
Why I'm switching back to Firefox - dave1010uk
http://www.campaul.net/blog/2013/03/10/why-im-switching-back-to-firefox/
======
stroboskop
The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP's last
paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality _alone_.

The most popular alternatives to Firefox are Google's Chrome and Microsoft's
Internet Explorer. I doubt these alternative browsers would exist if they were
not useful for Google's and Microsofts main businesses. These companies
produce web browsers to support their main products/services. The rationale
behind AOL Explorer (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Browser>) was similar.
In settings like those privacy and other interests of web users are easily
sacrificed.

Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web
browser for the sake of web browsing.

~~~
hosay123
Just to add, users rarely choose their software at all. If we're talking about
the unwashed masses here, then the primary reason Chrome, Internet Explorer,
or Safari are popular at all is almost entirely due to placement.

Joe consumer, comprising an ever increasing majority of the Internet
population, simply doesn't care about which browser she is using. More often
it is a result of what randomly got installed as the default through their
last foray of random clicking and purchases. As a result, Chrome's regular
placement on the Google homepage (and IE's default-installation) give it
obvious "competitive" edges.

Of course when discussing browser market share this is rarely mentioned,
instead popularity is usually attributed to fractional nanosecond differences
in rendering time and so on that 99% of users never notice, and simply won't
care about even if you told them.

(Edit: there is another reason to appreciate Mozilla in here, in that their
efforts seem less focused on branding and positioning than they are much more
so on function and vision. Mozilla's endgame shares a certain utilitarian
theme compatible with what the masses seem to expect from technology (it's a
"computer" with the "Internet" on it, not a "Chromebook" with "Google" on it),
than does just about every other company in this space who are using their
platforms to sell people more shit they don't need)

~~~
michaelwww
This is a very elitist and snobbish piece of writing and almost entirely
inaccurate. Just for fun, I rewrote it a bit:

Just to add, users rarely choose their car at all. If we're talking about the
unwashed masses here, then the primary reason Ford, Toyota, GM, or Volkswagon
are popular at all is almost entirely due to happenstance. Joe consumer,
comprising an ever increasing majority of the car buying population, simply
doesn't care about which car she is driving. More often it is a result of what
randomly went up for sale at the corner car lot. As a result, Ford's regular
placement on the edge of the car lot give it "competitive" edges.

~~~
_dark_matter_
I'm having trouble understanding what point you're trying to make. What,
exactly, is "entirely inaccurate" about the comment? How is your rendition
with physical cars similar? How is it snobbish in the least?

~~~
michaelwww
Using terms like "unwashed masses" and "Joe sixpack" to describe the computer
users of working class background where I come from is insulting. Why not just
go all the way and them call them "white trash"? The inaccuracy I was trying
to highlight with my rewrite was your idea that people of lower means and
education don't care about what browser they use, presumably in your view
because they are too ignorant to know the difference. Obviously, this is not
the case with automobiles and is also not the case in choice of computers,
browsers, mobile phones, etc... You don't have to have a college degree and a
six figure income to be discerning about technology.

~~~
hosay123
Speaking as someone of "lower means" and mostly with a lifelong dedication to
computers, _I_ don't particularly care what software I use, and if you forced
me to try and rationalize my choices, most likely I would, like the majority
of people on the planet, spout mostly meaningless bullshit.

The "tech savvy" only differ in one sense: they are incredibly more delusional
about their choices than the rest of the planet. I certainly haven't taken the
time to study Chrome's design in depth (or for that matter Firefox's), and
probably never will. My reasoning for using Firefox is due to a vague-warm-
fuzzy ideological alignment I seem to have with Mozilla and their approach to
software. Nothing quantitative, and certainly nothing adequately logical that
I could use it to command authority over anyone else on the planet. In fact
exactly the kind of thought processes that "joe user" experiences ("I like the
icon.. it bounces"). 23 years spent in front of a machine, and that's still
pretty much me.

~~~
icebraining
No, the difference is that you actually _know_ what a browser is. "Google" is
still a common reply to "what browser do you use?".

~~~
Oxxide
how is that not a valid response? sure, it's not semantically accurate.

but, if someone says that, you know exactly what they mean. seems like a valid
response to me any way you slice it.

p.s. this kind of attitude is part of the problem.

~~~
mercurial
> seems like a valid response to me any way you slice it.

How so? It does not tell you if it's Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera or Safari. My
mom refers to the Internet as "google".

~~~
yRetsyM
> My mom refers to the Internet as "Google".

that's how she browses the internet then? in her case the application wouldn't
matter to greatly if her point of reference is the Google search box

~~~
mercurial
If it's a matter of security, speed, or an issue with how a particular website
is rendered, knowing that somebody uses "google" as a web browser is of little
help when attempting a diagnosis, regardless of their point of reference.

------
bobsy
I feel Chrome is becoming the new IE. Firefox always works. I keep finding
obscure bugs in Chrome. I report them. They are confirmed by 3+ people. 9
months later issues remain unfixed. It feels like all development is targeted
at new features instead of rounding off and fixing existing functionality.

The two things I dislike about Firefox. The development tools are funky. I am
sure many people like them but when you are used to firebug / webkit tools the
default Firefox tools are a bit of a shock.

The second issue is the lack of tab sand-boxing. A fairly large part of my job
is testing for edge cases in our products. Our products are JavaScript heavy.
I often find issues which crash the browser... well.. they crash Firefox. In
Chrome the tab shows an error in the console and I have the option to close
the tab. In Firefox I never get an error in the console. The whole browser
freezes and stops responding.

It would be fantastic if Firefox sandboxed tabs to stop the entire browser
crashing.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Two of the main advantages of Firefox for many are its memory usage and its
extensibility. Those two advantages would be lost if Firefox added sandboxing.
I'm glad that I can choose between sandboxing and better extensions and I
would be sad to see that choice disappear.

~~~
coldtea
> _Two of the main advantages of Firefox for many are its memory usage and its
> extensibility. Those two advantages would be lost if Firefox added
> sandboxing. I'm glad that I can choose between sandboxing and better
> extensions and I would be sad to see that choice disappear._

Totally orthogonal issues.

Not to mention Firefox ate memory like a pig until recently, despite not
having sandboxing.

Now it's somewhat better with post 16 stuff, but still it's slow. Chrome is
much more responsive and fast.

~~~
thelukester
> _Totally orthogonal issues._

[http://blog.ffextensionguru.com/2011/11/20/electrolysis-
proj...](http://blog.ffextensionguru.com/2011/11/20/electrolysis-project-on-
hold/) Add-on were one of the major issues blocking Multi-process Firefox.

> _Not to mention Firefox ate memory like a pig until recently, despite not
> having sandboxing._

Agreed. Sandboxed Chrome was like a gift from the IT gods back in the bloated
FF3 days.

> _Now it's somewhat better with post 16 stuff, but still it's slow. Chrome is
> much more responsive and fast._

Responsive and fast until it starts thrashing when your physical RAM gets all
used up.

~~~
coldtea
> _Add-on were one of the major issues blocking Multi-process Firefox._

Well, they will need adaptation to communicate cross pages, but it's not like
you can't have sandboxing and plugins (a la Chrome/Safari).

> _Responsive and fast until it starts thrashing when your physical RAM gets
> all used up._

Haven't really seen that. But I rarely have more than 20 tabs open (usually
around 10-15). OS X, and using Canary.

------
Trezoid
Firefox really needed the release of chrome to kick it back into gear because
it had stagnated to some extent, easy in its "we're better then IE and that's
all that really matters" mediocrity, and swapping over to the rapid release
schedule has just accelerated things.

The fact that mozilla actively fights for internet freedom and user privacy is
just the delicious icing on a technically solid browser cake.

