28 ms·

Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try

• stevekemp 8y ago
  It was only a couple of months ago that I remembered I paid to have my name included in the Firefox advert, as printed in the New York Times: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-places-two-page-advocacy-ad-in-the-new-york-times/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... That was back in 2003!
  • ninkendo 8y ago
    I remember going to a Firefox 1.0 release party at Dragonmead brewery near Detroit and meeting a bunch of local nerds from IRC and various LUGs. A party with strangers just to celebrate the release of a browser we didn't get paid to promote or develop. I feel like the era where people were passionate about open source as a goal in itself has really waned in recent years. Maybe because a lot of the major battles were won, or because more companies are realizing that open source is a logical business choice in a lot of cases. Or maybe it's just rosy retrospection at play and I've just become jaded.
  • danso 8y ago
    How much did you have to pay?
    • stevekemp 8y ago
      I just checked my email archive: Donation ID: 1184 Donation Amount: $30.00 Donation Name: Steve Kemp Placed On: 12:07 PM Tuesday October 19, 2004 Payment Type: (paid in full)
• zmix 8y ago
  This journalist does not seem to know about the tech world he reports about. Not a single word has been shed about all those high quality addons, that Firefox users once had, and how huge the quality gap is between Chromium based add-ons and what was available for Firefox. In my opinion, this is so extreme, that I switched over to Vivaldi browser, now that XUL is gone.
  • bovine3dom 8y ago
    What add-ons are available for Chrome-likes that you miss in Firefox?
    • zmix 8y ago
      I meant, that there are XUL add-ons, that are neither available for Chrome-likes or the new Firefox. Like DownThemAll, Ubiquity and so many more.
• pmoriarty 8y ago
  Firefox permanently broke Pentadactyl. I'm really not going to be excited about Firefox until it has something of that caliber again.
  • branchless 8y ago
    vimvixen
  • regecks 8y ago
    Vimium has been working great for me, even since they broke Vimperator.
    • huntie 8y ago
      I used VimFX before and I'm using Vimium now. It's okay, but it works nowhere near as well as VimFX did. The biggest problem is that it doesn't work until a page has loaded. So if I open a page and while it's loading I want to open a new tab, I can't use Vimium shortcuts to do it.
  • michaelmrose 8y ago
    Tridactyl is quickly approaching parity with pentadactyl
    • Jaepa 8y ago
      Especially after installing the native message. Want a bind to open something in mpv/youtube-dl `";v": "hint -W exclaim_quiet mpv"` Want to open a text field in gvim? Hit `ctl+i` Want to remove the extra chrome: run `:guiset gui none` I stuck on the ESR of firefox for a long time because I wasn't willing to give up vimperator. Its not the same, but its pretty close. There are 2 main pain points, which I don't know it will be possible to address. First the page has to before its functional. Second currently domain keybinds take priority (looking at you github).
      • void_starer 8y ago
• didgeoridoo 8y ago
  Ironically, the thing that drove me to Firefox was the excellent Account Containers system that I found necessary to manage being logged into multiple Google Apps accounts simultaneously (I have five). Each tab owns one account — that way, Google Drive files from my work don't randomly refuse to open because I'm also logged into my personal account. (Chrome has no solution for containing accounts across tabs, last I checked. You have to spawn entire new Chrome instances.)
  • ghaff 8y ago
    Not sure I understand. I routinely have a personal Google Drive tab and a work tab in Chrome. Ditto with email.
    • SparkyMcUnicorn 8y ago
      Is this a Google accounts feature or a browser feature? I switched to FF for Container Tabs, and use it for much more than Google accounts.
      • ghaff 8y ago
        Two disconnected accounts. ADDED: In general a lot of services don't handle multiple accounts terribly well. I've had issues with Wordpress as well. I actually have two different soft-key authenticator programs related to making personal and work accounts play nice.
        • nybblet 8y ago
          Sounds like you're using the Google Accounts feature, and using the [separate] browser profiles feature would exactly solve your problem. In particular: you can log into different profiles in the browser (each window can be associated with up to one profile, and they can be different), by clicking the little "Sign In" tab in the upper right corner. See also https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE.... You can then open tabs under the different profiles with right-click, "Open link as", and selecting the appropriate profile. (Personally, once I tried profiles, I never touched multiple-accounts-logged-in again.)
• whalesalad 8y ago
  I switched cold turkey to Firefox a few months ago. It was fine for a bit but eventually became unbearably slow. I made the switch on both my work MacBook Pro (retina) and my personal MacBook Air. Both had similar issues. That and the fact that it ships with things like Pocket made me jump back to Chrome.
  • noobermin 8y ago
    Different strokes. This certainly was not my experience.
    • balladeer 8y ago
      What you didn't find to be true in your case - Firefox becoming slower over time (as OP says) or Firefox shipping with Pocket? Or both? Personally my reason was Pocket incident and since then I never went back to Firefox. Checked few months ago and they still had Pocket. Besides I am pretty happy on Safari except the lack of extensions which I am kind of used to by now.
      • fencepost 8y ago
        They still have Pocket, but it's both less in the way and now actually owned by the Mozilla Foundation though that's not really made obvious. The most obvious place you'll see it is on the default new tab/blank tab page where top trending stories being saved on Pocket are listed. It's a crowd-curated list of stories that people have found interesting enough to save to read or return to later, almost like a technology news site where people vote stories up...... But no commenting. (https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/27/mozilla-pockets-pocket-in-first-acquisition/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/27/mozilla-pockets-pocket-in-...)
        • yarrel 8y ago
          I'd hardly call Pocket being on new pages even if you disable it (you cannot remove it) being less in the way. Mozilla rewarding everyone involved in the Pocket debacle by buying the company was weird.
• ductr 8y ago
  If Firefox wants to be taken seriously they have to stop showing ads in the home page. Period. It looks way too unprofessional. Like some adware browser you’d have to uninstall from your grandmas Windows XP computer.
• f311a 8y ago
  I've switched to Firefox on most of my devices. And there is only one thing which I don't like — high CPU usage compared to chrome. It makes my old MacBook air very noisy because of the fan spinning. When I use chrome it's completely silent.
  • creddit 8y ago
    Especially on YouTube where I believe there’s an issue with Firefox not using the most efficient encoding on the videos.
    • blt 8y ago
      Do you have details? I noticed that Youtube on Firefox makes the fan spin up on my 2013 rMBP a lot. I currently use Firefox but as a heavy Youtube watcher this is a pretty big negative.
      • creddit 8y ago
        Yeah I’ll dig up he bugzilla link and add to this comment.
      • uglycoyote 8y ago
        Same here. I have been a longtime Firefox user and don't recall having performance issues with YouTube on macbook before Quantum. But now if I'm watching anything more than a short clip on YouTube, the MBP's fans start to annoy me and it feels like it is going to burn a hole in my lap. YouTube in Chrome is totally fine. YouTube on Firefox on my Windows Intel NUC desktop is also totally fine. It seems to be a mac only Firefox issue. Would really love a solution!
        • cpeterso 8y ago
          Firefox uses H.264 for YouTube on macOS, so it can use the system's H.264 hardware decoder, which should be faster and use less power than a software decoder. Chrome uses a VP9 software decoder on YouTube. You can try VP9 in Firefox by setting the about:config pref "media.mediasource.webm.enabled" = true, but it is disabled by default for good reasons. :) This YouTube page will show which codecs are currently enabled in your browser: https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5
• elvirs 8y ago
  I would really love if Firefox didnt make me wait until it install an update while I need to quickly test something on an alternative browser. Can I be the one who decides if I want to install the update right now or do whatever I wanted to do in the first place.
  • Larrikin 8y ago
    Turn off automatic updates. You'll get prompted when you open Firefox instead.
• elvirs 8y ago
  Also, Print options really suck on Firefox. They should copy from Chrome.
  • bittercynic 8y ago
    I think it's pretty annoying that Chrome doesn't use the system print dialog by default. It repeatedly confuses the less savvy users where I work.
    • jacobsenscott 8y ago
      The chrome print dialog is totally broken for us. It always tries to use the wrong size paper from an empty paper tray. We always need to click through to the system print dialog. I need to tell people to do that every single time because they forget every single time. I should switch everyone to FF just for that.
• tyteen4a03 8y ago
  When it stops being a battery hog on Macs, sure. On Android the performance is comparable to Chrome, but I can never get used to some of their UXes (pressing the X button doesn't clear the address bar, instead closes it). Also no seamless page opening with Google search app (although I suspect they can't do much about this)
  • colordrops 8y ago
    The X thing to close the address bar is so obviously wrong. Needs to be changed to clear it.
    • jasonkostempski 8y ago
      I've never found that confusing. Tapping the address bar opens a whole new navigate/search view. X closes that view. The most common use case is entering a new search or url, just start typing, the existing text is already selected so it will overwrite. On the off chance you want to edit the current URL, it's there. I can't think of a more streamlined workflow. Whatever you're used to is only good because you're used to it, but it's adding extra steps and/or unnecessary UI elements.
  • on_and_off 8y ago
    Google search opens a ChromeCustomTab. AFAIK the implementation of CustomTabs is open and the API agnostic so Firefox could provide FirefoxCustomTabs if they wanted to.
  • itsjloh 8y ago
    I keep trying to switch back to it on my Mac Pro (I've tried three times in the last 12 months) but after a week or two I always end up switching back to Chrome because the CPU/battery impact it has. I can have the same amount of tabs/workload in Chrome and my laptop copes fine with good performance. If I do the same in FF (with likely less plugins installed) it often spikes to 100% CPU usage, chews through my battery like nothing else and just gets bogged down/slow. I _want_ to use FF but can't sacrifice having a burning hot laptop with terrible battery life on my lap.
• greggarious 8y ago
  Some of us never left :)
  • Avshalom 8y ago
    Yeah, I mean I only switched from IE because it froze my computer if it ever opened more than one window (this was a Windows ME system with about half the ram ME claimed as required). I've been Mozilla since ~2002. The idea of switching for anything short of the apocalypse just seems weird, like getting rid of a car because it's a couple years old.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• kerng 8y ago
  I have been mainly using Firefox for the last 3 months on desktop, and for over a year on phone - and it's amazing. Highly recommend it. I even uninstalled Chrome now on my main machine- sometimes you run into what appears "Chrome optimized" sites, like back in IE6 days but its rare.
