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Why I'm switching back to Firefox

• fakeer 14y ago
  Earlier it used to be ...-Firefox-Chrome-Firefox-... every 2/3 months but fot that 1 year or so it's been just Firefox, happily. I switched back to Firefox sometime ago. It got back its speed and crashes less and fries my Mac less than other browsers. Well, on crashing part and getting stuck part Safari is better than all others on a Mac(at least) but for other purpose(for my usage) it's a pretty pretty useless browser. Safari uses more RAM in Mac than Firefox/Chrome and for less tabs it uses more RAM than both combined, it just does that in a different helper process. Quick releases ensures FF gets thinks out and fixed faster. Their mobile browser is not still there. I hope it becomes better so that I can replace Chrome on my Android too. There are things I wish were there in Firefox. Like manage tabs separately. Like in Chrome. Visual tools/API(seems it's not that open, not sure) like Chrome. I really liked Cortex extension of Chrome in Firefox(it was my favourite). And of course I love those people at Mozilla for always standing against those privacy-killers and keep telling them to suck it up their -----.
  • Ygg2 14y ago
    I don't get about FF on Android, I find it more useable than Chrome. It's about the same speed and it runs flash rather decently (as decently as Flash can run on ARM).
• zhangtai 14y ago
  I have tried several times to switch back to firefox, but without success. I have to use different computers almost everyday, chrome does the sync work so well besides other functions, when I install firefox on a different pc, the sync configuration is so conplex for me... but there are some excelent addons on firefox I will miss, e.g. pantadactyl
• Nux 14y ago
  Welcome back! :)
• Trezoid 14y ago
  Firefox really needed the release of chrome to kick it back into gear because it had stagnated to some extent, easy in its "we're better then IE and that's all that really matters" mediocrity, and swapping over to the rapid release schedule has just accelerated things. The fact that mozilla actively fights for internet freedom and user privacy is just the delicious icing on a technically solid browser cake.
  • RDeckard 14y ago
    And it's bookmark system is still second to none (imo)
    • lucaspiller 14y ago
      One thing I've got used to in Chrome is the syncing between devices (well desktop machines anyway). I remember seeing some stuff a few years ago about this in Firefox. What is the state of it now?
      • Sanddancer 14y ago
        Better than chrome, in my opinion. I switch between my tablet, my phone, my desktop, and laptop, and have access to all my bookmarks, passwords, etc. I don't have tab sync enabled, but that's just personal preference.
      • saurabh 14y ago
        I use Firefox Sync to access tabs on other computers. I haven't tried the mobile version though.
        • LeonidasXIV 14y ago
          It is decent. Although the browser is not exactly impressive since it needs a lot of memory, hangs sometimes and has a weird UI. I really hope they get it together, because page rendering is, apart from font-weirdness sometimes, actually really good.
      • 14y ago
• nodata 14y ago
  At the least, we desperately need Firefox as competition for Webkit.
• robotmay 14y ago
  I made the same switch about a year ago now. Firefox feels so much better than it did when Chrome first appeared. I also now have an Android tablet, and Firefox on Android has come on leaps and bounds since it was first released; the tab syncing feature it shares with the desktop is fantastic and I haven't even launched Chrome on my tablet since I got it.
• ok_craig 14y ago
  Sometimes I wonder how comprehensive these comparisons actually are. This is what I currently have open in Chrome: 3 Chrome Beta windows, with 17, 14, and 1 tabs open. 1 Chrome Canary window with 2 tabs A good number of these tabs have not-very-light applications open like Gmail, Google spreadsheets, and some YouTube vids. If you say to yourself, "oh, let me go check out Firefox compared to this," and launch it with one tab, do a quick Google search, and then determine, "hey, this is way faster," well... yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Not only do you not have multiple windows and tabs open, but if you haven't used it in years you've probably got a pretty small cache not bogging you down. Personally I've never actually noticed Chrome's performance to have any issues. Maybe because I have 12 gigs of RAM and an otherwise decent setup. On a more constrained system perhaps problems start to show themselves more easily. But are you sure that those same problems don't also appear in other browsers, given you're using them as intensely as you've been using Chrome this whole time? I'd really love to see some browser comparison stats that go in-depth on this. Basically the only numbers you ever see these days are javascript rendering scores, and I feel like that's a really poor way to determine a browser's overall speed and efficiency. It doesn't account for how long it takes to open a new tab (like .01 seconds vs .3 seconds, which IMO is a big difference), scroll lag, startup time, etc, and it certainly doesn't account for how and if browsers become bogged down by real-world use. I fear that users may be making similar snap judgments by comparing on the basis of quick open-and-go tests, instead of actual in-depth testing. First impressions are everything. You may find yourself five years from now using a browser that is actually slower than you were using previously, but you maintain your use of it because one time five years ago you opened it and loaded a page and it was faster than the encumbered incumbent.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • ewencp 14y ago
    I honestly can't give hard numbers, but I really did switch back to FF because of the memory usage. My ancient-by-HN-standards but not-too-ancient-by-normal-standards desktop with 4GB RAM (Ubuntu 10.04 if that's relevant) was starting to thrash like crazy with a moderate number of tabs (maybe 6-12 on average), but most importantly, with a few open for long periods of time. Firefox seemed to really clean up their act wrt memory, where Chromium seemed to grow without bound and keep a lot of it in the working set, doubling the pain. Firefox isn't perfect, but it seems to be more of a problem with Flash than the browser (clearing out my Rdio tab has the most effect). And measuring memory usage through top isn't perfect, but FF does seem to use significantly less RES even after long sessions. So, anecdotal evidence, but I was using Chromium as my regular browser for years and ended up switching back to FF because I found the performance on my reasonable-but-aging machine to be far superior to Chromes under regular, long-term usage.
• kaolinite 14y ago
  I switch back on Linux every so often, feel refreshed and stay for a few months. Then I switch to Chrome, feel refreshed and the cycle continues.
• tanepiper 14y ago
  I've recently switched back as well and I find that it's back to a much better experience. Firefox was horrible for a while, but I think the team have been doing an excellent job of optimising it. My only annoyance is the development tools - Chrome still whips FF here - and they are still no where as good as Firebug, which continues to be the most required extension - but I believe work is being done there too.
  • jaredmcateer 14y ago
    Chrome Dev Tools were what ultimately lured me over to Chrome full time. The Sync tool is pretty good too. I don't really get these memory issues everyone talks about. Maybe it's because I'm not on OSX but on Linux and Windows I regularly have 20+ tabs open for weeks and have no issues... even if I'm playing video games that take up 60% of my memory when Chrome was taking up 50% as it was it seems to play nice.
• rth 14y ago
  First of all Firebug and million other addons are good reason to stick to Firefox ;) Welcome back!
• INTPenis 14y ago
  My story is similar but goes further back, I tried Chrome shortly but soon learned that its only two noscript-options were flawed in various ways, mainly they loaded all the javascript once before they blocked it. So the only reason I use firefox today is due to noscript.
• jagermo 14y ago
  I would love to switch back to Firefox, but, to be honest, the rapid relase cycle really annoys me. I would love to head back, if Mozilla switched to a more stable release cycle - or at least to updates, that don't interupt me everytime I start the browser up. But I'll give it a try.
  • LeonidasXIV 14y ago
    You can use Firefox ESR, also by Mozilla.
  • dochtman 14y ago
    The update nagging has been much reduce since the start of the rapid release cycle, so you should definitely give it a try.
    • jagermo 14y ago
      Thanks all, I will.
  • keeperofdakeys 14y ago
    I believe Firefox now has mostly silent updates, just like Chrome does. At least, I don't usually notice it updating. It does however require (automatically) installing a service (in Windows), since it's installed on the system, and not in the user directory, like Chrome is.
