9 ms·

I switched back to Firefox 57 about a decade after abandoning it for Opera. I remember the advocacy movement around Firefox 1.0 which I was quite involved in. I

I switched back to Firefox 57 about a decade after abandoning it for Opera. I remember the advocacy movement around Firefox 1.0 which I was quite involved in. I thought (and still think) it was great. I don't plan to go quite as far this time, but do plan to try and convince all my friends and family to get on board. It'll be a harder task for sure since Chrome is not IE6, but as the resident IT guy that everyone asks for help, I know I have some sway. I'm just waiting for Quantum to land on Android, because I know enough of them will have issues with the current version and I want to skip over those problems to leave a good first impression.

steve19 9y ago
Firefox on Android is so frustrating. Things like no swipe down to refresh, despite all other apps implementating that pattern. On my phone, scrolling by swiping is slow, it scrolls such a short distance. Meaning going down a long NH page takes many swipes. All other Android browsers seem to get it right. Fonts also seem "off". It's these small things that make the experience frustrating. I truly want to use it, but it seems the designers of the app don't use other browsers, or have no interest in making the switch and Android FF easier.
- LocutusOfBorges 9y ago
  Things like no swipe down to refresh This is the thing that made me switch to it from Chrome. Something as experience-breaking as refreshing the page isn't something that the user should encounter just through energetic scrolling.
  - csydas 9y ago
    I can see the flip side on this too though - the user action is pretty universal in apps, and it's disruptive when 9 out of 10 apps use this and you're trying to get fresh data out of app #10. There should be some consistency in user expectations across apps, or a clear way of performing the same action. That being said, I agree with you and really like that FF doesn't have a motion for refresh. It's mildly annoying sometimes, but usually it's only on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism which have no other way of refreshing the page without going somewhere else first. HN is convenient enough on mobile with FF because you can just tap on the HN Title to refresh the page. Other pages are not as kind.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      I expect swiping down to take me to the top of the page. It's frustrating when it does more (like reloading the page). I guess I'm the wrong person to ask whether 9/10 apps do it; I usually find a replacement when they do. Firefox, Pale Moon, and Chrome all have a refresh command in the "3 dots" menu. I usually use that.
      - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
        Swiping down only refreshes when you are already at the top of the page, and it even gives some visual feedback to see that you have indeed reached the top and you are now initiating a refresh gesture. I'm a quite energetic swiper and, to be honest, I have never found a situation where I wanted to return to the top and ended up refreshing due to too much swiping. But YMMV, I guess.
    - birksherty 9y ago
      Personally I want to disable "swipe down to refresh" system wide and instead have a button at the top of those apps. "on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism" Browsers have refresh buttons for that.
  - languageiunvs 9y ago
    How did this even become a thing???? I absolutely hate it
- rtpg 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm a heavy Firefox for Android user and I _really_ want to use it but the performance is really rough. I wish I had the sort of skills to help contribute to performance, but the whole thing is so huge I wouldn't even know where to begin. At this point if Chrome implemented the "open tab in background" feature (when I click on a link in an e-mail I don't want to switch directly to the browser) I would probably switch back.
  - moz23 9y ago
    Mozilla don't really care about mobile. The (too) small mobile teams do care, but the company as a whole doesn't - which mostly explains why it's so rough.
    - Sylos 9y ago
      And you take this wisdom from where? They tried to build an entire mobile operating system before. Clearly they do care.
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      Firefox Focus is my go to browser on Android for 'just looking things up'. It's perfect for Wikipedia and IMDB (when someone points at the film you are watching and asks who the actor is). I only use another browser if I want up keep the page. No cookies, no bookmarks, no trackers
      - JeremyNT 9y ago
        Sadly, Focus appears to just be another Chrome skin with some ui and privacy tweaks, and I think it's pretty telling that Mozilla did this rather than actually use FF mobile as the basis for this product. If you want to encourage browser diversity it doesn't really help. I use FF Mobile because I want competition and I do like the features Firefox offers, but the performance and UX on Android are definitely lacking relative to Chrome.