  • bufferoverflow 8y ago
    Chrome is still king when it comes to fast JS execution and modern technologies. I'm talking about real world use, I know some benchmarks put FF and Edge ahead. The recent post about real time pose estimation was a pretty example of that - pretty unusable in FF, runs great in Chrome (on Windows at least) https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs-models/demos/posenet/camera.html https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs-models/demos/posenet/cam... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17283525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17283525
    • the_duke 8y ago
      I've been using FF again since 57 came out. The only real world pages that sometimes crawl to a halt on FF are some Google pages like the old Gmail and Youtube.
      • konart 8y ago
        Pretty much any page with paralax scrolling or great ammount of images - and you can barely scroll the page. It's gets better with 62, but Fx still struggles with pages like https://www.hellomonday.com/ https://www.hellomonday.com/
    • dblohm7 8y ago
      What exactly do you mean by "modern technologies?" Usually people who say that are complaining that Gecko is missing some bleeding-edge DOM API that was pushed out by Blink. If you think that Firefox/Gecko doesn't have any modern tech, then you're not looking closely enough.
• ProfessorLayton 8y ago
  I never really "switched" to any particular browser, I use Safari/Vivaldi/Firefox concurrently, but have noticed how much better Firefox has gotten recently, after years of painful decline (Speed, and resource hogging being my biggest peeves). The only major thing I wish it did better is if it conserved battery power as well as Safari does. If I want to maximize my laptop's battery life I don't really have a choice other than Safari on my MBP.
  • noobermin 8y ago
    I don't think that is Firefox's fault vs. Safari being optimized for usage on MacOS machines obviously.
    • savoytruffle 8y ago
      It's a native Mac application. Why shouldn't it be "optimized"?
      • outworlder 8y ago
        Because being a native app is not enough. You actually need to do extra work if you want it to be energy efficient.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
        Portability, I suppose
  • mediocrejoker 8y ago
    I've been using safari for a few months as my main browser and while it does feel quick, I can't say I've noticed a huge difference in battery life compared to chrome or firefox. Are there any (recent) tests you know of that compare battery life between safari and the other major browsers?
  • spiderfarmer 8y ago
    Yeah, they know about this but it’s ignored: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536
• kranner 8y ago
  Firefox also seems to have better support for WebVR than Chrome, at least on Windows. As a very rough measure, half of the A-frame official demos don't render for me on Chrome, but all of them render on Firefox. They're also choppy on Chrome compared to Firefox.
  • dblohm7 8y ago
    Considering that both WebVR and A-Frame originated at Mozilla, this is unsurprising.
• noobermin 8y ago
  Since the recent updates to Firefox which prompted a lot of press, have the numbers for Firefox usage actually moved at all? BTW, haven't used Chrome/chromium in years unless it was for testing purposes.
• JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  Has anyone tested the battery efficiency of Firefox versus Safari on the MacBook Air?
  • konart 8y ago
    Nothing to test there. Firefox eats battery on macOS like a beast. Even compared to Chrome.
• dangcansmyd 8y ago
  NY times telling Google to increase their ad spending ;) PS: full time Firefox user here but anyone who follows IBM and apple knows how "tech journalism " works.
• alistproducer2 8y ago
  I've switched back from chrome for the quantum release. Overall, it works fine 99% of the time but since chrome became the new IE there are a few sites that break in non-webkit browsers. Not enough of an inconvenience to make me go back to handing over all my info to Google.
• thermodynthrway 8y ago
  I switched back a few months ago on all of my devices and only go back when I need Chrome devtools, Firefox is absolutely back in its prime. Feels just as speedy as Chrome on desktop and mobile, and handles large numbers of tabs better. Ironically, or maybe intentionally, Google services are the only thing degraded. Google even refuses to give you the regular home page. Thankfully you can just get an extension that fakes Chrome useragent on the offending pages, but it's the darkest pattern I've ever seen
  • soperj 8y ago
    the real answer is, where you can, move off of google services. I've gone to duckduckgo and i'll never go back.
  • sp332 8y ago
    What's different about the home page?
    • Sylos 8y ago
      I don't know, if he's talking specifically about this, but on Firefox for Android, Google serves a version of their search page from a few years ago.
      • thermodynthrway 8y ago
        Yes exactly, looks like a website from 1995
• quasimodem 8y ago
  I thought this was Hacker News, not Hacker Sponsored Content?
  • pininja 8y ago
    I just reviewed the article for their sponsorship disclosure, and it doesn’t have one so this isn’t sponsored. This article is like every other product release article, plus the recent revival effort from Mozilla is news worthy.
    • RoastBeats 8y ago
      Of course there’s no sponsorship disclosure. That’s not what the OP means. This article was seeded by a PR firm. It’s not directly sponsored by Mozilla. It’s been professionally “placed” in the NYT. Then again, I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. Judging by the style of your comment, I’m guessing you didn’t really go back to check if the article contained any sort of sponsorship notice (because, seriously, what real person would do that and then come back and leave a comment?). Your account is probably owned by the PR team that got the article placed and then pushed it to the top of HN. #AmIRight
• arf 8y ago
  I did give it a try. I used it like I use Chrome. Many tabs open and keeping them open for a couple of days. I did that a couple of times. It, of course, crashed every single time and for some reason made my 4GHz quad-core i7 with 64Gb memory freeze for 5 minutes where I couldn't even ^d in a terminal.
  • toss1 8y ago
    Interesting, I do the same -- dozens of tabs open in multiple windows, for multiple days, and it hasn't crashed in probably over a year. Different machines, this one is: Intel I-6700-HQ 2.6GHz 4-core/8 logical 16GB RAM...
    • abrowne 8y ago
      Same for me, and I even usually use Firefox Nightly with a Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM and nouveau graphics forced on in the about:config . . .
  • greglindahl 8y ago
    I keep FF open for weeks at a time with dozens of tabs, only 16 gigs of ram, no problem.
  • lastUsername 8y ago
    I keep it open for 6-7 days regularly and I don't have any problems. On a dated machine : i5 460m and 4 gb of ram.
• trumped 8y ago
  If I would have ever switched to Chrome, it would have been to save probably less then one minute per day (when Chrome was faster)... not worth it for me.
• booleandilemma 8y ago
  I didn’t realize it went anywhere.
• nimbius 8y ago
  1. does it still require me to use pulseaudio to compile it. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661 2. does it still send DNS data to third parties for analytics. https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/20/firefox-dns-over-https-and-a-worrying-shield-study/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/20/firefox-dns-over-https-and... 3. Am i still required to build Pocket when I build Firefox? are we still forbidden from removing pocket? 4. Is telemetry still shipped on by default? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/24/mozilla_considers_move_to_opt_out_telemetry_for_firefox/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/24/mozilla_considers_m... Then no, its certainly not time for me to try firefox.
  • make3 8y ago
    They mean, as an alternative to Chrome, which is undoubtedly less open then Firefox. So, genuine question, what do you use, then? GNU IceCat?
    • tomnipotent 8y ago
      > they mean, as an alternative to Chrome, which is undoubtedly less open then Firefox Chromium is just as open as Firefox.
      • make3 8y ago
        I would bet quite a lot that most of their readers are using Chrome and not Chromium.
      • ufo 8y ago
        Chromium still comes with lots of googly bits https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
        • AlexCoventry 8y ago
          This looks great. Why isn't it available on debian via apt? It seems strongly aligned with debian's values.
• just_one_time_ 8y ago
  1) Brave
• Rebelgecko 8y ago
  I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago and am mostly happy, with just a few annoyances: There's a setting to prompt "are you sure" before closing Firefox, but it doesn't actually work. I really miss this feature (which works as expected in Chrome) since unless I'm turning my machine off a pretty much never close my browser intentionally Shortcuts in text input also work differently than every other program on my computer. Command-backspace deletes the whole text field, not just the text before the cursor. ^t doesn't transpose, ^k behaves differently when text wraps, etc
  • nayuki 8y ago
    > "are you sure" before closing Firefox I believe this feature gets disabled if you enable the feature that automatically restores your previous session when Firefox is opened.
    • Rebelgecko 8y ago
      Yeah, there's some arguments about that on their bug tracker page and it looks like someone tried to change that code but it never went anywhere. If you horde tabs like I do it can still waste a lot of time to restart the browser and wait for the session to be restored.
      • callahad 8y ago
        Huh. Is this consistent for you? Since Firefox 55, we should be able to restore 1500+ tabs in under 15 seconds: https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/ https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/
        • Rebelgecko 8y ago
          Pretty consistent. I haven't timed it, but it certainly feels like more than 15 seconds for my 50-100 tabs. I'm not in quite as pure of a situation as that benchmark though-- I have plenty of other programs using memory and I'm waiting for the page to actually render. During some of my Firefox launches lately I also had a bunch of other applications launching at the same time since I was trying to debug a WebGL page that sporadically hangs/reboots my machine (in both Firefox and Chrome)
• susam 8y ago
  Firefox was never away, at least for me. Therefore the expression "Firefox is back" sounds a little odd to me. I have been using it since 2006 (Firefox 2.0). Back then, the presence of the Firebug extension for Firefox made me switch to Firefox as my primary browser. Two years later, Chrome arrived but Firefox remained as my primary browser because I wanted to continue using the Vimperator extension for Firefox that allowed mouseless browsing with Vim-like key bindings and commands. Firefox still remains as my primary browser with Chrome being an additional browser that I use sometimes. These days, I use the Vimium extension for both to use Vim-like key bindings. I occasionally use Safari and qutebrowser too.
  • casefields 8y ago
    It’s for your average NY Times reader that doesn’t keep up with the day-to-day tech news world.
    • Krasnol 8y ago
      And don't forget about those thousands (millions?) of users who suddenly found Chrome installed on their computer because they updated their Virus Scanner or installed some Freeware where it was bundled with Chrome.
      • kbart 8y ago
        Still an upgrade from IE8 the same group would be using. I'm not advocating bundled installs, but installing secure (compared to old IE) browser alongside antivirus software is one of the very few cases where it makes sense.
        • Krasnol 8y ago
          From my private IT support perspective: I hate it! My "customers" have FF installed and are every time utterly confused missing their favorites on their "Internet Program". There is so much wrong with this bundling but yes, it's probably still better then IE...
  • 8y ago
• furgooswft13 8y ago
  I find it kind of ironic that Mozilla rewrote Netscape Navigator from scratch with the lofty idea of creating an entire cross-platform application development platform, not just a browser. XUL, XULRunner etc. But it never caught on and they abandoned all that to focus on just the browser. Yet now Electron is everywhere... Before its time and abandoned in the nick of it. And no one cares about native GUI's anymore apparently.
  • jploh 8y ago
    I remember XUL. Not a fan but it's sad it didn't take off. We need an Electron alternative.
