
Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is the Browser Built for 2017 - bpierre
https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-quantum-the-browser-built-for-2017/
======
mdip
On my end, I never actually stopped _using_ Firefox after Chrome came out. I
had Chrome installed and used it mostly for testing and validation of web
code, but my day-to-day was Firefox. I had my extensions configured and setup
in it and my large collection of bookmarks was there (I guess I was just too
lazy to import them into Chrome). I think the main reason I _stuck_ with
Firefox was because I used Android and the Firefox browser on Android
supported my extensions -- the most important being uBlock Origin, so the
browsing experience was better even though the overall performance wasn't
great -- and since my bookmarks were synced, it just worked out better for me
that way.

I ran Developer edition, so I received the updated that killed most of my
extensions earlier than most and I realized that the _main_ reason I used
Firefox _was_ because of my collection of extensions -- many of which now
didn't work. So I abandoned Firefox on all but mobile earlier this year and
switched to Vivaldi (chromium based)[0].

Now that my most important extensions are available (though still haven't
found uBlock Protector), I've started using Quantum again. I'm _really_
enjoying the fact that HTML5/Flask autoplay can be disabled in "about:config"
(and that it works, unlike the myriad of extensions I installed for Vivaldi
claiming to do the same but which mostly broke things like gifv playback and
random non-YouTube video sites that would still autoplay or would simply
refuse to play). Firefox Quantum _is_ faster and I'm back to being a (mostly)
happy Firefox user, again. Last night I removed the icons for Opera and
Vivaldi from my task bar to keep me from accidentally starting them due to
muscle memory (and therefore adding bookmarks in a place where I will lose
them).

[0] No, I don't have a thing against Google, I just preferred the high-degree
of customization that Firefox/Vivaldi gave me over Chrome. I don't like
Chrome's opinionated configuration panel -- I'm a developer and I like knobs
to turn. Though Vivaldi lacked the conveniences of syncing things between my
various machine so I ended up on Opera rather regularly.

~~~
aquova
As an avid Vivaldi user, I was impressed with what Firefox Quantum had to
offer. I hadn't used Firefox since Chrome became dominant, it was interesting
to see what Firefox had to offer compared to the Chromium-based ecosystem.

Personally, I would consider Firefox Quantum to be a step up over Chrome, but
it's still missing much of the customization that I grew to love under
Vivaldi. Simply being unable to change keybindings or the speed dial selection
were enough to draw me back to Vivaldi, but I'll be keeping a keen eye on
Firefox development from now on.

I do agree however, the lack of syncing is a major drawback to Vivaldi, and
one I hope they will add in the near future.

~~~
krotton
You can customize what pages are displayed in the quick dial screen (and pin
them, so that they stay there), but you cannot change the images and reorder
sites by dragging (you need to re-enter the URL in some further tile).

------
mastax
I'm surprised at the success of Mozilla's PR push for this. It seems the time
is right for this. Probably helps that tech sites seem to compete to have an
article on every "current" topic.

~~~
Certhas
Mozilla is running Firefox adverts in my city. I don't remember seeing browser
adverts since the initial chrome push.

~~~
eitland
Does Chrome spam on the google home page count?

I've heard that is one of the most valuable ad spots in the world and I've
seen a lot of Chrome ads there.

~~~
dingo_bat
> I've heard that is one of the most valuable ad spots in the world

Yeah since they literally won't sell that spot, I'd say it's worth billions of
dollars.

------
menacingly
I bet it was 2009 since I last used firefox, other than testing for reported
bugs in it. I've been using it exclusively since the Quantum launch, and I
really enjoy it.

I liked the idea of having real browser diversity before, but it wasn't
practical for me. Now it's practical and awesome.

~~~
remir
Same for me. I tried to switch back to Firefox a couple of times in the past
and couldn't do it. Performance wasn't there and the UI would often hang
without response.

But Quantum changed everything. I've been using Nightly since this summer and
it's wonderful. I now use it as my default browser.

------
mgiannopoulos
The speed increase in Firefox has been something I haven't seen in a browser
update for years.

~~~
fdej
It reminds me of Phoenix (to become Firefox), and how much of an improvement
it was over the Mozilla browser. It makes me wonder where things went wrong,
as I recall the Firefox of ~2005 being snappier than the one of ~2015. The
only discrete drop in performance that I can remember was the addition of the
AwesomeBar (which was worth it, but it really annoyed me at the time that just
typing in an address became sluggish). Of course, my memory about these things
could be completely wrong, and in any case web 2.0 gradually took over and
websites accreted JavaScript faster than the hardware could improve, so
comparing today with 10-15 years ago isn't really fair... Well, congrats to
the Firefox developers, because it really is a pleasure to use again.

