21 ms·

Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox

• mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Interesting discussion, and surprising comments about browser workflow. I tend to not check my email while programming or writing. I also don't keep any fun reading or "research" tabs open. While working in about 1 hour sprints, I will have very few tabs open if I am even running a browser. If I visited a page briefly while reading hacker news during morning coffee, I can kill that tab and find the web page later using browser history or from memory during lunch break, etc. If I need to do a Google or Bing web search, starting a browser or opening a new tab is no hassle, and a minute later the tab is gone. Anyway it was interesting to read that people keep a browser running for days or longer with many tabs open. I am not being judgemental, and I hope that I don't sound so, I just have different working preferences.
• lisa_henderson 12y ago
  This has been exactly my experience. I was an early convert to Chrome, and I loved how fast it was, but now I find it slow and buggy. There are some partial workarounds: Chrome does a cache lookup on your history when you type, so if you delete your history, then you get a speed bump. But I'm annoyed that I have to erase my history. If I never erase my history, Chrome gets very slow after a few months of history piling up. And when I have many windows open it is slower, and when Flash is running, it often crashes. I've switched back to FireFox.
  • gear54rus 12y ago
    I never switched to chrome since it seemed sub-par all that time (reduced set of controls, dumbed down all the way) but flash-related crashes are Adobe's problem actually (I also have them on FF sometimes). When will this proprietary crap die off already?
    • rockdoe 12y ago
      There's an article about Shumway on the front page :)
    • mtrimpe 12y ago
      Chrome doesn't run Adobe Flash; it runs its own version called PepperFlash by default. I know because I witnessed them breaking one Flash video-recording feature after the other trying to reimplement the damn thing...
      • jaredsohn 12y ago
        >Chrome doesn't run Adobe Flash Yeah, it does. Pepper Flash is just Flash repackaged to use Chrome's new plug-in architecture; it is still written by Adobe. (Although perhaps Chrome does deserve the blame for some crashes related to how it integrates with the browser.)
        • bzbarsky 12y ago
          Pepper Flash is maintained by Google themselves, not by Adobe, as far as I can tell.
          • jaredsohn 12y ago
            Looks like you are right; googling it definitely suggests that. Thanks for the correction.
    • layman 12y ago
      You do realize that Chrome is different from Chromium, the open source browser, right?
      • gear54rus 12y ago
        I guess yes. What difference does it make in the context?
  • colin_jack 12y ago
    Its been my recent experience too, I keep a lot of tabs open and began to notice Chrome was filling up my memory. Very strange that Google let the situation get so bad. Mind you I find the Chrome developer tools far more powerful and intuitive than those in Firefox which stops me moving entirely.
    • rockdoe 12y ago
      The Firefox Devtools team regularly probes the webdev community on the features they need - make sure you let them know (and don't be surprised if they're in Aurora already).
      • e15ctr0n 12y ago
        The Firefox Devtools team even did an Ask HN[1] and then folowed up 10 days later[2] with the feedback they got. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325445 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5393864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5393864
      • colin_jack 12y ago
        Ta yeah, I probably should but its usually just I don't find the approach the UI takes intuitive in a lot of cases. Even just things like doing a search, viewing results, compared to Chrome I find it all a little painful...not sure that's the sort of thing I can meaningfully report though.
    • AtmaScout 12y ago
      I agree with you about the developer tools. One of the main reasons I use Chrome over Firefox.
    • mason55 12y ago
      > I keep a lot of tabs open and began to notice Chrome was filling up my memory. I had this problem too and found that Chrome was getting so slow that it was unusable. For those who have this problem and don't want to switch from Chrome there is an extension called "The Great Suspender" which dumps background tabs after a configurable time period of inactivity. It helped immensely.
  • speeder 12y ago
    There is any browser that tolerates flash properly? My associate had a machine that would RESET because of flash (we know it is flash because it would only start to randomly reset if flash was running somewhere on the machine), no matter what browser. And in my personal experience flash could crash ALL browsers open at once, one time flash crashing on MSN Messenger partially froze my entire machine, after 10 minutes wrestling it to get to the task manager (yep, sometimes I am stupid) and close flash process, the machine came back to normal.
• DKnoll 12y ago
  For me the performance has never been a problem, but the end of NPAPI support may also force me back to FF.
  • joshstrange 12y ago
    Uh, aren't they both dropping support? [0] [0] https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/browser-plugin/issues/13 https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/browser-plugin/issues/13
    • dblohm7 12y ago
      Mozilla is not dropping NPAPI support. Having said that, we are trying to replace NPAPI plugins whereever we can (PDF.js, Shumway)
• tom4000 12y ago
  Did the same some weeks ago!
• talleyrand 12y ago
  After reading this, I tried out Firefox for Android on my old Nexus 7 tablet. The performance improvement over Chrome is significant. Chrome simply can't be run on low-RAM devices any more, IMHO.
• nvk 12y ago
  The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it's been about linking Google IDs with the browser. I've lost data twice by bugs related to not having a linked ID. Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google account.
  • pkmishra 12y ago
    exactly!! I don't want Google everywhere.That's why I changed the default search engine to duckduckgo. Let's see how it goes.
    • Mikeb85 12y ago
      Funny, that's part of why I use Chrome. Having all my Google accounts and apps available is a huge feature to me. Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. As for privacy implications, there's no reason to believe Google does anything inappropriate, and I rather like having my internet experience tailored based on past behaviour. To each their own I guess.
      • nvk 12y ago
        Sure, some people may like that. All I ask is a reasonable way of opting out.
        • deleted 12y ago
          [deleted]
      • rockdoe 12y ago
        Plus Firefox crashing is a huge downside. How do you get Firefox to crash? What does about:crashes say? Did you report the bug?
        • Mikeb85 12y ago
          Running many WebGL demos. Whereas in Chrome only 1 tab will freeze. Also, pretty much anything that's Javascript + WebGL runs like shit in Firefox. Emscripten demos are good though. But Emscripten runs better in Chrome than JS+WebGL in Firefox.
• Scarbutt 12y ago
  My only beef with Firefox is multiple webpages don't render well for me, but those pages render fine in Chrome and IE. I haven't stop once to debug why (I just switch to Chrome but sometimes do report the websites to Mozilla), can the reason be in Firefox being more pure and the others browsers allowing more quirks? If this is the case, isn't this bad UX?
  • mbrubeck 12y ago
    You can report these issues to https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ where Mozilla staff and others will help debug them and report them to browser developers or web site publishers, as appropriate.
  • ldng 12y ago
    Half the time I encounter pages that don't render well with FF it's because they use API only available in Chrome and those pages and/or spa have not even been tested in other browsers.
• pkmishra 12y ago
  I have tried it many times but failed. The reason - if firfox memory goes too high, which happens frequently, there is no option to kill single tab(in the stable version) like Google Chrome. I have started using Firefox Nightly (because of separate process feature) but it keeps on crashing. So I am ready to jump on it as soon as we have new stable build with separate process for each tab.
  • rockdoe 12y ago
    1) What do you do to make "Firefox memory goes too high" 2) What does about:crashes say for the crashes you get? Are those known bugs?
    • lqdc13 12y ago
      I had the same issue. For me it was pages' JS having bugs or pages recreating ads after adblock blocks them.
    • kenrick95 12y ago
      If you use AdBlockPlus, you can switch to uBlock (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock) to achieve better memory performance.
      • Max_Mustermann 12y ago
        How painless is the transition with a fairly large collection of custom filters and the like?
        • azdle 12y ago
          I don't have any custom filters, but AFAIK it uses exactly the same format for its black lists. The "my filters" pages says: > A filter can be a plain hostname, or an Adblock Plus-compatible filter. Lines prefixed with ‘!’ will be ignored.
        • wtallis 12y ago
          If you use custom filters instead of subscribing to one of the popular filtersets, then you should check to see whether you're even using the kind of rules that ABP doesn't handle well. The memory and CPU usage only gets bad when you've got a lot of broad-spectrum CSS element hiding rules; regular URL-based blocking rules are plenty scalable.
• WizzleKake 12y ago
  I'll switch back to Firefox when they stop re-arranging the UI. Every year or so it gets changed. It's what drove me to Chrome in the first place.
  • frederickf 12y ago
    Ug. I know how you feel. I've had success using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...
  • rockdoe 12y ago
    Australis was the biggest change since Firefox 4 I think. Firefox 4 was quite a while ago.
• nostromo 12y ago
  I recently switched to Safari for similar reasons. Safari is much faster than it used to be. It's also tightly integrated with my phone, including password management functionality (similar to LastPass) that works on all my devices. You can also get AdBlock for Safari now, which wasn't always the case. It also has a snazzy built-in RSS reader and just looks better than Chrome.
  • tashoecraft 12y ago
    Exactly, Safari handles 90% of web needs and doesn't clog up my memory the way Chrome does. It handles my battery exponentially better then Chrome as well. Then with adblock plus, lastpass and pocket I'm all set on extensions.
    • Zombieball 12y ago
      > doesn't clog up my memory the way Chrome What exactly is "clogging up memory" that everyone here complains about? I can understand if Chrome is using 6 / 8gb of your ram and you are simultaneously running photoshop and it can't grab any memory due to Chrome, but is this the case? Shouldn't Chrome use as much RAM as it can to ensure speedy performance provided its not starving out any other applications? I have little experience in writing desktop applications & memory management in an environment of this nature. Genuinely curious what the normal practice is. Edit: To clarify, I am assuming the memory growth is not due to any sort of leaks :)
      • Outofthebot 12y ago
        Superfluous RAM use hurts battery life a lot. Using Safari over Chrome easily saves 2+ hours for me.
