
Firefox Is as Fast as Chrome Now, and No One Cares - doener
https://www.theawl.com/2017/06/firefox-is-as-fast-as-chrome-now-and-no-one-cares/
======
romwell
Well, I personally switch to Firefox Quantum on all machines that I'm using.

It simply provides a smoother, faster experience than other browsers (on the
websites that I use, at least), especially so on older platforms.

I didn't like FF before the update. My all-time favorite browser is Opera 12,
but it doesn't work (or grinds to a halt) on many websites now, and its
closest relatives (Chropera and Vivaldi) don't offer that much on Chrome. I
tried Edge, too, but both Edge and Chrome are too resource-hungry for the 2008
machine I have at home. "Too many open tabs" wasn't a big problem in the dial-
up days, and I feel like it shouldn't be today, with supposedly much better
tech.

So far I don't have much to complain about the new FF; obviously, the
extensions are not there yet, but I don't rely on these anyway. All in all, I
switched to FF for technical reasons more so than moral ones (each year, it
feels more and more dirty to be enveloped in the "unevil" ecosystem, but
that's a separate issue).

Hope this addresses the questions that some might have before trying it for
themselves.

~~~
TylerH
Browsers didn't have tabs in the dialup days.

~~~
soganess
Mainstream browsers didn't, but tabs were around on windows since 1997.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetCaptor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetCaptor)

------
danjoc
>Maybe the internet really is over

The internet didn't open borders or create the happy place of free expression
we were promised. It was consolidated by a few big companies who control it
all. We're at the end game now. It's mostly a place of siloing, monitoring,
censorship, and conditioning.

DRM. Licensing. The W3C caved. FF ceded control to the bad guys. I'm sorry
Dave, I can't allow you to watch that video on this device.

Yeah, the internet is over. The original vision is long gone. FF is one of
them too now.

~~~
symlinkk
Yet it’s still much more open and free than iOS or Android, and it’s cross
platform.

The web may not be perfect but there is nothing else like it.

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bllguo
Well you have to be better than Chrome, otherwise why switch? I am a diehard
Firefox user, but if all you care for is speed then there is no reason to
switch until Firefox surpasses Chrome. There are transition costs.

For me one killer feature Firefox has is container tabs.

~~~
dingo_bat
For people to switch en mass, Firefox's features and speed will not help.
People have to start feeling problems with Chrome.

~~~
kaushalmodi
Ever hit Ctrl+S on sites like Gmail or Inbox on Chrome?

~~~
dingo_bat
No. What's that supposed to do?

~~~
kaushalmodi
Try it :) For me, Ctrl+S on Chrome on most sites hangs up the browser for few
seconds, even into minutes before it shows the File Save popup. And most of
the times, I do Ctrl+S by mistake out of habit has that binding is for
searching in Emacs.

Not sure why Chrome takes minutes to present the File Save popup, but that
action is instant on Firefox.

~~~
explainplease
The same thing happens to me! I always thought it was just Qt/KDE being slow
for some reason, but maybe it is Chrome!

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morxs
Sorry, but I care. I switch all my browsing to firefox now. I use chrome
occasionally due to some extension that help me transfer information between
laptop and my mobile, which I didnt see yet replacement on firefox extension,
nor the creator will port the extension to firefox.

There is still something that firefox quantum needs to improve, the new
extension support (either they provide backward API equivalent, or more
complete API)