  • cpeterso 14y ago
    If you set the about:config pref "app.update.silent" to true, Firefox should never show you an update dialog. A Mozilla user study showed that most Firefox users restarted their browser at least once a day, so the update dialog usually waits something like 12 or 24 hours. By then, most users will have restarted their browser without needing to be prodded. http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent
• the_gipsy 14y ago
  How about doing actual benchmarks? How about pin pointing how exactly google tracks you more or better with chrome than with ff?
  • josephlord 14y ago
    > How about pin pointing how exactly google tracks you more or better with chrome than with ff? Why? It can change it the next update. Or you can just use Firefox (and NoScript) with much less worry.
    • the_gipsy 14y ago
      There is no evidence that chrome tracks you anymore than FF with google as search engine. My gripe is that the article is all about "feelings" and makes claims without backing them up.
• christogreeff 14y ago
  Finding myself using Firefox more often again. Chrome is not as snappy as I once felt it to be.
• Semaphor 14y ago
  Does anyone know of an extension that adds Chromes feature of highlighting results in the scrollbar when searching through a page (Ctrl+F)? It's pretty much the only thing I'm missing whenever I try FF again.
  • J_Darnley 14y ago
    I use XUL/Migemo which marks matches in a similar way to what you describe and also allows a a regex search. It also has some Japanese language features (but I'm not interested in those).
    • Semaphor 14y ago
      Thank you so much! While XUL/Migemo seems to have problems with current FF versions, someone there linked Fastest Search [1] and it has everything I wanted plus way more (including RegEx). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fastest-search/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fastest-searc...
      • abrowne 14y ago
        Great find, I've been looking for something like this too.
  • ubojan 14y ago
    I use Scrollbar Search Highlighter: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrollbar-search-highlighter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrollbar-sea... It does pretty good job.
  • zobzu 14y ago
    I agree. I wonder why FF doesn't just do this by default.
• stroboskop 14y ago
  The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP's last paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality alone. The most popular alternatives to Firefox are Google's Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I doubt these alternative browsers would exist if they were not useful for Google's and Microsofts main businesses. These companies produce web browsers to support their main products/services. The rationale behind AOL Explorer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser) was similar. In settings like those privacy and other interests of web users are easily sacrificed. Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing.
  • hosay123 14y ago
    Just to add, users rarely choose their software at all. If we're talking about the unwashed masses here, then the primary reason Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Safari are popular at all is almost entirely due to placement. Joe consumer, comprising an ever increasing majority of the Internet population, simply doesn't care about which browser she is using. More often it is a result of what randomly got installed as the default through their last foray of random clicking and purchases. As a result, Chrome's regular placement on the Google homepage (and IE's default-installation) give it obvious "competitive" edges. Of course when discussing browser market share this is rarely mentioned, instead popularity is usually attributed to fractional nanosecond differences in rendering time and so on that 99% of users never notice, and simply won't care about even if you told them. (Edit: there is another reason to appreciate Mozilla in here, in that their efforts seem less focused on branding and positioning than they are much more so on function and vision. Mozilla's endgame shares a certain utilitarian theme compatible with what the masses seem to expect from technology (it's a "computer" with the "Internet" on it, not a "Chromebook" with "Google" on it), than does just about every other company in this space who are using their platforms to sell people more shit they don't need)
    • ferongr 14y ago
      When it comes to Chrome, in many cases it's not even conscious or explicit user choice. Chrome is aggressively pushed as opt-out shovelware with installers of unrelated software (e.g. CCleaner) and is set up as the default browser if the user doesn't deselect the options.
• andybak 14y ago
  Due to issues with memory usage on Chrome I recently tried switching back but page rendering and UI response felt noticeably slower. I am also so fluent with web inspector that the burden of re-learning Firebug or the built-in tools was a drag. So I decided that the easiest way to reduce Chrome's memory usage was to curb my slightly irrational usage patterns - keeping dozens of tabs open that I rarely ever get around to going back to.
• marvwhere 14y ago
  1) Firefox is the new IE7/8 - i having more and more issues with standard css settings, which are f* up in the ff, but are nice and shiny in all other brothers (yes even in ie) 2) "I honestly believe Mozilla is committed to freedom and privacy on the web." - haha thats funny :D you know about chromium right? :D its free, you can code on it too if you want too, sure there are might be 1-2 functions in the chrome, which belongs to google, but all in all you can know the code. and google did there learnings after the first versions where they sending stuff to there servers. and in the end, all browser are logging the same shit, where are we clicking, what are we doing, where we enter this and that. why? because they want to make there money too, and collect a big big big database, which they can sell to other companies. and learn stuff out of it. i guess on this view all brothers are the same crap 3) memory management - yes its true chrome get stuck more and more often, and eating the memory, and it is annoying. but for me, firefox still is worse. everytime i start firefox for debugging some website or whatever, i'm totally pissed, because this stupid software still needs like forever for the initialised start. and when you keep it open for 2 days, you done :D in my opinion even photoshop has a better memory management then firefox. = i hope for the chrome too, that the switch from opera to webkit, give them a little ass kick, because that is that what all browser companies needed, an ass kick. first there was an IE everybody used it, so why should they update it? then there was the firefox, ie was screwed, everybody used ff now, so why should they update it? then there was the chrome, ff was screwed, everybody used chrome now, so why should they update it? and everybody took there lesson out of it, IE is getting better, FF starts updating there browser after sitting on 3.6 like forever... and thats ok, people now having like 3-4 good brothers and can choose.
  • tobylane 14y ago
    The second part to 2) sounds a little paranoid, can you back it up? I switched from Opera (then known as the lightweight) to Chrome (then known as the chugging oversized beast) because of Opera's (sudden in v11 ish) memory leaks. Hopefully they fix that and I'll switch abck to Opera for the same reasons as OP did for Firefox.
    • dgesang 14y ago
      I haven't experienced any memory leaks in the last couple of months.
• 0mbre 14y ago
  Surf with Chrome and use Firefox for dev
• ricardobeat 14y ago
  Here we go again! This is a sentiment that is spreading in the dev community, Chrome is starting to lose it's edge. I'm currently working on a slightly heavy page, and Chrome is the slowest of the bunch to render, despite having smoother animations in most cases after it has done it's thing. Firefox, Safari and even IE9 are visibly faster by a couple seconds. I feel like it slowly got worse and worse over the years. These days Chrome is the main CPU hog in my machine, uses GBs of memory and is responsible for most system hangs (OSX). The com.google.keystone agent thing even causes the trackpad and keyboard to malfunction every once and a while.
  • belorn 14y ago
    With "keep tabs at exit" setting, I managed to reach over 250 tabs in Firefox. Had no issues what so ever, even when a game like guild wars 2 and bt was also up and running. I would very much like to see a memory and cpu comparison between Firefox and chrome when the tab sizes reaches that size.
  • rachelbythebay 14y ago
    WTF! THAT is the thing which makes my input go away for a few seconds? I thought I had hardware which was flaking out, since really, how does the whole system regularly "lose" both input devices at once? Thank you for mentioning this!
    • alex_doom 14y ago
      Well that's good news, sorta. I too thought the hardware was having issues.
    • chaz 14y ago
      This is totally news to me as well. I'll have to investigate and confirm.
    • Kurtz79 14y ago
      I have been experiencing something similar recently. Please follow up if you find any references to the problem.
• afhof 14y ago
  What OS? I have noticed that Firefox on Ubuntu (12.04 clean install) looks way worse and feels worse than FF on Windows 7. I feel like Firefox on Windows is still more peppy than Chrome / Firefox on Ubuntu despite my Linux box being way beefier. I feel like the author's post is 1 dimensional (which browser) when it should be a 2 dimensional comparison (browser and OS).
