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Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns use

Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns used by microsoft and google to steer users toward their own browsers, it's an uphill battle. I'll stick firefox and appropriate extensions on a friends computer so they can watch youtube etc completely ad free, which is a major tangible QOL improvement, but then find them watching ads in ms edge a few days later without having realized.

leadingthenet 6y ago
It's definitely not the best browser on macOS.
- only_friends 6y ago
  or in Windows
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    I’ll have to disagree there. It’s by far the best on Windows.
    - 1_player 6y ago
      Agreed with you, the best Firefox experience is on Windows. Hardware acceleration is on point, always very snappy rendering with no lag. Can't say the same about FF on macOS or Linux, where the experience is worse. Support for CoreAnimation compositing was added last year. Support for hardware acceleration on Linux was added this week.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    I think it's for non default scaling.
    - leadingthenet 6y ago
      And the non-standard UI, the weird animations, the increased power consumption, the general non-macOS-ness of it all.
soperj 6y ago
That's when you change the edge icons in the shortcut bar and on the desktop to point to firefox.
celsoazevedo 6y ago
I don't know about Windows or Linux, but on Mac it's far from the best browser. It uses more resources (power/battery, memory, etc) than Safari (and sometimes Chrome[ium]), the UI is a mix of old and new code, and system integration is worse than Safari and Chrome. I use it, but both Chromium and Safari are better on this platform.
- Yaggo 6y ago
  It's not that Firefox isn't an excellent browser on its own, but on macOS Safari rises the bar very high if you care about details (most people don't).
  - recursive 6y ago
    How's that? It seems to be the least standards-compliant browser with any significant user share.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      Yes, Safari is the most buggy browser in common use other than IE11. It's also the one that uses the least battery life, it's standards-compliant enough to render most web pages, and it's the only option on iOS.
      - Yaggo 6y ago
        > It's also the one that uses the least battery life Battery life has always been very top priority for Apple. That's the reason why Apple stopped supporting Flash and basically killed it (thank gosh).
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - Yaggo 6y ago
      It's somewhat a myth that Safari is less standard-compliant. True, Safari's release cycle is slower and Apple has the motivation to prevent PWAs to become too good, but in many things Safari has always been very innovative browser. Built on top of KHTML foundation, it then became webkit and later the most successfull engine. It was the first to implement full ES6 support, and basically invented CSS transformations/transitions (really amazing stuff back then but not really used until all major browsers caught up years later), was the first to ditch Flash support, has argueably the best privacy policy, has superb font rendering, etc.
Causality1 6y ago
For me Firefox has been chasing the Chrome market share by trying to replicate the Chrome user experience for so long it's no longer distinct from Chrome in a meaningful way. Give me the Firefox experience from ten years ago and I'll drop Chrome on the spot.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  So, slow? I switched from FF to Chrome back then because Chrome was much faster. Before Quantum, FF couldn’t hold a candle to Chrome performance-wise. Disclaimer: For my use-case, which did not include having 1000 tabs open forever.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    Slow and does what you need it to do beats fast while not doing what you need it to do.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
I disagree. I've had so many issues with the Firefox Developer edition I stopped using it and have switched to Opera for my browsing needs. Way more reliable, doesn't constantly hang and time out, and isn't a total resource hog like Firefox has become.
- capitainenemo 6y ago
  Speaking from personal experience doing user support in firefox IRC channel on freenode and formerly moznet, the vast majority of "resource hog" complaints are due to the user running AdBlock with a million block rules (or some similar addon). Occasionally it is a particular long running website with JS memory leaks though. Like a gmail pinned tab. In terms of performance, until recently a common issue was lack of default graphics acceleration on linux, requiring manually enabling layers.acceleration.force-enabled
  - hermanradtke 6y ago
    How can someone determine this? I wonder Firefox itself does not tell me the resource issues are due to an extension.
    - gravitas 6y ago
      Firefox has a suite of `about:` URLs[1], one of them is about:performance which will show you the Task Manager (their name) which has a sort of CPU and RAM column. It even shows you when it's javascript on a tab chewing up resources and not the extension. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/The_about_protocol https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/The...
      - dblohm7 6y ago
        about:about is the fastest way to look these up. :-)
      - capitainenemo 6y ago
dleslie 6y ago
Firefox isn't even the best browser on Linux. On my aarch64 devices, Chromium in a Docker image loads faster, never dominates the CPU, renders video and websites faster, and has working DRM. Firefox is slower in every respect and can't render Netflix.
- troyvit 6y ago
  Really? Firefox works fine with netflix on my pop_os laptop.
  - cpeterso 6y ago
    GP is talking about aarch64 Linux laptops, and IIUC Pop_OS uses x86_64.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    The key is `aarch64` ;)
- lutoma 6y ago
  I don't think you can make a blanket statement like this. My experience has been almost the opposite, Chrome always uses significantly more CPU for me. I think it really depends on hardware, drivers etc.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Opposite experience. For starters, Chromium doesn't even support video hardware decoding on Wayland properly.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    That's unfair. Not even Emacs master works under Wayland. It's nowhere near a replacement for X.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      > It's nowhere near a replacement for X. It is for me and many others. Emacs works great under XWayland but Chromium HW video acceleration doesn't. Emacs is a community project whereas Chromium has billions poured into it. Even Wine's getting Wayland support now and that ran under XWayland fine. I don't think it's that unfair. Firefox on Linux is just better. Leaves some to be desired, sure, but a lot less than Chromium.
js8 6y ago
> The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. How can most people not know it exists, when it had a majority user share at some point?
EpicEng 6y ago
>Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. I used FF for years before switching to chrome when it came out. Every attempt I've made since to switch back (windows and macOS) as been a disaster. Hogging resources, pages that skip around while scrolling, and rendering issues (perhaps GPU related) are a few of the numerous issues I've run into. I try to switch back to FF about twice a year. I'm going on about a eight years with no success.
zomglings 6y ago
Using Firefox every day, somewhat on principle. The experience is nowhere as good as Chrome. It takes FOREVER after starting Firefox to load saved tabs -- like 30 seconds to 1 minute of delay before the first tab starts to load. Recently, it also has been updating quietly in the background and FORCING me to restart Firefox to view any content. I'm sure there's a setting I can change somewhere that makes it require manual updates. That should be the default.

