8 ms·

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 b

by 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
      Nightly -> Stable every ~12 weeks or so, so should feel just as fast. I noticed this difference too, but I believe that's as I use it with a fresh profile each time.
  - Ar-Curunir 12y ago
    Chrome doesn't work well for me on Linux at all, whereas Firefox functions beautifully.
    - voidlogic 12y ago
      While "work well at all" might be an exaggeration, I have found Firefox to run much better than Chrome/Chromium on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as well.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    The Ad Block Plus extension is itself a notorious memory and CPU hog [1]. Chrome's slimmer uBlock extension has now been ported to Firefox [2]. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
    - wtallis 12y ago
      Please don't put the blame solely on AdBlock Plus. Most of the problem is due to the rulesets, not the extension itself. EasyList and friends have a truly frightening number of broad CSS element hiding rules, which are much less efficient than the URL blocking rules that were the original AdBlock mode and should have stayed the primary means of blocking.
      - wooger 12y ago
        This is patently untrue, as I subscribe to the exact same filter rulesets in uBlock, and it makes a dramatic, incredible difference to the browser's performance.
        wtallis 12y ago
        I didn't say that there was no difference in performance between uBlock and ABP. I was explaining that the performance problems with ABP are a result of it being misused. uBlock tolerates the abuse much better, but URL based blocking should still be the first line of defense.
    - vandahm 12y ago
      Thanks for the link to uBlock. I've been growing frustrated with Ghostery and AdBlock Plus, but didn't know of a good alternative. I'm giving uBlock a try, and so far, so good.
      - slasaus 12y ago
        Although µBlock might be a lot slimmer than AdBlock Plus, according to this article [1] it's comparable with Ghostery. Ofcours µBlock is open source where Ghostery is not and I personlly really like µBlock's philosophy [2] about tracking and privacy. [1] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199188-%C2%B5block-aims-to-block-ads-without-draining-system-resources http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199188-%C2%B5block-aims... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
- hackuser 12y ago
  > I left Firefox mainly because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) I have no idea what your experience was, of course. Many people said this for years while Firefox consistently won or tied in objective comparisons. Having dealt with end-user complaints for years, I've learned to doubt reports that rely on subjective perceptions of things like 'speed'. Sometimes the new, cool thing feels faster. Perhaps Firefox should pump in some fake engine noise.
  - moe 12y ago
    Those "objective comparisons" then probably compared the rendering engines or some other micro benchmarks. My main problem was the GUI, not the rendering (though the latter probably played its part in slowing the GUI down). Opening/closing/moving tabs was sluggish. Just opening Firefox with my ~20 tabs open would take many times as long as opening Chrome with the same number of tabs. You didn't need a stopwatch to see the difference.
    - scholia 12y ago
      Of course, things have changed since then....
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    I was one of the small group suffering (I think back around Firefox 24). It indeed was winning reviews & praise- but it was also completely unresponsive on my high-end machine. Several seconds of unresponsive, as if it/I were having problems with interrupts. I realize most people didn't have that problem; it was probably a freak corner case on my machine.
  - jlarocco 12y ago
    I switched to Chrome primarily because of that doubting. For a while a pretty good chunk of people were complaining about Firefox's speed and memory usage, and the dev team stuck their head in the sand and blamed plugins, extensions, slow hardware, OS problems, malware, and everything under the sun except Firefox itself. At some point people just said, "Fuck it, I'm not even trying to convince them any more, I'm just switching to Chrome." Also note that Firefox was "winning" objective benchmarks on things that didn't matter. Rendering speed doesn't mean much to me if it takes 10x longer to open the tab before rendering begins.
speeder 12y ago
For me the bloatware was Firefox 3.0 that installed itself against my wishes. I was using then Firefox 2 or 2.5 (don't remember) quite happily. It was just great (compared to Explorer). Chrome showed up... But Firefox 2.5 was still much better. Then one day, Firefox started to INSIST to install 3.0, then 3.5, then one day it just did, no matter how hard I tried to keep my old version. And then behold, Firefox 3.5 had a bigger interface, that used more screen space (and I am in Brazil, bigger screens and bigger resolutions get expensive FAST, my current laptop, that is a ASUS gaming one, is still 14 inches and the maximum vertical res is 768, screens better than that were unaffordable to me), and it was SLOW, VERY, VERY slow, like RIDICULOUS slow. So I hopped into Chrome... and I wish I could say I never looked back, but hogging 600mb just to load reuters.com webpage is NOT nice. I am only still using chrome for google-ecosystem reasons. If I could get rid of relying on google stuff (several work-related things depend on google) I probably would get on Firefox or Opera (or see if I can put Konqueror on Windows? I never tried that...)
- speeder 12y ago
  Can you people explain why you are downvoting me for my anecdote?
  - hackuser 12y ago
    Feedback as requested: It's the all caps hyperbole. It contributes little; it undermines interesting, valuable discussions; it's contagious, spreading from one poster to another; and it's also used so much in so many forums that long ago it became tiresome and dull. That wasn't your whole post, but when I see it I stop reading and move on. Anyway, don't worry too much about a few negative mods.
- zanny 12y ago
  Apparently Rekonq has a Windows version, at least according to a Google search and resultant blog post and winkde repo. http://lpapp.blogspot.com/2012/09/randa-rekonq-installer-for-windows.html http://lpapp.blogspot.com/2012/09/randa-rekonq-installer-for... Generally Rekonq is considered the better maintained KDE browser nowadays.
nkozyra 12y ago
I'd hate for this to become the revisionist history of the migration from FF -> Chrome. When I finally made the move FF had no extensions, no malware or any add-ons. I ran the same (mostly) version on Ubuntu, OSX and Windows 7. It had become unusably slow on all platforms. Looking around on the Internet in those days saw enough validation of the problem being widespread in terms of speed and memory resources that I tried Chrome and found it significantly snappier. In fact, I still do, although I note the great strides FF has taken in that regard. My problem is I haven't seen the same degradation in Chrome that I saw in FF a few years back. If it's getting bloated, I've missed it (in terms of palpable heft with slowdowns, crashes).
- logn 12y ago
  The historical FF record: https://areweslimyet.com/ https://areweslimyet.com/
  - nnethercote 12y ago
    That site is the historical record of memory usage on one automated benchmark on one particular test machine. It's useful for finding memory regressions but you really can't draw general conclusions from it. In particular, it's worst-case behaviour (esp. spikes) that hurts the most with memory usage, and Firefox is much better in that regard than it used to be.

