8 ms·

I've used Firefox as my primary browser since the "Quantum" in 2017. Chrome still feels snappier, but Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing.

by xd1936 3y ago

dsauerbrun 3y ago
pretty sure chrome has had tab grouping for over a year now
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  container tabs != tab grouping tab grouping uses the same cookies everywhere, whereas container tabs provide isolated workspaces each with their own set of cookies
- post-it 3y ago
  Are they containerized? I have separate containers for work and personal stuff, with separate sessions for Gmail, GitHub, etc.
- allarm 3y ago
  That's not what container tabs are. Think of it as isolated environments for groups of sites. You can even set it up so that each new link opens in a new environment, without any cookies, etc.
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  How are tab groups relevant here?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- haswell 3y ago
  Container tabs isolate sessions. I don’t think tab grouping is related. Firefox allows you to create/manage multiple containers, and set up rules to assign specific sites to specific containers if desired. I think the closest feature in Chrome is the ability to create multiple profiles, but this is less flexible/ergonomic IMO.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    In some ways profiles works better, and in others container tabs does. I have two password managers, one for work and one for home. Multiple profiles lets me work with both. Container tabs lets me log into a site multiple times, or when they have a session cookie that prevents me from navigating to two different flows. Both great, both fill completely different niches.
    - toyg 3y ago
      Firefox has profiles too, btw.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        Profiles in Firefox isn't great. The profiles plugin, is great. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc... I would want to see this integrated.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
> Chrome still feels snappier I actually tested this and Firefox is significantly faster in rendering CSS and tables. (Not sure about complex Javascript.) Chrome's snappiness is mostly UI smoke and mirrors, actual sites load faster for me in Firefox.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  Maybe FF should take some tips on those UI "smoke and mirrors". What feels faster is what users are going to go off of. For example, a page that fully loads in 1 second vs a page that incrementally loads in 1.5 seconds - the latter may feel faster because the time to start loading is faster.
  - causi 3y ago
    Not to mention that the things the user wants to see are probably early in the load order and all the worthless garbage is coming in later.
    - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
      Those SPA-filled days, all I get on those "early load order" pages are blinking blank rectangles and spinners.
  - ndiddy 3y ago
    That makes the user experience worse though. Anyone who's had a webpage layout change while they were trying to interact with it knows how frustrating it is.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Sometimes. The big offender here is advertising.
  - WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
    Pretty much this, the overall feel of Chrome is snappier and the UI/UX is much better I'm still not a fan of the latest UI revision on Firefox.. Chrome is able to make me forget there is an UI I remember switching to Chrome because of a new UI update many years ago (performance too) If Firefox manage to catch up performance wise, I might give it another try
rewmie 3y ago
> (...) but Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing. Are you referring to Firefox's multi-account containers extension? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
- happymellon 3y ago
  I can't speak for them, but it's what I thought of and agree. Sandboxed tabs is brilliant. I just wish they added better overall profile support.
- chaxor 3y ago
  This is indeed fantastic, but paired with container proxies, it's awesome. You can send a few tabs through one socks proxy, a few through another, all while segmenting that from work, personal, etc. if you have a vpn for one work location and different ones for other work.
  - tux3 3y ago
    I'm just starting to use this, I have a VPN that I put in a network namespace along with a local `danted` socks proxy, so it doesn't disturb the rest of the system It's amazing how well it works! I just set a few glob rules on the URLs I need proxied and I don't have to think about it anymore :)
- xd1936 3y ago
  That's the one! I thought it was an inbuilt feature of the browser. I guess the Facebook Container[1] extension must bring it down as a dependency or something, because I have never installed that extension knowingly. 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...
bayindirh 3y ago
