Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome • Hacker News Board

Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#1

Post by Tekker » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

I've used "Firefox" since Mosaic, then Netscape, then Mozilla Firefox. But, damn, more and more Firefox bogs down on me (and I have few, if any add-ons installed). Flash was locking it up, and I'm keeping it disabled unless I particularly want it on, and animated GIFs seem to bog it down. Othertimes it just seems to bog down - I assume a memory resource leak - and a restart fixes it. Sometimes not.

I'm loyal to the heir of the first browser, but frankly am ready to trade - same quandry when I had to abandon Borland for M$oft (but that was a business decision).

Alas, although I know it's open source, I'm not in a position to fix it myself.

Anyone else hanging in there, know what the bog down is, or what are people doing? I know I'm not the only one with this issue.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#2

Post by smt88 » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

How powerful is your hardware? What OS do you use? Do you have any irreplaceable extensions?

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#3

Post by a3n » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

I've had uBlockOrigin, Ghostery and Disconnect installed for awhile.

I recently went through Ghostery's and Disconnect's settings, choosing the most agressive blocking. I am amazed at how quiet my laptop runs.

I recently went to a Wired article, and uBO blocked 133 requests. That's 133 bits of content or code that my browser and cpu did not have to work on.

It may not be Firefox that's causing you trouble, it may just be that the Web sucks more with each passing day.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#4

Post by cdvonstinkpot » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

I switched from Firefox to Chrome about a year or so ago. No complaints so far. I'm not going to talk you out of it. I think it's a good idea to switch.

Multiple threading= 1 process per tab

A bit more lightweight than Firefox when both are loaded with plugins.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#5

Post by cdvonstinkpot » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #3

I've had uBlockOrigin, Ghostery and Disconnect installed for awhile. I recently went through Ghostery's and Disconnect's settings, choosing the most agressive blocking. I am amazed at how quiet my laptop runs. I recently went to a Wired article, and uBO blocked 133 requests. That's 133 bits of content or code that my browser and cpu did not have to work on. It may not be Firefox that's causing you trouble, it may jus…

uBO is cool- I'll be switching to it from AdBlock Plus straight away & start saving a few milliseconds on page load with its CPU usage being less.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#6

Post by Tekker » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #2

How powerful is your hardware? What OS do you use? Do you have any irreplaceable extensions?

I have an 8-gig mem 64-bit Windows 7. I run almost no extensions (usually just firebug and ghostery and web developer).

It's not any one thing; it just seems to bog down, and I can't noodle out why, except Firefox seems to be the common denomator ATM.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#7

Post by tmuir » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

Are there any extensions/add ons that exist for multiple browsers that allow you to actually measure browser performance on an arbitrary site? If you had such a thing, you could easily and quantitatively test the websites you visit most often, and figure out which browser best suited your specific use case.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#8

Post by tmuir » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #3

I've had uBlockOrigin, Ghostery and Disconnect installed for awhile. I recently went through Ghostery's and Disconnect's settings, choosing the most agressive blocking. I am amazed at how quiet my laptop runs. I recently went to a Wired article, and uBO blocked 133 requests. That's 133 bits of content or code that my browser and cpu did not have to work on. It may not be Firefox that's causing you trouble, it may jus…

Are these in addition to, or in lieu of Ad Block Plus?

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#9

Post by pki » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

Tekker wrote: post #6

smt88 wrote: post #2

How powerful is your hardware? What OS do you use? Do you have any irreplaceable extensions?

I have an 8-gig mem 64-bit Windows 7. I run almost no extensions (usually just firebug and ghostery and web developer). It's not any one thing; it just seems to bog down, and I can't noodle out why, except Firefox seems to be the common denomator ATM.

Firebug is one of the worst extensions I've seen in terms of performance. Uninstall it and see if there are changes.

Especially since devtools are native in Fx now.

Re: Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

#10

Post by CircleJerk » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

pki wrote: post #9

Tekker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an 8-gig mem 64-bit Windows 7. I run almost no extensions (usually just firebug and ghostery and web developer). It's not any one thing; it just seems to bog down, and I can't noodle out why, except Firefox seems to be the common denomator ATM.

Firebug is one of the worst extensions I've seen in terms of performance. Uninstall it and see if there are changes. Especially since devtools are native in Fx now.

Yeah, it's awful. I also stopped using in favor of the native FF tools. There's https://getfirebug.com/releases/firebug/3.0/ but it's way better to just make the switch.