• nhebb 14y ago
  For me the big difference wasn't the browser itself; it has been excessive javascript that's slowing the browsers. Many media sites are loading 20-30 external scripts, and I found that switching back to Firefox with NoScript has made a huge difference in load times and memory usage. The other issue with Chrome was releasing memory. I can close a tab in FF and the memory is recovered.
  • ubercow13 14y ago
    That's weird, shouldn't Chrome be better at releasing memory due to its process model?
    • keeperofdakeys 14y ago
      Having individual processes also dramatically increases the overhead of having multiple tabs open.
      • ubercow13 14y ago
        Yes but when they are closed, it should be trivial to reclaim all of the memory a tab was using, unlike with a single-process model?
  • krichman 14y ago
    Installing NoScript freed up like 20% of my CPU time. Now I just need websites to stop failing ungracefully.
    • rangibaby 14y ago
      I saw someone recommend this before: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/yesscript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/yesscript/ I haven't tried it myself, but apparently it's a kind of reverse Noscript (hence the name). "YesScript lets you make a blacklist of sites that aren't allowed to run JavaScript. Use YesScript on sites that annoy you or hog your system resources. One click to the icon in the status bar turns scripts on or off for the current site."
• pioul 14y ago
  I switched from Firefox to Chrome at about the same time as op. But I can't relate to how he feels: - Chrome still has better dev tools than Firefox - Chrome doesn't freeze at all (while Firefox does when handling a lot of tabs) - Chrome doesn't require to restart when installing an extension (even if Firefox starts moving to this too) - I still prefer Chrome's UI - Even though I didn't try syncing with Firefox, Chrome does that very nicely
  • keeperofdakeys 14y ago
    > Chrome doesn't require to restart when installing an extension (even if Firefox starts moving to this too) Mozilla did introduce an api to do restart-less addons about two years ago, as a side effect these addons don't depend on specific firefox versions anymore. The problem with firefox addons is that they have always hooked directly into XUL, a layout language used inside firefox, which changes (nearly) every version. This means addons needed to be updated regularly. However it did allow them many capabilities (that I suspect the new api doesn't give them).
• shadowmint 14y ago
  Same here, but for a slightly different reason for me: When you're not logged into your google account, typing into the address bar with periodically kill chrome on mountain lion. Not often, but maybe 3 or 4 times a day. Not kill the tab; hard kill chrome, instantly, destroying all the tabs, no recovery, all chrome processes go poof. It happens on all three of my mac devices (and this is on Version 25.0.1364.160). It's not even a choice; that's just unusable. I've also found firefox to be a lot better than I remember. Firebug is still a memory hog though, and as we saw in the other epic thread, the firebug / native developer tools thing is still just idiotic. ...but it's pretty good. I honestly didn't expect to be ever returning to firefox because it was more stable than the alternative.
  • AlexeyBrin 14y ago
    I've had the same problem with Chrome on ML, reinstall the browser and the bug will disappear (you'll need to erase it from your Applications and from ~/Library/Caches).
  • dplesca 14y ago
    I had the same problem on chrome. There's a lengthy bug discussion and a suggested solution (that worked for me): https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=175341#c45 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=175341#c...
    • recuter 14y ago
      The immediate difference toggling "Predict network actions to improve page load performance" off for me is STUNNING. Thank you so much.
  • JonnieCache 14y ago
    FWIW It's stopped doing that to me in recent weeks.
  • eddmc 14y ago
    I use a Chrome extension from www.sessionbuddy.com to retrieve tabs if Chrome unexpectedly crashes. I've found it pretty useful
• reidrac 14y ago
  Firefox is great, but I think is a unfair comparison Chrome vs Firefox as he's talking about freedom and Chrome is not free software[1]. He may want to try Chromium instead. I know is supposed to be the same source code, but it gives me some peace of mind that a 3rd party I trust (Linux distro) had access to the source code and built the actual binary I'm using. [1] http://www.google.co.uk/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html http://www.google.co.uk/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html EDIT: formatting
• rkwz 14y ago
  >The “disable cache” checkbox in the developer tools seems to do nothing I've the same issue. It works sometimes and other times it doesn't.
  • spand 14y ago
    You need to keep the pane open for it to have an effect. The relevant SO thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690269/disabling-chrome-cache-for-website-development http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690269/disabling-chrome-... I actually like this behavior but obviously you need to know about it for it to seem reasonable :-)
    • rkwz 14y ago
      Yes, I'm aware of that. But sometimes even keeping the dev tools open doesn't clear the cache. Probably it's some bug.
• siamore 14y ago
  I too have switched Firefox as my main browser, so far I like the better addons, * ad block is much better * addons work in private mode by default, * an addon to use keepaas as my password manager * many addons that allow me to customize youtube which i could not do in chrome (force 240p etc..), * I missed Instant search but Firefox already searches bookmarks better and with the instantFox addon i can also search any site ala google instant and ddg Better in chrome * Addons by HNers (HN in chrome is great with a few addons like tldr.io, HNbox) * Firefox seems unable to do multiple downloads as well as chrome (I'm unable to download multiple videos at once from coursera when using firefox) * some chrome store apps * Developer tools (which I don't really need) I don't see much of a performance difference (maybe Firefox is better now or it may be hardware accelerated as I'm using Windows)
  • oinksoft 14y ago
    I haven't seen this multiple download issue with Firefox, but you may like the DownThemAll! download manager, it provides a queue, maximum downloads, bandwidth limits, and other very nice features: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/
    • siamore 14y ago
      Thanks for the suggestion, I already use DownThemAll but it could not even grab the download. It may be the site's fault, once I click on the download link it opens a new tab and the download starts, on chrome I can start another download but it gets stuck on Firefox, it may be that the page was made with chrome in mind idk.
    • siamore 14y ago
      Actually you're right, multiple downloads is working fine now, it might have been V19 or maybe the site was updated anyway its now fixed, thanks for the heads up!
  • yohui 14y ago
    Regarding YouTube on Chrome, have you tried the "YouTube Options" extension? Among other things, it can set the default resolution and size of videos. The version on the developer's site can also add links to download videos (the Chrome Web Store version cannot due to YouTube's TOS). Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-options/bdokagampppgbnjfdlkfpphniapiiifn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-options/bd... Developer's site: https://spoi.com/software/yto/ https://spoi.com/software/yto/ I'm surprised to hear that you've not found a KeePass addon for Chrome. I'm using LastPass right now, but I've been thinking of switching to take advantage of KeePassDroid on Android. Do the popular options on the Chrome Web Store not pass muster?
• tekahs 14y ago
  Firefox is great for his philosophy, but for my part, Chrome is better for dev., performance, memory, etc. (And recently, I'm having a weird bug with text while scrolling with Firefox). Anyway, I think everyone here using Firefox AND chrome.
• bobsy 14y ago
  I feel Chrome is becoming the new IE. Firefox always works. I keep finding obscure bugs in Chrome. I report them. They are confirmed by 3+ people. 9 months later issues remain unfixed. It feels like all development is targeted at new features instead of rounding off and fixing existing functionality. The two things I dislike about Firefox. The development tools are funky. I am sure many people like them but when you are used to firebug / webkit tools the default Firefox tools are a bit of a shock. The second issue is the lack of tab sand-boxing. A fairly large part of my job is testing for edge cases in our products. Our products are JavaScript heavy. I often find issues which crash the browser... well.. they crash Firefox. In Chrome the tab shows an error in the console and I have the option to close the tab. In Firefox I never get an error in the console. The whole browser freezes and stops responding. It would be fantastic if Firefox sandboxed tabs to stop the entire browser crashing.