~~~
RDeckard
And it's bookmark system is still second to none (imo)

~~~
gnosis
Firefox's bookmarking system is actually one of the things I hate most about
it, compared to Opera.

In Opera you can right click a link and then select the exact place in the
bookmark heirarchy to place it in. In Firefox you have to first bookmark the
link, then go to the atrocious bookmark manager and move the bookmark where
you want it to go.

Opera's bookmark manager is also just much nicer, more powerful, and more
intuitive than Firefox's.

Unfortunately, Opera is closed-source software, and has been moving in anti-
privacy directions I don't like, so I still use Firefox. But in many ways,
Opera is a far superior browser.

~~~
skrause
_In Firefox you have to first bookmark the link, then go to the atrocious
bookmark manager and move the bookmark where you want it to go._

In Firefox you can click the star in the URL bar to set a bookbar. When you
click the star for a second time immediately, you can select where in the
bookmark hierarchy it should go without opening the bookmark manager at all.

You can also just drag&drop the tab title to the right location in the
bookmarks toolbar and it will create a bookmark there.

------
ricardobeat
Here we go again! This is a sentiment that is spreading in the dev community,
Chrome is starting to lose it's edge.

I'm currently working on a slightly heavy page, and Chrome is the slowest of
the bunch to render, despite having smoother animations in most cases after it
has done it's thing. Firefox, Safari and even IE9 are visibly faster by a
couple _seconds_.

I feel like it slowly got worse and worse over the years. These days Chrome is
the main CPU hog in my machine, uses GBs of memory and is responsible for most
system hangs (OSX). The com.google.keystone agent thing even causes the
trackpad and keyboard to malfunction every once and a while.

~~~
rachelbythebay
WTF! _THAT_ is the thing which makes my input go away for a few seconds? I
thought I had hardware which was flaking out, since really, how does the whole
system regularly "lose" both input devices at once?

Thank you for mentioning this!

~~~
alex_doom
Well that's good news, sorta. I too thought the hardware was having issues.

------
shadowmint
Same here, but for a slightly different reason for me:

When you're not logged into your google account, typing into the address bar
with periodically kill chrome on mountain lion.

Not often, but maybe 3 or 4 times a day. Not kill the tab; hard kill chrome,
instantly, destroying all the tabs, no recovery, all chrome processes go poof.
It happens on all three of my mac devices (and this is on Version
25.0.1364.160).

It's not even a choice; that's just unusable.

I've also found firefox to be a lot better than I remember. Firebug is still a
memory hog though, and as we saw in the other epic thread, the firebug /
native developer tools thing is still just idiotic.

...but it's pretty good.

I honestly didn't expect to be ever returning to firefox because it was _more
stable_ than the alternative.

~~~
dplesca
I had the same problem on chrome. There's a lengthy bug discussion and a
suggested solution (that worked for me):
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=175341#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=175341#c45)

~~~
recuter
The immediate difference toggling "Predict network actions to improve page
load performance" off for me is STUNNING. Thank you so much.

------
ok_craig
Sometimes I wonder how comprehensive these comparisons actually are. This is
what I currently have open in Chrome:

3 Chrome Beta windows, with 17, 14, and 1 tabs open. 1 Chrome Canary window
with 2 tabs

A good number of these tabs have not-very-light applications open like Gmail,
Google spreadsheets, and some YouTube vids.

If you say to yourself, "oh, let me go check out Firefox compared to this,"
and launch it with one tab, do a quick Google search, and then determine,
"hey, this is way faster," well... yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Not only do
you not have multiple windows and tabs open, but if you haven't used it in
years you've probably got a pretty small cache not bogging you down.

Personally I've never actually noticed Chrome's performance to have any
issues. Maybe because I have 12 gigs of RAM and an otherwise decent setup. On
a more constrained system perhaps problems start to show themselves more
easily. But are you sure that those same problems don't also appear in other
browsers, given you're using them as intensely as you've been using Chrome
this whole time?

I'd really love to see some browser comparison stats that go in-depth on this.
Basically the only numbers you ever see these days are javascript rendering
scores, and I feel like that's a really poor way to determine a browser's
overall speed and efficiency. It doesn't account for how long it takes to open
a new tab (like .01 seconds vs .3 seconds, which IMO is a big difference),
scroll lag, startup time, etc, and it certainly doesn't account for how and if
browsers become bogged down by real-world use.

I fear that users may be making similar snap judgments by comparing on the
basis of quick open-and-go tests, instead of actual in-depth testing. First
impressions are everything. You may find yourself five years from now using a
browser that is actually slower than you were using previously, but you
maintain your use of it because one time five years ago you opened it and
loaded a page and it was faster than the encumbered incumbent.

~~~
ibotty
this post is uninformed.

first, a cache should never slow you down. old obscure settings can. and these
can be in your old firefox profile as well.

second, the usecase of many open tabs is better in firefox. there are studies
out there that show lower ram usage in firefox for many tabs. (first google
link, because i don't find the one i had in mind right now:
[http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-
chrome-24-...](http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-
chrome-24-firefox-18-internet-explorer-10-and-opera-1212))

btw: if you are going to criticize test methodology, why do you include two
browser? you know you can run various development version of firefox as well?

~~~
csdigi
With Chrome you have to trade memory usage for the process sandboxing of each
tab which adds a measurable overhead. But I think for the general population
it is a trade worth making.

~~~
mhaymo
I think it definitely used to be, but these days Firefox crashes so rarely
that I don't see it as an issue. I imagine other browsers are similarly
stable, and it depends on your personal usage patterns, but I think the
majority of users probably neither use dozens of tabs nor experience frequent
crashes, so both should be fine for most users, but power users are likely to
prefer one or the other.

------
mherdeg
We've just passed the four-year anniversary of the bug that made me abandon
Firefox on Mac: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541>

If you are an extremely fast typer, pretty much any time you use Firefox on OS
X to "Save As" you will hit this incarnation of a bug that hangs every tab in
your browser and forces you to kill it and start from scratch:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528149>

Total bummer, I love Firefox but I'm not gonna train myself to type slower to
keep from breaking it. This is no Therac-25.

~~~
bhauer
I love Firefox and use it every day. But you bring up an important point. The
Google Chrome team has some pretty annoying bugs and limitations that they
ignore for years, but the same is true for Firefox.

For example, my largest pet peeve with Firefox is that two sessions cannot
share the same profile. I can't have Firefox open for user abc in desktop
session 1 and try to open it again as user abc in desktop session 2. Chrome
and IE have no problem doing that. No joke, the issue is a decade old. And
Mozilla recently marked the issue as a wont-fix.

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135137>

I didn't lodge a complaint in the bug's comment trail. It's disappointing, but
I figure it's essentially impossible for any of these guys to have a stellar
record on bugs when you're got bug IDs in the high six-digits.

