27 ms·

Firefox Private Browsing vs. Chrome Incognito: Which Is Faster?

262 points by ronjouch 9y ago

artursapek 9y ago
Is anyone else getting tired of Mozilla shilling how fast their new version of Firefox is? If it's really that good, let the product speak for itself.
- proaralyst 9y ago
  a) is it shilling if it's self-promotion? Edit: a quick check in a dictionary points out that a shill is someone pretending to be impartial. I'm not sure Mozilla could do that about their own browser. b) if they didn't make noise about this no one would try to switch to this fairly big release. It's a bit like the hype around Firefox 3.
  - infinityplus1 9y ago
    And Firefox 4. That was a pretty big release.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  oh no, they didn't get a third party blogger to write about them, it looks so laaaaaame when it comes from the one person that knows about their accomplishment /s
- atonse 9y ago
  They should be proud of their accomplishments and show them off. One thing I've learned in life is, you can do great work, but if people don't know about it or appreciate it, it simply won't help you.
- cJ0th 9y ago
  Well, I don't blame them for promoting their product. Speed, however, is probably among the least important things when it comes to incognito mode. I would have appreciated it if they had spent more time figuring out how to reduce fingerprints.
  - callahad 9y ago
    We are. It's not quite polished yet, but check out privacy.resistFingerprinting (and privacy.firstparty.isolate) in about:config. This all dovetails with our work to upstream the relevant patches from the Tor Browser Bundle, which is also proceeding apace. More info at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting
    - cJ0th 9y ago
      That's great to hear :)
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      > privacy.resistFingerprinting Is there a reason that setting does so many different things? I've been trying it for a few days but it's a real problem when I want some of those settings but not others. For example the protection against canvas image extraction needs work. It's stuck on 'ask' with constant popups, and once you pick yes/no on a domain it's impossible to see the permission or change it ever again. Until it forgets on browser restart and starts bugging you all over again.
  - daxorid 9y ago
    The privacy afforded by anti-fingerprinting features is kind of useless as long as the browser remains a member of the UAF-vuln-of-the-week club.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Chrome and Edge do the same, what's your point? Also please stop using that stupid alt-right language inappropriately.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  It think it's a pretty silly thing to focus marketing on considering they've been fast enough for the average user for years. I saw a TV commercial for it during The Walking Dead last night, surely that money could have been spent in a much better way. I think the marketing should focus on being the only major browser to allow ad blockers to be installed on Android devices.
  - floatingatoll 9y ago
    I was very happy to see how we’re using the advertising spend for this release. The “Hot Firefox” custom New York coffee cup is to die for, and a lot of folks in the real world have said thank you to us to my face, unprompted, for making the web suck less for them. Every percent we make the browser faster makes it more usable for people (and libraries!) with older, slower computers. A lot of the world can’t afford to upgrade. When we make it faster for everyone, we make it faster for them too. If we save 0.3 seconds per page view, how many millions of hours do we save humanity from waiting for their browser to do something it could do faster if we just worked hard enough? That’s why faster is good, to me, and so this campaign aligns well with my personal reasons for working here.
    - apetrovic 9y ago
      >If we save 0.3 seconds per page view, how many millions of hours do we save humanity from waiting for their browser to do something it could do faster if we just worked hard enough? That’s why faster is good, to me, and so this campaign aligns well with my personal reasons for working here. Can you explain in a just a bit more details how Firefox "save humanity" 3 seconds if I and nine more people around shave off 0.3 seconds from some web page load and what exactly that mean?
      - floatingatoll 9y ago
        For ten people, shaving 0.3 seconds per page load would save 3 seconds of their total shared lives from sitting and watching a page load. For a million^ people who load web pages at least once, you technically have created an opportunity to save 0.3 * 1_000_000 = 300_000 seconds of cumulative lifetimes across them, which is 3-4 days of reality. Practically, I'm not sure how I feel about this metric on the 0.3 second level, but I sure do understand it at the 5 second level. I've stared at useless pages that are stuck on some tracking JS so many times I can't count, so if those stop making me stuck, that's invaluable once and multiply that win by a million. But that's just time. If you also consider the resources that are needed to execute the page JavaScript, we're probably saving megawatts of power per interval (totaled across all Firefox users) with each small efficiency gain. The changes that are "parallelize all the work" may cost more, less, or same amount of power; the ones that are "use fewer CPU cycles" will definitely cost less power. And so there's a very real theory that we could probably measure how many gigawatt^-hours Quantum has saved the world to date, which appeals to me greatly :) ^ I arbitrarily picked "a million" and "gigawatts". This does not offer any guidance whatsoever on specific or approximate user counts. EDIT: My UPS says that my entire desk has a load of ~75 watts @ 120V, times a million^ users = 75 megawatts. I haven't the faintest idea how much power it takes to evaluate Javascript inefficiently, but saving 0.3 seconds of any amount of power times a million^ users per page view quickly balloons into reality-impacting figures.
- INTPenis 9y ago
  They lost a lot of market share when Chrome came on the scene. Partly because it was faster but also because Google promoted it and it actually had some sweet process/tab separation. I remained a loyal FF user myself and actually wanted to take this opportunity to promote Firefox Focus which makes it real easy to browse sensitive things like porn on a tablet shared by the family or SO. It's oriented around privacy so it saves nothing and provides easy to access shortcuts for clearing browser history when you're done.
  - rplnt 9y ago
    Google promoted it HEAVILY. TV, radio, outdoor, print, (and web of course). Must have been millions of dollars poured into advertising for Chrome. I'm not sure I've seen all that for any software, let alone a free one. Not to mention prominent native ads on such little pages like google.com or youtube.com. And all that wasn't enough since they also shadily (based on user agent for no good reason) blocked features for other browsers in their products.
    - floatingatoll 9y ago
      If Google had to charge itself actual market prices for the google.com homepage banners promoting Chrome, the costs would be well into a billion dollars per release.
    - INTPenis 9y ago
      Yes but weren't they brought up on charges by the EU for monopolization?
      - robin_reala 9y ago
        Not to do with Chrome, the EU charge was around shopping comparisons.
    - bzbarsky 9y ago
      > Must have been millions of dollars poured into advertising for Chrome. For what it's worth, "millions of dollars" is probably understating things by 2-3 orders of magnitude. The ad budget for Chrome was likely comparable to Mozilla's entire budget for a few years there, even if you ignore the free product placement on google.com...
- elgenie 9y ago
  The problem is that "Let the product speak for itself" is actually Step 2. Step 1 is "Get people to (re)try the product". Unless there's a magic wand waved that gets people unaware of a milestone release to (re)install and (re)launch FF57, Mozilla needs to put out some marketing just to even seed the basis for word-of-mouth of the product's merits.
fwn 9y ago
Sure, it's faster if some scripts are blocked. Wait how fast it gets as soon as you add ublock Origin.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  Ironically, content blocker extensions have historically been a common source of slowdowns while loading all pages.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    That's been historically true for Adblock Plus. Has anyone benchmarked ublock as impacting the performance of Firefox?
    - floatingatoll 9y ago
      Adblock was not consistently slow over time. It varies based on a huge array of conditions. I would assume any benchmark will suffer the same flaw - unless performed over time, which will go poorly since we’re busily swapping out the guts of the product right now, and so Apples to Apples will be nigh impossible on any useful timescale.
    - akerro 9y ago
      https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance It might be biased since it's from µblock developer.