        • inclemnet 12y ago
          > Superfluous RAM use hurts battery life a lot Do you have a reference for why this should be? A quick search yields results suggesting only the opposite (for instance, https://superuser.com/questions/738848/does-more-ram-usage-cause-more-battery-usage https://superuser.com/questions/738848/does-more-ram-usage-c...).
• gvb 12y ago
  I read the article hoping for something insightful, but when I read the paragraph ...a half-dozen tabs that auto-open on launch thanks to the dozens of extensions I've accumulated over the years[...] I had to stop and say "wait, what?" To leverage his analogy that it is like coming home to a new house to find that most of your stuff is already there, it is like not cleaning your house and not taking out the trash for three years and then moving into a new house. Yeah, it's clean and new, but why is it better and will it stay better?
  • rockdoe 12y ago
    To be fair quite a few users left Firefox because they found it "bloated" or "it didn't work anymore" but never realized they were the ones that installed the bloat/adware/malware.
    • moe 12y ago
      I left Firefox because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) and because crashes/hangs would usually take the whole Browser down.
      • dragonshed 12y ago
        This. Have the scales tipped the other way recently? Chrome still feels faster to me, but I only have one active extension (Ad Blocker).
        • zxcvcxz 12y ago
          I think most people on HN using FF are running nightly versions, I know I was. The nightly versions of FF have always had the edge on Chrome, but I think it's just recently that the stable version of FF has really gotten pretty much on par with Chrome, and I'd say definitely better on the Linux 64bit.
          • wooger 12y ago
• jarcane 12y ago
  I have some serious issues with Chrome (the permaloading, it's new download blocking 'feature', poor startup time), but I did not find Firefox remotely an improvement. On my system it is half as fast, twice as buggy, and even more memory hungry than Chrome is. I think people overstate Chrome's memory usage as a factor of performance; IME it's still less than FF in total most times, and largely that memory cost doesn't seem to come with the performance impact of FF's because of the way Chrome handles processes. On my Win8.1 system at the moment, Chrome uses about 400mb of RAM. Firefox routinely ballooned up to a full 1GB or more. Even on FreeBSD, it was not at all unheard of to glance at top and find FF consuming as much as 1.4GB. The idea of switching back to FF because of Chrome's memory consumption seems frankly laughable to me. FF's memory leakage is infamous, and literally goes clear back to FF Beta, and still hasn't been fixed a decade on. And since Opera is a joke now, and Safari a toy, and there being zero real viable alternatives, that means Chrome, for good or ill. I'd really appreciate it if they'd stop telling me what I'm allowed to download though. At least they disabled the autodelete function.
  • vor_ 12y ago
    What makes Safari a toy?
    • jarcane 12y ago
      Safari on Windows has always been a toy. Now it's an unsupported toy to boot.
      • Greenisus 12y ago
        So it's a toy because it's a toy?
    • lucian1900 12y ago
      It's not cross-platform.
      • chipotle_coyote 12y ago
• FreakyT 12y ago
  Firefox on Mac still has too many visual issues, and the devs often drag their feet on fixing them. Lion (released 2011) added "bounce" scrolling and auto-hiding scrollbars. It took them nearly half a year to fix the lack of auto-hiding scrollbars nightly builds[1], and even longer for it to finally make it to mainline Firefox. Firefox still doesn't have bounce scrolling. To add to that point, the first high-dpi (retina) laptops were released in 2012, and nearly three years later, Firefox still contains a reasonable number of icons that aren't in 2x (Retina) resolution. I suspect that these and other similar issues relate to the unfortunate decision to continue using a cross-platform UI toolkit (XUL). Personally, I've also found that, despite Firefox's distinction as the browser to popularize the idea of extensions, it now tends to lag in that department. Sure, you can get Adblock, but the stuff available on Chrome tends to be much more diverse these days. Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564 [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap
  • pcwalton 12y ago
    > Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] In fact, Nightly now is by default.
    • joshstrange 12y ago
      So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? EDIT: Ok, downvote me all you want but it's a fact, not opinion. I'd give FF another shot once it's in stable but as it is now I'm not going to waste my time playing on a nightly build.
      • ecnahc515 12y ago
        This kind of major potentially havoc wreaking change takes time. Google also has a much larger team then Mozilla, so I wouldn't exactly rush these things.
      • chimeracoder 12y ago
• at_ 12y ago
  The reliability of Firefox's post-crash 'session restore' is what made me stick with it for good over Chrome. Life of a power tabber.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • rockdoe 12y ago
    I'm not sure how you can use Chrome with a lot of tabs anyway. Maybe with a mouse with a DPI switch so you can hit the few pixes they size down to if you have 20+?
    • jrochkind1 12y ago
      Keyboard controls to switch tabs. But I can have about 20 before they get too small to click on my laptop -- but they've already become too small to know what is in what tab at that point. I do it anyway. Because my browser is just about as messy as my physical desktop or my apartment.
  • wvenable 12y ago
    I can't live without Tab Mix Plus and multi-row tabs on Firefox. On Chrome I can't even be a power tabber. It's pretty much the only reason I've stuck with Firefox over Chrome. The post-crash session restore seems to work well for me; and luckily it's not a frequent occurrence.
  • Yoric 12y ago
    Thanks, we worked hard to get there :)
  • cyphax 12y ago
    At one point, the post-crash session restore on Firefox actually single handedly made me move to Chrome. Another reason was the fact that I needed to kill its process because the UI became unresponsive. Chrome was fresh and snappy, not a fair comparison at that point but it was definitely fast. I never wanted to switch away from Firefox but I felt like I had to because it had become unusable. I've switched back to Firefox since and all the previous problems were gone. It's been very reliable and if it did crash (which can still happen like with all software) it would restore my tabs just fine. I just like it better than I ever did Chrome and I certainly like the organization behind Firefox better than that behind Chrome. :)
• chiph 12y ago
  Something I noticed the other week - Chrome on Windows will scan my desktop on startup (all the icons go back their generic version, and then return). Why would they do that? My desktop isn't where the cache is.
  • ChuckMcM 12y ago
    I believe it is hooking the explorer launch process not 'scanning' the desktop. But I may be wrong. Like the author I got tired of all the issues I was having (exactly two extensions, OnePassword and Evernote) and switched to Firefox.
  • justcommenting 12y ago
    My experience with relatives' computers has been that trying to completely remove Chrome from Windows is a lot like trying to remove a rootkit, specifically one that phones home a lot. If any other company did those sorts of things in persisting pieces of their software all over the OS without easy removal for non-technical users, people would be calling it malware or spyware.
    • fizzbatter 12y ago
      Interesting, what specifically are you having trouble with? I would think it just uninstalls. Are you claiming otherwise? I'd love to try and reproduce what your claims are (fact check).
      • zobzu 12y ago
        A bunch of adware reinstall it actually, because they get money from Google for that. On a clean system its pretty simple to uninstall.
    • asdrty 12y ago
      the main reason why I never switched to Chrome is the Google process that is always running whether you are currently using Chrome or not.. but I don't think I had any issues uninstalling it a few years ago
• blumkvist 12y ago
  Did the same.
• atesti 12y ago
  I run Chrome with "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --renderer-process-limit=9 and it's much better that way: Less total memory consumption and killing a renderer unloads many tabs at once. It seems to me that the focus on security by isolating every webpage from each other went to far recently. When I started with Chrome I think they used to limit the maximum amount of render processes much more. Of course if there was a serious security hole in e.g. webkit/blink then one tab could have stolen data from another tab more easily. But it consumed much less memory
• ihaveajob 12y ago
  Did that last year and couldn't be happier. Whether performance and memory use is better or worse, I've grown wary of Google's pervasiveness.
• hackerhasid 12y ago
  After reading this I fired up Safari (on Yosemite). Never really tried Safari before - opened it once when I got my first Mac, wondered who moved my cheese, and downloaded Chrome. But the last half hour with it have been great actually!
• flyrain 12y ago
  Though most of time, I still use Chrome, yeah, most of time, because recently(about one or more years), Chrome crashes a lot and when it keep crashing in some pages, I have to use other, like Firefox, I plan to switch to Firefox as well. Chrome crashes everyday. That's really annoying. I am on Ubuntu 12.04.
• navait 12y ago
  I love firefox, mostly because of the pentadactyl extension(not compatible with firefox 35, sadly) but it has a huge number of problems. Namely, it crashes far too often. It's extremely frustrating, and no number of bug reports I fill out or new releases ever seems to address the problem. I'm thinking of trying to find a better productivity extension, or go back to emacs type shortcuts with chrome or safari. Of course, maybe the grass is always greener on the other side. I left chrome a few years ago because I had an linux install where any non-trivial js would cause the computer to lock up.
  • nickysielicki 12y ago
    cvim for chrome is really fantastic. I was like you, up until a month ago. I don't miss FF at all. I'm waiting for someone to encorporate vim bindings, umatrix, and webkit into a package... I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't use it.
    • navait 12y ago
      yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. This is so much better than the other "vim" chrome extensions. Thanks.
  • mccr8 12y ago
    This doesn't help with your main issues, but I think the Vimperator extension is a little better maintained than the Pentadactyl one.
