6 ms·

Great time to switch to Firefox if you haven't already. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ And before you ev

Great time to switch to Firefox if you haven't already. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than Chrome", <other statement of the month>, tell us that after you're running Chrome without an ad-blocker. And even if it really is still slower by some miracle - this is a community containing world-class software engineers. Donate some of your time to bring it up to speed. Pun intended.

htfy96 7y ago
> a community containing world-class software engineers Sadly they don't seem to have world-class managers
- taneq 7y ago
  Doesn't matter how good you are at doing the thing right if you're not doing the right thing.
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    Funny how that applies to Chrome.
gnicholas 7y ago
> And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than Chrome", <other statement of the month>, tell us that after you're running Chrome without an ad-blocker. I run Brave without an adblocker and have found it to be much faster than Firefox (with adblocker and pi-hole). Also, as someone whose startup has both Chrome and Firefox extensions, I have to say the Firefox reviewers (who review releases and hold up the process — not end user reviewers) can be hugely annoying, and we deploy there as infrequently as possible. As a result, our Firefox customers don’t get all the latest bells and whistles. Wish it weren’t that way, but the process takes months! Edit: clarified the annoying reviewers are not end users reviewers, but the people who suck up months of time for every minor update, making confused complaints about our code, and even UI implementation.
- phalangion 7y ago
  Brave is an ad blocker
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    Yep, just pointing out that one cannot defend Firefox as the best just by saying Chrome requires and adblocker. There are other browsers, like Brave. And for the record, I used Firefox for decades, up until last year. I just spend too much time in my browser to use anything other than Brave, given how much time it saves me.
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      Does it have time saving features?
      - gnicholas 7y ago
        Have you tried it? It is insanely fast.
        austhrow743 7y ago
        I haven't. Will give it a go.
  - prepend 7y ago
    Brave has add blocking features but isn’t an ad blocker. I think it’s useful to compare for speed base vanilla brave to other browsers with and with addons.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    Is that really true? I thought Brave was a novel ad sales platform that allows users to bid against ad companies for user time. It's inherently wrapped up in the cryptocurrency ethos (trying to inflate a Token) which will not really lead to profit for users, but for a founder.
- 7y ago
mattmaroon 7y ago
I tried switching to Firefox for two months. It's just so rough around the edges in ever way. I wanted to like it. Really.
- goda90 7y ago
  I'm curious, when did you try switching? What OS were you using? Do you have any examples of rough spots?
  - Santosh83 7y ago
    Not parent but in my case at least Twitch consumes twice as much memory to stream a video in Firefox as compared to Chrome, and still manages to stutter more. But it is possible it could be something to do with my extensions (uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere) since they're installed on Firefox but not on Chrome.
    - hackinthebochs 7y ago
      Agreed. Twitch is nearly unusable in firefox. I have to view all channels in 480p to keep it from freezing constantly. It still freezes occasionally.
      - jonny383 7y ago
        I feel like Twitch is equally responsible for fixing these stability issues.
      - worble 7y ago
        For twitch.tv I highly recommend the 'Alternate Player for Twitch.tv'[0] extension for both Firefox and Chrome. It runs a million times better in both browsers. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/
        hackinthebochs 7y ago
PossiblyKyle 7y ago
I’ve switched when the rumors about Google’s intentions started surfacing, and my only regret is not switching earlier!
edoceo 7y ago
Reddit, Firefox, Pixel is noticably slower to render, scroll or click than in Chrome.
- javagram 7y ago
  Old.reddit.com or especially i.reddit.com solve speed issues related to that site... But yeah as a Firefox user it still lags behind safari and chrome for speed. I don’t use Adblock either...
  - edoceo 7y ago
    I do use adBlock. Other sites are fast. But those sites that are JS heavy just to render lag.
- folkhack 7y ago
  Mapbox and Hangouts as well - both products I use on a daily basis. I'd say Mapbox is about 20% performant in comparison to Chrome, and Hangouts w/video chews up 50%+ CPU utilization.
NightlyDev 7y ago
Page-loads in chrome are usually really slow if you have an adblocker. ABP runs a bunch of JS on every load and the page load performance goes from being seemingly instant when the mouse button is released to having a noticeable delay. Sure, this is isn't really noticeable when the page already have a noticeable delay, but it sure slows things down for pages without a bunch of tracking and ads that blocks rendering.
- Eldt 7y ago
  Hasn't ABP been known for poor performance? If I recall correctly at some point they were hiding ads with a ton of CSS
submeta 7y ago
Switched some short time ago. And could not be happier. Love the UI, the addon ecosystem, the bookmark manager. And the philosophy behind it.
MperorM 7y ago
And while you're at it, I can highly recommend trying out tree style tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... If you do decide on using it, I recommend editing the browser so it doesn't display tabs on top, so the tree style tabs is the only place your tabs are located. I cannot emphasize enough how big an improvement this has been to my browser experience, once I got proffecient with it.
- jdance 7y ago
  Aah why did they complicate tree style tabs. I tried once again to use it after they changed it but I'm not going to create some userChrome.css file on all my systems to hide the native tabs, and the plugin looks stupid now with some big "Tree Style Tab" header :( Why doesn't Mozilla just implement this natively. Do that Sherlock thing! Its just a super feature. I want to do Prefences->Show Tabs as a Tree, get it synced, and just never use Chrome!
- joecot 7y ago
  Also try out container tabs. Firefox supports running multiple containers (isolating your cookies etc between), and the extension means you can open different tabs in different containers. For example instead of using multi-account login for Gmail, I open personal Gmail and work Gmail in different containers. I have a container just for banking, and there's another container extension to isolate your Facebook https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
squarefoot 7y ago
"And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than Chrome"... " That was undeniably true, though ages ago. Probably those thinking along these lines didn't run Firefox for some time. A ton of code has changed in the two products and since about two years Firefox has filled the gap then surpassed Chrome. And BTW even if Firefox wasn't faster than Chrome (it is), I would happily trade say a 20% loss in speed with a close to 100% gain in privacy.