        Sylos 9y ago
- diminish 9y ago
  ..Swipe down to refresh intervenes with google maps or canvas bad interactive content on firefox focus. I just opened a ticket.
- cdancette 9y ago
  The thing that annoys me the most is to change tab: on chrome / brave we can just swipe the top bar and change tab. On firefox, we need to first click on the tab button, and then find the right tab by looking at a huge list of tabs. I find it much less practical and that's what got me back to chrome.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Ha yeah. Firefox seems to want to encourage people to use fewer tabs, by having the tab-bar on top be a scroll-bar, so it's super annoying to have many tabs open.
  - dblohm7 9y ago
    All you need to do is go to your awesome bar and type "%" as the first character, then space, then start typing the string you're looking for.
    - cdancette 9y ago
      Yeah but on mobile it's annoying to type % .. it's so much faster to just swipe the address bar
mwilliaams 9y ago
Check out FF nightly on Android. It has the new features. I use it and it's great
- tempestn 9y ago
  You're not going to install a nightly build on your friend's or mom's phone though. Your parent is already sold on FF; just waiting for Quantum to be released on Android before pushing it.
  - chrismorgan 9y ago
    I can think of only one crash in the best part of a year of using Firefox Nightly exclusively on my phone. (Firefox Nightly on my laptop has been far more heavily used for a number of years and has had a handful of crashes and a few other issues, but still fewer crashes at least than I get the impression production Chrome has.)
    - mwilliaams 9y ago
      I've had a few crashes with it. But nothing serious or really different from Chrome. There's also FF developer edition, which is more stable.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Firefox on android kills my phone, gobbles tons of memory. Nexus 5x, no plugins. I've given up on it now.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Have you tried Firefox Focus?
    - moz23 9y ago
      Focus is chrome with a different skin and ads blocked. Literally, it's WebView which is Chrome.
ksec 9y ago
I started before it was called Firefox, and it was similar story. I abandoned Firefox last year to the Chrome Opera, So i have been bitting my fingers for years, Firefox was slow, and I knew Chrome was better, and I had waited. I used to force the usage of Firefox as the resident IT, with over 150 computer's default browser and later grew to 250. But every year since the introduction of Chrome, I have had more resistant, Chrome was faster, and better from those employees who knew IT, and may be 4 years ago, someone who is absolutely computer Illiterate came and asked if she could use this Google thing (Chrome). I asked for a reason, because I was curious how she knew, it turns out someone helped her using Chrome, and the speed was much better. She since then loved using it. And that wasn't only case, there were many other similar examples. And others from friends and family as well. It was at that time I gave up. Before then many within the Mozilla communities were begging for a better, more performant browser. That was right after Firefox 3, the goal of Firefox 4, the project of e10s. We thought JS was the problem, we advocated Spidermonkey being faster in benchmarks, but not much in UI or general feel of the Browser. Mozilla then literally gave up making a better browser and its users, and went on to built Firefox OS. Their ideology of Javascript is the best, build an OS with JS. It was pure luck they had a small group of people crazy enough to work on Rust, and Servo as an experiment which later turned into what we had today, Quantum. From the outside it was what i call a management and vision issue. And Mozilla left a very bad taste in my month. There used to be Article from Ars every month showing the decline of Firefox usage. I kept wondering at some point they should become worry as with less market share means less money from Search Engine, I dont think they see that as a problem until fairly recently. It wasn't until a month ago, someone on HN posted an comment on Mozilla that helped me Grief. It was never their intention to have the best browsers, or to care for user experience, that wasn't their main Goal. Their goal, as it always has been, is an Open Web; all others are secondary and merely the results for their first goal. They weren't here to compete, they were merely here to make sure the Web is open. It is good they are now back to Focus on Firefox. With WebRender, more Quantum parts, Firefox's future is bright. I am using Firefox now, but I wont be advocating for it any more, I guess everyone just choose what they want. Sorry for a long rant, but that is the results of someone who has been following them since Netscape era.
- dangoor 9y ago