by 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
    Nightly -> Stable every ~12 weeks or so, so should feel just as fast. I noticed this difference too, but I believe that's as I use it with a fresh profile each time.
- Ar-Curunir 12y ago
  Chrome doesn't work well for me on Linux at all, whereas Firefox functions beautifully.
  - voidlogic 12y ago
    While "work well at all" might be an exaggeration, I have found Firefox to run much better than Chrome/Chromium on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as well.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  The Ad Block Plus extension is itself a notorious memory and CPU hog [1]. Chrome's slimmer uBlock extension has now been ported to Firefox [2]. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
  - wtallis 12y ago
    Please don't put the blame solely on AdBlock Plus. Most of the problem is due to the rulesets, not the extension itself. EasyList and friends have a truly frightening number of broad CSS element hiding rules, which are much less efficient than the URL blocking rules that were the original AdBlock mode and should have stayed the primary means of blocking.
    - wooger 12y ago
      This is patently untrue, as I subscribe to the exact same filter rulesets in uBlock, and it makes a dramatic, incredible difference to the browser's performance.
      - wtallis 12y ago
        I didn't say that there was no difference in performance between uBlock and ABP. I was explaining that the performance problems with ABP are a result of it being misused. uBlock tolerates the abuse much better, but URL based blocking should still be the first line of defense.
  - vandahm 12y ago
    Thanks for the link to uBlock. I've been growing frustrated with Ghostery and AdBlock Plus, but didn't know of a good alternative. I'm giving uBlock a try, and so far, so good.
    - slasaus 12y ago
      Although µBlock might be a lot slimmer than AdBlock Plus, according to this article [1] it's comparable with Ghostery. Ofcours µBlock is open source where Ghostery is not and I personlly really like µBlock's philosophy [2] about tracking and privacy. [1] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199188-%C2%B5block-aims-to-block-ads-without-draining-system-resources http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199188-%C2%B5block-aims... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
hackuser 12y ago
> I left Firefox mainly because it was measurably slower than Chrome at the time (and not by a small margin) I have no idea what your experience was, of course. Many people said this for years while Firefox consistently won or tied in objective comparisons. Having dealt with end-user complaints for years, I've learned to doubt reports that rely on subjective perceptions of things like 'speed'. Sometimes the new, cool thing feels faster. Perhaps Firefox should pump in some fake engine noise.
- moe 12y ago
  Those "objective comparisons" then probably compared the rendering engines or some other micro benchmarks. My main problem was the GUI, not the rendering (though the latter probably played its part in slowing the GUI down). Opening/closing/moving tabs was sluggish. Just opening Firefox with my ~20 tabs open would take many times as long as opening Chrome with the same number of tabs. You didn't need a stopwatch to see the difference.
  - scholia 12y ago
    Of course, things have changed since then....
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I was one of the small group suffering (I think back around Firefox 24). It indeed was winning reviews & praise- but it was also completely unresponsive on my high-end machine. Several seconds of unresponsive, as if it/I were having problems with interrupts. I realize most people didn't have that problem; it was probably a freak corner case on my machine.
- jlarocco 12y ago
  I switched to Chrome primarily because of that doubting. For a while a pretty good chunk of people were complaining about Firefox's speed and memory usage, and the dev team stuck their head in the sand and blamed plugins, extensions, slow hardware, OS problems, malware, and everything under the sun except Firefox itself. At some point people just said, "Fuck it, I'm not even trying to convince them any more, I'm just switching to Chrome." Also note that Firefox was "winning" objective benchmarks on things that didn't matter. Rendering speed doesn't mean much to me if it takes 10x longer to open the tab before rendering begins.