I really missed the old opera, fast, lean and many features (bloated or not
bloated, that is just preference, IMO)

~~~
cosmie
Care to share that extension? I haven’t quite solved that laptop <-> mobile
sharing workflow yet, myself.

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deburo
Firefox surely feels pretty fast at loading and rendering content now, but it
still lacks in start-up time. From clicking on the icon in my taskbar to a
window showing up, Chrome still beats Firefox on Win10, and I close and open
windows enough times in a day that this matters to me.

As to the point of the article, I think it is a lost cause to convince users
to try a different browser merely because it is backed by a company motivated
by better morals. The Chrome team doesn't appear evil enough for it to matter,
and it still puts in excellent work. They make some heavily contested
decisions every now and then, but so far it has not affected my experience on
the websites that I use daily.

I like trying out Firefox every now and then, and on every fresh OS install, I
will install Firefox along with Chrome. However I always go back to Chrome
because of some silly detail. Today, it's because of its start-up time.

------
gpsx
I tried the new Firefox and it is very fast, at least for some things. I'm
working on a side project that really taxes the browser so I occasionally will
test on the other browsers. The old firefox was very slow for my UI where I
would drag things around. Now it is very nice. Maybe better than Chrome. But I
do have a few problems. This is too bad because all things being equal I would
prefer to use Firefox. So the problems...

First of all I am working on a windows machine. The standard UI elements on
Firefox are incredibly ugly, as in they look like something from a java
application 15 years ago. That is enough reason for me not to use it. Edge
looks the best and Chrome is only very slightly behind.

Secondly, the project I am doing is a sort of programming environment. The
debugger on Firefox is not working right for some reason. I am debugging
dynamic code (as in code that is not loaded from a source file but instead
entered by the browser user). So when I when I tried using Firefox I quit
becauseI couldn't debug the code I was writing in the app.

The last reason I don't want to use it may not be a great on but I'll say it
anyway - the rendering is a little different between Chrome and Firefox. That
maybe Chrome's fault. I think I fixed most cases in my app, but I still have
errors of a few pixels. In my particular case I am probably going to target
Electron also (or even exclusively) so it makes sense to work more in Chrome.

Just to add some additional info, Edge works really well. In most cases it
uses render rules more like Firefox, which is what makes me thing Chrome is
the problem there. The main problem I have with Edge is that it works really
well until it crashes. I can really tax the browser if I am working with a lot
of data and Edge seems to die the fastest.

My main conclusion is that the Firefox team did some great things, but it is
going to take more work to really get it to be an all around better or even
equal browser. That will be a tough task but I would like to see them do that.

~~~
romwell
>First of all I am working on a windows machine. The standard UI elements on
Firefox are incredibly ugly, as in they look like something from a java
application 15 years ago.

Perhaps you are using a version of Windows from 10 years ago?

It just isn't the case on Windows 10 - looks great (it uses the system UI
elements).

>Secondly ... the debugger on Firefox is not working right for some reason.

You mean the debugger in the web-based programming environment that you are
developing on is not working in Firefox? Is that a fault of the browser?

>The last reason: the rendering is a little different between Chrome and
Firefox.

>My main conclusion is that ... it is going to take more work to really get it
to be an all around better or even equal browser.

One of your criteria is that Firefox has to be literally Chrome in the way it
renders things. I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with it (unless you
change your mind).

It's already a better browser for my use case: leaner, faster, and has Reader
View button in the UI out of the box, which is great in general, but more so
if I'm at work.

Thanks for sharing your experience, though! I hope that you project ends up
working fine in FF as well :)

------
sj4nz
Firefox Quantum is almost perfect except occasionally something pegs it to
100% CPU making it unresponsive on a lower power laptop. I'm disappointed when
Google Hangouts reminds me that they have not made it work with anything not-
Chrome and I have to start it up.

------
kylehotchkiss
I switched to Firefox on my personal laptop. I'm always a little nervous about
rendering gotchas so I use chrome on my work laptop. I'm pretty happy with
firefox as all the ad-blocking I already use is built in and I've always been
weary about what Google is collecting from the browser as a whole.

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tinus_hn
> Firefox [...] functions as a meritocracy (a.k.a. videogame).

Uhh what? A meritocracy is an organizational structure where you can rule if
your ideas are good, not just if you are the boss or the owner or if you are
rich.

I don’t see how that is related to video games.

It kind of makes sense to let the people that are best at something do
something.

------
ratinacage
Article is from June 20, 2017.

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CalChris
I switched from Chrome to Firefox on iOS. Firefox is significantly better
there. I also switched to Outlook on iOS from GMail which is also
significantly better. It wasn't speed. Ads are annoying and they're especially
annoying on a 4" iPhone SE.

I haven't switched to Firefox on OSX yet. Chrome + adblock extensions on OSX
is pretty good and it hasn't given me a reason to abandon it there. But
Chrome+GMail on iOS gave me plenty of reasons.

