7 ms·

Some time ago I was a Firefox user. Then Chrome came out and I first started using it for free-time browsing, while still developing on Firefox. Later, I decide

by iagooar 13y ago

Some time ago I was a Firefox user. Then Chrome came out and I first started using it for free-time browsing, while still developing on Firefox. Later, I decided to fully migrate to Chrome. I've decided to change it again, so I'm going to give Firefox a try during this month. For now, it looks really nice, performance seems to be quite good and the feeling of getting at least a small part of my digital life away from Google feels nice as well. Tomorrow I'll be trying out the Firefox' developer tools. I'd be really happy if Firefox convinced me to stay, as I really love what Mozilla is doing for the web community.

rubiquity 13y ago
I think you'll be quite impressed with Firefox's developer tools again. I've been more and more unhappy with Chrome's tools, mostly the subtle changes of not having filters and things so readily available anymore. The Firefox tools are quite slick though. I don't even use Firebug anymore.
- skrowl 13y ago
  If you install both, you can use both side by side. F12 for firebug, Ctrl Shift K for built in.
- cbaleanu 13y ago
  So glad I am not the only one noticing the filter change. That additional click to display the filtering options that Chrome introduced really made me start using FF more and more for work. I think this dumbing-down approach Google is doing with all their apps and websites will only alienate more and more professionals out of using their platform.
  - paulirish 13y ago
    (Chrome DevTools team here). We cleaned up the filtering as it was totally inconsistent across all panels. So now it introduces one more click, but felt like generally that extra click was OK. I think we can still improve the UX, however. Which panels do you most use filters on (and for what?) Console, Network?
    - rubiquity 13y ago
      Network is definitely the one I always click to turn the filters on.
    - cbaleanu 13y ago
      Network most definitely, for checking requests. Using filtering there is very useful as it allows me to quickly toggle between All and Scripts / XHR.
    - sorenbs 13y ago
      Network for sure
    - jackocnr 13y ago
      99% of the time I just want XHR, so this change added an extra click every time I open dev tools to look at the Network panel (also this step can be laggy if you're in development and you have hundreds of separate requests for your scripts/stylesheets, which I never care about). So I could actually be in favour of hiding away the filters if I could just set a default filter? Or if it just remembered my last selection?
    - MrBra 13y ago
      I knew they were attently watching on this thread... :)
    - dflt 13y ago
      Hey Paul, I'm trapped on Chromium-30.0.1599.101 (same goes for similar Chrome version) because DevTools freeze for ~3 minutes after GWT's SuperDevMode recompilation on newer Chrome/Chromium. There is huge regression in performance after Chromium 32.x.xxxx.xxx. Chromium-30.0.1599.101 is the latest version without this problem on my distro. I've tried to report this but you guys don't have proper bug tracker only form in the about menu.
      - paulirish 13y ago
        http://crbug.com/ http://crbug.com/ is the place to file tickets for us. File something and we can take a look!
lingben 13y ago
Right now firefox beats the pants off chrome for memory usage - that is why I'm using it.
- clarry 13y ago
  Still it can't deal with memory pressure, and will just eventually oom & crash.
  - ndesaulniers 13y ago
    What's your host environment and browsing habits like (lots of tabs open, many pinned tabs, lots of video, flash video)?
    - clarry 13y ago
      Having just one gigabyte of physical RAM, I run Firefox with a 512M rlimit (the OpenBSD default), as I have to reserve some space for other software too (and swap is painfully slow on the spinning disk). As far as browsing habits go, I do usually have quite a few tabs open (currently I've got 38, though they're not all loaded; I don't think I often go much over this often). None are pinned. Video is disabled, and I've got no flash or plugins. I've got three extensions (noscript, https-everywhere, duckduckgo plus). I tend to run with scripts disabled and this helps a lot with memory pressure. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking I need to enable javascript for something (hi Google), and that's usually when memory usage skyrockets and the thing dumps core :-) But eventually it'll happen even if I don't allow any scripts.
      - slyall 13y ago
        http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/
      - ndesaulniers 13y ago
        This is getting close to the limit of my expertise. What resource is bumping into it's system limit? Can you back up that answer with a stack trace or core dump? If so, would you mind filing a bug in our bug tracker? [0] It looks like if you put [MemShrink] in the Whiteboard field, the memshrink team should pick it up. If not, you could jump in #memshrink in our IRC server, irc.mozilla.org, and let someone there know. [1] You can ping me directly on irc, too. My handle is a literal new line character (which _is_ a valid nick), and I'd be happy to help you get the bug filed if you run into any issues. Once you have a bugzilla account, you'll see it's generally pretty easy to submit bugs and provide feedback in channels that allow us to more easily find and work on issues. We're happy to help, too! I'd file the issue myself, but I'd prefer to enable you to see how easy it is, and for you to provide the stack trace. Even providing steps to reproduce issues makes you a part of our Mozilla community. Welcome! [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink
cpeterso 13y ago
Firefox's new Australus UI will be merged to the Aurora channel in just a couple days, if you'd like to try it out (without installing the bleeding edge Nightly channel).
- dorkrawk 13y ago
  I love the new Australus UI. I've been playing around on Nightly for a bit and I can't wait until that gets rolled into the main branch.
  - acqq 13y ago
    It looks very bad to me, doing everything against the UI conventions of the OS. The menu gone from the top right, why oh why? Didn't Firefox success started with being more "native" (close to the OS UI) than the predecessor? The history of bad decisions seems to repeat with every new generation? Mozilla guys, you really want to annoy your users again? Why?
    - elclanrs 13y ago
      Australis looks nice in Ubuntu. The new menu is much better with big icons and can be customized however you like it. It's great IMO. I took a couple screenshots from latest nightly release. http://i.imgur.com/19Iwy7r.png http://i.imgur.com/19Iwy7r.png, http://i.imgur.com/6Kouk14.png http://i.imgur.com/6Kouk14.png
davexunit 13y ago
>I'd be really happy if Firefox convinced me to stay, as I really love what Mozilla is doing for the web community. If you love what they are doing then I urge you to stick with Firefox in the future. Firefox is the only major browser that is free software. Chrome is proprietary and sends a lot of your data to Google. Google entices a lot of programmers with their developer tools, but it's not worth trading freedom for.
- sethish 13y ago
  Chromium, the open-source-only version of Chrome is also a viable option.
  - devcpp 13y ago
    Well, davexunit did say "Firefox is the only major browser that is free software". Chromium is arguably a very minor browser. Besides, if you would like take a tiny amount of market share from Google (thereby weakening their ability to set standards such as the W3C's "EME" DRM, which they support), you know that using Firefox is the right thing to do. It also shows Google that you're not buying into their free/nonfree paradigm that discourages developers from making apps/extensions not approved by Google's stores. Also, Chromium OS, as distributed by Google, is not free of surveillance mechanisms such as the omnibar. You'd first have to audit, hunt and remove these features, or trust a third party to do this job for you. Besides, in my experience, there are fewer good FOSS extensions in Chromium, in particular anti-surveillance ones, but that depends on what extensions you want.
    - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
      Chromium isn't a "minor brower", it is Chrome. Nearly all the code that does any real work is developed as part of Chromium, google just throw a few patches on top to make Chrome.
      - ndesaulniers 13y ago
        Can you checkout the code, apply their patches, and build Chrome? Can you do that with Firefox? ;)
nnethercote 13y ago
If you have an old Firefox profile hanging around, please reset it first: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...
keehun 13y ago
Firefox just simply never lives up to the experience I get from Chrome or Chromium. It crashes very often on certain pages (harmless and trustworthy pages from sites that shouldn't be causing crashes) and extensions like 1Password just don't work properly all the time and scrolling/performance is never as good as Chrome. I always give it a third/fourth/fifth chance but can't stand Firefox for more than five minutes.

