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IMO Firefox has just 2 things to beat Chrome: better add-ons (like treestyle tabs) and politics (made by Mozilla instead of an ads company). They are burning th

IMO Firefox has just 2 things to beat Chrome: better add-ons (like treestyle tabs) and politics (made by Mozilla instead of an ads company). They are burning the first one.

moron4hire 10y ago
Mozilla may not be an ads company, but they make the vast majority of their money from giving space to ads companies.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- gkya 10y ago
  Where's that space?
  - TAForObvReasons 10y ago
    Search companies -- formerly Google, now Yahoo and others -- pay Mozilla so that the browser defaults to their search engine. While it may not be a display ad, it's effectively funded by advertising.
  - sp332 10y ago
    From November 2014 to December 2015, they had ads in the new tab page.
darkengine 10y ago
If Firefox 56 is the last release to support Tree Style Tabs, it will be the last release of Firefox before I begrudgingly switch to Chromium.
- richardboegli 10y ago
  Try Pale Moon. It has Tree Style Tabs and will continue to even after Firefox gets rid of XUL
  - vocatus_gate 10y ago
    Been a happy Pale Moon user for a while. I hope the project keeps ticking on.
    - richardboegli 10y ago
      It is going strong and with Firefox removing XUL it is going to get stronger.
- sveme 10y ago
  Why? Does Chromium support Tree Style Tabs despite using WebExtensions? If that's the case, why would that not be possible for Firefox? Or would you switch to make a statement?
  - Spivak 10y ago
    It wouldn't really be to make a statement. Chromium is a better browser but because of the powerful add-ons Firefox's overall experience is better. Take that away and there's no real reason to stay with Firefox unless you like their license and Mozilla as a company.
    - eveningcoffee 10y ago
      There is still one major reason to stay with Firefox - it is not Chrome.
      - nine_k 10y ago
        Chromium isn't, either. But the extension flexibility was one of the major points for me. I'll have to pin Firefox to 56.x in my package manager.
        ecnahc515 10y ago
        That's a pretty terrible idea. Your web browser is probably the most important piece of software to keep up to date, besides the OS for security reasons.
        nine_k 10y ago
        Agreed. I need time to consider alternatives.
        kuschku 10y ago
        For me, I have no alternative but to pin Firefox. No browser on Linux can handle different DPI per screen. For Firefox, there's an addon implementing that today, but it won't work with WebExtensions. So I have to use today's Firefox - or I can't use any browser. Well, there's also the third option of using a magnifying glass to read websites.
- gdulli 10y ago
  I switched to Pale Moon and I've been happy with it.
- satysin 10y ago
  I switched to Chrome a year ago and while it was a little rough at the start I am very happy overall now. Shame but Firefox was just so much slower that it was annoying me. Plus Chrome syncs everything much better than Firefox ever did.
acjohnson55 10y ago
+1 to Treestyle tabs (buggy though it may be), and also Tab Mix Pro, which lets me clone tabs.
- chrismorgan 10y ago
  You can duplicate a tab in stock Firefox by Ctrl-clicking the reload button.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    Alternatively, you can duplicate a tab in stock Firefox by Ctrl+dragging the tab in the tab bar.
veeti 10y ago
https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/
- keehun 10y ago
  Tab Center has been my favorite tree-style tab add-on/plugin ever. None of the previous implementations come close to this for me.
  - hokkos 10y ago
    But this is not a tree, only a list, there is no nesting, they should really do an expert mode of tab center.
- Grue3 10y ago
  It's not a web extension and will not work with Firefox 57.
smnscu 10y ago
Firefox also seems slightly faster for me than Chrome (and Safari feels _a lot_ faster), but that's not enough to switch, since I'm so used to Chrome's sane UX and sync (and with a passphrase I'm pretty comfortable having that on Google's servers).
- beerbaron23 10y ago
  You are correct with your experiences, Firefox and Safari are now quite quick compared to Chrome, sometimes 3x as fast. If you are on a Macbook using battery power I highly suggest using Safari due to it's power consumption profile, your battery will last way longer. My latest benchmarks: https://www.dropbox.com/s/58doo8csebp9l62/Bench.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/58doo8csebp9l62/Bench.pdf?dl=0
JohnTHaller 10y ago
Only about 250,000 users use the tab modification extensions that people keep claiming is Firefox's only advantage out of 10s of millions of Firefox users. Addons that greatly alter Firefox's behavior are the main reason for crashes. And maintaining XUL is hampering Firefox future development.
- VoxPelli 10y ago
  There are plenty of add-ons that extend or alter the UI of tabs. There's eg. 780,000 users of Tab Mix Plus according to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
  - JohnTHaller 10y ago
    I forgot about TMP. Even so, that's still not a ton of users in terms of the total Firefox users. Plus, I'd wager a large percentage of those are TMP legacy users. Way back in the day, TMP was the only way to properly manage sessions and tabs. Firefox now has full session management and you can reload, pin, undo close, close other tabs, and move tabs around to your heart's content. Heck, the most recent review of the extension even says as much.
- sp332 10y ago
  But tabs-on-the-side is important enough that they are running an experiment with a first-party extension right now. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center It's gong to be a priority for the new extension model to support this kind of thing before FF57.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  What Percentage of users is that? I can't seem to find it, atm. If 250,000 = 1%, then sure, who cares. But if 250,000 = 50%, then that's a big deal
  - sp332 10y ago
    https://blog.mozilla.org/press/ataglance/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/ataglance/ says it's near 500,000,000. But while Firefox tries to keep the core browser lean, they have always catered to power users through the extension APIs.
Larrikin 10y ago
I'm extremely worried about Rikai-chan/sama. Rikaichan allows translation of Japanese words simply by hovering your mouse over. It works much better than entering words into an online dictionary, since nearly every free JE-EJ dictionary uses the same source, and if a conjugation isn't translatable it will cut the word off giving the meaning and then letting you easily highlight the conjugation to figure out the meaning of the two together. Its just much faster than using something like jisho.org if theres a lot of words in a text you don't know. Rikaisama makes Rikaichan even more powerful with a lot of extra features Everytime I've ever tried the similar plug-ins on Chrome they've all been terrible, missing words, missing conjugation, or just being slow in general. Its the first check I do every time I think about switching browsers. However with the new Electrolysis on Firefox its completely broken and it seems like the dev might not want to do a rewrite since the plugin works exactly how you would want it and has for a few years now, but especially not if the sandbox changes make the plugin impossible to work.
- delroth 10y ago
  I've been using Rikai-kun[1] on Chrome. It claims to be a port of Rikai-chan, I'm curious in which ways it's inferior (I have not tried the original Firefox addon). [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rikaikun/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rikaikun/jipdnfibh...
- ytugiuyghvk 10y ago
  Same here. Is the Lookupbar (Alt+Del) possible to do with WebExtensions? I think it would have to be recreated in the DOM and inserted into the web page.
  - ripdog 10y ago
    There's nothing difficult or complex (or unsupported) about inserting content into web pages. The main limitation of webextensions is that free-form UI modification is no longer possible, the UI can only be modded in specific, allowed ways.
    - 10y ago
ReverseCold 10y ago
Still waiting for a lightweight browser that works on Windows (Linux has bad battery life even after very very aggressive power optimization) and doesn't use 4gb RAM and 89% of my battery. If anyone can do that then I'll switch. We need "Safari" for Windows, but not edge.

