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After being a Chrome user for several years, I've switched back to Firefox for the past two years or so and I'm really, really happy with it. Latest version do

After being a Chrome user for several years, I've switched back to Firefox for the past two years or so and I'm really, really happy with it. Latest version does multi-processing, e10s is finally here (though it might still get disabled by usage of certain add-ons, I remember I had to force it to stay enabled). On performance, in the past it felt sluggish, but now Firefox is fast and for my usage patterns it uses less memory than Chrome. And one thing I really love is the Awesome Bar, which is a pain point every single time I open Chrome. I have a lot of websites I need to return to and in Chrome I end up searching on Google far more than I should. I guess that's the biggest difference between Firefox and Chrome, as Mozilla does not feel obligated to shareholders to extract ads clicks from you (although I hope that whatever they do keeps them afloat). Also, tab management. I installed "Tab Center" from the Test Pilot and it's awesome. The experiment is now over unfortunately and the code itself for Tab Center isn't compatible with WebExtensions, but there's work going on to port it and that highlights that Firefox's WebExtensions will be more flexible than Chrome, if they aren't already. But in the end I actually care more about trusting my browser and its maker to protect my interests. I actually trust Google more than I trust other companies, but something feels very wrong for a company to have so much leverage on me. Which is why, as long as I have a choice, I'll always prefer Firefox over Chrome, or Safari, or Edge.

nothis 9y ago
You mention tab management. One of the main reasons I like Firefox is due to one, exemplary addon: Tab Mix Plus. It's the kind of tinker-y addon that lets you do almost anything that is typical for Firefox. With ad-blocking especially, I just can't trust Google to be fully supportive. I mean, who are we kidding? It's literally their business model.
Ntrails 9y ago
One thing I've been finding lately with firefox is that the Netflix website is abysmally slow. It lags on loading, goes unresponsive a lot etc etc. I've always watched twitch in Chrome (second browser, other screen, works fine) because firefox used to be bad. It's likely that I will start doing the same with Netflix.
- Certhas 9y ago
  Make some noise to Netflix then to make sure their Website works with Firefox.
- 0x27081990 9y ago
  If you can watch Netflix with Firefox, sounds like you're on Windows or macOS. The best browsers for Netflix are IE or Safari. Chrome and Firefox support up to 720p only.
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    You can watch Netflix with Firefox on Linux, but the first time you do, it has to download a plugin, and you have to reload the window.
baby 9y ago
Tree Style Tab is the biggest difference for me, if you haven't used it before you are probably slow to browse the web :)
- haddr 9y ago
  I like a lot the "tabs outliner" extension for Chrome. It's especially useful when you work with many tabs open at the same time, and want to preserve sessions, etc. Unfortunately there is now alternative to that in Firefox. Session Manager comes close, but is painful to use. So I'm still looking forward to such extension for Firefox, because honestly I prefer FF to Chrome for most of the things.
  - baby 9y ago
    Honestly nothing beats Tree Style Tab, have you tried it?
    - spiralx 9y ago
      Tab Outliner does all of that and more as far as I can tell. I'm certainly happy using it.
      - CWuestefeld 9y ago
        Perhaps the biggest reason I use Firefox is for Tree Style Tabs. I've tried to find something equivalent in Chrome. I installed Tab Outliner briefly, and honestly, I couldn't figure out what the heck it was trying to do. Maybe my mental capacity is too limited, but as far as I could tell it didn't get me one iota closer to my goal. What I've settled on, for the times when I need to use Chrome, is an external helper app called Sidewise. So Tab Outliner needs to do a LOT more to make its operation more discoverable if it wants more users.
        spiralx 9y ago
