16 ms·
I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.
by sixothree 8y ago
I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.
- devoply 8y agoIt fast. That most important thing.
- jay_kyburz 8y agoFirefox on Windows is no slower as far as I can tell, and renders fonts better. Firefox on Mac is noticeably slower.
- darkpuma 8y agoFirefox with uMatrix will smoke Chrome without it, in nearly any real world use-case.
- beezischillin 8y agoYeah, even with all the speed increases from the rewrite, Firefox still feels awkward and slow at times when compared to Safari and Chrome. Every time I decide to try and switch over from Safari, I get pages where scroll performance is a lot slower than what I'm used to and then I get bothered by it and switch back. It annoys me because I really want to use it. I'm very happy that we have it and I hope that the wider community will hold Mozilla to account every time they try something shady to protect the best free and open browser we have. If we lose Firefox, we lose the Internet to corporations.
- novaRom 8y agoThis is strange, because Firefox is much faster than Safari for me. Have you tried Firefox Nightly?
- beezischillin 8y agoI haven't but I'll give it a shot, thank you!
- the8472 8y agoIf you want to try their experimental GPU rendering (webrender) you can enable it via about:config -> gfx.webrender.all = true It works well on windows, I don't know how far the mac support is.
- cpeterso 8y agoNote that the WebRender can only be enabled in the Firefox Nightly channel. To confirm that it's working, flip the pref, restart Firefox Nightly, and then search for "WebRender" in about:support. WebRender does work on macOS (and Android and maybe Linux), but Mozilla is prioritizing a Windows MVP first (because something like 90% of Firefox users are on Windows). Work on macOS, Linux, and Android will then resume.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
- rapnie 8y agoCame upon this review the other day, that placed Firefox on #1. Didn't read the detailed report (I'm on FF and feeling happy), but maybe worth a look: https://www.toptenreviews.com/software/internet/best-internet-browser-software/ https://www.toptenreviews.com/software/internet/best-interne...
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoHey, you should give w3m a try then.
- beavis2 8y agoI know. Apple, too. Can't get more closed and locked-in (outside of Oracle).
- Memosyne 8y agoI use Chromium on linux because Firefox doesn't have touch-screen support and smooth-scrolling feels a little rough. I wont hesitate to switch over if these changes are made though.
- kowbell 8y agoI've had great success getting touchscreen scrolling to work with https://superuser.com/a/1155441 https://superuser.com/a/1155441 (Surface Pro 3 running KDE Plasma)
- moosingin3space 8y agoI find the touchscreen support to be pretty good with Fedora's patches running on Wayland. I think these patches are slated for upstreaming, so get excited! Disclaimer: I contribute to Firefox and enjoy it quite a bit.
- dsego 8y agoAdd 'export MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1' to ~/.xsessionrc and disable “Use smooth scrolling” to get the real smooth scrolling.
- abrowne 8y ago+100 This is the first setting I change on a new Linux laptop install. You can also disable smooth scrolling only for the touchpad in about:config to keep the animation for scrolling with the keyboard. Search for "smooth"; I think it's the mouseWheel one, but I'm not at home to verify.
- renholder 8y ago>Firefox doesn't have touch-screen support On Ubuntu and Kali (both debian-based), it most certainly does.
- swampthinker 8y agoMost of my logins have been syncd via Chrome. Makes logging into a new computer a breeze, or if I need to borrow someone else's stuff really quick.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- antoineMoPa 8y agoFirefox also has password/history/bookmarks sync between devices.
- ojosilva 8y agoI've always wondered how Chrome and Firefox password storage fare in safety. Are they both equality trustworthy? Are the encryption technologies comparable?
- zcid 8y agoYou can read about Firefox Sync here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/. It is also possible for you to run your own sync and account servers: https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. I assume that Chrome has a similar design, but I'm not familiar with it.
- Arelius 8y agoauto-fill of CC/billing information is the feature I wish FF had.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoI use the BitWarden Firefox extension for this.
- yoklov 8y agoFirefox has this in nightly too (possibly only in US). It's been there a while and works well, I don't know why it hasn't moved on from nightly, to be honest...
- QML 8y agoFirefox just doesn’t have enough advantages yet that would convince someone comfortable with Chrome to switch over. While privacy is an ever growing concern, it isn’t a strong enough feature for most people.
- antoineMoPa 8y agoWell now Firefox will have ad blocking plugins that works and Chrome will not.
