Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 90 posts

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#11

Post by rangibaby »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #6

My choice to dump Firefox has absolutely nothing to do with Eich's termination. Or his comments. Firefox on the Mac has gotten increasingly slower for me, since about version 28. Version 36 is when it became absolutely intolerable, where the pinwheel pauses during navigating to a new page or opening a new tab achieved a duration of 10 - 30 seconds. I could handle 1-2 seconds. Even 3-5 seconds was annoying but not eno…

Do Apple diagnostics, someone at our company was having problems specifically with Firefox. It turned out to be a bad stick of RAM.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#12

Post by bobcostas55 »

Apart from the ridiculous slowness (in real world usage, not specialized javascript benchmarks), I think the biggest issue is the single-thread design. Every serious problem with the browser (well, apart from the UI) stems from that. The fix has been in the pipeline for what, half a decade at this point? Probably more, even.

Firefox apologists say the silliest things about it ("I don't like process-per-tab because it pollutes the task manager"), but really at this point there are no excuses.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#13

Post by mrspeaker »

I recently switched back to Firefox as my primary browser because it's the company I distrust least. Turns out it's as exactly the same as Chrome now anyway - I keep forgetting which browser I'm using.

The reason I switched back was because Google's updater ping (according to Lil' Snitch) is very aggressive (several times a day) and also a long time ago I vowed to switch to the browser that first implemented ES6's arrow function syntax ;)

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#15

Post by song »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #6

My choice to dump Firefox has absolutely nothing to do with Eich's termination. Or his comments. Firefox on the Mac has gotten increasingly slower for me, since about version 28. Version 36 is when it became absolutely intolerable, where the pinwheel pauses during navigating to a new page or opening a new tab achieved a duration of 10 - 30 seconds. I could handle 1-2 seconds. Even 3-5 seconds was annoying but not eno…

That's interesting, I've switched back to Firefox because Chrome was getting slower and currently for my usage (I tend to have 100+ tabs open) under Yosemite, Firefox wins hands down compared to Safari and Chrome.

I thought that they've improved a lot in recent times whereas Chrome has become more and more bloated...

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#17

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #6

My choice to dump Firefox has absolutely nothing to do with Eich's termination. Or his comments. Firefox on the Mac has gotten increasingly slower for me, since about version 28. Version 36 is when it became absolutely intolerable, where the pinwheel pauses during navigating to a new page or opening a new tab achieved a duration of 10 - 30 seconds. I could handle 1-2 seconds. Even 3-5 seconds was annoying but not eno…

That doesn't sound normal. Are you sure your system is working properly?

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#18

Post by _wmd »

Its pretty naive to think present market share is any kind of reliable predictor for the future viability of Firefox. Its most recent ideologically compatible competitor, Chrome, has recently (<12 months) been shown to have deeply rooted problems relating to its independence that in a post-Snowden age, Tech community aside, have become factors in the decisionmakng processes of regular people. Accounting for those that accelerate adoption most, the tech enthusiast community, sites like HN show Mozilla still has a (potentially growing) great deal of love from the decision makers that matter.. there is a strong and still valid sheppard/sheep network effect in play here (the same that originally caused Mozilla's 90s/00s popularity) and it's still far too early to discount its value just yet.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#19

Post by threeseed »

ep103 wrote: post #10

I really don't want to develop web code in a world where the only two popular browsers are one developed by and for Google, and one by and for Microsoft. But every time I come to a thread that mentions Firefox on this website, there are people claiming (usually wrongly) that it doesn't implement x, y, or z that someone else does. I really think the development community needs to wake up a bit, and start promoting FF…

Actually there will be three Google, Microsoft and Apple.

Whilst it is better to have some competition there really does need to be an open alternative.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#20

Post by protomyth »

You have to seek out Firefox, so it has to be worth seeking out. Chrome comes with Android, Safari comes with Mac and iOS, and IE comes with Microsoft. So, as mobile increases, Firefox is not a default player.

Here's a question: "Why would a System Administrator take the time to install Firefox on all the company machines?"

Post reply on HN