14 ms·

It's time to switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster and generally more efficient than Chrome plus it has the most important extensions. The most

It's time to switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster and generally more efficient than Chrome plus it has the most important extensions. The most surprising thing is that the Android version of Firefox is excellent. So good that I switched from Chrome a few months ago when this expected news first dropped. No ads on mobile is awesome.

fishtacos 7y ago
Odd - my experience is the opposite. FF is noticeably slower than Chrome, and my Chrome installation is loaded with extensions, unlike Firefox. Phoronix's tests seem to back my experience as well. From 4 days ago: "As for the Firefox vs. Chrome performance, Google's web browser continues generally delivering better performance." https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox69-chrome77-tests&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox6...
- KuhlMensch 7y ago
  Agreed. Plus it doesnt have Picture-in-picture But I use FF as my main
  - starbugs 7y ago
    PIP is a good point, not supporting play/stop via Bluetooth is another for me personally.
  - phit_ 7y ago
    it does though, at least in beta
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I recommend using the "Open With" extension with mpv. This allows you to right click on any sort of video link that youtube-dl supports and launch that link in mpv. mpv has a "stay on top" feature that can be enabled by default when mpv is invoked in this way. The result is picture-in-picture that supports virtually every video site on the net.
  - meandave 7y ago
    https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture-for-videos-in-firefox-69/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture...
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Only on Windows.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    Happy to tell you that PIP functions if you enable in in config!
- dustingetz 7y ago
  Firefox scroll lags like 500ms behind my input, on my mbp. How does anyone live like that?
  - simfoo 7y ago
    By disabling smooth scrolling (available in settings). Feels much snappier to me
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      Exactly. This is what fixed this issue for me as well. What I haven't been able to fix is that new windows open rather slowly.
    - dictum 7y ago
      I'm so used to scrolling by keypress (i.e. any of the vim-like extensions), with smooth scrolling disabled and a higher scroll step, that I just recently noticed that this reduces resource usage/heat.
    - Filligree 7y ago
      But then you don't have smooth scrolling. Enabling apz kinetic scrolling is another approach. That cuts the lag by about 90%, getting it much closer to chrome.
  - swiley 7y ago
    I usually scroll with the spacebar which doesn't appear to have any lag to me.
  - _Microft 7y ago
    "I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard statements like the following. Firefox crashes ten times a day for me. I don’t understand how anyone can use it. There’s a simple answer: for most people it doesn’t crash ten times a day. But the person making the statement hasn’t realized that what links the first sentence to the second is an assumption — that other people’s experiences are the same.", quoted from https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/01/02/yeinu-your-experience-is-not-universal/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/01/02/yeinu-your-e...
- SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  I would interpret efficiency in terms of resource usage, not just clock time.
- me551ah 7y ago
  Is your firefox using Webrender? Vanilla firefox is slower than chrome but WebRender is noticeably faster than chrome. Chrome on a 4K monitor slows down to a crawl, but WebRender handles it like a champ. It can be easily enabled with a flag.
  - tomrod 7y ago
    If any firefox devs are reading this - Can you please make this a default? - Can you please fix text rendering on mobile? Sites like reddit render at desktop resolution on mobile screen, and there is no clear text sizing that works. With Chrome I just set my size option and move on with life.
    - Ayesh 7y ago
      I could be wrong, but AFAIK, webrender is the default on latest versions.
      - opencl 7y ago
        It is enabled by default for a small subset of system configurations (Windows desktop machines with AMD or NVIDIA GPU).
        tasty_freeze 7y ago
        The matrix is more complicated. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where In some configurations you have to set a config flag to enable it.
        ahartmetz 7y ago
        Hey, I think this site's audience is technical enough that it's okay to just give them the name of the option: about:config -> gfx.webrender.all -> true Go to about:support and search for WebRender to check if it worked. Works great for me with Kubuntu 19.10 / Mesa / AMD. It didn't work when I tried it a couple of months ago.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  You should try installing the extensions that help FF become faster than Chrome: Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and optionally HTTPS Everywhere.
- behringer 7y ago
  I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage. You can have a browser run by a company looking to loot the public good for their own gain, or a non-profit looking to keep the web open and free. Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient...
  - CharlesW 7y ago
    > Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient... In both cases, people are choosing products because they're better. "Better" for most favors properties of the product. "Better" for you favors the politics of the product. Both are completely valid approaches.
    - okcando 7y ago
      Eeeehhh... He's arguing for principles and I'm not comfortable with the claim that not having principles is every bit as valid as having them.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        It's a pretty big leap from someone not sharing your exact principles to them not having principles at all.