- klardotsh 8y agoWe'll see how long it lasts. Firefox has mostly strived, in the Quantum era, to stay mostly-ish compatible with Google's interpretation of WebExtensions, from what I can tell.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoThey do have some parts that are Firefox-exclusive. This is an easy advantage to have over your competition practically for free. I hope they see that.
- throwaway2048 8y agoJudging by how mindlessly mozilla has been copying chrome anti-features, expect this in firefox too.
- albru123 8y agoFirefox does not stack tabs like Chrome does and does not load all the restored session tabs at once either. Aren't these dumb design decisions enough to switch to a product where people actually think about how it's going to be used?
- teraflop 8y ago> and does not load all the restored session tabs at once either For what it's worth, Chrome stopped doing this for me in a recent update (I think version 71).
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoI am pretty sure that most of the people using firefox right now are from the hacker communities though.
- furicane 8y agoThe dev console is better than Firefox one. It's faster. Minimalistic interface is great. HOWEVER - Firefox console is catching up. Firefox is fast enough. Chrome is getting more and more bloated and interface is starting to suck compared to initial version of Chrome. Now they're trying to do stupid things and promote ads more and more. It gets worse every day and hopefully, they'll screw up to the point it dies. I loved Google before, now I'm disliking them as much as I do Facebook. I root for Firefox, but it's still not there yet. Guys who maintain Firefox - thank you. I hope I'll join the FF users once more in the near future.
- sridca 8y agoI'm invested in the Google ecosystem, and have recently got myself a Pixel Slate that I carry everywhere as my primary computing/ media device (no more separate laptop and tablet). It would now be silly of me to use Firefox in place of Chrome. Moreover I have got nothing to hide, so all these privacy-fears don't concern me; in fact I often feel like they are being overblown.
- pault 8y agoThe right to free speech is important even if you don't have anything to say. Privacy is no different.
- dictum 8y ago> Moreover I have got nothing to hide Don't mean to insult you, and some people just have an easier time opening up about everything, but a life with nothing whatsoever to hide sounds limited, uninventive and uninteresting.
- sridca 8y agoNo insult taken. > a life with nothing whatsoever to hide sounds limited, uninventive and uninteresting. Ever familiar with the phrase "un unexamined life is not worth living"? Here, of course, the thing to be examined is your belief that a life with nothing whatsover to hide is limited, uninventive and uninteresting.
- SimeVidas 8y ago> It would now be silly of me to use Firefox in place of Chrome. Why? In what ways is Chrome more useful than Firefox on Chrome OS?
- sridca 8y agoChrome is deeply integrated in ChromeOS devices (should be obvious from the naming), of which the Pixel Slate is what I own. A bunch of PWAs (arguably the future of android apps) also require Chrome. Moreover I use Chrome to sync my Google account, including passwords (which I can't live without) and browsing history.
- mrbrowning 8y agoI feel the same. I keep Chrome around, though, because it seems to be the new IE in the sense that I frequently encounter sites that simply don't work properly in either WebKit- or Gecko-based browsers. It's also the new IE in the sense that I get incessant reminders about how I should be using Chrome when I access Google-administrated services, which feels like a surprisingly blatant if still implicit admission on their part that an open web simply isn't a concern or interest of theirs. I never really believed otherwise, but still.
- feikname 8y agoLatest breakage I noticed is spacebar not pausing YouTube videos on Firefox but works fine on Chrome.
- drawkbox 8y ago> I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Chrome used to be very lightweight, fast and basically unseated IE as the top browser. It got that love because at the time Firefox was bloated and IE had a stranglehold. Chrome was also safer with a process per tab. Chrome made web browsing/dev pleasant like Firefox/Firebug did and it really took off being based on Webkit like Safari which also worked well on mobile. Chrome (and Safari) or Webkit pushed HTML5/Canvas/WebGL/SVG into real world use which changed the landscape of browsers. Nowadays Chrome is bloated like Firefox was, has a stranglehold like IE did, is now pushing its own market standards and breaking existing open/market standards and generally being a forceful, non respecting to standards, web browser. It sure is unfortunate and another sign that bizdev/marketing/executives rule over engineers at Google now.
- mdekkers 8y agoand basically unseated IE as the top browser And didn't get to this spot on any kind of technical or feature merits, but essentially by relentless nagging on the Google search page to have users install it. Sure, devs/geeks etc were eager early adopters, but the bulk of users were steered this way by Google.