• joshstrange 12y ago
  I find Chrome's web dev tools to be vastly superior to FF and last time I tried it it didn't look good on my Mac and I had the same memory problems as with Chrome. Until FF get's much faster or better devtools than chrome I'm not interested. Not to mention how often does a Chrome extension hit the front page of HN vs a FF one? Don't get me wrong, I don't love Chrome unconditionally (the RAM usage is crazy but so is FF) but I still think it's the better of the two. Just my two cents...
  • theVirginian 12y ago
    I heard a rumor a while back that Firefox was developing a browser targeted at web developers. Not sure if thats unnecessary or what but if it materializes I'll probably give it a try.
    • joshstrange 12y ago
      Yeah, I remember getting excited when I read about that. I'll give it a shot when it comes out but there are a number of little things that annoy me with FF web dev tools that I doubt they will fix. Also I really need to dev on the SAME browser the product will be released on and not some special dev build. Edit: Oh now I remember why I wrote off: > Firefox Developer Edition replaces the Aurora channel in the Firefox Release Process. > By using the Developer Edition, you gain access to tools and platform features at least 12 weeks before they reach the main Firefox release channel. They just fucking renamed their alpha channel to "Firefox Developer Edition"....
      • dblohm7 12y ago
        There is more to Dev Edition than a rename.
      • e15ctr0n 12y ago
        The Developer Edition packs a ton of features. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-first-browser-built-for-developers-firefox-developer-edition/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-fir...
• hgezim 12y ago
  Did the same a while ago due to Google trying to push it's services too hard. Also, the less I rely on Google the better :)
• Apocryphon 12y ago
  It's almost as if browser bloat is a cyclical phenomenon, as formerly kings of the hill struggle against the upstarts that displaced them by streamlining and improving technologies. Firefox has made strides against Chrome, but IE is the current major underdog.
• theVirginian 12y ago
  The worst part about chrome for me is that I can't access my Gmail accounts through Chrome. That's right, I have to use Firefox to access Google's own product because Chrome won't play nice with my school Google Apps account that my school provided us for email. Whenever I try to get to my school account it redirects to the gmail account I used to sign into Chrome - this happens regardless of whether I try to access the account directly through the school's website, or through the gmail website. The only way to get around it is to completely sign out of the browser, restart it, then make sure I don't visit any other sites than my school email. Obviously this is an enormous hassle and it wasn't always this way. I used to be able to use the multiple accounts feature with ease until one day Google up and broke it.
  • jrochkind1 12y ago
    I share your pain. One way to get around it is to use the Chrome 'multiple profiles' feature, it lets you switch to a different 'profile' with entirely different cookies, cache, etc., and will let you sign into a different Google account than in your first profile. You can switch profiles and even have different profiles active in different Chrome windows, without restarting Chrome. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en (I am not saying this makes it all better, trying to use more than one Google account is a _mess_ no matter what. But that it's one workaround I discovered recently, which has been lessening the pain somewhat)
    • digikata 12y ago
      The profile switcher is nice - would like Firefox to support fast switching out of the box. But here Chrome is going a little backwards too. Recent work has made that profile switcher a bit less convenient. Many complaints here: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=403619 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=403619
    • oaktowner 12y ago
      I think profiles are a hard-to-discover feature. But once I discovered them, I really liked them. They help me to separate my work and personal everything. Not just email, but my tabs, bookmarks, saved passwords, extensions, etc.
• andywood 12y ago
  I've had to use Safari lately because Hulu simply won't work in Chrome. I've also found that some sites that are unusably slow in Chrome scroll like a dream in Safari. It's too bad, because I prefer Chrome's UI. YMMV.
• juliangregorian 12y ago
  I finally gave Chrome the heave-ho when a recent update forced you to browse under a personal profile. There was a bug in the implementation that would crash the browser if you deleted the profile it created for you (I just wanted to use it normally like I always did!) I ended up inadvertently deleting all my saved bookmarks from the Chrome cloud or whatever. Fed up, I switched to Firefox and have been remarkably happy. Right now, I have one tab open in Chrome (was debugging a web page) and, including "Chrome Helpers", is using 86 threads and 11% of CPU. Firefox on the other hand has 33 tabs active and, including "Firefox Plugin Content", is using 104 threads and 8.5% of CPU.
  • Navarr 12y ago
    You had always had a profile.. Chrome just made it more visible so that you knew about Guest mode and stuff.. Of course deleting your user profile deleted all of that profile's data
    • juliangregorian 12y ago
      Your condescension is on point, but your reading comprehension could use some work: what I deleted was not my browser profile (which turns out to be undeleteable, and crashy), but my bookmarks that have been stored in my Google account in the cloud for years. Previously the browser-level profile (if indeed it existed) was invisible to me so it never bothered me. Also unclear why a "guest mode" needs to be different than the incognito mode which was already understood by everyone.
      • praxulus 12y ago
        https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6130773?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6130773?hl=en * Guest mode: A user in Guest mode does not leave any browsing history or cookies on the computer. In addition, they can't see or modify the computer owner's Chrome profile. * Incognito mode: You don't leave browsing history and cookies on your computer, but you can still see your existing history, bookmarks, passwords, Autofill data, and other Chrome settings.
• boobsbr 12y ago
  I've been using Chrome for a long time now. Then I had to go back to Firefox on the company computer. What a disappointment. Still slow as hell.
  • kenrick95 12y ago
    Update the Firefox on the company computer maybe? A fresh Firefox can be installed locally without admin access (I've done this in my school's shared computer).
• joesmo 12y ago
  The issue that has me considering a switch is that the latest Chrome dev tools' network panel tries too hard to show a preview of JSON requests that are not JSON. When I get exceptions and such, they come through as HTML or plaintext, sometimes with JSON at the end. Previously, Chrome would realize that it's not proper JSON and render the HTML. Now it doesn't render the HTML preview, but does render the JSON which is absolutely useless on both accounts. What did they say about 'if it isn't broke ...'?
  • lttlrck 12y ago
    Did you report it?
    • joesmo 12y ago
      I have now, but I don't expect it to be fixed.
• martin1975 12y ago
  was using firefox for the longest while... then as the OP suggests, I switched to Chrome because it was allegedly fast/nimble... Just downloaded latest firefox - it appears just as snappy (OS X, Yosemite). Don't remember what Chrome used up, Firefox is sitting pretty at 320+ MB memeory footprint with only a few tabs open. Personally, the whole reason for going to Firefox is my anticipation of their Servo/Rust inspired new browser, which has been in the back of my mind since I heard of Rust awhile back. Can't wait to see how that beasts performs when it's 1.0.
• bentcorner 12y ago
  I really like Firefox but the big annoying part that I run into is that Sync seems to blow away extension-specific settings whenever I install Firefox on a new machine. Like, the new machine doesn't have any of my settings for the extensions it knows I already have installed on a different machine, and then Sync happily syncs the new settings to the other machines, blowing it away there too. Thanks, Sync. I'm a big fan of NoScript and RequestPolicy, but having to "redo" all the whitelisting is a major PITA. Does anybody else run into this? Am I missing a setting or is there a file I can manually sync (or just backup and restore) to ensure I don't need to endure this pain again?
  • dblohm7 12y ago
    How about filing a bug for that Sync problem?
  • wtallis 12y ago
    NoScript and RequestPolicy each allow exporting and importing of their rulesets so you can manually back up those settings where a bad sync can't delete them.
• Touche 12y ago
  My biggest reason for not using Firefox is that I always keep 2 browser windows open in Chrome, one is for my work account and the other is for my personal account. I like this separation. IIRC you can't have 2 profiles open at the same time in Firefox and even switching between profiles is not easy. I do use Firefox on my personal laptop, but I spend 8 hours a day on my work laptop and need this feature.
  • bloodorange 12y ago
    firefox --new-instance --ProfileManager
    • Touche 12y ago
      Good to know. Only thing remaining would be a way to distinguish between them.
      • osw 12y ago
        different theme per profile
  • Yoric 12y ago
    The feature has always been in Firefox (I remember using it before Firefox 1.0), just well hidden. These days, I use the add-on profilist to make switching between profiles trivial in Firefox.
    • Touche 12y ago
      Profiles have always existed but I distinctly remember in the past getting "there's already an instance of Firefox running" when trying to have multiple open at the same time. proflist does make it easier to switch but there is no visible way to know which profile an open window is using.
• ripberge 12y ago
  He'll change his mind once he starts encountering more SVG (which is becoming increasingly popular). Firefox SVG performance is so bad compared to Chrome/Safari/IE. Some sites are unusable.
• ttflee 12y ago
  A little bit OT. I tried to go back to Firefox as I wrote an internal tool for company. Two problems did not go well: a) Firefox failed to provide a reasonable size for SVG elements, and by calling getBBox() I got a bounds that is not cropped by the container frame but the inner one which has been extended by elements drawn into, whereas in Safari/Chrome I could just call .offsetWidth/.offsetHeight; b) I cannot view node data as quickly as I could in Safari/Chrome and this is a pain when debugging __data bound in D3.js. Maybe I will try installing Firebugs later. For now I guess I have to stick to Chrome-first strategy or just ship it with nw.js.