      - kodablah 9y ago
        Also really old. uBlock is fairly fast on the cosmetic blocking because it does a couple of things: parses selectors themselves instead of querying for all of them, and caches known selectors. It uses a mutation observer to check for new elements.
    - Reason077 9y ago
      I observed very significant speedups on Firefox (< 57) on an older, memory-constrained Mac when using uBlock origin. Both page load times and general feel (lag when switching between tabs, etc) were improved. On a modern Mac with plenty of RAM the difference isn't really noticeable.
ajobaccount2017 9y ago
Firefox Quantum is really fast! And I love it :) However when comparing private/incognito browsing, my main concern wouldn't be the speed, but privacy.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  “Loads 3 seconds fewer tracking scripts” seems like a shoe-in for your privacy consideration.
  - zitterbewegung 9y ago
    I think the tracking scripts can have no upper limit to loading . Which means that it would make the page more snappier also.
- sjwright 9y ago
  Fortunately you don't have to choose between concerns because you can have your cake (privacy) and eat it (a fast browser) and eat it a second time (even faster when privacy improvements are enabled).
robinduckett 9y ago
Firefox in "Websites are faster when you don't load 44% of them" shocker
- callahad 9y ago
  The nice thing about being a non-profit is that we can include a tracking blocker for that 44% right in the browser, without it being counter to our business interests.
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
    Would you mind to expand your point of view and provide evidence? Are you perhaps referring to the cliqz experiment that was ran for less than 1% of german firefox downloads? Are you sure you are not blowing things out of proportion?
    - GrayShade 9y ago
      Germany has rather strict privacy laws, so it sounds like the worst pick for something like this. They're also planning [] to send more detailed browsing history as telemetry, so there's that. [] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL0w/OVf_NL7yCgAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL...
  - gmartres 9y ago
    I'll be impressed the day this is turned on by default, or at least proposed as an option to the user after installation :).
    - discreditable 9y ago
      You can already enable tracking protection globally in the options. It's on by default for private browsing, but it does break a few sites (like any adblocker).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
whizzkid 9y ago
I really want Firefox Quantum to be at least as good as Chrome. But when I tried watching some HTML5 videos, it started using a significant amount of CPU on my Mac and it did not stop. My experience for 3 major browsers on MacOS as follows: - If you want noticeably longer battery life when on the travel. 1- Safari 2- Chrome/Firefox - If you want seamless browsing experience. 1- Chrome 2- Firefox 3- Safari
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  Yeah, it's weird. Switched to Firefox Quantum as my main browser again, happened to use Plex and it was slightly laggy with huge cpu usage. Try it in chrome and it's smooth as always.
  - tehbeard 9y ago
    I've seen comments that, at least on Linux it might not use GPU acceleration by default?
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      If this is the case for you, hit up `about:config` and change `layers.acceleration.force-enabled` to true. This heavily reduced tearing for me.
      - floatboth 9y ago
        That is a must-enable setting for sure, but not video related. That's compositing. Firefox still does not support VAAPI or VDPAU :(
    - jhasse 9y ago
      It doesn't, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523
- caiob 9y ago
  Agreed! Video playback is one of the main reasons I keep coming back to Chrome.
james_pm 9y ago
I'm really liking what Firefox is doing around Private Browsing and FF57 has brought me back to Firefox as my primary browser. With the amount of tracking going on these days, a FF Private window is literally the only way I'll sign into either Facebook or Twitter. I wish they would also enable Tracking Protection and Do Not Track by default on non-Private browsing as well, but that was an easy enough change for me to make.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  I know at least with Do Not Track, advertising companies were asserting that if a browser had activated it by default for the user, then the user showed no intent on blocking the tracking; it was a decision made for them by the browser, and thus couldn't be interpreted as the user's wish to not be tracked. Same argument can be made about Private Browsing and Tracking Protection. Perhaps Firefox should display a "privacy start screen" the first few times the browser is launched after downloading it, explaining the features to the user, and allowing them to opt-in on their own decision? For things like DNT or Tracking Protection, I imagine most common users do not know about these things so the usage rate is much lower than it "should be". Fun fact: in Firefox you can actually turn Tracking Protection on to use it all the time, not just when you're in Private Browsing mode: Options > Privacy & Security > Tracking Protection > Always
  - ajnin 9y ago
    Using private browsing is definitely intentional, it's activated by the user and not a default setting; besides it's actively preventing tracking from taking place, it's not politely asking if advertisers would be so kind as not do what they exist to do as DNT was naively attempting.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Have you tried multi-account containers? That allows you to separate your Facebook/Twitter login from all your other sessions, but remember it on their own sites so you don't have to log in every time: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
NikolaeVarius 9y ago
I find that Firefox/Firefox-Dev seems to be very VERY slow on my 4k setup. It works just fine when not connected to the 4K monitor, but when connected, sites take like 5x longer to properly fully load. I've tested it with the Debug stuff on, and it simply just shows render times being very very slow with nothing else. It also pegs the CPU 100% while loading. There are no errors, but I notice a LOT of GC Pauses in the perf dump Chromium works just fine on these sites.
- juandazapata 9y ago
  Weird. I have a 4k display as well and my experience is not what you describe. I'm running macos high Sierra and there's no issues for me.
- tedmielczarek 9y ago
  If you've got a specific site that this reproduces on that would be helpful. If you can also provide the model of the monitor you're using and the version of your OS that would help us track it down. Thanks!
  - NikolaeVarius 9y ago
    Not a specific site, just general slowness on all rendering. This is with fully clean install and several attempts at cleaning profile. I notice it seems to get stuck on "waiting for site" and "Performing TLS Handshake", which is strange because im on a 100gbit line and I can get chrome to load those sites full speed just fine simultaneously. X1 Carbon Fedora 26 Intel Core i7-6600U 16 GB RAM Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) Do you have a good place to send these profile dumps to?
    - mattl 9y ago
      If you're using GNOME 3, pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R screen recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. Posting the videos of Chrome vs Firefox Quantum somewhere like YouTube might be an interesting thing to watch.
fastball 9y ago
I know this isn't really the place for bug reports, but I'm having a very interesting issue with FF57+. I work on a University campus, and when I'm on the Uni wifi (eduroam), google search does not work in FF. However, it works just fine in Chrome. Super weird and I haven't been able to debug the problem.
- ginkoes 9y ago
  Chrome uses its own integrated DNS client rather than relying on the host OS resolver, so your problem may lie with broken DNS settings for your wifi configuration. You can test it by running nslookup while specifying alternative name servers.
  - fastball 9y ago
    Wow, hot tip. Thanks! Changed my system's wifi settings on the network to use Google's DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and it worked a treat. Does Safari also have it's own DNS resolution? That is why I missed this - googling worked just fine in Safari.
  - DavideNL 9y ago
    Exactly. This is also somewhat of a privacy issue, since Chrome sends all Dns requests for all websites you visit to Googles own dns servers, regardless of which Dns servers you have cofigured in your OS... :(
- 0xcoffee 9y ago
  I've also noticed in private mode I cannot use the omnibar to search using google in Firefox. I have to go to google.com else it hangs forever.
egberts1 9y ago
What a dud website for it is not compatible with Firefox mobile on iPhone
- callahad 9y ago
  What specific app, and what version of it, are you using?
imwally 9y ago