  • mmahemoff 14y ago
    Sandboxed tabs was planned with Electrolysis, which was dropped, and will hopefully be delivered with Servo. But it seems a while off production.
  • bryanlarsen 14y ago
    Two of the main advantages of Firefox for many are its memory usage and its extensibility. Those two advantages would be lost if Firefox added sandboxing. I'm glad that I can choose between sandboxing and better extensions and I would be sad to see that choice disappear.
    • coldtea 14y ago
      >Two of the main advantages of Firefox for many are its memory usage and its extensibility. Those two advantages would be lost if Firefox added sandboxing. I'm glad that I can choose between sandboxing and better extensions and I would be sad to see that choice disappear. Totally orthogonal issues. Not to mention Firefox ate memory like a pig until recently, despite not having sandboxing. Now it's somewhat better with post 16 stuff, but still it's slow. Chrome is much more responsive and fast.
• bryanwbh 14y ago
  Switched to Firefox from Chrome due to the following: - I dislike Google tracking everything that I am doing - Chrome with one tab starts out smoothly but with more tabs, its memory usage increases at a faster rate compared to Firefox - A browser that puts an advertisement in a blank page (chromebook anyone?) is a total turn-off
• Newky 14y ago
  I have returned to firefox for the following reasons: 1) It feels more stable. Almost never crashes. 2) Can run separate profiles at the same time in a nicer way than chrome. I use this to have a work and personal browser in work. 3) I use vimperator now which I find works best on firefox. 4) I get that happy feeling that I am using software which actually values some of the open source philosophy that I value.
• mcovey 14y ago
  I've been a lifelong Opera user and given the current situation (it's dying), I am considering Firefox the only viable alternative. I've never even liked having chrome on my computer, and in fact I would not be surprised if Google simply dropped chrome as a product, leaving it to the hands of the open source community anyway. They've abandoned many good products and dropping chrome wouldn't surprise me. Then again, maybe I am bitter, I thought Opera would be around forever.
  • lucb1e 14y ago
    Was it ever not dying? I liked the browser, but the lack of support and incorrectly rendering websites got me off of it after at most one evening. (I tried a few times.)
    • dgesang 14y ago
      Please, don't swap the facts. Opera (Presto) was conform to the standard, but most web developers focused only on webkit and implemented too much browser-specific code.
    • dubcanada 14y ago
      I use Opera pretty much 100% and I've very rarely found any issues that would not have been issues in the other browsers. The only problem is some people seem to think every single CSS3/HTML5 feature needs to be prefixed with -webkit- to work.
  • dgesang 14y ago
    It is not dying. It had have around 2% market share for the last couple of years and it will stay in that region for next years. It might even get more user due to the recently announced shift to Webkit and its increasing popularity on mobile devices. Just keep using it. If you need Chrome as a 2nd browser you should consider using any of the Chromium forks available. E.g. I use Comodo Dragon. cheers
• Mahn 14y ago
  I have no idea what the article and some of you guys are talking about. I'm a very heavy user of Chrome, usually I have around 3 windows and 50-60 tabs in total; with this is setting I feel it's running pretty snappy, animations runs very smooth compared to the choppy experience I get with a single window and a single tab using Firefox. And don't get me started about Firebug; it's still so slow and clumsy compared to the chrome dev tools, every time I have to debug something Firefox specific the mere thought of being forced to use it gives me pain. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage Mozilla, I have a huge appreciation for what they are doing. But when it comes to day-to-day usage, and as a developer tool, Chrome still wins in my book.
  • Guillaume86 14y ago
    Same experience here (well my Firefox experience is ok too but I don't see anything better then Chrome so I'm not switching back). As a web dev, I have 10+ tabs open all day long and I never see a chrome crash. I'm not even looking at the RAM usage, if everything run smooth there is not reason to...
    • exodust 14y ago
      22 tabs open now in Firefox on Win7, and they've been open for days in between hibernation, gaming, other stuff. All kinds of dodgy developer tabs and video sites etc. Firefox takes it, and provides a huge range of tools and options to make the browser environment exactly how I like. Amazing add-ons, custom looks. I prefer an old fashioned status bar at the bottom of the browser. Thank God for status-4-eva add-on. I'm glad Chrome was made, it's an option for anyone who doesn't mind the 'Google feel'. There's a Google vibe that has a sort of marketing agenda that you can sometimes see, manifesting in a few different ways in and out of browser. No big deal, just sometimes it feels like you're renting your online experience from Google rather than on your own journey. Hard to explain. They make amazing things, so can forgive, just don't want to sign up to Google every time I'm online. They currently push you to sign in and stay signed in on Google.com search when not logged in. And they try to sell you Chrome too, with "no thanks" as the button to hide the ad. You know when you make a button that says "no thanks", you're assuming the user who clicks the button is thankful, for being given the ad on google for the 500th time. Your assumption would be wrong.
• qoo 14y ago
  Firefox's killer features: 1. Option "Don't load tabs until selected" 2. Firefox Sync 3. Aurora releases
  • abrowne 14y ago
    Yes, I love lazy-loading tabs!
• mariusmg 14y ago
  See you there. Most of us already made the switch (back).
  • canthonytucci 14y ago
    Do you have numbers to support that?
• qwerta 14y ago
  I tried to switch to Firefox while ago, but there are two problems which holds me back: - Firefox is horrible with inversive color theme (light text on dark background). With Chrome it just works on 99% websites - KDE Firefox integration is horrible.
  • Noughmad 14y ago
    I use Firefox on KDE with a dark theme (obsidian coast). Parts of some pages, like this very comment input on HN, specify either text color or background color, but not the other, and so you get dark text on dark bg or light text on light bg. However, these are relatively rare, and I have little issue with this setup. The KDE integration is also not that bad. I use ArchLinux and never installed any special packages, and while tabs and menus do not look exactly like Qt/KDE apps, the difference is barely noticable. And they are the correct color.
• wilfra 14y ago
  It's getting better and it's now overtaken Safari as my default when I need a second browser. However I'll never consider switching back until they completely eliminate popups of any kind. I never want to be asked to restart the browser or update my plugins or anything. I don't care if Mozilla is filing for bankruptcy and they are turning it over to Kim Jong-un - I don't want a fucking popup announcing it. Edit: immediately after making this post I realized there might be a way to disable all popups and notifications. Is there? If so, I might give it a spin for a week.
  • cpeterso 14y ago
    If you set the about:config pref "app.update.silent" to true, Firefox should never show you an update dialog. A Mozilla user study showed that most Firefox users restarted their browser at least once a day, so the update dialog usually waits something like 12 or 24 hours. By then, most users will have restarted their browser without needing to be prodded. http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent
• rasmuskl 14y ago
  I was actually thinking the same thing and am giving it a try. One thing that strikes me as vastly inferior in FF given my use cases is the way private browsing works. I use incognito tabs in Chrome all the time in dev to get a clean tab with no sessions etc. FF only allows for either normal tabs or private tabs, not both. Oh well :-)
  • khuey 14y ago
    Chrome-style private browsing is coming in a few weeks. https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/02/22/firefox-beta-includes-per-window-private-browsing/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/02/22/firefox-b...
