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I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrate

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated. The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser. Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next?

sleavey 5y ago
Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases would have been down to Flash. Now that I think more about it, that whole time I've also blocked ads, which surely helps too.
- foepys 5y ago
  A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox' memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3 open tabs.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I wonder how many of those are actually “open” - disconnect the internet and try looking at them. I suspect many just are the URL and nothing more and on view it reloads.
    - foepys 5y ago
      Yes, Firefox unloads old unused tabs.
    - monkeybutton 5y ago
      So bookmarks but less organized and more risk of losing them all at any given moment. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about discovering the ":D" easter egg in mobile chrome.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when abused. that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine
    - johnmaguire 5y ago
      The most disappointing part of the redesign to me was that they actually REMOVED icons from menu items. It is harder to find what I'm looking for.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      can you explain what the value is of having that many tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it. what's the point?
      - agumonkey 5y ago
        There's no point. It's just a blend of laziness / hoarding / fomo
      - littlecranky67 5y ago
        There is no value to it, this is what happens when you don't know what bookmarks are for.
        agumonkey 5y ago
        Honestly I simply need an autotagger. I tried doing one a few time but never finished.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    This is just a blatant lie. Come on, man!
    - crateless 5y ago
      I can believe it. I have over 2,000 tabs open over the last year. Before the last "clean up", I had 4,000 tabs open. As GP noted, most of them are unloaded (I would say around 3/4). I have 32GB RAM, so firefox issues are a distant memory. (pun intended)
    - detaro 5y ago
      Nope, it's possible, as long as most of the tabs stay around inactive. (Sadly it doesn't handle too many tabs becoming loaded very well, so if you hit the limit it usually ends with something crashing...)
    - schwarze_pest 5y ago
      2650 tabs open right now. I'm sure I had more open in the past. No major performance impact. If I click on the "List all tabs" button it takes a second to render the list. The PC is 5 years old, not even close being state of the art.
- krylon 5y ago
  In my experience, Firefox uses a lot more memory on Windows than on Linux. It feels faster on Linux, too. The reasons might rather complex, though.
- littlecranky67 5y ago
  This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and optimize for it.
- brynjolf 5y ago
  Try using Firefox on the world's most popular streaming site Twitch.Tv and report back, let it sit there for a while and try for example use multiple streams to check different perspectives. It slows down to a halt. Also I can't for example leave Firefox alive while playong some games or it starts to create stutter in the games. I tried profiling but the Firefox profiler just hangs all the time or uses so many resources it becomes unstable ironically
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    Sounds like Twitch is allocating resources and not releasing them.
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 5y ago
Are you perhaps not using an adblocker and thereby being trapped into wrongly believing that the slowness induced by ad+tracking Javascripts is the fault of Firefox?
- csmpltn 5y ago
  I am using an adblocker.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  Let me give you another datapoint. My old uni laptop, an Intel T4400 with 4gb RAM. Both chrome and Firefox have adblock. Never ran in to a problem with Chrome, despite the wider internet calling it a memory hog. Firefox struggled after 4/5 tabs, couldn't even playback video on YouTube or Vimeo reliably.. Don't run into these issues on desktop, and the Android version seems somewhat competent. But I've lost a lot of trust in Mozilla the last few years thanks to middle management. Atleast with Google I know their motives and I'm not locked in to their platform relying on any particular proprietary thing they have.
  - abcd_f 5y ago
    For what it’s worth and based on a non-trivial sample set this is highly atypical.
    - shaan7 5y ago
      Yep. I rarely see Firefox lagging/unresponsive (~15 pinned + 3-4 normal tabs open). In the rare chances that it does, I get an option "This web page is slowing down Firefox" which lets me kill the tab and all is well again.
  - sp332 5y ago
    Poor video playback in one browser might mean that it's not configured to use the hardware decoder. I think performance there should be basically the same for video playback if they're configured the same way.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
My understanding of the current browser landscape is that you've got Firefox; browsers that build upon Google's browser engine (Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera/etc); and Safari. There are a number of good options, but very few that don't further cement Google's control over the world's browser-engine code. (Yes, I know there are some other very minor players that lag behind on features and standards support. I don't think that's what the parent commenter is looking for.)
- TheRealPomax 5y ago