~~~
DiThi
> It makes me wonder where things went wrong, as I recall the Firefox of ~2005
> being snappier than the one of ~2015.

If you visit any page made in 2005 with any recent browser it will be
unbelievably fast. Pages became more bloated in the last decade because they
could.

~~~
cat199
this + stuck js + single threading..

chrome's day-one multiprocess support was really the big shift since it
allowed js bloat to not kill your session, which in turn allowed more js bloat
to exist, which in turn made ff slower..

~~~
staticassertion
Yeah, when you think about Chrome's being selling points - a browser that
won't crash just because one tab does, sandboxing, and responsiveness - it's
literally all just from their multiproc architecture. It bought them _so_ much
to have that from the state.

But, like Firefox, they now have a big codebase to maintain and it's not so
easy to get massive perf improvements because changing up architecture is
painful.

------
zerocrates
> I can't use the Conde Nast CMS in anything other than Chrome, so I can't
> switch completely.

Highlight of the article tucked in at the end there.

~~~
spystath
You'd think that a technology-oriented magazine like wired would at least try
to aim for cross-browser compatibility in their infrastructure. But why
bother, make your CMS Chrome-only a policy and free yourself of extra testing.

And it's not only wired. I've come across a lot of internal sites and
intranets that are poorly tested on anything but Chrome. I know, it's not
exactly the same thing as the old IE/ActiveX but it still grinds my gears when
it happens.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
If Firefox had a larger market share, it would be easy to make the argument
for cross-browser compatibility. But when Firefox is not even 12% of Chrome's
usage globally [http://gs.statcounter.com/](http://gs.statcounter.com/) and
likely much less for your customers it's difficult to appeal to ideals

~~~
eitland
Oh come on.

We've been pushing this since IE6 ruled. :-)

Cross browser compability should be easier than ever so it should just be a
matter of being a professional developer.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
There are a different and arguably smaller set of warts in 2017 compared to
1999 but that doesn't mean that it's easy to reproduce the exact layout, pixel
for pixel, across Firefox, Edge, Opera, UC Browser, Safari, Chrome and other
browsers in use.

~~~
the8472
There is a difference between "it works" and pixel-identical results. Those
are probably impossible due to font rendering differences anyway.

------
casta
Offtopic: 'ciao' doesn't mean only 'goodbye' as the author seems to imply
given the title. It means both 'hello' or 'goodbye'. It is similar to the
Hawaiian 'aloha' when used as a greeting.

~~~
ecesena
I'm Italian and agree with you. This said, I'm reasonably sure that in
countries like Brazil ciao is only used as good bye, so maybe this explains
the confusion. FWIW, I've also saw it written as "chao", which made me rofl.

~~~
schoen
Brazilians spell it "tchau" (due to ch representing /ʃ/ rather than /tʃ/ in
Portuguese -- like German sch for /ʃ/ and tsch for /tʃ/).

~~~
pjmlp
Like any other Portuguese speaking country, it is not Brazilian specific. :)

------
jtl999
I find something is off with Firefox Quantum, possibly the font rendering and
it hurts my eyes.

Running Chrome 62 on OSX 10.11.6 and it is fine.

I had similar problems with Chrome on Windows after they implemented
DirectWrite with anti aliasing.

~~~
discreteevent
I switched from chrome to Firefox because of the font rendering on Windows. It
seemed to do a better job particularly on those effete sites with thin fonts
and weak contrast. Haven't noticed any disimprovement in quantum but I'll
watch out for it.

~~~
tomi0000
I had the same problem, try the Font Rendering Enhancer extension for Chrome.

------
cageface
The welcome resurgence of Firefox makes Apple’s ban on third party browser
engines on iOS even less justifiable. This is about control, not security.

~~~
ac2u
It does give them enviable control, but the security is a valid point. A
browser engine has a wide surface area for attack vectors as it features
multiple parsers and a JS engine.

~~~
Sylos
Right, but does a monoculture actually help that in any way? It's not like
Apple is always at the forefront of innovation with WebKit.

------
subbz
Firefox is a great browser, but what bothers me:

\- Design: On Windows it integrates better but on MacOS the header is just
somehow ugly. Chrome just feels more stable in this point. Also the scrolling
to top when Chrome goes over the 0px line and bounces back - that's just a
nicer behaviour.

\- Clearing history and cookies: I yet didn't manage to find a fast solution
to do this in Firefox.

