12 ms·

Reading this breaks my heart. I have been a Firefox user for almost a decade now and I have good and bad memories with it. Since Quantum release my experience w

by kansi 8y ago

Reading this breaks my heart. I have been a Firefox user for almost a decade now and I have good and bad memories with it. Since Quantum release my experience with FF has been nothing but exceptional. On a general day I have around ~15 pinned tabs and more than 50 other tabs open and FF handles it like a breeze. The memory usage is good given the fact that my workload is heavy. On a dual-core machine, I am able to restart FF under ~3 seconds. I have read comments in this thread suggesting that FF's performance is not that snappy but I cannot seem to notice any difference. Maybe my dev senses are not that strong ... maybe the benchmarks do show a difference but I have never felt FF to be any less performant than Chrome. I am tired of listening to people screaming their lungs out about privacy when their actions don't reflect their opinions.

TheArcane 8y ago
The day Firefox integrates a seamless translation solution (Bing/Google/anything) is the day I get rid of Chrome from all my devices.
alexott 8y ago
I Ihave around 50 tabs in FF, but active only maybe 15-20. On Mac OS I see a standard problem when I connect external monitor after wakeup, FF starts to "eat" memory like crazy, until I either kill it, or it's crashed. I need to restart FF every 2 days to get my memory back. Here is screenshot from App monitor: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh133wnhk1wgbe2/Screen%20Shot%202018-12-03%20at%2008.26.26.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh133wnhk1wgbe2/Screen%20Shot%2020... Sometimes, after 2 days of work each worker consumes ~7Gb of RAM (on machine with 16GB of RAM)... P.S. mostly opened documents in google doc, gmail, calendar, JIRA/Confluence...
- fbender 8y ago
  There is a well-known bug[1] with non-standard resolutions. Try changing the resolution and see if it makes any difference. If not, please file a new bug :). Otherwise you can see if you can help fixing the issue. Unfortunately, it requires some re-engineering of core graphics processing and they are working on it, but it'll likely take a few more months to fix completely. [1] I think this was the bug I thought about: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042, see also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422090 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422090
rraghur 8y ago
Agreed. I'm on nightly and it has been stable - even with WR turned on. I've been pushing my family and friends to use FF - but a lot of them are Chrome loyalists. Still - one must persist. I'd rather not have a world where only chrome and chrome clones exist - and I certainly don't appreciate that Chrome wants me to log in every time I use the browser (and getting more and more insistent at that lately from what I hear)
- glenneroo 8y ago
  Firefox Quantum also nags constantly about logging in and syncing devices, not that I'm against it, it's great when you have multiple devices and don't want to install the same plugins, sync bookmarks, etc.
  - MrRadar 8y ago
    You can choose what to sync between devices. I personally only sync my bookmarks.
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      That's well and good but I'm replying to the comment above me which stated: > I certainly don't appreciate that Chrome wants me to log in every time I use the browser (and getting more and more insistent at that lately from what I hear)
  - bfrydl 8y ago
    What? I've never been nagged for this. I forget the feature exists.
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      Did you have to disable the requests? Or are you really saying that on a virgin installation, Firefox never tried to get you to login and sync? Are you on Apple/Linux? I was able to disable most of the reminders to sync on both Android and Windows but I eventually gave in, in order to sync all my plugins and bookmarks.
umichguy 8y ago
I was a dedicated user of FF since 2005/6 till about a year ago. I don't why I switched to Chrome, but since then haven't touched FF. I need an app like Fox Clocks, which worked in FF only for a long time, but now is available on Chrome too.
bad_user 8y ago
> “I am tired of listening to people screaming their lungs out about privacy when their actions don't reflect their opinions.” Those screaming for privacy, like myself, are in fact a small minority. Also regardless of the topic, double standards are rampant in this community. You’ll often see people screaming against Google but still using @gmail.com because paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month is too expensive. Or people claiming that they need ad-blockers for privacy, but then screaming against paywalls.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  I keep my gmail because my self hosted email’s ip sometimes gets put on spam lists (probably by gmail admins.)
- devxpy 8y ago
  > paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month That's some expensive coffee.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    My FastMail account costs $50 / year or $130 / 3 years, thus with a monthly cost starting at 3.6 USD. That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. Google's G Suite, which is still better than free web mail since you no longer have the lock-in, plus a better privacy policy, is $5 per month, which is almost the price of a Starbucks Venti Latte. And this is actually an expensive offering in the business. So no, it's not an expensive coffee, especially since we are talking about a highly skilled and highly paid demographic. Also I'm from Romania where we have a lower cost of living and lower wages to go with it, so seeing my Silicon Valley brethren complaining about the price of paying for non-free email on your own domain is really awkward, given the importance of email. I get it, I hate subscriptions for software too. But not when that service is essential for your profession, your security or your privacy and email is all of the above.