by iagooar 13y ago

rubiquity 13y ago

I think you'll be quite impressed with Firefox's developer tools again. I've been more and more unhappy with Chrome's tools, mostly the subtle changes of not having filters and things so readily available anymore. The Firefox tools are quite slick though. I don't even use Firebug anymore.

skrowl 13y ago
If you install both, you can use both side by side. F12 for firebug, Ctrl Shift K for built in.
cbaleanu 13y ago
So glad I am not the only one noticing the filter change. That additional click to display the filtering options that Chrome introduced really made me start using FF more and more for work. I think this dumbing-down approach Google is doing with all their apps and websites will only alienate more and more professionals out of using their platform.
- paulirish 13y ago
  (Chrome DevTools team here). We cleaned up the filtering as it was totally inconsistent across all panels. So now it introduces one more click, but felt like generally that extra click was OK. I think we can still improve the UX, however. Which panels do you most use filters on (and for what?) Console, Network?
  - rubiquity 13y ago
    Network is definitely the one I always click to turn the filters on.
  - cbaleanu 13y ago
    Network most definitely, for checking requests. Using filtering there is very useful as it allows me to quickly toggle between All and Scripts / XHR.
  - sorenbs 13y ago
    Network for sure
  - jackocnr 13y ago
    99% of the time I just want XHR, so this change added an extra click every time I open dev tools to look at the Network panel (also this step can be laggy if you're in development and you have hundreds of separate requests for your scripts/stylesheets, which I never care about). So I could actually be in favour of hiding away the filters if I could just set a default filter? Or if it just remembered my last selection?
  - MrBra 13y ago
    I knew they were attently watching on this thread... :)
  - dflt 13y ago
    Hey Paul, I'm trapped on Chromium-30.0.1599.101 (same goes for similar Chrome version) because DevTools freeze for ~3 minutes after GWT's SuperDevMode recompilation on newer Chrome/Chromium. There is huge regression in performance after Chromium 32.x.xxxx.xxx. Chromium-30.0.1599.101 is the latest version without this problem on my distro. I've tried to report this but you guys don't have proper bug tracker only form in the about menu.
    - paulirish 13y ago
      http://crbug.com/ http://crbug.com/ is the place to file tickets for us. File something and we can take a look!