        It's certainly not obvious, I'd agree with that. It's a kind of a hybrid of tabs, sessions and bookmarks as far as I use it.
pmlnr 9y ago
> On performance, in the past it felt sluggish, but now Firefox is fast and for my usage patterns it uses less memory than Chrome. /me remembers how fast FF was compared to IE 'back in the days'.
- Suro 9y ago
  Well, bear in mind that websites was way simpler to render for a browser back then.
  - moosingin3space 9y ago
    Also keep in mind that Mozilla is researching better rendering methods through the Quantum project. The potential boost will be huge -- CSS styling and compositing will be faster, JS code that interacts with the DOM will be faster, etc. I'm very excited about Quantum CSS and Quantum DOM landing.
exDM69 9y ago
To me, the best feature of Firefox compared to Chromium (both out of the box, no extensions. not sure if there are extensions that could help) is the address bar. Firefox does a fuzzy search into your browsing history and if you visit the same sites often, the suggestions are quite good. Contrast this with Chrome, where the idea behind address bar user experience seems to be maximizing the number of Google searches done. But the one that really keeps me on Firefox is Vimperator. It's the best keyboard oriented browser UI in mainstream browsers. The extensions available for Chrome are nowhere near as good (last time I tried). The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. Chromium startup is near instantaneous.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  This is supposedly a lot better with Firefox 55, released this week :)
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Only for restoring lots of tabs.
    - govg 9y ago
      And by god is it fast now. I have in excess of 200 tabs open in various groups (RIP Tab groups), and didn't remember that my Firefox had updated. I open Firefox, see it startup instantly and my first reaction was that Firefox somehow forgot all the tabs that I had loaded and had just started a new window. Imagine my surprise when everything was just as I wanted!
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      Yeah, I have a strong hunch that a ten-second startup time is due to restoring lots of tabs.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  > The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. If you're the type with a lot of tabs open, that should improve a lot in the next few releases. https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.html https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.ht...
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
Not many people seem to be aware of this, but Firefox Mobile is just as great! You can run full extensions, just like on desktop.
- amq 9y ago
  I'm using Firefox on desktop, but Mobile scrolling is just awful even on a flagship smartphone. Just also tried nightly: the same.
- sirfz 9y ago
  I use Firefox Mobile as well but to be fair extension-support is flakey. A lot of times I install an extension that doesn't work and nothing indicates whether it does or doesn't. Also the extensions store doesn't indicate whether and extension is mobile friendly or not.
- yadenoyad 9y ago
  Oh man plugin support on mobile, this is a game changer for me. If only Firefox supported 2fa with an authenticator app I would have no hesitation using Firefox as my main browser.
mistermann 9y ago
> Latest version does multi-processing, e10s is finally here (though it might still get disabled by usage of certain add-ons, I remember I had to force it to stay enabled). Are multi-processing and e10s separate things? How do you forcefully enable it? 5/7 of my addins are listed as Legacy so I am still in single process mode, I am dying to try multi-process! EDIT: See here: https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/ https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/ EDIT 2: Doesn't seem to work, for me anyways. It appears to be enabled in about:config but I only see one process running in task manager. EDIT 3: I lied, it does work, 8 processes running now. ALSO: Does anyone know if tree-style tabs will be made compatible, or if there is something comparable that is?
sametmax 9y ago
+1. The perfs on Firefox have improved so much. And the new test pilots are awesome. I freaking love tab containers.