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      > That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. A cup of coffee is a pretty lousy indication of cost. For some people going into a Starbucks for a $5/€4,40/£3,92 gluten-free-unicorn-sprinkles-ariana-grande-latte may be part of a daily routine, but for others, coffee means using a coffee-maker to brew your own cup for a few cents, or just getting a cup to go at a some kiosk.
Krasnol 8y ago
It's hard to compete with a product that is being spread like crap ware bundled with other freeware or pushed through Android or the main search engine on the internet. From my experience this is the ways most of the people I know came in contact with Chrome. Even those where I've installed FF end up with Chrome. When I ask them why they switched, they don't know. They don't even know where it came from...this is what you get from clicking "Next" without reading...
- eftpotrm 8y ago
  In fairness - much as I like desktop Firefox, Android Firefox has never felt as slick as Android Chrome. I'd love to switch, but it's got to be good enough.
  - Krasnol 8y ago
    As FF allows me to install ublock origin, I never seen a single reason to use Chrome on my Android.
    - vonmoltke 8y ago
      I switched back to Chrome on Android, and will stay there until FF Mobile and LastPass start playing together nicely. I'm not sure which party is responsible, but it's a dealbreaker in general for me.
      - Krasnol 8y ago
        OK, I'm not familiar with LastPass on Android. It sounded too insecure compared to KeePass so I never considered it.
  - adminu 8y ago
    I think FF Focus is absolutely brilliant an mobile and for everything else (except Facebook) I use firefox with ublock origin. It performs very well and I can nicely sync my passwords and tabs to my other devices.
wslh 8y ago
> I have read comments in this thread suggesting that FF's performance is not that snappy but I cannot seem to notice any difference. I tried to switch from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago but I had a terrible experience using Hangouts with a customer for two hours. The Firefox degraded until a point of no return and that sucks when you are talking with a customer. I initially blamed the network but there was no signal of network issues.
- ohthehugemanate 8y ago
  > I tried to switch from Chrome to Firefox but I had a terrible experience using Hangouts So, you're saying Google's anti-competitive tactic of degrading and not supporting other browsers worked on you. Did you know there's a name for that tactic? Embrace Extend Extinguish. Did you consider using another, more neutral video conference system?
  - adminu 8y ago
    This. I use FF for normal browsing and Chrome for Google based stuff that requires an account, like Gmail, YouTube, Docs, etc. Besides not having ANY performance issues with FF I think it is good practice to separate most of your accounts from normal surfing.
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      Just today I ran into a weird bug in Google Drive's document editor where selecting 'paste without formatting' from the context menu resulted in a pop-up saying 'These actions are unavailable via the Edit menu, but you can still use: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+X'. In Chrome: no problem at all.
      - AlexandrB 8y ago
        This is not a weird bug. It’s Google tailoring their products for their own browser and ignoring the others (Safari has the same “issue”). It’s their prerogative to do so, but I think they’re risking getting hit by antitrust for these kinds of antics in the future.
merb 8y ago
well to be fair sometimes my firefox makes really really strange things. sometimes our internal sites won't work, because firefox resolves a IPv6 address (that is also in our network but for another domain.) when the thing has no IPv6 address. i.e. git.example.com has the IPv6 and sometimes sentry.example.com resolves the ipv6 of git besides not having any IPv6 AAAA entry at all. I could not find out why that is happing, since it's only happening in FF. besides that, I also think the developer tools got better, but are still not on par with Google Chrome. (At the moment I primarly use Firefox, besides when the bug occurs than I open these services in Safari or Chrome)
- stult 8y ago
  It's actually turned into a benefit for me that the developer tools suck. I also use FF for browsing and then Chrome for debugging. Which is nice when a coworker is watching me debug over my shoulder because autocomplete never reveals the incredibly basic shit I google on a day to day basis.
- adminu 8y ago
  Turns out firefox uses DNS over HTTPS to resolve DNS names (if enabled), maybe you want to turn that of and check if it changes anything. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver
vardump 8y ago
Firefox has improved tremendously. But I guess some people are still missing their favorite features. For me it's pinch zooming. I've been waiting for it for ages. It's the last issue keeping me from leaving Chrome. Just tried newest Firefox on macOS and Windows 10, and sadly it still didn't work on either. This feature is great for hiding flashing sidebars and distracting navigation bars. And of course zooming in occasionally, when the need arises.
- TheArcane 8y ago
  For me it's instant and seamless translations in Chrome.
- Vindicis 8y ago
  On mobile? Because it works fine on my Samsung phone. Although, I very rarely use it, so take that for what it's worth.
  - iaml 8y ago