  • Skalman 14y ago
    Firefox has just added private windows (just like incognito in Chrome). It's currently in Firefox beta [1], which will be released on April 2nd. [1] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/20.0beta/releasenotes/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/20.0beta/releasenotes/
  • zobzu 14y ago
    nightlyniw support private browsing per window. ie soon to be in ff
• kamme 14y ago
  I'm sticking with firefox for most of the same reasons as the author notes, but I do wish the mozilla team used some common sense when they think of new features. A good example of the lack of common sense (imho) is the addon bar. Why do I want an extra bar with 2 or 3 icons? Most people will probably remember the status bar in browsers and they ditched that because it was not needed and you lost valuable screen estate. What was the best solution mozilla could come up with to handle the extension icons? An extra bar in the bottom of your browser. Just implement an omnibar already and put those things there... If anyone from mozilla is reading this: you've done a great (GREAT!) job at making firefox faster and use less memory, and if you're ever in the neighbourhood I'll buy you a beer. Now please also start thinking about those little things that just don't make any sense.
  • shared4you 14y ago
    It might not be useful for you, but I for one find the "addon bar" really great. I've about 10 addons installed and configured most of them to be at the bottom, all in a single place. You can toggle it with "CTRL + /" at anytime, which pleases both parties.
    • kamme 14y ago
      I'm using a non-us keyboard layout and unfortunately that doesn't work...
      • phaylon 14y ago
        It works on my German keyboard layout (Ctrl + Shift + 7, that is).
      • babuskov 14y ago
        It's probably accessible somehow. For example, on my Serbian keyboard it's AltGr+Shift+Q
  • conradfr 14y ago
    I for one miss the status bar (I don't like "hover url display", attract my eyes) and have the addon bar to control adblock+ and ghostery.
• runeks 14y ago
  I recently switched back to Chrome because I felt Firefox was too slow. Strange how we experience the exact opposite :\. Also, the feature I most appreciate with Chrome is the synchronization of tabs across all my devices (PC, laptop and phone). Firefox also has this but it never really worked for me (it was slow to update the tab list of my PC so I could access it from my phone, or it didn't update it at all "Ubuntu 12.04 - 4 days ago").
  • Newky 14y ago
    Strangely this was one of the main reasons I switched off Chrome. I found that this was not useful at all. My three main consumptions are: -> Work Computer -> Tablet and phone -> Home computer The tabs on my work computer are almost always not relevant for when I am at home and on tablet phone. There is also certain cases where I would not particularly want my tabs from my work machine (sensitive information perhaps) shared to my home computer or a mobile device I could get stolen and vice versa. For any sharing of tabs I want, I just use pocket, as the tabs I really want to share are usually just articles that I want to read, either way pocket will take those links.
• g3orge 14y ago
  Chromium doesn't greet you with an ad. ;-)
  • lucb1e 14y ago
    Chromium doesn't have a built-in pdf reader :(
    • Shorel 14y ago
      I consider that a feature.
      • lucb1e 14y ago
        What, downloading, opening, closing and deleting a pdf file instead of just opening a new tab with it?
        • Shorel 14y ago
          I simply click the link, and a real PDF viewer shows me the content. I close the viewer when finished, and forget about it. It's the same experience, except that the PDF is rendered right, the fonts are nicer, and the scrolling is far better. I can also view it as a presentation with slides easily.
    • g3orge 14y ago
      you can easily install it.
• shocks 14y ago
  I get where everyone is coming from when they say Firefox is getting better, but I really don't see Chrome getting worse and I certainly don't see Firefox surpassing Chrome. Firefox dev tools in Nightly are much better, but still don't beat Chrome's. Firefox is still ugly. Firefox still won't let me open Nightly and Aurora. Firefox's Javascript performance is getting faster and memory usage is getting better, but when running tight loops in Javascript doing lots of calculations (specifically rendering fractal flames) Firefox becomes unresponsive and unusable, where as Chrome is fine and I can still browse normally while it runs in the background. Chrome might use a but more RAM but that's not a problem for me. I have buckets of RAM. Firefox needs restarting all the time when I change extensions or get updates. I'll stick with Chrome for now. :)
  • chaud 14y ago
    Firefox's dev tools are still inadaquate compared to the ones in Chrome, even with Nightly. Thankfully Firebug and another Firefox profile solves that. As far as opening both Nightly and Aurora, create a shortcut to Nightly with the following options "...\firefox.exe -p -no-remote". This will let you select a profile on startup, keeping your Aurora and Nightly profiles separate and running both at the same time.
    • shocks 14y ago
      Thanks for this tip! :)
  • jimmaswell 14y ago
    Firefox isn't ugly. Maybe the default style, but it's the most customizable browser in common use. You can make it look however you want with a few addons and config settings.
  • mehrzad 14y ago
    >Firefox needs restarting all the time when I change extensions Because the extensions are more powerful.
• vidyesh 14y ago
  Spot on, OP. Spot on. Firefox is a great browser and its truly open. Unlike you I always been a Firefox user mostly because I still can't the basic addons for Chrome which I use on Firefox. And privacy concerns. I still use Chrome for cross-browser checks. The one thing that Chrome was been said to be better than Firefox was the memory management. Over the past years, Firefox's memory leak issue has almost diminished and Chrome's has started. Mozilla was and always is making Firefox for web browsing, they never pulled in any other feature/add-on/plug-in which would side track their motto.
• razzmataz 14y ago
  Recently, it seems Chrome is saving history online between browsers on different machines. This has freaked me out to the point where I'm moving back to using Firefox.
  • lucb1e 14y ago
    You can even sync tabs if you like. It's all in the settings...
  • Achshar 14y ago
    You can always disable it in the sync settings. Seriously this is HN, not some news site.
• gokfar 14y ago
  Pentadactyl alone did it for me.
  • chojeen 14y ago
    Pentadactyl is incredible. I find it difficult to use a browser without it now.
• cabbeer 14y ago
  If you're on windows, the difference in font rendering between firefox and chrome is huge.
  • Mahn 14y ago
    Very true, on windows at least every single browser renders fonts however they feel like. I wish someone would stand up and propose a standard way to render fonts (yes, I know pages don't necessarily have to look exactly pixel perfect across browsers, but it would simplify the design process a lot)
  • gluxon 14y ago
    That's always bothered me. Firefox's fonts are so crisp and clear. Chrome's look faded for some reason.
    • ivank 14y ago
      They screwed it up in Chrome 22 while rewriting part of skia: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407
  • eumenides1 14y ago
    It drives me bonkers when I highlight text to read (I don't highlight everything, but I do it unconciously). When I highlight the text in chrome, it feels like my vision suddendly dropped out and I need glasses.
  • OWaz 14y ago
    I've been using Firefox a lot more often once I found out that poor font rendering was the fault of Chrome and not because of cleartype settings.
  • senorerik 14y ago
    There has been talks of directwrite coming to Chrome for nearly a year now. We have to suffer the poorly hinted fonts looking terrible for a while longer.
• jacquesm 14y ago
  I never switched to Chrome for the silly and simple reason that I prefer a less corporate internet over a more corporate one. On top of that I am not sure that Chrome is or is not spyware but I'd like to err on the side of caution with stuff like this.
• ams6110 14y ago
  IIRC when Google released Chrome they said (I'm paraphrasing) they were doing it to raise the bar by which web browsers were measured. They needed to do this so that their other products (gmail, google docs) were viable replacements to their desktop competitors. They weren't really interested in developing a browser for its own sake. If Firefox is now seen as being as good as or even better than Chrome, it looks like Google have succeeded.
  • lucb1e 14y ago
    Seeing ads in Google Chrome, I'd say they use the browser for more than that. But yes, I can also remember hearing something like that. They're profiting regardless of the outcome.
• seferphier 14y ago
  Chrome lags a lot when dealing with HTML5 and hogs a lot of memory
• e40 14y ago
  I frequently have tabs become completely unresponsive This started happening to me a few months ago, and yesterday I had about 5 tabs do this. I even cleared the cache and restarted, and it happened again. I've been having the same thoughts as the OP, and having fled FF around the same time frame, perhaps I should give it another try.