nothis 9y ago

You mention tab management. One of the main reasons I like Firefox is due to one, exemplary addon: Tab Mix Plus. It's the kind of tinker-y addon that lets you do almost anything that is typical for Firefox. With ad-blocking especially, I just can't trust Google to be fully supportive. I mean, who are we kidding? It's literally their business model.

Ntrails 9y ago

One thing I've been finding lately with firefox is that the Netflix website is abysmally slow. It lags on loading, goes unresponsive a lot etc etc. I've always watched twitch in Chrome (second browser, other screen, works fine) because firefox used to be bad. It's likely that I will start doing the same with Netflix.

Certhas 9y ago
Make some noise to Netflix then to make sure their Website works with Firefox.
0x27081990 9y ago
If you can watch Netflix with Firefox, sounds like you're on Windows or macOS. The best browsers for Netflix are IE or Safari. Chrome and Firefox support up to 720p only.
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  You can watch Netflix with Firefox on Linux, but the first time you do, it has to download a plugin, and you have to reload the window.

baby 9y ago

Tree Style Tab is the biggest difference for me, if you haven't used it before you are probably slow to browse the web :)

haddr 9y ago
I like a lot the "tabs outliner" extension for Chrome. It's especially useful when you work with many tabs open at the same time, and want to preserve sessions, etc. Unfortunately there is now alternative to that in Firefox. Session Manager comes close, but is painful to use. So I'm still looking forward to such extension for Firefox, because honestly I prefer FF to Chrome for most of the things.
- baby 9y ago
  Honestly nothing beats Tree Style Tab, have you tried it?
  - spiralx 9y ago
    Tab Outliner does all of that and more as far as I can tell. I'm certainly happy using it.
    - CWuestefeld 9y ago
      Perhaps the biggest reason I use Firefox is for Tree Style Tabs. I've tried to find something equivalent in Chrome. I installed Tab Outliner briefly, and honestly, I couldn't figure out what the heck it was trying to do. Maybe my mental capacity is too limited, but as far as I could tell it didn't get me one iota closer to my goal. What I've settled on, for the times when I need to use Chrome, is an external helper app called Sidewise. So Tab Outliner needs to do a LOT more to make its operation more discoverable if it wants more users.
      - spiralx 9y ago
        It's certainly not obvious, I'd agree with that. It's a kind of a hybrid of tabs, sessions and bookmarks as far as I use it.

pmlnr 9y ago

> On performance, in the past it felt sluggish, but now Firefox is fast and for my usage patterns it uses less memory than Chrome. /me remembers how fast FF was compared to IE 'back in the days'.

Suro 9y ago
Well, bear in mind that websites was way simpler to render for a browser back then.
- moosingin3space 9y ago
  Also keep in mind that Mozilla is researching better rendering methods through the Quantum project. The potential boost will be huge -- CSS styling and compositing will be faster, JS code that interacts with the DOM will be faster, etc. I'm very excited about Quantum CSS and Quantum DOM landing.

exDM69 9y ago

To me, the best feature of Firefox compared to Chromium (both out of the box, no extensions. not sure if there are extensions that could help) is the address bar. Firefox does a fuzzy search into your browsing history and if you visit the same sites often, the suggestions are quite good. Contrast this with Chrome, where the idea behind address bar user experience seems to be maximizing the number of Google searches done. But the one that really keeps me on Firefox is Vimperator. It's the best keyboard oriented browser UI in mainstream browsers. The extensions available for Chrome are nowhere near as good (last time I tried). The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. Chromium startup is near instantaneous.

Vinnl 9y ago
This is supposedly a lot better with Firefox 55, released this week :)
- jhasse 9y ago
  Only for restoring lots of tabs.
  - govg 9y ago
    And by god is it fast now. I have in excess of 200 tabs open in various groups (RIP Tab groups), and didn't remember that my Firefox had updated. I open Firefox, see it startup instantly and my first reaction was that Firefox somehow forgot all the tabs that I had loaded and had just started a new window. Imagine my surprise when everything was just as I wanted!
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    Yeah, I have a strong hunch that a ten-second startup time is due to restoring lots of tabs.
vanderZwan 9y ago
> The worst part of Firefox is the terribly long startup time. It can take up to 10 seconds after a reboot and takes quite a long time even with warm caches. If you're the type with a lot of tabs open, that should improve a lot in the next few releases. https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.html https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/index.ht...

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

Not many people seem to be aware of this, but Firefox Mobile is just as great! You can run full extensions, just like on desktop.

amq 9y ago
I'm using Firefox on desktop, but Mobile scrolling is just awful even on a flagship smartphone. Just also tried nightly: the same.
sirfz 9y ago
I use Firefox Mobile as well but to be fair extension-support is flakey. A lot of times I install an extension that doesn't work and nothing indicates whether it does or doesn't. Also the extensions store doesn't indicate whether and extension is mobile friendly or not.
yadenoyad 9y ago
Oh man plugin support on mobile, this is a game changer for me. If only Firefox supported 2fa with an authenticator app I would have no hesitation using Firefox as my main browser.

mistermann 9y ago

> Latest version does multi-processing, e10s is finally here (though it might still get disabled by usage of certain add-ons, I remember I had to force it to stay enabled). Are multi-processing and e10s separate things? How do you forcefully enable it? 5/7 of my addins are listed as Legacy so I am still in single process mode, I am dying to try multi-process! EDIT: See here: https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/ https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/ EDIT 2: Doesn't seem to work, for me anyways. It appears to be enabled in about:config but I only see one process running in task manager. EDIT 3: I lied, it does work, 8 processes running now. ALSO: Does anyone know if tree-style tabs will be made compatible, or if there is something comparable that is?

sametmax 9y ago

+1. The perfs on Firefox have improved so much. And the new test pilots are awesome. I freaking love tab containers.