Please, dear Firefox team, if you read this, improve it and you got me back!

~~~
jamienicol
There is a “forget” toolbar item (which you probably need to add from the
customise menu) which makes it very easy to clear history and cookies

~~~
subbz
Thanks!

------
chrstphrhrt
Anyone have thoughts on the opt-out telemetry default?

I had to read the privacy notice they open on start to find out that telemetry
was enabled by default.

~~~
sillysaurus3
My gut reaction was to be suspicious of Mozilla, but then I remembered that
they're Mozilla. They're probably just trying to figure out which features are
confusing for users.

It's strange because we do this type of tracking in all facets of webapps, but
desktop apps trigger our suspicion meter.

~~~
Manishearth
Mozilla's pretty careful about what goes into the default telemetry, too. Most
of it is info that isn't very identifying (stuff like "how many cores do you
have" or "how many times did this specific kind of jank occur for you")

FWIW in Firefox nightly (maybe also beta?) if you flip the
privacy.firstparty.isolate then the fact that websites can talk to each other
is severely reduced; basically third party iframes get their own set of
cookies for each domain they're embedded in, so tracking iframes know about
each other less. Flipping this pref will log you out of everything though
(only the one time), and some sites don't work with it (nothing major so far,
and you can file a bug. In many cases it's the site relying on iframes in a
weird way).

~~~
blub
Any comments on the cliqz experiment? Sending visited URLs doesn't sound very
careful.

~~~
Sylos
Sending data by itself isn't commonly seen as an attack vector with things
like TLS in place and working, as far as we know. At least, Google has been
sending browsing history with no additional encryption as part of Chrome Sync
since its inception and there we don't know of data leaks during send so far
either.

And at the server where it's sent to, it gets disconnected from the IP address
and intermixed with other people's browsing history. So, it's not stored in
personally identifiable form and therefore not vulnerable there either.

Mozilla has also made an official statement that neither they nor Cliqz store
personally identifiable information as part of this, so doing it anyways would
be misleading of consumers, i.e. breaking the law.

Not to mention that it would violate German privacy laws (which is where it's
currently being tested), if they collected personally identifiable information
without clearly notifying the user and at least some checkbox that the user
has to tick.

It's easy to spin this, so that it sounds like Mozilla is doing pure evil
here, but it's just not the case.

------
turblety
It's really so great to see Firefox actually competing with Chrome on
performance. I had to stop using Firefox a few years ago, when visiting most
websites would spin up my fans, use all my battery and still be slow.

I've been using Firefox now for about a month, and it's become my main
browser. I'm really loving Firefox again, and hope they keep this up.

Maybe time for a donations?
[https://donate.mozilla.org/](https://donate.mozilla.org/)

------
jalopy
I tried Quantum and it crushed the battery of my MacBook Air. Activity Monitor
showed much more energy usage than chrome. Anyone experience the same?

~~~
frik
There seem to be a bug with MP4 video processing it eats CPU and battery like
crazy (for me both on macOS and Win7), but otherwise, the new FF is great.

~~~
rene_bg
You can use [1] to force YouTube videos being streamed as H.264 instead of
VP8/9\. This helps with the battery issue (at least on YouTube).

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/h264ify/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/h264ify/)

~~~
vim_wannabe
I think browser makers (or whoever it needs to be) should offer an option to
save battery over a little bit of extra bandwidth. Maybe even make it the
default.

~~~
the8472
youtube's logic selects the codec, not the browser

~~~
ComputerGuru
No, it’s a negotiation wherein the client submits its list of supported
protocols and the server chooses between them.

~~~
icebraining
And since FF supports both, it's YouTube which is choosing the codec, as
the8472 wrote.

~~~
pests
And what vim_coder and ConputerGuru meant was that Firefox would present a
spoofed list of supported codecs to YouTube to force selection of the higher
bandwidth, lower-powered codec.

Just because Firefox technically supports a format doesn't mean it has to
disclose that format to external servers for selection.

