9 ms·

I just updated - WOW! What an improvement! Compared startup time and scrolling around some over-monetized sites; Behaves just as well as Chrome. Time for a swit

I just updated - WOW! What an improvement! Compared startup time and scrolling around some over-monetized sites; Behaves just as well as Chrome. Time for a switch again, I've missed FireFox since I started having Chrome as my default browser back in ~2011

manojlds 9y ago
If it as just as good as chrome, why should I switch? Especially given how good Chrome Dev tools are.
- Yoric 9y ago
  Better privacy? Non-profit? More open source? Cheerful community? Pick one or more :)
  - toweringgoat 9y ago
    Privacy is about the same, Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit, both are open source. Correct on community maybe.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > Privacy is about the same, Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit, both are open source. Chrome is not open-source. Chromium is, but Chrome is not.
    - AsyncAwait 9y ago
      > Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the non-profit. > both are open source Not to the same degree, as Chrome != Chromium
    - callahad 9y ago
      The privacy situation is absolutely different; Mozilla has no profit motive to monitor and monetize your activity on the Web. For example, Firefox Sync is specifically designed so that we have no knowledge of your browsing data. In contrast, when you sign into Chrome, "Your experience in other Google products is personalized by including your Chrome history with your Web & App Activity."(https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277)
      - raller 9y ago
        > The privacy situation is absolutely different https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_ships_cliqz_experiment_in_germany_for_1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_shi...
      - JadeNB 9y ago
        > Mozilla has no profit motive to monitor and monetize your activity on the Web. But if a substantial portion of Mozilla's funding comes from an organisation that does have a profit motive to monitor and monetise my activity on the web, then surely that's almost as bad (for me as the end user)?
        Drdrdrq 9y ago
        There's a world of difference. For Mozilla to sell out on user's privacy it would mean game over. They simply can't afford to do so, even if they wanted to (which I believe they don't). Google on the other hand? That's their main business, they are an advertising agency. Sure they make nice products too but make no mistake where their profit is coming from.
        jeffdavis 9y ago
        I donate to Mozilla because they claim to support privacy, and I want them to be less dependent on large donations.
- callahad 9y ago
  Aside from the privacy / philosophy / openness / counterweight-to-monopolization-of-the-Web angles which Yoric mentioned, you might find we're actually better than Chrome in some areas. Often small things, but I find I prefer the feel of Firefox to Chrome. - If you do frontend work, our CSS grid inspector is unparalleled https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/Examine_grid_layouts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto... - Firefox has built-in tracking protection (https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to-offer-tracking-protection-for-all-in-its-next-update/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to-offer...) - Powerful add-ons like Tree Style Tab make managing large numbers of tabs much easier (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) - Our WebAssembly performance tends to be better - We should have better resource utilization when you have many tabs open - You can mute audio on a page clicking the little speaker icon in the tab If you want to contribute to the DevTools themselves, they're built using standard web technologies: HTML/JS, React/Redux, etc. https://github.com/devtools-html/ https://github.com/devtools-html/
  - Avernar 9y ago
    > If you want to contribute to the DevTools themselves I wish I had the time. So I'll have to wait for someone else to add the element DOM properties tab in thr panel that has the style rules and layout. Firebug had it, Chrome has it. The right click and then Show DOM Properties with the results in the console pane is just painful to use.
  - aquadrop 9y ago
