or Pentadactyl.)

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

#245

Post by jcoffland »

FilterJoe wrote: post #177
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…

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 regularly have several hundred tabs open in Firefox with no problems. Some people may think this is crazy or messy but I find it very useful for organizing the various projects I'm working on for different clients and my own personal projects. Tab groups and delayed loading make it all very smooth. Such usage is just not possible with Chrome. I tried to switch to Chrome but couldn't find the features I needed and did not wish to change my workflow.

Back when Chrome came out Firefox was buggy. Since then it has become much more stable. Chrome is the one that's buggy now. One process per tab means that a bug in one tab does not take down the whole browser but it is much better to just fix the bugs and not crash at all.

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

#246

Post by baddox »

I'll admit to not using Firefox extensively for several years, but I also have had zero issues with Chrome. The closest thing to an issue is that I really don't care for the profile name UI in the top right of the window, which they just added. That's certainly not enough to switch browsers over.

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

#247

Post by frik »

wldcordeiro wrote: post #210
frik wrote: post #180

I just tested Firefox 37 (Developer Edition) and Firefox 38 (Nightly). The multi-process "Electrolysis" support in 38 is great. Several tabs with flash plugin work fine now, without slowing down the whole browser. Though, I still see only one main process for all web sites (there is a child process "plugin-container"), that's a bit disappointing. IE 9+, Chrome and Safari 7+ spawn a new process for every x sites - a c…

If you have Electrolysis there should be more than just firefox and plugin-container. Currently I run Nightly as my main browser and have to keep it disabled though due to some plugins I use lacking Electrolysis support (the fix is not on the plugin maker's side.)

I run the current Firefox 38 Nightly 64-bit Windows version with "Enable E10S (multi-process)" turned on (default setting). There are only two processes.

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

#248

Post by CrazyRabbit »

attozk wrote: post #93

Still using Opera 12.16 for borwsing, the best browser there is. It still has far more "useful" feature than many other browser, to name a few: - ctrl + tab that really works like it should, no sequential switching through tabs - per site user-agent/js settings For development I still use firefox; chrome has been too aggressive with their caching in my experience. Plus some one else mentioned, I don't like my browser…

it's time to upgrade, boss! download 12.17 please

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

#249

Post by hackuser »

This is really about the tech equivalent of fashion. You're not still using last year's cool browser, are you?

I doubt there is enough difference between the browsers to make a meaningful productivity impact for most end users (the population at HN might probably has more exceptions to that statement). The only significant difference is confidentiality, where I trust Mozilla far more than Google.

Here is what is really going on:

1) IE defined the web for most people, with 95% market share.

2) Firefox became the new, cool alternative, with some social/political appeal (free-as-in-speech, non-profit mission, openness, anti-corporate), and the appeal of being the cutting-edge and the shiny-new thing.

3) 'New' and 'cool' have shelf lives, slowing your subjective experience of browsers and skinny blue jeans. Also, Mozilla lacked a marketing budget and department to manage and refresh their image, as other vendors might have done: 'In limited release beta preview: Firefox XE! Be the first person you know to get it! It's burning up the 'net!'

4) Google was an uber-cool company, and they put out a browser, which became the new uber-cool thing. 'You're not still using Firefox, are you?' (Actually said to an end-user I was helping by a technorati wannabe.)

5) Chrome might have performed better for a time, but the browsers were neck and neck in performance tests for many years while people rationalized their love of cool. As I said, I doubt there was much real difference, except in some specialized circumstances.

6) Now repeat #3, except this time for Chrome. The subtext and whole point of this article is, 'is Chrome no longer cool?' It's as if the author is throwing some red meat in the waters, to see if the piranha are ready to swarm.

Perhaps Mozilla and Google should pump in fake engine noise.

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

#250

Post by Touche »

Yoric wrote: post #233
Touche wrote: post #81

My biggest reason for not using Firefox is that I always keep 2 browser windows open in Chrome, one is for my work account and the other is for my personal account. I like this separation. IIRC you can't have 2 profiles open at the same time in Firefox and even switching between profiles is not easy. I do use Firefox on my personal laptop, but I spend 8 hours a day on my work laptop and need this feature.

The feature has always been in Firefox (I remember using it before Firefox 1.0), just well hidden. These days, I use the add-on profilist to make switching between profiles trivial in Firefox.

Profiles have always existed but I distinctly remember in the past getting "there's already an instance of Firefox running" when trying to have multiple open at the same time. proflist does make it easier to switch but there is no visible way to know which profile an open window is using.
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