7 ms·

I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the defa

by f055 6y ago

I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the default one used by the 99% of its users.

Silhouette 6y ago
Being highly user-configurable used to be the best reason to use Firefox, but Mozilla seem to be have become openly hostile towards that flexibility in recent times, even when it made the experience far worse for lots of users. These days, being probably more trustworthy when it comes to privacy and phoning home is more-or-less the only benefit Firefox has compared to just using Chrome/Safari/Edge that comes out of the box with your device.
- robbyt 6y ago
  Supporting all that flexibility is challenging for development, and could cause issues for the end user. I can imagine that people over-customize Firefox, forget about their changes, then have bugs, finally abandon Firefox thinking it's unstable.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    No doubt some people do. On the other hand, that flexibility was Firefox's main selling point. Even today, there are several things I used to use on a frequent basis that are missing or limited because the Quantum changes broke so many add-ons. The equivalent functionality hasn't been or in some cases can't be implemented by add-ons using the new APIs instead. I'm a programmer. I understand the technical arguments for why they wanted to make the internal changes. But when you are dumping your #1 competitive advantage because of technical details, it's probably time to start asking some tough questions.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      Being fair, they dumped their #1 competitive advantage in order to relieve their #1 competitive disadvantage - keeping XUL made desperately needed performance improvements impossible to implement. Calling that "technical details" rather understates the case.
      - Silhouette 6y ago
        FWIW, I didn't find Firefox noticeably slow on any device I was using before, nor did I notice any big speed up after those changes. I understand that others had varying experiences, but unfortunately I can't relate to them at all myself.
        throwanem 6y ago
        The only time pre-e10s Firefox performed well was anecdotally, in threads relating to pre-e10s Firefox not performing well.
        Silhouette 6y ago
        That might be your experience; I have no reason to doubt you. Mine is that no-one I know personally ever expressed any dissatisfaction with the speed of Firefox before anyway, and the only time people complain about the performance of pre-e10s Firefox is when they're trying to justify all the broken useful functionality that was caused by the change.
        throwanem 6y ago
        You're right that people weren't all that likely to complain loudly about Firefox's pre-e10s performance. Much more often, they just quietly switched to Chrome.
        Silhouette 6y ago
        You're making a significant assumption there. Let's not pretend that people only switch to Chrome because of some perception about performance. If that were the main or only reason, shouldn't lots of people have switched to Firefox later, if Quantum made it so much faster?
Hamuko 6y ago
Firefox comes pretty much broken out of the box if you don't use config flags.
- coldpie 6y ago
  Hmm? The only pref I change is "image.animation_mode=none" to disable animated GIFs and videos, and I can understand why they don't set that to the default. What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Do you really think most users feel the same way you do?
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Firefox uses a self-made fullscreen implementation by default on macOS, which is buggy and causes menubar issues. Firefox has code to use the macOS native fullscreen feature, but it's actually hidden behind "full-screen-api.macos-native-full-screen" about:config flag. So if you're on macOS and want to fullscreen something on another monitor (and actually have it work proper), you need to figure out that the fix is hidden there.
    - coldpie 6y ago
      Surely you can understand that an issue in a platform-specific implementation of a fairly obscure feature doesn't really support your assertion that it is "broken out of the box". It's likely that config option is not set by default because it's known to be buggy in some other way. You can read some discussion of this setting here, which has seen some activity in the past year, so it is being worked on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085
      - Hamuko 6y ago
        A fairly obscure feature, what? Fullscreen is a fairly obscure feature?
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
forgotpwd16 6y ago
I don't even know how default Firefox looks like. For all the changes going on, my configuration seems to persist fine.

by f055 6y ago

I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the default one used by the 99% of its users.

Silhouette 6y ago

Being highly user-configurable used to be the best reason to use Firefox, but Mozilla seem to be have become openly hostile towards that flexibility in recent times, even when it made the experience far worse for lots of users. These days, being probably more trustworthy when it comes to privacy and phoning home is more-or-less the only benefit Firefox has compared to just using Chrome/Safari/Edge that comes out of the box with your device.

robbyt 6y ago
Supporting all that flexibility is challenging for development, and could cause issues for the end user. I can imagine that people over-customize Firefox, forget about their changes, then have bugs, finally abandon Firefox thinking it's unstable.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  No doubt some people do. On the other hand, that flexibility was Firefox's main selling point. Even today, there are several things I used to use on a frequent basis that are missing or limited because the Quantum changes broke so many add-ons. The equivalent functionality hasn't been or in some cases can't be implemented by add-ons using the new APIs instead. I'm a programmer. I understand the technical arguments for why they wanted to make the internal changes. But when you are dumping your #1 competitive advantage because of technical details, it's probably time to start asking some tough questions.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Being fair, they dumped their #1 competitive advantage in order to relieve their #1 competitive disadvantage - keeping XUL made desperately needed performance improvements impossible to implement. Calling that "technical details" rather understates the case.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      FWIW, I didn't find Firefox noticeably slow on any device I was using before, nor did I notice any big speed up after those changes. I understand that others had varying experiences, but unfortunately I can't relate to them at all myself.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        The only time pre-e10s Firefox performed well was anecdotally, in threads relating to pre-e10s Firefox not performing well.
        Silhouette 6y ago
        That might be your experience; I have no reason to doubt you. Mine is that no-one I know personally ever expressed any dissatisfaction with the speed of Firefox before anyway, and the only time people complain about the performance of pre-e10s Firefox is when they're trying to justify all the broken useful functionality that was caused by the change.
        throwanem 6y ago
        You're right that people weren't all that likely to complain loudly about Firefox's pre-e10s performance. Much more often, they just quietly switched to Chrome.
        Silhouette 6y ago
        You're making a significant assumption there. Let's not pretend that people only switch to Chrome because of some perception about performance. If that were the main or only reason, shouldn't lots of people have switched to Firefox later, if Quantum made it so much faster?

Hamuko 6y ago

Firefox comes pretty much broken out of the box if you don't use config flags.

coldpie 6y ago
Hmm? The only pref I change is "image.animation_mode=none" to disable animated GIFs and videos, and I can understand why they don't set that to the default. What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Do you really think most users feel the same way you do?
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Firefox uses a self-made fullscreen implementation by default on macOS, which is buggy and causes menubar issues. Firefox has code to use the macOS native fullscreen feature, but it's actually hidden behind "full-screen-api.macos-native-full-screen" about:config flag. So if you're on macOS and want to fullscreen something on another monitor (and actually have it work proper), you need to figure out that the fix is hidden there.
  - coldpie 6y ago
    Surely you can understand that an issue in a platform-specific implementation of a fairly obscure feature doesn't really support your assertion that it is "broken out of the box". It's likely that config option is not set by default because it's known to be buggy in some other way. You can read some discussion of this setting here, which has seen some activity in the past year, so it is being worked on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      A fairly obscure feature, what? Fullscreen is a fairly obscure feature?
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago

forgotpwd16 6y ago

I don't even know how default Firefox looks like. For all the changes going on, my configuration seems to persist fine.