18 ms·

I was extremely skeptical of all the changes they were doing - I said it myself 100 times, "they're just building a Chrome clone, they're killing all the featur

I was extremely skeptical of all the changes they were doing - I said it myself 100 times, "they're just building a Chrome clone, they're killing all the features I like in favor of speed". But here I am, running Nightly because holy shit this thing flies. Their work has paid off and they're not even done yet. Webrender is coming, it's not quite stable enough for daily use yet (mostly just graphics glitching and integration performance issues as far as I could see), but there's a lot of work being done and it's only getting better. Their whole "Project Quantum" eliminated the UI performance issues that used to plague the browser and they're improving security sandboxing all the time. To those who loved the power and control like myself, they still offer a ridiculous level of configuration flexibility and extension APIs - while no longer as powerful as they were - are still better than other browsers on the market today.

Sideloader 9y ago
And FF Developer Edition still lets you install unsigned extensions.
- earenndil 9y ago
  Actually, in stock chrome, it's much easier to install 3rd-party extensions than in stock ff.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Unless you are on Windows, there Chrome makes them impossible.
    - dannyw 9y ago
      No, you just load an unpacked extension in developer mode. Hard but not impossible
      - kuschku 9y ago
        That’s removed on every restart of the browser on Windows nowadays.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  waterfox has been doing since firefox stopped doing it, actually waterfox is doing right everything firefox does wrong: Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015) Removed Pocket Removed Telemetry Removed data collection Removed startup profiling Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins Allow running of unsigned extensions Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page Addition of Duplicate Tab option Locale selector in about:preferences > General https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
teleproto 9y ago
One wonders why all the UI issues weren't solved long ago. Good that they're fixing them now, but what were they waiting for to decide to do it? (Rendering performance is a separate topic, that's been waiting on rust/servo.)
- craftyguy 9y ago
  One might argue because they were "distracted" with making a phone OS and other endeavors.
  - 482794793792894 9y ago
    Yeah, but that's nonsense that bad journalists write or Mozilla marketing people say, because it's more understandable for normal readers and makes it more credible that things will change. The truth is that they were in a dilemma situation where they had to choose between not killing all extensions or fixing performance by introducing a multiprocess architecture (which required breaking all extensions). So, the first thing they did was to simply wait. The performance issues were not that bad yet, so it just didn't yet weigh up to kill all extensions. Eventually they started work on the multiprocess architecture. That was around 2012, if I remember correctly. They've been doing that in the background without visible results for the public for a long time. It's considered the biggest architectural change that Firefox ever went through, so yeah, that just takes time. Cleaning up technical debt that Chrome never had. And then they also figured, if they already break all extensions, they should also switch to a new extension API in the same breath (because the old one has had big problems for as long as its existed). So, then they implemented that, too, in the background, in parallel, just to be able to throw it all on the table one day, so that extension authors would only have to rewrite their stuff once.
    - kibwen 9y ago