    You've switched to multiple processes model, but you don't have "task manager" as Chrome. Do you plan to implement it in the future?
    - Santosh83 9y ago
      about:performance is a somewhat similar substitute for now. You can see stats of the various processes and close or reload tabs.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  To support a non-profit, so that they actually have the might to fight for us.
  - WC3w6pXxgGd 9y ago
    Are you under the assumption that profit is bad?
- pornel 9y ago
  I personally like how it handles hundreds of tabs. No matter how many tabs I have open they remain usable size, and the compact UI theme is even more compact than Chrome. Tab containers are useful for having multiple accounts on the same site (Gmail/Github), or isolating work or most secure sites from regular browsing. The containers are more light-weight and more general than Chrome profiles (and they don't depend on having external accounts). Pinned tabs don't close on Command+W. It's a small thing, but I kept accidentally closing my pinned tabs in Chrome. Chrome Dev Tools are hard to beat, although Fx is slowly catching up there, too. I don't mind launching Chrome just for web dev.
  - scholia 9y ago
    > No matter how many tabs I have open they remain usable size They were! I think they've shrunk, though that might be an optical illusion... And I can't see a simple way to make them bigger (simple as in: not editing the css file).
    - mythmon_ 9y ago
      There is a pref that controls the minimum width now (browser.tabs.tabMinWidth). The default changed from 100px to 76px in Firefox 57. You should be able to tweak this to change the minimum width.
      - scholia 9y ago
        Fantastic. Many many thanks.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Yeah, if it's just for the good of the internet, openess, and society, who cares to jump to an equal (but better at those regards) engine?
- benlower 9y ago
  because Google has the worst biz model in the tech industry and is doing harm to the world.
  - myrryr 9y ago
    I guess you were not around during the Halloween papers then. Or the Sco Linux lawsuits.
    - benlower 9y ago
      i was not. def slimy stuff.
  - binaryblitz 9y ago
    How so? That's a pretty bold claim...
  - aquadrop 9y ago
    I think Chrome and its DevTools has positive overall effect on the world.
  - V-2 9y ago
    Fortunately brave rebels fight against this harm in every way they can :) https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go... The real world is not Star Wars. For all the privacy considerations etc., this comment above reads extremely naive.
- wtetzner 9y ago
  Honestly, I find it to be (subjectively, I didn't actually measure anything) much faster than Chrome. At least, it feels much snappier on my MacBook Air.
- dabockster 9y ago
  A lot of us in the dev community feel that some of the web standards that Chrome is pushing does not reflect the will of the community at large. Chrome is also tied to a company known to have a business interest in data collection, while Firefox is maintained by the community with some funding from a nonprofit.
- Zardoz84 9y ago
  Becasue Firefox Dev tools are better ? I feel the Chrome dev tools more hard to use.
forgot-my-pw 9y ago
Firefox is pretty similar looking as Chrome now. I liked FF before cause it looked different, now everyone just copies Chrome look.
- schrodinger1337 9y ago
  While there are some similarities in the UI I don't think the photon design system is a chrome ripoff. http://design.firefox.com/photon/welcome.html http://design.firefox.com/photon/welcome.html
- willtim 9y ago
  The dark theme looks much better than Chrome.
- V-2 9y ago
  Does it? As a matter of fact, it's much more similar to MS Edge. With dark theme it's super close in terms of look. Rectangular, beefy tabs.
  - pluma 9y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "beefy". Do you mean the "touch" density with the very large tabs and icons? I'm on "compact" and it's very similar to Chrome except for the right-angled tabs. You can switch between three levels of density: https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/firefox-density.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/firefox-...
59nadir 9y ago