    • citilife 8y ago
      I use Qt for some pretty large applications - works well and highly recommend.
    • furgooswft13 8y ago
      The idea was essentially the same, except instead of HTML + JS it was XUL + JS. And XUL provided a far richer set of built in controls, and was far more powerful and flexible than HTML, especially at the time it was conceived and still arguably today. Critically it tried to render all the standard GUI elements we were accustomed to in the 90s and early 00s using the native APIs of whatever OS it was running on. Webdevs have tried for 20 years to recreate these interfaces from scratch in HTML with still highly questionable results, and of course no real integration, visual or otherwise, with the host OS. For me, the biggest impediment for writing XUL, when I was into FF extension development, was the extremely lackluster documentation. Despite Mozilla's ambitions they never seemed to promote the app development part of their platform much. It also suffered from much the same problems as Electron does today with performance and bloated memory usage compared to native apps. Though I imagine if they stuck with it, with the much improved JS and rendering engines (and multicore CPUs and 16gb standard RAM) in-use today, it would have become just as good enough as Electron is considered. Fact is, HTML/CSS/JS benefits hugely from it's own inertia, and the near instant answers to most any question on Google/Stackoverflow. Hard to compete when you are basically an internal Mozilla project. I'm sure Mozilla, or someone, could package the current Firefox stack in a similar way to Electron as an alternative, but it would be largely the same thing and have similar issues compared to native. So why bother I guess. How's wxWidgets doing? Does anyone still use that?
• com2kid 8y ago
  After running for a few hours, Firefox starts making my entire computer lag, eventually to the point of freezing up for seconds at a time multiple times per minute. Over time Firefox's video playback gets more and more janky, until it drops more frames than it shows. In task manager I can see FF using 50% of my GPU to play a 720p stream from Twitch. Closing FF completely and reopening it fixes the problem, until it happens again. Chrome has none of these issues. Love the privacy, not a big fan of the performance problems.
  • drampelt 8y ago
    I've been having the exact same problems. Been trying to use Firefox primarily for the past few months but it gets frustrating having to restart it all the time.
  • yourapostasy 8y ago
    See what happens when you switch to Nightly Firefox.
    • etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
      FF has had performance problems for years. I doubt the magic fix is right around the corner.
  • bholley 8y ago
    Sounds like ghost windows. Try disabling all your add-ons to see if the problem persists? You can also record a profile via perfht.ml and send it to me, I'm happy to have a look.
    • ferongr 8y ago
      Admittedly, my own experience was with older versions up to 57, but what it felt like e10s did not really help with responsiveness, especially after very long sessions (24 hours+). Restarting Firefox used to be a daily ritual (with all the lost website state that entailed) as JS pauses started becoming very noticeable. Fx would also keep the CPU in high power states with constant 10-20% CPU usage near the 24 hour mark. I don't know if it's an architectural limitation of how e10s was implemented, but Firefox still feels like a single-process browser. On the other hand, Chrome remains responsive even after a week of being open.
• andrepd 8y ago
  >The browser, made by the nonprofit Mozilla, emerged in the early 2000s as a faster, better designed vessel to surf the web. But it became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser. Irrelevant? More versatile (even though it didn't even have extensions until v5)? Why?
  • exodust 8y ago
    It's simply an incorrect statement. Firefox did not become irrelevant. I'm not sure where the author is coming from with his remarks, but obviously he lived in a Google Chrome bubble for a long time.
    • vntok 8y ago
      Have a look at the trends[0] and tell me it does not show a descent to darkness. 1. Firefox was at ~30% market share at its apex (it's now half that) 2. It got surpassed by a newcomer with no previous experience in browser making in less than 3 years 3. And the newcomer was so much better at technical stuff and marketing that it not only kept superseding Firefox but it kept growing uninterrupted ever since 3. Meanwhile, instead of stabilizing and reversing the trend, Firefox's usage share just kept tumbling down to the level of Internet Explorer's (Internet Explorer!) 4. It. Never. Recovered. Seriously, it had around 12% market share a month ago[1], below IE's share. That's ridiculous. Of all those points, I think maybe #4 shows Firefox's irrelevancy best: the most generous estimates now place it around 14% global market share, barely above while Chrome is striving at around 60%. If IE is becoming more and more irrelevant (it is, right?), then surely Firefox is becoming just as irrelevant as well. Even though the data isn't ideal and there are probably some +/- percent point errors between Netmarketshare, W3counter, Alexa, Google, etc., the trend is identical among all these reporting platforms. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_StatCounter).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m... 1: https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222017-06%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222018-05%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options...
• fencepost 8y ago
  I haven't seen anyone mention this, but Firefox is my "daily driver" for almost all browsing, and is also locked down with uMatrix, uBlock Origin, DecentralEyes and Ghostery (though I could probably drop Ghostery without missing it). Chrome has uBlock Origin and a few other things but interferes with pages less. I keep a set of pages for some specific web apps (e.g. GMail, Google Calendar, task management, etc.) open in Chrome, but otherwise only use it when something just won't work in my locked-down Firefox. I also can't recommend highly enough Firefox on Android, particularly with uBlock Origin and the "Dark Background and Light Text" addon (currently at version 0.6.8 for ease of finding). For HN you'll want to use the "Simple CSS" dark setting instead of the default - that keeps the arrows, but you do lose the greying-out of downvoted comments. Edit: I also think it's interesting how much Chrome now minimizes and almost hides the Chrome App Store to add new extensions. It's almost as if it's not making Google any money and people keep installing adblockers through it.
  • modzu 8y ago
    +1 for ff on android (because it can run extensions) recommend checking out 'night light mode' for night browsing -- it does some things a little nicer like dims images and uses low contrast (full disclosure: i am the author. feedback welcome!) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/night-light-mode/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/night-light-m...
    • aembleton 8y ago
      When I go to https://rideways.com/ https://rideways.com/ it inverts the large background image
      • modzu 8y ago
        thanks for the report! a fix is forthcoming (looks like some kind of css preloading is tripping up the plugin)
  • mxvzr 8y ago
    I'd remove Ghostery. Not only is it useless once you are running uMatrix & uBlock Origin, they also used to sells your data (page visit, blocking, and advertising statistics) if you activated a feature called "GhostRank". Not sure whether it's still true or not.
• aplummer 8y ago
  > The web has reached a new low Strongly disagree. The web is just the medium, the places people visit might have reached a new low, but the platform is only getting better. Just at the state of cross browser in 2015 vs 2018!
  • hotwire 8y ago
    yeah but.... actually, crap you're right. tech is better than ever. pity that it's being wasted on today's trivialities.
    • aplummer 8y ago
      Maybe in general but Wikipedia and kiva exist
• snarfy 8y ago
  I've been using nightly ever since chrome started asked me to sign in. I'm not 'signing in' to my browser. Performance is on par with chrome, memory usage is a bit more. I still use both, but I only use chrome for google's sites.
• alf-pogz 8y ago
  Mozilla as an organization makes me a bit uncomfortable. I still haven't forgotten the entire Brendan Eich fiasco. Who is to say that extremely politically motivated folks at Mozilla may consider it their duty to expose user(s) in a similar way? How can they purport to be a champion of user privacy after what they did to Brendan Eich?
  • siddboots 8y ago
    What did they do exactly? I'm reasonably familiar with the story, but wasn't aware of Mozilla breaching his privacy. Do you just mean the act of speaking out against him in a public way?
    • dagenix 8y ago
      He made a publicly recorded donation of $1,000 to oppose same sex marriage. Mozilla employees spoke out against his fitness to run a diverse organization. He resigned. The only real black eye for Mozilla in this story is that they promoted him at all. If he's just some dude that does his own work, doesn't manage people, and keeps his mouth shut, then, maybe you let his abhorrent opinion slide. But, he was literally the CEO and would make decisions that would impact lots of people.
  • rpearl 8y ago
    What? His donation (of public record) specifically against same sex marriage--indicated that he was not a good culture fit. People (inside and outside the organization) chose to point that out when he was promoted. This really doesn't have anything to do with user privacy in any way whatsoever--nothing about user privacy was surfaced or breached in any way. Nor is there any indication, in mozilla's extremely open source code, that Mozilla would be collecting any information like this. So, uh, what do you mean by "in a similar way"?
    • alf-pogz 8y ago
      The act was definitely "doxing" any way you slice it. Folks at Mozilla actively chose to find a touchy topic, and expose it to cause the "bad culture fit" argument. I'm not here to start conspiracies, I'm simply stating that the entire event left me feeling that there are some big players at Mozilla that will use ethically gray areas to achieve their goals, and the people who indulged in that gray area won and are still part of the organization. Due to that, I am out. I should state that, politically speaking, I was not in solidarity with Eich's position. I am opposed to what people at Mozilla did.
• esturk 8y ago
  Until Firefox address privacy concerns, I'm not going back. Try opening private tabs and going some where. Now close it and reopen it with Ctrl+Shift+T. All the browsing history is still there. Safaria dna Chrome doesn't do this.
  • rpenm 8y ago
    You can reopen tabs in a private window, but the session appears to be lost when you close the window.
    • cpeterso 8y ago
      That's correct. And all private tabs and windows share the same private session, which is discarded when the last private tab is closed.
  • Sylos 8y ago
    It goes away when you close the Private Browsing window. I cannot feasibly imagine a situation where you need your browsing history to be purged as you close individual tabs. Like, what are you gonna do? Close the tab to have its browsing history purged, when you take a pee break from searching wedding rings, but leave the Private Browsing window open? Just close the window entirely. It's also very much expected behaviour for many users, to be able to reopen tabs and I'd consider it a bug, if I weren't able to. What's more, Chrome has you covered for actual privacy concerns. When you use Chrome Sync, Google gets your browsing history and bookmarks in readable form (and they declare that they use these in their privacy policy). Which means US intelligence agencies, as well as befriended intelligence agencies from other countries, also have access to your data. When auto-filling data, Chrome will fill out all input fields on a page, even ones that you cannot see. So, dodgy webpages may very well have your address, phone number etc.. Chrome's extension store also has a massive malware problem. Mozilla has human reviewers to prevent this and also requires extension to get user consent for internet connections that are not necessary for the functioning of the extension (telemetry, ads). To sort of mitigate this problem, Chrome doesn't allow extensions to run in Incognito Mode, which however also locks out privacy enhancing extension. Firefox also blocks tracking scripts and similar in Private Browsing mode by default.