    No, using mac touchpad. I agree with GP, I use it all the time in safari.
- roxya 8y ago
  For me it's right-click, Translate to English.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    There are Firefox extensions to integrate Google Translate for right click on text or web page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Google%20Translate https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Google%20...
  - wyuenho 8y ago
    For me, the ability to look up a word from the built-in dictionary on the Mac. But I do use FF at home and only use Chrome at work.
barking 8y ago
Killing off the add-on I still needed firefox for ended my last usage of it. Maybe they should have done that last?
eternalny1 8y ago
I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and Firebird in a zip file as a faster alternative to Netscape. I am loving Quantum, and I don't understand why Firefox continues to slide. With this Edge announcement (a new Microsoft Chromium browser), I'm nervous we're getting into not a duopoly, but potentially a monopoly.
- MrRadar 8y ago
  > I am loving Quantum, and I don't understand why Firefox continues to slide. Apparently a lot of Firefox installs are on older systems (think Windows XP/Vista era) from before Chrome took over the world. There's a reason Firefox was the last major browser to drop XP support (they only did so when 52 ESR left support a few months ago!). As those systems get phased out they generally get replaced with systems that come with Chrome preinstalled and that's "good enough" for most people buying them (unlike Internet Explorer back in the day) so they don't seek out alternatives.
- dorgo 8y ago
  > why Firefox continues to slide They broke extension support. Half of the extensions disappeared (didn't migrate to Quantum). The other half works only partially. One year after Quantum i still have a blank new tab because a custom html file in new tab would require an extension AND a web server. Sure, it is harder now for non-technical users to shoot themselves in the foot. On the other hand, Mozilla took away control from users. After Quantum I lost all hope.
  - eternalny1 8y ago
    I agree this was rough but things need to be taken into context with this in my opinion. Given their small "market share", it would seem right to remove a major burden to rapid development (the old extension format, XPI) in favor of open standards (web workers). It's more maintainable, more in-line with current standards. I am only speaking as a fly-on-the-wall here. Although I am a senior "full stack" developer, I am pretty far removed from any of the day-to-day here. By wiping the slate clean in terms of extensions, hopefully this will be a small paint-point, quickly forgotten, and things move forward from here. Re-reading this prior to submit, it seems like I've inserted too many items straight out of the BS generator but I'm ok with it.
loa-in-backup 8y ago
The only thing I use Chrome for is deeeep.io . It works better in Chrome. Everything else is Firefox E: too many e's
lkbm 8y ago
> I have read comments in this thread suggesting that FF's performance is not that snappy but I cannot seem to notice any difference. I use Firefox (Nightly) on a 2015 MBP and I do think it feels less snappy than Chrome. If it didn't have Container tabs, I might switch back to Chrome, despite very much wanting Firefox to succeed. Performance is key.
- dijit 8y ago
  I get your point but I often wonder if by stuffing everything through a networked document renderer hasn't caused a lot of those performance issues. Rendering a page is expensive enough, but you have a generation of programmers who only know javascript (and for good reason, the web is an incredible software deployment system). But when everything is a web-app, then the renderer that does the parsing and execution needs to be optimised so hard that the code might as well be proprietary. That's how I feel about chrome. Parsing and rendering websites today is /hard/ and we're not helping things by pushing more and more and more into our browsers. Of course it will become a monopoly.
leevlad 8y ago
Firefox has noticeable delays and scrolling performance issues on OSX. I have a top of the line macbook from last year, with i7, 16GB RAM, etc. But even on that it's sluggish and stuttery. I've tried all sorts of performance tweaks, beta/nightly builds - nothing really makes it as snappy as Chrome or Safari. So, unfortunately, I have to go back to those.
- cerberusss 8y ago
  > Firefox has noticeable delays and scrolling performance issues on OSX On your machine perhaps. Not on mine. Just trying to be more precise here.
- eclat 8y ago
  Not for me it doesn't.
steffan 8y ago
I regularly have several hundred tabs open without issue. I have occasionally had over a thousand in very long running sessions. I’ve been a very happy Firefox user since Phoenix days.
xtrimsky1234 8y ago
I have tried using Firefox several times this year, but on a Macbook with only 8gb of RAM the RAM usage was far too big compared to Chrome. It made the rest of my computer sluggish. And Firefox itself was slower than Chrome, one of the examples for me is Youtube. Yes Youtube is Google, but I use it often enough that it was too slow for me to stick with firefox.
- fefehern 8y ago
  Try the YouTube Classic Addon in the Mozilla Extension Store. It disables the new styling for YouTube that makes it sluggish on Firefox.
JohnFen 8y ago
My problem with the new FireFox is simply that I don't like it. I like it better than Chrome, but I was never a Chrome user (I've been using Firefox since the very beginning). I'm better off using a fork that still allows for enough customization that I can make it behave the way that suits me best. Since I can use forks in a way that is no less (or marginally less) secure, they are my best option.

