8 ms·

Honestly, as a firefox die-hard who finally gave up, all of those issues were dwarfed by the performance one. The only one I even bothered to config away was t

by Pxtl 9y ago

Honestly, as a firefox die-hard who finally gave up, all of those issues were dwarfed by the performance one. The only one I even bothered to config away was the search-engine change. I stopped using firefox because of performance. Nothing more, nothing less.

f4rker 9y ago
Exactly. Every now and then I try to switch back to ff but the performance just isn't there.
epoch1970 9y ago
It was the extension signing that caused me to move on. I had written several small, but useful, extensions for my own personal use. I knew they were harmless, yet Firefox made it difficult for me to actually use them. If I'm remembering this right, I think there was initially an about:config option for disabling the signature checks. But that was eventually removed from the stable releases. The workarounds were to waste my time getting the extensions signed, or to use some special unbranded build, or to use the Nightly or Developer Edition releases. None of those were acceptable to me. Then I learned about the planned WebExtensions changes, and knew it was time to move on. I'm aware of the security-related reasons that were used to justify such changes. But for me they ended up taking away the main benefits that Firefox offered, namely being easy to extend, and giving me the freedom to use the browser as I see fit.
- dallamaneni 9y ago
  Firefox developer edition allows using unsigned webextensions by toggling xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config
  - vetinari 9y ago
    Firefox developer edition is the former Aurora (development) channel. It is not the stable release channel.
    - dblohm7 9y ago
      FWIW, developer edition is now the Beta channel.
    - the8472 9y ago
      It's not labeled as stable, that does not mean it is unstable.
    - johnny22 9y ago
      You could use the unbranded builds. They build them specifically for your use case. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    waterfox allows unsigned extensions. It seems to me disabling the xpinstall.signatures.required setting has no effect anymore, at least the last time I tried using it, it had no effect.
- qovv 9y ago
  IMO it is really shortsighted to treat your best users and evangelists so poorly. This is the absolute creme de la creme of your user base- they should be pandered to, not locked out.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Mozilla seems to have gotten infected by the same paternalism that is riding the likes of Gnome into the ground.
Semaphor 9y ago
Same here. I read a bit about multi process having arrived, so I'm planning to give ff another try soon. But at least all the electrolysis pre release versions I tried ended up disappointing. It's a real shame, I'd love to switch away from chrome.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  have you tried vivaldi ?
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    It's crowded, there are way too many things I don't need. I prefer getting the flavor of feature I need by choosing an extension.
kleiba 9y ago
Something I could never quite understand. I'm using Firefox but occasionally run Chrome for a few minutes. I do have a couple of extensions installed in Firefox. To me, Chrome might be faster, or maybe not. But honestly, I couldn't care less: even if Firefox takes a second, or two or even three more to show me a page sometimes, so what? I mean, two seconds? I guess I can wait that long, even if I look at tens of websites each day (which I'm not even sure I do). If somebody gave me a Ferrari for free with the caveat that there's a guy sitting on the passengers seat who keeps track of where I'm going at all times, I guess I'd still keep driving my current car (hint: it's not a Ferrari). And before the downvote reflex sets in in some of you: I'm not saying that you should be like me. If you like Chrome, great, good for you! It's just that the speed difference to me personally has never been a good enough reason to switch. YMMV.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  The problem is that when you get more and more tabs going, Firefox's single-threadedness becomes more and more painful. When one misbehaving tab locks up (or crashes) the whole browser, that's bad.
  - callahad 9y ago
    This has been fixed. Firefox is now fully multi-process on all release channels.
    - jetpacktuxedo 9y ago
      Unless you have an add on that isn't compatible, like the one that ubuntu for some reason bundles with the browser out of the box.
      - j605 9y ago
        I hate it when people who know how to disable them don't do it and complain about it. It is really Ubuntu's fault for bundling an addon that is not compatible with multiprocesses.
monochromatic 9y ago
Firefox nowadays feels every bit as fast as Chrome, if not faster.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Not for me and definitely not on Linux, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 for example.
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Haven't tried it on Linux, just Windows.
  - josefx 9y ago
    Just run it in Wine (currently may not work).
    - jhasse 9y ago
      Most people will just use Chrome instead.
Narishma 9y ago
It must be something subjective or system-dependant then because I switched from Chrome to Firefox for that same reason.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  It is totally subjective. Except for the cases where it's accumulated cruft and dubious extensions (adblock plus for example).
ss64 9y ago
The problem Firefox had for a long time was the terrible Flash plugin combined with a lack of per-tab processes. That meant that a single flash element on one page would slow down the entire browser. I removed the flash plugin completely a couple of years ago and havent looked back.
michaelmrose 9y ago
This was the big part of why I dumped firefox. Others included pending depreciation of addon apis, screwy behavior with dark gtk themes and unreadable text, issues where video would straight on skip or freeze max headroom style, yahoo partnership, addon signing requirement, failure to add synced reading lists to desktop browser in favor of pushing pocket. In short screw you too mozilla.
math0ne 9y ago
Performance is really good with the new multi threaded implementation.
Endy 9y ago
As a fellow Firefox user (writing this on Firefox, btw), I've heard people complain about performance issues all the time with Firefox vs. Chrome... and I've never understood the problem. Firefox with ~20 addons starts up like a charm for me, loads every page I need in moments, and has no problem doing anything I need it to do. Chrome, on the other hand, gums up my machine to the point that just opening a Chromium-based browser usually ends with my machine frozen like an iceberg, me pulling the battery, booting into safe-mode, and uninstalling the product completely.
nolemurs 9y ago
Same here. I like the idea of Firefox. Every few months I reinstall it and try it for a day or two, and it's always just painfully slow compared to Chrome. In most other respects I actually prefer Firefox, but the other differences are just much less important to me. Ohh, and the Chrome dev tools are just better. So that helps. But if Firefox weren't noticeably slow I'd use it without hesitation.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  If you're willing to spend a bit of time on this, I'd really appreciate a list of at least some of the things that feel slow compared to Chrome when you try to use a current Firefox nightly. It's a lot easier to fix things we know about than things we don't know about. ;)