• hirundo 8y ago
  I disagree with Brendan Eich on same-sex marriage. And I'm not neutral or ambivalent on the subject; I wholeheartedly approve of the practice. But I disapprove of the way Eich was treated for his heresy. I think that he is a fine man and a great technologist and Firefox is a poorer product due to his excommunication. So for me it isn't time to give Firefox another try. It's time to keep using Eich's far more innovative new browser, Brave.
  • dagenix 8y ago
    He was the CEO. How are Mozilla employees supposed to believe he is going to look out for them when he literally spent money to advance a cause that was harmful to some of his employees and in no way beneficial to anyone. It wasn't like he was just some dude that didn't have people management responsibilities and kept his mouth shut. The decisions he made would impact lots of peoples lives. Mozilla employees were absolutely right to demand more from someone with that power.
    • mongol 8y ago
      It was a political opinion. People have different political opinions, even as CEOs.
      • dagenix 8y ago
        He didn't just have an opinion. He acted on that opinion. In a way designed to harm some of his own employees. That action was publicly recorded. And its not just "some opinion". Its not like he preferred Turkey Club sandwiches to BLTs. He preferred that some of his own employees be denied basic human rights.
      • ambicapter 8y ago
        Turns out politics has an effect on people's lives, who knew?
        • TillE 8y ago
          It's utterly bizarre how so many people can view politics as if it were as value-neutral as supporting a football team, or as if it's all some high-minded abstract debate.
• ggm 8y ago
  I must be an outlier. I find the chrome 'one person per instance' thing works fine, with multiple virtual desktops. I have colour coded my chrome personalities for me, me-as-lists and me-at-work and I slide desks sideways in OSX to get between them. I never mistake one for the other, I have distinct cache state, distinct password/form completion, and unified plugins within limits. Not that I dislike FF, but the 'chrome does it worser' meme about how to be multiple google people: Chrome does it different
• polski-g 8y ago
  Best part of FFX is you can use the element inspector to screenshot a specific node.
• RoastBeats 8y ago
  This is article is just PR-driven propaganda. Notice how, for example, it hits on a bunch of focused, high-level talking points (faster, better memory management, Facebook container, etc). It also includes rebuttals for potential objections to its main thesis (e.g. sure, Chrome has hundreds of thousands of extensions compared to FireFox’s 11,000 — conveniently hyperlinked, btw — but don’t worry because FireFox has all the main ones you’d want like LastPass). This article was clearly written by a PR team hired by Mozilla and seeded to the NYTimes for some undisclosed amount of money. I’d even go so far as to suggest it’s high placement on HN is being manipulated by the same PR firm. Now... let the downvotes to my comment commence, which only further proves my point because many of them are probably coming from the same faux HN accounts being used to elevate the article to the top.
• epsilon_machine 8y ago
  Wait, it had left?
• nojvek 8y ago
  I gave Firefox a new try. Mostly because after a chrome update my location bar search is broken. I think due to some bug the text and selection colors are all white. Well someone at Chrome dropped the ball. Firefox feels really fast and light. I think I’m Making it my primary browser from now on.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• NVRM 8y ago
  Never switched off.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• grundymonday 8y ago
  I switched to Vivaldi a year or two ago after using Firefox as my main browser for the longest time. I've considered switching back, but every time I run up against several features in Vivaldi that I am just not ready to part with yet: 1) tab stacks, 2) the ability to save and reopen an entire session, 3) a page load progress indicator in the URL bar, 4) using Ctrl-F highlights the position of all matching locations in the page in the right-hand scroll bar, and 5) the window panel, which keeps track of all closed tabs and windows so you can reopen everything if you accidentally close a window. Some of those are small perks, and some of them are major. I'd love to see Firefox implement some of them.
  • aquova 8y ago
    I am in the same boat as you are. After the Firefox Quantum release, I decided to switch from Vivaldi and try Firefox out for a little bit. While I did like it, and it did seem to have a slightly faster performance, there are just many QoL feature s that Vivaldi offers that Firefox doesn't (or at least isn't immediately apparent). Simple things such as rebinding keys or reorganizing the top sites were such a headache that I very quickly switched back.
  • TACIXAT 8y ago
    I'm on Vivaldi right now and I love it. The window panel is so much nicer than tabs (for those that don't know, it's tabs along the side, kinda bookmark style). Tab stacks are amazing. The background downloading is nice where it starts the download while you decide to Save, Save As, or Open. There is a lot of little stuff too, like in the window panel you can select multiple tabs and copy the URLs. The closed tabs stack. Oh, and backspace still goes back a page. I don't usually shill for products but Vivaldi is a really good browser.
    • kilburn 8y ago
      > The background downloading is nice where it starts the download while you decide to Save, Save As, or Open. AFAIK firefox does that too, it just doesn't show it. Just test it: click on a large file download link and leave the dialog alone for some seconds. Once you actually click on Save, Save As or Open... it opens instantly (or already has a large downloaded chunk, depending on the file's size and your bandwidth of course).
• catchmeifyoucan 8y ago
  The biggest reason I use Chrome is for Casting purpose. I would have dropped Chrome a long time ago if it weren't for that. I use Safari as my primary because of the battery benefits but still have Chrome. How are the dev tools on Firefox? Not a big fan of the Safari dev tools. Chrome is also my go-to for dev stuff.
• joeblau 8y ago
  I just ran both of the speed test benchmarks [1][2] mentioned in the article, plus two other tests [3][4]. | Firefox | Safari | Chrome ----------------|----------------|-----------------|----------------- Speedometer 2.0 | 83.0 ±0.91 | 92.1 ±2.8 | 75.7 ±3.4 JetStream | 219.40 ±8.5563 | 294.79 ±11.138 | 201.81 ±15.171 Motion Mark | 203.71 ±5.41% | 525.77 ±6.56% | 388.85 ±4.79 ARES-6 | 54.06 ±0.95ms | 16.85 ±1.19ms | 20.26 ±0.56ms It looks like Firefox beats Chome in some perfomrance tests but Safari is still faster than Chrome and a lot faster than Firefox. At this point, I'm not sure any of Firefox's features are compelling enough to get me to switch back. I started using Firefox at 0.4 back when I was in college then I switched to Chrome when Firefox got slow, but I think the way I use the web now has changed. I really only use a few sites and I just want better security/ad-block/tracking block tools (which Apple is committing to) and speed. edit: If someone uses Windows, I would be curious to see how Edge compares to Firefox and Chrome. [1] - https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ [2] - https://browserbench.org/JetStream/ https://browserbench.org/JetStream/ [3] - https://browserbench.org/MotionMark/ https://browserbench.org/MotionMark/ [4] - https://browserbench.org/ARES-6/ https://browserbench.org/ARES-6/
  • tymekpavel 8y ago
    Assuming these are all in ms, how do you conclude that Safari is faster than Chrome or Firefox? It's slower in almost every test.
    • msbarnett 8y ago
      Higher is better in Motion Mark, Speedometer, and Jetstream. ARES-6 is elapsed time. Safari beat the other two browsers in all four benchmarks.
    • wutbrodo 8y ago
      I know that at least for the Jetstream benchmark, higher scores are better (ie they're not just time measurements). If you make an assumption that makes the parent comment contradict itself, it seems like it would make sense to investigate your assumption instead of thinking the parent comment is contradictory.
• harry8 8y ago
  Why doesn't everyone use multiple browsers all the time? I've got chrome, chromium, firefox, opera and use them all in amounts that vary with mood. That mood is probably affected by the differing ways those browsers develop. I don't recall firefox ever being a bad browser or so dramatically worse than others that I would consider stopping using it. I can see the reservations people have with chrome, mostly it's not that it performs badly but that maybe it does things you don't want behind your back. I'm not even 100% sure what chrome does behind our backs - is it nothing interesting? Is it a disgrace? Easy for me to switch if it turns out to be the latter and I'm sure it will become more clear. I think it would be interesting if browsers did not allow a page to make requests from multiple domains. nyt.com has to serve the ads and the images or forget it. Everyone having to take full responsibility for what they serve seems to me that it would result in an all-around more pleasant web.
  • AlexCoventry 8y ago
    A few years ago, at least, chrome had a significantly better design, from a security perspective. Hopefully FF has caught up, but I haven't looked into it.
    • harry8 8y ago
      From /some/ security perspectives, not all. Enough to actually ditch firefox for all websites? The convenience of only using one browser seems to me to be pretty limited and is clearly a security concern in itself as opposed to using multiple. (How many is optimal? - Well how many are there? How easy is it for you to use each of them - make the call that suits you given your assessment of the concern.)
      • AlexCoventry 8y ago
        I don't see the security issue with using the one browser which is least likely to let a webpage root you.
        • harry8 8y ago
• stockkid 8y ago
  I use Firefox but I find the developer experience constantly lacking. Many times I have no choice but to switch to Chrome to carry out certain tasks. For example, in the developer tools, you are not able to pick an element when the page is frozen using `debugger` command. Also there is no way to hijack a particular event and enter debug mode. There are many things like these that make me constantly go back to Chrome while developing. Although small, they really add up. As much as I like and support Firefox, I do not think it is quite there with the same level as Chrome.
• slededit 8y ago
  I really hope they take some time to introspect on how this happened for a second time. From an outsiders perspective it was placing everything on a rewrite and zero perceived progress for years. It's good for the internet that Firefox succeeds. If they managed to take back the lead I hope they don't give it up a third time.
• Animats 8y ago
  It was gone?
• calimac 8y ago
  The lost me when they fired a founding contributor over some stupid political virtue signaling and caused him to resign.
• joelrunyon 8y ago
  I switched to Firefox because Chrome kept taking over my entire CPU and making my computer sound like a drone. Anyone else run into that?
• nsm 8y ago
  I'm typing this comment from Firefox running inside a container on a Pixelbook (ChromeOS) :) Firefox has been my daily driver for over 5 years, with all my history and bookmarks synced across all devices I had to have it on ChromeOS too. It does a great job. The Tree Style Tabs extension really makes life easy and with u2f support, there are very few things I need to use Chrome for now (Looks at hangouts!).
  • dblohm7 8y ago
    My understanding is that Hangouts has finally been fixed.
    • cpeterso 8y ago
      Yes. Google now supports Firefox in legacy Hangouts and Meet, the enterprise version of Hangouts: https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-google-hangouts-and-meet/ https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-...
    • nsm 8y ago
      Thanks! I tried this out, but it said "experimental" and didn't really work on the pixelbook. It only asked for microphone permission, not camera, and neither speakers nor microphone worked.