        okcando 7y ago
        I'd say that's a pretty uncharitable reading of my comment! That wasn't intended, to be clear.
  - switch007 7y ago
    Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs.
  - visarga 7y ago
    > Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient... It's about immediate pain vs future gain. People are susceptible to temporal discounting.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I can't notice any real difference, having been using Nightly (dev) edition for a full year now. Incidentally, my company (one of the largest tech in the world) uses Firefox by default (and nobody had any reason to switch). Google simply can't be trusted with all that ads stuff
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Have you tried a fresh profile as a test? It’s possible you have about:config settings or other random hacker detritus that may be leading to slowness.
cpuguy83 7y ago
Chrome extensions should generally work on Firefox anyway. It's a slightly different packaging process, but that's the only difference.
phasnox 7y ago
I'd try Brave.
- SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  Brave looks really cool, but it uses chromium so its hands are forever tied to google. I remember they considered Gecko but rejected it for some reason.
  - phasnox 7y ago
    Yeahp I wish they could decouple from it. What we really need is an alternative to the official Chrome Web Store.
  - codehalo 7y ago
    I don't understand that logic. It's a fork. Is Webkit tied to KHTML? Is gcc tied to egcs?
    - SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
      Chromium is not a fork of chrome. AFAIK brave has not forked chromium.
      - yoasif_ 7y ago
        > AFAIK brave has not forked chromium. Yes they have. They had their own browser previously but have since given up on that. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser https://github.com/brave/brave-browser Chromium is listed right on the readme.
- mdtusz 7y ago
  If you're a vim user, try qutebrowser. It has some quirks, but with the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts and call upon scripts it's hard to move back to a "normal" browser.
Causality1 7y ago
Only downside to Firefox mobile is its crummy tab management. Especially when browsing in landscape mode it takes an incredibly long swipe to dismiss a tab. I don't think I go a week without yelling "oh my God, go away!" at my phone after failing to close a tab after multiple tries.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Click on three dots close all tabs. You can also close just all private tabs. It also tends to unload unused tabs and perform pretty well with ridiculous amounts of tabs so if you forget to bother it won't perform much worse.
- morsch 7y ago
  I use an add-on that adds a close button to the address bar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab-close-webext/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab-close-web...
  - Causality1 7y ago
    That's super awesome, thanks!
- epse 7y ago
  While I agree the swipe is too long sometimes, there is still an "X" above every tab
Pxtl 7y ago
Unfortunately the Android version of Firefox is unusably crashy on my phone (moto z play) and noticeably slower. I gave it a hard try, but it just wasn't workable. Still using Firefox on all desktop/laptop devices, though.
- lightedman 7y ago
  Your phone is probably one of the ones that came out with bad RAM and is defective, it works great on both my Moto Z Play and Moto G6 Play.
  - MrRadar 7y ago
    Same on my Moto G7 Power and Moto E4. I've never had a (regular) problem with FF crashing on any of my Android phones.
  - Glyptodon 7y ago
    Do you have a link about this?
    - lightedman 7y ago
      No, I'm a BGA repair tech that has had to deal with the bad RAM chips on that model of phone, among others. The RAM will appear to pass hardware checking in our testers, but you hit it hard and suddenly the frequency becomes unstable, often dropping down to DDR1 speeds. Plenty of room for error, there.
      - Pxtl 7y ago
        Ugh, I'd suspected something like that because it behaves very badly sometimes, but it's intermittent. Is there any recommended test for this? Or is it too ephemeral to test for?
        lightedman 7y ago
        You need a dedicated BGA removal/reflow tool (like a Metcal) a compatible RAM board to mount the removed BGA upon for insertion into a RAM tester, then you need a hardware RAM tester like RAMCHECK LX. That's an expensive set of kit.
free652 7y ago
Using firefox for the last year. It's slower , bloatted - 3 or more GB ram used. And the last update is forcing dns over https that for some reasons keeps get reenabled all the time. Constant issues with ssl handshake. I am almost ready to go back to Chrome.
- yoasif_ 7y ago
  > And the last update is forcing dns over https that for some reasons keeps get reenabled all the time. That isn't true -- there's something else going on. Is DoH enabled in preferences? How are you verifying this - have you seen https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-dns-over-https https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-dns-over-https ?
downtide 7y ago
I can't seem to right scroll under firefox. What am I doing wrong?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alexfromapex 7y ago
Already made the switch as well
molteanu 7y ago
> the Android version of Firefox is excellent Keeps crashing on me daily, multiple times even.
shubidubi 7y ago
I'm using Firefox for a while now (both on desktop and mobile) and I love it. The only missing part for me on Android is that Firefox doesn't open native apps (YouTube, maps, Instagram etc..) when you open a link. The integration with built in apps like chrome has is not there.
- sorenjan 7y ago
  It's really annoying. If you have a matching app installed there's an Android icon in the URL bar to open it in that app instead, but it's an extra step.
  - jackewiehose 7y ago
    I'm glad it behaves like that because for me it's really annoying when the browser throws me out to another app (especially youtube, which is so much better with adblock in the browser).
