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Firefox is inferior still. It has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every year I switch to Firefox and use it as a main brows

by tored 5y ago

Firefox is inferior still. It has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every year I switch to Firefox and use it as a main browser. It usually goes for a month and then I need to switch again because Firefox has too many glitches. Firefox has had a bad policy of not fixing the basics first before new features. I do use Firefox as my main development browser still but that is because I’m more used to the developer tools than the alternatives.

teawrecks 5y ago
I have the same experience in reverse with chrome. I've been using FF for a few years now with no issues.
heavenlyblue 5y ago
What glitches?
- ly 5y ago
  I’ve encountered annoying bugs like Firefox being unable to render elements when SVG filters are applied to them so they just disappear, or smaller things like extreme banding on gradients that no other browser has. My biggest issue was (maybe still is, I quit using Firefox last year) is that on wide color gamut displays, like every MacBook Pro, it renders colors completely wrong. So it would render literally every website, save black and white website, completely incorrectly. My main browser these days is Safari (so I’m still enjoying a lot of browser bugs). When I really need something to work or need specific de tools I switch to Chrome. For me Firefox is in a middle ground between those two browsers, resulting in me never actually using it anymore.
simondotau 5y ago
That's funny, because I've had the same experience as you—but in the opposite direction. In my experience, Chrome has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every now and then I try to use Chrome (or a derivative) as secondary browser and I give up because it has noticeably higher latency for simple web page loads, and more likely to suffer irritating repaint flashes.
- sfink 5y ago
  (I work for Mozilla, but don't speak for them.) You're both right. It's a common story -- people use browser A, start noticing a variety of problems, switch to browser B and everything is so much better. After a while, they start noticing a variety of problems, switch to browser A, and once again everything is so much better. Those people are not being stupid, that is their real experience. Sometimes the problem is in a web site (an update starts leaking memory, for example) and whatever browser is running gets blamed. Sometimes it's just natural human bias—we want to see patterns, and we want there to be a solution ("just switch browsers!"), so we get selective in what we notice and don't notice. Sometimes it's because profile cruft piles up, and resetting would fix it. Sometimes the problems really are in one browser and not the other. There are plenty of legitimate problems to be found, and things change pretty rapidly.
  - GeoAtreides 5y ago
    How would resetting the profile help? It means losing addons and their configuration, the bookmarks, the open sessions and the tabs, the history, the about:config settings.
    - sfink 5y ago
      It means losing a lot of stuff, yes. It sometimes helps because some things slow down as state is accumulated. So resetting can speed things up, at the cost of losing all of your state. But the comparison point is switching browsers, which also loses lots of state. (In both cases, you can import a subset of your state into your new profile, and you'd probably get most of the performance advantages.) I believe all browsers have been improving in their resistance to the accumulated state problem, but I also believe that all browsers are still susceptible to it.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    For what it's worth I haven't had an issue with Firefox for at least five years. And in the entire history of using Firefox I've never had a problem that was solved by a profile reset—though that might be because I'm a technically savvy user who can troubleshoot with relative ease. Any time I've tried switching away it's more to see if I'm missing out on something... and it turns out I'm not.

by tored 5y ago

teawrecks 5y ago

I have the same experience in reverse with chrome. I've been using FF for a few years now with no issues.

heavenlyblue 5y ago

What glitches?

ly 5y ago
I’ve encountered annoying bugs like Firefox being unable to render elements when SVG filters are applied to them so they just disappear, or smaller things like extreme banding on gradients that no other browser has. My biggest issue was (maybe still is, I quit using Firefox last year) is that on wide color gamut displays, like every MacBook Pro, it renders colors completely wrong. So it would render literally every website, save black and white website, completely incorrectly. My main browser these days is Safari (so I’m still enjoying a lot of browser bugs). When I really need something to work or need specific de tools I switch to Chrome. For me Firefox is in a middle ground between those two browsers, resulting in me never actually using it anymore.

simondotau 5y ago

That's funny, because I've had the same experience as you—but in the opposite direction. In my experience, Chrome has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every now and then I try to use Chrome (or a derivative) as secondary browser and I give up because it has noticeably higher latency for simple web page loads, and more likely to suffer irritating repaint flashes.

sfink 5y ago
(I work for Mozilla, but don't speak for them.) You're both right. It's a common story -- people use browser A, start noticing a variety of problems, switch to browser B and everything is so much better. After a while, they start noticing a variety of problems, switch to browser A, and once again everything is so much better. Those people are not being stupid, that is their real experience. Sometimes the problem is in a web site (an update starts leaking memory, for example) and whatever browser is running gets blamed. Sometimes it's just natural human bias—we want to see patterns, and we want there to be a solution ("just switch browsers!"), so we get selective in what we notice and don't notice. Sometimes it's because profile cruft piles up, and resetting would fix it. Sometimes the problems really are in one browser and not the other. There are plenty of legitimate problems to be found, and things change pretty rapidly.
- GeoAtreides 5y ago
  How would resetting the profile help? It means losing addons and their configuration, the bookmarks, the open sessions and the tabs, the history, the about:config settings.
  - sfink 5y ago
    It means losing a lot of stuff, yes. It sometimes helps because some things slow down as state is accumulated. So resetting can speed things up, at the cost of losing all of your state. But the comparison point is switching browsers, which also loses lots of state. (In both cases, you can import a subset of your state into your new profile, and you'd probably get most of the performance advantages.) I believe all browsers have been improving in their resistance to the accumulated state problem, but I also believe that all browsers are still susceptible to it.
- simondotau 5y ago
  For what it's worth I haven't had an issue with Firefox for at least five years. And in the entire history of using Firefox I've never had a problem that was solved by a profile reset—though that might be because I'm a technically savvy user who can troubleshoot with relative ease. Any time I've tried switching away it's more to see if I'm missing out on something... and it turns out I'm not.