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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

#541
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have more problems with Firefox's performance than with Chrome's (in terms of processor power), Chrome definitely uses more memory, but it's super fast; firefox is just abysmally slow and can;t handle more than a few tabs. Tried both browsers on Windows 8.1 and Linux, with different machines (home and work computers), too. However, my high memory consumption in Chrome was due to using AdBlock, which is muc…

uBlock is now available on Firefox too, and makes an even more dramatic difference in performance. I really don't know what you're talking about - Chrome is a dog after ~10 tabs are opened, uses crazy memory and becomes unusable fast once it starts paging. Firefox remains stable, backgrounds tabs you're not using in a graceful way, and doesn't try to open and render every single tab at once on a session restore. It's…

Are you on Windows? I'm not seeing this on Mac, I often have 30+ tabs opened and apart from high memory, I don't suffer of any performance issues.

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

#542
Firefox is dirt slow on my Asus T100. Only reason I run Chrome is because it's decent speed on the T100. I think it has to due with the separate processes. The Quad Core Bay Trail chokes on single threaded processes.

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fi…

lol. You really think a new programming language will increase speed?! Rust is not faster as C++ for sure.

Actually re-writing things might make it faster.

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

#544
As someone who made the switch a month ago, here's the problems I've felt - but they are not major I warn you. I still use it.

1. Firefox's private window still runs your plugins - its not a sandbox clean browser 2. You still have to restart if you installed a plugin (ugh! its 2015) 3. You can search from the address bar, prepend a "?". i.e "?google.com" will search with keyword "google.com".

Otherthan this it was a joy to use firefox - works faster than my "chromium" build on osx yosamite.

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

#545
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Chrome developer, I agree that process-per-tab absolutely should not be a replacement for fixing bugs. However, I think it's important to point out that process-per-tab is not just for stability: it's also critical for security.

Chrome is way ahead of Firefox in terms of security. It's worth the performance trade-offs. Each website is rendered in a separate process with a sandbox, each with an empty chroot + process namespace + network namespace + tiny seccomp-bpf + syscall whitelist. Chrome also has a stronger sandbox, pioneers better SSL, supports PIE on binaries, uses pepper - doesnt use native Flash plugins, the JIT compiler does randomi…

I'll just throw that in there but Firefox Linux - since you refer to that (99% of what you just mentioned doesnt exit on windows/osx) - so yeah, Firefox for Linux uses the Chromium sandbox. You know, the exact same code, with a different filter and options applied.

Sure, its process model isnt as "secure" as chrome since it has the trade off or sharing more memory among other examples. But as a user, it seems like a freaking good enough trade off right now....

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

#547

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 switched from Firefox to Chrome right around Firefox 3.6. I have an average of around 20 tabs open at any given moment, and I tend to go around a week or two between reboots. Other than the occasional tab crashing and quickly reloading (and by "occasional", I mean maybe once every couple of months or so), I've never had an issue with Chrome. It just works.

Firefox 3.6 was pretty slow compared to Firefox today. I would switch again to Chrome if we were in Firefox 3.6 times.

Turns out, they fixed Firefox up pretty good over the years

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

#548

And just yesterday I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome. Based in the UK and the latest Firefox searches google.com instead of google.co.uk Never had this problem before and seems it cannot be fixed. Even tried a fresh install of Firefox but no dice. I love Firefox but getting the wrong search results is a deal breaker for me. Any ideas?

Its more of a google issue to be honest. Anyway just click here with firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-uk/

and you'll have google.co.uk :)

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

#549
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's really fair, the largest Chrome task in memory isn't a tab or extension. Yes I suppose it isn't perfectly isolated and if something happens to the main program task it will obviously cause problems but if a single page or extension crashes everything else lives on.

It's a perfectly fair point. The fact that the largest Chrome task by far is not a tab or extension at all, but is the core of Chrome itself, indicates that maybe - just maybe - Chrome isn't doing as good a job of keeping things isolated as it should. That process shouldn't be doing a whole lot beyond driving the UI and managing the lifecycles of its children.

The point is to isolate any code which renders HTML, plugins, etc., i.e., anything which processes untrusted external input, something which the main process does not do.

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this essentially when I run high numbers of tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... Though another comment has led me to wonder if FF doesn't have something similar built-in.

Between Tree Style Tabs and The Fox Only Better[0] I can't see myself going to Chrome or any other browser. The UI is pretty much hidden until I need it, giving me maximum browsing space. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-fox-only-...

Thanks, just installed The Fox Only Better which restored Vimperator to its former glory. That url bar was painful.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/quq37nq1583x0lf/u_g2cx...

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