  In terms of "browsers that actually matter", there's just Chrome/chromium at a combined 70% and Safari at a little over 18%. Everything else is a side mention at best and as a browser at least, is basically irrelevant on the world stage. Even if the companies behind them aren't (e.g. Mozilla or Samsung). [1] They are of course highly relevant for their user bases, but in terms of "browsers that might break the Chrome hegemony through normal competition", there are none. You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google and enact laws that forbid them from loading Chrome as default and only browser on all first and third devices associated with their brand. A few administrations ago, that might have still been a possibility, but it's not going to happen unless the EU does it first, and even then, the US might pull one of those idiotic "how dare the EU punish a US company for outcompeting everyone else" and instead enact reactionary laws that loosen the rules for them instead. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/
  - freediver 5y ago
    > You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google How about actually just making a good, competitive browser instead? Firefox is not failing because of Google's monopoly; it is failing because as a product it is unable to compete and beat Chrome where it matters. If not Mozilla, I am pretty sure somebody else will make such browser (and search engine, and email... ) eventually.
    - psee 5y ago
      Currently you can't really compete with Google's/Alphabet's market and marketing power. If you get too close, product-wise, they can just throw more money at their own product in your field. It needs political market intervention to make a dent that would count enough for others even getting a theoretical chance of getting one step ahead again. While that might be true in little web standard pieces here and there for Firefox compared to Chrome (and it certainly is vice-versa), the much smaller teams will always play catch up.
andi999 5y ago
I also want a browser that when you start it doesn't let you wait for an update. Got too impatient too often with that.
- Sayrus 5y ago
  Firefox 90.0 [1] can now update in the background on Windows. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/
prepend 5y ago
I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped for reasons similar to what you listed. I’ve really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that works (and has lots of privacy features).
- eli 5y ago
  Firefox has its own funding issues but I don’t trust a browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.
  - prepend 5y ago
    I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out. Of course, maybe it won’t work forever, but it works for now. I’m not a crypto person and don’t use Brave’s crypto features, but I think it’s a more sustainable future than relying on Google’s largess.
    - eli 5y ago
      Relying on google’s rendering engine is worse IMHO. And I think they are going to end having to pivot on funding.
    - freediver 5y ago
      > I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out. That is just the browser part. The code on their servers that actually processes the data the browser collected is closed-source. In general, browser being open or closed source has no correlation with how privacy respecting it is. Chrom{e|ium} and Edge are another examples. Pragmatically speaking there is only one thing that guarantees privacy and that is browser being zero-telemetry, regardless of if it is open source or not.
      - xtat 5y ago
        What server-side components are you referring to here? From my memory there was very little interesting private code, and I can't think of anything that would process user data that would be private.
gorhill 5y ago
> The slowness and slugishness. Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try -- oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but some extensions, external processes, or undesirable modifications in `about:config`. --- [1] https://profiler.firefox.com/ https://profiler.firefox.com/
- mmis1000 5y ago
  That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some improvements to help the user reading the results.
  - gorhill 5y ago
    If you suspect the issue is with Firefox, you can open an issue with the profiling data attached, Firefox devs know how to interpret the data.
    - mmis1000 5y ago
      This is also way it is powerful. It used to be impossible for Mozilla to inspect the bug if they can't reproduce it themselves and consistently. But with the new profiler, you can screenshot the moments it bugs out either on reporter's computer or dev's. Makes the bug you used to be impossible to debug possible to debug.
kunagi7 5y ago
If you want to customize your browser (as far as using your own CSS) you can try Vivaldi. I've been using it for years and after the 3.7 update it feels fast and snappy (at least on my computer). It has tons of custom settings around tabs, commands, windows, toolbars, etc. At least on Linux it gets out of my way quite nicely. Things like easily accessible Profiles help me quite a lot with my workflow. If you're really strict about privacy there are browsers like ungoogled-chromium, Bromite (Android) and Orion Browser (only on Mac, iOS) which promise 0 telemetry, connections against their services, etc. Brave is nice but has connections against their services (internal addon updates, safe browsing, updates).
- jarcane 5y ago
  If there were someway to sync Vivaldi with an iOS browser, I'd have already switched. I've really been quite impressed with it, and it seems better every time I check, but I get a lot of use about the cross-device features of Firefox/Chrome, and while that's possible on Android, Vivaldi still don't have an iOS version.