leadingthenet 6y ago

It's definitely not the best browser on macOS.

only_friends 6y ago
or in Windows
- Semaphor 6y ago
  I’ll have to disagree there. It’s by far the best on Windows.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Agreed with you, the best Firefox experience is on Windows. Hardware acceleration is on point, always very snappy rendering with no lag. Can't say the same about FF on macOS or Linux, where the experience is worse. Support for CoreAnimation compositing was added last year. Support for hardware acceleration on Linux was added this week.
bosswipe 6y ago
It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I think it's for non default scaling.
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    And the non-standard UI, the weird animations, the increased power consumption, the general non-macOS-ness of it all.

soperj 6y ago

That's when you change the edge icons in the shortcut bar and on the desktop to point to firefox.

celsoazevedo 6y ago

I don't know about Windows or Linux, but on Mac it's far from the best browser. It uses more resources (power/battery, memory, etc) than Safari (and sometimes Chrome[ium]), the UI is a mix of old and new code, and system integration is worse than Safari and Chrome. I use it, but both Chromium and Safari are better on this platform.

Yaggo 6y ago
It's not that Firefox isn't an excellent browser on its own, but on macOS Safari rises the bar very high if you care about details (most people don't).
- recursive 6y ago
  How's that? It seems to be the least standards-compliant browser with any significant user share.
  - notriddle 6y ago
    Yes, Safari is the most buggy browser in common use other than IE11. It's also the one that uses the least battery life, it's standards-compliant enough to render most web pages, and it's the only option on iOS.
    - Yaggo 6y ago
      > It's also the one that uses the least battery life Battery life has always been very top priority for Apple. That's the reason why Apple stopped supporting Flash and basically killed it (thank gosh).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - Yaggo 6y ago
    It's somewhat a myth that Safari is less standard-compliant. True, Safari's release cycle is slower and Apple has the motivation to prevent PWAs to become too good, but in many things Safari has always been very innovative browser. Built on top of KHTML foundation, it then became webkit and later the most successfull engine. It was the first to implement full ES6 support, and basically invented CSS transformations/transitions (really amazing stuff back then but not really used until all major browsers caught up years later), was the first to ditch Flash support, has argueably the best privacy policy, has superb font rendering, etc.