steve19 9y ago

Firefox on Android is so frustrating. Things like no swipe down to refresh, despite all other apps implementating that pattern. On my phone, scrolling by swiping is slow, it scrolls such a short distance. Meaning going down a long NH page takes many swipes. All other Android browsers seem to get it right. Fonts also seem "off". It's these small things that make the experience frustrating. I truly want to use it, but it seems the designers of the app don't use other browsers, or have no interest in making the switch and Android FF easier.

LocutusOfBorges 9y ago
Things like no swipe down to refresh This is the thing that made me switch to it from Chrome. Something as experience-breaking as refreshing the page isn't something that the user should encounter just through energetic scrolling.
- csydas 9y ago
  I can see the flip side on this too though - the user action is pretty universal in apps, and it's disruptive when 9 out of 10 apps use this and you're trying to get fresh data out of app #10. There should be some consistency in user expectations across apps, or a clear way of performing the same action. That being said, I agree with you and really like that FF doesn't have a motion for refresh. It's mildly annoying sometimes, but usually it's only on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism which have no other way of refreshing the page without going somewhere else first. HN is convenient enough on mobile with FF because you can just tap on the HN Title to refresh the page. Other pages are not as kind.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    I expect swiping down to take me to the top of the page. It's frustrating when it does more (like reloading the page). I guess I'm the wrong person to ask whether 9/10 apps do it; I usually find a replacement when they do. Firefox, Pale Moon, and Chrome all have a refresh command in the "3 dots" menu. I usually use that.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
      Swiping down only refreshes when you are already at the top of the page, and it even gives some visual feedback to see that you have indeed reached the top and you are now initiating a refresh gesture. I'm a quite energetic swiper and, to be honest, I have never found a situation where I wanted to return to the top and ended up refreshing due to too much swiping. But YMMV, I guess.
  - birksherty 9y ago
    Personally I want to disable "swipe down to refresh" system wide and instead have a button at the top of those apps. "on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism" Browsers have refresh buttons for that.
- languageiunvs 9y ago
  How did this even become a thing???? I absolutely hate it
rtpg 9y ago
Yeah, I'm a heavy Firefox for Android user and I _really_ want to use it but the performance is really rough. I wish I had the sort of skills to help contribute to performance, but the whole thing is so huge I wouldn't even know where to begin. At this point if Chrome implemented the "open tab in background" feature (when I click on a link in an e-mail I don't want to switch directly to the browser) I would probably switch back.
- moz23 9y ago
  Mozilla don't really care about mobile. The (too) small mobile teams do care, but the company as a whole doesn't - which mostly explains why it's so rough.
  - Sylos 9y ago
    And you take this wisdom from where? They tried to build an entire mobile operating system before. Clearly they do care.
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    Firefox Focus is my go to browser on Android for 'just looking things up'. It's perfect for Wikipedia and IMDB (when someone points at the film you are watching and asks who the actor is). I only use another browser if I want up keep the page. No cookies, no bookmarks, no trackers
    - JeremyNT 9y ago
      Sadly, Focus appears to just be another Chrome skin with some ui and privacy tweaks, and I think it's pretty telling that Mozilla did this rather than actually use FF mobile as the basis for this product. If you want to encourage browser diversity it doesn't really help. I use FF Mobile because I want competition and I do like the features Firefox offers, but the performance and UX on Android are definitely lacking relative to Chrome.
      - Sylos 9y ago
diminish 9y ago
..Swipe down to refresh intervenes with google maps or canvas bad interactive content on firefox focus. I just opened a ticket.
cdancette 9y ago
The thing that annoys me the most is to change tab: on chrome / brave we can just swipe the top bar and change tab. On firefox, we need to first click on the tab button, and then find the right tab by looking at a huge list of tabs. I find it much less practical and that's what got me back to chrome.
- ant6n 9y ago
  Ha yeah. Firefox seems to want to encourage people to use fewer tabs, by having the tab-bar on top be a scroll-bar, so it's super annoying to have many tabs open.
- dblohm7 9y ago
  All you need to do is go to your awesome bar and type "%" as the first character, then space, then start typing the string you're looking for.
  - cdancette 9y ago
    Yeah but on mobile it's annoying to type % .. it's so much faster to just swipe the address bar

mwilliaams 9y ago

Check out FF nightly on Android. It has the new features. I use it and it's great

tempestn 9y ago
You're not going to install a nightly build on your friend's or mom's phone though. Your parent is already sold on FF; just waiting for Quantum to be released on Android before pushing it.
- chrismorgan 9y ago
  I can think of only one crash in the best part of a year of using Firefox Nightly exclusively on my phone. (Firefox Nightly on my laptop has been far more heavily used for a number of years and has had a handful of crashes and a few other issues, but still fewer crashes at least than I get the impression production Chrome has.)
  - mwilliaams 9y ago
    I've had a few crashes with it. But nothing serious or really different from Chrome. There's also FF developer edition, which is more stable.
mattmanser 9y ago
Firefox on android kills my phone, gobbles tons of memory. Nexus 5x, no plugins. I've given up on it now.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Have you tried Firefox Focus?
  - moz23 9y ago
    Focus is chrome with a different skin and ads blocked. Literally, it's WebView which is Chrome.

ksec 9y ago

I started before it was called Firefox, and it was similar story. I abandoned Firefox last year to the Chrome Opera, So i have been bitting my fingers for years, Firefox was slow, and I knew Chrome was better, and I had waited. I used to force the usage of Firefox as the resident IT, with over 150 computer's default browser and later grew to 250. But every year since the introduction of Chrome, I have had more resistant, Chrome was faster, and better from those employees who knew IT, and may be 4 years ago, someone who is absolutely computer Illiterate came and asked if she could use this Google thing (Chrome). I asked for a reason, because I was curious how she knew, it turns out someone helped her using Chrome, and the speed was much better. She since then loved using it. And that wasn't only case, there were many other similar examples. And others from friends and family as well. It was at that time I gave up. Before then many within the Mozilla communities were begging for a better, more performant browser. That was right after Firefox 3, the goal of Firefox 4, the project of e10s. We thought JS was the problem, we advocated Spidermonkey being faster in benchmarks, but not much in UI or general feel of the Browser. Mozilla then literally gave up making a better browser and its users, and went on to built Firefox OS. Their ideology of Javascript is the best, build an OS with JS. It was pure luck they had a small group of people crazy enough to work on Rust, and Servo as an experiment which later turned into what we had today, Quantum. From the outside it was what i call a management and vision issue. And Mozilla left a very bad taste in my month. There used to be Article from Ars every month showing the decline of Firefox usage. I kept wondering at some point they should become worry as with less market share means less money from Search Engine, I dont think they see that as a problem until fairly recently. It wasn't until a month ago, someone on HN posted an comment on Mozilla that helped me Grief. It was never their intention to have the best browsers, or to care for user experience, that wasn't their main Goal. Their goal, as it always has been, is an Open Web; all others are secondary and merely the results for their first goal. They weren't here to compete, they were merely here to make sure the Web is open. It is good they are now back to Focus on Firefox. With WebRender, more Quantum parts, Firefox's future is bright. I am using Firefox now, but I wont be advocating for it any more, I guess everyone just choose what they want. Sorry for a long rant, but that is the results of someone who has been following them since Netscape era.

dangoor 9y ago