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Scripting News: Where I'm at with Firefox

13 points by apievangelist 15y ago

mestudent 15y ago
I try every new firefox release for at least a week, and to be honest I haven't seen an advantage of using it since chrome came out. It is just way too slow[1], it may have better extensions better adblocking and a regular ui but it just can't compete. [1] Slow in both snappiness and perceived rendering compared to chrome, firefox also still likes to crash or freeze on me which rarely happens with chrome even though I run the dev channel.
- oconnore 15y ago
  I haven't had a crash yet in FF5 or 4 (flash crashed several times but did not bring down the browser). Also, I notice about 0 rendering delay.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    What about "terminal unresponsiveness" in which the browser stay very unresponsive until you shut it down?
    - starwed 15y ago
      I don't think I've seen that in Firefox since they shunted Flash into a different process, which was a couple of years ago.
      - zobzu 15y ago
        Many people actually like to blame Firefox for imaginary problems since it's not the new kid on the block anymore. Likewise, IE9 ain't bad. This explains that ;-)
        starwed 15y ago
        My favorite complaint is that firefox has become slower and more bloated over time. I'd like to see such folk browse today's web with the original version of FF... :) The average webpage today is way more complicated than 10 years ago.
    - oconnore 15y ago
      Not that either. Sorry for the short response, but I think that answers your question. It works great! You should try it :)
      - hollerith 15y ago
        I've been using it -- on Linux and on OS X. I'm guessing that if I got more RAM, the "terminal unresponsiveness" would mostly go away. I've got only a gig in my old Macbook.
  - mestudent 15y ago
    Are you using linux, linux seems like a secondhand citizen with regards to firefox and that is where I see all my problems. I don't know if crashing is the right word but it does become completely unresponsive often enough that it is noticeable and annoying. (Unresponsive as in it has to be killed to regain functionality.)
    - oconnore 15y ago
      Ubuntu, yes.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
>I think Google is a troubled company and very large and very rich, and likely to use their browser in power plays against their competitors, with little regard for users. I like to look for the best in Google, but I found this baseless assertion... to be rather baseless, especially given (my perception) of the quality of Chrome and what it has done for the web in the last two short years. As a Chrome-convert, I enjoy watching people stray away from Firefox 3.6.x only to go sprinting back when they're an inch out of their comfort zone. If all you know is FF4, 5 and Aurora... I can see why auto-updating, cutting-edge would be terrifying. Author, I invite you, download Chrome, get on the Dev channel. You'll never have an extension that breaks, no modal dialog boxes on every boot checking compatibility. Fast-updating doesn't have to mean unstable... but I certainly understand why you feel that way. Mozilla is in the process of converting to a nimbler and lighter development and release cycle. They're not very good at it so far, in my opinion (I'm also a jaded Linux user, though).
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- zobzu 15y ago
  Unfortunately you do sound like a Chrome dev or promoter. Chrome's way ain't bad. Firefox way ain't bad, and it's their first iteration of their new development and release strategy. Firefox's extension incompatibility comes from something that is important to understand: Firefox can be 100.00% modified using extensions, including the start-up mechanism, everything. Chrome cannot do that. Most Firefox extensions are written that way, mostly because of Firefox's history (extensions were only doable that way for a long time). The drawback is such control require browser restart and compatibility check and there is NO possible way around that. Firefox also supports on-the-fly extensions which do not require restart or anything like that - like Chrome. However, like Chrome they also allow lesser control and thus these are not very widely used, at least, yet. Firefox nighties, Aurora, and beta are also far from unstable. It's rare for nighties to ever break, and I've been using them for a decade. It never happened to any other channel. In fact, that's one strong point of Firefox vs Chrome. Chrome is not actually very stable. It usually doesn't matter too much as tabs are per process and can be easily reloaded or reopened when Chrome crashes so I find it mostly ok. But the bottom line is that Chrome annoys me by crashing every now and then. Firefox nearly NEVER crashes (once a year?). I would however agree that Firefox is a lot faster and slicker on Windows than any other platform, that said, it's not so bad on OSX and Linux. In comparison Chrome is mostly identically good on these 3 platforms.
Macha 15y ago
What was called from x.y to x.y+1 is now x to x+1. Did Mozilla continue support for 3.5 for long after the 3.6 release? I don't see what the fuss is unless you're equating version numbers to progress, which is the wrong thing to do. That said, they could throw a bone to enterprise and so on by copying the idea of Long Term Support versions for those IT departments that are more used to meaningful version numbers.
ColemanF 15y ago
Interesting discussion, but why is there a picture of Joe Montana on Winer's post?
peterbraden 15y ago
At first I thought this article was a parody of the enterprise browser upgrade rationale. But then I realised it was serious. How can someone who works with web technology not realise the downsides not upgrading browsers causes? I mean, IE6...