• jrochkind1 12y ago
  I think there's a general principle here, that can be applied to nearly any case of "That software is big and bloated and disorganized, it's time to create a lean alternative from scratch." It's easy(ish) to create a first release of a product that is lean and efficient and has well-organized code. Then you start addressing all the edge cases that it turns out you really want to handle but weren't, and adding various features that you realize really are important (that the original 'competitor' may have had some version of already too)... Pretty soon you realize that keeping your software lean and efficient and well-organized is _hard_, the reason the original competitor was bloated and a mess was _not_ that their developers aren't as smart as yours. It's cause it's way harder to do this with living evolving software past the 1.0 release. Doesn't mean it's impossible to keep post-1.0, mature, feature-complete software lean and efficient and well-organized. It's just hard. And will slow down your new-feature release cycle. This cautionary note can apply to just about any "Why is X so bloated and/or such a mess internally or in it's API's, can't we write a new one without those problems?" Popular X's might include "Rails", or an existing programming language in favor of a new hot programming language. Now, the experience of the first one that "went wrong" might be useful in creating a second one that does better -- but for it to be so, you actually have to _understand_ the experience of the first one, why various decisions were made at various times that led to "the mess". Not just assume it's because you've got smarter devs than them. And in many cases, might require making some fundamental different decisions about scope, architecture, or other goals, than the first one did -- and sticking to them. This is related to, and kind of a generalization of, the famous Joel "rewriting software is a mistake" argument, but shouldn't be oversimplified to "never bother trying to create new software that's better than software already out there", of course.
• attozk 12y ago
  Still using Opera 12.16 for borwsing, the best browser there is. It still has far more "useful" feature than many other browser, to name a few: - ctrl + tab that really works like it should, no sequential switching through tabs - per site user-agent/js settings For development I still use firefox; chrome has been too aggressive with their caching in my experience. Plus some one else mentioned, I don't like my browser to link to my account!
  • CrazyRabbit 12y ago
    it's time to upgrade, boss! download 12.17 please
• Symmetry 12y ago
  Firefox's performance has improved a lot and that's really impressive. I tried moving back to Firefox but in the end I just prefer the Chrome UI too much. Using a custom search engine on Chrome can be just a matter of a couple of key presses after opening a new tab whereas in firefox I'm either stuck holding down alt and using the arrow keys or switching to my mouse. And adding new search engines is super easy in Chrome as well. EDIT: Oh, and there was also having my browser UI lock up when a page had a misbehaving script but that might have been due to an older version of firefox.
  • davmre 12y ago
    Not sure if this would solve your issues, but next time you try Firefox you should check out Instantfox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/instantfox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/instantfox/). It implements a Chrome-like unified URL/search box and lets you run custom search engines with single-character prefixes (e.g. "w Barack Obama" hits Obama's Wikipedia page).
    • Symmetry 12y ago
      Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted. I've got Firefox 35 now and if the UI stutters are gone I'll be back permanently.
  • mccr8 12y ago
    You can add a custom search in Firefox by right clicking on a search box, then clicking on "Add a keyword for this search". Then save a bookmark with a keyword, like "so" for stack overflow. Then you can enter this in the URL bar: so python reverse list ...and you'll get a search for "python reverse list". This is much less magical than how it works in Chrome, and harder to discover, but once you get it set up it is reasonably convenient.
  • dinkumthinkum 12y ago
    But do you seriously think there is a better search engine to configure it to?
• justizin 12y ago
  I don't have to agree with the author's justifications, I switched back some time ago for primary browsing because FireFox makes a browser for me and Google makes a browser for them. Privacy Extensions always seem to work better in FF because it's produced by an organization, if imperfect, whose values center around privacy and not subservience to advertisers. I've worked in offices of companies with ad-supported site where we could barely support the product without an ad blocker, but these days I primarily lean toward privacy badger or other privacy-oriented extensions like Disconnect.
  • metastart 12y ago
    Many privacy extensions do protect some privacy on one hand, but then take away some on the other hand e.g. block trackers but collect other information on your browsing to sell (data business model). Using addons is thus risky. Firefox uses your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you. They get nearly $1mn/day from Google. They have done some good things in privacy with Yahoo, but they're overall probably not the best choice for one who cares about privacy and security (chromium is way ahead in security out-of-the-box than other browsers). Try giving the Epic Privacy Browser a spin!
    • zobzu 12y ago
      You do realize that Mozilla does not actually get 1M/day from Google right now.. right?
• Surio 12y ago
  A few questions were asking for chrome "alternatives" FWIW, there is SRWARE Iron: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_faq.php http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_faq.php
• cevaris 12y ago
  Haha, just had this realization myself. Safari -> Firefox.
• 1amzave 12y ago
  As of late I've been using a mix of Chrom{e,ium} and Firefox, and frankly at this point I've basically resigned myself to the fact that browsers, as a class of software, are just universally terrible. So I say "fuck it, I'm going back to my shell and text editor." I cannot wait for the current trend of all-things-must-be-web-things to die.
• tomkin 12y ago
  I'm happy I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Hopefully Google pays attention, because the marketshare they enjoy may soon see a decline. Chrome's performance has taken a major hit on iOS and OS X. It regularly freezes up and seems to be getting worse with each new update. Now Chrome to Mobile is being axed soon, to be "replaced" with Google Sync - which isn't even the same thing.
• rajeemcariazo 12y ago
  I can't leave Chrome because of its web developer tools
  • mewwts 12y ago
    Try the Firefox developer edition. I personally find it better than Chrome dev tools.https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
• TheHypnotist 12y ago
  I love chrome. I have almost no problems with it. That said, I love Firefox and recommend my coworkers use it as often as possible. This is because while I know I am capable in keeping my Chrome running, I know the majority of them are not. My one major gripe is how poorly it works with Sharepoint. There have been times in the past where I have been working in Sharepoint using Chrome and I can't use a particular function because... well because Chrome? I don't really know why. I just know it works in FF and IE.
• 51Cards 12y ago
  I was one who never left Firefox just because I found Chrome (while faster) to be too minimalist for my desires. I clung to Firefox's ability to be customized and to this day my layout is still reminiscent of browsers I started on in the 90's. That's where my motor memory looks for buttons, etc. I fully expected a couple years ago to eventually be the last hold-out user of Firefox in a Chrome world but I have watched things turn around. I'll never say Chrome is bad... but I prefer to see a market where there is still browser competition and choice for the user. It looked like Chrome was going to be the next IE with some vast percentage of the market locked up. I'm glad to see signs of some balance being restored.
• calinet6 12y ago
  Fine, still an evergreen browser, auto-updates and supports standards. Use whatever you want!
• jeromegv 12y ago
  I moved to Safari a year ago when I bought my retina macbook pro. For some reason it was painfully slow in Chrome and super fast in Safari. Never looked back.
• Glyptodon 12y ago
  I love using firefox on my Android device. But it has more to do with it letting you use browser extensions (unlike mobile chrome) than anything else.
• Shivetya 12y ago
  and here I am on my Mac having to swap to Safari at times for youtube and other video presentations because Firefox gives me errors, errors which claim to be provider issues yet Safari does fine including allowing me to see through the videos without stalls. To each his own, but Firefox can go full retard just as well as any other browser. (their SSL fix is aggravating too)
• pcthrowaway 12y ago
  I tend to keep 15+ tabs open at any given time and I can't remember the last time Chrome crashed on me. Chrome's extension ecosystem is better too.
• hjeldin 12y ago
  Wait, has gizmodo turned into a blog lately? I mean, that's not journalism, that's a rant supported by no benchmarking or any evidence of sort...and while i do agree on the message, i believe that anyone who wants to be called journalist should at least write like one.
  • unreal37 12y ago
    What do you mean "turned into"? Gizmodo describes itself as a "Technology blog focused on gadgets."
    • hjeldin 12y ago
      Well, they have editors, writers and so on...do blogs have the same structure as news outlets?
      • Sgt_Apone 12y ago
        There is a lot of editorial guidance for many of the more popular blog sites including the Gawker network. Most of the popular blogs, outside of one-man operations, work in a similar manner.
  • acheron 12y ago
    It's a Gawker site. Expecting anything more than clickbait trash is just going to bring disappointment.
• DontBeADick 12y ago
  My favorite "feature" of Chrome is the way it invites people to look through your browsing history every time they open a new tab, and there's no way to disable it. There used to be a way to disable it, but they removed it sometime last year. Because users don't know what they want, right Google?
  • Truespeed 12y ago
    There's the "Blank New Tab" extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfdloiaebhgmjpaclbbodcmlmppkakjh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfdloiaebhgmjpaclb... It's only 1.7 KB
• greggyb 12y ago
  For now, for me, Chrome is my go to #2 browser because of native HTML5 Netflix on Linux. My primary browser is Midori, but it does not render all sites well, and since I already have Chrome installed....
• mmanfrin 12y ago
  I made the switch a few months back when I got a new computer, but found that Firefox was slower for me with less extensions than Chrome (on mac). That being said, I keep the number of extensions I use low: json formatter, a rest client, adblock, cloud-to-butt, clearly, and pocket. Chrome works a lot better with multiple windows open in my experience (on a new iMac with 2 external monitors).
• ErikRogneby 12y ago
  Ironic that shortly after reading this, chrome crashed on me. I've only got 2 extensions loaded other than the 3 Google doc ones that came pre-loaded. One thing I did notice the other day is that chrome will reload webpages on it's own even if they don't have focus. I was running an express.js app on localhost and periodically I would see traffic in in the logs even though I wasn't interacting with it. It may just be enforcing some ttl/cache header that was automagicly set, but it will make me close my browser more often. It might be worth installing firefox and see if it behaves the same.
• kristopolous 12y ago
  Is this what passes for journalism? That was truly awful. Did that take 3 minutes to write? Maybe four?
