Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification Specification Title: Web Environment Integrity API Specification or proposal URL (if available): https://rupertbenwiser.github.io/Web-E...
I’m switching today. Right now. Because of this post.
^^maybe EDIT: okay. I think I’ve done it. I’m currently editing this comment from Firefox. I already had Firefox installed. But now I have pinned it to my taskbar. I went to import my bookmarks from chrome, and found that I also had the option of importing other stuff from chrome, too (bookmarks, passwords, history and autofill data). That’s sweet. My bookmark bar has the same bookmarks in the same position. I also installed ublock origin, like someone recommended. And I am going to give it a go. If it all goes smoothly, I will unpin Chrome from the taskbar.
And in fact will save you CPU cycles. For a bit, Chrome had a slight performance edge over Firefox. But once Google got the market share, Firefox caught up and got ahead, and Chrome didn’t invest in keeping up, so Firefox is generally faster. The only exception is a few sites (especially Google ones) seem to be heavily optimised for Chrome, but not necessarily as much for Firefox. If you stay away from those sites, Firefox is generally faster.
Plus Chromium is increasingly becoming more hostile to efficient ad blocking add-on implementations - so if you want to block ads (generally recommended due to ad networks doubling as paid malware distribution networks), Firefox or other Gecko-based browsers are generally the best bet.
Wait can you elaborate on that a little bit? Back in the days, Chrome was a resource hog which made me switch to Firefox for a few years. Then I tried a bunch of different browsers and found that my Firefox couldn’t keep up with the performance of Chromium-based browsers, which made me switch to Edge. But now, Firefox has better performance again?
It ebbs and flows over time. All browsers will be attempting to improve performance, but at the same time adding features. More features often impact performance negatively.
Most normal pages are apparently faster in Firefox right now, but Google might make an optimisation effort in chromium that might make Firefox comparatively slower.
The main pages that are still slower in Firefox are Google sites. Google has repeatedly made things on their pages that unfairly favor Chrome. For example at one point they added an invisible frame that had no functionality over the video player on YouTube. They obviously made optimisations in chrome at the same time so they wouldn’t be affected, but Firefox’ hardware acceleration of videos broke, because the video now had additional items over top that it needed to custom handle. This gave chrome a massive performance edge on YouTube, until Firefox started ignoring completely invisible overlays of videos, just like Chrome did
Linux user here, at least on my platform there are chromium alternatives that are far faster, like Brave. uBlock (and now this) are the only reason im still in firefox
Firefox is awesome now. It was great, then it lost out a bit to chrome, but it’s back to being awesome. If anyone’s reading this and isn’t using Firefox, please switch!
And importantly, their import mechanisms are great. A typical user can switch with basically no effort. Next time they ask you for help, switch your parents too, and your siblings, and that neighbour who keeps referring to the internet as “the google”. Set them up with Firefox and ublock origin and they’ll be set.
Depends on what you mean by “when”. From my POV for the last few years, it has an amazing plugin ecosystem (almost complete interoperability with Chrome’s), a revamped/minimal UI, performance optimizations, a better DX for web devs than Chrome, and an active R&D (Firefox View, new plugins button, better personalization, etc). I’m missing a few things but those are the ones that stand out to me.
Well… there is a reason why so many folks sswitched to Chrome. Especially back when Chrome was new, Firefox just felt sluggish and slow. Chrome was a new breeze.
It took Firefox a long time to catch up. I’ve been trying semi regularly and just 3 years ago it was “okayish”. Tried it a few days ago again and switched all my devices over.
I don’t know what happened, but I installed it and it just felt snappy and fast. Apart from having some awesome features. Luckily if you don’t really keep bookmarks and such, switching isn’t that hard.
At least with Firefox Quantum (v57) they have tried to continuously bring in optimizations to bump the performance. In the meantime there has been lots of work with WebRender, a newer and more robust Javascript Engine and better CSS engine which made it get faster every update. Being quite fast and snappy isn’t just a placebo since Firefox has lately started to get better Speedometer scores than Chrome
If only Firefox would have a bigger userbase. I still use it, but the vast majority of people is on Chromium.
I switched this week.
I’m switching today. Right now. Because of this post.