  - kunagi7 5y ago
    I have around 1000 bookmarks and sync does really help. Since Brave has an iOS version I just use that but I hope someday they will release it.
- jolux 5y ago
  Vivaldi is Chrome underneath.
LinuxBender 5y ago
I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! gaming laptop I am not a web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the quality of the javascript. Disable javascript and well... the site isn't usable any more for business transactions, but the slowness and CPU load vanishes. The website becomes snappy, highly responsive and easy to browse. The fans spin down and memory usage goes way down. I've never used Chrome. Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript? Do they have a different javascript library/engine? I assume they must. Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and Chrome? Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question.
- bigyikes 5y ago
  Chrome uses V8, which is the same JS engine that Node is built on top of. As the name implies, it’s sort of wicked fast. IIRC Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I don’t know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it. I have a hard time imagining it being faster than V8, but I actually have no idea — will need to go look at some benchmarks.
  - andai 5y ago
    There used to be a big difference (in JS engine speed) but it's small recently. Where there is still a difference is in the UI code. Not necessarily operations being slower in Ff, but ordered in such a way to appear slower. For example, when you press ctrl+n, chrome instantly creates a new window, then spends the next second or so (depending how old your computer is) painting the UI. On Firefox though it seems like nothing is happening for an entire second, and then the window emerges fully painted. So even tho the total time is about the same, FF feels much less responsive due to this design choice. I also noticed Firefox spent a much longer time (a fraction of a second, but perceptible, and multiply that by thousands of clicks a day) before it would even (apparently, again -- not sure whats going on inside) begin loading a page, which was frustrating. I verified this was the case in the web inspector's network performance tab (there was an mysterious delay before the first network request).
Hayarotle 5y ago
At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css. I'm sticking with Firefox as long as its problems have workarounds, because the only options left are Chromium and Safari (or forks like Librewolf), and I find its pros still outweigh its cons.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  > At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css Not entirely, unfortunately.
- account42 5y ago
  You can override things with userChrome.css and userContent.css for now. Mozilla has made it clear that this will be removed in the future by already putting it behind an additional about:config flag - it is only a matter of time till they are axed once their privacy-disrespecting analytics tell them that "noone uses those features".
ghosty141 5y ago
I'm the complete opposite. I don't have any problem with firefox. Everything works perfectly.
croes 5y ago
Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.
- verdverm 5y ago
  You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking 2 column tabs sadly no more... Why they think this is better UX is beyond me
  - croes 5y ago
    Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags one by one. I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to just open a link in another tab.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      I'm starting to see the benefit in it, in that I will use it less and get life time back
- heurisko 5y ago
  I switched from chrome to firefox on Android for this reason. It is behaviour that has earned many recent one star reviews. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.ch...
josefx 5y ago
> The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. Is that firefox or Google pulling a Shadow Dom v0 where they use an API only Chrome implements and fall back to software emulation on everything else?
butz 5y ago
Slowness could come from several different sources. One quick improvement is to use AdBlocker, or even block Javascript if your workflow allows it. This makes browsing extremely fast. Another one is missing support for upcoming and non-standard web technologies, that usually are implemented in Chrome (Blink) first, that leaves Firefox (and other browsers) using slower performing polyfills. As much as I hate the direction Firefox UI is going, there are no decent browser alternatives, especially those who support adblockers at such low lever as Firefox.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Aaaah, Firefox users. With friends like these, who needs enemies ? > The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. Firefox's last major UI update was 1 version ago. And that was a truly large update. The previous sizeable one was... version 50 ? To redesign the tabs ? Stop being a princess, UI changes. Unhappy with it ? Apply a theme and leave the rest of us who are perfectly happy with it. > The instability I have run Firefox Canary/Developer Edition for... 5 years now ? I have had _two_ actual crashes. > and ridiculous resources consumption. I have, right now, 6 firefox windows open, each with around a hundred tabs. My Firefox is currently using 4GB of RAM. And that's with a 1080p youtube video playing in the background too. What browser do you know of that does better ? Lynx ? > I want a browser that works It does. And better than almost every other browser out there. > respects my privacy It does. I expect you to answer with "but but mr robot easter egg" and great, yeah, that's one fuckup. Do we want to list just how much every single other browser out there does much worse on a daily basis ? > Any suggestions for what to try next? Growing up.