• frik 12y ago
  I just tested Firefox 37 (Developer Edition) and Firefox 38 (Nightly). The multi-process "Electrolysis" support in 38 is great. Several tabs with flash plugin work fine now, without slowing down the whole browser. Though, I still see only one main process for all web sites (there is a child process "plugin-container"), that's a bit disappointing. IE 9+, Chrome and Safari 7+ spawn a new process for every x sites - a child process with little permissions (a technique known as "sandbox"). Maybe we have to wait a little longer for Mozilla's Rust based Servo engine.
  • wldcordeiro 12y ago
    If you have Electrolysis there should be more than just firefox and plugin-container. Currently I run Nightly as my main browser and have to keep it disabled though due to some plugins I use lacking Electrolysis support (the fix is not on the plugin maker's side.)
    • frik 12y ago
      I run the current Firefox 38 Nightly 64-bit Windows version with "Enable E10S (multi-process)" turned on (default setting). There are only two processes.
      • dblohm7 12y ago
        That's temporary. Once e10s has been stabilized with one content process, they'll look into scaling that up.
    • cpeterso 12y ago
      Note that both the Flash sandbox process and the Electrolysis content process are named "plugin-container.exe". If you just see a Firefox and one plugin-container process, it is likely the content process, not Flash.
• martokus 12y ago
  And just yesterday I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome. Based in the UK and the latest Firefox searches google.com instead of google.co.uk Never had this problem before and seems it cannot be fixed. Even tried a fresh install of Firefox but no dice. I love Firefox but getting the wrong search results is a deal breaker for me. Any ideas?
  • zobzu 12y ago
    Its more of a google issue to be honest. Anyway just click here with firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-uk/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-uk/ and you'll have google.co.uk :)
• erichate 12y ago
  Chrome has been making some pretty awesome improvements to the dev console as well as performance related to HTML5 on desktop and mobile. Our game http://www.FreeRiderHD.com http://www.FreeRiderHD.com has always performed best on mobile and desktop through Chrome. That being said the most recent stable build of Chrome desktop is constantly triggering 'Aw Snap' crashes without any crash data where the issue does not appear to exist in previous or future beta builds. Not just limited to our game as I have been experiencing crashes on Facebook and Twitter as well.
• jkempe11 12y ago
  Chrome sucks, Firefox kind of sucks, and Safari is good but it lacks extensions. Are we going to go back to the days of no great browser options? Please no.
• chm 12y ago
  I don't understand why one would use a single web browser for everything. I don't have any evidence to prove its effectiveness, but the following combination has been pretty good for me and I've used it for years: Firefox with NoScript/Ghostery for e-commerce and article/blog reading. I have a selection of unblocked websites. Vanilla Safari for banking. Vanilla Chrome for anything that would require a lot of unblocking in FF. This means that at any time I can have three browsers opened with multiple tabs each. I never seem to have any problem.
• emodendroket 12y ago
  I'm so sick of people obsessing over "bloat" on desktop programs. All the most "bloated" programs (like, say, Visual Studio, or Word, or Emacs, or whatever other example you care to name) also happen to be the most useful, because, hey, it turns out you use some fraction of those "unnecessary" features. "Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. If that's what you need, you've got options..." -- jwz
  • hatu 12y ago
    I don't think they've really added that many new features(visible to users) to Chrome. I've been using it since it came out and it still looks the same and I use the same features I used to. Maybe I'm wrong and just missed them since they were added so slowly. I guess the Dev Tools have been improved?
• basicguru 12y ago
  This article is full of whiny nonsense. Sounds like one of those rants you hear from those who think they are savvy because they can install apps on their phone. Chrome eats batteries for lunch, but it's still super fast and stable, and I use quite a few 'useful' addons.
• shmerl 12y ago
  > Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome? I remember the hype, but I never switched. Firefox was always good enough for me. And really, Firefox overtook Chrome in performance a while ago already. And naturally Mozilla's manifesto is way better to support than Eric Schmidt's "you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide" idea.
  • metastart 12y ago
    Firefox gets nearly $1mn/day from Google...they're using your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you...they're not a good choice if you care about privacy. They have, though, pressured Yahoo to do some good stuff -- they have zero leverage over google, in fact google has tons of leverage over them. Try the Epic Privacy Browser if you care about privacy!
    • e15ctr0n 12y ago
      Mozilla no longer gets $1mn/day from Google. The new default search engine is Yahoo for US users. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...
    • shmerl 12y ago
      As others said, their contract with Google is over - now they use Yahoo (and some others) which you can easily switch to DuckDuckGo if you want. And also you can switch off new tab ads trivially.
• bdcravens 12y ago
  What drives me nuts is the fact that even after I explicitly close it, Chrome insists on opening up all the tabs I had open before. Reloading those tabs takes time, and I can only pray it's not some poorly coded webpage that performs an undesired action based on the URL. If I explicitly close an app, my expectation is that all the resources I had open close as well (to be fair, Atom does the same thing)
  • emodendroket 12y ago
    So turn off that setting then.
• spydum 12y ago
  Poor browsers, the punching bag of all technologists. About the only software more despised/criticized/argued about is systemd.. that's saying something.
• Morphling 12y ago
  Unless Firefox opens sites instantly (instead of 1-2 sec wait) then I don't see any speed benefit. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the author probably has a lot of heavy addons that do stuff that is not needed. Biggest example probably is AdBlock Plus which bogs down any browser considerably and poking around with family's and friends' Chromes I see that a lot of them have several ad blocking extensions as well as couple privacy extensions is it any wonder Safari or Firefox with no addons is faster?
• meapix 12y ago
  i never switched from firefox, with vim like extension, never had problems.
• oliv__ 12y ago
  This is probably me being my annoying self but one thing I absolutely cannot stand on Chrome are those disgusting grey circled arrows that show up whenever you swipe left or right on the trackpad to go forward or backward in history. That's enough for me to stick with Firefox.
• frade33 12y ago
  this has been the case with all of us, and what is even worse, the google has developed a steady habit of screwing things up, and it does not even consider the risks involved., the risks here being the user adoption/retention/abandonment. cough barely anyone cares for users anyway, these days. But from a business point of view it's dire mistake, but it's kind of outrageous too in some way, when you would promise one thing and do another. anyway fuck users, what about the competitors, Google perhaps is the most alienated enterprise of its size anyway too. Not because they were totally unreasonable, just because google have no respect for any of them.
• upgray-d 12y ago
  asston?
• jwiley 12y ago
  Signed extensions also seem like a nice addition https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing-safer-experience/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing...
• plg 12y ago
  just a naive question---on the mac, what's the issue with Safari? Seems really fast to me. Also I love the Reading List feature.
• skywhopper 12y ago
  I switched to Chrome very soon after it came out, and I've been happy with it for the most part for years. I typically have dozens of tabs open at a time if not more and it's never been a problem, until the last few months when Chrome on Linux has started becoming unstable after running for a day or so to the point that I can't rely on it working for anything but Gmail. Other pages, even simple ones, will blow up with the Chrome BSOD until I completely restart it. I used to be able to leave things up for literally months. How this makes sense with Chrome's process architecture, I do not know. On Windows I haven't had these problems, and maybe it's just a particular combination of libs at fault, but I may soon switch to Firefox on my Linux box at least just to avoid the hassle.
• baddox 12y ago
  I'll admit to not using Firefox extensively for several years, but I also have had zero issues with Chrome. The closest thing to an issue is that I really don't care for the profile name UI in the top right of the window, which they just added. That's certainly not enough to switch browsers over.
• hackuser 12y ago
  This is really about the tech equivalent of fashion. You're not still using last year's cool browser, are you? I doubt there is enough difference between the browsers to make a meaningful productivity impact for most end users (the population at HN might probably has more exceptions to that statement). The only significant difference is confidentiality, where I trust Mozilla far more than Google. Here is what is really going on: 1) IE defined the web for most people, with 95% market share. 2) Firefox became the new, cool alternative, with some social/political appeal (free-as-in-speech, non-profit mission, openness, anti-corporate), and the appeal of being the cutting-edge and the shiny-new thing. 3) 'New' and 'cool' have shelf lives, slowing your subjective experience of browsers and skinny blue jeans. Also, Mozilla lacked a marketing budget and department to manage and refresh their image, as other vendors might have done: 'In limited release beta preview: Firefox XE! Be the first person you know to get it! It's burning up the 'net!' 4) Google was an uber-cool company, and they put out a browser, which became the new uber-cool thing. 'You're not still using Firefox, are you?' (Actually said to an end-user I was helping by a technorati wannabe.) 5) Chrome might have performed better for a time, but the browsers were neck and neck in performance tests for many years while people rationalized their love of cool. As I said, I doubt there was much real difference, except in some specialized circumstances. 6) Now repeat #3, except this time for Chrome. The subtext and whole point of this article is, 'is Chrome no longer cool?' It's as if the author is throwing some red meat in the waters, to see if the piranha are ready to swarm. Perhaps Mozilla and Google should pump in fake engine noise.
  • zobzu 12y ago
    this comment is sadly very accurate ;) The worse part IMO is that companies indeed play on that effect, and people, even smart techies will always fall for the new cool. We have such a tendency to have to follow trends in groups.. its a little scary at times.
• mattchew 12y ago
  I'd like to switch back to Firefox, but they do not support inverted colors like Chrome does. Hacker Vision on Chrome is sooooo good. The closest I've found for Firefox is Color Toggle, but it fails in a lot of places, enough that FF+CT is not usable as my main browser. (This difference might be laid at the feet of the plugin writers, but I have the idea that there is inversion support available in the browser in Chrome but not in FF.) Unfortunately, after getting used to Hacker Vision, good color inversion is a must-have feature for me.
