Features wise I prefer Firefox (containers are amazing, extra privacy features/blockers by default nice, the new picture in picture for video is nice, dev tools have a lot of cool extra features etc), but Firefox often struggles and stutters for me, whereas I rarely have issues with Chrome.
The devtools are a good example, sometimes just having them open on a page I am developing slows everything down. Closing/re-opening the tab seems to fix it for a bit but then it just starts to happen again, Chrome's devtools are always snappy. Similary if I want to inspect an element on a page Chrome never has a problem doing it instantly, Firefox has to think about it for a while.
In general everything that uses the GPU I find far faster in Chrome. The other day for instance I was working on a d3 SVG visualization that strained Firefox but was no problem for Chrome, canvas performance is similar but not as bad in my experience. The most common offender is trying to watch a video: in Firefox everything slows down and the fans spin up, in Chrome no effect.
It is also true that all Google services that I am unfortunately tied to (GMail, Maps, Calendar etc) are snappy in Chrome and like molasses in Firefox...
I think it comes down to what one is used to. We probably learn to sidestep problems with any browser we use, but using a different browser inevitably leads to frustration.
Of course, this is not true if you are using Google services. Google seems to put an extra effort in making sure that their pages are as slow as possible in Firefox... I don't care much myself as I don't use them, but it's a good reminder of how (non)non-evil they have become.
Will probably try to make the switch again at some point.
People mention that more people should use Firefox because google controls the Blink engine and Gecko is the only real competitor, and if Blink has too high of market share, than google can add exclusive functionality to blink for developers to use, edging all other browsers out of the market.
Congrats, we live in that future.
I use Canvas every day in Firefox and have never had a single problem or error. Anecdata, I know, but that's my experience.
Chrome tabs load and appear instantly. As you add more tabs they shrink down to a tiny but still usable favicon size. As you close tabs they resize well and with nice little UX behavior like the next close button always appearing directly under your mouse. They close and re-open instantly.
When you press enter in the address bar Chrome always loads your Search, unlike Safari, which often requires second press, or weirdly loses focus. Even doing simple web search feels so slow and broken in Safari tabs. When you have a moderate number of tabs Safari switches to this horizontal scrolling mode where half of your tabs are no longer visible. Basically unusable.
Chrome tabs are so good compared to the standard macOS tabs found in places like Safari and Finder. I wish I could have them everywhere.
I have nearly 1000 tabs open in Firefox and navigate them extremely efficiently. Does chrome do that?
I was lured in initially by the novelty. But it has become an amazing tool for organizing myself. When I browse HN, I shift-click on everything interesting, and it automatically gets organized into a nice collapsible tree.
When I am working on a project, I move search results, project pages, and relevant info to a single tree.
I leave other things open indefinitely, which effectively replaces bookmarks.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
(To anyone who plans to try it, you may need to edit userChrome.css to turn off the top tabs; there's guides on this. I also recommend tweaking TST's settings, imposing a limit on nesting, and preventing auto switching tabs )
Firefox just feels like a solid browser and how it should be.
Whenever I need to switch to chrome to browser test, I notice it just feels like a less well made browser.
Hard to articulate.
Edit: not to mention that the logo itself is uber cool!
The only thing that's annoyed me with FF was the recent update where the url bar got bigger when clicked.
Firefox's JavaScript engine is still slower and large JavaScript apps become sluggish more quickly.
Also, I still haven't found a way to let users download files from JavaScript (e.g. through a button click that invokes a function) in Firefox, that wouldn't open another window and in the process close their websocket connection.
This was true (I no longer use Chrome and don’t know if it’s improved in the last two years). Chrome needed enormous amounts of memory compared to Firefox. Using RAM is not an issue as such, but it makes other applications running at the same time miserable (and the user too).
I play games and use complex web apps (GCloud, Office 365) exclusively in Chromium
No, you are not. You are a Google marketing tool.
And this is not ad-hominem from my side, since you made a claim about yourself the main part of your argument.
Google is known for intentionally crippling Firefox performance on their services. That doesn't make Firefox itself slower.
Unfortunately the Firefox codebase itself is the only marketing tool at work here. I still use Firefox for everything else, not least due to the fact it isn't trying to swindle every last private detail out of me, but for work stuff and gaming (O365/GCloud) I don't really care about any of that.
Hiding behind lies and random personal attacks will not make Firefox better, but comparisons to its main competitor in key areas might help
Also (unless I missed something) there's still no way to get hardware video acceleration on Firefox on Linux outside of Wayland. When I'm on Linux I'm also installing Chromium (with the VA-API patches applied) entirely for YouTube as my CPU usage ramps up immensely when watching videos. Watching videos in mpv (or equivalent software) is an alternative, but I like the convenience of watching videos directly through the browser.
Other than that though Firefox has been rock solid for me and has been my daily browser for years now.
i'll tell you though, the #1 subjective thing i hate is that single-click in the Chrome (Chromium) omnibar doesn't honor OS selection convention. unless you're on windows, where single click selects-all. having this behavior forced on Mac is jarring and awful and no amount of pleading would convince the dictatorial "my way is the right way" attitude of the gatekeepers. they refuse to even have a hidden flag to control this behavior. it's actively hostile.
the incongruity can be seen by clicking in any form field. eg chrome://flags search field. Note that single-click merely places the cursor on mac in a form field. then go to the omnibar. single-click selects-all. ARGH!
I had hoped Edge would fix this, but alas, no. (Also Opera keeps this behavior.)
Fast forward to newer behavior of hiding the protocol from the omnibar, until you click on it. Now when you click (or click-drag, the "proper" way to select less than the entire URL in one stroke, thank you oh overlords), as soon as you release the text changes and your mouse is no longer at the selection point. ARGH!! so awful.
I can't tell you how much I hate this poor implementation choice. However it's not enough to push me to FireFox, which is subjectively very much worse than Chrome.
When in FireFox I am still experiencing weird bugs but am willing to give her some slack and hope they get fixed. Come on Firefox, FireFix and Rock!
I assume there are more factors that go into this than just the browser itself. For example, I find Ubuntu to be one of the more sluggish distros out there in general, while Fedora and Arch feel way snappier, but am sure this isn't the case for everyone.
Main reason why I use firefox is container tabs.
And IE being better than (any browser)? Let's not get carried away. They still have multiple zero day vulnerabilities discovered every year.