by kansi 8y ago

TheArcane 8y ago

The day Firefox integrates a seamless translation solution (Bing/Google/anything) is the day I get rid of Chrome from all my devices.

alexott 8y ago

I Ihave around 50 tabs in FF, but active only maybe 15-20. On Mac OS I see a standard problem when I connect external monitor after wakeup, FF starts to "eat" memory like crazy, until I either kill it, or it's crashed. I need to restart FF every 2 days to get my memory back. Here is screenshot from App monitor: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh133wnhk1wgbe2/Screen%20Shot%202018-12-03%20at%2008.26.26.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh133wnhk1wgbe2/Screen%20Shot%2020... Sometimes, after 2 days of work each worker consumes ~7Gb of RAM (on machine with 16GB of RAM)... P.S. mostly opened documents in google doc, gmail, calendar, JIRA/Confluence...

fbender 8y ago
There is a well-known bug[1] with non-standard resolutions. Try changing the resolution and see if it makes any difference. If not, please file a new bug :). Otherwise you can see if you can help fixing the issue. Unfortunately, it requires some re-engineering of core graphics processing and they are working on it, but it'll likely take a few more months to fix completely. [1] I think this was the bug I thought about: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042, see also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422090 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422090

rraghur 8y ago

Agreed. I'm on nightly and it has been stable - even with WR turned on. I've been pushing my family and friends to use FF - but a lot of them are Chrome loyalists. Still - one must persist. I'd rather not have a world where only chrome and chrome clones exist - and I certainly don't appreciate that Chrome wants me to log in every time I use the browser (and getting more and more insistent at that lately from what I hear)

