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"... and Firefox is just not cutting it." What are your objections to modern Firefox? Most of the criticism I've heard is that it's become too much like Chrom

"... and Firefox is just not cutting it." What are your objections to modern Firefox? Most of the criticism I've heard is that it's become too much like Chrome. I'm quite happy with it personally.

satyenr 8y ago
To be honest, my experience with FF has not be been great in the recent years — although I do acknowledge that it has improved recently. I can’t point my finger at one thing — it was combination of little things that bothered me enough to make me switch to Safari and later Chrome. That said, my comment was directed towards that FF’s market share is plunging rapidly and unless things change drastically, it might become another Opera — a niche browser at best. We need something that can counter Chrome and by extension, Google — something that developers have to support in addition to Chrome. FF has been playing that role nicely so far, but for how long? FF is not cutting it in terms of adoption — in terms of challenging the might of Chrome.
wlll 8y ago
As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago my main issues are: * No spellcheck in form fields (without a plugin, and I hate plugins). * It feels slower. There's something about it that just doesn't feel as fast. Mostly things like opening windows etc. * There's some annoying defaults. * Dev tools aren't as good. * Updates aren't installed automatically. I mean, it's close to Chrome, which is good (for me), but it just feels about 5% less polished. It's good enough that I'll stick with it, after all there was a driving force for me to leave Chrome too.
- sleavey 8y ago
  Spell check just needs a dictionary installed, not a plugin. This takes about three clicks.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    three clicks i'd never heard out til today(i just got irritated by the lack of functionality and do my form filling in chrome)
  - toofy 8y ago
    I'm guessing they meant "No spellcheck in forms without jumping through more hoops."
    - wlll 8y ago
      Right. When I looked into how to get spell checking in form fields all the advice I could find on the Internet was "install a plugin". It seems to me that spell checking of form fields should be a basic feature integrated into the browser.
  - wlll 8y ago
    I'm on a mac and everything else spell checks just fine, so: 1. Why not Firefox? 2. Why do I have to jump through some undocumented hoops to get something that should work out of the box?
- x0x0 8y ago
  on my box FF is a stunning memory pig I understand this is my fault for having 10-30 tabs open at any point in time, but still, chrome will generally manage that at 2-4gb ram. FF often breaks 10gb. I understand Jira is a pig of an app (Atlassian software is generally shit), but I unfortunately need to use it all day long. Chrome seems to be able to handle 2-4 each of jira, gmail, google cal, github, aws console, and slack. FF couldn't last time I tried, a couple months after they released Quantum. This would, of course, be less of a problem if the cheapest macbook with 32g ram didn't cost $3k...
  - pimeys 8y ago
    I never see my total RAM usage going over 6G to the whole system if I don't compile anything. I have tens of tabs open and the 32G of RAM is most of the time useless. Mind you the ThinkPad RAM upgrade was about 120€...
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  +1 for feeling slower and dev tools not being as good. And Google sites are actually slower on Firefox, which I assume is not their fault but still doesn't work in their favor.
- teknologist 8y ago
  You could have a look at Brave, a commercially-supported degoogled chromium.
- gdwatson 8y ago
  For clarity, what platform are you on? Updates are automatic on Windows and managed by the package manager on Linux and BSD.
  - wlll 8y ago
    Mac edit To clarify, I'm used to Chrome seemingly just updating itself in the background. Firefox needs a restart, and so far the restart behaviour with Firefox has been less reliable than Chrome (losing opened tabs sometimes, for instance).

"... and Firefox is just not cutting it." What are your objections to modern Firefox? Most of the criticism I've heard is that it's become too much like Chrome. I'm quite happy with it personally.

satyenr 8y ago

To be honest, my experience with FF has not be been great in the recent years — although I do acknowledge that it has improved recently. I can’t point my finger at one thing — it was combination of little things that bothered me enough to make me switch to Safari and later Chrome. That said, my comment was directed towards that FF’s market share is plunging rapidly and unless things change drastically, it might become another Opera — a niche browser at best. We need something that can counter Chrome and by extension, Google — something that developers have to support in addition to Chrome. FF has been playing that role nicely so far, but for how long? FF is not cutting it in terms of adoption — in terms of challenging the might of Chrome.

wlll 8y ago

As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago my main issues are: * No spellcheck in form fields (without a plugin, and I hate plugins). * It feels slower. There's something about it that just doesn't feel as fast. Mostly things like opening windows etc. * There's some annoying defaults. * Dev tools aren't as good. * Updates aren't installed automatically. I mean, it's close to Chrome, which is good (for me), but it just feels about 5% less polished. It's good enough that I'll stick with it, after all there was a driving force for me to leave Chrome too.

sleavey 8y ago
Spell check just needs a dictionary installed, not a plugin. This takes about three clicks.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  three clicks i'd never heard out til today(i just got irritated by the lack of functionality and do my form filling in chrome)
- toofy 8y ago
  I'm guessing they meant "No spellcheck in forms without jumping through more hoops."
  - wlll 8y ago
    Right. When I looked into how to get spell checking in form fields all the advice I could find on the Internet was "install a plugin". It seems to me that spell checking of form fields should be a basic feature integrated into the browser.
- wlll 8y ago
  I'm on a mac and everything else spell checks just fine, so: 1. Why not Firefox? 2. Why do I have to jump through some undocumented hoops to get something that should work out of the box?
x0x0 8y ago
on my box FF is a stunning memory pig I understand this is my fault for having 10-30 tabs open at any point in time, but still, chrome will generally manage that at 2-4gb ram. FF often breaks 10gb. I understand Jira is a pig of an app (Atlassian software is generally shit), but I unfortunately need to use it all day long. Chrome seems to be able to handle 2-4 each of jira, gmail, google cal, github, aws console, and slack. FF couldn't last time I tried, a couple months after they released Quantum. This would, of course, be less of a problem if the cheapest macbook with 32g ram didn't cost $3k...
- pimeys 8y ago
  I never see my total RAM usage going over 6G to the whole system if I don't compile anything. I have tens of tabs open and the 32G of RAM is most of the time useless. Mind you the ThinkPad RAM upgrade was about 120€...
mehrdadn 8y ago
+1 for feeling slower and dev tools not being as good. And Google sites are actually slower on Firefox, which I assume is not their fault but still doesn't work in their favor.
teknologist 8y ago
You could have a look at Brave, a commercially-supported degoogled chromium.
gdwatson 8y ago
For clarity, what platform are you on? Updates are automatic on Windows and managed by the package manager on Linux and BSD.
- wlll 8y ago
  Mac edit To clarify, I'm used to Chrome seemingly just updating itself in the background. Firefox needs a restart, and so far the restart behaviour with Firefox has been less reliable than Chrome (losing opened tabs sometimes, for instance).