9 ms·

With all these posters complaining, am I the only one who is totally satisfied with Firefox? I never had many issues using firefox. I did use Chrome briefly, bu

With all these posters complaining, am I the only one who is totally satisfied with Firefox? I never had many issues using firefox. I did use Chrome briefly, but came back to firefox. If it matters, I mostly use firefox on Debian Linux and am also not a web developer.

dcd0101 8y ago
I used Chrome exclusively for a very long time. I’ve since moved back to FF and have been much happier with it.
coffeefirst 8y ago
I keep trying to switch. The thing that stops me is it chokes on big single page apps. Arguably the problem is the sites being choked on (too much javascript) but there's not much I can do about that.
- phakding 8y ago
  What would be an example of a "big single page app"?
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Can’t speak for OP, but Slack is the first that comes to mind.
    - robotron 8y ago
      I have Slack open all day in Firefox and it's fine. Much better than the desktop app for me.
  - driverdan 8y ago
    Google Calendar crushes FF for me. I can't leave it open very long or it slows down FF, eats CPU cycles, and drains my battery.
    - grumblestumble 8y ago
      If you're on OSX and not using the "default for display" resolution, that may be the cause of the issue. Don't have the bugzilla handy, but I stumbled across it at one point and confirmed that that was the culprit for me. Unfortunately, I'm unwilling to use default display res, so I'm hoping that gets fixed soon. Would love to standardize on Firefox for my every day browsing.
      - dao- 8y ago
        > Don't have the bugzilla handy Here you are: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
    - Grue3 8y ago
      That's on purpose. It is apparently Google's policy that every Google website must be accessed with a Google browser, or else. Be thankful it works at all unlike, say, Google Hangouts.
  - richjdsmith 8y ago
    Honestly, 'new' gmail is substantially worse on FF than chrome. Which sucks, because I don't want to use chrome.
- conradfr 8y ago
  I use Chrome for big apps, especially Google apps (GMail, Google Music). But yes once in a while I still have to restart it when its memory usage and responsiveness become a problem (used to have an extension to have a restart entry in the menu, killed as many others by the new system, yeah for progress). In fact I use Chrome more since Quantum, ironically.
- hrktb 8y ago
  I realized that for me most of these sites: - don’t use browser navigation - need a specific login to have any use - they are pinned,and I never close them, ever With that in mind, I stopped thinking about them as web sites, and use chrome windows as application containers, while doing all my browsing and search in firefox. I wish there was a simple way to have dedicated chrome windows acting as independant applications, like Gears was. For now it’s just too much friction to my taste to have each site in an electron style wrapping.
- Endy 8y ago
  Stop trying to do things in your browser that should be their own independent programs.
  - what_ever 8y ago
    Well they are a user and not the programmer so they may not have that option.
    - Endy 8y ago
      I'm also a user and not a programmer. There are things I use a browser for, and things I use proper programs for. There is some overlap, in the space of email, video watching (I'm entirely too lazy to stream every video I watch through VLC), and to a small degree gaming (i.e. Flash). There are a great many things I do not do because I hold to my beliefs. Overall, I don't feel I lose anything. If anything, I gain peace of mind that my browser doesn't have more data leaking out to servers than I'm willing to accommodate.
  - hazz99 8y ago
    I believe the future is with powerful web apps. They're cross-platform & often easy to use. I don't have to worry about downloading & installing. In the future, they'll be able to run as efficiently as non-browser applications. What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases?
    - Nadya 8y ago
      >What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases? I'm an edge case, but nearly everything. I prefer to not only "own" the program so that I may use it beyond the lifespan of the creator or hosting company supports it but I also prefer to own my files (cloud storage is prohibitively expensive for me). At $0.02 per GB per month I would be spending in excess of >$4,000/yr - and that's just my photos. It would be in excess of $10,000/yr if I also wanted to store videos. For me to move into an "online, cloud-based software" world online storage would have to be price competitive with purchasing my own local storage for the TB's of data I have and the software would have to be fast enough to work on the files and work with whichever cloud storage I was using. (Let's also pretend that internet is always-present and always-fast-enough.) On the note of expensive cloud storage... non-affiliated shout-out to Backblaze. I'm probably a borderline "abusive user", $5/mo is an absolute steal to backup the huge amount of data I backup with them.
SllX 8y ago