Would the built-in tracking protection make anti-tracking add-ons such as uBlock Origin redundant? Looks like it's using Disconnect's list but I'm not sure how much this differs from uBlock.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  And how do the two interact? Does Firefox's built-in tracking protection block content before uBlock Origin even has a chance to see it, and if so then is using the two in combination faster than just using uBlock Origin alone?
  - groovecoder 9y ago
    Privacy Engineer @ Firefox here ... Extensions operate on requests before the platform-level channel classifier. In theory, the platform-level classifier should be faster than the webRequest API, but we've not measured it specifically. Running both uBO and and Tracking Protection can give some extra coverage; I've noticed sometimes the Tracking Protection shield pops up even though uBO (and Privacy Badger) are running.
    - clouddrover 9y ago
      Interesting. Thanks. :)
- rsync 9y ago
  I notice that if you enter incognito mode in chrome, while using ublock origin, the extension is disabled in the incognito window/session. However, it's not obvious to me that the protections offered by incognito are a superset of the protections offered by UO and I wonder why this is desirable ? Do I want incognito mode with UO running on it or is that unnecessary ?
  - daxterspeed 9y ago
    When you install an extension in chrome it's by default set to be disabled in incognito mode (supposedly since some extensions don't respect privacy). From the extensions page you can easily set UO, or any other extensions for that matter, to remain enabled in incognito mode windows. Last time I checked chrome does not by itself offer any tracking protection while in incognito mode (supposedly since this would make it easier to detect when a user is in incognito mode). So you probably want UO enabled for that.
ploggingdev 9y ago
One of the interesting aspects about the recent Firefox Quantum launch, apart from the amazing product itself, is the marketing. It's been incredible to read the well written blog posts that appeal to a variety of audiences. Though most are focused on the tech behind Firefox, a few, like the linked post, appeal to a wider audience. Anecdotal, but the blog posts leading up to the launch got me excited enough to download and use the beta version of Firefox for the first time and it lived up to the marketing. I've tried switching to Firefox multiple times over the past few years, but I always ended up switching back to Chrome for the speed. It might be different this time. What happened to the controversial cliqz program that they were testing? Last I checked, Mozilla did not respond to the privacy concerns of the integration.
- mtgx 9y ago
  Indeed. I actually mentioned this before they ever mentioned "Project Quamtum" (last year), that if they ever plan on releasing a major overhaul of Firefox based on components written in Rust, it also needs to come with a new look as well as new branding. Otherwise, most people wouldn't perceive what's really new about the new release, even if it's indeed faster, more secure, etc. This is what Microsoft also did with Edge and at least from a branding point of view, it worked quite well for them, because people do believe it's a new start from Internet Explorer. It's just that many didn't think that this new fresh start was better than Chrome for the most part (the fact that even now it only works with 70 extensions is a big reason for that belief, too). I think Project Quantum hit the right spots for the most part. Headlines didn't just mention "Firefox 57" but "Firefox Quantum edition." Hopefully the Mozilla team is writing down all of the things that worked well for them this time around (as a tactic checklist) so that they can repeat them for future major releases, too.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Was having a shower thought the other day that frankly v57 broke so sharply with legacy Firefox that they should have just given it a new name and version number.
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
jvannistelrooy 9y ago
I switched to Firefox for Mac and iOS completely the moment Quantum came out of beta, and I really want it to succeed. However, I experience severe speed problems loading Google apps (drive, sheets, slides, inbox) along with occasional freezes and CPU spikes. Additionally, I experience a bug on iOS where certain pages will only render partially and turn completely blank when I scroll down. Refresh doesn't help, which makes me open Chrome again to load the page. Firefox is still my default browser as I'm still trying to convert myself, but it turns out I'm typing this message in Chrome again.
- om42 9y ago
  The performance of Google apps in Firefox (and any non-Chrome browser) have always been sluggish. But since I updated to Quantum its been much smoother for me. Also don't think the mobile (iOS/Android) versions of Firefox have seen the Quantum updates yet. Note: I'm on Linux
- Jyaif 9y ago
  Apple doesn't allow anyone to use anything other than the system provided Webkit, so FF on iOS is just a wrapper for Webkit.
  - jvannistelrooy 9y ago
    That makes sense. I didn't expect the whole quantum engine to be running on iOS, but I hoped hoped Firefox to be at least as be reliable on iOS as Chrome (also Webkit) or Safari.
danielricci 9y ago
If you care about privacy, you should not be on the internet.
- dEnigma 9y ago
  You realize that there is a very wide spectrum between absolute privacy and no privacy at all?
evo_9 9y ago
Personally I'd rather know which is more private/secure; speed for this use case is secondary.
- milkytron 9y ago
  Speed happens to be a byproduct of some of the security features being implemented in this scenario.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
I want to report a typo: "If you’d like to take it up a notch and enable Tracing Protection" -> "Tracking Protection"
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  If you want it to be addressed, the comments section of a random web site unrelated to Mozilla is probably not the best place to report it. Try Bugzilla [0] or leaving a comment on the blog post instead. [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  Thank you! I reported your comment and they should have fixed it by now.
thatzerodude 9y ago
Which one is actually "Private"? Pro-tip: Neither, use Tor Browser.
Fharland 9y ago
The new Quantum is super fast for browsing in general, but I've found some snags with some videos. Not sure if I just need some sort of plugin to make it work, but at this point I'm back to Chrome.
johndoe489 9y ago
Firefox's private browsing lets you restore closed tabs, unline Chrome, which is a small but noticable improvement for me.
- dubya 9y ago
  Safari has this as well. I've taken to using private mode for just about everything, mostly because I click on so many random links to Amazon, and Amazon is so aggressive about trying to sell you things you've clicked while logged in.
  - johndoe489 9y ago
    Same here. More specifically, I keep my general browsing history , and YouTube history more relevant by opening random / "lol" content in a private tab. That way the omnibar suggestions show me content that I'm more likely to revisit and doesn't get clogged up with random results I don't care about; and YouTube gives me more interesting recommendations.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  I don’t know. I can see it being a feature both ways. As always, the balance between usability and security. Keep in mind the algorithms for session management are complicated and a session might persist past when you thought it would.
  - NathanCH 9y ago
    It's a private browser window, not a private browser tab.
andybak 9y ago
Remember that Chrome beat Explorer by being faster. Users care about that more than they care about privacy et al. Now - Chrome is slower vs Firefox Quantum's new privacy because of the ad networks. The ad networks have had no incentive up until now to improve their shitty code. If people start switching to Firefox and turning on privacy more to get faster browsing - they will lose the game entirely. All that's needed is for a modest uptick in usage of this mode and for some ad networks to get scared. They spend some of the pile of money they swim in to not ruin everyone's browser experience and bam - we get a less crappy internet. If they don't shape up - then we get a faster internet with better privacy. Even better.
- gschier 9y ago
  Don't forget that Google advertises Chrome on the most popular website in the world google.com, as well as in a lot of it's products. Chrome also ships with Android, the most popular mobile operating system. I assume these channels are a huge reason why people adopt it. I love the new Firefox and use it every day but, unfortunately, I don't think it will come close to Chrome's market share by just being slightly better.
  - takeda 9y ago
    Google even does scummy bundling of chrome with popular downloads. I don't understand how people don't have problem with that.
    - jonathankoren 9y ago