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. Ive been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this is my biggest complaint. Stop hiding menu options, my monitor is bigger and you're suddenly trying to save real estate. The only reason Firefox got as popular as it did is because technical people liked it, and they encouraged their non technical friends to use it. If you're going to dumb it down then technically inclined users will not feel as pationately about it. I was personally responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of people switching from ie to Firefox when I worked at the help desk of a small ISP. I don't think I would do the same now. It's still my main browser, but it feels like an abusive relationship.
TomMasz 5y ago
When things don't work in Firefox I try Edge (Canary) and then Safari. Right now, Edge is about 10% of my web usage but it's growing.
chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing to update Firefox. I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing. The new Firefox UI is incredibly frustrating, and feels like it walks back sensible UI principles. Removing icons in the main menu was celebrated as "de-cluttering" [0], when in reality icons improve ease of use. The "floating" tabs feel more distracting [1], when they claim the opposite. Heck, even user prompts no longer colorize the "primary action" button [2]. Also, what's with modern UIs becoming increasingly childish and watered down? The word I'd use to describe the new proton UI is "blurry". [0] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_clear_menu.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [1] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_inspired_tab_design.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_updated_prompts.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...
- semiotic1 5y ago
  https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix fixes most of the frustrating bits of Proton you describe. It's arguably not the same as a sensible out-of-the box design, but far better than sticking to old versions just because of the UI.
  - arp242 5y ago
    I didn't care much for these entire UI revamps as I felt they were far too complex, so I wrote a much simpler one: https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox 2174 lines of CSS vs. 53 lines :-) I don't overly care how every pixel looks or what the icon is and such; I just want my tabs to have some contrast.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Some people prefer less clutter. You can’t satisfy everyone.
stanziak 5y ago
Funny, I’ve used it on and off for 12 years, switching to other browsers when they started doing rapid release since it was noticeably slower than the competition. But since 2017 when the Quantum update came out I’ve completely switched to it because it’s speed became comparable to the competition. I like it even more when they added container tabs so I can switch between accounts easily. Reading this thread is really strange based on my experience. I do agree that Google makes it hard to use their products like Meet or Drive outside of Gmail and Calendar (the only Google products I use).
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years. Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it’s fine, just fine.
- ckosidows 5y ago
  Same boat. Used to be a big Firefox fan back in the day but even if it's not bad for me these days it doesn't do anything special. Edge works just as well and feels slightly less cumbersome.
LordNight 5y ago
>The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. >I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser. >Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next? That's my experience as well. I was using FF from v 1.0 back in 2004. Upgrade to Quantum almost gave me a heart attack because it ruined majority of addons and disabled custom themes. Upgrade to "megabar" was a final straw for me. I've spent ~ 3 hours, but finally migrated to Pale Moon ... and it's like I'm back in 2004. Even Noia theme is working again. FF, in my opinion, went full circle: from being the most functional and the most customizable browser to being the new IE6. There are no redeeming qualities left really.
Rd6n6 5y ago
Between Firefox and Chrome, the performance is almost identical. What is different is the smooth scrolling behaviour: it is far smoother in chrome than in Firefox, and that has a dramatic impact on how performant the browser “feels.” If Firefox tinkered with that a bit, it would be game changing. (The few times I’ve had perf issues in Firefox were all either addons or sites designed to work only in chrome)
Ayesh 5y ago
> The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I think this drives many people off Firefox. I am willing tinker with Firefox's internal CSS to tame some of the UI nonsense, but the rest of people just want a browser to get their work done; not to spend a couple hours every month to get rid of Firefox's new UI overhaul.
ElCapitanMarkla 5y ago
I was in the same boat until a year or so ago. The resource consumption kept getting worse and worse, I’d have to restart Firefox every day. I really miss Firefox but the memory leaks were just a deal breaker.
JohnFen 5y ago
> Any suggestions for what to try next? I'm in the same boat as you -- a Firefox user (and evangelist) from the beforetimes. But Firefox stopped meeting my needs when the revamp occurred. I haven't really found a modern browser that is acceptable, though, but it's not for lack of looking. In the meantime, I stick with an older release of Waterfox.