• icelancer 8y ago
  I switched and while I use it daily, even on plain installs it has huge, huge memory footprints. I thought switching over was going to be a huge memory saver over Chrome, but it hasn't proven to be the case for me unfortunately. And of course, it "doesn't" support USB keys like Yubikey, as in, it totally does if you change a config flag, but websites like Vanguard and even Google just check user-agent and if it returns Firefox, it prompts you to use other methods because the key "isn't supported."
• molteanu 8y ago
  I've been using Firefox for 10+ years. The latest Quantum release broke some addons, specifically keysnail. I just couldn't replace it. The last one I've tried was surfingkeys but it was buggy and lacked the good features of keysnail. Eventually I've switched to CVim + Chromium. I couldn't be happier. I mean, how is this not a bug? You wouldn't expect the latest Emacs release to not support user config files (I'm stretching the analogy here a bit) or something, right?
  • wyclif 8y ago
    If you don't mind me asking, what is the difference and/or advantage of using CVim instead of Vimium?
  • bovine3dom 8y ago
    I think a better analogy is expecting a Counter-Strike: Source modification to work with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I was also upset by the death of most of my favourite add-ons, particularly Vimperator, so I bullied a friend into writing Tridactyl with me [1]. If you tried it around the death of keysnail it might be worth giving it another go now, as I think it is a lot less bad than it used to be (although I can guarantee it still has bugs). It certainly is not as polished as cVim. Other alternatives include Vim Vixen and Sakakey. [1] https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl
    • PurpleRamen 8y ago
      Tridactyl (and all similar addons) will only be a bad replacement as long as they are limited to inject code in loaded sites to fetch keys. The problems emerging from this are really bad.
      • bovine3dom 8y ago
        Yeah, I see where you're coming from. cmcaine started on an extension to the WebExtension API [1] that would fix that, but progress has stalled. It got preliminary approval and was split up into loads of bugs on Bugzilla at which point we all got a bit lost. If you feel very strongly about it, perhaps you could pick up the baton? Part of the reason I haven't done so is because I disagree with you - Tridactyl is pretty usable to me, and there's loads of things I want to fix in that that are a higher priority to me. [1] https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api
• russelldavis 8y ago
  Scrolling on chrome (via the keyboard) has become incredibly slow and janky. One example: log in to twitter, click any tweet, then click outside the lightbox to return to the main page. Then hold the down arrow key. It's unusably slow (and choppy). This also happens on amazon and a bunch of other sites. Firefox, on the other hand, has consistently fast & buttery smooth scrolling. I'm surprised this doesn't get called out more.
• babbit999 8y ago
  The best thing about FF is the “about:config”. It really gives you the control like it should be. I don’t care if it’s slower than other browsers. Sadly, this is not possible yet on iOS. Like others, I use chrome if my locked down FF don’t work on a specific site.
  • NiLSPACE 8y ago
    Firefox, like any other browser on iOS, is based on webkit because Apple doesn't allow other engines. That's why you don't have 'about:config' there.
• thirdsun 8y ago
  While Firefox is my primary browser there's still something off with their CSS transform / CSS transition performance. Take these hover effects, particularly demo #4, as an example: http://preview.codecanyon.net/item/card-css3-portfolio-cards-with-hover-effects/full_screen_preview/21558172 http://preview.codecanyon.net/item/card-css3-portfolio-cards... While certainly excessive those demos run flawlessly and smoothly on Chrome, but are struggling on Firefox. An observation I made often when it comes to complex transform effects in Firefox. Does anyone else experience this?
  • teekert 8y ago
    Nothing looks strange to me with Demo nr. 4? (FF 60.0.2)
    • thirdsun 8y ago
      For me the frame rate is struggling to keep it even remotely close to 60fps. It's certainly not smooth. This happens in FF 61.0 Beta on an iMac 5K, but the issue applies to versions that date back to pre-Quantum days. I noticed the problem is more visible if large elements are affected by the transform effects, a smaller window renders those smoother for example.
      • dreamer_ 8y ago
        For me, it works perfectly on both FF and Chrome (Linux), but I wonder how WebRender will deal with it; can you test Firefox Nightly with "gfx.webrender.all" set to true?
        • thirdsun 8y ago
          Thanks! gfx.webrender.enabled (not .all) alone does indeed solve the performance issues, however only in Nightly (v62), not in the Beta (v61) channel.
  • nruttnod 8y ago
    I use animation and transitions a lot in my work and manly use firefox. I have noticed this problem as well, it does not manage transitions as well as chrome for some reason.
• OscarTheGrinch 8y ago
  Make pockets easy to disable, stop re-enabling it on upgrade.
• eldfuthark 8y ago
  I was a Chrome/Firefox/IE user for many years due to my job (utilizing many web browsers to test customer and application behavior through network devices). Over the last few years I’ve realized that Chrome is the new IE.
• Digital-Citizen 8y ago
  From the article: "But [Firefox] became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser." Google Chrome is proprietary software. There's no way to back up any claim of it being "secure" because there's no way to determine what proprietary programs do. Users lack the permission to inspect the program's source code, alter the program, or distribute altered versions. Firefox, by comparison, was never proprietary. Users were and are free to run, inspect, share, and modify Firefox (with perhaps a minor naming hurdle that apparently isn't hard to overcome as Debian demonstrated for years). In fact, this is likely a reason why TorBrowser is based on Firefox. Software freedom isn't about guaranteeing the user security, it's about addressing the inequity between users and developers inherent in non-free software. The technical advantages or disadvantages come and go and are apparently only as far as developers want to take them. People can and do learn to become software developers. And free software's technical merit can be improved by anyone willing to do the work. So we can add impressive technical features to free software. But we have no way to make proprietary software free. So the path to getting software we can evaluate against a claim of "security" and back up that claim starts and ends with software freedom.
  • nkkollaw 8y ago
    "secure" probably refers to the sandboxing functionality that Chrome has had since version 1.
    • Digital-Citizen 8y ago
      "Probably refers to"? That you don't know what "secure" refers to is itself a problem. But more problematic is anyone's defense of Google Chrome's architecture while overlooking that that architecture is implemented with secret software which you aren't allowed to vet, alter, or share with others (parts of software freedom). This proprietary software apparently allowed for sending Google every URL a Chrome user types in (http://www.favbrowser.com/google-chrome-spyware-confirmed/ http://www.favbrowser.com/google-chrome-spyware-confirmed/) and making it easy for extensions to spy on Chrome users (https://labs.detectify.com/2015/07/28/how-i-disabled-your-chrome-security-extensions/ https://labs.detectify.com/2015/07/28/how-i-disabled-your-ch...) which many Chrome extensions apparently do, or activating a Chrome user's microphone and sending the captured data to Google (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-chrome-listening-in-to-your-room-shows-the-importance-of-privacy-defense-in-depth/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-ch...). Hardly behavior users are likely to call "secure" because such behavior does not look out for the security of its users, but instead securing access to Chrome user's data.
• aoner 8y ago
  I want to use the chrome dev tools on safari, it's the only thing keeping me at chrome. Is there a way to do this?
• LoSboccacc 8y ago
  Unless they fixed their outline shit and other weird css inconsistencies I want none of it.
• yolo1897 8y ago
  they added 2FA to firefox sync recently, finally !
• teekert 8y ago
  I never left Firefox, but I was able to completely drop all other browsers when they introduced containers. All the tracking stuff can only see each others cookies whereas my default session only logs me into my own services and some that I trust. I love it. I use Privacy Badger (doesn't block non-tracking ads by default) and sometimes uBlock origin but I unblock sites I like with an ad policy that shows some thought went into it.
  • dmortin 8y ago
    What about browser fingerprinting? If you use the same browser then they know it's you from the same fingerprint, so they can still track you if they want.
    • teekert 8y ago
      Hmm, yes good point. Still waiting for the browser-finger-print-obfuscation plugin ;)
      • clouddrover 8y ago
        Mozilla is integrating Tor into Firefox. Anti-fingerprinting measures are part of that project: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fusion https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fusion https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018Rome/Notes/FusionProject https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...
• nikisweeting 8y ago
  I love Firefox with all my heart, but it's still slower than Chrome for me on an Intel Iris i7 2014 MacBook Pro. They seem comparable with <10 tabs open, but Chrome pulls ahead once I have 50-100 suspended tabs open. I trust Firefox will keep improving though, so I try to use it regularly despite it not being my primary browser.
• azinman2 8y ago
  I spent the last 6 months or so in Firefox after having been out of it for years. It generally has caught up, and was generally pleasurable to use. I’m in the Apple ecosystem, so I wish there was a way to better sync with it like using the system keychain and Safari bookmarks, but it was otherwise holding up nicely. I loved the new containers feature, feeling like I had a fundamentally new way to approach web security. That was until last week. My Mac lost power due to some construction, and when I turned it back on Firefox had completely erased its previous profile. All my data, all my containers, all my cookies and bookmarks were gone. No evidence on disk for my old profile, despite a faq suggesting it’d be there. Firefox sync somehow was preserved in this blank profile, yet it synced barely anything (a few extensions). Sorry Firefox, you lost my trust. I’m now back to Safari.
  • analogmemory 8y ago
    I'm guessing you didn't signup for a Firefox account to save the sync the bookmarks? Do you not have any backup services running?
    • ddtaylor 8y ago
      > Firefox sync somehow was preserved in this blank profile, yet it synced barely anything (a few extensions).
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• Yizahi 8y ago
  > But it became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome No, it didn't. > Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser. No, it wasn't. Articles like this are perpetrating the myth about "better" Chrome, while it had always been slower and had less features than Firefox.
  • konart 8y ago
    >it had always been slower Only if at the very beginnning. For a long time now Chrome is much faster than Fx both in rendering (withough Fx WebRender) and general responsiveness.
    • Yizahi 8y ago
      I know it is anecdotal experience, not a proper test, but personally I tried Chrome for several months as a main browser when FF had been in 3x versions, and Chrome always felt less responsive. It had some weird micropauses in initial page rendering, and since I'm mainly opening/closing new different pages from multiple sites (as opposed to have several pages open constantly from few sites) it had been less pleasant to use compared to FF. And I'm not even mentioning addons and privacy, just from performance standpoint. PS: at that time I was working for almost full time on Asus Eee PC, with 1Gb memory and early model of Atom CPU, so that was the reason to try Chrome widely marketed as "faster" (as I said above, it wasn't in practice, at least for me).
• Blindedwino 8y ago
  Sadly, FF still slows to a crawl on OSX and it makes it unusable for me. I can't even watch a Youtube video without it skipping frames.