~~~
icebraining
Having custom behaviors for specific sites is a terrible practice. Browsers
are complex enough as they are without an extra layer of hacks.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Who said anything about custom behavior for custom sites? A simple “on
battery? X264/265 only” is what’s being discussed here.

~~~
the8472
That does not work because the browser that does not know how much it can
reduce the presented feature-set without actually breaking the site. Some
content is vpx-only.

------
BuckRogers
I never left Firefox, and started when it was Phoenix (beta). I've always been
a Firefox and/or native browser guy. On my desktop (Windows10) it's FF with
Edge backup. On my laptop (macOS), it's FF and Safari backup. I see each
browser as having certain natural incentives and they run this way:

Native browsers (Safari/Edge)- tend to try their best to grant a good user
experience all around for the device you bought, so they should never be
discarded. Pretty safe for people to just stick to these as a result.

Firefox- user focused on customization, privacy, features (Send to Device, RSS
toolbar feeds, etc).

Chrome- focused on Google's best interests. No real privacy guarantee since
that's in their profit incentive. Mostly a marketing backed browser, shiny
Google adverts on Google services insisting Chrome is what you want.

I tend to recommend native browsers or Firefox, if the user has the
inclination towards being a power user. I really can't see a purpose to
Chrome, and it's hard to separate truth from fiction because there's a massive
boatload of corporate Google fanboys out there that promote everything they
create.

I'm more of the anti-profit incentive type, and prefer people simply do what
they want to. It's worth considering if no one would build Google Chrome
without a for-profit incentive (and it's highly unlikely it would exist
without Google existing), then how could it possibly improve things for the
better? It doesn't, it serves Google's best interests. Everything that does,
are temporarily mutually aligned interests.

Most people don't see this for what it is, and think Google is their friend.

------
drinchev
Kudos to Mozilla for the new Firefox. I really like it!

Though I'm quite sure I won't switch from Safari, since I don't want to
exercise my fans anymore. Tried Firefox Quantum and it really feels fast, but
it's still on top of my "significant energy" battery list. When I think about
it it would be really hard to beat a native GUI browser with something made
for cross-platform, so I feel a bit desperate.

~~~
mattnewton
I think it is more that many of the safari folks work at a hardware company
where people will file bugs and show up at their offices if need be when
battery life is affected for said hardware.

------
OverThere
"built for 2017" but doesn't support pinch to zoom on a mac

~~~
mcintyre1994
I really miss the back/forward arrows on the swipe gestures too - the gesture
works but it feels wrong not to have that visual feedback.

------
lossolo
Am I the only one on HN that dosen't see any significant difference in
performance vs Chrome 62 ? and developer tools in Chrome are still superior. I
am using both browsers on my ultrabook with mobile low power processor and on
my desktop with flagship intel i7 and I don't see any reason to switch to
firefox completely.

It seems that Mozilla just uncovered how to make PR/marketing successfully
after years of failures in this department. Good because competition is good
for end-users.

It's shame that Mozilla is doing things like this though:

"I stopped using firefox since they are delivering cliqz with every 100th
download which will analyze and store your browsing history" [1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771719)

~~~
konart
>significant difference in performance vs Chrome 62

Firefox without WebRender is still slower than Chrome. The difference is
noticable if you compare it with the old versions.

------
leandot
I really want to switch back to FF, especially because of the containers
extension, but on macOS (i7 + 16gb ram) the fan spins like crazy and the
overall feeling is that it is definitely slower than Chrome. Does anyone else
have this experience?

~~~
virgilp
Happened to me once, but definitely not a constant occurrence

------
agumonkey
Used Nightly for a few weeks before and after Quantum.

Definitely a huge improvement. The web response showed it. But I went back to
chrome for the last few days. For 2 windows / 20 tabs it's definitely faster
in just enough places to make a difference.

~~~
criddell
I really like Quantum's UI, but for some things (esp Google Inbox) it's
significantly slower than Chrome.

~~~
agumonkey
I wasn't even asking for fancy + perf. Even average website would take a
second to show their tab.

I don't have a recent machine, but chrome (even stable) has no issue at all
flying with my x200.

I wonder how firefox perf will evolve with more and more rewrites (rust
modules etc)

------
knodi
I wish there was a way to import passwords in to Firefox Quantum.

~~~
menacingly
I did! for me it was hidden in the bookmarks menu. When I imported bookmarks
from Chrome, it grabbed passwords and history as well. This would have been a
blocker for me as I don't really know any password.

~~~
knodi
It looks like import password is only available on Windows.

------
tmnvix
Unfortunately, at this point I am just too comfortable with Chrome's
inspector. It might seem like a small thing, but I have a dozen other 'small
things' to familiarise myself with every day, so reacquainting myself with
Firebug is likely to never become a priority. At this stage it'll take
something stupid on Chrome's behalf to encourage me to make a move.

Having said that, I might start using FF as my non-work browser again.

~~~
eganist
Took me a bit to switch from Firebug to Chrome's inspector when Chrome became
better a number of years ago.

Took me not as much to switch back.

