5 ms·

When Chrome first came out it was much faster and leaner than Firefox. The gap has closed significantly in the past few years. I used Chrome as my main browser

by cbsks 7y ago

When Chrome first came out it was much faster and leaner than Firefox. The gap has closed significantly in the past few years. I used Chrome as my main browser for a year or so before switching back to Firefox. I’m glad that Firefox is now catching up again, hopefully developers will start treating Firefox as a first class browser again. Occasionally I will come across a website which was clearly only tested on Chrome.

hanoz 7y ago
It was faster for about a year. And at what cost?
- eropple 7y ago
  It was, anecdotally, faster-feeling until maybe a year and a half ago. The lack of sufficient parallelization meant that Firefox would feel sluggish and constantly freeze at the UI layer from a misbehaving website. I switched back around then, because now it's fantastic.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    Hm I have a different anecdote... Although chrome was way faster when it first came out, I switched off of chrome when writing the wrong JavaScript in chrome would cause Linux to lock up, and Firefox was sufficiently fast to not suck anymore. That was about six years ago.
- zerkten 7y ago
  The cost was huge, but Firefox is much more competitive than it was. Chrome was faster for a pretty long time and was heavily marketed. It was bundled with lots of common utilities on Windows. Then things got to the point where developers started doing the "IE thing" and only testing with Chrome. Developers were complicit in this because they repeated the same mistakes of the past. It's amazing how just a few years pass and the next wave of developers are oblivious to what came before. My move to the latest (quantum?) Firefox has been beset by horrific energy use problems on macOS. Those have only just been fixed, but things are much better now. I hope the FF team keep their focus because with Microsoft and Opera giving up on their engines we need Mozilla more than ever.
  - tekknik 7y ago
    > Then things got to the point where developers started doing the "IE thing" and only testing with Chrome. Developers were complicit in this because they repeated the same mistakes of the past. Not all developers. In fact I remember quite a few meetings where I couldn’t convince product that Safari and Firefox should be supported and ended up leaving the meeting yelling “Fine I’ll support them myself”. To this day I still test in all 3 hoping one day I can stop testing in Chrome.
- jimclegg 7y ago
  Chrome is glorified spyware, simple truth. When $GOOG gets squeezed, they always find new ways to use your data for commercial purposes.
CivBase 7y ago
I originally switched about a decade ago because Chrome was significantly more stable for me. I gave FF another shot when they released quantum. I experienced some stability issues at first, but I now consider it to be a superior browser. I use Chrome and FF simultaneously at work because Google holds hangouts for ransom and that's our enterprise IM solution. Recently, FF seems to be much more stable than Chrome. I also use FF on my smartphone and, IMO, it's a significantly better experience than Chrome. The one feature I really miss from Chrome is the ability to easily switch between browser profiles. You can use the about:profiles page on Firefox for a similar effect, but it's nowhere near as seamless as Chrome.
- spockz 7y ago
  Would account containers[0] help you with the profile issue? [0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
  - Volundr 7y ago
    These single handedly are what keeps me in Firefox. So convenient at work where I often need to be logged into the same site with a few different accounts.
kenhwang 7y ago
But Firefox always had superior and better performing AdBlock which made whatever speed advantage Chrome had pretty irrelevant. I think the draw to Chrome for developers at the time was the better built-in dev tools compared to Firebug.
andai 7y ago
On my old hardware, Chrome based browsers run significantly faster. Faster startup, significantly faster page loading. More responsive UI (new tab, new window etc). Once a web app loads it’ll be equally fast though. I keep switching back to Firefox as it’s supposedly “as fast now” but it never was, and on my hardware, it still isn’t. I gotta add to this that when it comes to ethics and privacy there is no contest. But the bulk of Mozilla’s funding coming from its arch-nemesis is tragi-comical.
tekknik 7y ago
> hopefully developers will start treating Firefox as a first class browser again I’m a webdev and we’re still fighting this one and will be for a while. Chrome has such a huge market share it’s hard to convince the decision makers to consider even Safari, much less Firefox. Please help give those of us fighting for Chrome alternatives and give us something to back up our arguments better than “But Google!!”

