4 ms·

It's been discussed in the past, but I'll just leave this here as a reminder: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html htt

by jfk13 8y ago

It's been discussed in the past, but I'll just leave this here as a reminder: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-l...

userbinator 8y ago
I think Firefox/Mozilla is still a bit on the "too big" side, and they've done some mollycoddling/anti-user-freedom stuff in the past too. IMHO if you want to "protest" the browser monopoly, use something more like Dillo or NetSurf. They have no JS, so web apps are out of the question, but work well for the document-centric sites.
- benj111 8y ago
  I would love Dillo and Netsurf to be usable web browsers on the modern web, unfortunately they aren't. We should be able to do better than 2 rendering engines though.
  - jfk13 8y ago
    Arguably there are 3, depending how you view webkit vs blink; yes, they come from a common ancestor, but there's been quite a bit of divergence by now. But yes, the loss of EdgeHTML (following a few years after the loss of Presto) is a sad thing for the health of the web.
  - classichasclass 8y ago
    NetSurf has the most hope for becoming a new capable engine, but a lot of work still remains to get it to feature parity. I love how it performs on very constrained systems, though.
- O1111OOO 8y ago
  > I think Firefox/Mozilla is still a bit on the "too big" side One of the machines I use is an old Dell Latitude D620 (2006, Intel Core2 CPU T7200 2.00GHz[0]) on a debian base. I can tell you from personal experience, on this machine, that Mozilla's latest Quantum Browser is heads above Chrome and their "clones". It is so quick to load (even loaded with extensions), it replaced Pale Moon as the default browser for this laptop. I was stunned at the performance improvements in Quantum. I remain surprised, every single day, that the modern web has been made available on a laptop that's 13 years old. All other Chrome-like browsers (Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi, etc) take much longer to load, cause the cpu to throttle (fans kick in) which can lead to overheating and shutdown issues. They are essentially unusable on that machine. Firefox Quantum, otoh, is snappy on this machine. I say this because I'm genuinely curious by the "too big" comment. I honestly find it puzzling (unless you're comparing a modern, full-featured browser to Dillo or Links2/GUI: both of which are favs of mine for their use cases). I had turned my back on Firefox for a few years because of performance issues, caching problems. They didn't just correct these issues, they've done so in a way few software upgrades have ever managed to do in my experience (dating back three decades) and have blown past their competitors from a purely performance standpoint. [0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+T7200+%40+2.00GHz&id=927 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+T72...
  - PetahNZ 8y ago
    Anecdotally I have the opposite experience. On my 2 computers (MBP/Win10 Desktop) Chrome starts up near instantly and Firefox has a noticeable delay. I just tried it and it took about 5 seconds to load. Not that this is really a deal breaker anyway. On my MBP it also makes the fans spin up.
    - mikepurvis 8y ago
      Same here. Every few months when Firefox is in the news, I give it a try again, and I keep wanting to like it, but everything just seems slightly laggy compared with Chrome on my 2014 MBP.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > On my 2 computers (MBP/Win10 Desktop) Chrome starts up near instantly and Firefox has a noticeable delay. You may be experiencing OS caching. If you normally use Chrome, Chrome is already cached in memory by the OS and will open faster than something you haven't started recently. > On my MBP it also makes the fans spin up. I've noticed that Chrome tends not to do this while still being slower. This may be related to the way it uses more processes, which consequently requires more resources per operation (and thereby higher visible latency) but splits the load better between cores so that no individual one gets hot enough to require additional cooling. In theory this could be "better" if the browser actually needed to use 8+ cores for some reason, but in general if that is happening it is some kind of anomaly or defect (like some adspam mining Bitcoin in javascript) rather than any normal behavior. And Firefox does use other threads/processes for most of the few things that actually benefit from it.
    - berkut 8y ago
      Exactly the same with me: I've been trying to use Firefox over the past month on a MBP, but Chrome is definitely faster (both UI-wise and seemingly with connections/requests - maybe Chrome is pre-empting some things?), and for me Firefox demonstrably uses more CPU across multiple cores, so laptop temp is noticeably hotter for the same sites, and fans spin a lot more, and battery life is worse.
  - 8y ago
- 0-_-0 8y ago
  I installed NetSurf when I saw your comment. It immediately crashed when I entered a URL of a website. Then I uninstalled it.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I would be very upset to see Firefox fade into oblivion. My at home workflow has Firefox baked in: separate containers for G Suite, Twitter, HN, for paid web apps, etc. I don’t think that Chrome supports anything like Firefox containers, right?
- Spivak 8y ago
  Closest is multiple profiles but no, nothing as seamless as containers.