------
Mahn
I have no idea what the article and some of you guys are talking about. I'm a
very heavy user of Chrome, usually I have around 3 windows and 50-60 tabs in
total; with this is setting I feel it's running pretty snappy, animations runs
very smooth compared to the choppy experience I get with a single window and a
single tab using Firefox. And don't get me started about Firebug; it's still
so slow and clumsy compared to the chrome dev tools, every time I have to
debug something Firefox specific the mere thought of being forced to use it
gives me pain. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage Mozilla, I
have a huge appreciation for what they are doing. But when it comes to day-to-
day usage, and as a developer tool, Chrome still wins in my book.

~~~
tomku
I was a Firefox user since the Phoenix/Firebird days, but I switched to Chrome
about a year ago. On two separate occasions recently, I tried to switch back
to Firefox for daily use. In both cases, I was back on Chrome within a week.
Firefox has made great strides in memory usage, Javascript performance and
overall UI polish, but on my hardware* and with my usage patterns, it
absolutely CRAWLS compared to Chrome. I found myself restarting it almost
daily to keep it responsive, and even on a fresh startup it wasn't as snappy
as a fully-loaded (15-20 tabs open) and long-running Chrome.

I can honestly say that if performance wasn't an issue, I would prefer
Firefox. I love the addons that are available, particularly NoScript, ABP and
Vimperator. The Chrome equivalents are imperfect due to Chrome's extension
model, and I miss the real things almost daily. However, I just can't go back
to a browser that's slow and unresponsive. Maybe Firefox and Chrome are just
making different trade-offs, and I happen to benefit more from Chrome's
choices. I don't know. What I do know is that I can't tolerate my browser
freezing up or taking 5 seconds to process clicks.

* - A fairly modest laptop with a 1.6ghz dual-core AMD APU, 6gb of RAM and an SSD. It's easily fast enough for everything else that I do, and Chrome flies on it. On my much beefier desktop, Firefox is usable, but still noticeably slower than Chrome.

~~~
jomohke
That doesn't sound typical. Have you tried doing a Firefox reset? I've seen it
make a large improvement to performance, especially with older Firefox
profiles:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-
fi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-
problems)

(In short: Go to "about:support" and click reset. It will prompt you before
doing anything, and will rebuild your profile while preserving
bookmarks/history/saved-forms/etc)

------
ams6110
IIRC when Google released Chrome they said (I'm paraphrasing) they were doing
it to raise the bar by which web browsers were measured. They needed to do
this so that their other products (gmail, google docs) were viable
replacements to their desktop competitors. They weren't really interested in
developing a browser for its own sake.

If Firefox is now seen as being as good as or even better than Chrome, it
looks like Google have succeeded.

~~~
lucb1e
Seeing ads in Google Chrome, I'd say they use the browser for more than that.
But yes, I can also remember hearing something like that. They're profiting
regardless of the outcome.

------
shocks
I get where everyone is coming from when they say Firefox is getting better,
but I really don't see Chrome getting worse and I certainly don't see Firefox
surpassing Chrome.

Firefox dev tools in Nightly are much better, but still don't beat Chrome's.
Firefox is still ugly. Firefox still won't let me open Nightly _and_ Aurora.
Firefox's Javascript performance is getting faster and memory usage is getting
better, but when running tight loops in Javascript doing lots of calculations
(specifically rendering fractal flames) Firefox becomes unresponsive and
unusable, where as Chrome is fine and I can still browse normally while it
runs in the background. Chrome might use a but more RAM but that's not a
problem for me. I have buckets of RAM. Firefox needs restarting all the time
when I change extensions or get updates.

I'll stick with Chrome for now. :)

~~~
chaud
Firefox's dev tools are still inadaquate compared to the ones in Chrome, even
with Nightly. Thankfully Firebug and another Firefox profile solves that.

As far as opening both Nightly and Aurora, create a shortcut to Nightly with
the following options "...\firefox.exe -p -no-remote". This will let you
select a profile on startup, keeping your Aurora and Nightly profiles separate
and running both at the same time.

~~~
shocks
Thanks for this tip! :)

------
eumenides1
I also switched back for similiar reasons. FF has really stepped up their
memory management and patching IMO. Also, i went back because of plugins.

Say what you will about chrome, but tab plugins are king in firefox. Tree
style tabs on the left hand side and tab grouping what really sank it for me.
I even merged the the search box and address bar in FF to give me that chrome
omnibar feeling.

I think the most important takeaway is this: FF is still competitive among
technical people and so is chrome. There even might be room for IE. We as a
community, would need to keep voting with our feet and we can make sure the
"browser wars" never end.

------
jacquesm
I never switched to Chrome for the silly and simple reason that I prefer a
less corporate internet over a more corporate one. On top of that I am not
sure that Chrome is or is not spyware but I'd like to err on the side of
caution with stuff like this.

------
ebbv
I develop on Chrome all day every day and I cannot relate at all to these
people saying it is full of bugs and crashing all the time. Nor do I find that
Firefox is faster.

Chrome dev tools are still the best in the business, and Chrome just works.

Also I did a memory usage comparison on Chrome and Firefox 2 months ago and
Firefox was using more memory by quite a bit (and got worse the more tabs you
had open.) And this was Firefox with NO Flash and Chrome with Flash.

~~~
tericho
This is the first comment I've read so far that I 100% agree with.

I personally see no reason to keep more than 8-10 tabs open at a given time
which doesn't affect my CPU performance whatsoever (running a "standard" dev
machine of 12GB+ RAM, i7, etc) so I could care less if FF handles 40 tabs
better.

And quickly, some reasons I love Chrome (& Google):

\- Accessible nightly builds (Canary)

\- AngularJS debug extension

\- Built-in bookmark/history/search sync (read something at home yesterday -
can easily find it in my history at work or on mobile)

\- <http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/>

~~~
bzbarsky
You do realize that Firefox has accessible nightly builds (and has for over a
decade) and has built-in sync?

I agree they're useful things to have, but they're not exactly Chrome-
specific.

------
siamore
I too have switched Firefox as my main browser, so far I like the better
addons,

* ad block is much better

* addons work in private mode by default,

* an addon to use keepaas as my password manager

* many addons that allow me to customize youtube which i could not do in chrome (force 240p etc..),

* I missed Instant search but Firefox already searches bookmarks better and with the instantFox addon i can also search any site ala google instant and ddg

Better in chrome

* Addons by HNers (HN in chrome is great with a few addons like tldr.io, HNbox)

* Firefox seems unable to do multiple downloads as well as chrome (I'm unable to download multiple videos at once from coursera when using firefox)

* some chrome store apps

* Developer tools (which I don't really need)

I don't see much of a performance difference (maybe Firefox is better now or
it may be hardware accelerated as I'm using Windows)

~~~
oinksoft
I haven't seen this multiple download issue with Firefox, but you may like the
DownThemAll! download manager, it provides a queue, maximum downloads,
bandwidth limits, and other very nice features:
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/>

~~~
siamore
Thanks for the suggestion, I already use DownThemAll but it could not even
grab the download. It may be the site's fault, once I click on the download
link it opens a new tab and the download starts, on chrome I can start another
download but it gets stuck on Firefox, it may be that the page was made with
chrome in mind idk.

------
pioul
I switched from Firefox to Chrome at about the same time as op.

But I can't relate to how he feels:

\- Chrome still has better dev tools than Firefox

\- Chrome doesn't freeze at all (while Firefox does when handling a lot of
tabs)

\- Chrome doesn't require to restart when installing an extension (even if
Firefox starts moving to this too)

\- I still prefer Chrome's UI

\- Even though I didn't try syncing with Firefox, Chrome does that very nicely

~~~
keeperofdakeys
> Chrome doesn't require to restart when installing an extension (even if
> Firefox starts moving to this too)

Mozilla did introduce an api to do restart-less addons about two years ago, as
a side effect these addons don't depend on specific firefox versions anymore.

The problem with firefox addons is that they have always hooked directly into
XUL, a layout language used inside firefox, which changes (nearly) every
version. This means addons needed to be updated regularly. However it did
allow them many capabilities (that I suspect the new api doesn't give them).