    - shubidubi 7y ago
      Maps is the main app that I wish would open automatically. Each time someone shares a location with me or if I need to drive somewhere it's very lengthy to open the native app. Sometimes the address doesn't stick and I need to type it again.
    - m-p-3 7y ago
      I wish it was configurable per app. For example, having YouTube links stays in Firefox, but have links to the Play Store apps open within the app.
- AJ007 7y ago
  That could be a feature.
- cycomanic 7y ago
  I highly recommend Firefox preview. It's really fast, no ads and trackers blocked without extensions. They also put the address bar at the bottom which is so much better.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
I’m really surprised no one is mentioning the new chromium-based MS Edge (still in Beta). They removed all the Google tracking and login nonsense, and it’s fast. Edge Beta on macOS has been my daily driver (and dev browser) for a month (switched to it from Firefox, actually), and my only gripe is the extension story isn’t yet complete. The MS store only has a few extensions, and you have to jump through a couple of hoops to install from the Chrome store.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Any idea if MS is going to skip the manifest v3 changes that will kill uBlock Origin next year?
- tass 7y ago
  I’m avoiding it because I don’t want Blink to be the only engine around.
  - zbraniecki 7y ago
    Thank you.
- Darvon 7y ago
  You're surprised geeks are talking about open source over microsoft?
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    To be fair, that’s a bit of a false dichotomy when it comes to the new MS Edge (or any other modern browser, for that matter). It’s open source as well.
ravenstine 7y ago
Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome, and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each other. It's one of the best reasons to switch to Firefox, in my opinion.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Chrome has something similar built in called profiles, each profile is a unique session (like incognito except it persists)
  - angrygoat 7y ago
    Unless something has changed, the Chrome functionality associates an entire window with a particular profile. Firefox lets you have tabs in different containers, colour coded and all in the same window. I find this much nicer to use.
  - fanf2 7y ago
    If chrome profiles are anything like Firefox profiles then they are a lot more heavyweight than container tabs
- greyfox 7y ago
  is this just for windows/linux (desktop) installs of firefox? or is android included in this feature?
  - cosmic_ape 7y ago
    Containers were not supported on Android last time I checked, a few month ago. No containers on iOS also. One more problem is that containers are an addon and do not sync between Firefoxes on different desktops. Still extremely useful though.
  - 9034725985 7y ago
    No support for Android (yet). Install this Facebook container [1] on the desktop. A request: I run Firefox nightly [2] as my main browser and would like to request everyone to consider using a pre-release version of Firefox if possible. It helps us make the argument that Mozilla should not run experiments in Firefox stable. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/
kettlecorn 7y ago
I used Firefox before Chrome and have tried to swap numerous times in the past (and have been using it for the last few weeks). Advocates for Firefox often say "Firefox is better, just try switching!" yet when people point out reasons it's not better the response is "Oh those don't matter, you're just being nitpicky!" But it's not a very gentle push back, it's forceful. In this thread someone says "I don't like how much ram Firefox uses" and the response is > I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage. and > Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs. Firefox, as a product, has many issues when compared to Chrome. Why does everyone spend so much of their breath arguing against the real concerns and problems people have with it? Chrome has been getting worse in lots of major ways, Firefox has a chance to be the better product for a wider audience. But Firefox won't become better with a culture of downvoting and arguing against criticism rather than trying to understand it. This is not the culture of Mozilla as far as I know, but it's the culture of many Firefox advocates all across the internet.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  This is a pattern that shows up in other contexts as well. Linux on the desktop, git etc. have communities of advicates that tend to dismiss complaints and criticism far too strongly. That isn't to say that there are more reasonable people in these communities - there are plenty - but the forceful pushback is very visible and tends to be quite offputting.
  - kettlecorn 7y ago
    Yes, those absolutely feel similar. It's a real shame because I think it holds back those communities and products enormously. The person who takes the time to complain isn't an enemy, they're making an effort to bring something to attention for the community. You want more complainers instead of people silently rejecting your community and product. The 'argue against the messenger' first reaction of many projects creates insular communities and insular communities create worse products.
- Darvon 7y ago
  It's no skin off my nose if you want to feed Google, but personally I have no idea what you're talking about as there's never been something I couldn't do on firefox.
alistproducer2 7y ago
I switched (back) to firefox after the quantum update and havent looked back. I haven't used chrome in years so im not able to compare performance but I've had nice issues in that department with ff. I use brave for mobile.
vast 7y ago
I only use chrome when I need access to my google account (gmail), so my FF is completely disconnected from my google account. FF is really on par with chrome for me, with the exception of few extreme performance applications like webgl.
visarga 7y ago
> switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster What platform are you referring to? Is it faster on macs too?
burtonator 7y ago
Firefox is really dying compared to Chrome but I honestly think this is going to cause it to rebound. People aren't going to be happy without uBlock and Ad Block... Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. What's a NEW Google product that you actually like (that they didn't acquire)? They literally CAN NOT build new products that people like. ... all their hardware products suck. New things like Google Allo exist for like a year and then they are killed. It seems like they give a half-assed attempt at creating new products as a way to keep skilled talent at Google rather than having them leave to work for Facebook or Apple. They're actually DECENT at large acquisitions but that's the only thing that's saved them. It's really a shame because Chrome is actually a GREAT browser but I won't use it without ad blocking. I've already migrated to Firefox on my phone and it's been pretty great so far. It also supports extensions on mobile which is huge!
- fwip 7y ago
  Their phones are pretty darn good.
- klyrs 7y ago
  > Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. Nope, they're in the advertising biz now. They aren't so much "dropping the ball" as playing a ballgame (extremely well) that you dislike (because it's harmful and exploitative and destroys the tools you love). They're just a new microsoft. Or since they're in a particular phase of that development, let's say a new M$. Embrace, extend, exploit.
- denton-scratch 7y ago
  "What's a NEW Google product that you actually like" Robots that kill people? Come on, there are people that think that's cool.
- NelsonMinar 7y ago
  Not sure what you mean about Firefox dying; the software is the best it's ever been, relative to other browsers. The market numbers are still down though.
hyh1048576 7y ago
I tried several times to use Firefox as my default browser, but eventually I switched back to Chrome, due to some weird issues I got at some sites. I still hate what Google is doing for Chrome and I'm now using a dual browser strategy... I use Firefox and Chrome at the same time, with a preference to Firefox.
- yoasif_ 7y ago
  > I tried several times to use Firefox as my default browser, but eventually I switched back to Chrome, due to some weird issues I got at some sites. You can report those issues to https://webcompat.com https://webcompat.com -- if they are Firefox issues, they will be logged and hopefully fixed.
tjpnz 7y ago
I switched to Firefox for Android after several attempts by DoubleClick to infect my device with malware. Funnily enough Chrome does ship with a setting which makes this kind of hijacking a lot harder. It was off by default and hidden in an obscure menu that wasn't accessible via the UI. Enabling it for everyone would probably lose them too much ad revenue I suspect.
- wipash 7y ago
  Could you please share what this setting is, and how to access it?
  - tjpnz 7y ago
    It was one of the options under chrome://flags and I don't recall which - this was more than 6 months ago now.
colshrapnel 7y ago
Firefox Focus is also a thing. A permanent incognito mode browser is an ideal candidate for the default browser position.
aninteger 7y ago
There are some sites that don't work well in Firefox, like Cisco's WebEx. The web client will disconnect and reconnect causing everyone to constantly hear a disconnect and entry beep when your audio cuts out. On Chromium there is no problem on the same machine. This is on Xubuntu Linux.
- Santosh83 7y ago
  Maybe you can report it with this tool? https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/
Numberwang 7y ago
Firefox is slower. Don't lie.
lordnacho 7y ago
I've been trying to do this but for some odd reason it's really slow on Mac. Been trying to figure out why but I don't see any solutions. Perhaps someone here knows.
nilkn 7y ago
Firefox also offers the Tree Style Tab extension. If you’re working with limited screen real estate (e.g., smaller laptop) it may not be ideal, but on a full-sized monitor browsing the internet without it feels downright antiquated. My hierarchy of browsers looks like this. FF is my default, along with an extensive suite of security and privacy extensions including uBlock Origin. Very rarely, I’ll encounter an issue with a site, and I’ll fall back to Brave. Exceptionally rarely, I’ll fall back from Brave to Chrome, but I can’t remember right now the last time I needed to do that.
mwcampbell 7y ago
I like Mozilla's principles in theory, but this warning from the user guide for GrapheneOS [1] (successor to CopperheadOS) is alarming, and applies to more than just Android: > Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox runs as a single process on mobile and has no sandbox beyond the OS sandbox. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux, where it can hardly be considered a sandbox at all) and lacks support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. So, despite concerns about monoculture, I guess Chromium-based browsers other than Chrome are the most practical solution for now. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/usage https://grapheneos.org/usage
- roca 7y ago
  The Linux desktop Firefox sandbox is pretty strong AFAICT. All the usual namespace protection, pretty good seccomp filter. I wonder what the issue they're referring to is and whether that comment is up to date (the sandbox has improved a lot over the last few years). The WebView argument is basically an argument for monoculture: you should only have one browser engine installed because that's less attack surface than two, and since Chromium must be installed for reasons, it must be Chromium. That's actually kind of a weak argument since it's not that common for users to load a specific attack in both browser engines.
Rapzid 7y ago
So this is timely. I was just testing out something I'm working out that creates, uh.. A LOT of DOM elements. Original dev work was in Chrome and I went over to Win 10 to test other browers. I was COMPLETELY blown away by how much faster FireFox was at recomputing layout.