lingben 13y ago

Right now firefox beats the pants off chrome for memory usage - that is why I'm using it.

clarry 13y ago
Still it can't deal with memory pressure, and will just eventually oom & crash.
- ndesaulniers 13y ago
  What's your host environment and browsing habits like (lots of tabs open, many pinned tabs, lots of video, flash video)?
  - clarry 13y ago
    Having just one gigabyte of physical RAM, I run Firefox with a 512M rlimit (the OpenBSD default), as I have to reserve some space for other software too (and swap is painfully slow on the spinning disk). As far as browsing habits go, I do usually have quite a few tabs open (currently I've got 38, though they're not all loaded; I don't think I often go much over this often). None are pinned. Video is disabled, and I've got no flash or plugins. I've got three extensions (noscript, https-everywhere, duckduckgo plus). I tend to run with scripts disabled and this helps a lot with memory pressure. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking I need to enable javascript for something (hi Google), and that's usually when memory usage skyrockets and the thing dumps core :-) But eventually it'll happen even if I don't allow any scripts.
    - slyall 13y ago
      http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/
    - ndesaulniers 13y ago
      This is getting close to the limit of my expertise. What resource is bumping into it's system limit? Can you back up that answer with a stack trace or core dump? If so, would you mind filing a bug in our bug tracker? [0] It looks like if you put [MemShrink] in the Whiteboard field, the memshrink team should pick it up. If not, you could jump in #memshrink in our IRC server, irc.mozilla.org, and let someone there know. [1] You can ping me directly on irc, too. My handle is a literal new line character (which _is_ a valid nick), and I'd be happy to help you get the bug filed if you run into any issues. Once you have a bugzilla account, you'll see it's generally pretty easy to submit bugs and provide feedback in channels that allow us to more easily find and work on issues. We're happy to help, too! I'd file the issue myself, but I'd prefer to enable you to see how easy it is, and for you to provide the stack trace. Even providing steps to reproduce issues makes you a part of our Mozilla community. Welcome! [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink

cpeterso 13y ago

Firefox's new Australus UI will be merged to the Aurora channel in just a couple days, if you'd like to try it out (without installing the bleeding edge Nightly channel).

dorkrawk 13y ago
I love the new Australus UI. I've been playing around on Nightly for a bit and I can't wait until that gets rolled into the main branch.
- acqq 13y ago
  It looks very bad to me, doing everything against the UI conventions of the OS. The menu gone from the top right, why oh why? Didn't Firefox success started with being more "native" (close to the OS UI) than the predecessor? The history of bad decisions seems to repeat with every new generation? Mozilla guys, you really want to annoy your users again? Why?
  - elclanrs 13y ago
    Australis looks nice in Ubuntu. The new menu is much better with big icons and can be customized however you like it. It's great IMO. I took a couple screenshots from latest nightly release. http://i.imgur.com/19Iwy7r.png http://i.imgur.com/19Iwy7r.png, http://i.imgur.com/6Kouk14.png http://i.imgur.com/6Kouk14.png

davexunit 13y ago

>I'd be really happy if Firefox convinced me to stay, as I really love what Mozilla is doing for the web community. If you love what they are doing then I urge you to stick with Firefox in the future. Firefox is the only major browser that is free software. Chrome is proprietary and sends a lot of your data to Google. Google entices a lot of programmers with their developer tools, but it's not worth trading freedom for.

sethish 13y ago
Chromium, the open-source-only version of Chrome is also a viable option.
- devcpp 13y ago
  Well, davexunit did say "Firefox is the only major browser that is free software". Chromium is arguably a very minor browser. Besides, if you would like take a tiny amount of market share from Google (thereby weakening their ability to set standards such as the W3C's "EME" DRM, which they support), you know that using Firefox is the right thing to do. It also shows Google that you're not buying into their free/nonfree paradigm that discourages developers from making apps/extensions not approved by Google's stores. Also, Chromium OS, as distributed by Google, is not free of surveillance mechanisms such as the omnibar. You'd first have to audit, hunt and remove these features, or trust a third party to do this job for you. Besides, in my experience, there are fewer good FOSS extensions in Chromium, in particular anti-surveillance ones, but that depends on what extensions you want.
  - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
    Chromium isn't a "minor brower", it is Chrome. Nearly all the code that does any real work is developed as part of Chromium, google just throw a few patches on top to make Chrome.
    - ndesaulniers 13y ago
      Can you checkout the code, apply their patches, and build Chrome? Can you do that with Firefox? ;)

nnethercote 13y ago

If you have an old Firefox profile hanging around, please reset it first: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...

keehun 13y ago

Firefox just simply never lives up to the experience I get from Chrome or Chromium. It crashes very often on certain pages (harmless and trustworthy pages from sites that shouldn't be causing crashes) and extensions like 1Password just don't work properly all the time and scrolling/performance is never as good as Chrome. I always give it a third/fourth/fifth chance but can't stand Firefox for more than five minutes.