      "Hey, I've noticed you have Google Calendar installed on your phone! You're missing a bunch of other crapware! Install it now!" Never. Enable. Notifications. They're just product management spam.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      This isn't much different than people complaining Edge nags Chrome users to switch, but not minding Google sites nagging the heck out of Firefox and Edge users: If you already are on Chrome, as most people are, you don't see Google harassing people since you're already onboard.
codepie 9y ago
Firefox has a really good market in the mobile industry. I really wanted Firefox OS to catch up, but it didn't. I am still looking for privacy-focused OS alternative to Android, any suggestions?
- Jeaye 9y ago
  > I am still looking for privacy-focused OS alternative to Android, any suggestions? https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
0xbear 9y ago
If someone from Mozilla is reading this: I (and I suspect many other people who prefer to strictly segregate their “work” and “personal” data), would very much prefer if you implemented built-in profile switching a-la Chrome. This shouldn’t even be that hard given that FF already supports profiles. This is, and has always been, an obstacle for me to seriously consider Firefox as my only browser.
- jedahan 9y ago
  You might be interested in Firefox Multi-Account Containers[1], an addon by Mozilla, announced in https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are-go-ed2e3533b6e3 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    I know about those, but they are almost the opposite of what I want to have: instead of completely separating the two worlds, they forcibly merge them in the same browser instance (and Sync account).
- callahad 9y ago
  The UI isn't as pretty, but Firefox does support fully separated profiles. More info at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... You can also use command line flags to do the same. For example, you can run `firefox --profile $(mktemp -d) --new-instance` to create a temporary, throwaway profile. (Change --new-instance to --no-remote on Windows).
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  The about:profiles UI is not very polished, but it does exist.
down 9y ago
I switched today to firefox and it really feels faster, but also I remembered how some things annoys me on Chrome, for example you can't modify new tab to remove everything on Chrome, so in my case, it makes me to click around more and procrastinate, as I see the sites there, also I never liked the Chrome dev tools, I know the general opinion is that are better, but felt to complicated for me and somehow slow, to busy.
darksim905 9y ago
My only problem with Firefox these days is that extension overhaul completely screwed with how I browse, store & catalogue links & things I find. The fact things like the tab groups extension are broken (and, the fact that it was removed when it was a baked in feature years ago), is ridiculous. I see no reason why they can't add this feature back as part of the browser.
- kk_cz 9y ago
  I have switched to Firefox ESR for the time being exactly for this reason. I can now only hope that working alternatives will be ready by the time extensions stop working there as well.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Tab groups were apparently a huge mess in the backend side of things, which is why they removed it. And Tree Tabs [1] seems to be doing something functional into the direction of tab groups. Maybe that works for you... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/
- loopbit 9y ago
  I'm on the same boat and, to be honest, it's making me think about leaving Firefox. Looking at the number of forks that have appeared recently, I'm not the only one. Let me explain: I've used Firefox since the beginning (and Navigator before that). I like Mozilla and I agree that most of the changes that they've done internally in quantum were kind of necessary (although many could have been handled better). However, along the way, they've broken the way many people use Firefox and the only answer the frustrated users seem to get is "but it's fast". They've changed the UI to be similar to Chrome, to the point where the reload button is not where it used to be. But it's fast. They've broken the extensibility, which was (at least for me) the main reason to use Firefox instead of Chrome, Chromium or any of the others. You could do things in Firefox that the others couldn't even dream of. But it's fast. While doing this, they've alienated plenty of plugin developers, people who loved the Firefox ecosystem, some of which have had to rewrite their plugins thrice already (with some being told to, essentially, "bugger off"). But it's fast. As far as I can tell, it's using more resources in MacOS than the old version, at least the processor runs hotter and the fans kick in more often. I've had issues with the CPU use sky-rocketing, but I believe that has more to do with opening multiple tabs quickly rather than with one specific page. But it's fast. Honestly, I haven't noticed any major changes in speed in Quantum (it's a bit snappier, that's it) and was happy enough with it's previous performance. IMHO what we've lost is not worth what we've gained. I'd move to other browser, but which one? None of the main ones have the things I liked about Firefox and I don't really see most of the forks being able to keep up the pace. I guess that I'll stay, hoping that the things I love about Firefox will eventually come back.
t0mbstone 9y ago
I can't use the new Firefox until it works with the following addons: 1. Lastpass 2. Xmarks (for cross-browser bookmarks syncing) 3. Adblock (or uBlock) As far as I know, it works with all of these now except for Xmarks. I am impatiently waiting until then.
- yborg 9y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/versions/beta https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/v... Works, but very buggy with multiple sync sources, might be server-side, I've had trouble with failed syncs losing entire folders for a long time. I only use the Upload/Download functionality and make sure not to have conflicting syncs. The product has been on minimal life support for years, so can't expect much I guess. But remains the only solution I've seen that works cross-browser.
eighthnate 9y ago
I use both daily and both are fine when it comes to speed. Where chrome shines over firefox quantum is in blocking ads. I use uBlock Origin on both and yet I see some sponsored ads on firefox while I see nothing on chrome. It's not a deal breaker but an occasional annoyance that I can live with.
DavideNL 9y ago
My only problem with Firefox is the annoying pinch to zoom on a trackpad (Macbook) - pinch to zoom is (and has been for many years) so much better in Safari and Chrome, it just hurts my brain to use it in Firefox. It's like going back in time 10 years... and zooming seems quite a basic feature to me. Other than that though, Firefox is my favorite browser.
TylerH 9y ago
They're both fast. Most people who use them don't really care if one saves them a a few seconds to a minute over a standard browsing period. They care about other features that aren't necessarily specific to the private aspect of it.
leeoniya 9y ago
i like firefox, but this article might as well show page load times with and without uBlock Origin or uMatrix in both browsers. it's nice that private mode is more private and faster by default though.
Jeaye 9y ago
I just really wish every private browsing window were entirely separate from the others. It's odd when I log into something on private browsing, then open up another private window for another service but find the first one still logged in. A marriage of private browsing + containers would also do the trick.
- the8472 9y ago
  You could try one of the container management addons that simply spawn new containers as needed, e.g. containers on demand[0]. In principle the underlzing building blocks for containers and private browsing are orthogonal that can be used at the same time, i.e. a container in private browsing mode is yet another context that will have private browsing features (nothing written to disk) but is also separate from other private browsing tabs. But I'm not sure if that this is exposed through UI or APIs. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-on-the-go/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-on...
catalunia 9y ago
Frustrates me to see techies running chrome. You guys should know better. Are you really willing to let google own everything just because chrome has this one tiny feature that you like?
toblender 9y ago
My issue is that I'm on a corporate firewall, and I can't even navigate to https://google.com https://google.com on the new version of firefox, as it complains about the certificate. It won't even let me add an exception.
- CodesInChaos 9y ago
  If you're behind a corporate firewall (and want to be mitm-ed by it), you should install their root CA instead of adding an exception for the invalid certificate.
wodenokoto 9y ago
Can I overload the tracking filter with, say, easylist[1]? [1] https://easylist.to https://easylist.to
bakhy 9y ago
This is why I use Firefox on Android - with the uBlock Origin add-on installed, it's really fast. There's no optimization like avoiding the needless work in the first place :)

