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Comment by mrmondo | Hacker News Reader

From 2014: "Choose Firefox now, or you won't get a choice later" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163

After reading that article in 2014, I switched to Firefox. I used it from that point until just a few weeks ago when a program bypassed my defaults and launched Chrome. And I immediately remembered why I preferred Chrome and how much more responsive it feels, and how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow.

So now I'm back on Chrome. Felt good to be on FF for awhile, felt like I was preserving freedom or whatever. But now that I'm on Chrome, I won't switch back until Firefox actually becomes a better browser.

I've heard this same thing from many people, and the problem almost always turns out to be accumulated cruft in the Firefox profile. Switching to a "fresh" browser usually makes it feel much more responsive because you don't have the cruft. If that's the case for you, following the steps at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-a... may help.

It's not. FF is slower then Chrome. I formatted my Macbook recently so I know it was clean. FF is significantly slower than Chrome, especially on JS heavy sites like Amazon.

It's also worse on power. FF tends to drain my battery much faster than Chrome. That's with <20 tabs open, mostly light weight sites.

I'm still using FF as my main browser but will probably switch to Chrome again.

> how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow.

Swings and roundabouts. I find chrome uses much more memory, and the plugins I care about (tab group view, NoScript) don't have effective parallels in chrome last I looked. I also have a pet hate for any application which decides that it needs its own look-and-feel and you should discard your own window decorations.

Also, the mozilla entity is much more about preserving freedom, and I think that's worth the minor inconveniences you get from webdevs who think that chrome is the only browser in existence.

uMatrix is on Firefox and Chrome. I switched to it from NoScript last year and I have to say I like it better.

> and uses a quarter the memory somehow.

I thought Chrome was famous for being a resource hog. It consumes more RAM on my Windows PCs, though I confess I use more tabs than are viable in Chrome....

> I thought Chrome was famous for being a resource hog.

That's only in comparison to Safari and Edge. If you open enough tabs to cause memory issues on Chrome, Firefox would have frozen and slowed down to a crawl before filling the memory, anyhow, and electrolysis still isn't in a state where it could change that: there's still one process for the renderer so if enough intensive webpages are run your web browsing experience will still slow down.

That's not what I find. How are you measuring memory use?

Chrome is a resource hog for me, on macOS and Windows. But Firefox is only slightly better in my experience. I last tried it about 3 months ago.

You can clear out memory use in Firefox by restarting it. It doesn't create a firestorm of reloads that cripple your PC because it only reloads tabs when you click on them.

I use FF for almost everything but when it comes to Google stuff (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.) I use Chromium. Firefox crashes on me too much with those apps and though I generally don't lose work it's a pain to have to relaunch and get back to where I was.

Mozilla's marketing annoys me. They aren't freedom fighters, and they aren't actually protecting the web. They aren't big or powerful enough to protect the web, so their desire to protect it makes no difference.

That kind of marketing is an admission that their browser is not as good as its competitors. If Firefox was the best, Mozilla would drop the freedom-fighter baloney and simply say "Choose Firefox because it has the best features and user experience."

Firefox was launched at a time when web browsing was dominated by IE. [0] It is open-source in a world where browsers are either completely (IE/Edge) or somewhat (Chrome) closed source.

People say that IE didn't adapt fast enough, and that's why it died. But imagine how behind we'd be today if Firefox had never come along!

In a world where almost every piece of software you run (from your OS to your favorite toolbar) and every site you visit, tries to gather as much information about you. Mozilla's open-source stance and mission to improve privacy is protecting the web, by protecting us.

Perhaps privacy is not your favorite feature, perhaps it does not enhance your user experience, but for many others it does. It serves an important niche, and I hope that it succeeds and continues to disrupt what could otherwise be a browser monopoly.

[0] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/

Firefox was released in 2004. It did a great deal to break up IE's market share at that time. I remember it very well, and I liked it a lot back then.

But it is now 2017, and when I decide which browser I should use, I choose one that is good today, and I don't care about the blows its parent company struck for or against freedom 13 years ago.

I also disagree with the assertion that Firefox is better for security or privacy than Chrome is. They are comparable in their security and privacy features.

Security and privacy isn't only prevalent on browser frontend features. There are battles happening within every standardized Web specification. Without more than one major player, one company would be allowed to dictate the level of security and private within every API. There are also initiatives that push the Web forward in security like with Let's Encrypt or Do Not Track. Mozilla also advances into new areas of technology to try to ensure they remain open.

It's totally fine to prefer one browser or the other. It's great to have an actual choice. But the ideals and values aren't just for show.

Ideas and values don't matter if you don't have enough power to make a difference in the world.

What has Mozilla actually done in the past few years to push the web forward in security or ensure that a web specification protects user freedom?

Things that Microsoft or Google or Apple were also trying to do don't count -- what good things did Mozilla succeed in doing that the other browser companies opposed?

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