• mherdeg 14y ago
  We've just passed the four-year anniversary of the bug that made me abandon Firefox on Mac: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 If you are an extremely fast typer, pretty much any time you use Firefox on OS X to "Save As" you will hit this incarnation of a bug that hangs every tab in your browser and forces you to kill it and start from scratch: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528149 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528149 Total bummer, I love Firefox but I'm not gonna train myself to type slower to keep from breaking it. This is no Therac-25.
  • bhauer 14y ago
    I love Firefox and use it every day. But you bring up an important point. The Google Chrome team has some pretty annoying bugs and limitations that they ignore for years, but the same is true for Firefox. For example, my largest pet peeve with Firefox is that two sessions cannot share the same profile. I can't have Firefox open for user abc in desktop session 1 and try to open it again as user abc in desktop session 2. Chrome and IE have no problem doing that. No joke, the issue is a decade old. And Mozilla recently marked the issue as a wont-fix. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135137 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135137 I didn't lodge a complaint in the bug's comment trail. It's disappointing, but I figure it's essentially impossible for any of these guys to have a stellar record on bugs when you're got bug IDs in the high six-digits.
• 3do 14y ago
  Built-in syncing service is still not user friendly. Persona may fix it in future
• YPetrov 14y ago
  I used to be a Firefox user a couple of years ago and then when I switched to Chrome I noticed a BIG difference in the performance. Chrome was faster and more stable. Now, similar to the OP I keep having issues with Chrome, the biggest of which is its memory usage. "Memory usage is off the charts and I frequently have tabs become completely unresponsive." In my case, it not only eats 2GB of my RAM, but also takes a bit proportion of my hard-disk. I did a quick experiment yesterday and measured my FREE HDD space before closing Chrome and after that. Before: 800 MB free. After: 10.9 GB free :) It's true I keep a lot of tabs open (>70), but 10GB.. I think that's too much. Now, I'm considering switching back to Firefox, too.
• forgotAgain 14y ago
  I've been using Firefox more myself. It's the consistent tic- tic-tic of disk access by Chrome. I have all extensions and plug-ins disabled. All caching disabled. And yet when I try to concentrate on something I'm reading in Chrome I'm continuously distracted by the tic-tic-tic of chrome accessing the hard disk every second or two. Right now this window I'm writing in is the only Chrome window open. Yet there are three Chrome processes running. One of which is writing 7k per second to a temp file. Chrome is not the sleek beast it once was. It's living off its reputation at this point.
• mbesto 14y ago
  I honestly believe Mozilla is committed to freedom and privacy on the web. Google is committed to making money and knowing everything I do. The majority of the revenues comes from Google Inc., which is the default search engine on Mozilla Firefox.[1] Doesn't Mozilla exist because Google exists? [1]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Mozilla_Corp...
  • kibwen 14y ago
    Mozilla continues to exist because there is competition among search engines for marketshare. If Google was the only search engine in the world, they likely wouldn't see any need to fund Mozilla. But given that Bing does exist, and that it has non-negligible marketshare (16.5% [1]), Microsoft would be more than willing to fund Mozilla if Google wasn't willing to pony up. We can only speculate, but bids from Microsoft are likely why Google increased the amount that they're paying Mozilla in the most recent round of negotiations. Personally, I hope that the venture with Firefox OS will be successful in making Mozilla less reliant on search engine licensing agreements. [1] http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2244472/Google-Once-Again-Claims-67-Search-Market-Share http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2244472/Google-Once-Aga...
    • chris_mahan 14y ago
      But what if I use the duckduckgo search in Firefox? Am I screwing google? NB: duckduckgo uses Bing, among others.
      • kibwen 14y ago
        No, because in order to use DDG you had to change the default away from Google. That default is the entirety of what Google is paying for, and I'm sure it actually gets them a lot of traffic from people who don't care enough to switch (or who just don't care at all).
• ghjm 14y ago
  Well, with both Chrome and Firefox on rapid mandatory release schedules, all I can say is: Get comfortable supporting IE for large enterprise customers forever.
  • martinced 14y ago
    Interesting... I've been consulting for one of the biggest of the biggest you could dream of. There's a tendency which you may have heard of: mobile (smartphones and tablets) and there's a lot of push for making these supported and available to employees (the push very often coming both from the employees and from very high up the chain). As a result mobile browsers support in large enterprise are becoming very often mandatory. Why do you think large enterprise are supporting browsers at all? why do you think large enterprise are switching en masse to internal webapps instead of internal desktop apps? To free themselves from a particular technology vendor. It's the way they regain control. And you think they'd ruin all that by mandating "IE only"!? This is not at all what I'm seeing in the enterprisey webapp world. On the contrary: the shift is to more platform, more standards, more openness.
    • stevewilhelm 14y ago
      Also seeing BYOD in small and medium sized enterprises.
  • robin_reala 14y ago
    Firefox has enterprise support releases that aren’t anywhere as near as rapid as the default ones: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
• sibilsalim 14y ago
  I've noticed Google Analytics tab in Google Chrome crashing often. Google Analytics eats lot of memory in Google Chrome.
• kinnth 14y ago
  really refreshing!
• martinced 14y ago
  People trading security (sandboxing) for performance (lower memory usage and faster speed in Firefox) deserve to be a) owned and b) have their whole browser crash when one tab crashes. I'd be using Firefox if they started to sandbox all the tabs. To me the argument that it's faster and use less memory because it's not sandboxed is a very poor one. Actually that argument shows what is wrong with the mindset of many people in our field. You should never trade security for a bit more perfs.
  • venus 14y ago
    I don't believe Chrome took appreciably longer than Firefox to compromise in the recent PWN2OWN competition. Chrome's sandboxing implementation is not a silver bullet, and FF has run plugins out-of-process for some time. That said, full sandboxing is probably preferable and I believe it is on the agenda.
• eumenides1 14y ago
  I also switched back for similiar reasons. FF has really stepped up their memory management and patching IMO. Also, i went back because of plugins. Say what you will about chrome, but tab plugins are king in firefox. Tree style tabs on the left hand side and tab grouping what really sank it for me. I even merged the the search box and address bar in FF to give me that chrome omnibar feeling. I think the most important takeaway is this: FF is still competitive among technical people and so is chrome. There even might be room for IE. We as a community, would need to keep voting with our feet and we can make sure the "browser wars" never end.
• debian69 14y ago
  Til people are snobbish and only use one browser , personally i use whatever is avail i have no allegiance to one or the other just the one that works first.
• Kurtz79 14y ago
  Like many, I also switched to Chrome when it came out, after many years of Firefox. Are there reviews/benchmarks that substantiate the article's claims ?
• ebbv 14y ago
  I develop on Chrome all day every day and I cannot relate at all to these people saying it is full of bugs and crashing all the time. Nor do I find that Firefox is faster. Chrome dev tools are still the best in the business, and Chrome just works. Also I did a memory usage comparison on Chrome and Firefox 2 months ago and Firefox was using more memory by quite a bit (and got worse the more tabs you had open.) And this was Firefox with NO Flash and Chrome with Flash.
  • tericho 14y ago
    This is the first comment I've read so far that I 100% agree with. I personally see no reason to keep more than 8-10 tabs open at a given time which doesn't affect my CPU performance whatsoever (running a "standard" dev machine of 12GB+ RAM, i7, etc) so I could care less if FF handles 40 tabs better. And quickly, some reasons I love Chrome (& Google): - Accessible nightly builds (Canary) - AngularJS debug extension - Built-in bookmark/history/search sync (read something at home yesterday - can easily find it in my history at work or on mobile) - http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/ http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
    • ebbv 14y ago
      I generally will have anywhere from 12-50 tabs open in Chrome, and have no problems whatsoever. I suspect that Chrome isn't actually the problem for these people complaining about it.
