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This trend of Firefox increasingly bundling more services and features is an interesting paradox considering that Firefox started as a quiet project to make a s

by firasd 11y ago

This trend of Firefox increasingly bundling more services and features is an interesting paradox considering that Firefox started as a quiet project to make a slimmed down, no frills browser in comparison to the main Mozilla browser. I’ve recently resumed using Firefox as my main browser partly driven by support of the project but also because Chrome was taking too much RAM and causing performance issues. Of course, when Chrome first came out it was a very slimmed down browser that used a lot less RAM compared to Firefox. Everything moves in cycles…

cpeterso 11y ago
Phoenix/Firefox was Mozilla's own lightweight alternative to SeaMonkey. Then Chrome was the lightweight alternative to a memory-hogging Firefox. Now Chrome is seen as sluggish and a memory hog. Where do we go next?
- wvenable 11y ago
  Servo, when it's done. And from there, who knows!
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    btw, browser.html is a Servo experiment with "future UI paradigms": https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/ https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/
    - Touche 11y ago
      It says right on the page that it doesn't use Servo.
      - Manishearth 11y ago
        https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell does though
        frik 11y ago
        I would like to switch to servo-shell sooner than later. Though there is no Win32/64 build of Servo. See Servo github issue "Get Servo working on Windows": https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908
- firasd 11y ago
  I suppose, as far as the web platform is concerned, we aren't really going to replace HTML/CSS/JS so increasing the speed and memory management of javascript rendering is the clear way forward, e.g. with Servo https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/research/projects/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/research/projects/
- hackmiester 11y ago
  ...back to Seamonkey? :D
- cwyers 11y ago
  Microsoft Edge?
- zanny 11y ago
  There are a lot of alternative browsers, though almost all of them use Blink.
- ossreality 11y ago
  Chrome isn't sluggish or even that much of a memory hog. People see a large number of processes... and have been using Chrome for years with all of their shitty fucking extensions installed.... and then pretend to be surprised that it's slower.\ For FUCK's sake, it still takes over 7 seconds to cold launch Firefox. That's Atom-editor level shit-ness.
steve-howard 11y ago
I use Firefox because Tree Style Tab[1] is such a useful interface for me that I'm willing to put up with the annoyances. I had the same thought about the new widgets popping up, though. There is really no reason at all that Pocket can't have been shipped as an extension, at worst a pre-installed one (but why exactly was that necessary to begin with?). I want a browser that does what I want, supports the add-ons I prefer, and stays out of the way. Hopefully Firefox doesn't continue to make me remove "features" with every update. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

by firasd 11y ago

cpeterso 11y ago

Phoenix/Firefox was Mozilla's own lightweight alternative to SeaMonkey. Then Chrome was the lightweight alternative to a memory-hogging Firefox. Now Chrome is seen as sluggish and a memory hog. Where do we go next?

wvenable 11y ago
Servo, when it's done. And from there, who knows!
- cpeterso 11y ago
  btw, browser.html is a Servo experiment with "future UI paradigms": https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/ https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/
  - Touche 11y ago
    It says right on the page that it doesn't use Servo.
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell does though
      - frik 11y ago
        I would like to switch to servo-shell sooner than later. Though there is no Win32/64 build of Servo. See Servo github issue "Get Servo working on Windows": https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908
firasd 11y ago
I suppose, as far as the web platform is concerned, we aren't really going to replace HTML/CSS/JS so increasing the speed and memory management of javascript rendering is the clear way forward, e.g. with Servo https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/research/projects/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/research/projects/
hackmiester 11y ago
...back to Seamonkey? :D
cwyers 11y ago
Microsoft Edge?
zanny 11y ago
There are a lot of alternative browsers, though almost all of them use Blink.
ossreality 11y ago
Chrome isn't sluggish or even that much of a memory hog. People see a large number of processes... and have been using Chrome for years with all of their shitty fucking extensions installed.... and then pretend to be surprised that it's slower.\ For FUCK's sake, it still takes over 7 seconds to cold launch Firefox. That's Atom-editor level shit-ness.

steve-howard 11y ago

I use Firefox because Tree Style Tab[1] is such a useful interface for me that I'm willing to put up with the annoyances. I had the same thought about the new widgets popping up, though. There is really no reason at all that Pocket can't have been shipped as an extension, at worst a pre-installed one (but why exactly was that necessary to begin with?). I want a browser that does what I want, supports the add-ons I prefer, and stays out of the way. Hopefully Firefox doesn't continue to make me remove "features" with every update. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...