262 points by ronjouch 9y ago

Is anyone else getting tired of Mozilla shilling how fast their new version of Firefox is? If it's really that good, let the product speak for itself.

proaralyst 9y ago
a) is it shilling if it's self-promotion? Edit: a quick check in a dictionary points out that a shill is someone pretending to be impartial. I'm not sure Mozilla could do that about their own browser. b) if they didn't make noise about this no one would try to switch to this fairly big release. It's a bit like the hype around Firefox 3.
- infinityplus1 9y ago
  And Firefox 4. That was a pretty big release.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
oh no, they didn't get a third party blogger to write about them, it looks so laaaaaame when it comes from the one person that knows about their accomplishment /s
atonse 9y ago
They should be proud of their accomplishments and show them off. One thing I've learned in life is, you can do great work, but if people don't know about it or appreciate it, it simply won't help you.
cJ0th 9y ago
Well, I don't blame them for promoting their product. Speed, however, is probably among the least important things when it comes to incognito mode. I would have appreciated it if they had spent more time figuring out how to reduce fingerprints.
- callahad 9y ago
  We are. It's not quite polished yet, but check out privacy.resistFingerprinting (and privacy.firstparty.isolate) in about:config. This all dovetails with our work to upstream the relevant patches from the Tor Browser Bundle, which is also proceeding apace. More info at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting
  - cJ0th 9y ago
    That's great to hear :)
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > privacy.resistFingerprinting Is there a reason that setting does so many different things? I've been trying it for a few days but it's a real problem when I want some of those settings but not others. For example the protection against canvas image extraction needs work. It's stuck on 'ask' with constant popups, and once you pick yes/no on a domain it's impossible to see the permission or change it ever again. Until it forgets on browser restart and starts bugging you all over again.
- daxorid 9y ago
  The privacy afforded by anti-fingerprinting features is kind of useless as long as the browser remains a member of the UAF-vuln-of-the-week club.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Chrome and Edge do the same, what's your point? Also please stop using that stupid alt-right language inappropriately.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
It think it's a pretty silly thing to focus marketing on considering they've been fast enough for the average user for years. I saw a TV commercial for it during The Walking Dead last night, surely that money could have been spent in a much better way. I think the marketing should focus on being the only major browser to allow ad blockers to be installed on Android devices.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  I was very happy to see how we’re using the advertising spend for this release. The “Hot Firefox” custom New York coffee cup is to die for, and a lot of folks in the real world have said thank you to us to my face, unprompted, for making the web suck less for them. Every percent we make the browser faster makes it more usable for people (and libraries!) with older, slower computers. A lot of the world can’t afford to upgrade. When we make it faster for everyone, we make it faster for them too. If we save 0.3 seconds per page view, how many millions of hours do we save humanity from waiting for their browser to do something it could do faster if we just worked hard enough? That’s why faster is good, to me, and so this campaign aligns well with my personal reasons for working here.
  - apetrovic 9y ago
    >If we save 0.3 seconds per page view, how many millions of hours do we save humanity from waiting for their browser to do something it could do faster if we just worked hard enough? That’s why faster is good, to me, and so this campaign aligns well with my personal reasons for working here. Can you explain in a just a bit more details how Firefox "save humanity" 3 seconds if I and nine more people around shave off 0.3 seconds from some web page load and what exactly that mean?
    - floatingatoll 9y ago
      For ten people, shaving 0.3 seconds per page load would save 3 seconds of their total shared lives from sitting and watching a page load. For a million^ people who load web pages at least once, you technically have created an opportunity to save 0.3 * 1_000_000 = 300_000 seconds of cumulative lifetimes across them, which is 3-4 days of reality. Practically, I'm not sure how I feel about this metric on the 0.3 second level, but I sure do understand it at the 5 second level. I've stared at useless pages that are stuck on some tracking JS so many times I can't count, so if those stop making me stuck, that's invaluable once and multiply that win by a million. But that's just time. If you also consider the resources that are needed to execute the page JavaScript, we're probably saving megawatts of power per interval (totaled across all Firefox users) with each small efficiency gain. The changes that are "parallelize all the work" may cost more, less, or same amount of power; the ones that are "use fewer CPU cycles" will definitely cost less power. And so there's a very real theory that we could probably measure how many gigawatt^-hours Quantum has saved the world to date, which appeals to me greatly :) ^ I arbitrarily picked "a million" and "gigawatts". This does not offer any guidance whatsoever on specific or approximate user counts. EDIT: My UPS says that my entire desk has a load of ~75 watts @ 120V, times a million^ users = 75 megawatts. I haven't the faintest idea how much power it takes to evaluate Javascript inefficiently, but saving 0.3 seconds of any amount of power times a million^ users per page view quickly balloons into reality-impacting figures.
INTPenis 9y ago
They lost a lot of market share when Chrome came on the scene. Partly because it was faster but also because Google promoted it and it actually had some sweet process/tab separation. I remained a loyal FF user myself and actually wanted to take this opportunity to promote Firefox Focus which makes it real easy to browse sensitive things like porn on a tablet shared by the family or SO. It's oriented around privacy so it saves nothing and provides easy to access shortcuts for clearing browser history when you're done.
- rplnt 9y ago
  Google promoted it HEAVILY. TV, radio, outdoor, print, (and web of course). Must have been millions of dollars poured into advertising for Chrome. I'm not sure I've seen all that for any software, let alone a free one. Not to mention prominent native ads on such little pages like google.com or youtube.com. And all that wasn't enough since they also shadily (based on user agent for no good reason) blocked features for other browsers in their products.
  - floatingatoll 9y ago
    If Google had to charge itself actual market prices for the google.com homepage banners promoting Chrome, the costs would be well into a billion dollars per release.
  - INTPenis 9y ago
    Yes but weren't they brought up on charges by the EU for monopolization?
    - robin_reala 9y ago
      Not to do with Chrome, the EU charge was around shopping comparisons.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    > Must have been millions of dollars poured into advertising for Chrome. For what it's worth, "millions of dollars" is probably understating things by 2-3 orders of magnitude. The ad budget for Chrome was likely comparable to Mozilla's entire budget for a few years there, even if you ignore the free product placement on google.com...
elgenie 9y ago
The problem is that "Let the product speak for itself" is actually Step 2. Step 1 is "Get people to (re)try the product". Unless there's a magic wand waved that gets people unaware of a milestone release to (re)install and (re)launch FF57, Mozilla needs to put out some marketing just to even seed the basis for word-of-mouth of the product's merits.

fwn 9y ago

Sure, it's faster if some scripts are blocked. Wait how fast it gets as soon as you add ublock Origin.

floatingatoll 9y ago
Ironically, content blocker extensions have historically been a common source of slowdowns while loading all pages.
- sjwright 9y ago
  That's been historically true for Adblock Plus. Has anyone benchmarked ublock as impacting the performance of Firefox?
  - floatingatoll 9y ago
    Adblock was not consistently slow over time. It varies based on a huge array of conditions. I would assume any benchmark will suffer the same flaw - unless performed over time, which will go poorly since we’re busily swapping out the guts of the product right now, and so Apples to Apples will be nigh impossible on any useful timescale.
  - akerro 9y ago
    https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance It might be biased since it's from µblock developer.
    - kodablah 9y ago
      Also really old. uBlock is fairly fast on the cosmetic blocking because it does a couple of things: parses selectors themselves instead of querying for all of them, and caches known selectors. It uses a mutation observer to check for new elements.
  - Reason077 9y ago
    I observed very significant speedups on Firefox (< 57) on an older, memory-constrained Mac when using uBlock origin. Both page load times and general feel (lag when switching between tabs, etc) were improved. On a modern Mac with plenty of RAM the difference isn't really noticeable.