Chrome's most of the snappiness is coming from how it handles the DNS queries internally from my experience. Pair Firefox with a fast DNS, and it's noticably faster than Chrome, for the last 3 years or so. I discovered it accidentally, after switching to local DNS at the office. We run one of the nation-wide ones in a pretty close proximity in network terms.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  which is a fast DNS? 1.1.1.1 ? I thought the OS caches DNS anyway, so shouldn't matter much in day to day browsing.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Anything you can "time nslookup" in or under 0.03 seconds (in "real" terms). From my desk: local one - 0.029 seconds 1.1.1.1 - 0.035 seconds 8.8.8.8 - 0.120 seconds Normally it should be, but Firefox's behavior is very sensitive to DNS response speed. Sounds not intuitive, but I think they're not using glibc's caching, or doing something by themselves.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      In the past, at least, firefox has done its own caching since expiring my OS dns cache was insufficient to get it to pick up a change in DNS.
      - CmdrKrool 3y ago
        Good reason to avoid Firefox for development imo. Nothing is more annoying than mysterious cache interventions when you're trying to get a handle on an unrelated problem.
        bayindirh 3y ago
        Dev tools automatically disables caching for that tab, by default. CTRL+SHIFT+R always disables cache for that reload, too.
sanxiyn 3y ago
Chrome has better network stack. For most other things Firefox is faster, but of course, network is the most important.
- hnav 3y ago
  one deficiency in the FF network stack is that it doesn't properly detect existing pooled connections being broken by net route changes while Chrome does
wintermutestwin 3y ago
>Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing. Yes, and the lack of a viable vertical tabs solution for Chrome (though some Chrome based browsers have native implementations). I am baffled how anyone could still be using horizontal tabs as it is clearly inferior. I am also annoyed as hell that it is not native in Firefox.
- seapat 3y ago
  What extension do you use for vertical tabs on FF? I tried tree style tabs and sideberry but liked neither.
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    Not OP, but personally I'm using Tab Center Reborn with a bit of custom browser CSS to make it slide out on hover (so there are only favicons visible until hovered). It's just a vertical UI for tabs with handy filtering entry box, rather than a complex tab management thing like TST. The only thing I'm missing is filtering/jumping to the tabs that play sounds - it's easy to miss a tiny icon when you have thousands of tabs open :P
  - hencoappel 3y ago
    I use tree style tabs, what don't you like about it?
    - seapat 3y ago
      That I need to install additional extensions for features I wanted and also relying on those extensions to stay maintained. Also I don't like tree structuring generally, because I noticed that that just enables my tab hoarding habit. Configuration was also a bit annoying (in my memory) due to the drop down menus
  - RunSet 3y ago
    Out of the box Tree Style Tabs is not very good, due to decisions made by Firefox that are beyond the control of Tree Style Tabs's developer. Enabling the desired behavior likely requires quite a few steps beyond just installing the extension. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#on-firefox-69-and-later https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... Originally, Firefox had a dropdown menu that allowed the user to choose whether tabs were on the top, bottom, left, or right. This has been an annoying trend with Firefox for some time. They take the default, expected functionality, marginalize it while saying "Users who prefer the old way can enable it in a setting / extension" and then the setting gets deprecated or the extension stops working. See also: "Classic Theme Restorer". All the while software that might work better as an extension is bundled with Firefox and enabled by default. e.g. "Pocket", "Hello".
NelsonMinar 3y ago
I switched to Chrome a few months ago and Container Tabs are the one thing I really miss. I can no longer quarantine Facebook. I can no longer easily juggle multiple login profiles for sites like Twitter. There's nothing like it in Chrome. Multiple profiles don't work well, too many UI problems. The SessionBox looks promising but it's such a complex mess and basically requires a paid plan to use effectively.
kstrauser 3y ago
I spend more than my fair share of time in AWS consoles. My company uses multiple accounts to segregate data and services were appropriate, and container tabs let me have several consoles open at once when I need them. That's such a wonderful productivity boost over having to have multiple browsers open.
lattalayta 3y ago
I always get suspicious when someone describes performance as "feels snappier"
- xd1936 3y ago
  ok
jklinger410 3y ago
Container tabs are unfortunately not very usable for me. I have extensions that are unique to the profile. When they decided to redo the tabs rather than modernize the profile workflow, it basically forced me to use chrome.