IMO Firefox has just 2 things to beat Chrome: better add-ons (like treestyle tabs) and politics (made by Mozilla instead of an ads company). They are burning the first one.

moron4hire 10y ago

Mozilla may not be an ads company, but they make the vast majority of their money from giving space to ads companies.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gkya 10y ago
Where's that space?
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  Search companies -- formerly Google, now Yahoo and others -- pay Mozilla so that the browser defaults to their search engine. While it may not be a display ad, it's effectively funded by advertising.
- sp332 10y ago
  From November 2014 to December 2015, they had ads in the new tab page.

darkengine 10y ago

If Firefox 56 is the last release to support Tree Style Tabs, it will be the last release of Firefox before I begrudgingly switch to Chromium.

richardboegli 10y ago
Try Pale Moon. It has Tree Style Tabs and will continue to even after Firefox gets rid of XUL
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  Been a happy Pale Moon user for a while. I hope the project keeps ticking on.
  - richardboegli 10y ago
    It is going strong and with Firefox removing XUL it is going to get stronger.
sveme 10y ago
Why? Does Chromium support Tree Style Tabs despite using WebExtensions? If that's the case, why would that not be possible for Firefox? Or would you switch to make a statement?
- Spivak 10y ago
  It wouldn't really be to make a statement. Chromium is a better browser but because of the powerful add-ons Firefox's overall experience is better. Take that away and there's no real reason to stay with Firefox unless you like their license and Mozilla as a company.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    There is still one major reason to stay with Firefox - it is not Chrome.
    - nine_k 10y ago
      Chromium isn't, either. But the extension flexibility was one of the major points for me. I'll have to pin Firefox to 56.x in my package manager.
      - ecnahc515 10y ago
        That's a pretty terrible idea. Your web browser is probably the most important piece of software to keep up to date, besides the OS for security reasons.
        nine_k 10y ago
        Agreed. I need time to consider alternatives.
        kuschku 10y ago
        For me, I have no alternative but to pin Firefox. No browser on Linux can handle different DPI per screen. For Firefox, there's an addon implementing that today, but it won't work with WebExtensions. So I have to use today's Firefox - or I can't use any browser. Well, there's also the third option of using a magnifying glass to read websites.
gdulli 10y ago
I switched to Pale Moon and I've been happy with it.
satysin 10y ago
I switched to Chrome a year ago and while it was a little rough at the start I am very happy overall now. Shame but Firefox was just so much slower that it was annoying me. Plus Chrome syncs everything much better than Firefox ever did.