ajobaccount2017 9y ago

Firefox Quantum is really fast! And I love it :) However when comparing private/incognito browsing, my main concern wouldn't be the speed, but privacy.

floatingatoll 9y ago
“Loads 3 seconds fewer tracking scripts” seems like a shoe-in for your privacy consideration.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  I think the tracking scripts can have no upper limit to loading . Which means that it would make the page more snappier also.
sjwright 9y ago
Fortunately you don't have to choose between concerns because you can have your cake (privacy) and eat it (a fast browser) and eat it a second time (even faster when privacy improvements are enabled).

robinduckett 9y ago

Firefox in "Websites are faster when you don't load 44% of them" shocker

callahad 9y ago
The nice thing about being a non-profit is that we can include a tracking blocker for that 44% right in the browser, without it being counter to our business interests.
- 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
  Would you mind to expand your point of view and provide evidence? Are you perhaps referring to the cliqz experiment that was ran for less than 1% of german firefox downloads? Are you sure you are not blowing things out of proportion?
  - GrayShade 9y ago
    Germany has rather strict privacy laws, so it sounds like the worst pick for something like this. They're also planning [] to send more detailed browsing history as telemetry, so there's that. [] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL0w/OVf_NL7yCgAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL...
- gmartres 9y ago
  I'll be impressed the day this is turned on by default, or at least proposed as an option to the user after installation :).
  - discreditable 9y ago
    You can already enable tracking protection globally in the options. It's on by default for private browsing, but it does break a few sites (like any adblocker).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

whizzkid 9y ago

I really want Firefox Quantum to be at least as good as Chrome. But when I tried watching some HTML5 videos, it started using a significant amount of CPU on my Mac and it did not stop. My experience for 3 major browsers on MacOS as follows: - If you want noticeably longer battery life when on the travel. 1- Safari 2- Chrome/Firefox - If you want seamless browsing experience. 1- Chrome 2- Firefox 3- Safari

tokenizerrr 9y ago
Yeah, it's weird. Switched to Firefox Quantum as my main browser again, happened to use Plex and it was slightly laggy with huge cpu usage. Try it in chrome and it's smooth as always.
- tehbeard 9y ago
  I've seen comments that, at least on Linux it might not use GPU acceleration by default?
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    If this is the case for you, hit up `about:config` and change `layers.acceleration.force-enabled` to true. This heavily reduced tearing for me.
    - floatboth 9y ago
      That is a must-enable setting for sure, but not video related. That's compositing. Firefox still does not support VAAPI or VDPAU :(
  - jhasse 9y ago
    It doesn't, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280523
caiob 9y ago
Agreed! Video playback is one of the main reasons I keep coming back to Chrome.

james_pm 9y ago

I'm really liking what Firefox is doing around Private Browsing and FF57 has brought me back to Firefox as my primary browser. With the amount of tracking going on these days, a FF Private window is literally the only way I'll sign into either Facebook or Twitter. I wish they would also enable Tracking Protection and Do Not Track by default on non-Private browsing as well, but that was an easy enough change for me to make.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
I know at least with Do Not Track, advertising companies were asserting that if a browser had activated it by default for the user, then the user showed no intent on blocking the tracking; it was a decision made for them by the browser, and thus couldn't be interpreted as the user's wish to not be tracked. Same argument can be made about Private Browsing and Tracking Protection. Perhaps Firefox should display a "privacy start screen" the first few times the browser is launched after downloading it, explaining the features to the user, and allowing them to opt-in on their own decision? For things like DNT or Tracking Protection, I imagine most common users do not know about these things so the usage rate is much lower than it "should be". Fun fact: in Firefox you can actually turn Tracking Protection on to use it all the time, not just when you're in Private Browsing mode: Options > Privacy & Security > Tracking Protection > Always
- ajnin 9y ago
  Using private browsing is definitely intentional, it's activated by the user and not a default setting; besides it's actively preventing tracking from taking place, it's not politely asking if advertisers would be so kind as not do what they exist to do as DNT was naively attempting.
Vinnl 9y ago
Have you tried multi-account containers? That allows you to separate your Facebook/Twitter login from all your other sessions, but remember it on their own sites so you don't have to log in every time: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

NikolaeVarius 9y ago

I find that Firefox/Firefox-Dev seems to be very VERY slow on my 4k setup. It works just fine when not connected to the 4K monitor, but when connected, sites take like 5x longer to properly fully load. I've tested it with the Debug stuff on, and it simply just shows render times being very very slow with nothing else. It also pegs the CPU 100% while loading. There are no errors, but I notice a LOT of GC Pauses in the perf dump Chromium works just fine on these sites.

juandazapata 9y ago
Weird. I have a 4k display as well and my experience is not what you describe. I'm running macos high Sierra and there's no issues for me.
tedmielczarek 9y ago
If you've got a specific site that this reproduces on that would be helpful. If you can also provide the model of the monitor you're using and the version of your OS that would help us track it down. Thanks!
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago
  Not a specific site, just general slowness on all rendering. This is with fully clean install and several attempts at cleaning profile. I notice it seems to get stuck on "waiting for site" and "Performing TLS Handshake", which is strange because im on a 100gbit line and I can get chrome to load those sites full speed just fine simultaneously. X1 Carbon Fedora 26 Intel Core i7-6600U 16 GB RAM Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) Do you have a good place to send these profile dumps to?
  - mattl 9y ago
    If you're using GNOME 3, pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R screen recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. Posting the videos of Chrome vs Firefox Quantum somewhere like YouTube might be an interesting thing to watch.

fastball 9y ago

I know this isn't really the place for bug reports, but I'm having a very interesting issue with FF57+. I work on a University campus, and when I'm on the Uni wifi (eduroam), google search does not work in FF. However, it works just fine in Chrome. Super weird and I haven't been able to debug the problem.

ginkoes 9y ago
Chrome uses its own integrated DNS client rather than relying on the host OS resolver, so your problem may lie with broken DNS settings for your wifi configuration. You can test it by running nslookup while specifying alternative name servers.
- fastball 9y ago
  Wow, hot tip. Thanks! Changed my system's wifi settings on the network to use Google's DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and it worked a treat. Does Safari also have it's own DNS resolution? That is why I missed this - googling worked just fine in Safari.
- DavideNL 9y ago
  Exactly. This is also somewhat of a privacy issue, since Chrome sends all Dns requests for all websites you visit to Googles own dns servers, regardless of which Dns servers you have cofigured in your OS... :(
0xcoffee 9y ago
I've also noticed in private mode I cannot use the omnibar to search using google in Firefox. I have to go to google.com else it hangs forever.

egberts1 9y ago

What a dud website for it is not compatible with Firefox mobile on iPhone

callahad 9y ago
What specific app, and what version of it, are you using?