Another satisfied user, but it comes with the caveat that my habits let me use it. Firefox really knows how to make memory leak and if I weren’t the type to aggressively close windows/tabs I don’t need and not keep the browser going 24/7 I would probably end up switching to Safari as my default.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  I currently have 76 tabs open and last closed Firefox approximately 2 days ago. Firefox sits at about 5GB RAM usage and 3% CPU, which I find very acceptable. In my experience Firefox handles a large amount of tabs very well, while Chrome tends to eat a lot more RAM in the same situation (while doing its best to hide that fact). On the other hand there are some websites that will easily demand a gigabyte of RAM on their own, or that use excessive amounts of CPU time. Chrome handles those cases much better than Firefox. But those are outliers, and if I have to visit them I just open them in Chrome.
  - css 8y ago
    Meanwhile I have an HN tab and a Slack tab and I am sitting at 45% CPU and 1GB RAM...
    - cat199 8y ago
      what happens if you close the slack tab? don't really think a bloated spa is ff's fault.. my standalone slack on macos takes ~500M
  - r3bl 8y ago
    By the browser you're comparing Firefox to, I'm assuming you're not using a Mac, while the parent is. Every single performance complaint I've seen post Quantum release has been from a Mac user.
  - SllX 8y ago
    I've been using Firefox since 1.5, I've accepted memory leaks as a fact of life. For comparison, I currently have two browser windows open and zero tabs. One is this comment box, the other is a GitHub page. Firefox is using a grand total of 3GB RAM, about 700MB of which is for the WebExtensions process so figure about 2.3GB for a grand total of two pages. This is actually an improvement on the way things used to be, but if I quit the browser now (as I probably will soon regardless), these same two pages would take up only about 200MB, which is still a lot for what it is displaying and running, and the WebExtensions process would reset to about 200-300MB. I have Waterfox running in the background too, basically Firefox 56, which I use for a single website with exactly one extension taking up over a gig by itself with a single page open. I'm not complaining, again, it's a fact of life that I've accepted and it doesn't hurt me any, but if I changed my habits I have doubts about how much I would actually use Firefox. Maybe I still would after considering my other options, but the web isn't as interesting as it used to be and I have other means of getting what I want off it now so I don't really require a web browser I can throw a million tabs at since tabs themselves are pretty harmful. That said, if there are browsers that do a better job nowadays, and I stopped looking a long time ago, I'm not convinced they would do much better than Firefox currently does.
androidgirl 8y ago
I love Firefox! The performance is great, it feels zippy, and I love their reader mode and straightforward ui.
joelthelion 8y ago
You're not alone :)
gkya 8y ago
Complaining, criticising, two different things. The latter is what's being done, and that is quite useful. Loding and complimenting is nice, but useless. I have a love/hate relationship w/ Firefox, but it's the best trade-off for a privacy-aware power-user that also wants a relatively stable browser which does not want too much fiddling. But too many negatives are present and if we do not point them out they wont be fixed. Fixing them is good for Firefox, and good for all of us FF users.
- phakding 8y ago
  > Loding and complimenting is nice, but useless I hope that your manager doesn't think that way. :)
- fpgaminer 8y ago
  > complimenting is nice, but useless Some people will base their decisions on which software to try/use, based on the general sentiment of discussions on Hacker News. For example, suppose you suddenly had the need for Email As A Service. Which of the plethora of services will you choose to use? I believe a lot of Hacker News users will weight their decisions at least in part on HN comments discussing those services. The same goes for Firefox. If all people ever see is criticism, that is likely to drive people away from Firefox. That means less revenue for Mozilla, which means a worse browser for us. Basically I'm saying that compliments, positive comments, are not useless. Quite the opposite. (Don't get me wrong. I completely agree with you that criticism is necessary. I'm not saying those comments are bad. I'm saying positive comments serve an important function too.) And besides, suppose you were a Firefox developer reading these comment threads. Don't you think the positive comments can provide a bit of encouragement? Mozilla should know not only what it is doing wrong, but also what it is doing right. And that goes for any software and any company.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Well I actually agree you, I've exaggerated. Compliments are less useful than criticism here, but indeed not totally useless. I guess I overreacted to the comment that starts with a false blanket statement and overgeneralises.
tfha 8y ago
I've been very happy with firefox, with one exception. For whatever reason, I can't log into gitlab without getting a '422'. On chrome it's not an issue, but on firefox I can't log in to gitlab despite lots of trying different things.
simias 8y ago
I also remained loyal to Firefox but I think there's a mentality aspect to it: when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser. As such when I'm frustrated by my web experience I tend to think "man, I need to stop using this garbage website" rather than "well, time to use a faster browser". Because surely my octocore gaming PC with 16GB of RAM should manage to display text and images just fine without needing bleeding edge technology?
