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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

#321

Post by jackmaney »

ergothus wrote: post #316
jackmaney wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Chrome as my only browser. On my desktop, I run an average of 20 tabs open at any given time, across two windows. I also run Chrome on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 3) and keep 4--8 tabs open at any given time. I reboot my desktop once every 1--2 weeks, and my phone maybe once per month. Other than the rare tab freezing up and needing to be restarted, I've had absolutely no issues. Chrome just works.

Our workflow sounds similar, except that when my system reboots, Chrome is frozen for a minute as every tab tries to reload simultaneously, following by confusion as any youtube tabs all start playing. On Firefox I had no such issue as each tab would only reload on focus.

That's...very strange. I don't recall Chrome trying to open up every tab that I've had open before rebooting.

[digs into settings] Ah, that's it: on Settings > On Startup, I've selected "Open The New Tab Page" which (I think) is the default.

Yeah, trying to open up a couple dozen tabs at once, several of which are videos, could be problematic.

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

#322

Post by maxlybbert »

bitslayer wrote: post #296
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…

The whole point of having separate processes for each tab is that it isolates them. If one crashes, the others remain up. It supports multiple processors, too.

Firefox followed Chrome's lead. It also has separate processes for each tab now.

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

#324

Post by stygiansonic »

abandonliberty wrote: post #145
jo_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks exceptionally helpful. I have around 50 tabs open, nominally, and my CPU fan is almost perpetually on high for it. Just before installing it, however, I found myself wondering, "Why am I using an app which allows me to keep more tabs open? Why am I not using bookmarks?" Why do we keep open 500 tabs instead of using bookmarks these days?

Give onetab a shot. I'm still fighting to keep my number of tabs down. It causes significant mental overhead and task switching costs. I've noticed a bump in my productivity by taking the time to close/bookmark/onetab tabs.

Agreed. OneTab is a great way to organize your "sessions" of browsing. If you're like me, you keep separate windows for separate topics and it's great to OneTab them all when something needs to be put on hold.

I do realize it's glorified bookmarking, but the concept and ease-of-use make it nice.

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

#325

Post by Zancarius »

_lce0 wrote: post #300
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 16GB and regularly have >100 tabs open in Chrome. It works, kind of, as long as I don't try to run anything else at the same time. The article persuaded me that Firefox may be worth a try again. As for testing - you'd think testing on a range of hardware would be standard. Testing exclusively on top spec machines is just unprofessional.

I've using firefox on a 4Gb linux machine for about two years so far.. and it's working just fine, each release it keeps better and better

Edit: I want to apologize to eridal. I misread his/her statement and though the browser in question was Chrome, not Firefox.

So, public apolgy: I'm very sorry, eridal. I thought you wrote something you did not. My comment was wrong as a result. I have corrected my mistake, and wish to apologize to you personally for misreading what you wrote.

Original message with the offending part removed, mistakenly assuming eridal was using Chrome (I'm not sure why I read it that way):

---

I stopped using Chromium in part because once I passed the 100-150 tab threshold, memory usage skyrockets to 4-6GiB. It's OK with 16GiB RAM, but usability diminishes pretty badly (the stock UI is NOT conducive to more than 80-100 tabs), and if you're stupid enough to visit a site with Flash, the probability of it leaking and eating up another 2+GiB begin to approach 1.

I like Chrome for its speed--if you have 20 tabs or fewer open. But I can certainly correlate my own experiences with that of the GP comment.

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

#326

Post by higherpurpose »

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…

Actually my main problem with Firefox is that if it "chokes" on one tab, I can't use the whole browser until that fixes itself. In Chrome I generally have 20+ tabs open and I don't have any issues.

Firefox needs to get itself a multi-process system. I really don't mind a little extra RAM being used as long as tabs are separated and sandboxed. I'm also looking forward to a complete rewrite in Rust. That should make Firefox much faster than anything else out there. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

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

#327

Post by ubercow13 »

frik wrote: post #243
pcwalton wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's one process for tabs and one for the UI. Plugins have been in a separate process for years.

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

#328

Post by higherpurpose »

maxlybbert wrote: post #322
bitslayer wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of having separate processes for each tab is that it isolates them. If one crashes, the others remain up. It supports multiple processors, too.

Firefox followed Chrome's lead. It also has separate processes for each tab now.

In the stable version? I would doubt that, because my Firefox still freezes.

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

#329

Post by commandar »

omaranto wrote: post #244
perishabledave wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The minimalism is why I vastly prefer Vimium to e.g. Vimperator, personally.

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

#330

Post by smacktoward »

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…

Or the users were comparing a Firefox profile that had years' worth of extensions and history data with a Chrome profile that was empty...
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