------
nhebb
For me the big difference wasn't the browser itself; it has been excessive
javascript that's slowing the browsers. Many media sites are loading 20-30
external scripts, and I found that switching back to Firefox with NoScript has
made a huge difference in load times and memory usage. The other issue with
Chrome was releasing memory. I can close a tab in FF and the memory is
recovered.

~~~
krichman
Installing NoScript freed up like 20% of my CPU time. Now I just need websites
to stop failing ungracefully.

~~~
rangibaby
I saw someone recommend this before: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/yesscript/>

I haven't tried it myself, but apparently it's a kind of reverse Noscript
(hence the name).

"YesScript lets you make a blacklist of sites that aren't allowed to run
JavaScript. Use YesScript on sites that annoy you or hog your system
resources. One click to the icon in the status bar turns scripts on or off for
the current site."

~~~
cremnob
Would Ghostery accomplish the same thing?

~~~
rangibaby
I had Ghostery, but didn't like it. It seemed to "talk too much".

Noscript can be paranoid (a feature, not a bug) and occasionally stop sites
from working even if they are white-listed; I consider having to open a site
in another browser sometimes less of a nuisance than having my main browser
slowed down by dodgy JS.

Two add-ons anthropomorphized in one comment! I guess that's what happens when
you spend so much time in front of a screen ;-)

------
reidrac
Firefox is great, but I think is a unfair comparison Chrome vs Firefox as he's
talking about freedom and Chrome is not free software[1]. He may want to try
Chromium instead.

I know is supposed to be the same source code, but it gives me some peace of
mind that a 3rd party I trust (Linux distro) had access to the source code and
built the actual binary I'm using.

[1] <http://www.google.co.uk/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html>

EDIT: formatting

------
vidyesh
Spot on, OP. Spot on. Firefox is a great browser and its truly open.

Unlike you I always been a Firefox user mostly because I still can't the basic
addons for Chrome which I use on Firefox. And privacy concerns. I still use
Chrome for cross-browser checks.

The one thing that Chrome was been said to be better than Firefox was the
memory management. Over the past years, Firefox's memory leak issue has almost
diminished and Chrome's has started.

Mozilla was and always is making Firefox for web browsing, they never pulled
in any other feature/add-on/plug-in which would side track their motto.

------
Newky
I have returned to firefox for the following reasons: 1) It feels more stable.
Almost never crashes. 2) Can run separate profiles at the same time in a nicer
way than chrome. I use this to have a work and personal browser in work. 3) I
use vimperator now which I find works best on firefox. 4) I get that happy
feeling that I am using software which actually values some of the open source
philosophy that I value.

------
forgotAgain
I've been using Firefox more myself.

It's the consistent tic- tic-tic of disk access by Chrome. I have all
extensions and plug-ins disabled. All caching disabled. And yet when I try to
concentrate on something I'm reading in Chrome I'm continuously distracted by
the tic-tic-tic of chrome accessing the hard disk every second or two.

Right now this window I'm writing in is the only Chrome window open. Yet there
are three Chrome processes running. One of which is writing 7k per second to a
temp file.

Chrome is not the sleek beast it once was. It's living off its reputation at
this point.

------
mcovey
I've been a lifelong Opera user and given the current situation (it's dying),
I am considering Firefox the only viable alternative. I've never even liked
having chrome on my computer, and in fact I would not be surprised if Google
simply dropped chrome as a product, leaving it to the hands of the open source
community anyway. They've abandoned many good products and dropping chrome
wouldn't surprise me. Then again, maybe I am bitter, I thought Opera would be
around forever.

~~~
lucb1e
Was it ever not dying? I liked the browser, but the lack of support and
incorrectly rendering websites got me off of it after at most one evening. (I
tried a few times.)

~~~
dubcanada
I use Opera pretty much 100% and I've very rarely found any issues that would
not have been issues in the other browsers.

The only problem is some people seem to think every single CSS3/HTML5 feature
needs to be prefixed with -webkit- to work.

------
kamme
I'm sticking with firefox for most of the same reasons as the author notes,
but I do wish the mozilla team used some common sense when they think of new
features.

A good example of the lack of common sense (imho) is the addon bar. Why do I
want an extra bar with 2 or 3 icons? Most people will probably remember the
status bar in browsers and they ditched that because it was not needed and you
lost valuable screen estate. What was the best solution mozilla could come up
with to handle the extension icons? An extra bar in the bottom of your
browser. Just implement an omnibar already and put those things there...

If anyone from mozilla is reading this: you've done a great (GREAT!) job at
making firefox faster and use less memory, and if you're ever in the
neighbourhood I'll buy you a beer. Now please also start thinking about those
little things that just don't make any sense.

~~~
shared4you
It might not be useful for you, but I for one find the "addon bar" really
great. I've about 10 addons installed and configured most of them to be at the
bottom, all in a single place. You can toggle it with "CTRL + /" at anytime,
which pleases both parties.

~~~
kamme
I'm using a non-us keyboard layout and unfortunately that doesn't work...

~~~
babuskov
It's probably accessible somehow. For example, on my Serbian keyboard it's
AltGr+Shift+Q

------
mbesto
_I honestly believe Mozilla is committed to freedom and privacy on the web.
Google is committed to making money and knowing everything I do._

 _The majority of the revenues comes from Google Inc., which is the default
search engine on Mozilla Firefox._ [1]

Doesn't Mozilla exist because Google exists?

[1]-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Mozilla_Corp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Mozilla_Corporation)

~~~
kibwen
Mozilla continues to exist because there is competition among search engines
for marketshare. If Google was the only search engine in the world, they
likely wouldn't see any need to fund Mozilla. But given that Bing does exist,
and that it has non-negligible marketshare (16.5% [1]), Microsoft would be
more than willing to fund Mozilla if Google wasn't willing to pony up. We can
only speculate, but bids from Microsoft are likely why Google _increased_ the
amount that they're paying Mozilla in the most recent round of negotiations.

Personally, I hope that the venture with Firefox OS will be successful in
making Mozilla less reliant on search engine licensing agreements.

[1] [http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2244472/Google-Once-
Aga...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2244472/Google-Once-Again-
Claims-67-Search-Market-Share)

~~~
chris_mahan
But what if I use the duckduckgo search in Firefox? Am I screwing google?

NB: duckduckgo uses Bing, among others.

~~~
kibwen
No, because in order to use DDG you had to change the default away from
Google. That default is the entirety of what Google is paying for, and I'm
sure it actually gets them a lot of traffic from people who don't care enough
to switch (or who just don't care at all).

------
robotmay
I made the same switch about a year ago now. Firefox feels so much better than
it did when Chrome first appeared. I also now have an Android tablet, and
Firefox on Android has come on leaps and bounds since it was first released;
the tab syncing feature it shares with the desktop is fantastic and I haven't
even launched Chrome on my tablet since I got it.

------
bryanwbh
Switched to Firefox from Chrome due to the following: \- I dislike Google
tracking everything that I am doing \- Chrome with one tab starts out smoothly
but with more tabs, its memory usage increases at a faster rate compared to
Firefox \- A browser that puts an advertisement in a blank page (chromebook
anyone?) is a total turn-off

------
chenster
My biggest complain with Chrome right now is it freezes up and take over the
entire CPU for 10 to 30 seconds every now and then. It's the case on both
Windows 7 and Mac (10.8 Mountain Lion). Usually when that happens, I take a
mini-break. Before it was lightning fast. I tried to switch back to Firefox
but it's still IMO considerably slower in general but admittedly much more
stable and doesn't freeze up for no good reason. Chrome seems to be slowly
slipping to where Firefox was before as author ranted.