I find the bit about Chrome interesting, considering I've never had a Chrome installation even without any kind of add-on that was as fast as FF Quantum. Even without any features at all Chrome is much slower and it doesn't even have proper extensions for most things.
QAPereo 9y ago
Same, and when you add script control with uMatrix it’s just perfect!
microtheo 9y ago
Yes, it is even better if you have a precision touchpad and you disable smooth scrolling. Whole new world of reactivity! It is almost as smooth as edge!
- infogulch 9y ago
  Whoa thanks for the tip! This is so much better!
HenryBemis 9y ago
It looked great, up to the point that 70% of my addons were disabled. I rolled back in 5mins :) I'll give it another chance in a couple of weeks, and hope that there will be a bypass that will force my outdated addons to work.
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  There won't be a bypass - Fx57 has completely dropped legacy extension support. This is a good thing, and it's just a shame that so many addons haven't been updated yet.
  - ywain 9y ago
    This isn't quite true. Support for legacy extensions is disabled by default, but can be re-enabled via the `extensions.legacy.enabled` flag in about:config.
    - scholia 9y ago
      Though you lose multi-process operation, I think....
      - branchless 9y ago
        only on incompatible MP plugins. however I've just ran nightly and although it says vimfx will work as a legacy plugin it's not working, so the deal's off. I shall not use my mouse!
        mercurial 9y ago
        You can try vimium-ff (FF 57-compatible). There is also Tridactyl [1] currently in development. 1: https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl
    - ajdlinux 9y ago
      Huh, thanks for mentioning that! I didn't realise there was still a flag for it - serves me right for not doing my research. Though losing Electrolysis will defeat one of the main benefits of running Firefox 57...
chmln 9y ago
On Linux, its still night and day difference in favor of Chrome. I wish FF performance was as good as it is on Windows. As much as I want to like Mozilla, even with Quantum, there's pretty much no hardware acceleration at all, missing out on potentially big performance benefits. As others mentioned, e.g. VDPAU has been available for a long time now and there's no excuse for not taking advantage of GPU acceleration. Now contrast this to evil Google and Chrome. Firefox: https://imgur.com/mvtDenC https://imgur.com/mvtDenC Chrome: https://imgur.com/HBOpucc https://imgur.com/HBOpucc
- SkyMarshal 9y ago
  FF 57 is the first release of a big rewrite, I'm sure it will get VDPAU at some point, but they needed to get the base feature set stable first.
- ben-schaaf 9y ago
  For me it's exactly the opposite. While js and render performance might have been worse, scrolling has become more and more choppy with every chrome release while Firefox has absolutely no issues (even without quantum)
- beerbaron23 9y ago
  There certainly is hardware acceleration in Firefox on Linux, more then likely it has been disabaled because of your configueration/set-up/drivers. To turn it on go into your "about:config" and toggle the entry "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to "True" and restart. Then Firefox is as fast as Chrome or faster, simple as that. Although it would be nice if there was a dialog telling the user their setup is incorrect/unsupported and giving them the option whtout digging into the config, I believe this is the number one reason people think FF is slower, cause their HW acceleration is disabled and they don't even know it is...
  - Qwertious 9y ago
    >There certainly is hardware acceleration in Firefox on Linux, more then likely it has been disabaled because of your configueration/set-up/drivers. To turn it on go into your "about:config" and toggle the entry "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to "True" and restart. Implying that it wasn't deliberately disabled. HW acceleration on Linux isn't enabled by default, and for good reason. Until those underlying reasons are changed, Linux does have a hardware-acceleration-on-Firefox problem.
daveheq 9y ago
Now Google just needs to test their apps like Drive on it... I stopped using Firefox partly because they were so buggy on it.
- pluma 9y ago
  If this were Microsoft in the 90s, everyone would be calling this anti-competitive behavior. Saying they're just buggy because they're not tested well is putting it much more nicely.

