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Use Firefox for a day if you are a Chrome user, you’ll quickly realize the experience is far subpar. JS stuff is slower, random websites break, the UI feels a

by fooker 3y ago

Use Firefox for a day if you are a Chrome user, you’ll quickly realize the experience is far subpar. JS stuff is slower, random websites break, the UI feels a bit sluggish. I understand there are ideological reasons to support Firefox, and that some of these issues are easily attributed to other parties. But for users, there aren’t too many reasons to switch over from Chrome or even Safari, like it was the situation during the IE6 days.

ezekg 3y ago
I've been using Firefox for the past 2 years and I've had no such problems.
- fooker 3y ago
  Yes, if you have been using Firefox you'll not notice problems. A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    I reject your premise. I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi about 18 months ago because (mobile) Firefox scrolling would stutter on site like the New York Times, and it would force reload inactive tabs when I went back to them. On desktop I wanted the "reading list" and mail client of Vivaldi. Firefox (or NYT) seems to have fixed the stuttering scroll on mobile. Multi account containers on Firefox are an incredible isolation mechanism that needs a little bit of UX refinement. I'm probably switching back to FF for beta testing before cutting my defaults back to it.
  - ezekg 3y ago
    What a weird reply. I think I'd especially notice any glaring problems, seeing as I use it every day for web dev. The only issues I've had is that devtools will sometimes completely crash, giving me a white window, requiring me to close the tab to restart devtools. But that's been rare and I can't remember the last time it happened. I completely de-Google'd my life 2 years ago, and I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed (e.g. webgl). Comparing Firefox to IE5/6 is unfounded.
    - fooker 3y ago
      >I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed Read my grandparent comment carefully. Suppose you have two products A, B. They are roughly feature equivalent but B has a 10x more engineering effort put in towards QOL improvements and fixing the long tail of performance issues. You are not going to notice this if you generally use A and only once in a while use B. OTOH, if you use B and suddenly get transported to a A-only world you are going to miss the polish. Another way to think about this is to compare cheap clothes/shoes to well made expensive ones.
      - ezekg 3y ago
        I used Chrome for 8 years prior. I didn't miss a thing after the switch except my autocomplete/history, which I built back up over a few weeks. You sound like you haven't actually used Firefox recently. If you have, then maybe give specifics.
louzell 3y ago
This has not been my experience at all. I was compelled to use Chrome at my last job (there was a bunch of internal tooling built around Chrome assumptions). I was there for almost five years, so I did a whole lot more than kicked the tires. My daily driver has remained FF, and I have not perceived any noticeable difference in perf because of it.
- fooker 3y ago
  I tried Firefox a few weeks ago on a 2015 MBP plugged into a 4K tv, it could basically not play any high res video at any watchable framerate. Safari did the best, Chrome was close.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I also had a 2015 MBP and watched 4k video on it basically every day. I have no idea what you experienced.
    - fooker 3y ago
      That's exactly how software bugs work, weird setup specific issues that are expensive to triage and fix. But if you are not convinced see how many others have this issue by googling "site:reddit.com firefox stuttering on 4k video on mac"
  - nateb2022 3y ago
    See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1716164 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1716164 My guess is that Firefox was being served AV1 by YouTube. Intel chips prior to 11th gen have no hardware decode support for AV1, and so your CPU was overworked and bottlenecking. Chrome and Safari probably resorted to H.261/H.263/H.264 encoded video from YouTube, and relied on the hardware decoder. Easy fix: go to `about:config` and disable `media.av1.enabled`.
blahyawnblah 3y ago
If random websites break, it's because the developer didn't do any testing in Firefox. IIRC Firefox follows standards more closely than Chrome and Chrome has random additional features that aren't standard that can make websites better, e.g YouTube, Google Maps
- fooker 3y ago
  Agreed. What do you expect users to do here? Use Chrome or try to force a few thousand websites to test on Firefox?
  - vlod 3y ago
    Oh man, just got a flashback to when everyone coded to IE because everyone used it so there wasn't any reason to code to standards. That was not a good time.
    - fooker 3y ago
      Do you remember how Firefox got over this? By replicating IE's bugs and beating them at their own game. Now Firefox, for some reason, doesn't want to do this.
      - vlod 3y ago
        Hhmm. I don't remember FF ever trying to reproduce IE6. I remember having to do special hacks to handle IE.
        Klonoar 3y ago
        Opera replicated a significant amount of IE's "features" for compatibility reasons.
        fooker 3y ago
        Here's a search query to dig into this: "firefox bugzilla internet explorer compatibility".
Arech 3y ago
Never noticed any of that. (I have to use Chrome from time to time on 2 machines (one is fresh powerfull laptop and the other is a decade+ old PC) due to embedded Google Translate feature, and always happy to switch back to Firefox, which is much more convenient and tunable (and has a killer "Simple Tab Groups" extension)
- sparrow1029 3y ago
  Simple Tab Groups _IS_ a killer extension! I couldn't find its equivalent in the Chrome store. I haven't noticed any of the Firefox-specific issues that other users in this thread have mentioned that weren't due to extensions I had installed on FF. For the rare case of a website where the devs clearly only tested in Chrome, I will open Chrome to interface with that site and then go back to FF.