by Pxtl 9y ago

f4rker 9y ago

Exactly. Every now and then I try to switch back to ff but the performance just isn't there.

epoch1970 9y ago

It was the extension signing that caused me to move on. I had written several small, but useful, extensions for my own personal use. I knew they were harmless, yet Firefox made it difficult for me to actually use them. If I'm remembering this right, I think there was initially an about:config option for disabling the signature checks. But that was eventually removed from the stable releases. The workarounds were to waste my time getting the extensions signed, or to use some special unbranded build, or to use the Nightly or Developer Edition releases. None of those were acceptable to me. Then I learned about the planned WebExtensions changes, and knew it was time to move on. I'm aware of the security-related reasons that were used to justify such changes. But for me they ended up taking away the main benefits that Firefox offered, namely being easy to extend, and giving me the freedom to use the browser as I see fit.

dallamaneni 9y ago
Firefox developer edition allows using unsigned webextensions by toggling xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config
- vetinari 9y ago
  Firefox developer edition is the former Aurora (development) channel. It is not the stable release channel.
  - dblohm7 9y ago
    FWIW, developer edition is now the Beta channel.
  - the8472 9y ago
    It's not labeled as stable, that does not mean it is unstable.
  - johnny22 9y ago
    You could use the unbranded builds. They build them specifically for your use case. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  waterfox allows unsigned extensions. It seems to me disabling the xpinstall.signatures.required setting has no effect anymore, at least the last time I tried using it, it had no effect.
qovv 9y ago
IMO it is really shortsighted to treat your best users and evangelists so poorly. This is the absolute creme de la creme of your user base- they should be pandered to, not locked out.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Mozilla seems to have gotten infected by the same paternalism that is riding the likes of Gnome into the ground.