^^maybe
EDIT: okay. I think I’ve done it. I’m currently editing this comment from Firefox. I already had Firefox installed. But now I have pinned it to my taskbar. I went to import my bookmarks from chrome, and found that I also had the option of importing other stuff from chrome, too (bookmarks, passwords, history and autofill data). That’s sweet. My bookmark bar has the same bookmarks in the same position. I also installed ublock origin, like someone recommended. And I am going to give it a go. If it all goes smoothly, I will unpin Chrome from the taskbar.
Thanks everyone for the encouragement!
It’ll cost you nothing at all.
And in fact will save you CPU cycles. For a bit, Chrome had a slight performance edge over Firefox. But once Google got the market share, Firefox caught up and got ahead, and Chrome didn’t invest in keeping up, so Firefox is generally faster. The only exception is a few sites (especially Google ones) seem to be heavily optimised for Chrome, but not necessarily as much for Firefox. If you stay away from those sites, Firefox is generally faster.
Plus Chromium is increasingly becoming more hostile to efficient ad blocking add-on implementations - so if you want to block ads (generally recommended due to ad networks doubling as paid malware distribution networks), Firefox or other Gecko-based browsers are generally the best bet.
Wait can you elaborate on that a little bit? Back in the days, Chrome was a resource hog which made me switch to Firefox for a few years. Then I tried a bunch of different browsers and found that my Firefox couldn’t keep up with the performance of Chromium-based browsers, which made me switch to Edge. But now, Firefox has better performance again?
It ebbs and flows over time. All browsers will be attempting to improve performance, but at the same time adding features. More features often impact performance negatively.
Most normal pages are apparently faster in Firefox right now, but Google might make an optimisation effort in chromium that might make Firefox comparatively slower.
The main pages that are still slower in Firefox are Google sites. Google has repeatedly made things on their pages that unfairly favor Chrome. For example at one point they added an invisible frame that had no functionality over the video player on YouTube. They obviously made optimisations in chrome at the same time so they wouldn’t be affected, but Firefox’ hardware acceleration of videos broke, because the video now had additional items over top that it needed to custom handle. This gave chrome a massive performance edge on YouTube, until Firefox started ignoring completely invisible overlays of videos, just like Chrome did
Linux user here, at least on my platform there are chromium alternatives that are far faster, like Brave. uBlock (and now this) are the only reason im still in firefox
No maybes. Do it.
Please switch
same!
Firefox is awesome now. It was great, then it lost out a bit to chrome, but it’s back to being awesome. If anyone’s reading this and isn’t using Firefox, please switch!
And importantly, their import mechanisms are great. A typical user can switch with basically no effort. Next time they ask you for help, switch your parents too, and your siblings, and that neighbour who keeps referring to the internet as “the google”. Set them up with Firefox and ublock origin and they’ll be set.
What changed?
Depends on what you mean by “when”. From my POV for the last few years, it has an amazing plugin ecosystem (almost complete interoperability with Chrome’s), a revamped/minimal UI, performance optimizations, a better DX for web devs than Chrome, and an active R&D (Firefox View, new plugins button, better personalization, etc). I’m missing a few things but those are the ones that stand out to me.
What changed?
The person you replied to was mistaken. Firefox isn’t “back to” being awesome because it never stopped being so.
Well… there is a reason why so many folks sswitched to Chrome. Especially back when Chrome was new, Firefox just felt sluggish and slow. Chrome was a new breeze.
It took Firefox a long time to catch up. I’ve been trying semi regularly and just 3 years ago it was “okayish”. Tried it a few days ago again and switched all my devices over.
I don’t know what happened, but I installed it and it just felt snappy and fast. Apart from having some awesome features. Luckily if you don’t really keep bookmarks and such, switching isn’t that hard.
At least with Firefox Quantum (v57) they have tried to continuously bring in optimizations to bump the performance. In the meantime there has been lots of work with WebRender, a newer and more robust Javascript Engine and better CSS engine which made it get faster every update. Being quite fast and snappy isn’t just a placebo since Firefox has lately started to get better Speedometer scores than Chrome
I use firefox as my sidearm browser on my work computer, but I literally just made it the default on my personal computer
I’d solely use Firefox if jetbrains had better JS debugging support for it.
So for now I use edge for that at work.
Also I really like the tab sleep and vertical tabs features on Edge.
But everything is Firefox on my personal machines