Causality1 6y ago

For me Firefox has been chasing the Chrome market share by trying to replicate the Chrome user experience for so long it's no longer distinct from Chrome in a meaningful way. Give me the Firefox experience from ten years ago and I'll drop Chrome on the spot.

Semaphor 6y ago
So, slow? I switched from FF to Chrome back then because Chrome was much faster. Before Quantum, FF couldn’t hold a candle to Chrome performance-wise. Disclaimer: For my use-case, which did not include having 1000 tabs open forever.
- Causality1 6y ago
  Slow and does what you need it to do beats fast while not doing what you need it to do.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

I disagree. I've had so many issues with the Firefox Developer edition I stopped using it and have switched to Opera for my browsing needs. Way more reliable, doesn't constantly hang and time out, and isn't a total resource hog like Firefox has become.

capitainenemo 6y ago
Speaking from personal experience doing user support in firefox IRC channel on freenode and formerly moznet, the vast majority of "resource hog" complaints are due to the user running AdBlock with a million block rules (or some similar addon). Occasionally it is a particular long running website with JS memory leaks though. Like a gmail pinned tab. In terms of performance, until recently a common issue was lack of default graphics acceleration on linux, requiring manually enabling layers.acceleration.force-enabled
- hermanradtke 6y ago
  How can someone determine this? I wonder Firefox itself does not tell me the resource issues are due to an extension.
  - gravitas 6y ago
    Firefox has a suite of `about:` URLs[1], one of them is about:performance which will show you the Task Manager (their name) which has a sort of CPU and RAM column. It even shows you when it's javascript on a tab chewing up resources and not the extension. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/The_about_protocol https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/The...
    - dblohm7 6y ago
      about:about is the fastest way to look these up. :-)
    - capitainenemo 6y ago

dleslie 6y ago

Firefox isn't even the best browser on Linux. On my aarch64 devices, Chromium in a Docker image loads faster, never dominates the CPU, renders video and websites faster, and has working DRM. Firefox is slower in every respect and can't render Netflix.

troyvit 6y ago
Really? Firefox works fine with netflix on my pop_os laptop.
- cpeterso 6y ago
  GP is talking about aarch64 Linux laptops, and IIUC Pop_OS uses x86_64.
- dleslie 6y ago
  The key is `aarch64` ;)
lutoma 6y ago
I don't think you can make a blanket statement like this. My experience has been almost the opposite, Chrome always uses significantly more CPU for me. I think it really depends on hardware, drivers etc.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
Opposite experience. For starters, Chromium doesn't even support video hardware decoding on Wayland properly.
- dleslie 6y ago
  That's unfair. Not even Emacs master works under Wayland. It's nowhere near a replacement for X.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    > It's nowhere near a replacement for X. It is for me and many others. Emacs works great under XWayland but Chromium HW video acceleration doesn't. Emacs is a community project whereas Chromium has billions poured into it. Even Wine's getting Wayland support now and that ran under XWayland fine. I don't think it's that unfair. Firefox on Linux is just better. Leaves some to be desired, sure, but a lot less than Chromium.

js8 6y ago

> The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. How can most people not know it exists, when it had a majority user share at some point?

EpicEng 6y ago

>Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. I used FF for years before switching to chrome when it came out. Every attempt I've made since to switch back (windows and macOS) as been a disaster. Hogging resources, pages that skip around while scrolling, and rendering issues (perhaps GPU related) are a few of the numerous issues I've run into. I try to switch back to FF about twice a year. I'm going on about a eight years with no success.

zomglings 6y ago

Using Firefox every day, somewhat on principle. The experience is nowhere as good as Chrome. It takes FOREVER after starting Firefox to load saved tabs -- like 30 seconds to 1 minute of delay before the first tab starts to load. Recently, it also has been updating quietly in the background and FORCING me to restart Firefox to view any content. I'm sure there's a setting I can change somewhere that makes it require manual updates. That should be the default.