fishtacos 7y ago

Odd - my experience is the opposite. FF is noticeably slower than Chrome, and my Chrome installation is loaded with extensions, unlike Firefox. Phoronix's tests seem to back my experience as well. From 4 days ago: "As for the Firefox vs. Chrome performance, Google's web browser continues generally delivering better performance." https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox69-chrome77-tests&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox6...

KuhlMensch 7y ago
Agreed. Plus it doesnt have Picture-in-picture But I use FF as my main
- starbugs 7y ago
  PIP is a good point, not supporting play/stop via Bluetooth is another for me personally.
- phit_ 7y ago
  it does though, at least in beta
- catalogia 7y ago
  I recommend using the "Open With" extension with mpv. This allows you to right click on any sort of video link that youtube-dl supports and launch that link in mpv. mpv has a "stay on top" feature that can be enabled by default when mpv is invoked in this way. The result is picture-in-picture that supports virtually every video site on the net.
- meandave 7y ago
  https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture-for-videos-in-firefox-69/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/testing-picture-in-picture...
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Only on Windows.
- MiroF 7y ago
  Happy to tell you that PIP functions if you enable in in config!
dustingetz 7y ago
Firefox scroll lags like 500ms behind my input, on my mbp. How does anyone live like that?
- simfoo 7y ago
  By disabling smooth scrolling (available in settings). Feels much snappier to me
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    Exactly. This is what fixed this issue for me as well. What I haven't been able to fix is that new windows open rather slowly.
  - dictum 7y ago
    I'm so used to scrolling by keypress (i.e. any of the vim-like extensions), with smooth scrolling disabled and a higher scroll step, that I just recently noticed that this reduces resource usage/heat.
  - Filligree 7y ago
    But then you don't have smooth scrolling. Enabling apz kinetic scrolling is another approach. That cuts the lag by about 90%, getting it much closer to chrome.
- swiley 7y ago
  I usually scroll with the spacebar which doesn't appear to have any lag to me.
- _Microft 7y ago
  "I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard statements like the following. Firefox crashes ten times a day for me. I don’t understand how anyone can use it. There’s a simple answer: for most people it doesn’t crash ten times a day. But the person making the statement hasn’t realized that what links the first sentence to the second is an assumption — that other people’s experiences are the same.", quoted from https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/01/02/yeinu-your-experience-is-not-universal/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/01/02/yeinu-your-e...
SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
I would interpret efficiency in terms of resource usage, not just clock time.
me551ah 7y ago
Is your firefox using Webrender? Vanilla firefox is slower than chrome but WebRender is noticeably faster than chrome. Chrome on a 4K monitor slows down to a crawl, but WebRender handles it like a champ. It can be easily enabled with a flag.
- tomrod 7y ago
  If any firefox devs are reading this - Can you please make this a default? - Can you please fix text rendering on mobile? Sites like reddit render at desktop resolution on mobile screen, and there is no clear text sizing that works. With Chrome I just set my size option and move on with life.
  - Ayesh 7y ago
    I could be wrong, but AFAIK, webrender is the default on latest versions.
    - opencl 7y ago
      It is enabled by default for a small subset of system configurations (Windows desktop machines with AMD or NVIDIA GPU).
      - tasty_freeze 7y ago
        The matrix is more complicated. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where In some configurations you have to set a config flag to enable it.
        ahartmetz 7y ago
        Hey, I think this site's audience is technical enough that it's okay to just give them the name of the option: about:config -> gfx.webrender.all -> true Go to about:support and search for WebRender to check if it worked. Works great for me with Kubuntu 19.10 / Mesa / AMD. It didn't work when I tried it a couple of months ago.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
You should try installing the extensions that help FF become faster than Chrome: Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and optionally HTTPS Everywhere.
behringer 7y ago
I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage. You can have a browser run by a company looking to loot the public good for their own gain, or a non-profit looking to keep the web open and free. Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient...
- CharlesW 7y ago
  > Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient... In both cases, people are choosing products because they're better. "Better" for most favors properties of the product. "Better" for you favors the politics of the product. Both are completely valid approaches.
  - okcando 7y ago
    Eeeehhh... He's arguing for principles and I'm not comfortable with the claim that not having principles is every bit as valid as having them.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      It's a pretty big leap from someone not sharing your exact principles to them not having principles at all.
      - okcando 7y ago
        I'd say that's a pretty uncharitable reading of my comment! That wasn't intended, to be clear.
- switch007 7y ago
  Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs.
- visarga 7y ago
  > Hold on I'm going to pick the one that's marginally faster and more ram efficient... It's about immediate pain vs future gain. People are susceptible to temporal discounting.
Aperocky 7y ago
I can't notice any real difference, having been using Nightly (dev) edition for a full year now. Incidentally, my company (one of the largest tech in the world) uses Firefox by default (and nobody had any reason to switch). Google simply can't be trusted with all that ads stuff
floatingatoll 7y ago
Have you tried a fresh profile as a test? It’s possible you have about:config settings or other random hacker detritus that may be leading to slowness.

cpuguy83 7y ago

Chrome extensions should generally work on Firefox anyway. It's a slightly different packaging process, but that's the only difference.

phasnox 7y ago

I'd try Brave.

SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
Brave looks really cool, but it uses chromium so its hands are forever tied to google. I remember they considered Gecko but rejected it for some reason.
- phasnox 7y ago
  Yeahp I wish they could decouple from it. What we really need is an alternative to the official Chrome Web Store.
- codehalo 7y ago
  I don't understand that logic. It's a fork. Is Webkit tied to KHTML? Is gcc tied to egcs?
  - SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
    Chromium is not a fork of chrome. AFAIK brave has not forked chromium.
    - yoasif_ 7y ago
      > AFAIK brave has not forked chromium. Yes they have. They had their own browser previously but have since given up on that. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser https://github.com/brave/brave-browser Chromium is listed right on the readme.
mdtusz 7y ago
If you're a vim user, try qutebrowser. It has some quirks, but with the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts and call upon scripts it's hard to move back to a "normal" browser.

Causality1 7y ago

Only downside to Firefox mobile is its crummy tab management. Especially when browsing in landscape mode it takes an incredibly long swipe to dismiss a tab. I don't think I go a week without yelling "oh my God, go away!" at my phone after failing to close a tab after multiple tries.

michaelmrose 7y ago
Click on three dots close all tabs. You can also close just all private tabs. It also tends to unload unused tabs and perform pretty well with ridiculous amounts of tabs so if you forget to bother it won't perform much worse.
morsch 7y ago
I use an add-on that adds a close button to the address bar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab-close-webext/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/tab-close-web...
- Causality1 7y ago
  That's super awesome, thanks!
epse 7y ago
While I agree the swipe is too long sometimes, there is still an "X" above every tab

Pxtl 7y ago

Unfortunately the Android version of Firefox is unusably crashy on my phone (moto z play) and noticeably slower. I gave it a hard try, but it just wasn't workable. Still using Firefox on all desktop/laptop devices, though.

lightedman 7y ago
Your phone is probably one of the ones that came out with bad RAM and is defective, it works great on both my Moto Z Play and Moto G6 Play.
- MrRadar 7y ago
  Same on my Moto G7 Power and Moto E4. I've never had a (regular) problem with FF crashing on any of my Android phones.
- Glyptodon 7y ago
  Do you have a link about this?
  - lightedman 7y ago
    No, I'm a BGA repair tech that has had to deal with the bad RAM chips on that model of phone, among others. The RAM will appear to pass hardware checking in our testers, but you hit it hard and suddenly the frequency becomes unstable, often dropping down to DDR1 speeds. Plenty of room for error, there.
    - Pxtl 7y ago
      Ugh, I'd suspected something like that because it behaves very badly sometimes, but it's intermittent. Is there any recommended test for this? Or is it too ephemeral to test for?
      - lightedman 7y ago
        You need a dedicated BGA removal/reflow tool (like a Metcal) a compatible RAM board to mount the removed BGA upon for insertion into a RAM tester, then you need a hardware RAM tester like RAMCHECK LX. That's an expensive set of kit.

free652 7y ago

Using firefox for the last year. It's slower , bloatted - 3 or more GB ram used. And the last update is forcing dns over https that for some reasons keeps get reenabled all the time. Constant issues with ssl handshake. I am almost ready to go back to Chrome.

yoasif_ 7y ago
> And the last update is forcing dns over https that for some reasons keeps get reenabled all the time. That isn't true -- there's something else going on. Is DoH enabled in preferences? How are you verifying this - have you seen https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-dns-over-https https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-dns-over-https ?

downtide 7y ago

I can't seem to right scroll under firefox. What am I doing wrong?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

alexfromapex 7y ago

Already made the switch as well

molteanu 7y ago

> the Android version of Firefox is excellent Keeps crashing on me daily, multiple times even.

shubidubi 7y ago

I'm using Firefox for a while now (both on desktop and mobile) and I love it. The only missing part for me on Android is that Firefox doesn't open native apps (YouTube, maps, Instagram etc..) when you open a link. The integration with built in apps like chrome has is not there.

sorenjan 7y ago
It's really annoying. If you have a matching app installed there's an Android icon in the URL bar to open it in that app instead, but it's an extra step.
- jackewiehose 7y ago
  I'm glad it behaves like that because for me it's really annoying when the browser throws me out to another app (especially youtube, which is so much better with adblock in the browser).
  - shubidubi 7y ago
    Maps is the main app that I wish would open automatically. Each time someone shares a location with me or if I need to drive somewhere it's very lengthy to open the native app. Sometimes the address doesn't stick and I need to type it again.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    I wish it was configurable per app. For example, having YouTube links stays in Firefox, but have links to the Play Store apps open within the app.
AJ007 7y ago
That could be a feature.
cycomanic 7y ago
I highly recommend Firefox preview. It's really fast, no ads and trackers blocked without extensions. They also put the address bar at the bottom which is so much better.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