- rainonmoon 8y ago
  The difference in my experience is that hangups while I'm using Firefox usually happen within the viewport while moving tabs and accessing menus remains snappy, so it's easier to attribute that slog to the website. When I was using Chrome before, it would frequently lock up entirely.
- sjellis 8y ago
  > when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser You'd probably be right, too: the current browsers are marvels of technology that keep getting better, whilst the Websites are getting worse.
zaarn 8y ago
I'm a webdev and I'm totally satisfied with Firefox. Dev tools aren't perfect but good enough to get shit done and the included tracking blocker and containers are a must-have for any browser I'll consider from now on.
pageandrew 8y ago
Its pretty slow for me on macOS, at least compared to Safari.
tomc1985 8y ago
It's a little hard to believe a Firefox power user over any real length of time would be totally satisfied with it; they've been ripping out much-loved features right and left and stuffing it with mandatory sponsored add-ons. Still, it doesn't force report megabytes worth of data per day to the mothership, unlike Chrome...
- qbrass 8y ago
  As much as I don't like Firefox with each new release, the alternatives are worse. So I've settled for FF until it falls far enough to lose the title of "least worst browser". But I've quit suggesting it to others. They can use Chrome all they want.
  - snaky 8y ago
    > suggesting it to others When majority of power users stop suggesting it to users around them, Firefox has no future anymore.
    - eitland 8y ago
      Ironically enough it might be a good recommendation for everyone else even if it annoys us.
- phakding 8y ago
  May be it's because I come from a different culture, I am not so entitled. Firefox is free, as in speech and beer. It also doesn't phone home with your private data as a payload. That Is good enough for me to be happy. If something doesn't work for me, I find a workaround or a plug-in and am happy again. If there's something needs to be fixed, I write bug reports. So it might seem to you that no power user could possibly be totally happy, I am happy to prove you wrong.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    So in your culture one is supposed to be grateful for free things unquestioningly? Why does culture need to be brought into this? If, one day, churches started handing out rat poison to the hungry instead of food; are the hungry entitled to happily eat that rat poison because it is free? The problem is that Firefox makes these promises and builds a platform (in this case, old-school XUL-powered extensions), builds a profitable user-base from said platform, and then yanks features at a whim. It is almost like a classic bait-and-switch but played in slow motion. In the case of Firefox there simply aren't suitable replacements available for many add-ons because the APIs and underlying features they relied on are being pulled. And they are being pulled because of managerial decisions, made to metrics that only highlight majority use-cases, in the name of "saving programmer bandwidth". As a result, a popular, powerful, useful program more and becomes more like a disposable appliance and less like an extension of the mind. "Who cares about nice ideals like mind extensions blah blah blah" you think? Well, a lot of users do (especially us old nerds), many of us who have stuck by Mozilla and will willingly dance to their beat in exchange for the company's historical sense of economy in its asks and respect for its userbase. If Mozilla were making Firefox out of the kindness of their hearts, maybe you would have an argument. But Mozilla is a million-dollar business and much of what has become of their flagship browser lately is a result of business decisions to bring in more money, so I have a hard time understanding how legitimate user complaints could be considered "entitled".
biztos 8y ago
I'm also very happy with Firefox, and I usually keep FF, Safari, and Chrome all open all the time. I use one Firefox for work, Safari for random browsing, and Chrome for certain special-browsing or special-web-app cases where it either works better in Chrome or I just want keep it more available via alt-tab. My only real complaint is that `about:config` preferences have no descriptions, despite their names not always being descriptive. Chrome's `about:flags` is much better in this regard.
remir 8y ago
Absolutely satisfied with Firefox. I wanted to use FF for years, mainly for ideological reasons, but didn't because next to Chrome, the performance wasn't there. But the changes Mozilla did in recent years convinced me to come back and it has been great!
jrnichols 8y ago
you're not alone. I'm quite happy with Firefox, and it's my #2 browser on my Mac (I use Safari first) and my #1 browser on Windows and Linux. The only reason that I have Chrome installed is for the occasional website that absolutely requires something in Flash, and that's usually some online training thing.
JohnTHaller 8y ago
I stopped using most legacy extensions a while back when I found Firefox was faster and more stable without them. So, this change only affects me for the better - ditching years of crufty "oh we have to do this super-kludgey thing because a couple big extensions rely on it" code so the whole thing can go multi-process and keep improving.