sleavey 5y ago

Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases would have been down to Flash. Now that I think more about it, that whole time I've also blocked ads, which surely helps too.

foepys 5y ago
A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox' memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3 open tabs.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I wonder how many of those are actually “open” - disconnect the internet and try looking at them. I suspect many just are the URL and nothing more and on view it reloads.
  - foepys 5y ago
    Yes, Firefox unloads old unused tabs.
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    So bookmarks but less organized and more risk of losing them all at any given moment. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about discovering the ":D" easter egg in mobile chrome.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when abused. that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine
  - johnmaguire 5y ago
    The most disappointing part of the redesign to me was that they actually REMOVED icons from menu items. It is harder to find what I'm looking for.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    can you explain what the value is of having that many tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it. what's the point?
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      There's no point. It's just a blend of laziness / hoarding / fomo
    - littlecranky67 5y ago
      There is no value to it, this is what happens when you don't know what bookmarks are for.
      - agumonkey 5y ago
        Honestly I simply need an autotagger. I tried doing one a few time but never finished.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  This is just a blatant lie. Come on, man!
  - crateless 5y ago
    I can believe it. I have over 2,000 tabs open over the last year. Before the last "clean up", I had 4,000 tabs open. As GP noted, most of them are unloaded (I would say around 3/4). I have 32GB RAM, so firefox issues are a distant memory. (pun intended)
  - detaro 5y ago
    Nope, it's possible, as long as most of the tabs stay around inactive. (Sadly it doesn't handle too many tabs becoming loaded very well, so if you hit the limit it usually ends with something crashing...)
  - schwarze_pest 5y ago
    2650 tabs open right now. I'm sure I had more open in the past. No major performance impact. If I click on the "List all tabs" button it takes a second to render the list. The PC is 5 years old, not even close being state of the art.
krylon 5y ago
In my experience, Firefox uses a lot more memory on Windows than on Linux. It feels faster on Linux, too. The reasons might rather complex, though.
littlecranky67 5y ago
This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and optimize for it.
brynjolf 5y ago
Try using Firefox on the world's most popular streaming site Twitch.Tv and report back, let it sit there for a while and try for example use multiple streams to check different perspectives. It slows down to a halt. Also I can't for example leave Firefox alive while playong some games or it starts to create stutter in the games. I tried profiling but the Firefox profiler just hangs all the time or uses so many resources it becomes unstable ironically
- Tagbert 5y ago
  Sounds like Twitch is allocating resources and not releasing them.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 5y ago

Are you perhaps not using an adblocker and thereby being trapped into wrongly believing that the slowness induced by ad+tracking Javascripts is the fault of Firefox?

csmpltn 5y ago
I am using an adblocker.
tehbeard 5y ago
Let me give you another datapoint. My old uni laptop, an Intel T4400 with 4gb RAM. Both chrome and Firefox have adblock. Never ran in to a problem with Chrome, despite the wider internet calling it a memory hog. Firefox struggled after 4/5 tabs, couldn't even playback video on YouTube or Vimeo reliably.. Don't run into these issues on desktop, and the Android version seems somewhat competent. But I've lost a lot of trust in Mozilla the last few years thanks to middle management. Atleast with Google I know their motives and I'm not locked in to their platform relying on any particular proprietary thing they have.
- abcd_f 5y ago
  For what it’s worth and based on a non-trivial sample set this is highly atypical.
  - shaan7 5y ago
    Yep. I rarely see Firefox lagging/unresponsive (~15 pinned + 3-4 normal tabs open). In the rare chances that it does, I get an option "This web page is slowing down Firefox" which lets me kill the tab and all is well again.
- sp332 5y ago
  Poor video playback in one browser might mean that it's not configured to use the hardware decoder. I think performance there should be basically the same for video playback if they're configured the same way.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

My understanding of the current browser landscape is that you've got Firefox; browsers that build upon Google's browser engine (Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera/etc); and Safari. There are a number of good options, but very few that don't further cement Google's control over the world's browser-engine code. (Yes, I know there are some other very minor players that lag behind on features and standards support. I don't think that's what the parent commenter is looking for.)