acjohnson55 10y ago

+1 to Treestyle tabs (buggy though it may be), and also Tab Mix Pro, which lets me clone tabs.

chrismorgan 10y ago
You can duplicate a tab in stock Firefox by Ctrl-clicking the reload button.
- kibwen 10y ago
  Alternatively, you can duplicate a tab in stock Firefox by Ctrl+dragging the tab in the tab bar.

veeti 10y ago

https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/

keehun 10y ago
Tab Center has been my favorite tree-style tab add-on/plugin ever. None of the previous implementations come close to this for me.
- hokkos 10y ago
  But this is not a tree, only a list, there is no nesting, they should really do an expert mode of tab center.
Grue3 10y ago
It's not a web extension and will not work with Firefox 57.

smnscu 10y ago

Firefox also seems slightly faster for me than Chrome (and Safari feels _a lot_ faster), but that's not enough to switch, since I'm so used to Chrome's sane UX and sync (and with a passphrase I'm pretty comfortable having that on Google's servers).

beerbaron23 10y ago
You are correct with your experiences, Firefox and Safari are now quite quick compared to Chrome, sometimes 3x as fast. If you are on a Macbook using battery power I highly suggest using Safari due to it's power consumption profile, your battery will last way longer. My latest benchmarks: https://www.dropbox.com/s/58doo8csebp9l62/Bench.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/58doo8csebp9l62/Bench.pdf?dl=0

JohnTHaller 10y ago

Only about 250,000 users use the tab modification extensions that people keep claiming is Firefox's only advantage out of 10s of millions of Firefox users. Addons that greatly alter Firefox's behavior are the main reason for crashes. And maintaining XUL is hampering Firefox future development.

VoxPelli 10y ago
There are plenty of add-ons that extend or alter the UI of tabs. There's eg. 780,000 users of Tab Mix Plus according to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  I forgot about TMP. Even so, that's still not a ton of users in terms of the total Firefox users. Plus, I'd wager a large percentage of those are TMP legacy users. Way back in the day, TMP was the only way to properly manage sessions and tabs. Firefox now has full session management and you can reload, pin, undo close, close other tabs, and move tabs around to your heart's content. Heck, the most recent review of the extension even says as much.
sp332 10y ago
But tabs-on-the-side is important enough that they are running an experiment with a first-party extension right now. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center It's gong to be a priority for the new extension model to support this kind of thing before FF57.
CaptSpify 10y ago
What Percentage of users is that? I can't seem to find it, atm. If 250,000 = 1%, then sure, who cares. But if 250,000 = 50%, then that's a big deal
- sp332 10y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/press/ataglance/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/ataglance/ says it's near 500,000,000. But while Firefox tries to keep the core browser lean, they have always catered to power users through the extension APIs.

Larrikin 10y ago

I'm extremely worried about Rikai-chan/sama. Rikaichan allows translation of Japanese words simply by hovering your mouse over. It works much better than entering words into an online dictionary, since nearly every free JE-EJ dictionary uses the same source, and if a conjugation isn't translatable it will cut the word off giving the meaning and then letting you easily highlight the conjugation to figure out the meaning of the two together. Its just much faster than using something like jisho.org if theres a lot of words in a text you don't know. Rikaisama makes Rikaichan even more powerful with a lot of extra features Everytime I've ever tried the similar plug-ins on Chrome they've all been terrible, missing words, missing conjugation, or just being slow in general. Its the first check I do every time I think about switching browsers. However with the new Electrolysis on Firefox its completely broken and it seems like the dev might not want to do a rewrite since the plugin works exactly how you would want it and has for a few years now, but especially not if the sandbox changes make the plugin impossible to work.

delroth 10y ago
I've been using Rikai-kun[1] on Chrome. It claims to be a port of Rikai-chan, I'm curious in which ways it's inferior (I have not tried the original Firefox addon). [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rikaikun/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rikaikun/jipdnfibh...
ytugiuyghvk 10y ago
Same here. Is the Lookupbar (Alt+Del) possible to do with WebExtensions? I think it would have to be recreated in the DOM and inserted into the web page.
- ripdog 10y ago
  There's nothing difficult or complex (or unsupported) about inserting content into web pages. The main limitation of webextensions is that free-form UI modification is no longer possible, the UI can only be modded in specific, allowed ways.
  - 10y ago

ReverseCold 10y ago

Still waiting for a lightweight browser that works on Windows (Linux has bad battery life even after very very aggressive power optimization) and doesn't use 4gb RAM and 89% of my battery. If anyone can do that then I'll switch. We need "Safari" for Windows, but not edge.