I’m really surprised no one is mentioning the new chromium-based MS Edge (still in Beta). They removed all the Google tracking and login nonsense, and it’s fast. Edge Beta on macOS has been my daily driver (and dev browser) for a month (switched to it from Firefox, actually), and my only gripe is the extension story isn’t yet complete. The MS store only has a few extensions, and you have to jump through a couple of hoops to install from the Chrome store.

tyingq 7y ago
Any idea if MS is going to skip the manifest v3 changes that will kill uBlock Origin next year?
tass 7y ago
I’m avoiding it because I don’t want Blink to be the only engine around.
- zbraniecki 7y ago
  Thank you.
Darvon 7y ago
You're surprised geeks are talking about open source over microsoft?
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  To be fair, that’s a bit of a false dichotomy when it comes to the new MS Edge (or any other modern browser, for that matter). It’s open source as well.

ravenstine 7y ago

Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome, and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each other. It's one of the best reasons to switch to Firefox, in my opinion.

chipperyman573 7y ago
Chrome has something similar built in called profiles, each profile is a unique session (like incognito except it persists)
- angrygoat 7y ago
  Unless something has changed, the Chrome functionality associates an entire window with a particular profile. Firefox lets you have tabs in different containers, colour coded and all in the same window. I find this much nicer to use.
- fanf2 7y ago
  If chrome profiles are anything like Firefox profiles then they are a lot more heavyweight than container tabs
greyfox 7y ago
is this just for windows/linux (desktop) installs of firefox? or is android included in this feature?
- cosmic_ape 7y ago
  Containers were not supported on Android last time I checked, a few month ago. No containers on iOS also. One more problem is that containers are an addon and do not sync between Firefoxes on different desktops. Still extremely useful though.
- 9034725985 7y ago
  No support for Android (yet). Install this Facebook container [1] on the desktop. A request: I run Firefox nightly [2] as my main browser and would like to request everyone to consider using a pre-release version of Firefox if possible. It helps us make the argument that Mozilla should not run experiments in Firefox stable. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/

kettlecorn 7y ago

I used Firefox before Chrome and have tried to swap numerous times in the past (and have been using it for the last few weeks). Advocates for Firefox often say "Firefox is better, just try switching!" yet when people point out reasons it's not better the response is "Oh those don't matter, you're just being nitpicky!" But it's not a very gentle push back, it's forceful. In this thread someone says "I don't like how much ram Firefox uses" and the response is > I don't know why people choose their browser based on resource usage. and > Exactly. Come on, we're engineers we understand basic tradeoffs. Firefox, as a product, has many issues when compared to Chrome. Why does everyone spend so much of their breath arguing against the real concerns and problems people have with it? Chrome has been getting worse in lots of major ways, Firefox has a chance to be the better product for a wider audience. But Firefox won't become better with a culture of downvoting and arguing against criticism rather than trying to understand it. This is not the culture of Mozilla as far as I know, but it's the culture of many Firefox advocates all across the internet.

gmueckl 7y ago
This is a pattern that shows up in other contexts as well. Linux on the desktop, git etc. have communities of advicates that tend to dismiss complaints and criticism far too strongly. That isn't to say that there are more reasonable people in these communities - there are plenty - but the forceful pushback is very visible and tends to be quite offputting.
- kettlecorn 7y ago
  Yes, those absolutely feel similar. It's a real shame because I think it holds back those communities and products enormously. The person who takes the time to complain isn't an enemy, they're making an effort to bring something to attention for the community. You want more complainers instead of people silently rejecting your community and product. The 'argue against the messenger' first reaction of many projects creates insular communities and insular communities create worse products.
Darvon 7y ago
It's no skin off my nose if you want to feed Google, but personally I have no idea what you're talking about as there's never been something I couldn't do on firefox.

alistproducer2 7y ago

I switched (back) to firefox after the quantum update and havent looked back. I haven't used chrome in years so im not able to compare performance but I've had nice issues in that department with ff. I use brave for mobile.

vast 7y ago

I only use chrome when I need access to my google account (gmail), so my FF is completely disconnected from my google account. FF is really on par with chrome for me, with the exception of few extreme performance applications like webgl.

visarga 7y ago

> switch to Firefox as my main web browser. It's faster What platform are you referring to? Is it faster on macs too?