TheRealPomax 5y ago
In terms of "browsers that actually matter", there's just Chrome/chromium at a combined 70% and Safari at a little over 18%. Everything else is a side mention at best and as a browser at least, is basically irrelevant on the world stage. Even if the companies behind them aren't (e.g. Mozilla or Samsung). [1] They are of course highly relevant for their user bases, but in terms of "browsers that might break the Chrome hegemony through normal competition", there are none. You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google and enact laws that forbid them from loading Chrome as default and only browser on all first and third devices associated with their brand. A few administrations ago, that might have still been a possibility, but it's not going to happen unless the EU does it first, and even then, the US might pull one of those idiotic "how dare the EU punish a US company for outcompeting everyone else" and instead enact reactionary laws that loosen the rules for them instead. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/
- freediver 5y ago
  > You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google How about actually just making a good, competitive browser instead? Firefox is not failing because of Google's monopoly; it is failing because as a product it is unable to compete and beat Chrome where it matters. If not Mozilla, I am pretty sure somebody else will make such browser (and search engine, and email... ) eventually.
  - psee 5y ago
    Currently you can't really compete with Google's/Alphabet's market and marketing power. If you get too close, product-wise, they can just throw more money at their own product in your field. It needs political market intervention to make a dent that would count enough for others even getting a theoretical chance of getting one step ahead again. While that might be true in little web standard pieces here and there for Firefox compared to Chrome (and it certainly is vice-versa), the much smaller teams will always play catch up.

andi999 5y ago

I also want a browser that when you start it doesn't let you wait for an update. Got too impatient too often with that.

Sayrus 5y ago
Firefox 90.0 [1] can now update in the background on Windows. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/

prepend 5y ago

I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped for reasons similar to what you listed. I’ve really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that works (and has lots of privacy features).

eli 5y ago
Firefox has its own funding issues but I don’t trust a browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.
- prepend 5y ago
  I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out. Of course, maybe it won’t work forever, but it works for now. I’m not a crypto person and don’t use Brave’s crypto features, but I think it’s a more sustainable future than relying on Google’s largess.
  - eli 5y ago
    Relying on google’s rendering engine is worse IMHO. And I think they are going to end having to pivot on funding.
  - freediver 5y ago
    > I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out. That is just the browser part. The code on their servers that actually processes the data the browser collected is closed-source. In general, browser being open or closed source has no correlation with how privacy respecting it is. Chrom{e|ium} and Edge are another examples. Pragmatically speaking there is only one thing that guarantees privacy and that is browser being zero-telemetry, regardless of if it is open source or not.
    - xtat 5y ago
      What server-side components are you referring to here? From my memory there was very little interesting private code, and I can't think of anything that would process user data that would be private.

gorhill 5y ago

> The slowness and slugishness. Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try -- oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but some extensions, external processes, or undesirable modifications in `about:config`. --- [1] https://profiler.firefox.com/ https://profiler.firefox.com/

mmis1000 5y ago
That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some improvements to help the user reading the results.
- gorhill 5y ago
  If you suspect the issue is with Firefox, you can open an issue with the profiling data attached, Firefox devs know how to interpret the data.
  - mmis1000 5y ago
    This is also way it is powerful. It used to be impossible for Mozilla to inspect the bug if they can't reproduce it themselves and consistently. But with the new profiler, you can screenshot the moments it bugs out either on reporter's computer or dev's. Makes the bug you used to be impossible to debug possible to debug.

kunagi7 5y ago

If you want to customize your browser (as far as using your own CSS) you can try Vivaldi. I've been using it for years and after the 3.7 update it feels fast and snappy (at least on my computer). It has tons of custom settings around tabs, commands, windows, toolbars, etc. At least on Linux it gets out of my way quite nicely. Things like easily accessible Profiles help me quite a lot with my workflow. If you're really strict about privacy there are browsers like ungoogled-chromium, Bromite (Android) and Orion Browser (only on Mac, iOS) which promise 0 telemetry, connections against their services, etc. Brave is nice but has connections against their services (internal addon updates, safe browsing, updates).

jarcane 5y ago
If there were someway to sync Vivaldi with an iOS browser, I'd have already switched. I've really been quite impressed with it, and it seems better every time I check, but I get a lot of use about the cross-device features of Firefox/Chrome, and while that's possible on Android, Vivaldi still don't have an iOS version.
- kunagi7 5y ago
  I have around 1000 bookmarks and sync does really help. Since Brave has an iOS version I just use that but I hope someday they will release it.
jolux 5y ago
Vivaldi is Chrome underneath.