You can do it. It just takes some getting used to and perhaps a few
compromises until the next updates are released, but it'll encourage Google to
actually play nice with the web again.

------
XorNot
Think it's time I tried switching back to Firefox it sounds like. Adblock on
my mobile browser is probably what's going to do it for me.

------
131hn
I'm all into the "switch firefox on again" and removed my chrome from my
quicklaunch. It's fast as a browser should be, and I trust mozilla a lot more
than google.

Yet, webkit/blink powers today a lot more than google chrome. I think headless
mode & nodejs(v8) integration (e.g. nwjs/electron) is still a major missing
feature to call it "a browser build for 2017"

~~~
detaro
Firefox has headless mode.

I'm not sure why "use the JS engine from Chrome" is a good requirement for a
non-Chrome browser, or what do you mean by "nodejs(v8) integration"?

~~~
johnny22
probably a backend or binding or whatever they call it for node in the same
way ChakraCore from Microsoft can be.

[https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore](https://github.com/nodejs/node-
chakracore)

------
zaro
So many articles praising the new Firefox. Feels good but I am wondering now,
or let's say 2018 when ff will for sure be faster than chrome, will Google
change the annoyng notification they show you when you open Google that says
browse Internet faster try Chrome? Will they change that to Firefox?

------
fastball
Except for video playback.

Makes my mac catch fire and still stutters.

edit: downvotes? you guys using some build I'm not? Because I'm on nightly.

~~~
bsaul
just realized this today as well. The video player is a complete disaster,
even with forced h264 extension.

EDIT : this is really really weird. I'm pretty sure youtube played perfectly
fine yesterday on firefox (mac os x here too). Call me paranoid, but could it
be possible that they altered something to have the video stutter on firefox
in the meantime ??

------
brogrammernot
Can someone help me understand why this browser will improve my day to day
life as a developer?

I like Chrome Dev Tools, they fulfill the vast majority of my needs and
Postman covers the rest. I just don’t exactly understand the gains for a
developer to switch when the contextual switch is high.

------
jedberg
And yet 95% of the time I try to watch YouTube in Firefox, it just hangs,
never actually playing. Yet Chrome works flawlessly every time.

I'm not saying Google is doing anything malicious here, I think it's more of a
"we put a lot more effort into making YouTube work" kinda thing.

~~~
arianon
YouTube is now written in Polymer, a library made by Google that uses the Web
Components specifications, which currently only Chrome supports natively[1],
so they have to rely on polyfills on the rest of the browsers, so it's
understandable that YouTube can perform bad on browsers other than Chrome.

[1]:
[https://caniuse.com/#search=web%20components](https://caniuse.com/#search=web%20components)

~~~
kuschku
> which currently only Chrome supports natively

Firefox Nightly supports it, too, but Google still uses the polyfill there,
and not even their normal polyfill, but a significantly slower one.

------
natural219
I'm still extremely sad that Firefox OS was sidelined and Mozilla appears to
be permanently stuck on "faster browser tech" instead of innovating on open
standards where it actually matters (like mobile phones, social data
standardization, etc).

~~~
r3bl
To counter this, Firefox is the only desktop browser that supports VR out of
the box.

In fact, Mozilla has an entire team dedicated to emerging technologies[0] and
you can see what that team is focusing on on their website.

[0] [https://research.mozilla.org/](https://research.mozilla.org/)

Disclaimer: Associated with Mozilla (Foundation), not Firefox (Mozilla
Corporation).

------
foobarbazetc
On my machine (nMP with dual FirePro D700’s) there’s a noticeable “stall” when
Quantum navigates to a page.

This isn’t there on Blink or WebKit.

I’m not sure how to go about trying to get it looked at.

~~~
sjwright
I had the same problem; I tracked it down to a problem with my particular
macOS user account most likely caused by me changing the home directory name
post-facto. ([https://support.apple.com/en-
au/HT201548](https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201548)) I made the change
because I didn't want my full name as the account name. The problem didn't
present itself prior to (IIRC) updating to macOS Sierra.

To determine whether this is the cause for your particular problem, create a
fresh new macOS user account, log into it and see if you can replicate the
slow-down there. If there's no slowdown, it's probably this bug.

To work around the problem, I created a temporary admin account and logged
into it. I then renamed my current account, created a new one with the correct
details, then transferred most of my stuff from the old account to the new
one, including the full contents of Library. Last step, chown the new profile
directory:

    
    
      sudo chown -R youruser /Users/youruser

~~~
foobarbazetc
I’ve always had the same 4 letter username and homedir so I’m not sure this is
it.