dcd0101 8y ago

I used Chrome exclusively for a very long time. I’ve since moved back to FF and have been much happier with it.

coffeefirst 8y ago

I keep trying to switch. The thing that stops me is it chokes on big single page apps. Arguably the problem is the sites being choked on (too much javascript) but there's not much I can do about that.

phakding 8y ago
What would be an example of a "big single page app"?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Can’t speak for OP, but Slack is the first that comes to mind.
  - robotron 8y ago
    I have Slack open all day in Firefox and it's fine. Much better than the desktop app for me.
- driverdan 8y ago
  Google Calendar crushes FF for me. I can't leave it open very long or it slows down FF, eats CPU cycles, and drains my battery.
  - grumblestumble 8y ago
    If you're on OSX and not using the "default for display" resolution, that may be the cause of the issue. Don't have the bugzilla handy, but I stumbled across it at one point and confirmed that that was the culprit for me. Unfortunately, I'm unwilling to use default display res, so I'm hoping that gets fixed soon. Would love to standardize on Firefox for my every day browsing.
    - dao- 8y ago
      > Don't have the bugzilla handy Here you are: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
  - Grue3 8y ago
    That's on purpose. It is apparently Google's policy that every Google website must be accessed with a Google browser, or else. Be thankful it works at all unlike, say, Google Hangouts.
- richjdsmith 8y ago
  Honestly, 'new' gmail is substantially worse on FF than chrome. Which sucks, because I don't want to use chrome.
conradfr 8y ago
I use Chrome for big apps, especially Google apps (GMail, Google Music). But yes once in a while I still have to restart it when its memory usage and responsiveness become a problem (used to have an extension to have a restart entry in the menu, killed as many others by the new system, yeah for progress). In fact I use Chrome more since Quantum, ironically.
hrktb 8y ago
I realized that for me most of these sites: - don’t use browser navigation - need a specific login to have any use - they are pinned,and I never close them, ever With that in mind, I stopped thinking about them as web sites, and use chrome windows as application containers, while doing all my browsing and search in firefox. I wish there was a simple way to have dedicated chrome windows acting as independant applications, like Gears was. For now it’s just too much friction to my taste to have each site in an electron style wrapping.
Endy 8y ago
Stop trying to do things in your browser that should be their own independent programs.
- what_ever 8y ago
  Well they are a user and not the programmer so they may not have that option.
  - Endy 8y ago
    I'm also a user and not a programmer. There are things I use a browser for, and things I use proper programs for. There is some overlap, in the space of email, video watching (I'm entirely too lazy to stream every video I watch through VLC), and to a small degree gaming (i.e. Flash). There are a great many things I do not do because I hold to my beliefs. Overall, I don't feel I lose anything. If anything, I gain peace of mind that my browser doesn't have more data leaking out to servers than I'm willing to accommodate.
- hazz99 8y ago
  I believe the future is with powerful web apps. They're cross-platform & often easy to use. I don't have to worry about downloading & installing. In the future, they'll be able to run as efficiently as non-browser applications. What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases?
  - Nadya 8y ago
    >What should be its "own independent program"? Where do we draw that line? Why should we be constrained to our own offline system, when the web enables millions of (more) user-friendly use-cases? I'm an edge case, but nearly everything. I prefer to not only "own" the program so that I may use it beyond the lifespan of the creator or hosting company supports it but I also prefer to own my files (cloud storage is prohibitively expensive for me). At $0.02 per GB per month I would be spending in excess of >$4,000/yr - and that's just my photos. It would be in excess of $10,000/yr if I also wanted to store videos. For me to move into an "online, cloud-based software" world online storage would have to be price competitive with purchasing my own local storage for the TB's of data I have and the software would have to be fast enough to work on the files and work with whichever cloud storage I was using. (Let's also pretend that internet is always-present and always-fast-enough.) On the note of expensive cloud storage... non-affiliated shout-out to Backblaze. I'm probably a borderline "abusive user", $5/mo is an absolute steal to backup the huge amount of data I backup with them.