glenneroo 8y ago
Firefox Quantum also nags constantly about logging in and syncing devices, not that I'm against it, it's great when you have multiple devices and don't want to install the same plugins, sync bookmarks, etc.
- MrRadar 8y ago
  You can choose what to sync between devices. I personally only sync my bookmarks.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    That's well and good but I'm replying to the comment above me which stated: > I certainly don't appreciate that Chrome wants me to log in every time I use the browser (and getting more and more insistent at that lately from what I hear)
- bfrydl 8y ago
  What? I've never been nagged for this. I forget the feature exists.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    Did you have to disable the requests? Or are you really saying that on a virgin installation, Firefox never tried to get you to login and sync? Are you on Apple/Linux? I was able to disable most of the reminders to sync on both Android and Windows but I eventually gave in, in order to sync all my plugins and bookmarks.

umichguy 8y ago

I was a dedicated user of FF since 2005/6 till about a year ago. I don't why I switched to Chrome, but since then haven't touched FF. I need an app like Fox Clocks, which worked in FF only for a long time, but now is available on Chrome too.

bad_user 8y ago

> “I am tired of listening to people screaming their lungs out about privacy when their actions don't reflect their opinions.” Those screaming for privacy, like myself, are in fact a small minority. Also regardless of the topic, double standards are rampant in this community. You’ll often see people screaming against Google but still using @gmail.com because paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month is too expensive. Or people claiming that they need ad-blockers for privacy, but then screaming against paywalls.

dwighttk 8y ago
I keep my gmail because my self hosted email’s ip sometimes gets put on spam lists (probably by gmail admins.)
devxpy 8y ago
> paying for a domain and the price of one coffee per month That's some expensive coffee.
- bad_user 8y ago
  My FastMail account costs $50 / year or $130 / 3 years, thus with a monthly cost starting at 3.6 USD. That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. Google's G Suite, which is still better than free web mail since you no longer have the lock-in, plus a better privacy policy, is $5 per month, which is almost the price of a Starbucks Venti Latte. And this is actually an expensive offering in the business. So no, it's not an expensive coffee, especially since we are talking about a highly skilled and highly paid demographic. Also I'm from Romania where we have a lower cost of living and lower wages to go with it, so seeing my Silicon Valley brethren complaining about the price of paying for non-free email on your own domain is really awkward, given the importance of email. I get it, I hate subscriptions for software too. But not when that service is essential for your profession, your security or your privacy and email is all of the above.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    > That's less than the price of a Starbucks Grande Latte. A cup of coffee is a pretty lousy indication of cost. For some people going into a Starbucks for a $5/€4,40/£3,92 gluten-free-unicorn-sprinkles-ariana-grande-latte may be part of a daily routine, but for others, coffee means using a coffee-maker to brew your own cup for a few cents, or just getting a cup to go at a some kiosk.

Krasnol 8y ago

It's hard to compete with a product that is being spread like crap ware bundled with other freeware or pushed through Android or the main search engine on the internet. From my experience this is the ways most of the people I know came in contact with Chrome. Even those where I've installed FF end up with Chrome. When I ask them why they switched, they don't know. They don't even know where it came from...this is what you get from clicking "Next" without reading...

eftpotrm 8y ago
In fairness - much as I like desktop Firefox, Android Firefox has never felt as slick as Android Chrome. I'd love to switch, but it's got to be good enough.
- Krasnol 8y ago
  As FF allows me to install ublock origin, I never seen a single reason to use Chrome on my Android.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    I switched back to Chrome on Android, and will stay there until FF Mobile and LastPass start playing together nicely. I'm not sure which party is responsible, but it's a dealbreaker in general for me.
    - Krasnol 8y ago
      OK, I'm not familiar with LastPass on Android. It sounded too insecure compared to KeePass so I never considered it.
- adminu 8y ago
  I think FF Focus is absolutely brilliant an mobile and for everything else (except Facebook) I use firefox with ublock origin. It performs very well and I can nicely sync my passwords and tabs to my other devices.