manojlds 9y ago

If it as just as good as chrome, why should I switch? Especially given how good Chrome Dev tools are.

Yoric 9y ago
Better privacy? Non-profit? More open source? Cheerful community? Pick one or more :)
- toweringgoat 9y ago
  Privacy is about the same, Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit, both are open source. Correct on community maybe.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Privacy is about the same, Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit, both are open source. Chrome is not open-source. Chromium is, but Chrome is not.
  - AsyncAwait 9y ago
    > Mozilla Corporation (who distribute the browser) aren't non-profit Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the non-profit. > both are open source Not to the same degree, as Chrome != Chromium
  - callahad 9y ago
    The privacy situation is absolutely different; Mozilla has no profit motive to monitor and monetize your activity on the Web. For example, Firefox Sync is specifically designed so that we have no knowledge of your browsing data. In contrast, when you sign into Chrome, "Your experience in other Google products is personalized by including your Chrome history with your Web & App Activity."(https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277)
    - raller 9y ago
      > The privacy situation is absolutely different https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_ships_cliqz_experiment_in_germany_for_1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_shi...
    - JadeNB 9y ago
      > Mozilla has no profit motive to monitor and monetize your activity on the Web. But if a substantial portion of Mozilla's funding comes from an organisation that does have a profit motive to monitor and monetise my activity on the web, then surely that's almost as bad (for me as the end user)?
      - Drdrdrq 9y ago
        There's a world of difference. For Mozilla to sell out on user's privacy it would mean game over. They simply can't afford to do so, even if they wanted to (which I believe they don't). Google on the other hand? That's their main business, they are an advertising agency. Sure they make nice products too but make no mistake where their profit is coming from.
      - jeffdavis 9y ago
        I donate to Mozilla because they claim to support privacy, and I want them to be less dependent on large donations.
callahad 9y ago
Aside from the privacy / philosophy / openness / counterweight-to-monopolization-of-the-Web angles which Yoric mentioned, you might find we're actually better than Chrome in some areas. Often small things, but I find I prefer the feel of Firefox to Chrome. - If you do frontend work, our CSS grid inspector is unparalleled https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/Examine_grid_layouts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto... - Firefox has built-in tracking protection (https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to-offer-tracking-protection-for-all-in-its-next-update/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to-offer...) - Powerful add-ons like Tree Style Tab make managing large numbers of tabs much easier (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) - Our WebAssembly performance tends to be better - We should have better resource utilization when you have many tabs open - You can mute audio on a page clicking the little speaker icon in the tab If you want to contribute to the DevTools themselves, they're built using standard web technologies: HTML/JS, React/Redux, etc. https://github.com/devtools-html/ https://github.com/devtools-html/
- Avernar 9y ago
  > If you want to contribute to the DevTools themselves I wish I had the time. So I'll have to wait for someone else to add the element DOM properties tab in thr panel that has the style rules and layout. Firebug had it, Chrome has it. The right click and then Show DOM Properties with the results in the console pane is just painful to use.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  You've switched to multiple processes model, but you don't have "task manager" as Chrome. Do you plan to implement it in the future?
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    about:performance is a somewhat similar substitute for now. You can see stats of the various processes and close or reload tabs.
AsyncAwait 9y ago
To support a non-profit, so that they actually have the might to fight for us.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 9y ago
  Are you under the assumption that profit is bad?
pornel 9y ago
I personally like how it handles hundreds of tabs. No matter how many tabs I have open they remain usable size, and the compact UI theme is even more compact than Chrome. Tab containers are useful for having multiple accounts on the same site (Gmail/Github), or isolating work or most secure sites from regular browsing. The containers are more light-weight and more general than Chrome profiles (and they don't depend on having external accounts). Pinned tabs don't close on Command+W. It's a small thing, but I kept accidentally closing my pinned tabs in Chrome. Chrome Dev Tools are hard to beat, although Fx is slowly catching up there, too. I don't mind launching Chrome just for web dev.
- scholia 9y ago
  > No matter how many tabs I have open they remain usable size They were! I think they've shrunk, though that might be an optical illusion... And I can't see a simple way to make them bigger (simple as in: not editing the css file).
  - mythmon_ 9y ago
    There is a pref that controls the minimum width now (browser.tabs.tabMinWidth). The default changed from 100px to 76px in Firefox 57. You should be able to tweak this to change the minimum width.
    - scholia 9y ago
      Fantastic. Many many thanks.
coldtea 9y ago
Yeah, if it's just for the good of the internet, openess, and society, who cares to jump to an equal (but better at those regards) engine?
benlower 9y ago
because Google has the worst biz model in the tech industry and is doing harm to the world.
- myrryr 9y ago
  I guess you were not around during the Halloween papers then. Or the Sco Linux lawsuits.
  - benlower 9y ago
    i was not. def slimy stuff.
- binaryblitz 9y ago
  How so? That's a pretty bold claim...
- aquadrop 9y ago
  I think Chrome and its DevTools has positive overall effect on the world.
- V-2 9y ago
  Fortunately brave rebels fight against this harm in every way they can :) https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go... The real world is not Star Wars. For all the privacy considerations etc., this comment above reads extremely naive.
wtetzner 9y ago
Honestly, I find it to be (subjectively, I didn't actually measure anything) much faster than Chrome. At least, it feels much snappier on my MacBook Air.
dabockster 9y ago
A lot of us in the dev community feel that some of the web standards that Chrome is pushing does not reflect the will of the community at large. Chrome is also tied to a company known to have a business interest in data collection, while Firefox is maintained by the community with some funding from a nonprofit.
Zardoz84 9y ago
Becasue Firefox Dev tools are better ? I feel the Chrome dev tools more hard to use.

forgot-my-pw 9y ago

Firefox is pretty similar looking as Chrome now. I liked FF before cause it looked different, now everyone just copies Chrome look.

schrodinger1337 9y ago
While there are some similarities in the UI I don't think the photon design system is a chrome ripoff. http://design.firefox.com/photon/welcome.html http://design.firefox.com/photon/welcome.html
willtim 9y ago
The dark theme looks much better than Chrome.
V-2 9y ago
Does it? As a matter of fact, it's much more similar to MS Edge. With dark theme it's super close in terms of look. Rectangular, beefy tabs.
- pluma 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "beefy". Do you mean the "touch" density with the very large tabs and icons? I'm on "compact" and it's very similar to Chrome except for the right-angled tabs. You can switch between three levels of density: https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/firefox-density.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/firefox-...

