10 ms·

I have actually started using firefox again recently, chrome has lost me due to how hard they (and Google as a company) are trying to push things on to people.

by malikNF 10y ago

I have actually started using firefox again recently, chrome has lost me due to how hard they (and Google as a company) are trying to push things on to people. Anyways, I am in love with the nightly build of ff and everyone should honestly give it atleast a week of their time to try it. The developer edition and the nightly build have some really interesting features for development out of the box and honestly helps make work easier. You do run in to the occasional error or two but for pre-release versions they are seriously stable. p.s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163 (Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014))

chimeracoder 10y ago
One thing to note - Nightly is compiled with certain debugging flags enabled, whereas Developer Edition is not. There is a slight performance hit, which is not always noticeable, but I mention it in case anybody tries Nightly and finds it slow.
- johnp_ 10y ago
  It should be noted that some of those features can be disabled via environment variables: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Benchmarking https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Benchmarking Specifically, I use those environment variables: JS_OPTION_USE_UNBOXED_ARRAYS=1 JSGC_DISABLE_POISONING=1 There's at least one other thing (async stack) that I'm aware of that may be tunable: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280819 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280819 edit: just figured out that that's "javascript.options.asyncstack", so I set it to disabled on nightly too. Fwiw, the unboxed objects bug is: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1153266 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1153266 edit: typedobj performance improvements visible at the bottom of https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=28&view=breakdown&suite=misc https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=28&view=breakdown&suite=mi... edit: removed MOZ_QUIET=1, as a source inspection reveals that it is only compiled #ifdef DEBUG.
hunterwerlla 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. I got sick of chrome's annoying scaling problems and switched back to firefox after many years. I like that firefox actually gives you a choice about everything, unlike chrome (flash will never touch my system ever again). Additionally, nightly is smoother than chrome for me. Once the nightly improvements hit stable, I'm going to start recommending Firefox to my non tech savy family members again.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  If you're going to start recommending software and hardware to your friends and family then please support them when they run into problems and help them revert to their original choice when they decide to switch back.
neurostimulant 10y ago
I also decided to use Firefox again recently. There are some slight annoyances, but this time instead of complaining about it I decided to get the source code and tinker with it. Building Firefox from source is surprisingly very easy. I think Mozilla did a great job making the source code and the build process accessible for developers not familiar with Firefox internals like me.
zbraniecki 10y ago
Hi all. Just wanted to tell you that a lot of people working on Firefox are here and we really appreciate your word of mouth support and feedback. This year is going to be huge for us as we're wrapping up the part about reducing technical debt and start gearing toward using our new superpowers to innovate. We need your help to stay relevant (market share), improve quality (report bugs, write test cases), and improve (lots of code in Firefox is easy to hack on as we move a lot of UI to HTML/JS - like devtools).
- Chirael 10y ago
  This is great to read/hear. I'll put my vote in for two things. 1) Performance, performance, performance; this is what originally caused me to use Chrome a lot more, the perception of quick-to-open tabs and snappy responsiveness. 2) Privacy; this is something Google almost by definition can't compete on, because their business model depends on providing something free in exchange for user data (the opposite of privacy). A third important consideration of course is "not crashing" or at least if there is a crash, containing it to the offending tab - this is why I'm very happy to read about the progress of multi-process Firefox! Keep up the great work guys.
  - smw 10y ago
    My only serious problem with firefox is that a single tab can lock up the entire application. Otherwise, the performance _and_ memory usage is fantastic. But that one issue is enough to keep me away from it most of the time.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      Multiple tab processes (aka "e10s-multi") should be shipping in Firefox 54 (now in the Firefox Nightly channel). The initial rollout of multi-process Firefox ("e10s") had one process for the browser UI and one process for all tabs (and a separate process for sandboxing Flash), so one bad tab could lock up all your tabs but your browser UI would still be responsive so you could close the bad tab. e10s-multi will increase the number of shared tab processes to two or more, balancing tab isolation vs memory overhead. In the meantime, you can test more tab processes by increasing the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref in about:config. I set my process count limit to 999. :)
Esau 10y ago
Chrome is run by a company that collects and sells the personal information of its users for advertising. Everyone needs to be weary of it. That said, Mozilla has also made some bone-headed decisions. Integrating Pocket, forcing a chat client, and advertising tiles really turned me off.
- angryasian 10y ago
  please explain how they sell personal information, as far as I know.. they allow companies to target attributes in aggregate and you may see an ad based on your behaviors. No company actually receives your personal information
  - ams6110 10y ago
    > No company actually receives your personal information Google receives it.
    - angryasian 10y ago
      so they aren't selling it
      - malikNF 10y ago
        Yes they are, they are offering the information they have about their users to their advertisers. If its bad or good is a debate for another time. But the fact is you are the product, your information is the product they are selling.
        mda 10y ago
        What kind of information do they offer to advertisers?
        niutech 10y ago
        Citation from Google: "We try to show you useful ads by using data collected from your devices, including your searches and location, websites and apps you have used, videos and ads you have seen, and personal information you have given us, such as your age range, gender, and topics of interest."
rb666 10y ago
You made me reinstall FF Nightly after some years of using Chrome. Must say, the speed is so much better than it used to be. I think I will try switch to FF entirely.
9248 10y ago
I really wish I could use Firefox! But I gave up after trying repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to force-enable hardware acceleration and bypass their 'video card blacklist'. From what I understand they check driver versions in a couple places on Windows, and disable hw acc. if the version is lower than X, or the versions they get, say from registry and dll's, are different, mismatch. Thing is, the matter is quite complicated on dual-gpu laptops (intel+dedicated) since manufacturers give us all kinds of custom drivers. Firefox will try to find a driver version, it won't find anything from Intel or AMD/NVidia, and it will default to software rendering. As a user I don't have the luxury to simply 'Update my graphics drivers', I have to live with whatever custom software I got from the manufacturer.
- zbraniecki 10y ago
  please, report the bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org and describe your problem. Thank you!