speeder 12y ago

For me the bloatware was Firefox 3.0 that installed itself against my wishes. I was using then Firefox 2 or 2.5 (don't remember) quite happily. It was just great (compared to Explorer). Chrome showed up... But Firefox 2.5 was still much better. Then one day, Firefox started to INSIST to install 3.0, then 3.5, then one day it just did, no matter how hard I tried to keep my old version. And then behold, Firefox 3.5 had a bigger interface, that used more screen space (and I am in Brazil, bigger screens and bigger resolutions get expensive FAST, my current laptop, that is a ASUS gaming one, is still 14 inches and the maximum vertical res is 768, screens better than that were unaffordable to me), and it was SLOW, VERY, VERY slow, like RIDICULOUS slow. So I hopped into Chrome... and I wish I could say I never looked back, but hogging 600mb just to load reuters.com webpage is NOT nice. I am only still using chrome for google-ecosystem reasons. If I could get rid of relying on google stuff (several work-related things depend on google) I probably would get on Firefox or Opera (or see if I can put Konqueror on Windows? I never tried that...)

speeder 12y ago
Can you people explain why you are downvoting me for my anecdote?
- hackuser 12y ago
  Feedback as requested: It's the all caps hyperbole. It contributes little; it undermines interesting, valuable discussions; it's contagious, spreading from one poster to another; and it's also used so much in so many forums that long ago it became tiresome and dull. That wasn't your whole post, but when I see it I stop reading and move on. Anyway, don't worry too much about a few negative mods.
zanny 12y ago
Apparently Rekonq has a Windows version, at least according to a Google search and resultant blog post and winkde repo. http://lpapp.blogspot.com/2012/09/randa-rekonq-installer-for-windows.html http://lpapp.blogspot.com/2012/09/randa-rekonq-installer-for... Generally Rekonq is considered the better maintained KDE browser nowadays.

nkozyra 12y ago

I'd hate for this to become the revisionist history of the migration from FF -> Chrome. When I finally made the move FF had no extensions, no malware or any add-ons. I ran the same (mostly) version on Ubuntu, OSX and Windows 7. It had become unusably slow on all platforms. Looking around on the Internet in those days saw enough validation of the problem being widespread in terms of speed and memory resources that I tried Chrome and found it significantly snappier. In fact, I still do, although I note the great strides FF has taken in that regard. My problem is I haven't seen the same degradation in Chrome that I saw in FF a few years back. If it's getting bloated, I've missed it (in terms of palpable heft with slowdowns, crashes).

logn 12y ago
The historical FF record: https://areweslimyet.com/ https://areweslimyet.com/
- nnethercote 12y ago
  That site is the historical record of memory usage on one automated benchmark on one particular test machine. It's useful for finding memory regressions but you really can't draw general conclusions from it. In particular, it's worst-case behaviour (esp. spikes) that hurts the most with memory usage, and Firefox is much better in that regard than it used to be.