I've used Firefox as my primary browser since the "Quantum" in 2017. Chrome still feels snappier, but Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing.

by xd1936 3y ago

I've used Firefox as my primary browser since the "Quantum" in 2017. Chrome still feels snappier, but Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing.

dsauerbrun 3y ago

pretty sure chrome has had tab grouping for over a year now

CrampusDestrus 3y ago
container tabs != tab grouping tab grouping uses the same cookies everywhere, whereas container tabs provide isolated workspaces each with their own set of cookies
post-it 3y ago
Are they containerized? I have separate containers for work and personal stuff, with separate sessions for Gmail, GitHub, etc.
allarm 3y ago
That's not what container tabs are. Think of it as isolated environments for groups of sites. You can even set it up so that each new link opens in a new environment, without any cookies, etc.
seba_dos1 3y ago
How are tab groups relevant here?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
haswell 3y ago
Container tabs isolate sessions. I don’t think tab grouping is related. Firefox allows you to create/manage multiple containers, and set up rules to assign specific sites to specific containers if desired. I think the closest feature in Chrome is the ability to create multiple profiles, but this is less flexible/ergonomic IMO.
- happymellon 3y ago
  In some ways profiles works better, and in others container tabs does. I have two password managers, one for work and one for home. Multiple profiles lets me work with both. Container tabs lets me log into a site multiple times, or when they have a session cookie that prevents me from navigating to two different flows. Both great, both fill completely different niches.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Firefox has profiles too, btw.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Profiles in Firefox isn't great. The profiles plugin, is great. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc... I would want to see this integrated.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

> Chrome still feels snappier I actually tested this and Firefox is significantly faster in rendering CSS and tables. (Not sure about complex Javascript.) Chrome's snappiness is mostly UI smoke and mirrors, actual sites load faster for me in Firefox.

insanitybit 3y ago
Maybe FF should take some tips on those UI "smoke and mirrors". What feels faster is what users are going to go off of. For example, a page that fully loads in 1 second vs a page that incrementally loads in 1.5 seconds - the latter may feel faster because the time to start loading is faster.
- causi 3y ago
  Not to mention that the things the user wants to see are probably early in the load order and all the worthless garbage is coming in later.
  - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
    Those SPA-filled days, all I get on those "early load order" pages are blinking blank rectangles and spinners.
- ndiddy 3y ago
  That makes the user experience worse though. Anyone who's had a webpage layout change while they were trying to interact with it knows how frustrating it is.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Sometimes. The big offender here is advertising.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
  Pretty much this, the overall feel of Chrome is snappier and the UI/UX is much better I'm still not a fan of the latest UI revision on Firefox.. Chrome is able to make me forget there is an UI I remember switching to Chrome because of a new UI update many years ago (performance too) If Firefox manage to catch up performance wise, I might give it another try

rewmie 3y ago

> (...) but Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing. Are you referring to Firefox's multi-account containers extension? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

happymellon 3y ago
I can't speak for them, but it's what I thought of and agree. Sandboxed tabs is brilliant. I just wish they added better overall profile support.
chaxor 3y ago
This is indeed fantastic, but paired with container proxies, it's awesome. You can send a few tabs through one socks proxy, a few through another, all while segmenting that from work, personal, etc. if you have a vpn for one work location and different ones for other work.
- tux3 3y ago
  I'm just starting to use this, I have a VPN that I put in a network namespace along with a local `danted` socks proxy, so it doesn't disturb the rest of the system It's amazing how well it works! I just set a few glob rules on the URLs I need proxied and I don't have to think about it anymore :)
xd1936 3y ago
That's the one! I thought it was an inbuilt feature of the browser. I guess the Facebook Container[1] extension must bring it down as a dependency or something, because I have never installed that extension knowingly. 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

