9 ms·

It always astonishes me how many people who are ostensibly against the webkit derivative hegemony won't even consider recommending Firefox. It's certainly a com

It always astonishes me how many people who are ostensibly against the webkit derivative hegemony won't even consider recommending Firefox. It's certainly a competitive browser, and personally my favourite, and Mozilla does fantastically important work balancing out an otherwise entirely corporate, ulterior-motive laden browser market.

throwaway2016a 9y ago
My experience has been that Firefox was unusably slow on OS X and Linux for a long time and they lost a lot of users because of it. Now it is faster but it is difficult to woo people back. And even if it is faster, there track record shows that they found doing a release that slows down a large portion of users was acceptable. Granted I doubt they still have that attitude, and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back.
- saiya-jin 9y ago
  Firefox is OK these days. As a user I couldn't care less about Google offering, specifically because of google. That company is creepy and its core mission is to be even more creepy. On android, Firefox mobile is by far the best browser, since it allows (some) extensions, and you definitely need one - microBlock origin. No effin' way I am going to use their official browser, web is beyond useless with all the ads.
- wtetzner 9y ago
  > and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back. And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately, and sometimes I have to kill it to get my computer back to a usable state. And of course, I have to dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of them.
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    > And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately I'm OS X and I've had some CPU issues lately if I have a lot of tabs open but overall not nearly as many issues as when I finally decided to give up Firefox. I actually downloaded Firefox lately and it seems pretty nice. If Chrome gets works I may consider it.
    - leggomylibro 9y ago
      I usually have a few hundred tabs open in Firefox without issue; it seems to do a good job of putting unused/old tabs to 'sleep' until you come back to them.
  - insulanus 9y ago
    > dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of them To kill: pkill "Chrome" To suspend: pkill -SIGSTOP "Chrome" To resume: pkill -SIGCONT "Chrome"
    - wtetzner 9y ago
      Thank you!
- intopieces 9y ago
  My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox, so after months of crashes and general unbearably slowness on MacOS I switched to UnGoogled Chromium. I wish I could go back to FF because I like Mozilla as an org, but it's not in the cards for my day to day.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    > My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox How so?
- davesque 9y ago
  I tried using Firefox for a while recently (over the last month) and still found it unbearably slow as well as downright buggy in the way it handled and displayed certain pages. Was very disappointed by this since I really want to start using it again.
bobajeff 9y ago
I think trying to fight a browser engine monoculture is a lost cause. There is no money in building browser engines and it costs a lot of time and money to create one from scratch. The only reason Mozilla and Microsoft still use their own engine is for historical and technical reasons. The fact that we are down to just three implementations should tell you were things are headed.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  Mozilla is currently working hard on Servo, and regularly merging finished pieces into Firefox. Microsoft will likely always use their own engine, simply because they are obsessed with proprietary software.
  - bobajeff 9y ago
    Sure that's how it is today but what if Mozilla runs out of funds? Say they fail to get a lucrative search deal after the current one ends while Pocket fails to pick up the slack. What if Microsoft doesn't ever get a significant number of users on Edge? Say websites and users alike treat it like Windows Phone.
    - thomastjeffery 9y ago
      > what if Mozilla runs out of funds? That is a very unlikely edge case. If it were to happen, Servo is an open-source project, and would likely still see development. > What if Microsoft doesn't ever get a significant number of users on Edge? That is somewhat more likely, but as much as I can hope, probably will not happen. At least Edge renders fairly correctly. > like Windows Phone. Windows Phone simply failed to get inertia. Inertia is imperative for proprietary projects to succeed.
      - bobajeff 9y ago
        I think Mozilla is already cutting projects because they know their next search deal won't be as lucrative as their previous ones. Software development costs money. Edge came out in 2015 if it doesn't have inertia yet then you have to at least wonder if it's another Windows Phone.
justinclift 9y ago
> ... and Mozilla does fantastically important work balancing out an otherwise entirely corporate, ulterior-motive laden browser market. Mozilla seems to have become infected with the same ulterior-motive laden evil though. :( Example happening at the moment: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tests_cliqz_in_germany/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tests_cliqz...
- sfink 9y ago
  I wouldn't go by the negative tone of that article. The whole point of the cliqz experiment is to try out a possible alternative to one part of today's privacy-destroying web. You are not going to tracked through an indirection through cliqz anyway, but if i understand correctly, even that is only a way to make prototyping feasible to see whether it's worth proceeding with a fuller, architecturally privacy preserving implementation.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