by fooker 3y ago

ezekg 3y ago

I've been using Firefox for the past 2 years and I've had no such problems.

fooker 3y ago
Yes, if you have been using Firefox you'll not notice problems. A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  I reject your premise. I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi about 18 months ago because (mobile) Firefox scrolling would stutter on site like the New York Times, and it would force reload inactive tabs when I went back to them. On desktop I wanted the "reading list" and mail client of Vivaldi. Firefox (or NYT) seems to have fixed the stuttering scroll on mobile. Multi account containers on Firefox are an incredible isolation mechanism that needs a little bit of UX refinement. I'm probably switching back to FF for beta testing before cutting my defaults back to it.
- ezekg 3y ago
  What a weird reply. I think I'd especially notice any glaring problems, seeing as I use it every day for web dev. The only issues I've had is that devtools will sometimes completely crash, giving me a white window, requiring me to close the tab to restart devtools. But that's been rare and I can't remember the last time it happened. I completely de-Google'd my life 2 years ago, and I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed (e.g. webgl). Comparing Firefox to IE5/6 is unfounded.
  - fooker 3y ago
    >I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed Read my grandparent comment carefully. Suppose you have two products A, B. They are roughly feature equivalent but B has a 10x more engineering effort put in towards QOL improvements and fixing the long tail of performance issues. You are not going to notice this if you generally use A and only once in a while use B. OTOH, if you use B and suddenly get transported to a A-only world you are going to miss the polish. Another way to think about this is to compare cheap clothes/shoes to well made expensive ones.
    - ezekg 3y ago
      I used Chrome for 8 years prior. I didn't miss a thing after the switch except my autocomplete/history, which I built back up over a few weeks. You sound like you haven't actually used Firefox recently. If you have, then maybe give specifics.

louzell 3y ago

This has not been my experience at all. I was compelled to use Chrome at my last job (there was a bunch of internal tooling built around Chrome assumptions). I was there for almost five years, so I did a whole lot more than kicked the tires. My daily driver has remained FF, and I have not perceived any noticeable difference in perf because of it.

fooker 3y ago
I tried Firefox a few weeks ago on a 2015 MBP plugged into a 4K tv, it could basically not play any high res video at any watchable framerate. Safari did the best, Chrome was close.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I also had a 2015 MBP and watched 4k video on it basically every day. I have no idea what you experienced.
  - fooker 3y ago
    That's exactly how software bugs work, weird setup specific issues that are expensive to triage and fix. But if you are not convinced see how many others have this issue by googling "site:reddit.com firefox stuttering on 4k video on mac"
- nateb2022 3y ago
  See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1716164 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1716164 My guess is that Firefox was being served AV1 by YouTube. Intel chips prior to 11th gen have no hardware decode support for AV1, and so your CPU was overworked and bottlenecking. Chrome and Safari probably resorted to H.261/H.263/H.264 encoded video from YouTube, and relied on the hardware decoder. Easy fix: go to `about:config` and disable `media.av1.enabled`.

blahyawnblah 3y ago

If random websites break, it's because the developer didn't do any testing in Firefox. IIRC Firefox follows standards more closely than Chrome and Chrome has random additional features that aren't standard that can make websites better, e.g YouTube, Google Maps

fooker 3y ago
Agreed. What do you expect users to do here? Use Chrome or try to force a few thousand websites to test on Firefox?
- vlod 3y ago
  Oh man, just got a flashback to when everyone coded to IE because everyone used it so there wasn't any reason to code to standards. That was not a good time.
  - fooker 3y ago
    Do you remember how Firefox got over this? By replicating IE's bugs and beating them at their own game. Now Firefox, for some reason, doesn't want to do this.
    - vlod 3y ago
      Hhmm. I don't remember FF ever trying to reproduce IE6. I remember having to do special hacks to handle IE.
      - Klonoar 3y ago
        Opera replicated a significant amount of IE's "features" for compatibility reasons.
      - fooker 3y ago
        Here's a search query to dig into this: "firefox bugzilla internet explorer compatibility".

Arech 3y ago

Never noticed any of that. (I have to use Chrome from time to time on 2 machines (one is fresh powerfull laptop and the other is a decade+ old PC) due to embedded Google Translate feature, and always happy to switch back to Firefox, which is much more convenient and tunable (and has a killer "Simple Tab Groups" extension)

sparrow1029 3y ago
Simple Tab Groups _IS_ a killer extension! I couldn't find its equivalent in the Chrome store. I haven't noticed any of the Firefox-specific issues that other users in this thread have mentioned that weren't due to extensions I had installed on FF. For the rare case of a website where the devs clearly only tested in Chrome, I will open Chrome to interface with that site and then go back to FF.