LinuxBender 5y ago

I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! gaming laptop I am not a web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the quality of the javascript. Disable javascript and well... the site isn't usable any more for business transactions, but the slowness and CPU load vanishes. The website becomes snappy, highly responsive and easy to browse. The fans spin down and memory usage goes way down. I've never used Chrome. Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript? Do they have a different javascript library/engine? I assume they must. Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and Chrome? Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question.

bigyikes 5y ago
Chrome uses V8, which is the same JS engine that Node is built on top of. As the name implies, it’s sort of wicked fast. IIRC Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I don’t know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it. I have a hard time imagining it being faster than V8, but I actually have no idea — will need to go look at some benchmarks.
- andai 5y ago
  There used to be a big difference (in JS engine speed) but it's small recently. Where there is still a difference is in the UI code. Not necessarily operations being slower in Ff, but ordered in such a way to appear slower. For example, when you press ctrl+n, chrome instantly creates a new window, then spends the next second or so (depending how old your computer is) painting the UI. On Firefox though it seems like nothing is happening for an entire second, and then the window emerges fully painted. So even tho the total time is about the same, FF feels much less responsive due to this design choice. I also noticed Firefox spent a much longer time (a fraction of a second, but perceptible, and multiply that by thousands of clicks a day) before it would even (apparently, again -- not sure whats going on inside) begin loading a page, which was frustrating. I verified this was the case in the web inspector's network performance tab (there was an mysterious delay before the first network request).

Hayarotle 5y ago

At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css. I'm sticking with Firefox as long as its problems have workarounds, because the only options left are Chromium and Safari (or forks like Librewolf), and I find its pros still outweigh its cons.

JohnFen 5y ago
> At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css Not entirely, unfortunately.
account42 5y ago
You can override things with userChrome.css and userContent.css for now. Mozilla has made it clear that this will be removed in the future by already putting it behind an additional about:config flag - it is only a matter of time till they are axed once their privacy-disrespecting analytics tell them that "noone uses those features".

ghosty141 5y ago

I'm the complete opposite. I don't have any problem with firefox. Everything works perfectly.

croes 5y ago

Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.

verdverm 5y ago
You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking 2 column tabs sadly no more... Why they think this is better UX is beyond me
- croes 5y ago
  Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags one by one. I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to just open a link in another tab.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    I'm starting to see the benefit in it, in that I will use it less and get life time back
heurisko 5y ago
I switched from chrome to firefox on Android for this reason. It is behaviour that has earned many recent one star reviews. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.ch...

josefx 5y ago

> The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. Is that firefox or Google pulling a Shadow Dom v0 where they use an API only Chrome implements and fall back to software emulation on everything else?

butz 5y ago

Slowness could come from several different sources. One quick improvement is to use AdBlocker, or even block Javascript if your workflow allows it. This makes browsing extremely fast. Another one is missing support for upcoming and non-standard web technologies, that usually are implemented in Chrome (Blink) first, that leaves Firefox (and other browsers) using slower performing polyfills. As much as I hate the direction Firefox UI is going, there are no decent browser alternatives, especially those who support adblockers at such low lever as Firefox.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

Aaaah, Firefox users. With friends like these, who needs enemies ? > The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. Firefox's last major UI update was 1 version ago. And that was a truly large update. The previous sizeable one was... version 50 ? To redesign the tabs ? Stop being a princess, UI changes. Unhappy with it ? Apply a theme and leave the rest of us who are perfectly happy with it. > The instability I have run Firefox Canary/Developer Edition for... 5 years now ? I have had _two_ actual crashes. > and ridiculous resources consumption. I have, right now, 6 firefox windows open, each with around a hundred tabs. My Firefox is currently using 4GB of RAM. And that's with a 1080p youtube video playing in the background too. What browser do you know of that does better ? Lynx ? > I want a browser that works It does. And better than almost every other browser out there. > respects my privacy It does. I expect you to answer with "but but mr robot easter egg" and great, yeah, that's one fuckup. Do we want to list just how much every single other browser out there does much worse on a daily basis ? > Any suggestions for what to try next? Growing up.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. Ive been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this is my biggest complaint. Stop hiding menu options, my monitor is bigger and you're suddenly trying to save real estate. The only reason Firefox got as popular as it did is because technical people liked it, and they encouraged their non technical friends to use it. If you're going to dumb it down then technically inclined users will not feel as pationately about it. I was personally responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of people switching from ie to Firefox when I worked at the help desk of a small ISP. I don't think I would do the same now. It's still my main browser, but it feels like an abusive relationship.