My experience has been that Firefox was unusably slow on OS X and Linux for a long time and they lost a lot of users because of it. Now it is faster but it is difficult to woo people back. And even if it is faster, there track record shows that they found doing a release that slows down a large portion of users was acceptable. Granted I doubt they still have that attitude, and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back.

saiya-jin 9y ago
Firefox is OK these days. As a user I couldn't care less about Google offering, specifically because of google. That company is creepy and its core mission is to be even more creepy. On android, Firefox mobile is by far the best browser, since it allows (some) extensions, and you definitely need one - microBlock origin. No effin' way I am going to use their official browser, web is beyond useless with all the ads.
wtetzner 9y ago
> and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back. And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately, and sometimes I have to kill it to get my computer back to a usable state. And of course, I have to dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of them.
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  > And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog lately I'm OS X and I've had some CPU issues lately if I have a lot of tabs open but overall not nearly as many issues as when I finally decided to give up Firefox. I actually downloaded Firefox lately and it seems pretty nice. If Chrome gets works I may consider it.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    I usually have a few hundred tabs open in Firefox without issue; it seems to do a good job of putting unused/old tabs to 'sleep' until you come back to them.
- insulanus 9y ago
  > dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of them To kill: pkill "Chrome" To suspend: pkill -SIGSTOP "Chrome" To resume: pkill -SIGCONT "Chrome"
  - wtetzner 9y ago
    Thank you!
intopieces 9y ago
My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox, so after months of crashes and general unbearably slowness on MacOS I switched to UnGoogled Chromium. I wish I could go back to FF because I like Mozilla as an org, but it's not in the cards for my day to day.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox How so?
davesque 9y ago
I tried using Firefox for a while recently (over the last month) and still found it unbearably slow as well as downright buggy in the way it handled and displayed certain pages. Was very disappointed by this since I really want to start using it again.

bobajeff 9y ago

I think trying to fight a browser engine monoculture is a lost cause. There is no money in building browser engines and it costs a lot of time and money to create one from scratch. The only reason Mozilla and Microsoft still use their own engine is for historical and technical reasons. The fact that we are down to just three implementations should tell you were things are headed.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
Mozilla is currently working hard on Servo, and regularly merging finished pieces into Firefox. Microsoft will likely always use their own engine, simply because they are obsessed with proprietary software.
- bobajeff 9y ago
  Sure that's how it is today but what if Mozilla runs out of funds? Say they fail to get a lucrative search deal after the current one ends while Pocket fails to pick up the slack. What if Microsoft doesn't ever get a significant number of users on Edge? Say websites and users alike treat it like Windows Phone.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    > what if Mozilla runs out of funds? That is a very unlikely edge case. If it were to happen, Servo is an open-source project, and would likely still see development. > What if Microsoft doesn't ever get a significant number of users on Edge? That is somewhat more likely, but as much as I can hope, probably will not happen. At least Edge renders fairly correctly. > like Windows Phone. Windows Phone simply failed to get inertia. Inertia is imperative for proprietary projects to succeed.
    - bobajeff 9y ago
      I think Mozilla is already cutting projects because they know their next search deal won't be as lucrative as their previous ones. Software development costs money. Edge came out in 2015 if it doesn't have inertia yet then you have to at least wonder if it's another Windows Phone.

justinclift 9y ago

> ... and Mozilla does fantastically important work balancing out an otherwise entirely corporate, ulterior-motive laden browser market. Mozilla seems to have become infected with the same ulterior-motive laden evil though. :( Example happening at the moment: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tests_cliqz_in_germany/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tests_cliqz...

sfink 9y ago
I wouldn't go by the negative tone of that article. The whole point of the cliqz experiment is to try out a possible alternative to one part of today's privacy-destroying web. You are not going to tracked through an indirection through cliqz anyway, but if i understand correctly, even that is only a way to make prototyping feasible to see whether it's worth proceeding with a fuller, architecturally privacy preserving implementation.