- aylmao 8y ago> Chrome made web browsing/dev pleasant like Firefox/Firebug did and it really took off being based on Webkit like Safari which also worked well on mobile. This is the big one for me. When I'm not developing I actually prefer to use Safari-- I like it's interface better and it feels more at home in macOS. It's "good enough" too. What I'm really a user of is the Chrome Dev Tools. Firefox's are looking quite solid lately but I just haven't switched over.
- MarsAscendant 8y agoWhat I'd love is to have Firefox dev tools functionality in Chrome. Firefox highlights the edge lines of the selected element automatically, and in all directions (if I recall correctly). I have to use an extension – VisBug – to achieve that in Chrome. There's also the fonts window, which lets you in on what fonts are used on the page, and lets you modify the selected element's font settings – size, weight, slant/italic etc.. I pay a lot of attention to typography, so that part is important to me.
- arkh 8y agoMost young devs use a mac. And from what I understand Firefox is slow on macOS.
- pohl 8y agoChrome is notoriously power inefficient, though, relative to Safari at least. One would think developers would notice.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoIt's hard to notice power efficiency when you always have your laptop plugged in.
- driverdan 8y agoIt's still slower than other platforms but it's much faster than it used to be. I've been using Firefox exclusively on OS X / macOS for a year. The only problem I've seen is that it sometimes uses more CPU than is reasonable, which often appears to be due to Gmail's terrible implementation.
- Zardoz84 8y agoSince they made the big changes and become faster, I found Firefox faster that Chrome, except for Google pages.
- bytematic 8y agoThe great dev tools and overall design is pleasing.
- tracker1 8y agofrankly, I love the UX and developer tools in Chrome more than FF... however, this would have me jumping back to FF as my daily driver.
- tracker1 8y agoOn second thought, I might switch to Brave like I did on mobile.
- thecrumb 8y agoIcky, gross and violated.
- harrygeez 8y agoIt's Chrome devtools really
- maple3142 8y agoI think chromium devtool is still much better than firefox's ones.
- phs318u 8y agoGiven the claim that with Google, you (the user) are the product, your statement that, "Sorry Google, I feel 'icky & gross' when I use you", would be more accurately expressed as, "Sorry Google, I feel 'icky & gross' when I let you use me." EDITED: re-phrased for clarification.
- jimbo999 8y agotbh, nobody gives a shit what "hacker" communities think, that is precisely why Firefox exists
- gregknicholson 8y agoSorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when you use me.
- nvarsj 8y agoChrome is still the best performing browser (even if it's a resource hog). I tried using Firefox for Linux for about 6 months last year, but had to give up. I got frustrated with the random UI pauses/latency, random crashes, and broken web rendering (not its fault). On the other hand, Chrome just works, and provides a very smooth, low latency experience on Linux. I don't like that I have to give up my privacy for a decent browsing experience on Linux, but that's the state of things.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoTo be fair that seems anecdotal. I've been on Firefox since v57 on Arch Linux with no major issues.
- nvarsj 8y agoYeah, it's totally anecdotal and just my experience. I would really like to use Firefox. I may try it again. Quantum made such a big improvement on Linux which is why I gave it a shot and stuck with it so long. But it still had issues for me.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoOut of curiosity, what distro, display server and GPU drivers do you use?
- nvarsj 8y agoArch/X/Intel.
- AsyncAwait 8y agoHmm...that is super strange then. Intel has definitely been the most solid for me when it comes to GPU stability, including in Firefox. I primarily use a workstation with an AMD GPU, but have a secondary laptop with Intel and had no issues with Firefox there whatsoever. I am also on Arch. The only time I ever experienced frequent crashes was when I was testing the Wayland build early on, (they still happen sometimes on Wayland, which is still experimental in Firefox, but on X things have been solid for me). I am honestly perplexed what the issue could be then, I was sure you were using an NVidia with the proprietary drivers or something like that, as such setups have caused me trouble in the past. The only thing is I wouldn't recommend turning on WebRender for everything yet, but it's not on by default so I doubt you had it on.
- ahje 8y agoThat's really how I feel about all browsers since Opera did a U-turn and re-made their product into a Chrome clone. Firefox can get quite close with a bunch of add-ons, but not enough.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoIt's a better browser. It's faster, more cutting-edge features. Check their dev blog, they add cool features every couple of weeks: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChromeDevelopers/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ChromeDevelopers/videos