  • blauditore 8y ago
    That sounds like graphics drivers issues to me; I would double-check that.
    • Longhanks 8y ago
      Unless you're running a Hackintosh or a customized Mac Pro, there's no such thing as a "graphics driver issue" on macOS (if the rest of the system works fine).
  • micwag 8y ago
    Try h264fy: https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox It forces h264 on youtube, which is HW-accelerated
• bdz 8y ago
  Not sure how popular or known here but I use ungoogled-chromium. Personally I never had any problem with Chrome (features and performance) but more with all the ties to Google (telemetrics etc) https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
• fbn79 8y ago
  I'm missing something or Firefox inspector console (the base of web development) is still far from reaching Chrome levels?. For example, if I inspect an element and change window size I don't see applied media query updated in the element tab. Chrome instead let me see in real-time what media query rules are applied. This is really a strong limitation in web development.
  • Theodores 8y ago
    Depends on what matters, if you are using CSS grid then Firefox is the goto browser. If you are using CSS grid then media queries are not where it is at, the design is content driven and not screen size driven.
    • fbn79 8y ago
      No. I'm not using CSS Grid
• largote 8y ago
  I'm way too invested in Chrome Sync to change browsers at this point.
• digitalpacman 8y ago
  It doesn't have built-in websocket support so it can F off. Build better dev tools and feel bad. Even the plugin that used to be usable isn't supported on the new FF.
  • thecrazyone 8y ago
    Also my yubikey doesn't work with Firefox i.e. to use yubikey as 2nd factor during gmail login
  • arendtio 8y ago
    Yes, the FF Dev-Tools need some love. They have some cool features which are unavailable in Chrome (e.g. the CSS Grid view), but overall they tend to be less accessible (managing (wifi/usb) connected devices and service workers should be much easier and more reliable).
• isolli 8y ago
  I have always used Firefox, ever since they implemented tabbed browsing (an incredible improvement, for those who don't remember the time before that). However, in recent times I have had to switch more and more apps to Chrome because the UI breaks in Firefox: intercom.io, trello.com, notion.so. Probably no fault of Firefox, but if a UI is broken there is no choice but to migrate.
  • enriquto 8y ago
    > if a UI is broken there is no choice but to migrate. you also have the choice of not using the broken website
    • isolli 8y ago
      In general you would be right, but this is at work.
      • amelius 8y ago
        Yes. At work, principles don't apply.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • ar0 8y ago
    Are you sure this isn't some Firefox add-on that you are using that is causing this? (E.g. uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger or activating Firefox's built-in anti-tracking protection or maybe just blocking third-party cookies; which could be solved by whitelisting the problematic webpages.) I am using Firefox exclusively and I rarely find sites that don't work with Firefox after I disable blocking extensions.
    • isolli 8y ago
      Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't have any blocking extensions installed. If you use Notion you can check for yourself: there is no way to scroll down a page with the down arrow if the content exceeds the screen.
• zaarn 8y ago
  From other comments it seems FF is having some perf problems on MacOs. I'll weigh in with Linux + Windows experience: FF is currently the best browser. It pulls a bit more CPU but it also trumps with very good privacy options out of the box and in about:config (first party isolation, which I've been using as daily driver for a few months now) Containers allow me to isolate aspects of myself and contain tracking or otherwise unwanted websites in their own little world. The only item on my wishlist is to make multi-window tab handling better, I think Chrome still wins that on the UI/UX front (since FF sometimes feels like it's about to crash when I drag a tab out of the window)
• vladimir-y 8y ago
  I was a Firefox user long time ago, but then switched to Chrome since Firefox was freezing as hell. But just recently I switched back to Firefox Quantum and have been happy so far. No freezing anymore, open source, all the needed features. So totally agree, Firefox is back.
• metmirr 8y ago
  Yeah things have changed but on windows and Ubuntu there is still significant performance between chrome and Firefox. On virtualbox it is really slow and annoying. It fires up almost with pycharm at the same time.
• Grue3 8y ago
  I still cannot switch from the old Firefox because the new one is missing a decent proxy add-on. It needs to 1) automatically switch proxy based on URL regex/wildcard 2) I should be able to quickly add a new rule for the current website with a keyboard shortcut 3) should be able to import rulesets from old Foxyproxy Foxyproxy pre-Quantum could do all of this, but the new version cannot do 2). Also none of proxy add-ons work with Firefox Android. I really need this functionality to have normal Internet access because of stuff like [1]. [1] https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/04/17/russia-s-federal-censor-blocks-millions-of-ip-addresses-in-crackdown-on-telegram-disrupting-internet-services-across-the-country https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/04/17/russia-s-federal-censor...
• bad_user 8y ago
  Just dropping a note in support of Firefox ... It's a great browser and I've came back to it even before the changes in Quantum, because the UI is better and it's also a browser I can trust to protect my interests. Just one thing to consider ... recently in Chrome 66 they introduced the means for cosmetic ads blocking via stylesheets that can no longer be overridden, as Google finally succumbed to demands for it. Firefox has been supporting the feature for years and is on the cutting edge in regards to protecting privacy. For example I'm using Multi-Account Containers + Facebook Container, an add-on which sandboxes Facebook. Along with the blocking of trackers that's now built-in, Firefox is leading the offense against privacy invading web services (although granted Apple's Safari doesn't do a bad job either). The only downside of Firefox is that Chrome's dev tools are still better, however Firefox has been improving a lot lately and I'm pretty sure they'll be on par pretty soon. After all, lets not forget that Firebug, which then inspired every other browser, was an add-on that happened for Firefox. Oh, and I love that they are refactoring its internals via Rust. That's an awesome development.
  • manveru 8y ago
    Pretty much the only time I use chromium now is when I need to debug Websockets, since the traffic is impossible to see in Firefox. Really hope they fix https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1373639 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1373639 some day.
    • nneonneo 8y ago
      On the other hand, Chrome refuses to show binary WebSocket traffic, so I just use SSLKEYLOGFILE + Firefox + Wireshark/tshark to debug secured WS traffic. tshark can even be configured to dump out the packets basically as they come in.
      • navlelo 8y ago
        I am struggling quite a bit to make this work. Do you have any good writeups on how to do this?
• Paraesthetic 8y ago
  I'd use edge before I use this new version of firefox. Edge is actually almost at the point where I would use it over chrome.
• BadassFractal 8y ago
  How do you all feel Firefox compares with Brave these days as a normal daily driver?
• senthilnayagam 8y ago
  I use Firefox for my streaming needs, amazon video, hotstar. I am on beta channel, small 2-3 mb updates every couple of days. firefox is stable. I would recommend it.
• oelmekki 8y ago
  I've switched to firefox last year for privacy reasons, but soon realized it was way not enough. I used different profile to do what sandboxing is doing for facebook. Both methods are very good at isolating cookies, but it's still an easy job to know who you are based on IP address and a bit of easy fingerprinting (IP address + screen resolution + browser version gets you a long way). This year, I decided to start using tor-browser as my main browser, keeping a firefox profile for facebook and making an other for google products. It's a bit slower, I had to change a few habits (like being always logged in or retrieving url from history by simply typing part of it), but in the end, I'm glad to not have this paranoid-friendly feeling of constantly being watched anymore. I realized that even if I never thought anyone was looking at me specifically, I was acting as if it was the case, because of the perception that everything was recorded and could be used. Mass-surveillance and private social profiling are creating generations of paranoid, this can't be good.
• nathan_f77 8y ago
  I switched to Firefox 5 months ago, and the experience hasn't been great. I expecting good things after reading about Firefox Quantum, but it's noticeably slower than Chrome. There's often a lag while scrolling, and it just doesn't feel as smooth. It also doesn't support Chromecast, so I have to switch to Chrome whenever I want to play a YouTube video on the TV. I've seen quite a few websites with JS or CSS bugs on Firefox, and some Chrome extensions don't have Firefox versions (e.g. Streak CRM.) I also have to switch to Chrome whenever I use "Google Meet" for a call. (That's not Firefox's fault, but it's an issue you experience when you use Firefox.) The only reason I switched to Firefox is so that I could remove the little blue dot on pinned tabs [1]. I would get a new email, and the Gmail favicon would update with a (1). I'd read the email on my phone, and the icon would go back to (0). But there would be a little blue dot telling me about a change on the page, so I'd still have to click the tab to remove the dot. Same issue for Drift chat, Trello, etc. After months and months of clicking the tab just to remove that little blue dot, I finally cracked and switched to Firefox. Firefox also has that little blue dot, but at least you can disable it by hacking some CSS [2]. If Chrome gave me the option to disable that blue dot, I'd switch back immediately. [1] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/sxDEUmMy07o https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/sxDEUm... [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1181537 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1181537
• Accacin 8y ago
  It's great Firefox 'is back' but I never really left, and when I did try to use Chrome I just felt a bit 'dirty'. For me, whether FF is faster or slower than Chrome is largely irrelevent (unless ofc it's extreme). What matters to me is that it feels like Mozilla are fighting for me, and Chrome are fighting for the advertising revenue. Mozilla, for all their mistakes, do care about their users and privacy (but make some stupid mistakes).
  • MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    Agree. They're not-for-profit (well, mostly - Mozilla has a famously curious structure) and generally share my appreciation of privacy and FOSS values. But sometimes they really drop the ball. And by 'sometimes', I mean 'repeatedly'. * The time they dragged their heels fixing a bug whereby Firefox didn't clear IndexedDB when it clearly should have [0] * Integrating with a proprietary bookmark-management solution, 'Pocket', presumably for the money [1][2] * Making it difficult to disable address-bar search (no, I don't want Google getting a record of every URL I type in) [3] * Their general mismanagement isn't really the point here, but it's still true: dumbing down the UI and turning Firefox into a me-too Chrome and annoying power-users, breaking plugin compatibility (Firefox's big killer feature), and pretending for the longest time that their performance was competitive with Chrome when it quite clearly wasn't (evidenced in the release of Quantum, when they finally really were performance-competitive with Chrome). Also the Mr. Robot fiasco. [0] https://superuser.com/a/1250955/ https://superuser.com/a/1250955/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876504 [2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/15/06/09/1722236/mozilla-responds-to-firefox-user-backlash-over-pocket-integration https://news.slashdot.org/story/15/06/09/1722236/mozilla-res... [3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1134010 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1134010
• AlvaroRuiz 8y ago
  I am really surprise that there is not a single mention to the Brave browser. I know it is not one of the major player, I don't even used myself as a daily driver, but still surprise nevertheless.