  • dblohm7 12y ago
    File a bug for it. Maybe somebody will implement that for you!
    • mattchew 12y ago
      There exist related bugs in bugzilla, frex https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825578 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825578 . The css invert filter was very recently added to Firefox. Haven't played with this but sounds like it could make the job easier, so maybe FF will catch up here.
• baby 12y ago
  > Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome? Nope. Vertical tabs are the future and Chrome never had that.
• darrasoturi 12y ago
  Always finally wound up with Firefox, as it has the best mouse gestures support (with add-ons ofc).
• ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  It's about time.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• jwr 12y ago
  I don't understand why people on Macs don't simply use Safari. It's good, it's fast, and it works really well.
  • acheron 12y ago
    Lack of a good adblock plugin is what made me give up on it, though that was awhile ago.
    • _cudgel 12y ago
      I've been very happy with Ghostery on Safari.
  • greggman 12y ago
    Because it's massively insecure. 63 code exploits last year vs Chrome's 4 http://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?vendor_id=49 http://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?ven... http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224 http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v... Add to that Chrome has a far more secure version of Flash and yea, I'll be avoiding Safari (and Firefox) until they catch up.
• tzamora 12y ago
  The only reason I still use chrome is because of this little flag: --disable-web-security that allows me to test my local sites without the need to add them to a CORS config file.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    Why not just run a development web server?
• azinman2 12y ago
  He mentioned it briefly in the article, but I'm now finding safari to be a great browser on OS X Yosemite. It's seemingly fast/faster than chrome, has great retina and media support (Netflix without plugins!), integrates well with safari on my iPhone, but not mentioned here otherwise? It has better aesthetics. It got really good looking in a way that makes all the other browsers look super dated. Who cares about a cloud to butt plugin? I've got privoxy + 1password, don't need anymore than that.
• spain 12y ago
  In my experience I stayed with Firefox after I learned about tab groups. Sure you can run an extension on Chrome to do the same (and you can run extensions on Firefox to do things Chrome does) but after seeing just how much extensions can bog down a browser I prefer to run mine as close to vanilla as possible. It's not even "if you download a poorly made extension your browser will be slower" but it seems like extensions have that effect in general. It's probably irrational but I've honestly seen a lot of the most popular extensions falling into this category, extensions like AdBlock and HTTPS Everywhere come to mind.
• abvdasker 12y ago
  I never left.
• bovermyer 12y ago
  I hate having lots of tabs open, and so the bazillion-process problem doesn't apply to me. The difference between Chrome and Firefox, for me, is that some sites that work on Chrome don't work on Firefox. Other than that, it's mostly muscle memory of things like Chrome developer tools that keep me in Chrome.
• am0x 12y ago
  This is mainly a Mac only issue. I discovered that I was getting about 1/8th the amount of battery time recently. I thought it was a Yosemite issue, so I got some stuff to watch what was eating all my resources and causing my computer to overheat on what I would consider normal use. Chrome was the culprit. Switched to Firefox and the issue is gone. However, I have recently gone back to Chrome when plugged in because FF has been crashing a lot and seems sluggish.
• Uroboric 12y ago
  I still use Chrome for one reason only: it's the only browser with a built-in default zoom feature. I don't like manually zooming for every single page I visit, and the zoom extensions that exist for Firefox and Safari always break on certain pages.
• gorhill 12y ago
  For what it's worth, one fact and an anecdotal observation: One fact: Currently, Chromium-based browsers suffer from a nasty memory leak: each time one bring up an extension's popup UI, a big chunk of memory is leaked.[1] This alone for me justify using Firefox over Chromium if one has an extension which popup UI must be accessed often. Anecdotal observation: I have noticed since a couple of versions now that it appears Chromium's garbage collector can be very lazy sometimes. To the point where I am wondering if this is a bug, because the memory would just not be reclaimed by the browser until I forced it through the developer console: upon clicking the trash can in the Timeline tab, 60 MB were re-claimed for one of the extension (from ~130MB to 70MB). This was after waiting for an hour to see if it would be reclaimed. Yes, there was a lot of idle time while I waited. [1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500
  • gorhill 12y ago
    I would like to understand why what I said above was deemed a nuisance.
• melling 12y ago
  Please just use both Chrome and Firefox. Having both is great. I keep the Nightly's open for each.
• tdkl 12y ago
  Top 2 things that suck in FF that makes me stick with Chrome, despite wanting to part ways with Google mothership : - sync (Chrome syncs everything while being reliable) - mobile Android app (FF mobile has insane scrolling behaviour, that's out of place on the platform).
  • e15ctr0n 12y ago
    Firefox also offers Sync[1]. Its mobile Android app[2] has shown dramatic improvement recently with support for add-ons[3] and Sync[4]. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/02/07/introducing-mozilla-firefox-accounts/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/02/07/introducing-mozilla... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi... [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/ [4] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-new-firefox-sync https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-ne...
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• kyllo 12y ago
  The only reason I don't use Firefox anymore is because it doesn't automatically pick up changes in my proxy settings, whereas Chrome does. So with Chrome I can have tabs open on my laptop at work, then bring it home and continue to use the same tabs, while with Firefox I have to remember to go in and change my proxy settings.
  • dblohm7 12y ago
    You could request this by filing a bug in Bugzilla.
  • wanderview 12y ago
    I asked our networking folks and there are couple parts to fix this. First, this bug recently landed which allows us to respect the system network status better: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939318 I believe thats enabled on windows in FF35, but won't be enabled in Mac/Linux until FF38. There is a separate issue to deal specifically with recovering from proxy settings that have gone bad, though: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1121800 Work has not started there, but its on our radar.
    • kyllo 12y ago
      Thank you for the helpful response. There are a lot of other little things I don't like about Chrome, so once this little issue with Firefox is fixed I want to switch back to it. Good to know that there is a bug filed for it!
• igorgue 12y ago
  Slow. News. Day.
• chrismarlow9 12y ago
  I've been using firefox + duckduckgo as default browser for a week now on my personal box. No problems at all.
• groovylick 12y ago
  I returned to Firefox from Chrome about 1 year ago due to nagging rendering bugs with linux. Running out of video memory triggered a bug where Chrome would leave a stale buffer of the window on screen. My inputs still got to browser, I could change tabs, scroll, go full-screen it just won't repaint the window. I would have to restart my window manager to get it to repaint. The only solution was to disable GPU rendering but then scrolling was terrible. I know I was pushing the limits of my 7 year old Thinkpad, but I liked my keyboard and 3 real mouse buttons. I moved to Firefox and even with GPU rendering enabled never had that problem. Months later that Thinkpad's battery died and I moved to working on a modern dual monitor desktop machine. Thinking my problems with Chrome would be gone with plenty of horsepower I discovered a new bug. My monitors are (unfortunately) BGR pixel order not much much more common RGB. It's pretty easy to setup in Cinnamon/Gnome just change 1 dconf key and font rendering is great. Chrome completely ignores this setting and renders fuzzy haloed fonts, plus it not just for Linux, Chrome does the same under Windows. The best workaround is to enable grayscale sub-pixel rendering in chrome://flags but fonts are still fuzzy. From what I found while debugging the problem Chrome used to support different pixel orders but broke it recently. Once again Firefox renders fonts just fine by reading the pixel order set by the OS. Chrome isn't alone in the pixel order problems, Sublime Text and Atom both suffer from the same problem.
  • AceJohnny2 12y ago
    I have a similar experience, and also switched back to Firefox on Linux. There must be something in my setup [1] that screws with Chrome's expectations, because its performance and stability are horrendous on this computer. It runs fine and dandy on my Windows machine though. [1] Ubuntu 12.04, dual-monitor, AwesomeWM, Nvidia Quadro FX 580, 8-core and 8GB RAM,
  • realusername 12y ago
    I also have the same problem for the repaint window on Chrome, it's a really annoying bug and I have to close it and re-open it every time I lock my computer, Chrome simply cannot work properly when I unlock the computer again.
• cpeterso 12y ago
  Firefox also has (experimental) built-in tracking protection without needing to install a third-party extension. The tracking list is based on Disconnect's list. You can activate Firefox's tracking protection by switching the "privacy.trackingprotection.enabled" about:config pref to true.
  • metastart 12y ago
    Interesting! The Epic Privacy Browser has built-in tracker-blocking and a lot more privacy protections, plus it's built on faster, more secure chromium.
  • slasaus 12y ago
    Wow, that is cool! for others that are interested, see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-fir...
• isaiahg 12y ago
  I have some harsh news for you. I did exactly that. I moved back to firefox after probably 3 years on chrome. It's not much better. There's one thing about chrome that has spoiled me. The fact that when something crashes only the tab or tabs crash. After the third time firefox crashes and the whole browser locks up you go back, like me. Also chrome's task manager is magnificent.
• kaffeinecoma 12y ago
  This article prompted me to dust off Firefox to try it out again. Right away I notice a nice improvement over Safari- Firefox seems willing to cache a page for "back button" behavior longer than Safari. I always hate when sites fail to set their cache-control to something reasonable (Reddit is especially bad about this). So you click a link, read it for 5 seconds then go back- bam, full (slow) page reload. Firefox instantly fetches the page from local cache without hitting the server again. I really like this.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• praetorian84 12y ago
  I use both Firefox and Chrome pretty heavily at work. I still prefer the web dev experience in Chrome. The general browsing experience gap has definitely narrowed. Flash + Firefox used to be painful, but I'm not noticing that anymore.