      If this is referring to Electrolysis, that has been in stable Firefox for about a year now, and it was an initiative whose planning began in 2009. Seven years from inception to delivery is a long time, and indeed was largely attributable to trying to find ways to avoid breaking every extension in the universe, and then being forced to break every extension anyway, and then laboriously fixing up all the broken extensions over a very long period. After such a grueling task I don't blame them for coming to the painful conclusion that Firefox simply can't keep pace with other browsers while maintaining the all-pervasive legacy extension system, especially since Electrolysis was just a first tentative step towards effective multiprocessing. Indeed, I'm one of the people who has suffered from losing legacy Firefox extensions (find me a substitute for LeechBlock, please!), but I can see how much of a burden it was for the developers to compete on performance and security, which I value more. I'm hopeful that Firefox will continue to add sane extension APIs to help close the gap with what was previously possible without regressing to the old quagmire. Fingers crossed, but they've done well delivering so far with 57.
hdhzy 9y ago
Not to mention Firefox for Android that supports extensions (uBlock etc.).
- ATsch 9y ago
  Unfortunately, for me at least, it's not a viable option. Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome. Plus, googles questionable business practice of embedding chrome into many apps, while making opening links very fast, adds another three clicks to someone not using chrome.
  - eldridgea 9y ago
    I use the Brave browser to address this. It's based on Chromium with built in features based on Privacy Badger and HTTPS everywhere. It also replaces "Chrome view" so that if you click a link from an app and it opens up with the app, you're still getting the privacy features. And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      Hmm, you're saying apps use Brave instead of Chrome? That'd be amazing. I mean, you could block ads in apps that way. How does one enable that? > And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android. The point of the article is that you'll be able to have a quick experience with Android, without using that one tracker called Google.
  - kibwen 9y ago
    > Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome. Note that none of the Quantum work has been turned on for mobile Firefox yet. I hear it will be coming online in nightly this cycle, targeting Firefox 58.
    - Manishearth 9y ago
      This is incorrect. The Quantum Flow work affects mobile Firefox. The thing that is not on mobile Firefox is Stylo.
gotofritz 9y ago
Even if "they were just building a Chrome clone", it would still be valuable because of the privacy concerns
- MBCook 9y ago
  If they could only get near-Chrome speeds with significantly better battery impact that would also be a huge win.
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    Servo's multi threading actually improves battery life. Not sure how that translates to Firefox.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Right, and even if its latency is, say 1.5X that of Chrome(1), it's still better, for the same reason. (1) Though I'm sure it's better than that.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    That's why I've kept using it despite the slowness, but it's certainly great that now the lag is 0.9x that of Chrome!
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  what do you mean privacy concerns ? firefox is far from being a privacy browser outside of marketing. Also chrome has had privacy oriented counterpart since the early days such as srware iron[1]. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron
kkylin 9y ago
I'm not even running Nightly, just switched to 57 beta. It's a big improvement on 55 & 56 (which already felt faster than older versions).
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  They broke something in the latest nightlies, my fans become really loud when I open it for a while (high CPU usage). You're better off in beta right now until they fix it.
agumonkey 9y ago
The amount of work, the extent for how long they've been doing so, all relative to the funding they got.. it's even painful to think about. Chrome shadowed them overnight, had Google infinite wallet and started from scratch. Mozilla became the old slug.. Since then they got Rust off ground, servo yielding good fruits, firefox cool n quiet. Once again kudos.
- jldugger 9y ago
  When you consider where the funding they do have comes from, it's not surprising it happened. Especially with Bing / Yahoo starting to bid up traffic acquisition at the time, it's a strategic no-brainer.
- nextos 9y ago
