5 ms·

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 ba

by 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...
- exDM69 9y ago
  > If you're the type with a lot of tabs open I'm not and I don't store/restore tabs on close, so that's not the case here. It's just Firefox + Vimperator + uBlock origin with about:blank as home page. I'm on Linux/X11 if that matters.
  - simias 9y ago
    That's odd, from SSD a cold firefox start takes a few seconds on my debian testing (using firefox 54 from apt). Maybe you're using a slow HDD?
    - exDM69 9y ago
      Nope. It's a lightning fast m.2 SSD. And warm caches don't help either.
      - vanderZwan 9y ago
        Are Vimperator + uBlock origin the only active add-ons? The Ubuntu Modifications one is known to cause slowdowns, for example. What happens if you try to completely reset the Firefox profile, and bring back the plugins you want?
        exDM69 9y ago
        Happens without any extensions. I'm on Arch Linux, not Ubuntu. I don't care enough to debug it further. Firefox is stable enough these days that restarting it isn't even a daily occurence. I have enough patience to wait that 10+ seconds, it's just a minor annoyance.
rdsubhas 9y ago
Especially when we know we have browsed a site before but forgot the URL and remember only some portions of the title. Firefox address bar is just more productive in simple things like re-opening frequent/historical sites.
cesarb 9y ago
In my experience, whenever Firefox takes more than a couple of seconds to start up, I know my Internet connection is acting up. It appears to be doing some sort of blocking network lookup on the startup path, and opens the intial window only after it succeeds or times out.
mijoharas 9y ago
> 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). Did you ever use vimium on chrome? It's part of what keeps me on Chrome, I remember I had a quick glance at Vimperator a fair while ago, but switched back to chrome as it was what I was used to. I keep wondering about trying again. Can you talk about the trade-offs between them?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
psychometry 9y ago
One thing that helps with Chrome's address bar is typing in a slash when searching for a site in your history. Suppose I visited this URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lognormal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lognormal_distribution Chrome might or might not suggest it when I start typing "logn...". But if I type "/logn" it's there immediately. They're tokenizing URLs in a stupid way, apparently.

by exDM69 9y ago

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...

exDM69 9y ago
> If you're the type with a lot of tabs open I'm not and I don't store/restore tabs on close, so that's not the case here. It's just Firefox + Vimperator + uBlock origin with about:blank as home page. I'm on Linux/X11 if that matters.
- simias 9y ago
  That's odd, from SSD a cold firefox start takes a few seconds on my debian testing (using firefox 54 from apt). Maybe you're using a slow HDD?
  - exDM69 9y ago
    Nope. It's a lightning fast m.2 SSD. And warm caches don't help either.
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      Are Vimperator + uBlock origin the only active add-ons? The Ubuntu Modifications one is known to cause slowdowns, for example. What happens if you try to completely reset the Firefox profile, and bring back the plugins you want?
      - exDM69 9y ago
        Happens without any extensions. I'm on Arch Linux, not Ubuntu. I don't care enough to debug it further. Firefox is stable enough these days that restarting it isn't even a daily occurence. I have enough patience to wait that 10+ seconds, it's just a minor annoyance.

rdsubhas 9y ago

Especially when we know we have browsed a site before but forgot the URL and remember only some portions of the title. Firefox address bar is just more productive in simple things like re-opening frequent/historical sites.

cesarb 9y ago

In my experience, whenever Firefox takes more than a couple of seconds to start up, I know my Internet connection is acting up. It appears to be doing some sort of blocking network lookup on the startup path, and opens the intial window only after it succeeds or times out.

mijoharas 9y ago

> 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). Did you ever use vimium on chrome? It's part of what keeps me on Chrome, I remember I had a quick glance at Vimperator a fair while ago, but switched back to chrome as it was what I was used to. I keep wondering about trying again. Can you talk about the trade-offs between them?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

psychometry 9y ago

One thing that helps with Chrome's address bar is typing in a slash when searching for a site in your history. Suppose I visited this URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lognormal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lognormal_distribution Chrome might or might not suggest it when I start typing "logn...". But if I type "/logn" it's there immediately. They're tokenizing URLs in a stupid way, apparently.