• osw 12y ago
  I use surf for most of things, firefox is one fat panda.
• everydaypanos 12y ago
  Just sat on my PC and patted my Chrome window with my cursor for all the bad things it heard on this thread!!
• owly 12y ago
  Ditto. FF and µBlock are a solid combo now. I typically have 10 to 20 tabs open without issue. I uninstalled Chrome completely, I just don't need it.
• imchillyb 12y ago
  I use chrome on every device that allows the install. I've not experienced these slowdowns or crashes, on any of the machines that I use. (PCs, Phones, Tablets...) Perhaps something you've installed (your extensions maybe?), is giving you issues. Your problem could be as simple as you're using the wrong versions of java and chrome together. Mix-n-match 64-32 bit doesn't work well at all.
• Ezhik 12y ago
  I hate what Google did to Chrome. Went from a browser to some sort of a franken-OS inside of your own OS. Seriously, a user switcher? You mean that one feature that _every single OS Chrome runs on_ has? Also I hate how Google switched all of its apps to webapps, which work worse and use more resources than their native counterparts.
• eyalweiss 12y ago
  I'm usually keeping 100-150 (!) tabs open, using "Tabman" to navigate between them https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabman-tabs-manager/hgmnkflcjcohihpdcniifjbafcdelhlm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabman-tabs-manage... (disclosure: I made this extension) and using also "The Great Suspender" for the performance. This works great with so many tabs on my 2 year old laptop.
• capedape 12y ago
  I've got a bad habit with tabs that Chrome doesn't enable. The only solution I've found that works is to use Tab Mix Plus and set it to allow up to nine rows of tabs. Once I start getting past about three rows it starts to shut out the viewable screen space and I up saying F this and going on a deleting spree, or bookmarking all open tabs. The second reason I don't use Chrome is with a logitech mouse on Mac, there are no good gesture extensions that I know of that will allow me to right-click / scroll wheel to zoom through open tabs. Actually, all gesture extensions seem crippled in some way or another.
• stank345 12y ago
  I just closed Chrome as a test and am viewing this thread in FFX. Chrome was using 3 GB of RAM :/
• xkarga00 12y ago
  Since uBlock got support for Firefox, using Firefox is a no-brainer for me.
• Apofis 12y ago
  I wonder why something so seemingly simple as displaying some text and images on screen is so difficult to do effectively?
• tomphoolery 12y ago
  No you're not. You're gonna be right back in Chrome because it has V8. Admit it. You liked Chrome because it ran fast because it had a great JS engine and HTML renderer. We all did. Stop complaining, suck it up, and use Chrome.
• idbentley 12y ago
  This article annoyingly misses to mention THE reason to use Firefox over Chrome. Supporting Mozilla.
  • _lce0 12y ago
    ..plus supporting the open web!!
    • nashashmi 12y ago
      Nobody seems to remember the original Google/Chrome vision: seemless experience between the desktop and the web. No need for desktop apps. And all web content instantly loads on computer without any internet and browser delay. Just as though the content was always on your computer.
• malkia 12y ago
  Wow! Hold right there. Chrome uses shared memory among it's spawned processes on all operating systems. If you use Task Manager (Windows) / Activity Monitor (OSX) or something similar in Linux, you would see memory over-reported. Google for this: http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory" http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory" Some info: http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder Some more info: http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-usage-good-and-bad.html http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-usage-... Best tool to see the memory usage is chrome itself: about://memory -> check the real sum at the end of the page.
  • zobzu 12y ago
    Note that it still uses way more ram than firefox regardless. in firefox right now.. ive 4 tabs open and been using it for 2 hours.. 246megs used. I just started chromium 42.. open hacker news and theverge.. boom already at 311megs.(thats measured with about:memory) Another funny thing is that chromium "measures" ff memory but measures it as more than the OS or Firefox itself. Not too sure whats going on there, albeit its still lower
    • malkia 12y ago
      I get this, but before any conclusion is made correct memory usage must be done.
• igl 12y ago
  I do not understand this article. You can't load up any browser with add-ons and bookmarks for a few months and then complain about it being slower than a fresh install of another one. I hardly use any add-ons other than ad-block and a handful of selected ones and do not have the problems described. Quite the opposite actually! I do have the occasional freezes and crashes with ff using webgl, html5 video and even firebug (with less than 10 tabs open).
• mikecmpbll 12y ago
  I don't think Firefox or Chrome, I think Mozilla or Google. Easy choice.
• metastart 12y ago
  I use the Epic Privacy Browser, built on chromium and way better than firefox and chrome.
• 10098 12y ago
  Anecdata: using both Firefox an Chrome. Chrome on Linux is very fast and responsive. Firefox on Windows slow and clunky.
• dbg31415 12y ago
  When selecting software, I seldom say, "Fuck it, I hate X so much I'm using a competitor." I normally say, "I like Y so much, I'm using it." For me, I like that Firefox isn't constantly bombarding me with "link your accounts" crap. And I like how Firefox still has the option built in to reset the browser / delete all data on close. Performance seems like a wash these days, and frankly isn't something I care about even a little -- it's basically a problem solved by adding more RAM and RAM is cheap. 16 GB in my laptop these days... 32 GB in my workstation... who cares how it gets used. Also I like some of the Firefox plugins over Chrome. I do like how Chrome doesn't require a restart for plugins... Firefox needs to get on that train. But I add plugins once a week at most, so it's kind of moot. Anyway I like Firefox more than I like Chrome, that's why I use it.
• LukeHoersten 12y ago
  Same problem with Chrome for me. I ended up switching to Safari and have been really happy. In iOS, lots of apps only have an option to open pages in Safari and because I use cloud tab sharing etc, Safari on the desktop was really the only option for me. I started using Safari's built in style-stripping reader and reading list and have been really happy. Also, they have consistent swipe-for-history across iOS and OS X. Chrome did not and I'm still not use to it.
• ramigb 12y ago
  Google employees are in the air tonight.
• dude3 12y ago
  translate3d and CSS3 animations just run much faster on chrome. Javascript is also faster on chrome. That's why I use chrome. Newer versions of firefox are getting better tho. The debugger on firefox is sub par compared to the on chrome for complex applications.
• waxjar 12y ago
  I'd like to use Safari (instead of Chrome) but there's a couple of things holding me back. - No omnibar with custom search engines by keyword. I use this extensively. - Closing multiple tabs is annoying, because they resize. Chrome solves this well. The couple of times I used Firefox weren't pleasant. It seems to not work as well on OS X. Granted that has been a long time ago.
  • strange_quark 12y ago
    > No omnibar with custom search engines by keyword. Safari 8 has this feature. Not as elegant as the way Chrome handles it, but you can search domains you've previously searched by typing in the first few characters of the domain and hitting tab. > Closing multiple tabs is annoying, because they resize. Not sure when this was changed, but tabs only resize once you've moved your mouse away from the tab bar. I switched away from Chrome a year or so ago when they changed the new tab page to have the huge, redundant search box and fewer frequently visited pages and haven't regretted it. I find Safari's UI to be leaps and bounds better than Chrome's, scrolling is much smoother, and it drains my battery way less than either Chrome or FF. There aren't nearly as many extensions for Safari, but the ones I use (1Password, Reddit Enhancement, etc.) are all available for Safari.
    • waxjar 12y ago
      Interesting. I'm not on the latest OS X yet, but that's good to hear. Might be enough to make me switch.
• taf2 12y ago
  Meh the issue here is not chrome or Firefox... It's that people still use IE and more people are using Safari with all of its broken features... Both chrome and Firefox are open source and can be excellent browsers. Neither are limiting the content we can access via the web. Both agree to support the web as a platform. Contrast this with safari and IE and you see IE avoiding WebRTC due to an 8 billion dollar purchase of Skype and a safari avoiding WebRTC because of FaceTime... I'm not even sure the state of webgl but can only imagine it's worse... The two browsers and opera are the only browsers I plan on supporting...
  • zobzu 12y ago
    to be a little more fair safari made webkit possible (and thus chrome)..
• chorizos22 12y ago
  Fuck you, go back to hell.
• evolme 12y ago
  I'd be happier if Firefox got around to supporting 60fps on YouTube. There are a number of small things that irk me about Firefox, but no 60fps is one of the bigger ones. I still use it as my main browser though.
• evjim 12y ago
  When I got my windows 8.1 convertible I was disappointment that Firefox's scrolling is terrible with touch. IE metro is actually pretty awesome but I hate being fullscreened in something and I don't like. And that you can't install adblock or disconnect or tree tabs. But Chrome keeps crashing, so I think I will have to use firefox and just suffer with a mouse.
• teddyuk 12y ago
  If only they ported modern ie browsers to Unix like they did ie 4 and then this whole thread would be mute!
• egfx 12y ago
  I'm a developer focusing on mass appeal internet web apps. Chrome is number one there and that's what I use for everything but testing. Chrome HAS been crashing more and more but I could just as easily attribute it to the countless chrome extensions I have installed in 30+ tabs. Btw, Chrome seems fast and light enough to be able to handle the load. Actually, it just seems like I'm pushing chrome more and more lately. I do agree, flash crashes all the time, the browser crashes sometimes. It's not the end of the world, I wouldn't switch.
• krick 12y ago
  > Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome? Uhm, no. We didn't.
