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Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

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Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#441

Post by rrishi »

throwaway2056 wrote: post #150

> Some really cool observations in first 30 mins of using it : > 1. It opens websites really quickly, much faster than Chrome This is the same thing everyone says whatever new browser they move to. Once some one hoards 100 tabs it becomes slow. (Again,I am not against firefox or chrome - just meaning that everything is quick initially - somehow becomes slow in a few weeks)

Yea I put that in as a disclaimer that these are my first impressions after a quick 30 min session. I'll see how it feels after month or two

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#442

Post by michaelmrose »

charcircuit wrote: post #388
Idiot_in_Vain wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"objectively better performance" What are yon talking about? How many people browse the web on an i9 13900K with 32GB RAM? Try a 5 year old laptop with 4GB RAM and you'll see a completely different picture - Firefox is far better at managing limited memory. Also on Android (probably on iPhones as well) Chrome doesn't allow installation of ad-blockers - making it 10x slower than FF with uBlock Origin.

>Chrome doesn't allow installation of ad-blockers That is not accurate. The Android version of Chrome does not support web extensions at all. It's not like Google has a switch somewhere that they can flip and make web extententions work. Supporting web extensions on Android would be a brand new feature and would need significant development time. Not even Firefox properly supports web extensions on Android. They trie…

If I say your chevy doesn't allow you to travel the friendly skies in your car this covers both lacking wings and a lock on the throttle keeping you from achieving sufficient lift. They chose not to port that pre-existing feature from desktop chrome when they built mobile chrome and I think arguably for an ad company not supporting ad blockers is a feature.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#443

Post by rrishi »

readingnews wrote: post #217

I use firefox a lot. When I have to build a PC / workstation for grad-students or labs, I install linux, and the distro I use has Firefox by default and no chrome installed. The number one complaint / request I receive when I build a PC / workstation for the grad-students after they get it? Can you please install Chrome? When I ask them... they have not even tried Firefox. Chrome is all they know, and therefore they…

Reminds me of the meme that the only thing people search on Internet Explorer is "download Chrome".

I hope some of them give FF a fair chance.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#444

Post by nfriedly »

If you use Android, Firefox on Android is also really nice because it can sync with your desktop and also has about a dozen extensions (ublock origin, dark reader, etc.)[1].

And then Iceraven[2] is even better, because it's just Firefox for Android, but with several hundred extensions enabled and a few other annoyances fixed.

(A few years ago all extensions were enabled on Firefox on Android, but a few didn't work so they decided to limit it to a very short list of allowed ones. And then they let that list stagnate for years. Kind of a dick move IMO.)

If you use iOS, then "Firefox" is really just a skin on Safari, so no extensions (this is entirely Apple's fault), but the sync features work, so that's something if you use Windows or Linux.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re...

[2]: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#445

Post by shafyy »

rrishi wrote: post #436
shafyy wrote: post #95

I also use Firefox as my main daily driver and have been for 5 years or so. Recently I started trialing Arc ( https://arc.net/ ) and it's interesting. They try to be quirky and have a bit of a different approach. What I like is that they also have the idea of different profiles (like Firefox Multi-account Containers) built in. I'm not 100% convinced of Arc yet, but it's good enough for my secondary browser (also for…

I am definitely interested in giving Arc a try after reading about it in different parts of the interwebz. However, I haven't received an invite despite being on the list for close to a month.

I can send you one if you email me at canolcer@hey.com

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#448

Post by hojjat12000 »

SilasX wrote: post #353
lol768 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing actually substantive about it. It doesn't feel like it belongs on HN. Most of the comments on every new Firefox release post are just as bad and have nothing to do with the actual release (folks whining about how their incredibly-niche use-case isn't supported anymore which breaks their workflow etc.), so in some ways it's nice to see something positive (which I would wager is more representative of…

By coincidence, just this morning I had a panic because I tried to close FF by closing the only window (which is something I need to do periodically because memory usage will build up over time), and I thought I had lost the tabs because when I opened it back up, they were gone with no way to restore. Apparently the behavior had changed so that closing the last window no longer closes FF, but just that window a la Sk…

I also suggest using Tab Session Manager. Sometimes I save a session and close everything and start working on a different project, but I know I can go back to my previous session and continue the previous project. I'm not afraid of losing any tabs because it also has an autosave.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#449

Post by aidenn0 »

rrishi wrote: post #59
loa_in_ wrote: post #13

I love Firefox but some JS heavy demos etc. just don't work fast enough. I hate that I know exactly why. It's because they were only ever tested on Chrome during development.

Interesting, I haven't run into it as upto now and I was checking some pretty cool and intense CodePens earlier. I'll look into some threeJS demos to see how it goes (ex. https://bruno-simon.com/ ). Are there any other specific JS demos you've had a bad experience with?

Doppio (JVM implemented in JS) is absurdly slower for running java programs in Firefox compared to Chrome.

Re: Tell HN: Firefox Is an awesome browser right now

#450

Post by chronial »

jodrellblank wrote: post #361
chronial wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not that I haven't tested, it's that FireFox just isn't as fast as Edge. Only in this one specific case. You don't know the other cases. What you do is write code and check if it's fast enough in Chrome. If it's not you change your code. You never check if it's fast in Firefox instead and then go on with your day, saying "well chrome's just slow".

> " You don't know the other cases. " Why would I care about the other cases? It's no use to me if FireFox is really fast at caching if I'm not using caching. > " What you do is write code and check if it's fast enough in Chrome. If it's not you change your code. " I can't change my code, it's at the limit of (my understanding of JavaScript/web performance) crossed with (how much work time I can spend developing this…

> Why would I care about the other cases?

Because you talk about the other cases when you make general statements like:

> it's that FireFox just isn't as fast as Edge.

> I can't change my code,

I wasn't suggesting you change anything about your code. Remember, the context of this conversation is this Statement by GP:

> I hate that I know exactly why. It's because they were only ever tested on Chrome during development.

The reality is that Firefox has a tiny market share at this point, so it is questionable how much time should be invested into optimizing pages to make them fast on Firefox. But that is a problem with Firefox's market position, not technology.

My point was that when code is slow in Chrome, you change it and never notice whether Firefox would have been faster in those cases. You only test code that is sufficiently fast in Chrome in Firefox. Thus, you don't usually see the cases where Firefox is faster than Chrome.

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