------
cabbeer
If you're on windows, the difference in font rendering between firefox and
chrome is huge.

~~~
gluxon
That's always bothered me. Firefox's fonts are so crisp and clear. Chrome's
look faded for some reason.

~~~
ivank
They screwed it up in Chrome 22 while rewriting part of skia:
<https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=146407>

------
runeks
I recently switched back to _Chrome_ because I felt Firefox was too slow.
Strange how we experience the exact opposite :\\.

Also, the feature I most appreciate with Chrome is the synchronization of tabs
across all my devices (PC, laptop and phone). Firefox also has this but it
never really worked for me (it was slow to update the tab list of my PC so I
could access it from my phone, or it didn't update it at all "Ubuntu 12.04 - 4
days ago").

~~~
Newky
Strangely this was one of the main reasons I switched off Chrome.

I found that this was not useful at all. My three main consumptions are: ->
Work Computer -> Tablet and phone -> Home computer

The tabs on my work computer are almost always not relevant for when I am at
home and on tablet phone. There is also certain cases where I would not
particularly want my tabs from my work machine (sensitive information perhaps)
shared to my home computer or a mobile device I could get stolen and vice
versa.

For any sharing of tabs I want, I just use pocket, as the tabs I really want
to share are usually just articles that I want to read, either way pocket will
take those links.

------
tanepiper
I've recently switched back as well and I find that it's back to a much better
experience. Firefox was horrible for a while, but I think the team have been
doing an excellent job of optimising it.

My only annoyance is the development tools - Chrome still whips FF here - and
they are still no where as good as Firebug, which continues to be the most
required extension - but I believe work is being done there too.

~~~
jaredmcateer
Chrome Dev Tools were what ultimately lured me over to Chrome full time. The
Sync tool is pretty good too. I don't really get these memory issues everyone
talks about. Maybe it's because I'm not on OSX but on Linux and Windows I
regularly have 20+ tabs open for weeks and have no issues... even if I'm
playing video games that take up 60% of my memory when Chrome was taking up
50% as it was it seems to play nice.

------
fafner
I use both Firefox and Chrome. But I prefer Firefox. Better addons and
extensibility were already mentioned. But one thing that seems to be commonly
overlooked is the superior typography of Firefox. Firefox even does stuff like
ligatures. That makes reading longer text much more pleasant.

Firefox is also capable of handling large amounts of tabs. In Chrome the tab
bar is of fixed length (length of the window) and thus the maximum number of
tabs is limited by my screen width. In Firefox the tab bar can extend to the
sides or even better you can use the TreeStyleTabs addon to organize tabs in a
tree view.

I think the biggest problem for Firefox was the long wait before FF4 was
released. That was the exact time many people moved to Chrome. FF3.6 wasn't
bad but was clearly slower than Chrome and had a huge memory appetite. Later
versions improved this dramatically and Firefox now feels lighter/faster than
Chrome. But every time FF vs. Chrome there are people claiming otherwise who
have stopped using FF at version 3.6...

------
nodata
At the least, we desperately need Firefox as competition for Webkit.

------
dictum
I'm currently using an early 2006 iMac with Core Duo and 2GB of memory,
running OS X 10.6.8, while my main computer is being repaired. For two years I
thought it was dead (or on its last gasp), after some futile attempts to
revive it with an external HDD. Finally I managed to boot it with an USB flash
drive and later transferred its contents to an external USB hard drive.

Firefox is the only browser that runs comfortably on it. I'm using a lot of
extensions, including ABP with multiple filter lists. After disabling caching
on hard drive, I'm keeping around 25 tabs, sometimes 30 or more, and there's
still RAM to spare, and the CPU isn't getting pounded.

Of course, browsers should be optimized for current use cases and computers,
but what I've experienced for the past two weeks really changed my impression
of Firefox as a bloated and slow browser that was only fast in comparison to
old IE.

------
sdfjkl
I've switched back to Firefox recently too (from Safari). Here's what I had to
tweak to get it working like it should:
[http://sdfjkl.org/post/2013/03/07/Making-Firefox-behave-
on-O...](http://sdfjkl.org/post/2013/03/07/Making-Firefox-behave-on-OS-X)

------
jagermo
I would love to switch back to Firefox, but, to be honest, the rapid relase
cycle really annoys me. I would love to head back, if Mozilla switched to a
more stable release cycle - or at least to updates, that don't interupt me
everytime I start the browser up.

But I'll give it a try.

~~~
dochtman
The update nagging has been much reduce since the start of the rapid release
cycle, so you should definitely give it a try.

~~~
jagermo
Thanks all, I will.

------
piyush_soni
I've always stuck to Firefox for its customizability and because it has less
reasons to collect all my data and become an Apple like walled garden which
Chrome is slow turning into.

That said, yes, they also have less reasons to be 'answerable' to their users
or to fix problems. On Bugzilla, I've mostly seen arrogant and rude
contributors who are mostly like, if you can't contribute or fix it yourself,
go away! Don't even complain. See the example of this major/critical _12
years_ old bug, which no one wants to fix, and now they don't even want users
to express their displeasure on that. There's no resolve, while other browsers
have fixed that problem.

I've always stuck to Firefox for its customizability and because it has less
reasons to collect all my data and become an Apple like walled garden which
Chrome is slow turning into.

That said, yes, they also have less reasons to be 'answerable' to their users
or to fix problems. On Bugzilla, I've mostly seen arrogant and rude
contributors who are mostly like, "If you can't contribute or fix it yourself,
go away!" Don't even complain. See the example of this major/critical _12
years_ old bug, which no one wants to fix, and now they don't even want users
to express their displeasure on that. There's no resolve, while other browsers
have fixed that problem. <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414>

------
Semaphor
Does anyone know of an extension that adds Chromes feature of highlighting
results in the scrollbar when searching through a page (Ctrl+F)?

It's pretty much the only thing I'm missing whenever I try FF again.

~~~
J_Darnley
I use XUL/Migemo which marks matches in a similar way to what you describe and
also allows a a regex search. It also has some Japanese language features (but
I'm not interested in those).

~~~
Semaphor
Thank you so much! While XUL/Migemo seems to have problems with current FF
versions, someone there linked Fastest Search [1] and it has everything I
wanted plus way more (including RegEx).

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

~~~
abrowne
Great find, I've been looking for something like this too.

------
razzmataz
Recently, it seems Chrome is saving history online between browsers on
different machines. This has freaked me out to the point where I'm moving back
to using Firefox.

~~~
Achshar
You can always disable it in the sync settings. Seriously this is HN, not some
news site.

------
kaolinite
I switch back on Linux every so often, feel refreshed and stay for a few
months. Then I switch to Chrome, feel refreshed and the cycle continues.

------
afhof
What OS? I have noticed that Firefox on Ubuntu (12.04 clean install) looks way
worse and feels worse than FF on Windows 7. I feel like Firefox on Windows is
still more peppy than Chrome / Firefox on Ubuntu despite my Linux box being
way beefier. I feel like the author's post is 1 dimensional (which browser)
when it should be a 2 dimensional comparison (browser and OS).

------
rasmuskl
I was actually thinking the same thing and am giving it a try.