htfy96 7y ago

> a community containing world-class software engineers Sadly they don't seem to have world-class managers

taneq 7y ago
Doesn't matter how good you are at doing the thing right if you're not doing the right thing.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Funny how that applies to Chrome.

gnicholas 7y ago

> And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than Chrome", <other statement of the month>, tell us that after you're running Chrome without an ad-blocker. I run Brave without an adblocker and have found it to be much faster than Firefox (with adblocker and pi-hole). Also, as someone whose startup has both Chrome and Firefox extensions, I have to say the Firefox reviewers (who review releases and hold up the process — not end user reviewers) can be hugely annoying, and we deploy there as infrequently as possible. As a result, our Firefox customers don’t get all the latest bells and whistles. Wish it weren’t that way, but the process takes months! Edit: clarified the annoying reviewers are not end users reviewers, but the people who suck up months of time for every minor update, making confused complaints about our code, and even UI implementation.

phalangion 7y ago
Brave is an ad blocker
- gnicholas 7y ago
  Yep, just pointing out that one cannot defend Firefox as the best just by saying Chrome requires and adblocker. There are other browsers, like Brave. And for the record, I used Firefox for decades, up until last year. I just spend too much time in my browser to use anything other than Brave, given how much time it saves me.
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    Does it have time saving features?
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      Have you tried it? It is insanely fast.
      - austhrow743 7y ago
        I haven't. Will give it a go.
- prepend 7y ago
  Brave has add blocking features but isn’t an ad blocker. I think it’s useful to compare for speed base vanilla brave to other browsers with and with addons.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  Is that really true? I thought Brave was a novel ad sales platform that allows users to bid against ad companies for user time. It's inherently wrapped up in the cryptocurrency ethos (trying to inflate a Token) which will not really lead to profit for users, but for a founder.
7y ago

mattmaroon 7y ago

I tried switching to Firefox for two months. It's just so rough around the edges in ever way. I wanted to like it. Really.