SllX 8y ago

Another satisfied user, but it comes with the caveat that my habits let me use it. Firefox really knows how to make memory leak and if I weren’t the type to aggressively close windows/tabs I don’t need and not keep the browser going 24/7 I would probably end up switching to Safari as my default.

wongarsu 8y ago
I currently have 76 tabs open and last closed Firefox approximately 2 days ago. Firefox sits at about 5GB RAM usage and 3% CPU, which I find very acceptable. In my experience Firefox handles a large amount of tabs very well, while Chrome tends to eat a lot more RAM in the same situation (while doing its best to hide that fact). On the other hand there are some websites that will easily demand a gigabyte of RAM on their own, or that use excessive amounts of CPU time. Chrome handles those cases much better than Firefox. But those are outliers, and if I have to visit them I just open them in Chrome.
- css 8y ago
  Meanwhile I have an HN tab and a Slack tab and I am sitting at 45% CPU and 1GB RAM...
  - cat199 8y ago
    what happens if you close the slack tab? don't really think a bloated spa is ff's fault.. my standalone slack on macos takes ~500M
- r3bl 8y ago
  By the browser you're comparing Firefox to, I'm assuming you're not using a Mac, while the parent is. Every single performance complaint I've seen post Quantum release has been from a Mac user.
- SllX 8y ago
  I've been using Firefox since 1.5, I've accepted memory leaks as a fact of life. For comparison, I currently have two browser windows open and zero tabs. One is this comment box, the other is a GitHub page. Firefox is using a grand total of 3GB RAM, about 700MB of which is for the WebExtensions process so figure about 2.3GB for a grand total of two pages. This is actually an improvement on the way things used to be, but if I quit the browser now (as I probably will soon regardless), these same two pages would take up only about 200MB, which is still a lot for what it is displaying and running, and the WebExtensions process would reset to about 200-300MB. I have Waterfox running in the background too, basically Firefox 56, which I use for a single website with exactly one extension taking up over a gig by itself with a single page open. I'm not complaining, again, it's a fact of life that I've accepted and it doesn't hurt me any, but if I changed my habits I have doubts about how much I would actually use Firefox. Maybe I still would after considering my other options, but the web isn't as interesting as it used to be and I have other means of getting what I want off it now so I don't really require a web browser I can throw a million tabs at since tabs themselves are pretty harmful. That said, if there are browsers that do a better job nowadays, and I stopped looking a long time ago, I'm not convinced they would do much better than Firefox currently does.

androidgirl 8y ago

I love Firefox! The performance is great, it feels zippy, and I love their reader mode and straightforward ui.

joelthelion 8y ago

You're not alone :)

gkya 8y ago

Complaining, criticising, two different things. The latter is what's being done, and that is quite useful. Loding and complimenting is nice, but useless. I have a love/hate relationship w/ Firefox, but it's the best trade-off for a privacy-aware power-user that also wants a relatively stable browser which does not want too much fiddling. But too many negatives are present and if we do not point them out they wont be fixed. Fixing them is good for Firefox, and good for all of us FF users.

phakding 8y ago
> Loding and complimenting is nice, but useless I hope that your manager doesn't think that way. :)
fpgaminer 8y ago
> complimenting is nice, but useless Some people will base their decisions on which software to try/use, based on the general sentiment of discussions on Hacker News. For example, suppose you suddenly had the need for Email As A Service. Which of the plethora of services will you choose to use? I believe a lot of Hacker News users will weight their decisions at least in part on HN comments discussing those services. The same goes for Firefox. If all people ever see is criticism, that is likely to drive people away from Firefox. That means less revenue for Mozilla, which means a worse browser for us. Basically I'm saying that compliments, positive comments, are not useless. Quite the opposite. (Don't get me wrong. I completely agree with you that criticism is necessary. I'm not saying those comments are bad. I'm saying positive comments serve an important function too.) And besides, suppose you were a Firefox developer reading these comment threads. Don't you think the positive comments can provide a bit of encouragement? Mozilla should know not only what it is doing wrong, but also what it is doing right. And that goes for any software and any company.
- gkya 8y ago
  Well I actually agree you, I've exaggerated. Compliments are less useful than criticism here, but indeed not totally useless. I guess I overreacted to the comment that starts with a false blanket statement and overgeneralises.

tfha 8y ago

I've been very happy with firefox, with one exception. For whatever reason, I can't log into gitlab without getting a '422'. On chrome it's not an issue, but on firefox I can't log in to gitlab despite lots of trying different things.

simias 8y ago

I also remained loyal to Firefox but I think there's a mentality aspect to it: when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser. As such when I'm frustrated by my web experience I tend to think "man, I need to stop using this garbage website" rather than "well, time to use a faster browser". Because surely my octocore gaming PC with 16GB of RAM should manage to display text and images just fine without needing bleeding edge technology?