One thing that strikes me as vastly inferior in FF given my use cases is the
way private browsing works. I use incognito tabs in Chrome all the time in dev
to get a clean tab with no sessions etc. FF only allows for either normal tabs
or private tabs, not both. Oh well :-)

~~~
Skalman
Firefox has just added private windows (just like incognito in Chrome). It's
currently in Firefox beta [1], which will be released on April 2nd.

[1] <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/20.0beta/releasenotes/>

------
_august
Installed Firefox again because of this post.

One of the things I tried out was WebGL performance using the recently posted
WebGL terrain flyover demo
([http://www.zephyrosanemos.com/windstorm/20130301/live-
demo.h...](http://www.zephyrosanemos.com/windstorm/20130301/live-demo.html)),
but I can't get over 30.5 fps in Firefox whereas on Chrome I get 50 - 60.
Hardware acceleration seems to be enabled for both, perhaps Firefox is not
recognizing the graphics card?

One of the things that impressed my about Chrome in the beginning was when
they launched Chrome Experiments to show off the performance. There was no
comparison at the time between any other browser and Chrome. This may still
hold true to a certain extent.

However, for general browsing I can't tell a difference with the current
iteration.

------
christogreeff
Finding myself using Firefox more often again. Chrome is not as snappy as I
once felt it to be.

------
pnelson
I switched from Firefox to Chrome around the same time as the author. However,
I'm having the opposite experience. Chrome is great; everything is blazing
fast, even with my ~25 tabs open.

I tried Firefox a few weeks ago just to see if I had been missing out on
anything. Nope. Opening new tabs in Firefox was sluggish. Page navigation was
even worse. I assumed that most browsers would be roughly on par these days
but Firefox was not even tolerable after having used Chrome.

It pains me because I, too, share the sentiment that Mozilla is committed to
freedom and privacy on the internet. I guess I am just willing to give that up
in exchange for a better internet experience for the time being.

~~~
nnethercote
Try "Reset Firefox" -- it helps lots of problems like this. See
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-
fi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-
problems).

------
fiendsan
I use firefox, always have even when it was buggy as hell, mostly because i
needed all the web dev tools and was confortable with it, but i also use
chrome for watching youtube and quick browsing (unfortunately firefox till
this day is damn slow to open and become responsive).

Thats why im looking forward to opera's webkit version (so i can ditch google
chrome for opera), i think google chrome is getting more and more creepy and
has made some decisions that are more in google's interest than the users
(like posting links on the speed dial or all the extensions that are nothing
more thank links and all the extensions that are not links but behave like
links, its weird).

------
qoo
Firefox's killer features:

1\. Option "Don't load tabs until selected"

2\. Firefox Sync

3\. Aurora releases

~~~
abrowne
Yes, I love lazy-loading tabs!

------
YPetrov
I used to be a Firefox user a couple of years ago and then when I switched to
Chrome I noticed a BIG difference in the performance. Chrome was faster and
more stable.

Now, similar to the OP I keep having issues with Chrome, the biggest of which
is its memory usage.

"Memory usage is off the charts and I frequently have tabs become completely
unresponsive."

In my case, it not only eats 2GB of my RAM, but also takes a bit proportion of
my hard-disk. I did a quick experiment yesterday and measured my FREE HDD
space before closing Chrome and after that.

Before: 800 MB free. After: 10.9 GB free :)

It's true I keep a lot of tabs open (>70), but 10GB.. I think that's too much.
Now, I'm considering switching back to Firefox, too.

------
tekahs
Firefox is great for his philosophy, but for my part, Chrome is better for
dev., performance, memory, etc. (And recently, I'm having a weird bug with
text while scrolling with Firefox).

Anyway, I think everyone here using Firefox AND chrome.

------
lelele
> The post is spot on. Firefox is a great browser, but reading the OP's last
> paragraphs, users rarely choose software for quality alone.

Quality is not the same for everyone. I have switched to Chrome, and it feels
like it's build much better than Firefox. Maybe Firefox is actually built
better, but as an user, I perceive Chrome to be better, starting with rare
crashes instead of Firefox's frequent ones. Yes, Firefox's crashes may be
because of its plugins, but that's a moot point, because without any plugins,
Firefox is too basic a browser.

------
cciesquare
Firefox is still slow as heck for me. Not sure what performance you guys are
talking about. I unfortunately have to use Firefox heavily at work. When I can
I use something else, sometimes even IE.

~~~
ubojan
you can try to reset profile: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-
firefox-easily-fi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-
easily-fix-most-problems) Also, AdBlock plus addon for faster and clutterless
browsing.

------
srgseg
Great timing - I just posted a Show HN about my new extension to save 95%
memory in Google Chrome

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5356823>

------
0mbre
Surf with Chrome and use Firefox for dev

------
DrinkWater
I switched my main browser Chrome to Canary some time ago. And recently i have
been using Firefox Nightly. And all i can say is that Chrome now lacks the
quality it used to have (yes, even in the canary build) and Firefox has gained
a lot in terms of stability, memory consumption and Dev-features.

The bad thing is: hardly anyone knows about this, because Google is investing
tons and tons of money for Chrome marketing purposes (and developer
evangelisation; a point you also have to consider).

Only thing i like more about Chrome: the dev tools

------
seferphier
Chrome lags a lot when dealing with HTML5 and hogs a lot of memory

------
johnward
I still prefer firebug over the firefox dev tools. The built in tools look
pretty but they aren't that useful to me. I just figured out how to show the
style window, but there doesn't seem to be any javascript tools. Where is the
console?

edit: After I posted this I figured I should dig deeper before I get all kinds
of negative comments. I found the console and also some other useful tools
that I didn't know existed. Things like the responsive view and scratch pad
are pretty cool.

------
andybak
Due to issues with memory usage on Chrome I recently tried switching back but
page rendering and UI response felt noticeably slower. I am also so fluent
with web inspector that the burden of re-learning Firebug or the built-in
tools was a drag.

So I decided that the easiest way to reduce Chrome's memory usage was to curb
my slightly irrational usage patterns - keeping dozens of tabs open that I
rarely ever get around to going back to.

------
writebuffered
The exact reason I jumped out of Chrome to back Firefox. Privacy. I will never
trust Google with my information and it seems they do collect it without me
knowing as well. I have scoured over Chrome's source code to see if they are
doing anything nefarious as tracking my url visits but still I never felt safe
in that platform. I moved to duckduckgo, Firefox and I am happy.

------
zhangtai
I have tried several times to switch back to firefox, but without success. I
have to use different computers almost everyday, chrome does the sync work so
well besides other functions, when I install firefox on a different pc, the
sync configuration is so conplex for me... but there are some excelent addons
on firefox I will miss, e.g. pantadactyl

------
the_gipsy
How about doing actual benchmarks? How about pin pointing how exactly google
tracks you more or better with chrome than with ff?

~~~
josephlord
> How about pin pointing how exactly google tracks you more or better with
> chrome than with ff?

Why? It can change it the next update. Or you can just use Firefox (and
NoScript) with much less worry.

~~~
the_gipsy
There is no evidence that chrome tracks you anymore than FF with google as
search engine. My gripe is that the article is all about "feelings" and makes
claims without backing them up.

------
tn13
Switching between Firefox and chrome will happen often for at least few years
to come. Chrome was a good thing because it brought some real competition in
the Market.

Webkit is supported by Apple as well as Google which happen to be worlds
largest companies. Firefox on other other had is open, non profit organization
giving a tough fight to both of them.

------
scotty79
I'm switching back from Chrome to Firefox because Chrome doesn't work for me
with basic Google services, like search, maps, gmail.

