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Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

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Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#541

Post by detaro »

logicallee wrote: post #537
detaro wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opened up Firefox too and ctrl-tabbed around a bit to cause it to actually load some pages (hundreds of open tabs too, similar uBlock setup), and Windows reports Chrome 5.3 GB Firefox 4.2 GB I couldn't find a tally of where Windows applies its "memory compression" logic, to be honest I don't even know what exactly it does , but let's assume it's some background task and it did more to Chrome than to Firefox since Chr…

Can you repeat without ctrl-tabbing? What was Firefox usage then?

Jumped to 950 MB, settled at ~800 MB. Deferred loading seems to do a lot, so I could imagine that different usage patterns make a big difference, but that would need a detailed look into how Firefox and Chrome manage memory for "stale" tabs. If I remember right Mozilla recently added improvements there, getting rid of their memory more aggressively?

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#542

Post by baobrain »

novaRom wrote: post #532
Rovanion wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just experiments. Neither Google Hangouts nor Meet worked in Firefox until the 22nd of May this year.

Google Flights is still not working in Firefox

What is not working? I have been using google flights to book trips for months without issues now. The only google services I've had some trouble with firefox are hangouts, and even that is fixed.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#543

Post by samplesizeme »

retSava wrote: post #481
radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

yeah, performance-wise I can't complain :) I'm a compulsive tab hoarder with about 400 open (admittedly, have to enable the "don't load until focused"-setting) on a 5 yo laptop with lots of other stuff running. No problem at all.

I am a tab hoarder as well and switched to Firefox last year for this reason. I have a 16GB MBP and I had to restart Chrome twice a day due to memory usage. The most I saw was 25GB of RAM used by Chrome (thank you solid state swap!)

When Quantum was released, I did a side by side comparison, opening the exact same tabs in each browser, switching browsers each day, manually keeping tabs in sync. Did this for about two weeks. For my use case at that time, Firefox's memory usage was 1/4 of Chrome's right off the bat. After a full day of use, Firefox's memory would double, while Chrome's would triple. Given the starting numbers, this meant at the end of the day, Firefox would be using 4-6GB of RAM, while Chrome's memory usage would be something like 16-24GB.

By the time I switched, I had already moved to Rambox for Hangouts and Gmail and stopped using Keep, in an effort to reduce Chrome memory usage. Rambox mem usage was about half of what I saw with the Chrome Hangouts plugin.

Although I use FF 90% of the time now, I still prefer Chrome, probably due to using it for so long. I especially prefer the Chrome bookmark manager. I really wish I could find a good way to keep bookmarks in sync between browsers! Any suggestions??

A big bonus has been the huge improvement in battery life. I had no idea how much I was losing to Chrome. Safari is supposed to be great for that, but plugins and the fact I'm an Android user means it doesn't offer me much.

The downside is that FF has made my tab hoarding worse. Still, despite doubling the number of tabs, mem usage is still half of what I saw with Chrome.

As for the unused memory is wasted memory argument (which may be tongue in cheek re: browsers), my browser is not my OS and I have a lot more going on than just a browser. 32GB MBP can't come soon enough.....or a touchpad experience on any other hardware+Linux experience+lots'o'RAM. 3 yrs ago, I finally gave in and tried Mac. Touchpad experience is probably the number 1 thing that keeps me here.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#544

Post by kroltan »

allengeorge wrote: post #533
kees99 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.

Bank of America claims Firefox is an “unsupported browser”, so, yeah :/

You'll be surprised how well it works by just switching the user-agent. It's more of a "too lazy to make sure it works" than a "actually doesn't work and Chrome should be used" situation.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#545

Post by wheaties »

kees99 wrote: post #478
radmuzom wrote: post #467

Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not becaus…

> website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.

There are many job postings, payment forms(!?) and financial websites that only work properly in Firefox. The best part is, for job postings, it's a great "not going to work there" filter.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#546

Post by alf-pogz »

siddboots wrote: post #250
alf-pogz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The act was definitely "doxing" any way you slice it. Folks at Mozilla actively chose to find a touchy topic, and expose it to cause the "bad culture fit" argument. I'm not here to start conspiracies, I'm simply stating that the entire event left me feeling that there are some big players at Mozilla that will use ethically gray areas to achieve their goals, and the people who indulged in that gray area won and are st…

It's not doxing by any definition I'm familiar with. Also, this sentence... > Folks at Mozilla actively chose to find a touchy topic, and expose it to cause the "bad culture fit" argument. You are insinuating that folks at Mozilla exploited his position on same sex marriage towards a hidden agenda of some kind. Another interpretation is that folks at Mozilla simply took issue with his position on same sex marriage.

I'm absolutely insinuating that, and the agenda was not hidden. They did not want Brendan Eich to be CEO. It was a hit job. https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-under-fire-inside-the-9-da...

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#547

Post by lambda »

Rovanion wrote: post #520
latexr wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it still a thing, Google itself is a major culprit of it. Seems like every new experiment they release is “best viewed” in — or worse, “requires” — Google Chrome.

Not just experiments. Neither Google Hangouts nor Meet worked in Firefox until the 22nd of May this year.

Oh, wow, Hangouts and Meet are working in Firefox now? I've been keeping Chrome running just for that for a couple of years, will be glad to stop having to do that.

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#548

Post by logicallee »

detaro wrote: post #541
logicallee wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you repeat without ctrl-tabbing? What was Firefox usage then?

Jumped to 950 MB, settled at ~800 MB. Deferred loading seems to do a lot, so I could imagine that different usage patterns make a big difference, but that would need a detailed look into how Firefox and Chrome manage memory for "stale" tabs. If I remember right Mozilla recently added improvements there, getting rid of their memory more aggressively?

So, under actual usage (not ctrl-tabbing around to aggressively force-load things) it is 950 MB vs 5.3 GB. (I imagine for a comparable number of tabs?)

------

EDIT in response to your reply:

Please do! I agree that logging would be interesting.

Do you know, does Firefox defer/discard tabs again if they do fully load but you don't use them for a long time? Or are the only deferred tabs, ones that you never looked at this session?

Re: Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

#549

Post by myfonj »

chme wrote: post #364
fencepost wrote: post #85

I haven't seen anyone mention this, but Firefox is my "daily driver" for almost all browsing, and is also locked down with uMatrix, uBlock Origin, DecentralEyes and Ghostery (though I could probably drop Ghostery without missing it). Chrome has uBlock Origin and a few other things but interferes with pages less. I keep a set of pages for some specific web apps (e.g. GMail, Google Calendar, task management, etc.) open…

I really love addons like 'Dark Background and Light Text', but they don't work with the 'New Tab', 'about:*' and addons.mozilla.org pages like most other addons in recent Firefox. For the 'New Tab' page I now use 'New Tab Tools' to set the background to black. But I am still unhappy that its not possible to set all other pages to a dark theme. Also that Vimium doesn't work with those pages is a shame as well. I hope…

You can still tweak Firefox internals but you have to resort to its native `userChrome.css` [0] since current extensions API does not allow access to every corner. Luckily you can use devtools for that [1] what makes it quite pleasant (at least you don't have to restart browser to see the change). You can use pre-made package ([2][3]) and toggle what you want.

[0] https://www.userchrome.org/ [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/73dvty/tutorial... [2] https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/ [3] https://github.com/Timvde/UserChrome-Tweaks

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