bayindirh 3y ago

Chrome's most of the snappiness is coming from how it handles the DNS queries internally from my experience. Pair Firefox with a fast DNS, and it's noticably faster than Chrome, for the last 3 years or so. I discovered it accidentally, after switching to local DNS at the office. We run one of the nation-wide ones in a pretty close proximity in network terms.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
which is a fast DNS? 1.1.1.1 ? I thought the OS caches DNS anyway, so shouldn't matter much in day to day browsing.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Anything you can "time nslookup" in or under 0.03 seconds (in "real" terms). From my desk: local one - 0.029 seconds 1.1.1.1 - 0.035 seconds 8.8.8.8 - 0.120 seconds Normally it should be, but Firefox's behavior is very sensitive to DNS response speed. Sounds not intuitive, but I think they're not using glibc's caching, or doing something by themselves.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    In the past, at least, firefox has done its own caching since expiring my OS dns cache was insufficient to get it to pick up a change in DNS.
    - CmdrKrool 3y ago
      Good reason to avoid Firefox for development imo. Nothing is more annoying than mysterious cache interventions when you're trying to get a handle on an unrelated problem.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        Dev tools automatically disables caching for that tab, by default. CTRL+SHIFT+R always disables cache for that reload, too.

sanxiyn 3y ago

Chrome has better network stack. For most other things Firefox is faster, but of course, network is the most important.

hnav 3y ago
one deficiency in the FF network stack is that it doesn't properly detect existing pooled connections being broken by net route changes while Chrome does

wintermutestwin 3y ago

>Firefox's Container Tabs is hard for me to imagine losing. Yes, and the lack of a viable vertical tabs solution for Chrome (though some Chrome based browsers have native implementations). I am baffled how anyone could still be using horizontal tabs as it is clearly inferior. I am also annoyed as hell that it is not native in Firefox.

seapat 3y ago
What extension do you use for vertical tabs on FF? I tried tree style tabs and sideberry but liked neither.
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  Not OP, but personally I'm using Tab Center Reborn with a bit of custom browser CSS to make it slide out on hover (so there are only favicons visible until hovered). It's just a vertical UI for tabs with handy filtering entry box, rather than a complex tab management thing like TST. The only thing I'm missing is filtering/jumping to the tabs that play sounds - it's easy to miss a tiny icon when you have thousands of tabs open :P
- hencoappel 3y ago
  I use tree style tabs, what don't you like about it?
  - seapat 3y ago
    That I need to install additional extensions for features I wanted and also relying on those extensions to stay maintained. Also I don't like tree structuring generally, because I noticed that that just enables my tab hoarding habit. Configuration was also a bit annoying (in my memory) due to the drop down menus
- RunSet 3y ago
  Out of the box Tree Style Tabs is not very good, due to decisions made by Firefox that are beyond the control of Tree Style Tabs's developer. Enabling the desired behavior likely requires quite a few steps beyond just installing the extension. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#on-firefox-69-and-later https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... Originally, Firefox had a dropdown menu that allowed the user to choose whether tabs were on the top, bottom, left, or right. This has been an annoying trend with Firefox for some time. They take the default, expected functionality, marginalize it while saying "Users who prefer the old way can enable it in a setting / extension" and then the setting gets deprecated or the extension stops working. See also: "Classic Theme Restorer". All the while software that might work better as an extension is bundled with Firefox and enabled by default. e.g. "Pocket", "Hello".

NelsonMinar 3y ago

I switched to Chrome a few months ago and Container Tabs are the one thing I really miss. I can no longer quarantine Facebook. I can no longer easily juggle multiple login profiles for sites like Twitter. There's nothing like it in Chrome. Multiple profiles don't work well, too many UI problems. The SessionBox looks promising but it's such a complex mess and basically requires a paid plan to use effectively.

kstrauser 3y ago

I spend more than my fair share of time in AWS consoles. My company uses multiple accounts to segregate data and services were appropriate, and container tabs let me have several consoles open at once when I need them. That's such a wonderful productivity boost over having to have multiple browsers open.

lattalayta 3y ago

I always get suspicious when someone describes performance as "feels snappier"

xd1936 3y ago
ok

jklinger410 3y ago

Container tabs are unfortunately not very usable for me. I have extensions that are unique to the profile. When they decided to redo the tabs rather than modernize the profile workflow, it basically forced me to use chrome.