by malikNF 10y ago

chimeracoder 10y ago

One thing to note - Nightly is compiled with certain debugging flags enabled, whereas Developer Edition is not. There is a slight performance hit, which is not always noticeable, but I mention it in case anybody tries Nightly and finds it slow.

johnp_ 10y ago
It should be noted that some of those features can be disabled via environment variables: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Benchmarking https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Benchmarking Specifically, I use those environment variables: JS_OPTION_USE_UNBOXED_ARRAYS=1 JSGC_DISABLE_POISONING=1 There's at least one other thing (async stack) that I'm aware of that may be tunable: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280819 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280819 edit: just figured out that that's "javascript.options.asyncstack", so I set it to disabled on nightly too. Fwiw, the unboxed objects bug is: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1153266 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1153266 edit: typedobj performance improvements visible at the bottom of https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=28&view=breakdown&suite=misc https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=28&view=breakdown&suite=mi... edit: removed MOZ_QUIET=1, as a source inspection reveals that it is only compiled #ifdef DEBUG.

hunterwerlla 10y ago

I'm in the same boat. I got sick of chrome's annoying scaling problems and switched back to firefox after many years. I like that firefox actually gives you a choice about everything, unlike chrome (flash will never touch my system ever again). Additionally, nightly is smoother than chrome for me. Once the nightly improvements hit stable, I'm going to start recommending Firefox to my non tech savy family members again.

bitmapbrother 10y ago
If you're going to start recommending software and hardware to your friends and family then please support them when they run into problems and help them revert to their original choice when they decide to switch back.

neurostimulant 10y ago

I also decided to use Firefox again recently. There are some slight annoyances, but this time instead of complaining about it I decided to get the source code and tinker with it. Building Firefox from source is surprisingly very easy. I think Mozilla did a great job making the source code and the build process accessible for developers not familiar with Firefox internals like me.

zbraniecki 10y ago

Hi all. Just wanted to tell you that a lot of people working on Firefox are here and we really appreciate your word of mouth support and feedback. This year is going to be huge for us as we're wrapping up the part about reducing technical debt and start gearing toward using our new superpowers to innovate. We need your help to stay relevant (market share), improve quality (report bugs, write test cases), and improve (lots of code in Firefox is easy to hack on as we move a lot of UI to HTML/JS - like devtools).

Chirael 10y ago
This is great to read/hear. I'll put my vote in for two things. 1) Performance, performance, performance; this is what originally caused me to use Chrome a lot more, the perception of quick-to-open tabs and snappy responsiveness. 2) Privacy; this is something Google almost by definition can't compete on, because their business model depends on providing something free in exchange for user data (the opposite of privacy). A third important consideration of course is "not crashing" or at least if there is a crash, containing it to the offending tab - this is why I'm very happy to read about the progress of multi-process Firefox! Keep up the great work guys.
- smw 10y ago
  My only serious problem with firefox is that a single tab can lock up the entire application. Otherwise, the performance _and_ memory usage is fantastic. But that one issue is enough to keep me away from it most of the time.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Multiple tab processes (aka "e10s-multi") should be shipping in Firefox 54 (now in the Firefox Nightly channel). The initial rollout of multi-process Firefox ("e10s") had one process for the browser UI and one process for all tabs (and a separate process for sandboxing Flash), so one bad tab could lock up all your tabs but your browser UI would still be responsive so you could close the bad tab. e10s-multi will increase the number of shared tab processes to two or more, balancing tab isolation vs memory overhead. In the meantime, you can test more tab processes by increasing the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref in about:config. I set my process count limit to 999. :)

Esau 10y ago

Chrome is run by a company that collects and sells the personal information of its users for advertising. Everyone needs to be weary of it. That said, Mozilla has also made some bone-headed decisions. Integrating Pocket, forcing a chat client, and advertising tiles really turned me off.

angryasian 10y ago
please explain how they sell personal information, as far as I know.. they allow companies to target attributes in aggregate and you may see an ad based on your behaviors. No company actually receives your personal information
- ams6110 10y ago
  > No company actually receives your personal information Google receives it.
  - angryasian 10y ago
    so they aren't selling it
    - malikNF 10y ago
      Yes they are, they are offering the information they have about their users to their advertisers. If its bad or good is a debate for another time. But the fact is you are the product, your information is the product they are selling.
      - mda 10y ago
        What kind of information do they offer to advertisers?
        niutech 10y ago
        Citation from Google: "We try to show you useful ads by using data collected from your devices, including your searches and location, websites and apps you have used, videos and ads you have seen, and personal information you have given us, such as your age range, gender, and topics of interest."

rb666 10y ago

You made me reinstall FF Nightly after some years of using Chrome. Must say, the speed is so much better than it used to be. I think I will try switch to FF entirely.

9248 10y ago

I really wish I could use Firefox! But I gave up after trying repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to force-enable hardware acceleration and bypass their 'video card blacklist'. From what I understand they check driver versions in a couple places on Windows, and disable hw acc. if the version is lower than X, or the versions they get, say from registry and dll's, are different, mismatch. Thing is, the matter is quite complicated on dual-gpu laptops (intel+dedicated) since manufacturers give us all kinds of custom drivers. Firefox will try to find a driver version, it won't find anything from Intel or AMD/NVidia, and it will default to software rendering. As a user I don't have the luxury to simply 'Update my graphics drivers', I have to live with whatever custom software I got from the manufacturer.

zbraniecki 10y ago
please, report the bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org and describe your problem. Thank you!