  Firefox beta is very nice. My only (big) regret is that APIs that make Vimperator work are getting phased out. I can't live without Vimperator.
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    Or VideoDownloadHelper, or DownThemAll! :-( That said my dev edition self-updated last night and... holy shit, the new Firefox flies!
    - kuzimoto 9y ago
      Not sure what you're downloading, but have you ever given youtube-dl (https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) a try? It's got support for tons of other sites than just YouTube. It doesn't have a GUI, but it's pretty simple to use.
      - disillusioned1 9y ago
        youtube-dl-gui (https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/ https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/) is a cross-platform GUI for youtube-dl. It works well for me.
themihai 9y ago
After years of Chrome I'm back on Firefox(beta).
lomnakkus 9y ago
The long game, man. The long game. It can be devastating. (Mind you, Chrome/Webkit did a similar thing 5-10 years ago wrt. JS performance. Basically, this is the good kind of back-and-forth competition we're seeing.)
JoBrad 9y ago
You're not lying - I just downloaded it, and it is crazy fast. GMail (maybe not the best metric, but an important one for me) loads about twice as fast as in Chrome, and scrolling has no stuttering at all, even on very long pages. I may actually make the switch.
- criddell 9y ago
  I was actually thinking about switching to Chrome because of GMail (or rather Inbox). When I open Inbox in Firefox, it can take 20 to 30 seconds for the cursor to stop spinning and I have a 300 Mbps connection.
  - andrew3726 9y ago
    on which firefox version? have you tried nightly?
    - rhelmer 9y ago
      The first Quantum release (57) is now on Beta, so if you want something a little more stable than Nightly it's a solid choice. It's always a good idea to back up your profile first (where your bookmarks/passwords/etc. live), especially when downgrading: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/kb/back-and-restore-information-...
    - pivotal 9y ago
      I've been running Nightly and experienced the same thing with inbox. If I attempt to interact with it before fully loaded, inbox will freeze up for minutes at a time. Love everything else about nightly, this is my biggest issue.
      - mconley 9y ago
        Hi! Firefox engineer here, and I want to understand why your Firefox is misbehaving. Would you be willing to provide us a performance profile? Instructions are here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Reporting_a_Performance_Problem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance... Feel free to email it to me if you don't want to post the link publicly. I'm mconley at mozilla dot com.
mshenfield 9y ago
I felt guilty choosing Chrome over Firefox, but it was just so much damn faster. Writing from Nightly now, glad that I don't have to sacrifice performance to switch over.
rqs 9y ago
A Chrome clone? How that opinion came out of you?
- dannyw 9y ago
  Not GP, but I imagine he is referring to the use of Chrome’s extension API, Chrome’s PDF viewer instead of PDF.js, etc.
tomxor 9y ago
Just chiming in... I knew they were doing major replacements in parts of their engine but it started to become observably and blatantly obvious to me when doing cross browser testing. That thing makes chrome look like a lawnmower, it renders CSS with ease - here's hoping the reset of the browser gets the love it needs to bring it all together.
bigbugbag 9y ago
It flies towards the trash can. It could be fast as lightning it would a fast as lightning piece of crap without the couple dozen extensions I had to add to restore the features they removed, remove the unwanted change they made and just to add the basic but missing features. I've moved to waterfox which offers support for the legacy addons and this move actually fixed a few of the annoying bugs I had with firefox. Among which speed was not one.
kumarvvr 9y ago
It's truly awesome. Overtime I associated FF with hung pages and poor performance but stuck to it just to get away from Google software. Am really happy with FF 57 (Quantum). It's really really good. BTW, also using DDG for search, Outlook for email.
lithos 9y ago
No worries. Faster browsers just mean that web developers can put more stuff in web pages, so everything will be back to normal.