Semaphor 9y ago

Same here. I read a bit about multi process having arrived, so I'm planning to give ff another try soon. But at least all the electrolysis pre release versions I tried ended up disappointing. It's a real shame, I'd love to switch away from chrome.

bigbugbag 9y ago
have you tried vivaldi ?
- Semaphor 9y ago
  It's crowded, there are way too many things I don't need. I prefer getting the flavor of feature I need by choosing an extension.

kleiba 9y ago

Something I could never quite understand. I'm using Firefox but occasionally run Chrome for a few minutes. I do have a couple of extensions installed in Firefox. To me, Chrome might be faster, or maybe not. But honestly, I couldn't care less: even if Firefox takes a second, or two or even three more to show me a page sometimes, so what? I mean, two seconds? I guess I can wait that long, even if I look at tens of websites each day (which I'm not even sure I do). If somebody gave me a Ferrari for free with the caveat that there's a guy sitting on the passengers seat who keeps track of where I'm going at all times, I guess I'd still keep driving my current car (hint: it's not a Ferrari). And before the downvote reflex sets in in some of you: I'm not saying that you should be like me. If you like Chrome, great, good for you! It's just that the speed difference to me personally has never been a good enough reason to switch. YMMV.

Pxtl 9y ago
The problem is that when you get more and more tabs going, Firefox's single-threadedness becomes more and more painful. When one misbehaving tab locks up (or crashes) the whole browser, that's bad.
- callahad 9y ago
  This has been fixed. Firefox is now fully multi-process on all release channels.
  - jetpacktuxedo 9y ago
    Unless you have an add on that isn't compatible, like the one that ubuntu for some reason bundles with the browser out of the box.
    - j605 9y ago
      I hate it when people who know how to disable them don't do it and complain about it. It is really Ubuntu's fault for bundling an addon that is not compatible with multiprocesses.

monochromatic 9y ago

Firefox nowadays feels every bit as fast as Chrome, if not faster.

jhasse 9y ago
Not for me and definitely not on Linux, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 for example.
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Haven't tried it on Linux, just Windows.
- josefx 9y ago
  Just run it in Wine (currently may not work).
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Most people will just use Chrome instead.

Narishma 9y ago

It must be something subjective or system-dependant then because I switched from Chrome to Firefox for that same reason.

bigbugbag 9y ago
It is totally subjective. Except for the cases where it's accumulated cruft and dubious extensions (adblock plus for example).

ss64 9y ago

The problem Firefox had for a long time was the terrible Flash plugin combined with a lack of per-tab processes. That meant that a single flash element on one page would slow down the entire browser. I removed the flash plugin completely a couple of years ago and havent looked back.

michaelmrose 9y ago

This was the big part of why I dumped firefox. Others included pending depreciation of addon apis, screwy behavior with dark gtk themes and unreadable text, issues where video would straight on skip or freeze max headroom style, yahoo partnership, addon signing requirement, failure to add synced reading lists to desktop browser in favor of pushing pocket. In short screw you too mozilla.

math0ne 9y ago

Performance is really good with the new multi threaded implementation.

Endy 9y ago

As a fellow Firefox user (writing this on Firefox, btw), I've heard people complain about performance issues all the time with Firefox vs. Chrome... and I've never understood the problem. Firefox with ~20 addons starts up like a charm for me, loads every page I need in moments, and has no problem doing anything I need it to do. Chrome, on the other hand, gums up my machine to the point that just opening a Chromium-based browser usually ends with my machine frozen like an iceberg, me pulling the battery, booting into safe-mode, and uninstalling the product completely.

nolemurs 9y ago

Same here. I like the idea of Firefox. Every few months I reinstall it and try it for a day or two, and it's always just painfully slow compared to Chrome. In most other respects I actually prefer Firefox, but the other differences are just much less important to me. Ohh, and the Chrome dev tools are just better. So that helps. But if Firefox weren't noticeably slow I'd use it without hesitation.

bzbarsky 9y ago
If you're willing to spend a bit of time on this, I'd really appreciate a list of at least some of the things that feel slow compared to Chrome when you try to use a current Firefox nightly. It's a lot easier to fix things we know about than things we don't know about. ;)