    • bzbarsky 14y ago
      You do realize that Firefox has accessible nightly builds (and has for over a decade) and has built-in sync? I agree they're useful things to have, but they're not exactly Chrome-specific.
  • base698 14y ago
    With all the recent audio work chrome was unusable for many sites with flash audio playback. The problem persisted for months. There was one were whole tags of content would disappear due to a gpu bug. Unplugging headphones while the browser was focused would crash it. I find it amazing you haven't seen one in the past 6 months. Everyone I know has encountered some sort of problem
• Tenoke 14y ago
  This post seems weird to me as I recently switched back to Chrome for Firefox precisely because Chrome is faster than ff. It is visibly faster for me and most recent articles I could find after I googled 'Chrome versus Firefox' showed exactly that - that Chrome is faster than Firefox on the more important metrics right now.
  • derleth 14y ago
    And for me, Firefox is faster. By a lot, in fact, because Chrome loves to hit the disk for every little thing, especially on startup.
• srgseg 14y ago
  Great timing - I just posted a Show HN about my new extension to save 95% memory in Google Chrome http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5356823 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5356823
• prisonguard 14y ago
  Does the op know that the Mozilla foundation is almost entirely funded by Google? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation
• dgesang 14y ago
  Reading blog posts like this makes me wonder if the author even considered using Opera at any point in his painful journey with Firefox and Chrome.
• webwanderings 14y ago
  > Chrome greets me with a fucking advertisement for a Chromebook My solution for now is to use about:blank as a homepage.
• pnelson 14y ago
  I switched from Firefox to Chrome around the same time as the author. However, I'm having the opposite experience. Chrome is great; everything is blazing fast, even with my ~25 tabs open. I tried Firefox a few weeks ago just to see if I had been missing out on anything. Nope. Opening new tabs in Firefox was sluggish. Page navigation was even worse. I assumed that most browsers would be roughly on par these days but Firefox was not even tolerable after having used Chrome. It pains me because I, too, share the sentiment that Mozilla is committed to freedom and privacy on the internet. I guess I am just willing to give that up in exchange for a better internet experience for the time being.
  • nnethercote 14y ago
    Try "Reset Firefox" -- it helps lots of problems like this. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi....
• dictum 14y ago
  I'm currently using an early 2006 iMac with Core Duo and 2GB of memory, running OS X 10.6.8, while my main computer is being repaired. For two years I thought it was dead (or on its last gasp), after some futile attempts to revive it with an external HDD. Finally I managed to boot it with an USB flash drive and later transferred its contents to an external USB hard drive. Firefox is the only browser that runs comfortably on it. I'm using a lot of extensions, including ABP with multiple filter lists. After disabling caching on hard drive, I'm keeping around 25 tabs, sometimes 30 or more, and there's still RAM to spare, and the CPU isn't getting pounded. Of course, browsers should be optimized for current use cases and computers, but what I've experienced for the past two weeks really changed my impression of Firefox as a bloated and slow browser that was only fast in comparison to old IE.
• sdfjkl 14y ago
  I've switched back to Firefox recently too (from Safari). Here's what I had to tweak to get it working like it should: http://sdfjkl.org/post/2013/03/07/Making-Firefox-behave-on-OS-X http://sdfjkl.org/post/2013/03/07/Making-Firefox-behave-on-O...
• cciesquare 14y ago
  Firefox is still slow as heck for me. Not sure what performance you guys are talking about. I unfortunately have to use Firefox heavily at work. When I can I use something else, sometimes even IE.
  • ubojan 14y ago
    you can try to reset profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi... Also, AdBlock plus addon for faster and clutterless browsing.
  • evilpie 14y ago
    If you have any specific test case like a website or certain operation, please file a bug so we can look at the issue. Otherwise a profile reset and a test in safe-mode is always a good idea.
• pavanky 14y ago
  > Chrome greets me with… sigh… Chrome greets me with a fucking advertisement for a Chromebook. I have always used Chromium as opposed to Chrome. I am not sure why people would go for the Chrome version if they really care about freedom.
  • luser001 14y ago
    Two reasons: 1) Where can I find official-ish Chromium for Windows? 2) On Ubuntu, Chromium always seems to be behind Chrome wrt updates. I tried Chromium on Ubuntu, but switched because of the lag. Let me know if I am mistaken.
    • pavanky 14y ago
      > 1) Where can I find official-ish Chromium for Windows? Apparently this is the page to look out for. http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-sna... But looks like the downloading part is not straight forward. Look at the second answer at in the following link. http://superuser.com/questions/203606/where-can-i-get-chromium-binaries http://superuser.com/questions/203606/where-can-i-get-chromi... >2) On Ubuntu, Chromium always seems to be behind Chrome wrt updates. This has to do with an Ubuntu repository (for chromium) vs PPA from Google (for chrome). Ubuntu is always going to be a bit behind upstream. The same way it is a few days behind upstream firefox or other software. If you absolutely need the bleeding edge version of google chrome, either use something like archlinux (where you get updates within a day or two), or continue with Ubuntu, but use a ppa for chromium beta which is available from here (http://askubuntu.com/questions/126092/where-are-the-daily-builds-for-chromium-for-12-04 http://askubuntu.com/questions/126092/where-are-the-daily-bu...).
• jpulec 14y ago
  Unfortunately, in my experience, Chrome's WebGL performance is several times better than Firefox's. Upon several benchmarks, there is just no comparison.
• scotty79 14y ago
  I'm switching back from Chrome to Firefox because Chrome doesn't work for me with basic Google services, like search, maps, gmail. http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/hsW8ls9XhQE http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/hsW8ls9... It goes on and off. When I have this problem I switch back to Firefox for a while.
• piyush_soni 14y ago
  I've always stuck to Firefox for its customizability and because it has less reasons to collect all my data and become an Apple like walled garden which Chrome is slow turning into. That said, yes, they also have less reasons to be 'answerable' to their users or to fix problems. On Bugzilla, I've mostly seen arrogant and rude contributors who are mostly like, if you can't contribute or fix it yourself, go away! Don't even complain. See the example of this major/critical 12 years old bug, which no one wants to fix, and now they don't even want users to express their displeasure on that. There's no resolve, while other browsers have fixed that problem. I've always stuck to Firefox for its customizability and because it has less reasons to collect all my data and become an Apple like walled garden which Chrome is slow turning into. That said, yes, they also have less reasons to be 'answerable' to their users or to fix problems. On Bugzilla, I've mostly seen arrogant and rude contributors who are mostly like, "If you can't contribute or fix it yourself, go away!" Don't even complain. See the example of this major/critical 12 years old bug, which no one wants to fix, and now they don't even want users to express their displeasure on that. There's no resolve, while other browsers have fixed that problem. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414
• _august 14y ago
  Installed Firefox again because of this post. One of the things I tried out was WebGL performance using the recently posted WebGL terrain flyover demo (http://www.zephyrosanemos.com/windstorm/20130301/live-demo.html http://www.zephyrosanemos.com/windstorm/20130301/live-demo.h...), but I can't get over 30.5 fps in Firefox whereas on Chrome I get 50 - 60. Hardware acceleration seems to be enabled for both, perhaps Firefox is not recognizing the graphics card? One of the things that impressed my about Chrome in the beginning was when they launched Chrome Experiments to show off the performance. There was no comparison at the time between any other browser and Chrome. This may still hold true to a certain extent. However, for general browsing I can't tell a difference with the current iteration.