wslh 8y ago

> I have read comments in this thread suggesting that FF's performance is not that snappy but I cannot seem to notice any difference. I tried to switch from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago but I had a terrible experience using Hangouts with a customer for two hours. The Firefox degraded until a point of no return and that sucks when you are talking with a customer. I initially blamed the network but there was no signal of network issues.

ohthehugemanate 8y ago
> I tried to switch from Chrome to Firefox but I had a terrible experience using Hangouts So, you're saying Google's anti-competitive tactic of degrading and not supporting other browsers worked on you. Did you know there's a name for that tactic? Embrace Extend Extinguish. Did you consider using another, more neutral video conference system?
- adminu 8y ago
  This. I use FF for normal browsing and Chrome for Google based stuff that requires an account, like Gmail, YouTube, Docs, etc. Besides not having ANY performance issues with FF I think it is good practice to separate most of your accounts from normal surfing.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    Just today I ran into a weird bug in Google Drive's document editor where selecting 'paste without formatting' from the context menu resulted in a pop-up saying 'These actions are unavailable via the Edit menu, but you can still use: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+X'. In Chrome: no problem at all.
    - AlexandrB 8y ago
      This is not a weird bug. It’s Google tailoring their products for their own browser and ignoring the others (Safari has the same “issue”). It’s their prerogative to do so, but I think they’re risking getting hit by antitrust for these kinds of antics in the future.

merb 8y ago

well to be fair sometimes my firefox makes really really strange things. sometimes our internal sites won't work, because firefox resolves a IPv6 address (that is also in our network but for another domain.) when the thing has no IPv6 address. i.e. git.example.com has the IPv6 and sometimes sentry.example.com resolves the ipv6 of git besides not having any IPv6 AAAA entry at all. I could not find out why that is happing, since it's only happening in FF. besides that, I also think the developer tools got better, but are still not on par with Google Chrome. (At the moment I primarly use Firefox, besides when the bug occurs than I open these services in Safari or Chrome)

stult 8y ago
It's actually turned into a benefit for me that the developer tools suck. I also use FF for browsing and then Chrome for debugging. Which is nice when a coworker is watching me debug over my shoulder because autocomplete never reveals the incredibly basic shit I google on a day to day basis.
adminu 8y ago
Turns out firefox uses DNS over HTTPS to resolve DNS names (if enabled), maybe you want to turn that of and check if it changes anything. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver

vardump 8y ago

Firefox has improved tremendously. But I guess some people are still missing their favorite features. For me it's pinch zooming. I've been waiting for it for ages. It's the last issue keeping me from leaving Chrome. Just tried newest Firefox on macOS and Windows 10, and sadly it still didn't work on either. This feature is great for hiding flashing sidebars and distracting navigation bars. And of course zooming in occasionally, when the need arises.

TheArcane 8y ago
For me it's instant and seamless translations in Chrome.
Vindicis 8y ago
On mobile? Because it works fine on my Samsung phone. Although, I very rarely use it, so take that for what it's worth.
- iaml 8y ago
  No, using mac touchpad. I agree with GP, I use it all the time in safari.
roxya 8y ago
For me it's right-click, Translate to English.
- cpeterso 8y ago
  There are Firefox extensions to integrate Google Translate for right click on text or web page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Google%20Translate https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Google%20...
- wyuenho 8y ago
  For me, the ability to look up a word from the built-in dictionary on the Mac. But I do use FF at home and only use Chrome at work.

barking 8y ago

Killing off the add-on I still needed firefox for ended my last usage of it. Maybe they should have done that last?

eternalny1 8y ago

I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and Firebird in a zip file as a faster alternative to Netscape. I am loving Quantum, and I don't understand why Firefox continues to slide. With this Edge announcement (a new Microsoft Chromium browser), I'm nervous we're getting into not a duopoly, but potentially a monopoly.