It’s a really annoying issue because the “stall” is like 0.75-1 second every
time I navigate anywhere.

~~~
sjwright
I was only able to hypothesise the cause, as that happened to correlate well
in my minuscule sample size; your data point appears to have invalidated that.
I regret not being able to isolate the cause properly.

I would still run the user account experiment — your described symptom matches
_exactly_ what I experienced. It should only take a few minutes to make an
account, log into it and run Firefox.

What I do know:

* The problem started after a major macOS version upgrade, almost certainly Sierra.

* The problem occurred on my desktop and my laptop, but not my wife's computers that saw largely similar install history but more plain-vanilla usage patterns.

* The contents of the Firefox profile directory do not matter; the problem occurs with a completely fresh profile.

* The contents of the ~/Library directory do not seem to matter; creating a new user account and moving the entire contents of ~/Library back fixed it.

* The problem could not be replicated within any other user accounts on the same machine where the problem occurred.

* I was unable to create a faulty user account.

------
injvstice
Apparently they still didn't fix the issue with edit boxes and dark themes on
linux.

There are two things that keep me on Chromium - that, and the ability to
appify a website.

~~~
_keats
The dark text boxes can be fixed by doing a bit of configuration editing[0],
not ideal I'll admit but it goes a long way to making it usable on linux.

[0]
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/firefox#Unreadable_inpu...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/firefox#Unreadable_input_fields_with_dark_GTK.2B_themes)

~~~
injvstice
Or they could just fix the bug, and show they give a damn.

------
vhiremath4
With all this push for Quantum, I wonder what the extension landscape is like.
I’ve heard people complain about FF dropping support for old extension APIs
(absolutely no idea if this is true - just murmurs). As a Dev, would now
technically be a good time to consider building an extension for Firefox?

~~~
kenning
I switched to quantum and the only complaint is that I can't use Video Speed
Controller on it. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-
contro...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-
controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk)

That application is so useful, everyone I know who has tried it gets used to
it and can't live without it.

~~~
clouddrover
Video Speed Controller is MIT licensed:
[https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed](https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed)

So you could have a go at porting it to Firefox:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Po...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension)

~~~
clouddrover
I correct myself. There's no need to port it because it has already been
ported:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/videospeed/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/videospeed/)

~~~
kenning
Doesn't work with quantum

~~~
clouddrover
Works for me. Tested on YouTube and Vimeo.

~~~
kenning
whoa you're right, yahoo

------
Walkman
I don't know what's up with the memory usage claims, but on OS X it eats 2x as
much as Chrome :o

~~~
Sylos
Maybe see what memory usage is like in a new Firefox profile. That'll be
essentially like a factory-reset Firefox, but you can always switch back to
your old profile, if it does not change anything.

Type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar and from there it should be mostly
self-explanatory.

~~~
Walkman
I wiped out Firefox and observed this memory hungriness with a completely
clean install with no add-ons whatsoever versus a Fully configured Chrome.

------
neogodless
Anyone use LastPass? It seems like a deal breaker when it comes to Firefox. On
my phone, where I really don't want to be typing 16 digit passwords, I can't
get it to play nicely with Firefox mobile. If I can get it working, I can
really try switching back.

~~~
Belphemur
Personally I replaced it by bitwarden.

Free and open source alternative to last pass.

Work flawlessly as a Firefox Android/desktop extension or as it's own app in
Android.

~~~
neogodless
Working flawlessly would be a nice upgrade from LastPass. Thanks for the
suggestion!

------
pjmlp
I always used all four major browsers, as I do need to do web development
occasionally.

However Firefox has always been the default browser since the days it was
Netscape Navigator.

Mozilla is the only organization whose agenda is done in the name of the
consumers.

------
bsaul
wish i could zoom the page with pinch on the trackpad like i did with chrome..

------
thejosh
I really want to love the new Firefox, it's really great... Except I can't
debug promises in JavaScript, and JavaScript debugging seems very subpar
compared to chrome.

------
intopieces
Does it still kill the battery on the Mac or has that been fixed?

------
kyriakos
One thing holding me back : No websocket monitor in dev tools. And the
extension that was offering this in the previous version no longer works.

------
nearmuse
> Conde Nast CMS

> they are partnering with political activists to block sites that they deem
> to be "fake news."

> I'm a pretty heavy user of Chrome profiles .. definitely doesn't feel as
> well thought out in Firefox.

... and any extension incompatibility complaints

These are kind of secondary, or have little to do with the new browser itself.
They are not really an argument against an everyday tool that is faster, more
customizable and more practical out of the box.

------
schemathings
I'm a pretty heavy user of Chrome profiles .. definitely doesn't feel as well
thought out in Firefox.