TomMasz 5y ago

When things don't work in Firefox I try Edge (Canary) and then Safari. Right now, Edge is about 10% of my web usage but it's growing.

chiefofgxbxl 5y ago

I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing to update Firefox. I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing. The new Firefox UI is incredibly frustrating, and feels like it walks back sensible UI principles. Removing icons in the main menu was celebrated as "de-cluttering" [0], when in reality icons improve ease of use. The "floating" tabs feel more distracting [1], when they claim the opposite. Heck, even user prompts no longer colorize the "primary action" button [2]. Also, what's with modern UIs becoming increasingly childish and watered down? The word I'd use to describe the new proton UI is "blurry". [0] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_clear_menu.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [1] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_inspired_tab_design.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-images/proton_updated_prompts.png https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...

semiotic1 5y ago
https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix fixes most of the frustrating bits of Proton you describe. It's arguably not the same as a sensible out-of-the box design, but far better than sticking to old versions just because of the UI.
- arp242 5y ago
  I didn't care much for these entire UI revamps as I felt they were far too complex, so I wrote a much simpler one: https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox 2174 lines of CSS vs. 53 lines :-) I don't overly care how every pixel looks or what the icon is and such; I just want my tabs to have some contrast.
chrisseaton 5y ago
Some people prefer less clutter. You can’t satisfy everyone.

stanziak 5y ago

Funny, I’ve used it on and off for 12 years, switching to other browsers when they started doing rapid release since it was noticeably slower than the competition. But since 2017 when the Quantum update came out I’ve completely switched to it because it’s speed became comparable to the competition. I like it even more when they added container tabs so I can switch between accounts easily. Reading this thread is really strange based on my experience. I do agree that Google makes it hard to use their products like Meet or Drive outside of Gmail and Calendar (the only Google products I use).

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years. Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it’s fine, just fine.

ckosidows 5y ago
Same boat. Used to be a big Firefox fan back in the day but even if it's not bad for me these days it doesn't do anything special. Edge works just as well and feels slightly less cumbersome.

LordNight 5y ago

>The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. >I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser. >Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next? That's my experience as well. I was using FF from v 1.0 back in 2004. Upgrade to Quantum almost gave me a heart attack because it ruined majority of addons and disabled custom themes. Upgrade to "megabar" was a final straw for me. I've spent ~ 3 hours, but finally migrated to Pale Moon ... and it's like I'm back in 2004. Even Noia theme is working again. FF, in my opinion, went full circle: from being the most functional and the most customizable browser to being the new IE6. There are no redeeming qualities left really.

Rd6n6 5y ago

Between Firefox and Chrome, the performance is almost identical. What is different is the smooth scrolling behaviour: it is far smoother in chrome than in Firefox, and that has a dramatic impact on how performant the browser “feels.” If Firefox tinkered with that a bit, it would be game changing. (The few times I’ve had perf issues in Firefox were all either addons or sites designed to work only in chrome)

Ayesh 5y ago

> The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I think this drives many people off Firefox. I am willing tinker with Firefox's internal CSS to tame some of the UI nonsense, but the rest of people just want a browser to get their work done; not to spend a couple hours every month to get rid of Firefox's new UI overhaul.

ElCapitanMarkla 5y ago

I was in the same boat until a year or so ago. The resource consumption kept getting worse and worse, I’d have to restart Firefox every day. I really miss Firefox but the memory leaks were just a deal breaker.

JohnFen 5y ago

> Any suggestions for what to try next? I'm in the same boat as you -- a Firefox user (and evangelist) from the beforetimes. But Firefox stopped meeting my needs when the revamp occurred. I haven't really found a modern browser that is acceptable, though, but it's not for lack of looking. In the meantime, I stick with an older release of Waterfox.