by cbsks 7y ago

hanoz 7y ago

It was faster for about a year. And at what cost?

eropple 7y ago
It was, anecdotally, faster-feeling until maybe a year and a half ago. The lack of sufficient parallelization meant that Firefox would feel sluggish and constantly freeze at the UI layer from a misbehaving website. I switched back around then, because now it's fantastic.
- dnautics 7y ago
  Hm I have a different anecdote... Although chrome was way faster when it first came out, I switched off of chrome when writing the wrong JavaScript in chrome would cause Linux to lock up, and Firefox was sufficiently fast to not suck anymore. That was about six years ago.
zerkten 7y ago
The cost was huge, but Firefox is much more competitive than it was. Chrome was faster for a pretty long time and was heavily marketed. It was bundled with lots of common utilities on Windows. Then things got to the point where developers started doing the "IE thing" and only testing with Chrome. Developers were complicit in this because they repeated the same mistakes of the past. It's amazing how just a few years pass and the next wave of developers are oblivious to what came before. My move to the latest (quantum?) Firefox has been beset by horrific energy use problems on macOS. Those have only just been fixed, but things are much better now. I hope the FF team keep their focus because with Microsoft and Opera giving up on their engines we need Mozilla more than ever.
- tekknik 7y ago
  > Then things got to the point where developers started doing the "IE thing" and only testing with Chrome. Developers were complicit in this because they repeated the same mistakes of the past. Not all developers. In fact I remember quite a few meetings where I couldn’t convince product that Safari and Firefox should be supported and ended up leaving the meeting yelling “Fine I’ll support them myself”. To this day I still test in all 3 hoping one day I can stop testing in Chrome.
jimclegg 7y ago
Chrome is glorified spyware, simple truth. When $GOOG gets squeezed, they always find new ways to use your data for commercial purposes.

CivBase 7y ago

I originally switched about a decade ago because Chrome was significantly more stable for me. I gave FF another shot when they released quantum. I experienced some stability issues at first, but I now consider it to be a superior browser. I use Chrome and FF simultaneously at work because Google holds hangouts for ransom and that's our enterprise IM solution. Recently, FF seems to be much more stable than Chrome. I also use FF on my smartphone and, IMO, it's a significantly better experience than Chrome. The one feature I really miss from Chrome is the ability to easily switch between browser profiles. You can use the about:profiles page on Firefox for a similar effect, but it's nowhere near as seamless as Chrome.

spockz 7y ago
Would account containers[0] help you with the profile issue? [0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
- Volundr 7y ago
  These single handedly are what keeps me in Firefox. So convenient at work where I often need to be logged into the same site with a few different accounts.

kenhwang 7y ago

But Firefox always had superior and better performing AdBlock which made whatever speed advantage Chrome had pretty irrelevant. I think the draw to Chrome for developers at the time was the better built-in dev tools compared to Firebug.

andai 7y ago

On my old hardware, Chrome based browsers run significantly faster. Faster startup, significantly faster page loading. More responsive UI (new tab, new window etc). Once a web app loads it’ll be equally fast though. I keep switching back to Firefox as it’s supposedly “as fast now” but it never was, and on my hardware, it still isn’t. I gotta add to this that when it comes to ethics and privacy there is no contest. But the bulk of Mozilla’s funding coming from its arch-nemesis is tragi-comical.

tekknik 7y ago

> hopefully developers will start treating Firefox as a first class browser again I’m a webdev and we’re still fighting this one and will be for a while. Chrome has such a huge market share it’s hard to convince the decision makers to consider even Safari, much less Firefox. Please help give those of us fighting for Chrome alternatives and give us something to back up our arguments better than “But Google!!”