~~~
lol768
As someone who's not really used Chrome aside from browser testing (which used
to involve a lot of cursing because flexbox min sizing was broken), can you
explain what Chrome profiles offer over e.g. container tabs? Are you using
them as separate cookie jars, to install different extensions or something
else?

~~~
scotu
they allow different sets of extensions (and cookie jar and so on) and they
are basically segregated by window (no tabs with different profile in the same
window).

In the end they are different from containers in the general purpose (they are
geared towards having a multi user experience more than firefox's multi
identity/privacy) but chrome's take is much less frustrating to manage in my
experience because you can't open the wrong type of tab involuntarly.

That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth) is
the only pain point so far

~~~
lol768
> That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth)
> is the only pain point so far

You should be able to flip "security.webauth.u2f" depending on your release
channel. If not available yet, I think it will be soon in any case.

~~~
Tomte
None of the sites where I've been using U2F works.

Some/many sites are sniffing the user agent.

And as far as I have googled, there may be a bug in Mozilla's implementation
(or maybe a different interpretation of the standard) that they are currently
fixing.

~~~
Manishearth
It's not a bug in Mozilla's implementation.

Google has a JS u2f library that relies on an implementation specific detail
of Chrome's U2F impl. Lots of folks use this library.

~~~
Tomte
Hm, that's not good. Is that implementation detail something Mozilla might
replicate?

~~~
Manishearth
Not easily IIRC. Google is aware of that bug so I think we're going to just
wait.

------
gamekathu
Probably irrelevant but I found default Bengali font rendering is broken on FF
Quantum.

~~~
spoiler
FF always had issues with rendering fonts. It generally over-sizes them. It's
not a huge deal most of the time, though.

------
knowThySelfx
It needs Websocket inspector. Is it there? Couldn't find it.

------
DaniFong
Night Mode!!!

~~~
DaniFong
Ugh, the journalist jumped the gun, there is no native night mode.

Firefox, hear my plea, help my night browsing eyes, I have too large a screen
in my VR dome, and your browser, alongside all others, is still blinding, and
I do not trust your add ons with all of my data.

------
HugoDaniel
2017 ? :/

------
rgrieselhuber
After years of being a Chrome user, I've been trying to work myself off of
Google's infrastructure as much as possible. Firefox is great, but I was very
disappointed to learn that they are partnering with political activists to
block sites that they deem to be "fake news."

Edit:

makeee below posted a good source describing what Mozilla is currently doing,
which appears to be limited to "researching" the problem of fake news.

I would love to support Firefox so I hope they come up with something more
innovative than blocking (which they do _not_ appear to be doing now - I stand
corrected) or labeling (which has its own problems).

As I mentioned below, browsers, search engines, or social networks should not
be, IMO, attempting to block or de-rank websites based on political activism,
regardless of the source.

~~~
makeee
Source? Can’t find anything online that indicates they are partnering with
political activists to block websites.

~~~
numerlo
[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-
information...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information-
trust-initiative-building-movement-fight-misinformation-online/)

~~~
makeee
Thanks, although link doesn’t support anything in parent commenter’s claim.

------
vxl
Keyword searches have become unreliable in Quantum for me; it often goes to
the homepage of the search site instead. If this affects you too please file a
bug report, thanks!

~~~
detaro
Why don't _you_ file a bug report?

------
fatagun
This is bullshit.

~~~
dang
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? We ban accounts that
do that, and you've posted good things in the past so I don't want to have to.

------
bla2
Great pr, but Quantum sounds like they finally ported some of chrome 1's tech
over. It's great that they're multiprocess now, but it seems more like they've
caught up after 9 years, not like they're ahead much. And the UI is still off
on macOS.

~~~
Sylos
In a lot of ways, yes, Firefox had a lot of technical cruft that they got rid
of with this release and in those respects have now mainly just caught up with
Chrome.

But Mozilla has been optimizing around this technical cruft for so long now
that not having this technical cruft anymore leaves them with the architecture
of Chrome plus those optimizations.

And they are innovating on top of it as well. They packed in a written-from-
scratch CSS engine into this release, which utilizes parallelism. That's
something we haven't yet seen in other browsers.