59nadir 9y ago

I find the bit about Chrome interesting, considering I've never had a Chrome installation even without any kind of add-on that was as fast as FF Quantum. Even without any features at all Chrome is much slower and it doesn't even have proper extensions for most things.

QAPereo 9y ago

Same, and when you add script control with uMatrix it’s just perfect!

microtheo 9y ago

Yes, it is even better if you have a precision touchpad and you disable smooth scrolling. Whole new world of reactivity! It is almost as smooth as edge!

infogulch 9y ago
Whoa thanks for the tip! This is so much better!

HenryBemis 9y ago

It looked great, up to the point that 70% of my addons were disabled. I rolled back in 5mins :) I'll give it another chance in a couple of weeks, and hope that there will be a bypass that will force my outdated addons to work.

ajdlinux 9y ago
There won't be a bypass - Fx57 has completely dropped legacy extension support. This is a good thing, and it's just a shame that so many addons haven't been updated yet.
- ywain 9y ago
  This isn't quite true. Support for legacy extensions is disabled by default, but can be re-enabled via the `extensions.legacy.enabled` flag in about:config.
  - scholia 9y ago
    Though you lose multi-process operation, I think....
    - branchless 9y ago
      only on incompatible MP plugins. however I've just ran nightly and although it says vimfx will work as a legacy plugin it's not working, so the deal's off. I shall not use my mouse!
      - mercurial 9y ago
        You can try vimium-ff (FF 57-compatible). There is also Tridactyl [1] currently in development. 1: https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl
  - ajdlinux 9y ago
    Huh, thanks for mentioning that! I didn't realise there was still a flag for it - serves me right for not doing my research. Though losing Electrolysis will defeat one of the main benefits of running Firefox 57...

chmln 9y ago

On Linux, its still night and day difference in favor of Chrome. I wish FF performance was as good as it is on Windows. As much as I want to like Mozilla, even with Quantum, there's pretty much no hardware acceleration at all, missing out on potentially big performance benefits. As others mentioned, e.g. VDPAU has been available for a long time now and there's no excuse for not taking advantage of GPU acceleration. Now contrast this to evil Google and Chrome. Firefox: https://imgur.com/mvtDenC https://imgur.com/mvtDenC Chrome: https://imgur.com/HBOpucc https://imgur.com/HBOpucc

SkyMarshal 9y ago
FF 57 is the first release of a big rewrite, I'm sure it will get VDPAU at some point, but they needed to get the base feature set stable first.
ben-schaaf 9y ago
For me it's exactly the opposite. While js and render performance might have been worse, scrolling has become more and more choppy with every chrome release while Firefox has absolutely no issues (even without quantum)
beerbaron23 9y ago
There certainly is hardware acceleration in Firefox on Linux, more then likely it has been disabaled because of your configueration/set-up/drivers. To turn it on go into your "about:config" and toggle the entry "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to "True" and restart. Then Firefox is as fast as Chrome or faster, simple as that. Although it would be nice if there was a dialog telling the user their setup is incorrect/unsupported and giving them the option whtout digging into the config, I believe this is the number one reason people think FF is slower, cause their HW acceleration is disabled and they don't even know it is...
- Qwertious 9y ago
  >There certainly is hardware acceleration in Firefox on Linux, more then likely it has been disabaled because of your configueration/set-up/drivers. To turn it on go into your "about:config" and toggle the entry "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to "True" and restart. Implying that it wasn't deliberately disabled. HW acceleration on Linux isn't enabled by default, and for good reason. Until those underlying reasons are changed, Linux does have a hardware-acceleration-on-Firefox problem.

daveheq 9y ago

Now Google just needs to test their apps like Drive on it... I stopped using Firefox partly because they were so buggy on it.

pluma 9y ago
If this were Microsoft in the 90s, everyone would be calling this anti-competitive behavior. Saying they're just buggy because they're not tested well is putting it much more nicely.