Sideloader 9y ago

And FF Developer Edition still lets you install unsigned extensions.

earenndil 9y ago
Actually, in stock chrome, it's much easier to install 3rd-party extensions than in stock ff.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Unless you are on Windows, there Chrome makes them impossible.
  - dannyw 9y ago
    No, you just load an unpacked extension in developer mode. Hard but not impossible
    - kuschku 9y ago
      That’s removed on every restart of the browser on Windows nowadays.
bigbugbag 9y ago
waterfox has been doing since firefox stopped doing it, actually waterfox is doing right everything firefox does wrong: Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015) Removed Pocket Removed Telemetry Removed data collection Removed startup profiling Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins Allow running of unsigned extensions Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page Addition of Duplicate Tab option Locale selector in about:preferences > General https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

teleproto 9y ago

One wonders why all the UI issues weren't solved long ago. Good that they're fixing them now, but what were they waiting for to decide to do it? (Rendering performance is a separate topic, that's been waiting on rust/servo.)

craftyguy 9y ago
One might argue because they were "distracted" with making a phone OS and other endeavors.
- 482794793792894 9y ago
  Yeah, but that's nonsense that bad journalists write or Mozilla marketing people say, because it's more understandable for normal readers and makes it more credible that things will change. The truth is that they were in a dilemma situation where they had to choose between not killing all extensions or fixing performance by introducing a multiprocess architecture (which required breaking all extensions). So, the first thing they did was to simply wait. The performance issues were not that bad yet, so it just didn't yet weigh up to kill all extensions. Eventually they started work on the multiprocess architecture. That was around 2012, if I remember correctly. They've been doing that in the background without visible results for the public for a long time. It's considered the biggest architectural change that Firefox ever went through, so yeah, that just takes time. Cleaning up technical debt that Chrome never had. And then they also figured, if they already break all extensions, they should also switch to a new extension API in the same breath (because the old one has had big problems for as long as its existed). So, then they implemented that, too, in the background, in parallel, just to be able to throw it all on the table one day, so that extension authors would only have to rewrite their stuff once.
  - kibwen 9y ago
    If this is referring to Electrolysis, that has been in stable Firefox for about a year now, and it was an initiative whose planning began in 2009. Seven years from inception to delivery is a long time, and indeed was largely attributable to trying to find ways to avoid breaking every extension in the universe, and then being forced to break every extension anyway, and then laboriously fixing up all the broken extensions over a very long period. After such a grueling task I don't blame them for coming to the painful conclusion that Firefox simply can't keep pace with other browsers while maintaining the all-pervasive legacy extension system, especially since Electrolysis was just a first tentative step towards effective multiprocessing. Indeed, I'm one of the people who has suffered from losing legacy Firefox extensions (find me a substitute for LeechBlock, please!), but I can see how much of a burden it was for the developers to compete on performance and security, which I value more. I'm hopeful that Firefox will continue to add sane extension APIs to help close the gap with what was previously possible without regressing to the old quagmire. Fingers crossed, but they've done well delivering so far with 57.

hdhzy 9y ago

Not to mention Firefox for Android that supports extensions (uBlock etc.).

ATsch 9y ago
Unfortunately, for me at least, it's not a viable option. Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome. Plus, googles questionable business practice of embedding chrome into many apps, while making opening links very fast, adds another three clicks to someone not using chrome.
- eldridgea 9y ago
  I use the Brave browser to address this. It's based on Chromium with built in features based on Privacy Badger and HTTPS everywhere. It also replaces "Chrome view" so that if you click a link from an app and it opens up with the app, you're still getting the privacy features. And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    Hmm, you're saying apps use Brave instead of Chrome? That'd be amazing. I mean, you could block ads in apps that way. How does one enable that? > And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android. The point of the article is that you'll be able to have a quick experience with Android, without using that one tracker called Google.
- kibwen 9y ago
  > Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome. Note that none of the Quantum work has been turned on for mobile Firefox yet. I hear it will be coming online in nightly this cycle, targeting Firefox 58.
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    This is incorrect. The Quantum Flow work affects mobile Firefox. The thing that is not on mobile Firefox is Stylo.

gotofritz 9y ago

Even if "they were just building a Chrome clone", it would still be valuable because of the privacy concerns

MBCook 9y ago
If they could only get near-Chrome speeds with significantly better battery impact that would also be a huge win.
- Ygg2 9y ago
  Servo's multi threading actually improves battery life. Not sure how that translates to Firefox.
rdiddly 9y ago
Right, and even if its latency is, say 1.5X that of Chrome(1), it's still better, for the same reason. (1) Though I'm sure it's better than that.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  That's why I've kept using it despite the slowness, but it's certainly great that now the lag is 0.9x that of Chrome!
bigbugbag 9y ago
what do you mean privacy concerns ? firefox is far from being a privacy browser outside of marketing. Also chrome has had privacy oriented counterpart since the early days such as srware iron[1]. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron

kkylin 9y ago

I'm not even running Nightly, just switched to 57 beta. It's a big improvement on 55 & 56 (which already felt faster than older versions).