In a few releases from now, we should also get WebRender, which essentially
makes it so that Firefox renders webpages in the way that video games render
things. So, if you've ever wondered why your graphics card can pump out
cinematic space battles at 60 FPS, but your browsers stutters when playing a
flimsy CSS animation, this will mostly fix that.

------
trumbitta2
I'll stop using Chrome for work (UX Engineer) and personal use when safari
mobile, chrome for iOS, and chrome for Android will each become Firefox.

A browser I'm the only one using, has no use for me.

~~~
pitaj
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that you want Firefox mobile to be the
default browser?

Firefox mobile is available on Android and also on iOS, though the iOS variant
is only a wrap around Safari because of Apple's walked garden.

~~~
trumbitta2
I mean that I work with my browser and I write web applications.

Chrome is more than dominant, so I'll use Chrome because my users use - for
the most part - Chrome.

------
nbzs
Someone has deleted my comment. Why? I will say it again. Firefox 57 is
faster, with better UI design, i love dark theme option and it works under old
Os X Mavericks perfectly. Waiting for High Sierra optimization (is very heavy
on cpu) and will use it exclusively.

------
softwarelimits
Now if they only did respect user privacy!

Still every Firefox user gets a never-expiring google cookie by default, a
practice that is going on now for many years! Also cookies are accepted from
everywhere and last forever by default without user consent, overriding the
freedom of internet users in a brutal and privacy destroying way.

It is a great bigbrotheristic marketing lie by mozilla to obscure this anti-
privacy behaviour with glorious blabla about how they respect privacy, when in
fact they help the trackers to track you even better, doing so since many
years.

Cookie privacy must be handled more restrictive by default, e.g. there is no
reason to save any cookie after the browser has been closed if user did not
explicitely set that for a site.

Hopefully some journous finally check the facts before mindless re-babbling of
mozilla propaganda.

~~~
jonchang
This is disingenuous. I assume you’re referring to the safe browsing service,
which is run by Google and protects users from phishing and malware sites. In
Firefox the requests made to Google's safe browsing are sent using a
completely separate cookie jar that is isolated from the rest of the browser,
so that even if Google is tracking the requests to its safe browsing service
it wouldn't be able to identify you on the basis of the unique cookie alone.
Of course if you’re still uncomfortable with this you can always turn it off.

I don’t know where the claims for permanent cookies comes from. Cookies have
expiration dates like all other browsers and can be cleared by the user. I in
fact use an add on that clears cookies on tab close except for a set of
whitelisted sites.

------
dheera
I wish they had some better UX designers. Hit the download button and I get a
.bz2 file with no install scripts whatsoever.

    
    
        $ tar jxvf firefox-57.0.tar.bz2
        $ cd firefox
        $ mkdir /usr/local/firefox
        mkdir: cannot create directory '/usr/local/firefox': Permission denied
        $ sudo su
        Password:
        # mkdir /usr/local/firefox
        # cp -rv * /usr/local/firefox/
        ...
        # ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox 
        ln: failed to create symbolic link '/usr/bin/firefox': File exists
        # mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.bac
        # ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
    

Why couldn't they go the extra mile and give me a .deb file I can just click
and install or dpkg -i, like Chrome does? Make it absolutely frictionless --
lubricate the whole process -- if you want people to use it instead of Chrome.

~~~
inimino
This is kind of a strange complaint. You’re using Linux but you don’t want to
use the version packaged by your distro, yet you’re uncomfortable opening a
standard tarball and following the intructions within? Yet you’re complaining
that Mozilla didn’t go the extra mile for your obscure situation.

~~~
dheera
I'm used to the assumption that my package manager is out of date. It usually
is (e.g. it still has only OpenCV 2.4). I have a huge pile of PPAs to solve
that ...

~~~
NiceGuy_Ty
I on Fedora and the latest version is available via dnf. But still I use
nightly, and all I had to do to j install it was untar it into my opt
directory and symlink the binary.

~~~
mcny
> I on Fedora and the latest version is available via dnf. But still I use
> nightly, and all I had to do to j install it was untar it into my opt
> directory and symlink the binary.

What is your strategy with updates? Do you give yourself permission to write
to opt or do you run Firefox Nightly as root once a day so it can update
iself? I tried the latter for a few weeks and grew tired. I can't wait for
containers to come to Firefox stable (which is the feature I am looking
forward to the most in nightly).

~~~
r3bl
I mean, it doesn't _have_ to be in your /opt/ folder, you can put it anywhere
and add it to your $PATH. I did however give myself permissions to
/opt/nightly/, where my binary and the rest of its files are.

~~~
mcny
I think official deb and rpm repositories would still be nice.