rainonmoon 8y ago
The difference in my experience is that hangups while I'm using Firefox usually happen within the viewport while moving tabs and accessing menus remains snappy, so it's easier to attribute that slog to the website. When I was using Chrome before, it would frequently lock up entirely.
sjellis 8y ago
> when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser You'd probably be right, too: the current browsers are marvels of technology that keep getting better, whilst the Websites are getting worse.

zaarn 8y ago

I'm a webdev and I'm totally satisfied with Firefox. Dev tools aren't perfect but good enough to get shit done and the included tracking blocker and containers are a must-have for any browser I'll consider from now on.

pageandrew 8y ago

Its pretty slow for me on macOS, at least compared to Safari.

tomc1985 8y ago

It's a little hard to believe a Firefox power user over any real length of time would be totally satisfied with it; they've been ripping out much-loved features right and left and stuffing it with mandatory sponsored add-ons. Still, it doesn't force report megabytes worth of data per day to the mothership, unlike Chrome...

qbrass 8y ago
As much as I don't like Firefox with each new release, the alternatives are worse. So I've settled for FF until it falls far enough to lose the title of "least worst browser". But I've quit suggesting it to others. They can use Chrome all they want.
- snaky 8y ago
  > suggesting it to others When majority of power users stop suggesting it to users around them, Firefox has no future anymore.
  - eitland 8y ago
    Ironically enough it might be a good recommendation for everyone else even if it annoys us.
phakding 8y ago
May be it's because I come from a different culture, I am not so entitled. Firefox is free, as in speech and beer. It also doesn't phone home with your private data as a payload. That Is good enough for me to be happy. If something doesn't work for me, I find a workaround or a plug-in and am happy again. If there's something needs to be fixed, I write bug reports. So it might seem to you that no power user could possibly be totally happy, I am happy to prove you wrong.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  So in your culture one is supposed to be grateful for free things unquestioningly? Why does culture need to be brought into this? If, one day, churches started handing out rat poison to the hungry instead of food; are the hungry entitled to happily eat that rat poison because it is free? The problem is that Firefox makes these promises and builds a platform (in this case, old-school XUL-powered extensions), builds a profitable user-base from said platform, and then yanks features at a whim. It is almost like a classic bait-and-switch but played in slow motion. In the case of Firefox there simply aren't suitable replacements available for many add-ons because the APIs and underlying features they relied on are being pulled. And they are being pulled because of managerial decisions, made to metrics that only highlight majority use-cases, in the name of "saving programmer bandwidth". As a result, a popular, powerful, useful program more and becomes more like a disposable appliance and less like an extension of the mind. "Who cares about nice ideals like mind extensions blah blah blah" you think? Well, a lot of users do (especially us old nerds), many of us who have stuck by Mozilla and will willingly dance to their beat in exchange for the company's historical sense of economy in its asks and respect for its userbase. If Mozilla were making Firefox out of the kindness of their hearts, maybe you would have an argument. But Mozilla is a million-dollar business and much of what has become of their flagship browser lately is a result of business decisions to bring in more money, so I have a hard time understanding how legitimate user complaints could be considered "entitled".

biztos 8y ago

I'm also very happy with Firefox, and I usually keep FF, Safari, and Chrome all open all the time. I use one Firefox for work, Safari for random browsing, and Chrome for certain special-browsing or special-web-app cases where it either works better in Chrome or I just want keep it more available via alt-tab. My only real complaint is that `about:config` preferences have no descriptions, despite their names not always being descriptive. Chrome's `about:flags` is much better in this regard.

remir 8y ago

Absolutely satisfied with Firefox. I wanted to use FF for years, mainly for ideological reasons, but didn't because next to Chrome, the performance wasn't there. But the changes Mozilla did in recent years convinced me to come back and it has been great!

jrnichols 8y ago

you're not alone. I'm quite happy with Firefox, and it's my #2 browser on my Mac (I use Safari first) and my #1 browser on Windows and Linux. The only reason that I have Chrome installed is for the occasional website that absolutely requires something in Flash, and that's usually some online training thing.

JohnTHaller 8y ago

I stopped using most legacy extensions a while back when I found Firefox was faster and more stable without them. So, this change only affects me for the better - ditching years of crufty "oh we have to do this super-kludgey thing because a couple big extensions rely on it" code so the whole thing can go multi-process and keep improving.