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/hsW8ls9...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/hsW8ls9XhQE)

It goes on and off. When I have this problem I switch back to Firefox for a
while.

------
Tenoke
This post seems weird to me as I recently switched back to Chrome for Firefox
precisely because Chrome is faster than ff. It is visibly faster for me and
most recent articles I could find after I googled 'Chrome versus Firefox'
showed exactly that - that Chrome is faster than Firefox on the more important
metrics right now.

~~~
derleth
And for me, Firefox is faster. By a lot, in fact, because Chrome loves to hit
the disk for every little thing, especially on startup.

------
e40
_I frequently have tabs become completely unresponsive_

This started happening to me a few months ago, and yesterday I had about 5
tabs do this. I even cleared the cache and restarted, and it happened again.

I've been having the same thoughts as the OP, and having fled FF around the
same time frame, perhaps I should give it another try.

------
_pferreir_
> Now it’s five years later and things aren’t so great. More than ever I’m
> having issues with general slowness in the browser.

Check.

> Memory usage is off the charts and I frequently have tabs become completely
> unresponsive.

Check.

> JavaScript errors occasionally disappear into the void instead of logging to
> the console.

Check.

Oh, my! I'm so glad I'm not the only one!

------
rth
First of all Firebug and million other addons are good reason to stick to
Firefox ;) Welcome back!

------
INTPenis
My story is similar but goes further back, I tried Chrome shortly but soon
learned that its only two noscript-options were flawed in various ways, mainly
they loaded all the javascript once before they blocked it.

So the only reason I use firefox today is due to noscript.

------
gokfar
Pentadactyl alone did it for me.

~~~
chojeen
Pentadactyl is incredible. I find it difficult to use a browser without it
now.

------
pavanky
> Chrome greets me with… sigh… Chrome greets me with a fucking advertisement
> for a Chromebook.

I have always used Chromium as opposed to Chrome. I am not sure why people
would go for the Chrome version if they really care about freedom.

~~~
luser001
Two reasons:

1) Where can I find official-ish Chromium for Windows?

2) On Ubuntu, Chromium always seems to be behind Chrome wrt updates.

I tried Chromium on Ubuntu, but switched because of the lag. Let me know if I
am mistaken.

~~~
pavanky
> 1) Where can I find official-ish Chromium for Windows?

Apparently this is the page to look out for.
[http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-
sna...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-
snapshots/index.html)

But looks like the downloading part is not straight forward. Look at the
second answer at in the following link.

[http://superuser.com/questions/203606/where-can-i-get-
chromi...](http://superuser.com/questions/203606/where-can-i-get-chromium-
binaries)

>2) On Ubuntu, Chromium always seems to be behind Chrome wrt updates.

This has to do with an Ubuntu repository (for chromium) vs PPA from Google
(for chrome). Ubuntu is always going to be a bit behind upstream. The same way
it is a few days behind upstream firefox or other software. If you absolutely
need the bleeding edge version of google chrome, either use something like
archlinux (where you get updates within a day or two), or continue with
Ubuntu, but use a ppa for chromium beta which is available from here
([http://askubuntu.com/questions/126092/where-are-the-daily-
bu...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/126092/where-are-the-daily-builds-for-
chromium-for-12-04)).

------
qwerta
I tried to switch to Firefox while ago, but there are two problems which holds
me back:

\- Firefox is horrible with inversive color theme (light text on dark
background). With Chrome it just works on 99% websites

\- KDE Firefox integration is horrible.

~~~
Noughmad
I use Firefox on KDE with a dark theme (obsidian coast). Parts of some pages,
like this very comment input on HN, specify either text color or background
color, but not the other, and so you get dark text on dark bg or light text on
light bg. However, these are relatively rare, and I have little issue with
this setup.

The KDE integration is also not that bad. I use ArchLinux and never installed
any special packages, and while tabs and menus do not look exactly like Qt/KDE
apps, the difference is barely noticable. And they are the correct color.

------
p6v53as
The ultimate parameter for me is speed. As much as I love Mozilla's open
source policy, I just can't use it because it is slower. RAM is not a problem
to anyone, so I prefer more RAM used than slower performance.

------
rishimoko
There must be some shifting in the geekforce. I just switched back to Firefox
a couple of weeks ago on OSX 10.7. Flawless, which is more than I can say for
Chrome or Safari.

------
debian69
Til people are snobbish and only use one browser , personally i use whatever
is avail i have no allegiance to one or the other just the one that works
first.

------
mariusmg
See you there. Most of us already made the switch (back).

~~~
canthonytucci
Do you have numbers to support that?

------
jpulec
Unfortunately, in my experience, Chrome's WebGL performance is several times
better than Firefox's. Upon several benchmarks, there is just no comparison.

------
dgesang
Reading blog posts like this makes me wonder if the author even considered
using Opera at any point in his painful journey with Firefox and Chrome.

------
Kurtz79
Like many, I also switched to Chrome when it came out, after many years of
Firefox.

Are there reviews/benchmarks that substantiate the article's claims ?

------
rkwz
>The “disable cache” checkbox in the developer tools seems to do nothing

I've the same issue. It works sometimes and other times it doesn't.

~~~
spand
You need to keep the pane open for it to have an effect. The relevant SO
thread: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690269/disabling-
chrome-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690269/disabling-chrome-cache-
for-website-development)

I actually like this behavior but obviously you need to know about it for it
to seem reasonable :-)

~~~
rkwz
Yes, I'm aware of that. But sometimes even keeping the dev tools open doesn't
clear the cache. Probably it's some bug.

------
sibilsalim
I've noticed Google Analytics tab in Google Chrome crashing often. Google
Analytics eats lot of memory in Google Chrome.

------
tommaxwell
I actually use Chrome because it syncs my settings between Chrome for Desktop
and Chrome for Android quite nicely.

------
webwanderings
> Chrome greets me with a fucking advertisement for a Chromebook

My solution for now is to use about:blank as a homepage.

------
3do
Built-in syncing service is still not user friendly. Persona may fix it in
future

------
baby
And firefox has Tree Style Tab. Makes it superior to any other browsers.

------
qoo
Why was this post showing as [deleted] a few hours ago?

------
prisonguard
Does the op know that the Mozilla foundation is almost entirely funded by
Google?

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation>

------
ghjm
Well, with both Chrome and Firefox on rapid mandatory release schedules, all I
can say is: Get comfortable supporting IE for large enterprise customers
forever.

~~~
martinced
Interesting... I've been consulting for one of the biggest of the biggest you
could dream of.

There's a tendency which you may have heard of: mobile (smartphones and
tablets) and there's a _lot_ of push for making these supported and available
to employees (the push very often coming both from the employees _and_ from
very high up the chain).

As a result mobile browsers support in large enterprise are becoming very
often _mandatory_.

Why do you think large enterprise are supporting browsers at all? why do you
think large enterprise are switching en masse to internal webapps instead of
internal desktop apps? To free themselves from a particular technology vendor.
It's the way they regain control. And you think they'd ruin all that by
mandating "IE only"!?

This is not at all what I'm seeing in the enterprisey webapp world. On the
contrary: the shift is to more platform, more standards, more openness.

~~~
stevewilhelm
Also seeing BYOD in small and medium sized enterprises.

------
g3orge
Chromium doesn't greet you with an ad. ;-)

~~~
lucb1e
Chromium doesn't have a built-in pdf reader :(

~~~
Shorel
I consider that a feature.

~~~
lucb1e
What, downloading, opening, closing and deleting a pdf file instead of just
opening a new tab with it?