• rusk 8y ago
  Can anyone comment on what's driving this sudden intensification of effort on the engineering side of things at Mozilla? Has there been a change of management or something? Presumably Firefox is still Mozilla these days ... will they be updating any of their other apps as well?
• chillydawg 8y ago
  I use it by default, on my linux workstation and mbp. On my linux workstation, the browser needs periodic restarts as it gets laggy. Chrome does not need this, but I've stopped trusting google and so am removing as much google as practical. The firefox android app is pretty good, too, except there's no pull to refresh which is pretty annoying.
• qazqwert 8y ago
  Firefox never left... it was always the best the thing is just that the benchmarked and test and comparison to chrome speed is biased... you see Firefox is much faster using thousands (and even fucking 200 tabs the must i'v used...) open tabs and run in a smooth way and fast and... unlike what people think Firefox is much faster and has much better maintenance being open source and... Firefox holders much better over time and the um ui and of course ux in much better if you actually try and use Firefox with/vs/... chrome over time you will find Firefox to be better... the thing is just that Firefox is better for the power user... not the average stupid user who known how to get to google.... (My English is not my native language/ the best plz excuse my grammar and...)
• billysielu 8y ago
  I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago and I'm very happy with it. Day to day, the biggest difference I notice is that my adblocker extension works on Android, no more "[vibrate] omg ur phone haz been hax0red download our stuffz". Extensions: uBlock Origin - great ad blocker, works on Android. DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials - includes privacy tracker list, https everywhere, and visible privacy rating Settings: First Party Isolation On - IMO this is a top feature and should be on by default. Tracking Protection On (with Strict Block List). I also took the opportunity to change my search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo, which has been mostly fine. It's a bit more work to find something on Google Maps, but that's understandable.
• federicoponzi 8y ago
  Is there an easy way to export all my stuff from chrome (logins, bookmarks etc) and import it in firefox?
  • federicoponzi 8y ago
    Yeah, here it is :D https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-data-another-browser https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-data-a...
• severine 8y ago
  I always refrain from talking in Firefox threads because my use case is so different from the HN crowd, but still... I have a netbook with 1Gb RAM. It was a handout from the owner, as it was painfully slow even after cleaning and tweaking the Win 7 install. Eventually, the owner got a new beefier laptop and I got the netbook. Long story short: I put Xubuntu on it, and it's still my daily driver and main computer 6 years in. I have always used Firefox and, believe this 1Gb RAM multitasker, it's getting noticeably better year after year. Thank you mozillians! edit: i mean ubuntians, debianists, xfcers, fossers, hners, party people!
  • quickthrower2 8y ago
    Do you do any coding on that machine? If so, very cool.
    • isostatic 8y ago
      If it can run something as hungry as a webbrowser, of course you can do coding. The resources to run vim (or even emacs) are tiny in today's world. You probably wont be doing any 3D work or massive amounts of video manipulation, but even in the latter case it will be more than powerful enough.
      • quickthrower2 8y ago
        I was thinking more of compilation times, but of course if you write JS for example in VIM then this is not an issue (given that it can run a browser).
        • severine 8y ago
          Yeah, when I've tried, those kind of things seemed like could get really annoying, but for those I have a Proxmox install in another handout (4Gb RAM laptop with broken screen) :) The netbook runs Sublime Text nicely.
        • isostatic 8y ago
• mezod 8y ago
  Firefox never left. Proud user through the bad times :D
• chrischen 8y ago
  One thing browser makers (except Apple) tend to ignore is battery impact: https://www.guidingtech.com/59385/battery-conserving-mac-browsers/ https://www.guidingtech.com/59385/battery-conserving-mac-bro... Safari leaves everyone in the dust (at least on a Mac).
• WhitneyLand 8y ago
  Ff has portable plugins across systems even Android if I recall correctly. Is the lack of plugin suppport for iOS 100% legal/policy issues? Is there even a shread of any techicnal issue preventing it? I wonder if there is any poisbble way to reimagine the way plugins work, such that powerful extensibility could exist within an iOS browser and pass the appstore appproval gauntlet.
  • SXX 8y ago
    > Is the lack of plugin suppport for iOS 100% legal/policy issues? Is there even a shread of any techicnal issue preventing it? It is both legal, but also technical issue since Apple doesn't allow alternative rendering engines on iOS. Firefox for iOS is basically same webkit as Safari using and so Mozilla can do nothing about extension support since it's completely different code base from Desktop and Android versions.
• nneonneo 8y ago
  One Firefox addon single-handedly changed my browsing experience - Tree Style Tabs. With a little bit of styling & userChrome modification, you get a browsing experience that (a) handles huge numbers of tabs in a sane fashion, (b) takes up only a bit of space on the side, freeing up valuable vertical room & making all your tab names nice and readable, and (c) makes organizing and pruning tabs a snap. It's heavily customizable (but works well out of the box), and it's pretty exclusively for Firefox - similar things for Chrome rely on separate windows and can't remove the top tab bar (making them somewhat redundant). I also use multiple profiles via Profile Manager pretty frequently - it's super handy to have the ability to launch a clean browser environment for debugging purposes, and to have separate work profiles for different jobs to avoid cross-contamination. Firefox Sync also works quite well between all of my devices, and it's properly end-to-end encrypted for improved security.
  • VexorLoophole 8y ago
    Can you post your styling and userChrome setup? Sounds stupid but i like the concept of TreeStyleTabs but i always disabled it after some time. Firefox finally looks slick again on MacOS. And i want something nice to look at when i work 8+ hours with it. And Tree Style Tabs always turned me off somehow.
    • nneonneo 8y ago
      I use the "Sidebar" style on my Mac, with the TST add-on from piro_or. I previously used a different tree style tab addon but it was not updated for WebExtensions. TST addon preference style: /* Compact tab layout */ :root { --tab-height: 20px !important; } .tab { height: 20px !important; } /* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */ #tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; } userChrome.css: /* Hide tab bar in FF Quantum */ @-moz-document url("chrome://browser/content/browser.xul") { #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse !important; margin-bottom: 21px !important; } #sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header { visibility: collapse !important; } } Then I needed to turn on the title bar (right click toolbar -> customize -> check title bar at the bottom), and select Density -> Compact. The whole thing ends up looking like this: https://imgur.com/a/c4j9QxR https://imgur.com/a/c4j9QxR With some very small tweaks you could change it to look more like a Mac toolbar, I guess, but as it stands it's pretty svelte.
• dvcrn 8y ago
  The main reason why I am still with Safari is battery. Nothing else compares (or compared last time I checked) when it comes to battery life. Did this change? (But well, after the latest privacy changes announced by Apple, I might just stay with Safari for good)
• samuell 8y ago
  I switched to Brave on mobile, and hasn't looked back. Works flawlessly. It is only the desktop app on Linux/Xubuntu that can have a bit of micro-lagging at times, enough to cause frustration, and also is not as well integrated in the UI as chromium. Hope to switch there as well, as soon as laggyness improves a bit.
• samuell 8y ago
  Ah, just discovered it (still?) supports live bookmarks, based on RSS/Atom feeds (Right click on toolbar, add the "Subscribe" button, etc). Having live feed icons in the bookmark bar has been the best way to follow news I ever used. Hope this gets support in other browsers, like Brave, too.
• crashocaster 8y ago
  I'd love to use Firefox full-time, but I have always had font rendering issues whenever I've tried it out (on debian). Not only cosmetic issues, like blurriness or ugly rendering, but sometimes even simply incorrect rendering of characters.
• dorianm 8y ago
  Firefox is dead, it's at 6% market share now: Chrome 57.36% 60.60% 47.77% Safari 13.96% 17.27% 22.16% UC 7.88% 1.69% 0.32% Firefox 5.45% 5.89% 6.21% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
  • isostatic 8y ago
    Firefox works fine for me, so I'm not sure what "dead" means.
• zabil 8y ago
  I've talked about this before. Firefox is my main browser but I find chrome's developer ecosystem better. For e.g. the Chrome Dev tools protocol, puppeteer etc. I hope there's some kind of standardization (other that Webdriver) or easier automation and testing on Firefox.
• andyjohnson0 8y ago
  Took this as a hint to move my personal browsing from Chrome over to Firefox. Fairly quick process to move bookmarks etc over, and so far its looking pretty good. Real test will be how much friction I get with using FF on my android phone. Anyone here gone down this route recently?
• radmuzom 8y ago
  Most of the comments here are about using or not using Firefox, depending on it's features as compared to primarily Chrome. However, for me, it is not about being better or having more features at all - it is because I like Firefox and want to support Mozilla and believe that Google should not control the web. It is somewhat similar to the free software vs. open source debate - one should use free software not because it is better, but because it is the right thing to do (I understand that not many people agree with this philosophy, which is fine). Having said that, all sites which I regularly use work perfectly for me in Firefox with acceptable performance. So I never found a reason to switch at all. Rarely, I come across a website which is "best viewed with Chrome"; my default action is to close that site immediately.
  • kees99 8y ago
    > website which is "best viewed with Chrome" I'm stunned. Is this still a thing? Last time I remember seeing websites recommending a browser, it was late 90s with "get Netscape" gifs.
    • latexr 8y ago
      Not only is it still a thing, Google itself is a major culprit of it. Seems like every new experiment they release is “best viewed” in — or worse, “requires” — Google Chrome.
      • Rovanion 8y ago
        Not just experiments. Neither Google Hangouts nor Meet worked in Firefox until the 22nd of May this year.
        • lambda 8y ago
          Oh, wow, Hangouts and Meet are working in Firefox now? I've been keeping Chrome running just for that for a couple of years, will be glad to stop having to do that.
        • novaRom 8y ago
• fareesh 8y ago
  I would use Firefox if their track record for adding feature support was as good as Google. Also I vastly prefer the webkit inspector to the Firefox one, which feels very clunky and slow.
• colshrapnel 8y ago
  I always wanted to have an incognito browser as default option on my mobile. Recently I chanced to discover Firefox Focus on Google Play and that's exactly what I wanted. Now it's the default option to open random links, whereas Chrome and vanilla Firefox are used for the several trusted cities with permanent authorization.
• ericnyamu 8y ago
  Nice
• mattlondon 8y ago
  I've been using it for a few months now as my daily borwser on my personal Win10 machine and its been great. I cant say I noticed any compelling reason to move off of Chrome, but I thought I'd at least try out modern Firefox to see what I am missing. It feels a bit faster than Chrome for day-to-day browsing in totally non-scientific testing. Where it really shines though is in WebGL where it is HUGELY faster than Chrome for me. My laptop has a fairly high-end discrete GPU and Chrome feels like it is doing software rendering, but Firefox feels silky smooth so I guess Firefox is actually using the GPU and Chrome is not. I've just installed it on my work 2016 MBP. Keyboard still sucks, but I cant blame Firefox for that. However, on OSX, Firefox feels sluggish compared to Chrome.