imwally 9y ago

Would the built-in tracking protection make anti-tracking add-ons such as uBlock Origin redundant? Looks like it's using Disconnect's list but I'm not sure how much this differs from uBlock.

clouddrover 9y ago
And how do the two interact? Does Firefox's built-in tracking protection block content before uBlock Origin even has a chance to see it, and if so then is using the two in combination faster than just using uBlock Origin alone?
- groovecoder 9y ago
  Privacy Engineer @ Firefox here ... Extensions operate on requests before the platform-level channel classifier. In theory, the platform-level classifier should be faster than the webRequest API, but we've not measured it specifically. Running both uBO and and Tracking Protection can give some extra coverage; I've noticed sometimes the Tracking Protection shield pops up even though uBO (and Privacy Badger) are running.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    Interesting. Thanks. :)
rsync 9y ago
I notice that if you enter incognito mode in chrome, while using ublock origin, the extension is disabled in the incognito window/session. However, it's not obvious to me that the protections offered by incognito are a superset of the protections offered by UO and I wonder why this is desirable ? Do I want incognito mode with UO running on it or is that unnecessary ?
- daxterspeed 9y ago
  When you install an extension in chrome it's by default set to be disabled in incognito mode (supposedly since some extensions don't respect privacy). From the extensions page you can easily set UO, or any other extensions for that matter, to remain enabled in incognito mode windows. Last time I checked chrome does not by itself offer any tracking protection while in incognito mode (supposedly since this would make it easier to detect when a user is in incognito mode). So you probably want UO enabled for that.

ploggingdev 9y ago

One of the interesting aspects about the recent Firefox Quantum launch, apart from the amazing product itself, is the marketing. It's been incredible to read the well written blog posts that appeal to a variety of audiences. Though most are focused on the tech behind Firefox, a few, like the linked post, appeal to a wider audience. Anecdotal, but the blog posts leading up to the launch got me excited enough to download and use the beta version of Firefox for the first time and it lived up to the marketing. I've tried switching to Firefox multiple times over the past few years, but I always ended up switching back to Chrome for the speed. It might be different this time. What happened to the controversial cliqz program that they were testing? Last I checked, Mozilla did not respond to the privacy concerns of the integration.

mtgx 9y ago
Indeed. I actually mentioned this before they ever mentioned "Project Quamtum" (last year), that if they ever plan on releasing a major overhaul of Firefox based on components written in Rust, it also needs to come with a new look as well as new branding. Otherwise, most people wouldn't perceive what's really new about the new release, even if it's indeed faster, more secure, etc. This is what Microsoft also did with Edge and at least from a branding point of view, it worked quite well for them, because people do believe it's a new start from Internet Explorer. It's just that many didn't think that this new fresh start was better than Chrome for the most part (the fact that even now it only works with 70 extensions is a big reason for that belief, too). I think Project Quantum hit the right spots for the most part. Headlines didn't just mention "Firefox 57" but "Firefox Quantum edition." Hopefully the Mozilla team is writing down all of the things that worked well for them this time around (as a tactic checklist) so that they can repeat them for future major releases, too.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Was having a shower thought the other day that frankly v57 broke so sharply with legacy Firefox that they should have just given it a new name and version number.
lloyd-christmas 9y ago

jvannistelrooy 9y ago

I switched to Firefox for Mac and iOS completely the moment Quantum came out of beta, and I really want it to succeed. However, I experience severe speed problems loading Google apps (drive, sheets, slides, inbox) along with occasional freezes and CPU spikes. Additionally, I experience a bug on iOS where certain pages will only render partially and turn completely blank when I scroll down. Refresh doesn't help, which makes me open Chrome again to load the page. Firefox is still my default browser as I'm still trying to convert myself, but it turns out I'm typing this message in Chrome again.

om42 9y ago
The performance of Google apps in Firefox (and any non-Chrome browser) have always been sluggish. But since I updated to Quantum its been much smoother for me. Also don't think the mobile (iOS/Android) versions of Firefox have seen the Quantum updates yet. Note: I'm on Linux
Jyaif 9y ago
Apple doesn't allow anyone to use anything other than the system provided Webkit, so FF on iOS is just a wrapper for Webkit.
- jvannistelrooy 9y ago
  That makes sense. I didn't expect the whole quantum engine to be running on iOS, but I hoped hoped Firefox to be at least as be reliable on iOS as Chrome (also Webkit) or Safari.

danielricci 9y ago

If you care about privacy, you should not be on the internet.

dEnigma 9y ago
You realize that there is a very wide spectrum between absolute privacy and no privacy at all?

evo_9 9y ago

Personally I'd rather know which is more private/secure; speed for this use case is secondary.

milkytron 9y ago
Speed happens to be a byproduct of some of the security features being implemented in this scenario.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

I want to report a typo: "If you’d like to take it up a notch and enable Tracing Protection" -> "Tracking Protection"

jlgaddis 9y ago
If you want it to be addressed, the comments section of a random web site unrelated to Mozilla is probably not the best place to report it. Try Bugzilla [0] or leaving a comment on the blog post instead. [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
floatingatoll 9y ago
Thank you! I reported your comment and they should have fixed it by now.

thatzerodude 9y ago

Which one is actually "Private"? Pro-tip: Neither, use Tor Browser.

Fharland 9y ago

The new Quantum is super fast for browsing in general, but I've found some snags with some videos. Not sure if I just need some sort of plugin to make it work, but at this point I'm back to Chrome.

johndoe489 9y ago

Firefox's private browsing lets you restore closed tabs, unline Chrome, which is a small but noticable improvement for me.

dubya 9y ago
Safari has this as well. I've taken to using private mode for just about everything, mostly because I click on so many random links to Amazon, and Amazon is so aggressive about trying to sell you things you've clicked while logged in.
- johndoe489 9y ago
  Same here. More specifically, I keep my general browsing history , and YouTube history more relevant by opening random / "lol" content in a private tab. That way the omnibar suggestions show me content that I'm more likely to revisit and doesn't get clogged up with random results I don't care about; and YouTube gives me more interesting recommendations.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
I don’t know. I can see it being a feature both ways. As always, the balance between usability and security. Keep in mind the algorithms for session management are complicated and a session might persist past when you thought it would.
- NathanCH 9y ago
  It's a private browser window, not a private browser tab.

andybak 9y ago

Remember that Chrome beat Explorer by being faster. Users care about that more than they care about privacy et al. Now - Chrome is slower vs Firefox Quantum's new privacy because of the ad networks. The ad networks have had no incentive up until now to improve their shitty code. If people start switching to Firefox and turning on privacy more to get faster browsing - they will lose the game entirely. All that's needed is for a modest uptick in usage of this mode and for some ad networks to get scared. They spend some of the pile of money they swim in to not ruin everyone's browser experience and bam - we get a less crappy internet. If they don't shape up - then we get a faster internet with better privacy. Even better.

gschier 9y ago
Don't forget that Google advertises Chrome on the most popular website in the world google.com, as well as in a lot of it's products. Chrome also ships with Android, the most popular mobile operating system. I assume these channels are a huge reason why people adopt it. I love the new Firefox and use it every day but, unfortunately, I don't think it will come close to Chrome's market share by just being slightly better.
- takeda 9y ago
  Google even does scummy bundling of chrome with popular downloads. I don't understand how people don't have problem with that.
  - jonathankoren 9y ago
    "Hey, I've noticed you have Google Calendar installed on your phone! You're missing a bunch of other crapware! Install it now!" Never. Enable. Notifications. They're just product management spam.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    This isn't much different than people complaining Edge nags Chrome users to switch, but not minding Google sites nagging the heck out of Firefox and Edge users: If you already are on Chrome, as most people are, you don't see Google harassing people since you're already onboard.

codepie 9y ago

Firefox has a really good market in the mobile industry. I really wanted Firefox OS to catch up, but it didn't. I am still looking for privacy-focused OS alternative to Android, any suggestions?