• DrinkWater 14y ago
  I switched my main browser Chrome to Canary some time ago. And recently i have been using Firefox Nightly. And all i can say is that Chrome now lacks the quality it used to have (yes, even in the canary build) and Firefox has gained a lot in terms of stability, memory consumption and Dev-features. The bad thing is: hardly anyone knows about this, because Google is investing tons and tons of money for Chrome marketing purposes (and developer evangelisation; a point you also have to consider). Only thing i like more about Chrome: the dev tools
• rishimoko 14y ago
  There must be some shifting in the geekforce. I just switched back to Firefox a couple of weeks ago on OSX 10.7. Flawless, which is more than I can say for Chrome or Safari.
• fafner 14y ago
  I use both Firefox and Chrome. But I prefer Firefox. Better addons and extensibility were already mentioned. But one thing that seems to be commonly overlooked is the superior typography of Firefox. Firefox even does stuff like ligatures. That makes reading longer text much more pleasant. Firefox is also capable of handling large amounts of tabs. In Chrome the tab bar is of fixed length (length of the window) and thus the maximum number of tabs is limited by my screen width. In Firefox the tab bar can extend to the sides or even better you can use the TreeStyleTabs addon to organize tabs in a tree view. I think the biggest problem for Firefox was the long wait before FF4 was released. That was the exact time many people moved to Chrome. FF3.6 wasn't bad but was clearly slower than Chrome and had a huge memory appetite. Later versions improved this dramatically and Firefox now feels lighter/faster than Chrome. But every time FF vs. Chrome there are people claiming otherwise who have stopped using FF at version 3.6...
• brooksbp 14y ago
  I use Chrome because of the UI.
• qoo 14y ago
  Why was this post showing as [deleted] a few hours ago?
• chenster 14y ago
  My biggest complain with Chrome right now is it freezes up and take over the entire CPU for 10 to 30 seconds every now and then. It's the case on both Windows 7 and Mac (10.8 Mountain Lion). Usually when that happens, I take a mini-break. Before it was lightning fast. I tried to switch back to Firefox but it's still IMO considerably slower in general but admittedly much more stable and doesn't freeze up for no good reason. Chrome seems to be slowly slipping to where Firefox was before as author ranted.
• tommaxwell 14y ago
  I actually use Chrome because it syncs my settings between Chrome for Desktop and Chrome for Android quite nicely.
• p6v53as 14y ago
  The ultimate parameter for me is speed. As much as I love Mozilla's open source policy, I just can't use it because it is slower. RAM is not a problem to anyone, so I prefer more RAM used than slower performance.
• baby 14y ago
  And firefox has Tree Style Tab. Makes it superior to any other browsers.
• fiendsan 14y ago
  I use firefox, always have even when it was buggy as hell, mostly because i needed all the web dev tools and was confortable with it, but i also use chrome for watching youtube and quick browsing (unfortunately firefox till this day is damn slow to open and become responsive). Thats why im looking forward to opera's webkit version (so i can ditch google chrome for opera), i think google chrome is getting more and more creepy and has made some decisions that are more in google's interest than the users (like posting links on the speed dial or all the extensions that are nothing more thank links and all the extensions that are not links but behave like links, its weird).
• johnward 14y ago
  I still prefer firebug over the firefox dev tools. The built in tools look pretty but they aren't that useful to me. I just figured out how to show the style window, but there doesn't seem to be any javascript tools. Where is the console? edit: After I posted this I figured I should dig deeper before I get all kinds of negative comments. I found the console and also some other useful tools that I didn't know existed. Things like the responsive view and scratch pad are pretty cool.
• lelele 14y ago
  > The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP's last paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality alone. Quality is not the same for everyone. I have switched to Chrome, and it feels like it's build much better than Firefox. Maybe Firefox is actually built better, but as an user, I perceive Chrome to be better, starting with rare crashes instead of Firefox's frequent ones. Yes, Firefox's crashes may be because of its plugins, but that's a moot point, because without any plugins, Firefox is too basic a browser.
• thedeepself 14y ago
  Why I cant leave firefox: - tree style tabs - tab groups manager
• thedeepself 14y ago
  Why I cant leave firefox: - tree style tabs - tab groups manager
• _pferreir_ 14y ago
  > Now it’s five years later and things aren’t so great. More than ever I’m having issues with general slowness in the browser. Check. > Memory usage is off the charts and I frequently have tabs become completely unresponsive. Check. > JavaScript errors occasionally disappear into the void instead of logging to the console. Check. Oh, my! I'm so glad I'm not the only one!
• tn13 14y ago
  Switching between Firefox and chrome will happen often for at least few years to come. Chrome was a good thing because it brought some real competition in the Market. Webkit is supported by Apple as well as Google which happen to be worlds largest companies. Firefox on other other had is open, non profit organization giving a tough fight to both of them.
• writebuffered 14y ago
  The exact reason I jumped out of Chrome to back Firefox. Privacy. I will never trust Google with my information and it seems they do collect it without me knowing as well. I have scoured over Chrome's source code to see if they are doing anything nefarious as tracking my url visits but still I never felt safe in that platform. I moved to duckduckgo, Firefox and I am happy.
• dmccunney 14y ago
  Speaking personally, I never left Firefox. I've been using Mozilla code since the Netscape 7.X days (and tried to use NS6, but it was way too buggy.) I progressed from MS7 to the Mozilla Suite to Firefox, and have stayed there. I have Chrome (and Opera, Safari, Midori, Konqueror, K-Meleon, D+, and a few other things including IE installed, but mostly to keep up on what others are doing. Firefox is what I use in production, and I currently run Aurora (which will be the next release when it gets out of beta.) FF isn't the smallest or fastest browser on the machine I'm on at the moment (and old netbook) but is the most capable. FF, like other current browsers, makes assumptions about what you will run it on, and assumes a reasonably current machine with a reasonable CPU, GPU, and amount of RAM. I have another old machine I don't even try to run FF on. My reasons are tied up in the architecture. FF uses the Gecko engine, like everything else Mozilla puts out. Aside from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Gecko interprets and renders XUL, an XML language for designing user interfaces. The look and feel of FF is determined by XUL, CSS, and widgets, and the browser is simply an instance of something Gecko renders. This makes it possible to create themes that change what FF looks like, and extensions that modify and extend what it does, and that power is why I use it. My RSS reader, IRC client and several other things that would ordinarily be external programs are implemented in FF as extensions. Since the browser is always running when I'm at the computer, this make things very convenient. Other browsers like Chrome added an extension capability, but they are pure JavaScript and limited by what the device API will let you do in JavaScript. Half of what I do in FF isn't possible in Chrome. Chrome is a worthy browser, and I'm glad it's there, but it's not what I use. It invokes somewhat faster than FF, but page rendering is equivalent, and memory usage rises rapidly as you add extensions, so there's little difference between FF and Chrome in use. Faster invocation is a non-issue here: I start the browser when I sit down at the machine and simply leave it running, so a few extra seconds to invoke it isn't a concern. Too many people have the bad habit learned from IE of hopping in and out of the browser, and I just tell such folks "You're doing it wrong". On my desktop booted into Windows, I run FF from a RAMdisk. The desktop still runs XP and has 4GB RAM, but 32 bit Windows can only use 3.2GB of it. I found a RAMdisk driver that can use the rest and have a 768MBR ramdrive seen as Z:. Firefox, its cache, and its profile all live there and FF is run from there. It's quick. (Batch files populate the ramdisk on start up, and store the contents back to HD on shutdown.) I don't believe I can do that with Chrome.