• MBlume 12y ago
  Can I just take a moment to say that this is all a success story? Firefox was old and busted, slow and unstable, Chrome was the new hotness, now Chrome is starting to get long in the tooth, but in that time Firefox has been spurred on to get leaner and faster and more capable. Chrome did exactly what Google told us it was supposed to do when it was released -- it spurred competition and pushed the Mozilla devs to put out the best browser they could. As more people switch to Firefox, that same pressure will fall on the Chrome team. At the end of the day, we're all better off, and I'd like to thank the folks at Mozilla, at Google, and yes, even at Microsoft for all they've done.
• narrowrail 12y ago
  Comment-types I find odd in this thread (given this is HN): 1) People that only use one browser. 2) People that use Chrome over Chromium. 3) People that do not have one browser with js disabled. 4) People that have flash installed (there is some overlap with #1 here because Chrome bundles flash). Everybody here should know better, IMO.
• dinkumthinkum 12y ago
  Why does a gizmodo writer only uses one browser? Anyway, is he sure he isn't installing a lot of addins? I don't have these problems. I think Chrome works well.
• Orangeair 12y ago
  I've felt this same sentiment recently, but regarding the Chrome browser for Android. It used to be perfectly fast, but over time (with updates) it just seemed to get slower and slower on my Galaxy S4, to the point where now it sometimes can take fifteen seconds to register a scroll event on a site like Reddit. Heavier sites are practically unusable. Even as I type this, I see my characters suddenly appearing in groups of twenty or so at a time, where several months ago it was not a problem. And I never even have more than three tabs open normally.
• rjohnk 12y ago
  Firefox is dirt slow on my Asus T100. Only reason I run Chrome is because it's decent speed on the T100. I think it has to due with the separate processes. The Quad Core Bay Trail chokes on single threaded processes.
• dbalan 12y ago
  As someone who made the switch a month ago, here's the problems I've felt - but they are not major I warn you. I still use it. 1. Firefox's private window still runs your plugins - its not a sandbox clean browser 2. You still have to restart if you installed a plugin (ugh! its 2015) 3. You can search from the address bar, prepend a "?". i.e "?google.com" will search with keyword "google.com". Otherthan this it was a joy to use firefox - works faster than my "chromium" build on osx yosamite.
• bmoresbest55 12y ago
  It is funny. I just switched to Chrome and find it to be much quicker and less resource hungry.
• hisyam 12y ago
  If you have too many extensions that consumes memory you can easily switch them on/off using the Extensions Manager plugin: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-manager-aka-sw/lpleipinonnoibneeejgjnoeekmbopbc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-manager...
• lizzard 12y ago
  If anyone would like to give feedback on how addons are working with e10s (multiprocess) enabled on Nightly, have a look here: http://arewee10syet.com/ http://arewee10syet.com/ There are bugs in progress linked from this tracking site, and so, for example, if you want to help test Greasemonkey or Vimperator or whatever, search down the page, go to the bug, and see if there's something useful you can add to the comments in bugzilla.mozilla.org. If you're willing to do some testing and go back and forth with developers a bit, it can be really helpful!
• fapjacks 12y ago
  This has got to be a joke. Firefox is not better than Chrome in the most important capability. Without the ability to precisely see what tabs are causing CPU and memory problems and to destroy those tabs, using more than a handful of tabs at one time makes it totally impossible to use Firefox. I get that the Firefox devs really, really don't want to expend the herculean effort required to make per-tab process management possible in Firefox. But that's really the core of it. I want to love Firefox. I want to ditch Chrome. But the fact remains: Chrome is the only browser with the granularity of control necessary to make browsing usable with my habits.
  • freditup 12y ago
    It's not perhaps the prettiest, but 'about:memory' in Firefox can give you a good look into where memory issues are coming from.
• moeedm 12y ago
  Safari is the best browser on OSX hands down.
• sidcool 12y ago
  [satire] At some level the blog seems like it's written by Microsoft PR team that is too ashamed to pitch IE as an alternative.
• taivare 12y ago
  Went back to Firefox as well, same issues as author, plus my system security frequently flags Chrome extensions, I also feel better about supporting Firefox and open-source, I also enjoy Opera's speed-dial for surfing & bookmarks. Opera speed-dial is fast on my slow computer.
• ivan_ah 12y ago
  One thing that's tremendously useful in Firefox is the "Group tabs" feature. You can have multiple Groups of tabs and (e.g. work tabs, research tabs, and news tabs). After a tab group has not been in focus for some time it gets unloaded from memory: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-tabs#w_how-do-i-create-a-tab-group https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-tab...
• linuxhansl 12y ago
  I never understood the allure of Chrome. Everybody said it was faster. So I did countless benchmarks with a stop watch for the pages that I frequent and for every single one of them Firefox rendered the pages faster.
• telepoiss 12y ago
  Firefox is at the time being the only browser capable of displaying correct colors with a wide-gamut display. http://davidjohnstone.net/blog/2013/06/be-careful-when-buying-a-wide-gamut-monitor http://davidjohnstone.net/blog/2013/06/be-careful-when-buyin...
• paul_milovanov 12y ago
  Competition is good. Above all, for a long time Chrome has been the tide lifting all boats, or pushing other browsers to improve. That Firefox is now a leaner, more secure browser is a testament to Mozilla as well as the Chromium project.
• ashish01 12y ago
  I read this article and decided to try Firefox again after 2 years but I was disappointed. A javascript heavy page can still make the whole browser unresponsive. This is not acceptable. It was a fresh install of FF with no extensions installed.
• MatthewWilkes 12y ago
  I've never seen a Chrome install so slow that someone would describe Safari as fast in comparison. The author has clearly customised his install to the point of ruining it.
• kriro 12y ago
  I've used Firefox forever and I don't think I'll switch. Conceptually Chrome has some advantages but the difference is not big enough for me to care all that much. The Zotero integration has been great forever and I use that a lot. Guess that and vertical tabs are the two features I use most (I'm sure vertical tabs exist for all browsers).
• Gonzih 12y ago
  I would love to go back to firefox, but sadly pentadactyl extension does not work with latest versions of firefox.
• apa-sl 12y ago
  I'm happy with Opera browsers since the times when they were still serving ad banners and started to release promo codes for their users to remove those ads :D
• matrus 12y ago
  I'd like to switch back from Chrome to Firefox but I have over 200 random passwords saved in Chrome and no way to import them into Firefox automatically. On the other hand it was totally painless to switch away from Firefox as Chrome features comprehensive profile import from other browsers.
• tomgg 12y ago
  This[1] bug from 2012 is the reason I switched; 30 months (still incrementing) to fix a massive usability break seems slow to me. 1. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619
• sdfjkl 12y ago
  I dropped Chrome (and told everyone to stop using it) when it sprouted that infernal "Not signed in to Chrome - You're missing out" button. A browser should not come with an agenda.
• MrGando 12y ago
  I've been using Safari since Yosemite, before I was using firefox since 2010 or so (back from Chrome). I love what Firefox means, but I don't love that they receive a shitload amount of money from Google and that constraints them a lot from their true mission. Just go to about:config and search 'google', there are several settings that use google by default to send information. I understand that they need the money, but the state of affairs is a bit sad. I pick Safari because now it's fast, memory and _battery_ efficient (I think it's the most battery efficient browser that I've used on the Mac). Apple seems very wary about defending it's users privacy, and it's actually in their best business interests to do so. They have the money and weight to actually put a decent fight on the subject. That's why I use Safari. PS: I do use Thunderbird for my e-mail needs though ;)
  • slasaus 12y ago
    About the deal with Google, that bothered me as well, fortunately it has expired last year and has not been renewed. Instead a deal with a lot more companies has been made, based on which part in the world you live in. For the US Mozilla has made a five-year partnership with Yahoo, part of that deal is that Yahoo respects the Do-Not-Track preference of Firefox clients. See https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an... for the details.
    • MrGando 12y ago
      That's really cool, thanks for sharing :)
• scolfax 12y ago
  I worked for a company that turned out to be a bit shady. My takeaway from the whole experience was: Chrome is the safest browser. Any process can change your preferences etc on IE or FF by simply modifying registry settings or system files. Chrome is _locked down_. I recommend it to everyone now. Even if it was a bit slower than the competition (not convinced that it is) , I would rather be safe.
• znowi 12y ago
  In my case, the reason I keep using Firefox is privacy. Chrome is trying too hard to enforce the walled garden on you and collect data. There's also one "little", but very telling point - you can not set a homepage in Chrome. I could not believe when I first discovered it.
• chorizos22 12y ago
  Hacker news: no hacker around, only GNU retards. Fuck It.
• chorizos22 12y ago
  Firefox rendering speed?, you care about 'text' rendering speed or '3d' rendering speed?, because Firefox's WebGL is AWFUL.
• chorizos22 12y ago
  Dear Firefox users; we all know you never will program a 3D application that runs smoothly at 1080p. So please, Fuck your Fox, and go to hell.
• dead10ck 12y ago
  Chrome was always a non-starter for me without an option to cycle tabs in most-recently used order.
  • maxxxcohen 12y ago
    So you just gave up on it ? juat like that. It's because of people like you that software ends up slow and bloated..
    • dead10ck 12y ago
      Wow. So you are saying that because I chose not to use Chrome that all software suffers? I didn't realize that there was only one good choice, or that Firefox was "slow and bloated," or that my choice of which software to use somehow contributes to the quality of code that software engineers outside of Google write. MRU tabs is essential to my usage flow. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. I frequently have many tabs open, and I need to be able to quickly switch back and forth between two or three tabs. People have been clamoring for MRU tabs since Chrome came out, and Google and the Chromium developers simply ignore them. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=161960 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=161960