Jeaye 9y ago
> I am still looking for privacy-focused OS alternative to Android, any suggestions? https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

0xbear 9y ago

If someone from Mozilla is reading this: I (and I suspect many other people who prefer to strictly segregate their “work” and “personal” data), would very much prefer if you implemented built-in profile switching a-la Chrome. This shouldn’t even be that hard given that FF already supports profiles. This is, and has always been, an obstacle for me to seriously consider Firefox as my only browser.

jedahan 9y ago
You might be interested in Firefox Multi-Account Containers[1], an addon by Mozilla, announced in https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are-go-ed2e3533b6e3 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-are... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- 0xbear 9y ago
  I know about those, but they are almost the opposite of what I want to have: instead of completely separating the two worlds, they forcibly merge them in the same browser instance (and Sync account).
callahad 9y ago
The UI isn't as pretty, but Firefox does support fully separated profiles. More info at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... You can also use command line flags to do the same. For example, you can run `firefox --profile $(mktemp -d) --new-instance` to create a temporary, throwaway profile. (Change --new-instance to --no-remote on Windows).
bzbarsky 9y ago
The about:profiles UI is not very polished, but it does exist.

down 9y ago

I switched today to firefox and it really feels faster, but also I remembered how some things annoys me on Chrome, for example you can't modify new tab to remove everything on Chrome, so in my case, it makes me to click around more and procrastinate, as I see the sites there, also I never liked the Chrome dev tools, I know the general opinion is that are better, but felt to complicated for me and somehow slow, to busy.

darksim905 9y ago

My only problem with Firefox these days is that extension overhaul completely screwed with how I browse, store & catalogue links & things I find. The fact things like the tab groups extension are broken (and, the fact that it was removed when it was a baked in feature years ago), is ridiculous. I see no reason why they can't add this feature back as part of the browser.

kk_cz 9y ago
I have switched to Firefox ESR for the time being exactly for this reason. I can now only hope that working alternatives will be ready by the time extensions stop working there as well.
Sylos 9y ago
Tab groups were apparently a huge mess in the backend side of things, which is why they removed it. And Tree Tabs [1] seems to be doing something functional into the direction of tab groups. Maybe that works for you... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/
loopbit 9y ago
I'm on the same boat and, to be honest, it's making me think about leaving Firefox. Looking at the number of forks that have appeared recently, I'm not the only one. Let me explain: I've used Firefox since the beginning (and Navigator before that). I like Mozilla and I agree that most of the changes that they've done internally in quantum were kind of necessary (although many could have been handled better). However, along the way, they've broken the way many people use Firefox and the only answer the frustrated users seem to get is "but it's fast". They've changed the UI to be similar to Chrome, to the point where the reload button is not where it used to be. But it's fast. They've broken the extensibility, which was (at least for me) the main reason to use Firefox instead of Chrome, Chromium or any of the others. You could do things in Firefox that the others couldn't even dream of. But it's fast. While doing this, they've alienated plenty of plugin developers, people who loved the Firefox ecosystem, some of which have had to rewrite their plugins thrice already (with some being told to, essentially, "bugger off"). But it's fast. As far as I can tell, it's using more resources in MacOS than the old version, at least the processor runs hotter and the fans kick in more often. I've had issues with the CPU use sky-rocketing, but I believe that has more to do with opening multiple tabs quickly rather than with one specific page. But it's fast. Honestly, I haven't noticed any major changes in speed in Quantum (it's a bit snappier, that's it) and was happy enough with it's previous performance. IMHO what we've lost is not worth what we've gained. I'd move to other browser, but which one? None of the main ones have the things I liked about Firefox and I don't really see most of the forks being able to keep up the pace. I guess that I'll stay, hoping that the things I love about Firefox will eventually come back.

t0mbstone 9y ago

I can't use the new Firefox until it works with the following addons: 1. Lastpass 2. Xmarks (for cross-browser bookmarks syncing) 3. Adblock (or uBlock) As far as I know, it works with all of these now except for Xmarks. I am impatiently waiting until then.

yborg 9y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/versions/beta https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/v... Works, but very buggy with multiple sync sources, might be server-side, I've had trouble with failed syncs losing entire folders for a long time. I only use the Upload/Download functionality and make sure not to have conflicting syncs. The product has been on minimal life support for years, so can't expect much I guess. But remains the only solution I've seen that works cross-browser.

eighthnate 9y ago

I use both daily and both are fine when it comes to speed. Where chrome shines over firefox quantum is in blocking ads. I use uBlock Origin on both and yet I see some sponsored ads on firefox while I see nothing on chrome. It's not a deal breaker but an occasional annoyance that I can live with.

DavideNL 9y ago

My only problem with Firefox is the annoying pinch to zoom on a trackpad (Macbook) - pinch to zoom is (and has been for many years) so much better in Safari and Chrome, it just hurts my brain to use it in Firefox. It's like going back in time 10 years... and zooming seems quite a basic feature to me. Other than that though, Firefox is my favorite browser.

TylerH 9y ago

They're both fast. Most people who use them don't really care if one saves them a a few seconds to a minute over a standard browsing period. They care about other features that aren't necessarily specific to the private aspect of it.

leeoniya 9y ago

i like firefox, but this article might as well show page load times with and without uBlock Origin or uMatrix in both browsers. it's nice that private mode is more private and faster by default though.

Jeaye 9y ago

I just really wish every private browsing window were entirely separate from the others. It's odd when I log into something on private browsing, then open up another private window for another service but find the first one still logged in. A marriage of private browsing + containers would also do the trick.

the8472 9y ago
You could try one of the container management addons that simply spawn new containers as needed, e.g. containers on demand[0]. In principle the underlzing building blocks for containers and private browsing are orthogonal that can be used at the same time, i.e. a container in private browsing mode is yet another context that will have private browsing features (nothing written to disk) but is also separate from other private browsing tabs. But I'm not sure if that this is exposed through UI or APIs. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-on-the-go/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-on...

catalunia 9y ago

Frustrates me to see techies running chrome. You guys should know better. Are you really willing to let google own everything just because chrome has this one tiny feature that you like?

toblender 9y ago

My issue is that I'm on a corporate firewall, and I can't even navigate to https://google.com https://google.com on the new version of firefox, as it complains about the certificate. It won't even let me add an exception.

CodesInChaos 9y ago
If you're behind a corporate firewall (and want to be mitm-ed by it), you should install their root CA instead of adding an exception for the invalid certificate.

wodenokoto 9y ago

Can I overload the tracking filter with, say, easylist[1]? [1] https://easylist.to https://easylist.to

bakhy 9y ago

This is why I use Firefox on Android - with the uBlock Origin add-on installed, it's really fast. There's no optimization like avoiding the needless work in the first place :)