ReverseCold 9y ago
They broke something in the latest nightlies, my fans become really loud when I open it for a while (high CPU usage). You're better off in beta right now until they fix it.

agumonkey 9y ago

The amount of work, the extent for how long they've been doing so, all relative to the funding they got.. it's even painful to think about. Chrome shadowed them overnight, had Google infinite wallet and started from scratch. Mozilla became the old slug.. Since then they got Rust off ground, servo yielding good fruits, firefox cool n quiet. Once again kudos.

jldugger 9y ago
When you consider where the funding they do have comes from, it's not surprising it happened. Especially with Bing / Yahoo starting to bid up traffic acquisition at the time, it's a strategic no-brainer.
nextos 9y ago
Firefox beta is very nice. My only (big) regret is that APIs that make Vimperator work are getting phased out. I can't live without Vimperator.
- tomc1985 9y ago
  Or VideoDownloadHelper, or DownThemAll! :-( That said my dev edition self-updated last night and... holy shit, the new Firefox flies!
  - kuzimoto 9y ago
    Not sure what you're downloading, but have you ever given youtube-dl (https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) a try? It's got support for tons of other sites than just YouTube. It doesn't have a GUI, but it's pretty simple to use.
    - disillusioned1 9y ago
      youtube-dl-gui (https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/ https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/) is a cross-platform GUI for youtube-dl. It works well for me.

themihai 9y ago

After years of Chrome I'm back on Firefox(beta).

lomnakkus 9y ago

The long game, man. The long game. It can be devastating. (Mind you, Chrome/Webkit did a similar thing 5-10 years ago wrt. JS performance. Basically, this is the good kind of back-and-forth competition we're seeing.)

JoBrad 9y ago

You're not lying - I just downloaded it, and it is crazy fast. GMail (maybe not the best metric, but an important one for me) loads about twice as fast as in Chrome, and scrolling has no stuttering at all, even on very long pages. I may actually make the switch.

criddell 9y ago
I was actually thinking about switching to Chrome because of GMail (or rather Inbox). When I open Inbox in Firefox, it can take 20 to 30 seconds for the cursor to stop spinning and I have a 300 Mbps connection.
- andrew3726 9y ago
  on which firefox version? have you tried nightly?
  - rhelmer 9y ago
    The first Quantum release (57) is now on Beta, so if you want something a little more stable than Nightly it's a solid choice. It's always a good idea to back up your profile first (where your bookmarks/passwords/etc. live), especially when downgrading: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/kb/back-and-restore-information-...
  - pivotal 9y ago
    I've been running Nightly and experienced the same thing with inbox. If I attempt to interact with it before fully loaded, inbox will freeze up for minutes at a time. Love everything else about nightly, this is my biggest issue.
    - mconley 9y ago
      Hi! Firefox engineer here, and I want to understand why your Firefox is misbehaving. Would you be willing to provide us a performance profile? Instructions are here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Reporting_a_Performance_Problem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance... Feel free to email it to me if you don't want to post the link publicly. I'm mconley at mozilla dot com.

mshenfield 9y ago

I felt guilty choosing Chrome over Firefox, but it was just so much damn faster. Writing from Nightly now, glad that I don't have to sacrifice performance to switch over.

rqs 9y ago

A Chrome clone? How that opinion came out of you?

dannyw 9y ago
Not GP, but I imagine he is referring to the use of Chrome’s extension API, Chrome’s PDF viewer instead of PDF.js, etc.

tomxor 9y ago

Just chiming in... I knew they were doing major replacements in parts of their engine but it started to become observably and blatantly obvious to me when doing cross browser testing. That thing makes chrome look like a lawnmower, it renders CSS with ease - here's hoping the reset of the browser gets the love it needs to bring it all together.

bigbugbag 9y ago

It flies towards the trash can. It could be fast as lightning it would a fast as lightning piece of crap without the couple dozen extensions I had to add to restore the features they removed, remove the unwanted change they made and just to add the basic but missing features. I've moved to waterfox which offers support for the legacy addons and this move actually fixed a few of the annoying bugs I had with firefox. Among which speed was not one.

kumarvvr 9y ago

It's truly awesome. Overtime I associated FF with hung pages and poor performance but stuck to it just to get away from Google software. Am really happy with FF 57 (Quantum). It's really really good. BTW, also using DDG for search, Outlook for email.

lithos 9y ago

No worries. Faster browsers just mean that web developers can put more stuff in web pages, so everything will be back to normal.