burtonator 7y ago

Firefox is really dying compared to Chrome but I honestly think this is going to cause it to rebound. People aren't going to be happy without uBlock and Ad Block... Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. What's a NEW Google product that you actually like (that they didn't acquire)? They literally CAN NOT build new products that people like. ... all their hardware products suck. New things like Google Allo exist for like a year and then they are killed. It seems like they give a half-assed attempt at creating new products as a way to keep skilled talent at Google rather than having them leave to work for Facebook or Apple. They're actually DECENT at large acquisitions but that's the only thing that's saved them. It's really a shame because Chrome is actually a GREAT browser but I won't use it without ad blocking. I've already migrated to Firefox on my phone and it's been pretty great so far. It also supports extensions on mobile which is huge!

fwip 7y ago
Their phones are pretty darn good.
klyrs 7y ago
> Google has been REALLY dropping the ball in the last 2-5 years. Nope, they're in the advertising biz now. They aren't so much "dropping the ball" as playing a ballgame (extremely well) that you dislike (because it's harmful and exploitative and destroys the tools you love). They're just a new microsoft. Or since they're in a particular phase of that development, let's say a new M$. Embrace, extend, exploit.
denton-scratch 7y ago
"What's a NEW Google product that you actually like" Robots that kill people? Come on, there are people that think that's cool.
NelsonMinar 7y ago
Not sure what you mean about Firefox dying; the software is the best it's ever been, relative to other browsers. The market numbers are still down though.

hyh1048576 7y ago

I tried several times to use Firefox as my default browser, but eventually I switched back to Chrome, due to some weird issues I got at some sites. I still hate what Google is doing for Chrome and I'm now using a dual browser strategy... I use Firefox and Chrome at the same time, with a preference to Firefox.

yoasif_ 7y ago
> I tried several times to use Firefox as my default browser, but eventually I switched back to Chrome, due to some weird issues I got at some sites. You can report those issues to https://webcompat.com https://webcompat.com -- if they are Firefox issues, they will be logged and hopefully fixed.

tjpnz 7y ago

I switched to Firefox for Android after several attempts by DoubleClick to infect my device with malware. Funnily enough Chrome does ship with a setting which makes this kind of hijacking a lot harder. It was off by default and hidden in an obscure menu that wasn't accessible via the UI. Enabling it for everyone would probably lose them too much ad revenue I suspect.

wipash 7y ago
Could you please share what this setting is, and how to access it?
- tjpnz 7y ago
  It was one of the options under chrome://flags and I don't recall which - this was more than 6 months ago now.

colshrapnel 7y ago

Firefox Focus is also a thing. A permanent incognito mode browser is an ideal candidate for the default browser position.

aninteger 7y ago

There are some sites that don't work well in Firefox, like Cisco's WebEx. The web client will disconnect and reconnect causing everyone to constantly hear a disconnect and entry beep when your audio cuts out. On Chromium there is no problem on the same machine. This is on Xubuntu Linux.

Santosh83 7y ago
Maybe you can report it with this tool? https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/

Numberwang 7y ago

Firefox is slower. Don't lie.

lordnacho 7y ago

I've been trying to do this but for some odd reason it's really slow on Mac. Been trying to figure out why but I don't see any solutions. Perhaps someone here knows.

nilkn 7y ago

Firefox also offers the Tree Style Tab extension. If you’re working with limited screen real estate (e.g., smaller laptop) it may not be ideal, but on a full-sized monitor browsing the internet without it feels downright antiquated. My hierarchy of browsers looks like this. FF is my default, along with an extensive suite of security and privacy extensions including uBlock Origin. Very rarely, I’ll encounter an issue with a site, and I’ll fall back to Brave. Exceptionally rarely, I’ll fall back from Brave to Chrome, but I can’t remember right now the last time I needed to do that.

mwcampbell 7y ago

I like Mozilla's principles in theory, but this warning from the user guide for GrapheneOS [1] (successor to CopperheadOS) is alarming, and applies to more than just Android: > Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox runs as a single process on mobile and has no sandbox beyond the OS sandbox. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux, where it can hardly be considered a sandbox at all) and lacks support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. So, despite concerns about monoculture, I guess Chromium-based browsers other than Chrome are the most practical solution for now. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/usage https://grapheneos.org/usage

roca 7y ago
The Linux desktop Firefox sandbox is pretty strong AFAICT. All the usual namespace protection, pretty good seccomp filter. I wonder what the issue they're referring to is and whether that comment is up to date (the sandbox has improved a lot over the last few years). The WebView argument is basically an argument for monoculture: you should only have one browser engine installed because that's less attack surface than two, and since Chromium must be installed for reasons, it must be Chromium. That's actually kind of a weak argument since it's not that common for users to load a specific attack in both browser engines.

Rapzid 7y ago

So this is timely. I was just testing out something I'm working out that creates, uh.. A LOT of DOM elements. Original dev work was in Chrome and I went over to Win 10 to test other browers. I was COMPLETELY blown away by how much faster FireFox was at recomputing layout.