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Firefox is Cool Again
torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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I'm liking the new Compact Light/Dark themes that came in Firefox 53. Tabs have been lifted to the upper edge of the window, even when the window is not maximized. Time for Chrome fanboys to reconsider? 8-)

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Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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Is it still slow? I haven't used FF as my primary browser in several years. I remember it being slow compared to the likes of Opera and Chrome.

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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I don't perceive it as slow, but I also don't use Chrome enough to be able to compare. It's not one process per tab, it's still just a couple of processes. Which has its upsides and downsides, I guess. Back when Firefox was clearly lagging behind Chrome, I stayed with Firefox because of extensions like Chatzilla. I like Firefox' customizability and themeability, it's always been at the forefront when it comes to that.

And, of course, Firefox is independent in the sense that it's not controlled by the giant octopus that is Google.

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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Now that I think about it, it was probably around 2009 that I dropped Firefox... so it's been a while. I'll give Firefox another shot. I'll let you know how it goes.

Kitty Cat
Member #2,815
October 2002
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Is it still a memory hog?

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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Kitty Cat said:

Is it still a memory hog?

Yes, I usually restart it every day to free memory. Is Chrome better in that regard?

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Quote:

Firefox is Cool Again

Sorry, no, it's not. I use SeaMonkey, and it's way better than Firefox, in behavior and functionality. It doesn't store all your information unless you tell it to. Middle click closes a tab, instead of having to point at the little x and left click, or right click and then mouse to the bottom of the popup menu just to close the tab. Stupid. Firefox drives the crazy versioning issue where you have to have a new version of firefox every two weeks. Ridiculous. SeaMonkey doesn't ask you if you want to save your password, and it only remembers forms if you tell it to. On my phone I have to use Google and Chrome and Gmail and they suck. The gmail app shuts down unexpectedly fairly often. I don't use Chrome unless I have to. And regarding IE and Edge, jeez what a heaping pile of broken code spaghetti that must be.

I use SeaMonkey and Thunderbird for email.

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Middle click closes a tab, instead of having to point at the little x and left click, or right click and then mouse to the bottom of the popup menu just to close the tab.

That works in Firefox too.

Quote:

Firefox drives the crazy versioning issue where you have to have a new version of firefox every two weeks.

It's six to eight weeks between scheduled updates. And the changes are mostly minor.

Quote:

SeaMonkey doesn't ask you if you want to save your password, and it only remembers forms if you tell it to.

I suppose you can turn these features off in Firefox if you really want to. Each to his own, I guess.

Quote:

On my phone I have to use Google and Chrome and Gmail and they suck.

I use Firefox on my phone, it's pretty good. Especially if you use Firefox Sync 8-)

Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006

Not sure what version I use, but one thing I noticed is it is slow to start. I get a lot of pop ups warning me the logins are insecure, but that is just an annoyance. What is the Joe Rogan experience?

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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Mozilla has really fucked itself. The "extensions" reason for staying with it has largely been lost because they broke so many things so fast. Extension developers cannot keep up with the breaking changes. Particularly, the UI extensions. My favorite addon (after security/privacy based ones) is Pentadactyl. It removes the UI and gives you a Vim-like keyboard interface. I have used it for nearly a decade. But I've had to force install it for years, and it doesn't always work anyway. Last I heard from the developers, Mozilla has changed so much about how the UI works and how it can be changed by extensions that they were struggling to even maintain it. It's a real bitch. On top of Firefox losing those extensions and developers, it is still a terrible hog when it comes to performance (though I also use Chrome regularly and honestly it isn't much better). Mozilla seems to have completely lost their vision. I wonder if it's because of people that they've lost or kicked out.

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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If Mozilla's vision was catering to your whims, they would have gone out of business before anyone knew they existed :-/

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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I installed Firefox (53.0.2)... Not bad! :D It's reasonably zippy and looks nice. Heck, it's even using significantly less memory than Chrome. :o I like it. :)

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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torhu said:

If Mozilla's vision was catering to your whims, they would have gone out of business before anyone knew they existed :-/

No, they used to do just that. It wasn't until Chrome changed the game and they succumbed to trying to copy Chrome that Firefox went to shit trying to copy their UI, and throwing away the system they had built in the process. That would be understandable if they came out the other end with a sleeker browser that performed better, but it seems to just keep getting worse, not better. I honestly wish I could get a Firefox 3 with security patches or something. :P

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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I installed Firefox (53.0.2)... Not bad! :D It's reasonably zippy and looks nice. Heck, it's even using significantly less memory than Chrome. :o I like it. :)

Okay, that's interesting. Keep us updated 8-)

@bamccaig: There are several forks of Firefox, SeaMonkey, Water Fox, et cetera. You can make your own if you feel it's worth it.

Kitty Cat
Member #2,815
October 2002
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I switched to Pale Moon some time back. Has about all the features I care about from Firefox, but uses much less memory (after some use PM would sit at around 200MB, while a freshly launched FF was 285MB).

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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I never stopped using Firefox. With some tests, I don't honestly see any speed differences, never have. I love my Firefox addons and their dev team is always working on improving memory issues. From what I heard, it is now less of a memory hog than Chrome, so they have made progress. But then again, I now have 12Gigs of RAM so... who cares. Cutting out a couple add-ons helped in that regard as well, so it is not always the browser's fault.

Never found it slow though.

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Polybios
Member #12,293
October 2010

I've installd Chrome once. It imported everything from my Firefox profile without even asking. So it was quickly removed again.

jhuuskon
Member #302
April 2000
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Firefox momentarily catching up with Opera's UI design hardly makes me switch, considering it'd still need extensions (that, as bams points out, regularly break with new releases) to provide Opera default behaviour that I've pretty much been accustomed to in the past 15 years.

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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Opera is pretty good, but I like the more minimalistic interface approach of Firefox and Chrome.

Gideon Weems
Member #3,925
October 2003

bamccaig said:

My favorite addon (after security/privacy based ones) is Pentadactyl.

I couldn't put up with the update breakage you already seem familiar with. You might want to consider qutebrowser or vise.

I also use Firefox, though. My favorite extension is Privacy Badger.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Thanks for the suggestions. Those are certainly interesting projects. The only problem is that browsers are ground zero for exploits, and running unpopular code means you're probably not a target, but if you are the target you're an easy one.

Gideon Weems
Member #3,925
October 2003

I agree. That's why I keep Firefox (and Chromium) around. If I use Firefox whenever sensitive information is involved, do you still think I would be an easy target? Note that both qutebrowser and vise are little more than front-ends for WebKit/Blink, so as far as the actual layout engine is concerned, they run the same code as Safari and Chrome.

(I ask out of genuine curiosity, as I am always looking to improve my game.)

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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I think that's a fair approach, particularly if JavaScript and HTML5 are not implemented. The TLS implementation is probably the other fear. I'd be worried about exploits in those. Of course, what information isn't sensitive? If you use audio/video on the Web you're probably forced to leave yourself exposed or use a mainstream browser for most activity (which are also probably vulnerable, but should be patched faster).

Felix-The-Ghost
Member #9,729
April 2008
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I had to revert my FF version on my phone because any embedded video playing in the browser displayed corrupt data. I finally allowed it to update and it just reintroduced the problem -_-

I don't think there's an easy way to "rollback" versions either, last time I had to uninstall it to run the .apk and it lost all my settings/bookmarks.

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