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How Firefox Got Fast Again

hacks.mozilla.org

21–30 of 713 posts

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#21

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

Firefox is about more than market share. A state of the art free non for profit browser makes the market much more competitive and better for the consumer. They are there to keep chrome/ other browsers honest. If chrome / google does something too corporate you don't like, there's an alternative.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#22

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

I personally think so. I also think their latest work on replacing Firebug and PhantomJS are way way late as well. I commend them on improving their tools, but man, Google has just eaten their lunch the past 10 years.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#23
post #5

I have been using 57 in beta, and I have to say, I'm impressed. It is a huge improvement. Whether it keeps me off Chrome in the future remains to be seen though!

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

I find the absence of Smart Zoom on Mac Firefox to be very painful indeed. The "double right tap" gesture works in both Safari and Chrome, and zooms in exactly on the div/image you're interested in. I've searched for alternatives in FF, but even the half-working ones I found don't work in Quantum. Sad because I'm rooting for Mozilla, but just can't function in their browser without Smart Zoom.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

I have been thinking of switching back from Chrome to Firefox. I haven't been able to find decent profile support though (so I can keep work and private data separate), and all profiles addons are broken at the moment.

firefox -p launches firefox into the profile manager. firefox -p work -new-instance launches your work profile. What are you missing?

More options: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking of switching back from Chrome to Firefox. I haven't been able to find decent profile support though (so I can keep work and private data separate), and all profiles addons are broken at the moment.

What stops you from launching Firefox with the profile manager twice (there's a flag for that), and selecting the two profiles? It takes a couple of seconds to select the profile.

That is a good work-around. Multiple devices, systems, users, locations, and other factors makes selecting the current profile a pain.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

I have been thinking of switching back from Chrome to Firefox. I haven't been able to find decent profile support though (so I can keep work and private data separate), and all profiles addons are broken at the moment.

You can launch Firefox with different profiles (including navigation history, Firefox account, extension, etc) in the same machine. It's a bit cumbersome since you need to select the profile as a launch option (firefox -p) or launch it from "about:profiles", but it works.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#27

I have been using 57 in beta, and I have to say, I'm impressed. It is a huge improvement. Whether it keeps me off Chrome in the future remains to be seen though!

Similar conclusion here. So far I stopped using Chrome (stable or canary). I do miss it, Firefox Nightly (as I mention in other threads) have responsiveness issues a bit too much even for average websites (no video, no webgl, no audio) and I know that chrome doesn't suffer from that. But so far I'm still using Firefox for a few weeks. Few things that I do prefer in Firefox: - bookmarks with tags - nightly/testmode sn…

> reader view (not sure if chrome has that out of the box nowadays)

As far as I can tell, Firefox, Safari and Edge all seem to have it, and Chrome does not. Not on mobile, and not on desktop.

There are some extensions that accomplish the same. I've had some good (but very limited) experience using Mercury Viewer some time ago: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mercury-reader/okn...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking of switching back from Chrome to Firefox. I haven't been able to find decent profile support though (so I can keep work and private data separate), and all profiles addons are broken at the moment.

What stops you from launching Firefox with the profile manager twice (there's a flag for that), and selecting the two profiles? It takes a couple of seconds to select the profile.

@mmphosis: you can always link different profiles to different Firefox account so they all get sync between devices.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#29

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

Firefox is about more than market share. A state of the art free non for profit browser makes the market much more competitive and better for the consumer. They are there to keep chrome/ other browsers honest. If chrome / google does something too corporate you don't like, there's an alternative.

[deleted]

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#30

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

I personally think so. I also think their latest work on replacing Firebug and PhantomJS are way way late as well. I commend them on improving their tools, but man, Google has just eaten their lunch the past 10 years.

> but man, Google has just eaten their lunch the past 10 years.

Maybe because Google actively pays people to install Chrome without the users knowledge, and force it as default. That’s pretty much the definition of malware already.

It’s hard to win against someone that does such hostile behaviour.

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