MrRadar 8y ago
> I am loving Quantum, and I don't understand why Firefox continues to slide. Apparently a lot of Firefox installs are on older systems (think Windows XP/Vista era) from before Chrome took over the world. There's a reason Firefox was the last major browser to drop XP support (they only did so when 52 ESR left support a few months ago!). As those systems get phased out they generally get replaced with systems that come with Chrome preinstalled and that's "good enough" for most people buying them (unlike Internet Explorer back in the day) so they don't seek out alternatives.
dorgo 8y ago
> why Firefox continues to slide They broke extension support. Half of the extensions disappeared (didn't migrate to Quantum). The other half works only partially. One year after Quantum i still have a blank new tab because a custom html file in new tab would require an extension AND a web server. Sure, it is harder now for non-technical users to shoot themselves in the foot. On the other hand, Mozilla took away control from users. After Quantum I lost all hope.
- eternalny1 8y ago
  I agree this was rough but things need to be taken into context with this in my opinion. Given their small "market share", it would seem right to remove a major burden to rapid development (the old extension format, XPI) in favor of open standards (web workers). It's more maintainable, more in-line with current standards. I am only speaking as a fly-on-the-wall here. Although I am a senior "full stack" developer, I am pretty far removed from any of the day-to-day here. By wiping the slate clean in terms of extensions, hopefully this will be a small paint-point, quickly forgotten, and things move forward from here. Re-reading this prior to submit, it seems like I've inserted too many items straight out of the BS generator but I'm ok with it.

loa-in-backup 8y ago

The only thing I use Chrome for is deeeep.io . It works better in Chrome. Everything else is Firefox E: too many e's

lkbm 8y ago

> I have read comments in this thread suggesting that FF's performance is not that snappy but I cannot seem to notice any difference. I use Firefox (Nightly) on a 2015 MBP and I do think it feels less snappy than Chrome. If it didn't have Container tabs, I might switch back to Chrome, despite very much wanting Firefox to succeed. Performance is key.

dijit 8y ago
I get your point but I often wonder if by stuffing everything through a networked document renderer hasn't caused a lot of those performance issues. Rendering a page is expensive enough, but you have a generation of programmers who only know javascript (and for good reason, the web is an incredible software deployment system). But when everything is a web-app, then the renderer that does the parsing and execution needs to be optimised so hard that the code might as well be proprietary. That's how I feel about chrome. Parsing and rendering websites today is /hard/ and we're not helping things by pushing more and more and more into our browsers. Of course it will become a monopoly.

leevlad 8y ago

Firefox has noticeable delays and scrolling performance issues on OSX. I have a top of the line macbook from last year, with i7, 16GB RAM, etc. But even on that it's sluggish and stuttery. I've tried all sorts of performance tweaks, beta/nightly builds - nothing really makes it as snappy as Chrome or Safari. So, unfortunately, I have to go back to those.

cerberusss 8y ago
> Firefox has noticeable delays and scrolling performance issues on OSX On your machine perhaps. Not on mine. Just trying to be more precise here.
eclat 8y ago
Not for me it doesn't.

steffan 8y ago

I regularly have several hundred tabs open without issue. I have occasionally had over a thousand in very long running sessions. I’ve been a very happy Firefox user since Phoenix days.

xtrimsky1234 8y ago

I have tried using Firefox several times this year, but on a Macbook with only 8gb of RAM the RAM usage was far too big compared to Chrome. It made the rest of my computer sluggish. And Firefox itself was slower than Chrome, one of the examples for me is Youtube. Yes Youtube is Google, but I use it often enough that it was too slow for me to stick with firefox.

fefehern 8y ago
Try the YouTube Classic Addon in the Mozilla Extension Store. It disables the new styling for YouTube that makes it sluggish on Firefox.

JohnFen 8y ago

My problem with the new FireFox is simply that I don't like it. I like it better than Chrome, but I was never a Chrome user (I've been using Firefox since the very beginning). I'm better off using a fork that still allows for enough customization that I can make it behave the way that suits me best. Since I can use forks in a way that is no less (or marginally less) secure, they are my best option.