5 ms·

I rate Firefox pretty highly since Quantum released. It's fast, polished and in my unscientific testing, consumes less resources.

eightysixfour 8y ago
Except battery, it is a battery destroyer unfortunately.
- superkuh 8y ago
  Or fortunately for those of us who use desktop computers. Usually battery performance enhancements decrease actual performance. It's a real shame so much good software is gimped just so people can run it on mobile.
  - JoshTriplett 8y ago
    This hasn't been true for a long time. The same enhancements that conserve battery also tend to ensure that plenty of processing and thermal capacity is available for whatever does want the CPU. (For instance, your top CPU "turbo" speed depends on how many of the other CPU cores are sleeping.)
- jen729w 8y ago
  One would think that would be as a direct result of consuming more resources, not less. What is it doing to drain your power, do you know? I really want to switch from Chrome -> Firefox for dev work but my MBP’s battery already lasts nowhere near “10 hours”...
  - kiaulen 8y ago
    Well, if you're looking for battery life, both safari and edge have excellent battery life by virtue of not doing anything useful. And if you're looking to do dev work, that usually means at minimum an editor, a server, and a browser, which seems like too much to run unplugged.
    - Retr0spectrum 8y ago
      Unless your editor is actually a webapp itself, I don't see how that's going to tip anything over the edge in terms of practicality... The resources consumed by any web server I can think of are entirely inconsequential.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Last time I played around with comparing, Chrome and Firefox were comparable in terms of battery drain on my MBP. However they were both significantly worse than Safari, which barely ever turns on the discrete GPU while I'm browsing.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  There's some potential for the new WebRender stack to improve battery life a lot - part of the reason why Edge is so good at saving battery is that it makes good use of modern GPUs to save power, and Firefox's new graphics stack is another modern one that attempts to avoid wasting CPU/GPU to do old-style rendering of web pages
  - pcwalton 8y ago
    It's really that we should be using the OS compositor more than we are, particularly on macOS. I think I'm probably going to be working on this, or at least finding someone to work on it, soon. WebRender should make this easier, because we should be able to get away with using a smaller subset of the OS composition functionality than other browsers do. Anyway, for now, if you're on macOS, set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config for a large increase in energy efficiency at the cost of some visual effects.
Yokohiii 8y ago
I switched to FF mobile few weeks ago and I am very pleased. FF desktop however turned me away because it felt quite laggy.
- koolba 8y ago
  Have you tried it after the quantum engine change? It’s insanely faster than before.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  is there some option i'm missing? i'm trying to switch over on tablet, but ff touch detection or 'guessing where they meant to touch' is just horrible. i have to zoom in like crazy to hit the upvote button on hn while on chrome it just works, or i might be trying to click on an article on the front page but end up hitting the comments section. i usually prefer the desktop version of websites since mobile often times looks more awkward on tablet. but with ff i almost have no choice.
- KevinCarbonara 8y ago
  I'm the same way - I love FF mobile, and I love the Send Tab feature, but I can't stand Quantum so I switched to Waterfox.
fouc 8y ago
I tried using Firefox Quantum since Safari 12 closed off most extensions. Firefox Quantum is laggy in comparison, particularly the UI (web page rendering is fine). For example, dragging tabs to other windows is jittery. Launching preferences page is a bit delayed.
- theNextEpisode 8y ago
  @four try Firefox Developer Edition. There's a current known UI tabs issue in Firefox that's fixed in the next version (which Dev Edition runs on).
- tachion 8y ago
  I don't understand why people keep saying Safari closed some extensions. It simply disabled them and they're ready to be enabled again in the preferences panel, simple as that.
  - toyg 8y ago
    From what I understand, now you cannot install unsigned extensions. You might have some “grandfathered” if they were already installed, but anything new (on new machines etc) won’t get in. So, effectively, if the developer was unable or unwilling to pay the Apple tax, the extension was killed.

eightysixfour 8y ago

Except battery, it is a battery destroyer unfortunately.

superkuh 8y ago
Or fortunately for those of us who use desktop computers. Usually battery performance enhancements decrease actual performance. It's a real shame so much good software is gimped just so people can run it on mobile.
- JoshTriplett 8y ago
  This hasn't been true for a long time. The same enhancements that conserve battery also tend to ensure that plenty of processing and thermal capacity is available for whatever does want the CPU. (For instance, your top CPU "turbo" speed depends on how many of the other CPU cores are sleeping.)
jen729w 8y ago
One would think that would be as a direct result of consuming more resources, not less. What is it doing to drain your power, do you know? I really want to switch from Chrome -> Firefox for dev work but my MBP’s battery already lasts nowhere near “10 hours”...
- kiaulen 8y ago
  Well, if you're looking for battery life, both safari and edge have excellent battery life by virtue of not doing anything useful. And if you're looking to do dev work, that usually means at minimum an editor, a server, and a browser, which seems like too much to run unplugged.
  - Retr0spectrum 8y ago
    Unless your editor is actually a webapp itself, I don't see how that's going to tip anything over the edge in terms of practicality... The resources consumed by any web server I can think of are entirely inconsequential.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  Last time I played around with comparing, Chrome and Firefox were comparable in terms of battery drain on my MBP. However they were both significantly worse than Safari, which barely ever turns on the discrete GPU while I'm browsing.
kevingadd 8y ago
There's some potential for the new WebRender stack to improve battery life a lot - part of the reason why Edge is so good at saving battery is that it makes good use of modern GPUs to save power, and Firefox's new graphics stack is another modern one that attempts to avoid wasting CPU/GPU to do old-style rendering of web pages
- pcwalton 8y ago
  It's really that we should be using the OS compositor more than we are, particularly on macOS. I think I'm probably going to be working on this, or at least finding someone to work on it, soon. WebRender should make this easier, because we should be able to get away with using a smaller subset of the OS composition functionality than other browsers do. Anyway, for now, if you're on macOS, set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config for a large increase in energy efficiency at the cost of some visual effects.

Yokohiii 8y ago

I switched to FF mobile few weeks ago and I am very pleased. FF desktop however turned me away because it felt quite laggy.

koolba 8y ago
Have you tried it after the quantum engine change? It’s insanely faster than before.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
is there some option i'm missing? i'm trying to switch over on tablet, but ff touch detection or 'guessing where they meant to touch' is just horrible. i have to zoom in like crazy to hit the upvote button on hn while on chrome it just works, or i might be trying to click on an article on the front page but end up hitting the comments section. i usually prefer the desktop version of websites since mobile often times looks more awkward on tablet. but with ff i almost have no choice.
KevinCarbonara 8y ago
I'm the same way - I love FF mobile, and I love the Send Tab feature, but I can't stand Quantum so I switched to Waterfox.

fouc 8y ago

I tried using Firefox Quantum since Safari 12 closed off most extensions. Firefox Quantum is laggy in comparison, particularly the UI (web page rendering is fine). For example, dragging tabs to other windows is jittery. Launching preferences page is a bit delayed.

theNextEpisode 8y ago
@four try Firefox Developer Edition. There's a current known UI tabs issue in Firefox that's fixed in the next version (which Dev Edition runs on).
tachion 8y ago
I don't understand why people keep saying Safari closed some extensions. It simply disabled them and they're ready to be enabled again in the preferences panel, simple as that.
- toyg 8y ago
  From what I understand, now you cannot install unsigned extensions. You might have some “grandfathered” if they were already installed, but anything new (on new machines etc) won’t get in. So, effectively, if the developer was unable or unwilling to pay the Apple tax, the extension was killed.