13 points by apievangelist 15y ago

I try every new firefox release for at least a week, and to be honest I haven't seen an advantage of using it since chrome came out. It is just way too slow[1], it may have better extensions better adblocking and a regular ui but it just can't compete. [1] Slow in both snappiness and perceived rendering compared to chrome, firefox also still likes to crash or freeze on me which rarely happens with chrome even though I run the dev channel.

oconnore 15y ago
I haven't had a crash yet in FF5 or 4 (flash crashed several times but did not bring down the browser). Also, I notice about 0 rendering delay.
- hollerith 15y ago
  What about "terminal unresponsiveness" in which the browser stay very unresponsive until you shut it down?
  - starwed 15y ago
    I don't think I've seen that in Firefox since they shunted Flash into a different process, which was a couple of years ago.
    - zobzu 15y ago
      Many people actually like to blame Firefox for imaginary problems since it's not the new kid on the block anymore. Likewise, IE9 ain't bad. This explains that ;-)
      - starwed 15y ago
        My favorite complaint is that firefox has become slower and more bloated over time. I'd like to see such folk browse today's web with the original version of FF... :) The average webpage today is way more complicated than 10 years ago.
  - oconnore 15y ago
    Not that either. Sorry for the short response, but I think that answers your question. It works great! You should try it :)
    - hollerith 15y ago
      I've been using it -- on Linux and on OS X. I'm guessing that if I got more RAM, the "terminal unresponsiveness" would mostly go away. I've got only a gig in my old Macbook.
- mestudent 15y ago
  Are you using linux, linux seems like a secondhand citizen with regards to firefox and that is where I see all my problems. I don't know if crashing is the right word but it does become completely unresponsive often enough that it is noticeable and annoying. (Unresponsive as in it has to be killed to regain functionality.)
  - oconnore 15y ago
    Ubuntu, yes.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

>I think Google is a troubled company and very large and very rich, and likely to use their browser in power plays against their competitors, with little regard for users. I like to look for the best in Google, but I found this baseless assertion... to be rather baseless, especially given (my perception) of the quality of Chrome and what it has done for the web in the last two short years. As a Chrome-convert, I enjoy watching people stray away from Firefox 3.6.x only to go sprinting back when they're an inch out of their comfort zone. If all you know is FF4, 5 and Aurora... I can see why auto-updating, cutting-edge would be terrifying. Author, I invite you, download Chrome, get on the Dev channel. You'll never have an extension that breaks, no modal dialog boxes on every boot checking compatibility. Fast-updating doesn't have to mean unstable... but I certainly understand why you feel that way. Mozilla is in the process of converting to a nimbler and lighter development and release cycle. They're not very good at it so far, in my opinion (I'm also a jaded Linux user, though).

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
zobzu 15y ago
Unfortunately you do sound like a Chrome dev or promoter. Chrome's way ain't bad. Firefox way ain't bad, and it's their first iteration of their new development and release strategy. Firefox's extension incompatibility comes from something that is important to understand: Firefox can be 100.00% modified using extensions, including the start-up mechanism, everything. Chrome cannot do that. Most Firefox extensions are written that way, mostly because of Firefox's history (extensions were only doable that way for a long time). The drawback is such control require browser restart and compatibility check and there is NO possible way around that. Firefox also supports on-the-fly extensions which do not require restart or anything like that - like Chrome. However, like Chrome they also allow lesser control and thus these are not very widely used, at least, yet. Firefox nighties, Aurora, and beta are also far from unstable. It's rare for nighties to ever break, and I've been using them for a decade. It never happened to any other channel. In fact, that's one strong point of Firefox vs Chrome. Chrome is not actually very stable. It usually doesn't matter too much as tabs are per process and can be easily reloaded or reopened when Chrome crashes so I find it mostly ok. But the bottom line is that Chrome annoys me by crashing every now and then. Firefox nearly NEVER crashes (once a year?). I would however agree that Firefox is a lot faster and slicker on Windows than any other platform, that said, it's not so bad on OSX and Linux. In comparison Chrome is mostly identically good on these 3 platforms.

Macha 15y ago

What was called from x.y to x.y+1 is now x to x+1. Did Mozilla continue support for 3.5 for long after the 3.6 release? I don't see what the fuss is unless you're equating version numbers to progress, which is the wrong thing to do. That said, they could throw a bone to enterprise and so on by copying the idea of Long Term Support versions for those IT departments that are more used to meaningful version numbers.

ColemanF 15y ago

Interesting discussion, but why is there a picture of Joe Montana on Winer's post?

peterbraden 15y ago

At first I thought this article was a parody of the enterprise browser upgrade rationale. But then I realised it was serious. How can someone who works with web technology not realise the downsides not upgrading browsers causes? I mean, IE6...