Switched to Firefox a few months back. Havn’t missed Chrome at all
I give firefox a shot from time to time. I switch all devices to it, and then I use it exclusively all the time.
My most recent attempt failed few days ago, after a bit more than a month with it.
Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often.
And just overall experience on some platforms - especially macOS doesn't feel native at all. On top of that some websites don't support it that good (not Firefox's fault here - but I don't want to deal with that day to day).
Firefox also seemed snappier on the first few runs, but as the time went on I didn't find it faster or feeling less bloated than chrome as a lot of people like to portray it.
Chrome for me, as an average user, does not have any of these downsides. The closest to a downside for some people you could pin to chrome is that it's owned by google.
At the end of the day, chrome gets the job done, and does it without being in my way, on all the platforms I use, - and that's what I want from a browser, so for now I'm sticking with chrome.
Plus the non-native feel you mentioned. No pinch-to-zoom, moving tabs between windows feels clunky, and scrolling feels different than almost every other app.
I try Firefox for Android from time to time, and I also have a lot of issues with polish that make me stop using it every time. Tab management is extremely clunky, the address bar is inconsistent with virtually every other Android text input (e.g. there's a big X that I expect to clear the address bar, but in Firefox this escapes me from input mode). Even getting the toolbars to reappear by scrolling is troublesome - infuriating.
It sucks, because I care about privacy and web diversity, and have been a Firefox user since back in the Phoenix days.
I don't get those problems, but even if I did, it would be well worth it as opposed to seeing ads all the time. If Google wanted me to uninstall Firefox forever and use Chrome they'd allow for plug-ins for Chrome (on Android). While they don't I'll simply never switch. I have no idea how people tolerate ads.
For those sites, and others that are intrusive, if you need them, you can use containers. I use containers for things like Twitter and Facebook.
I don't know if this is site dependent or just a general issue but it bugs me too much to use firefox right now.
about:performance
Hamburger->More->Task Manager
Edit: not to mention that you can configure the number of webrender processes Firefox uses to render web pages. If you have a fast enough processor, just set it to one or two and call it a day.
Chrome uses a more complicated algorithm based on the source domain and the tab "dependency" tree. You have pretty much zero control over this.
I don’t heavily use tabs like 50+ but people who do say Firefox uses less RAM.
Either way it’s fast enough now for me not to have any performance complaints.
They've been putting out blog posts over the last 2 years specifically talking about the performance fixes they've put in.
Firefox themselves have admitted it's not FUD. They acknowledged it was a real problem.
It is pretty fast now, but a few years ago (at most 4), it was bloody awful.
Good job you don't work in user experience design, then, because how things feel to people is a huge part of that. If software feels bad to use, people won't use it, simple as that.
No amount of haughtiness from your high horse will change that.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/
Also, like someone else mentioned, you can visit this in the address bar:
about:performanceYou can also start it from Menu -> More -> Task Manager. The only thing I'm missing is a handy keyboard shortcut (Shift + Esc works in Chrome/ium).
One Tab acted maliciously: If you open One Tab, it doesn't show any tabs, so as someone who never used it before, I clicked "bring all tabs to One Tab" think you had to click a button to activate it. Nope, it closed all the tabs instead with absolutely no warning or way to undo it.
That's an extremely bad design.
Not sure what you were expecting. And on the OneTab page that gets generated, there's a link that says "Restore All" right at the top.
Firefox works perfectly on my linux and macos machines but on windows it seems to crumble after most Windows updates which is a shame. I imagine this is mostly due to Windows rather than Firefox but it's meant I've had to start using Chrome for a lot of things at home on my game / leisure machine.
I think touch recognition is better on Chrome too, as sliders and other touch-sensitive UI elements feel a bit more laggy in FF.
On mobile, I'm happy using Brave, which is Chromium but allows you turn off scripts if you want to (goodbye autoplaying videos). On desktop, FF all the way. Except when I need to use Dev Tools.
Stored credit card / payment information.
Chromecast because of the ecosystem devices in my house that use it. There are extensions to do this but they're not great. (Disclaimer: I work @ Google on Chromecast platform stuff.)
Other than that, it's great.
You may have to turn it on manually, though.
(Yes, cue the comments saying "just delete it" or "I deleted mine" but for a lot of people it's not practical and FB knows this and continues to act like complete fucking cunts)
Clicking away happens even more so if the site I'm trying to view is "user hostile". Bad readability, banners, popups, those cookie preferences that really don't work, just clicking Yes to hide them works.
When you think about it, it's incredible that Firefox is as good as it is (same re Linux.)
But obviously if Google wants to stay better than Firefox, whether it takes a year or a decade, they'll always be able to because they have an absurd amount of resources.
So I wonder, what are Firefox's competitive advantages?
1. Privacy: They can do things like this, blocking trackers, things that benefit the user over the platforms. Because Google can pay lip service to this but at the end of the day their customers are advertisers.
2. What else?
Also, Google has advantages, in that they have synergetic (is that the right way to put it?) products. Like Android and Chrome OS that promote Chrome over the competition.
Can Mozilla compete by adopting a similar approach?
Linux kind of fulfills the role of the OS with Firefox by default, usually. It certainly should, at least.
Of course, Linux suffers from the same lack of resources compared to the competition.
Less constraints: Firefox does not need to block release of a new feature because an Android API it depends on got blocked by legal due to regulations in Namibia.
Organisational stability: Firefox has a good revenue stream and stable leadership, with pretty constant direction.
Main competency: Firefox is the thing for Mozilla. For Google, Chrome is an insurance policy against Apple.
I can't see how it could ever happen. No matter what they do they can't beat the developer and monetary resources of Google.
Acting in the interest of the user.
Chrome has a history of adding or removing features, to align more to Google's business strategy, than to what really matters to the users.
While Chrome is open source, there’s not a true community making decisions. It’s just google doing stuff and releasing code. That is really nice, but not as nice as a community and foundation developing and making decisions based on community desires rather than what fits into Google’s corporate plan.
Google does a lot of stuff that I like and I use many of their services and software. But Google’s direct interests are not my own. Google wants to sell ads. I don’t care about selling ads so everything with them is a trade off between what I want and what I’m willing to pay.
> page that's broken in FF
I don't know any, and have used FF for as long as it exists. Could you give an example (or better yet, tell Mozilla via FF's built-in feedback)?
> developer tools
FF's devtools are far superior to Chrome's IMO for core web tech such as CSS debugging (Chrome is better for JavaScript debugging and profiling, that I'll give you)
> shopping
Y'know, not everybody is ok with Google knowing everything about us, including card details and purchases
> Google properties
That Google pushes GMail and YouTube users to use Chrome and boycots other browsers is hardly an argument (except for an antitrust case).
That said I moved to Vivaldi since most of the useful addons I had became incompatible with FF post-Quantum (nor, last I checked, is there any longer a way to save webpages as MHTML which I use frequently and exclusively to save web page content). Though I sorely miss the ability to disable DirectWrite in Blink browsers, which allowed MacType to affect the font rendering for far better text legibility.
https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/czle25/holy_crap_...
I honestly don't think I've seen this in years, and I load thousands of pages weekly. My adblockers break sites sometimes, but not FF. What kind of weird-ass sites are you visiting?