~~~
Shorel
I simply click the link, and a real PDF viewer shows me the content. I close
the viewer when finished, and forget about it.

It's the same experience, except that the PDF is rendered right, the fonts are
nicer, and the scrolling is far better. I can also view it as a presentation
with slides easily.

------
brooksbp
I use Chrome because of the UI.

------
dmccunney
Speaking personally, I never _left_ Firefox.

I've been using Mozilla code since the Netscape 7.X days (and tried to use
NS6, but it was way too buggy.) I progressed from MS7 to the Mozilla Suite to
Firefox, and have stayed there.

I have Chrome (and Opera, Safari, Midori, Konqueror, K-Meleon, D+, and a few
other things including IE installed, but mostly to keep up on what others are
doing. Firefox is what I use in production, and I currently run Aurora (which
will be the next release when it gets out of beta.)

FF isn't the smallest or fastest browser on the machine I'm on at the moment
(and old netbook) but is the most capable. FF, like other current browsers,
makes assumptions about what you will run it on, and assumes a reasonably
current machine with a reasonable CPU, GPU, and amount of RAM. I have another
old machine I don't even _try_ to run FF on.

My reasons are tied up in the architecture. FF uses the Gecko engine, like
everything else Mozilla puts out. Aside from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Gecko
interprets and renders XUL, an XML language for designing user interfaces. The
look and feel of FF is determined by XUL, CSS, and widgets, and the browser is
simply an instance of something Gecko renders.

This makes it possible to create themes that change what FF looks like, and
extensions that modify and extend what it does, and that power is why I use
it. My RSS reader, IRC client and several other things that would ordinarily
be external programs are implemented in FF as extensions. Since the browser is
always running when I'm at the computer, this make things very convenient.

Other browsers like Chrome added an extension capability, but they are pure
JavaScript and limited by what the device API will let you do in JavaScript.
Half of what I do in FF isn't _possible_ in Chrome.

Chrome is a worthy browser, and I'm glad it's there, but it's not what I use.
It invokes somewhat faster than FF, but page rendering is equivalent, and
memory usage rises rapidly as you add extensions, so there's little difference
between FF and Chrome in use. Faster invocation is a non-issue here: I start
the browser when I sit down at the machine and simply leave it running, so a
few extra seconds to invoke it isn't a concern. Too many people have the bad
habit learned from IE of hopping in and out of the browser, and I just tell
such folks "You're doing it wrong".

On my desktop booted into Windows, I run FF from a RAMdisk. The desktop still
runs XP and has 4GB RAM, but 32 bit Windows can only use 3.2GB of it. I found
a RAMdisk driver that can use the rest and have a 768MBR ramdrive seen as Z:.
Firefox, its cache, and its profile all live there and FF is run from there.
It's _quick_. (Batch files populate the ramdisk on start up, and store the
contents back to HD on shutdown.) I don't believe I can _do_ that with Chrome.

------
kinnth
really refreshing!

------
wilfra
It's getting better and it's now overtaken Safari as my default when I need a
second browser. However I'll never consider switching back until they
completely eliminate popups of any kind. I never want to be asked to restart
the browser or update my plugins or anything. I don't care if Mozilla is
filing for bankruptcy and they are turning it over to Kim Jong-un - I don't
want a fucking popup announcing it.

Edit: immediately after making this post I realized there might be a way to
disable all popups and notifications. Is there? If so, I might give it a spin
for a week.

~~~
cpeterso
If you set the about:config pref "app.update.silent" to true, Firefox should
never show you an update dialog. A Mozilla user study showed that most Firefox
users restarted their browser at least once a day, so the update dialog
usually waits something like 12 or 24 hours. By then, most users will have
restarted their browser without needing to be prodded.

<http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent>

------
fakeer
Earlier it used to be ...-Firefox-Chrome-Firefox-... every 2/3 months but fot
that 1 year or so it's been just Firefox, happily.

I switched back to Firefox sometime ago. It got back its speed and crashes
less and fries my Mac less than other browsers. Well, on crashing part and
getting stuck part Safari is better than all others on a Mac(at least) but for
other purpose(for my usage) it's a pretty pretty useless browser. Safari uses
more RAM in Mac than Firefox/Chrome and for less tabs it uses more RAM than
both combined, it just does that in a different helper process.

Quick releases ensures FF gets thinks out and fixed faster.

Their mobile browser is not still there. I hope it becomes better so that I
can replace Chrome on my Android too.

There are things I wish were there in Firefox. Like manage tabs separately.
Like in Chrome. Visual tools/API(seems it's not that open, not sure) like
Chrome. I really liked Cortex extension of Chrome in Firefox(it was my
favourite).

And of course I love those people at Mozilla for always standing against those
privacy-killers and keep telling them to suck it up their -----.

~~~
Ygg2
I don't get about FF on Android, I find it more useable than Chrome. It's
about the same speed and it runs flash rather decently (as decently as Flash
can run on ARM).

------
martinced
People trading security (sandboxing) for performance (lower memory usage and
faster speed in Firefox) deserve to be a) owned and b) have their whole
browser crash when one tab crashes.

I'd be using Firefox if they started to sandbox all the tabs. To me the
argument that it's faster and use less memory because it's not sandboxed is a
_very_ poor one.

Actually that argument shows what is wrong with the mindset of many people in
our field.

You should never trade security for a bit more perfs.

~~~
venus
I don't believe Chrome took appreciably longer than Firefox to compromise in
the recent PWN2OWN competition. Chrome's sandboxing implementation is not a
silver bullet, and FF has run plugins out-of-process for some time. That said,
full sandboxing is probably preferable and I believe it is on the agenda.

------
Nux
Welcome back! :)

------
marvwhere
1) Firefox is the new IE7/8 - i having more and more issues with standard css
settings, which are f __ __* up in the ff, but are nice and shiny in all other
brothers (yes even in ie)

2) "I honestly believe Mozilla is committed to freedom and privacy on the
web." - haha thats funny :D you know about chromium right? :D its free, you
can code on it too if you want too, sure there are might be 1-2 functions in
the chrome, which belongs to google, but all in all you can know the code. and
google did there learnings after the first versions where they sending stuff
to there servers.

and in the end, all browser are logging the same shit, where are we clicking,
what are we doing, where we enter this and that. why? because they want to
make there money too, and collect a big big big database, which they can sell
to other companies. and learn stuff out of it. i guess on this view all
brothers are the same crap

3) memory management - yes its true chrome get stuck more and more often, and
eating the memory, and it is annoying. but for me, firefox still is worse.
everytime i start firefox for debugging some website or whatever, i'm totally
pissed, because this stupid software still needs like forever for the
initialised start. and when you keep it open for 2 days, you done :D in my
opinion even photoshop has a better memory management then firefox.

=

i hope for the chrome too, that the switch from opera to webkit, give them a
little ass kick, because that is that what all browser companies needed, an
ass kick.

first there was an IE everybody used it, so why should they update it? then
there was the firefox, ie was screwed, everybody used ff now, so why should
they update it? then there was the chrome, ff was screwed, everybody used
chrome now, so why should they update it?

and everybody took there lesson out of it, IE is getting better, FF starts
updating there browser after sitting on 3.6 like forever... and thats ok,
people now having like 3-4 good brothers and can choose.

~~~
ricardobeat
> in my opinion even photoshop has a better memory management then firefox.

Too far, buddy.

~~~
Tloewald
Photoshop actually lets you cap its RAM and virtual memory usage. Does any
browser?

~~~
gluxon
Do you really think capping memory usage comes without costs?

