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Firefox 29

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Re: Firefox 29

#231

Post by slacka »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #130
dilap wrote: post #63

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pr…

The main problem for me is how memory-hungry this browser is. How can a single tab opened on HN use 500MB?

Firefox's memory usage has ballooned since FF 13. https://areweslimyet.com/

On my 512MB Raspberry Pi, this used to be FF's greatest strenth. Unfortunately the latest versions are getting nearly as bad as chrome. I wish Mozilla would focus on their strengths and put more resources back into their memshrink project.

Re: Firefox 29

#232

Post by noir_lord »

insertnickname wrote: post #220
Geee wrote: post #24

They still haven't get rid of the checking updates for add-ons dialog. Damn I hate that.

Yeah, it's a huge pain having to wait a few seconds every six weeks.

Indeed over a lifetime (of 78 years) waiting 3 seconds for updates every 6 weeks wastes 33m48s, that is nearly 3 cappuccino's!.

Re: Firefox 29

#233

Post by NathanKP »

gcommer wrote: post #219
NathanKP wrote: post #54

Overall I love the redesign, but I wish they would have compacted the top chrome a bit so it matches the height of other major browsers. Firefox has slightly taller chrome for no good reason, as seen in this picture: http://i.imgur.com/BlPRitn.png When I'm doing cross browser development I want my stuff to line up in all three browsers. At least Firefox no longer has the heaviest browser chrome. Safari wins that dubi…

If you want to shrink the top chrome, you can right click on it (getting the menu to choose toolbars), hit customize, then check "Use small icons". With this option, FF is thinner than chrome both fullscreen and floating. Edit: Actually, just updated and it looks like they got rid of that...

The "Use small icons" option used to be there, but I don't see it anymore. I think that they removed it.

Re: Firefox 29

#234

Post by sp332 »

maxerickson wrote: post #136
potch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we made extra sure this add-on got updated. Lots of TST users at Mozilla :)

Do I have to install an add on to get narrow tabs? This is like the 3rd or 4th time that minimum tab width settings have been changed. I understand the motivation to change the experience for the typical user. I don't understand the constant churn in what is customizable. If I customized the location of the reload/stop button last time it was moved, is the thought really that I won't want to this time? I guess there…

You could use the Custom Tab Width extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-tab-wi... Or, you could make a UserChrome.css file in your profile directory and put this in it (edited):

  /*
   * Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning
   */
  @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */

  .tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned]) {
    max-width: 250px !important;
    min-width: 100px !important;
  }
  .tabbrowser-tab:not([fadein]) {
    max-width: 1px !important;
    min-width: 1px !important;
    max-width: 1px;
    min-width: 1px;
  }
From https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574654

Re: Firefox 29

#235

Post by nikolak »

sp332 wrote: post #164
mohamedattahri wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem for me is how memory-hungry this browser is. How can a single tab opened on HN use 500MB?

I have no idea - mine uses 184MB. It's been much slimmer than Chrome for me for about a year. Even when I use lots of extensions, it's up to 340MB which is less than Chrome's 400MB.

Firefox uses less memory only on startup and when I have few tabs open. As soon as I start opening more tabs and browsing longer the memory usage is much larger on FF and the whole UI becomes less responsive and so do pages.

Even on startup it isn't that better compared to chrome.

Chrome 11 extensions 1 tab: ~300MB

FF 2 extensions 1 tab: ~200MB

It's not FF 29, it's 28 - but I doubt the memory management improved much in 29.

But to be fair, it's a lot better now than it used to be.

Re: Firefox 29

#237

Post by CmdrKrool »

gagege wrote: post #190
CmdrKrool wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Customize mode seems fairly flexible, for shuffling things between the three fixed-position bars, ie. the menu, navigation and bookmarks bars (probably the tab bar as well though I don't use tabs myself). I wonder why you can't just add new blank bars, at either the top or bottom, to fill up to your heart's content with that same Customize mode. That would undo most of the need for things like Status-4-Evar. This…

I'm very curious about your statement that you don't use tabs. Why not? Do you really only ever have one page open at once?

I open everything in a new window, and juggle windows at the desktop level with the help of a nifty Alt+Tab enhancer.

I know there's a use case for using seperate windows to group tabs by topic, but I don't like having that organization forced on me.

Also, I don't use a tiling window manager, but they tend to have their own ways of dealing with large numbers of windows, I hear.

Re: Firefox 29

#238

Post by gcommer »

NathanKP wrote: post #233
gcommer wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to shrink the top chrome, you can right click on it (getting the menu to choose toolbars), hit customize, then check "Use small icons". With this option, FF is thinner than chrome both fullscreen and floating. Edit: Actually, just updated and it looks like they got rid of that...

The "Use small icons" option used to be there, but I don't see it anymore. I think that they removed it.

Yeah, they did. But you can get it back with Classic Theme Restorer[1], which has the "Small buttons on navigation toolbar" option.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Re: Firefox 29

#239

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SonicSoul wrote: post #101
wlesieutre wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Given the new gTLDs, I'm thankful that Firefox still has a separate search box. Say I'm want to know about the "asdfg.cat" file that showed up on my system. If I put that into the URL bar and hit enter, it's going to say "Oh, I know w…

you can put it in quotes, and it should execute it as search vs address. the only argument for having a separate box i can think of is it you wanted a separate search engine associated to address bar, vs search box.

>the only argument for having a separate box i can think of //

I use the address bar primarily (in FF) but the search bar is useful as a "scratch pad" for storing details I want to see briefly. It's certainly an edge case.

Re: Firefox 29

#240

Post by scott_karana »

bushido wrote: post #195
cookiecaper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage Chrome users to go check the search history attached to their Google account. It exposes a lot of data that you didn't realize you were sending to Google (including letter-by-letter entry of search terms/urls) and may give a newfound respect for Firefox's separation, whether you personally care enough to make the switch or not.

To my knowledge search history is opt-in (as opposed to opt-out). Reconfirmed this for my Google accounts and in fact it is not storing search history. Ofcourse Google may be tracking it on their end, but I assume very few services don't track, so that's a non-issue (at least for me). For anyone who wants to check, the url is: https://history.google.com/history/

Search history as presented to you may be opt-in, but what Google actually does with your data is unknowable.
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