by jfk13 8y ago

userbinator 8y ago

I think Firefox/Mozilla is still a bit on the "too big" side, and they've done some mollycoddling/anti-user-freedom stuff in the past too. IMHO if you want to "protest" the browser monopoly, use something more like Dillo or NetSurf. They have no JS, so web apps are out of the question, but work well for the document-centric sites.

benj111 8y ago
I would love Dillo and Netsurf to be usable web browsers on the modern web, unfortunately they aren't. We should be able to do better than 2 rendering engines though.
- jfk13 8y ago
  Arguably there are 3, depending how you view webkit vs blink; yes, they come from a common ancestor, but there's been quite a bit of divergence by now. But yes, the loss of EdgeHTML (following a few years after the loss of Presto) is a sad thing for the health of the web.
- classichasclass 8y ago
  NetSurf has the most hope for becoming a new capable engine, but a lot of work still remains to get it to feature parity. I love how it performs on very constrained systems, though.
O1111OOO 8y ago
> I think Firefox/Mozilla is still a bit on the "too big" side One of the machines I use is an old Dell Latitude D620 (2006, Intel Core2 CPU T7200 2.00GHz[0]) on a debian base. I can tell you from personal experience, on this machine, that Mozilla's latest Quantum Browser is heads above Chrome and their "clones". It is so quick to load (even loaded with extensions), it replaced Pale Moon as the default browser for this laptop. I was stunned at the performance improvements in Quantum. I remain surprised, every single day, that the modern web has been made available on a laptop that's 13 years old. All other Chrome-like browsers (Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi, etc) take much longer to load, cause the cpu to throttle (fans kick in) which can lead to overheating and shutdown issues. They are essentially unusable on that machine. Firefox Quantum, otoh, is snappy on this machine. I say this because I'm genuinely curious by the "too big" comment. I honestly find it puzzling (unless you're comparing a modern, full-featured browser to Dillo or Links2/GUI: both of which are favs of mine for their use cases). I had turned my back on Firefox for a few years because of performance issues, caching problems. They didn't just correct these issues, they've done so in a way few software upgrades have ever managed to do in my experience (dating back three decades) and have blown past their competitors from a purely performance standpoint. [0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+T7200+%40+2.00GHz&id=927 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+T72...
- PetahNZ 8y ago
  Anecdotally I have the opposite experience. On my 2 computers (MBP/Win10 Desktop) Chrome starts up near instantly and Firefox has a noticeable delay. I just tried it and it took about 5 seconds to load. Not that this is really a deal breaker anyway. On my MBP it also makes the fans spin up.
  - mikepurvis 8y ago
    Same here. Every few months when Firefox is in the news, I give it a try again, and I keep wanting to like it, but everything just seems slightly laggy compared with Chrome on my 2014 MBP.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > On my 2 computers (MBP/Win10 Desktop) Chrome starts up near instantly and Firefox has a noticeable delay. You may be experiencing OS caching. If you normally use Chrome, Chrome is already cached in memory by the OS and will open faster than something you haven't started recently. > On my MBP it also makes the fans spin up. I've noticed that Chrome tends not to do this while still being slower. This may be related to the way it uses more processes, which consequently requires more resources per operation (and thereby higher visible latency) but splits the load better between cores so that no individual one gets hot enough to require additional cooling. In theory this could be "better" if the browser actually needed to use 8+ cores for some reason, but in general if that is happening it is some kind of anomaly or defect (like some adspam mining Bitcoin in javascript) rather than any normal behavior. And Firefox does use other threads/processes for most of the few things that actually benefit from it.
  - berkut 8y ago
    Exactly the same with me: I've been trying to use Firefox over the past month on a MBP, but Chrome is definitely faster (both UI-wise and seemingly with connections/requests - maybe Chrome is pre-empting some things?), and for me Firefox demonstrably uses more CPU across multiple cores, so laptop temp is noticeably hotter for the same sites, and fans spin a lot more, and battery life is worse.
- 8y ago
0-_-0 8y ago
I installed NetSurf when I saw your comment. It immediately crashed when I entered a URL of a website. Then I uninstalled it.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I would be very upset to see Firefox fade into oblivion. My at home workflow has Firefox baked in: separate containers for G Suite, Twitter, HN, for paid web apps, etc. I don’t think that Chrome supports anything like Firefox containers, right?

Spivak 8y ago
Closest is multiple profiles but no, nothing as seamless as containers.