  • paulie_a 8y ago
    To be fair the MBP keyboard always sucks regardless of browser.
• Proven 8y ago
  Please ... It collects data just like other Tier 1 browsers. There are several good privacy oriented browsers that aren’t lacking in functionality or other departments
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• amelius 8y ago
  Nice. There are still many things to be fixed on the internet, though: - social media - trust networks, moderation, reviewing, discovery - openness of OSes/devices, native programming frameworks - open implementations of ML/AI applications such as speech recognition/synthesis, NLP, web search - decentralization of services, like IPFS Any chance Mozilla will be working on these problems or funding research/development?
• auslander 8y ago
  > And both support uBlock Origin, the ad blocker recommended by many security experts. Finally a big media outlet with the right advice, the only extension you need is uBO. And a wrong one - using 1Password [0]. KeepassXC is safer, but hey, baby steps, right? :)) Chrome is snitching to Google, IE is Windows I stopped using, Safari is best, if you're rich :) Other browsers are too rare - easy for fingerprinting. [0] www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/28/flaws_in_password_management_apps
  • firepoet 8y ago
    Dang. I just switched from KeepassX from Enpass, and this article doesn't mention anything about them. Have to say the experience in Enpass is far superior to KeepassX, but I get that security is quite important! If I had data that Enpass was full of holes, I'd switch back instantly!
    • auslander 8y ago
      What made you to switch, I'm curious? Passwords is by far most sensitive data ever, way above tracking. So for passwords I trust no service to store them. KeepassXC encrypts them with your master password that you type every time, and you can now sync that encrypted database safely using iCloud Drive or Dropbox or whatever. I do store some non-critical passwords in Safari, it uses Keychain and Apple is pretty good on security. I would not store passwords in other browsers though.
• k__ 8y ago
  I was a long time Chrome user and switched back to Firefox a few months ago. It really has taken up speed and feature-wise it can compare itself with Chrome no problem. Only issues I have are videos (sometimes FB makes problems here) and the "Multi-Account Containers" log me out of some sites (Twitter) when I closed Firefox.
• jmh530 8y ago
  It runs awful on my work computer, but fine on home computer.
• usermac 8y ago
  The Dev Edition is superfine.
• tzfld 8y ago
  >But it became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome I've never felt Firefox becoming irrelevant
• juzffoo 8y ago
  I'm stuck with Chrome for more of my daily browsing because have been using Chrome browser as my password manager as well for non critical application accounts. Now every time I browse those apps/sites using firefox, i do not remember all of those passwords and need to go back to chrome again. And I been too lazy to go through the forgot password song and dance too. Is there any way to move the Chrome saved passwords over to Firefox?
• niklasd 8y ago
  I really like and use Firefox. Just the pdf-viewer is subpar – especially to Safari. If I print Latex-made pdfs from the browser, the font looks odd. Also I can't zoom properly/continuously in via my Mac Trackpad. Can anyone recommend a plugin with a better pdf-viewer for Firefox?
• flgr 8y ago
  I'm impressed by how well http://webclonk.flgr.me/ http://webclonk.flgr.me/ runs in Firefox on my 5 years old MBP, even when zooming out quite a lot. This used to run much much better in Chrome than in Firefox. Mozilla must have done a ton of optimization to their JavaScript engine.
• Fej 8y ago
  I understand that this is not a compelling argument for most people - but I would buy instantly a Firefox t-shirt that said "Live Free or Die".
• Helloworldboy 8y ago
  Brave is where it’s at boys.
• known 8y ago
  Mobile - Opera Office - Chrome Home -- Firefox
• manemobiili 8y ago
  I engourage to try out old school text based browsers. w3m with youtube-dl & media player. Text, images and video. That goes a long way.
• aceshades 8y ago
  My only gripe using Firefox on Linux is that my 1Password doesn't interface with it as well (or at all). Though I guess that's an issue with 1Password than with Mozilla.
• wintorez 8y ago
  I really wanted to go back to Firefox, but there was a lot in there I didn't like or ask for. For example, why I get Pocket integration out of the box? This could have been a plug-in.
• dghughes 8y ago
  Firefox on Android continually crashes at least for me and many other people going by comments on Google's Play Store. It must be at least six months since something changed to the Firefox Android app making it randomly crash. It has occurred across the last few versions. I wish I could figure out why because I miss uBlock Origin since Chrome on Android doesn't offer it.
• deventis 8y ago
  I never left FireFox, because I think it's spooky to use a browser from Google that connects profiles with their identity management. But I have to say, FireFox is finally getting better again!
• adamc 8y ago
  In the last year, my experience is that Firefox has become far more sluggish. It often has quite perceptible delays in responding to input. Slow JavaScript in one tab often affects other tabs. It also acts weirdly when using it over rdp. On paper, Quantum does lots of good things. In practice, my experience with it is not nearly so positive. And the plugin breakage of the last few years has been extremely irksome.
• josefresco 8y ago
  I never stopped using Firefox. I just started running Chrome in my left monitor for my G Suite services, and Firefox on my right for everything else.
• p3llin0r3 8y ago
  Firefox mobile has as extensions and ad blockers. That is all I needed to switch. Been using Firefox for years, rarely any problems I'm the days of babeljs and transpilers
• kerhackernews 8y ago
  The mobile version has improved by a lot. It used to be slow as shit but now it's comparable to Chrome.
• kerhackernews 8y ago
  The only issue I have is that Firefox works poorly with 3D view in Google Maps, which is something I use a lot.
• GnarfGnarf 8y ago
  I want Firefox and Mozilla to succeed, but the last time I upgraded a few months ago, Firefox was generating 12,000 page faults/sec. (on a 16GB PC). I said bye-bye and switched to Chrome.
• Improvotter 8y ago
  I've tried using Firefox for a month last month and decided to switch back to Chrome for a couple of reasons. Firstly and most importantly none of the extensions that I use seem to sync settings which make it very annoying when you have 3 computers that you're using daily (Linux, MacOS, and Windows). Sometimes it just still crashes and it's annoying. Firefox doesn't support debugging websockets like Chrome does. Opening file types in Firefox is a bit annoying, it constantly asks it every single time for a file type it never saw before. Just let me save it damnit, I don't want to be bothered about the file type. How do you even open PDFs in Firefox? If I set the file handler to Firefox itself, then it will recursively open the file in Firefox. Firefox doesn't play well with window manager like i3. Sometime when I'm working with Firefox, I'll need to force a resize of the window before Firefox notices that it's not a 1000px wide, but 500px wide. This happens very often. If you're saying that I should report this. I really cannot be bothered most of the time because I'm not a huge fan of their issue tracking software and most of these already have bug reports, but are just ignored. Firefox sometimes doesn't know how to handle a font and it makes it unreadable for some reason, alright? Firefox and dark mode GTK themes don't mix well together. You still have to manually add some CSS to what Firefox loads on every page just to make website input text readable or not black. Firefox uses the theme's settings for most stuff when it doesn't make sense when the whole web assumes you're using a white theme. That's about it I guess?
  • baby 8y ago
    Chrome doesn’t have tree style tabs. It’s hard to use as a power user.
• sneakycr0w 8y ago
  I have been switching back and forth between Chrome/Chrome Canary and Firefox/Firefox Dev Edition, and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that Firefox is my preferred source, especially as a web developer. There's small things the dev tools does that I really appreciate, like showing variable types by default. Also, the constant updates to the dev tools like the Shape Path Editor is amazing!
• con22 8y ago
  HN now is mozilla's Microphone
• daxorid 8y ago
  Security continues to be a concern. If FF can go a year without critical UAF bugs, maybe.
• dilap 8y ago
  Still no bounce scrolling! That's like table-stakes if you want to pretend like you're making a decent Mac app.
• penglish1 8y ago
  Firefox is indeed, much faster and less memory intensive than it used to be. I started using it heavily (again) roughly when Quantum came out after giving up on it for years as unusable. (like many, I think - hence the article). However. I still find it very crash-prone. Less so over time, since Quantum came out, but still.. very crash-prone. Perhaps I use it differently from others? I use different Profiles to separate concerns (and give myself some small modicum of cross-concern privacy - if nothing else auth cookies are reliably separated). At any given time, I have up to 5 separate Profiles running. With Firefox, each Profile is a fully separate PID (I assume their newer Containers are not), and there are affiliated PIDs for "Firefox CP Web Content" (similar to Google Chrome Helper, I assume). On any given day when I log into my system in the am, one or more of those Profiles has crashed, all affiliated PIDs are dead and the Crash Reporter is up. I don't believe anything I'm doing in any of the Firefox Profiles is particularly unusual, or extreme. No social networking, or anything with infinity-scroll. No video streaming (eg: Youtube). So Mozilla - what gives? Despite that complaint, I still happily use it because I believe Mozilla is much more interested in my privacy, and much more dedicated to FOSS, and because I mistrust Google. Thanks Mozilla!
  • penglish1 8y ago
    I meant to add - Chrome has maybe crashed on me a couple of times in that same year (versus one or more crashes per day from FF!), despite arguably much much heavier use, including all of my Youtube, social networking with infinity scroll etc.
• imagetic 8y ago
  The only thing Firefox feels behind on is video, at least that I notice in day to day operation. Chrome runs much more efficiently. When using Firefox my laptops fans spin up, battery life takes a hit, and it's overall more sluggish.
• ojuara 8y ago
  Guys, I use Safari and I’ve a little question. Talking about privacy, Firefox can do a better job than Safari? I heard Apple talking a lot about how Safari is becoming great at this.
• ece 8y ago
  It's been better than anything else for a while, at least 2 years or so.
• BuckRogers 8y ago
  Run DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Containerize & uBlock Origin. If you setup Containerize properly you'll never use anything else other than FF again. It can accept wildcards to break out of containers. DDG Privacy Essentials is also a must-have, as you get the functionality of Privacy Badger & HTTPS Everywhere in one addon. It also works a little better in my tests when compared to HTTPS Everywhere. DDG PE also gives you a privacy grade on sites you visit, which is a pretty nice addition. I've been using Firefox since it was in beta (as Phoenix). Never left. I used Navigator before and so it was a natural transition. It has always been better than everything else if you knew how to to utilize the features it has that others don't.