goda90 7y ago
I'm curious, when did you try switching? What OS were you using? Do you have any examples of rough spots?
- Santosh83 7y ago
  Not parent but in my case at least Twitch consumes twice as much memory to stream a video in Firefox as compared to Chrome, and still manages to stutter more. But it is possible it could be something to do with my extensions (uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere) since they're installed on Firefox but not on Chrome.
  - hackinthebochs 7y ago
    Agreed. Twitch is nearly unusable in firefox. I have to view all channels in 480p to keep it from freezing constantly. It still freezes occasionally.
    - jonny383 7y ago
      I feel like Twitch is equally responsible for fixing these stability issues.
    - worble 7y ago
      For twitch.tv I highly recommend the 'Alternate Player for Twitch.tv'[0] extension for both Firefox and Chrome. It runs a million times better in both browsers. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitch_5/
      - hackinthebochs 7y ago

PossiblyKyle 7y ago

I’ve switched when the rumors about Google’s intentions started surfacing, and my only regret is not switching earlier!

edoceo 7y ago

Reddit, Firefox, Pixel is noticably slower to render, scroll or click than in Chrome.

javagram 7y ago
Old.reddit.com or especially i.reddit.com solve speed issues related to that site... But yeah as a Firefox user it still lags behind safari and chrome for speed. I don’t use Adblock either...
- edoceo 7y ago
  I do use adBlock. Other sites are fast. But those sites that are JS heavy just to render lag.
folkhack 7y ago
Mapbox and Hangouts as well - both products I use on a daily basis. I'd say Mapbox is about 20% performant in comparison to Chrome, and Hangouts w/video chews up 50%+ CPU utilization.

NightlyDev 7y ago

Page-loads in chrome are usually really slow if you have an adblocker. ABP runs a bunch of JS on every load and the page load performance goes from being seemingly instant when the mouse button is released to having a noticeable delay. Sure, this is isn't really noticeable when the page already have a noticeable delay, but it sure slows things down for pages without a bunch of tracking and ads that blocks rendering.

Eldt 7y ago
Hasn't ABP been known for poor performance? If I recall correctly at some point they were hiding ads with a ton of CSS

submeta 7y ago

Switched some short time ago. And could not be happier. Love the UI, the addon ecosystem, the bookmark manager. And the philosophy behind it.

MperorM 7y ago

And while you're at it, I can highly recommend trying out tree style tabs. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... If you do decide on using it, I recommend editing the browser so it doesn't display tabs on top, so the tree style tabs is the only place your tabs are located. I cannot emphasize enough how big an improvement this has been to my browser experience, once I got proffecient with it.

jdance 7y ago
Aah why did they complicate tree style tabs. I tried once again to use it after they changed it but I'm not going to create some userChrome.css file on all my systems to hide the native tabs, and the plugin looks stupid now with some big "Tree Style Tab" header :( Why doesn't Mozilla just implement this natively. Do that Sherlock thing! Its just a super feature. I want to do Prefences->Show Tabs as a Tree, get it synced, and just never use Chrome!
joecot 7y ago
Also try out container tabs. Firefox supports running multiple containers (isolating your cookies etc between), and the extension means you can open different tabs in different containers. For example instead of using multi-account login for Gmail, I open personal Gmail and work Gmail in different containers. I have a container just for banking, and there's another container extension to isolate your Facebook https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

squarefoot 7y ago

"And before you even begin to complain about it being "too slow", "slower than Chrome"... " That was undeniably true, though ages ago. Probably those thinking along these lines didn't run Firefox for some time. A ton of code has changed in the two products and since about two years Firefox has filled the gap then surpassed Chrome. And BTW even if Firefox wasn't faster than Chrome (it is), I would happily trade say a 20% loss in speed with a close to 100% gain in privacy.