------
georgeecollins
I care about Firefox because I worry that Google will prevent Chrome from
including anti-tracking plugins. There needs to be a viable alternative.

------
stevefan1999
I disagree on the "as fast as Chrome" part, in my synthetic (and unofficial)
uibench test, Chrome is still faster than Firefox Quantum by a certain margin.
(However I only did React and Preact test, other vdom engines are not tested)

I have an 8 cores, 16 threads Xeon E5-2660 CPU and 16 GB of RAM. And Quantum
is behind Chrome. Maybe it's an issue on Windows 10 I don't know?

------
tqh
Firefox development process is so bad/slow. New features will take ages to
appear. Mercury, Bugzilla are old relics and the review process is from the
90's and very strange. I think that is one of the reasons they copied
functions to XPCOM instead of fixing them in NSPR. It was easier to add new
stuff than get a review to fix existing code.

------
banku_brougham
I have disproven the article title with a single counter-example, therefore
conclude there is little value in the content.

------
tristanb
I wish it rendered things correctly.

~~~
richev
If you see any such issues, it's a quick task to report it to the Firefox
team.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-look-wrong-
or-...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-look-wrong-or-appear-
differently#w_report-the-website)

~~~
Strom
Reporting is one thing, but getting things actually fixed is proving difficult
even if you're very precise in pointing out problems. See VSYNC bugs for
example:
[http://www.vsynctester.com/firefoxisbroken.html](http://www.vsynctester.com/firefoxisbroken.html)

------
simooooo
I care. I use Firefox for all my browsing now. Haven't come across anything it
can't do. The extensions actually seem better and more diverse than chrome. I
actually prefer the UI to chrome also.

I only use chrome for web development now

------
EpicEng
here's why I don't care; FF simply doesn't work. No, really, it doesn't...
_for me_.

I'm sure it works for many, _many_ people, I'm just not one of them. I give it
another shot every year and it's always something. This year (~5 months ago)
it would randomly stutter (freeze every ~5 seconds) and, of course, when a tab
crashed, it crashed _everything_.

Now I know they _finally_ have separation via processes between tabs, but WTH?
Why did it take so long? Why did my pages begin to stutter? Why could I find
no resolution?

Meh, I'll try again next year, but I'm not holding my breath. Safari on Mac,
and still Chrome on Windows.

~~~
ksenzee
This is a bit like saying you're not going to try OS X because OS 9 was slow
and buggy. The code that made your pages stutter is probably not even in the
repo anymore.

~~~
EpicEng
No, it's a bit like saying I'm not buying a mac again because I've bought one
every year for the last 10 years and they were all crap. Seems reasonable to
me.

------
excitom
I care. It seems that bleeding edge changes to Chrome are breaking things.
Example: I use the Chase Bank website. Parts of it stopped working with
Chrome.

I'm back to using Firefox now.

*Edit: Someone downvoted this? What is this, reddit?

~~~
RickS
>It seems that bleeding edge changes to Chrome are breaking things

Breaking changes are an expected cost of being on the bleeding edge of
something.

The Canary (chrome) website[1] literally opens with the following disclaimer:

Get on the bleeding edge of the web Google Chrome Canary has the newest of the
new Chrome features. Be forewarned: it's designed for developers and early
adopters, and can sometimes break down completely.

Caveat emptor.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/canary.html](https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/canary.html)

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zaro
> Firefox is open source, but so is Chrome.

Chrome is not open source.

~~~
iLemming
Chromium is

~~~
zaro
Chrome is a different browser than Chromium. For example you install chrome
you get Adobe Flash automatically.

Yes they use the same render engine but nowadays the browser is more than
simply rendering html and executing Javascript .

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atonse
If I wasn’t already using safari, I’d switch to Firefox. But it’s already my
main non-safari browser (web dev, etc)

------
esturk
I just tried it and while I'd want to like it, the very basic requirement of
exposing a certain menu item is missing.

I'm looking for "Open Location..." so I can bind it to some shortcut but I
can't even find it anywhere. What's up with that.

~~~
TylerH
Are you trying to find that within the app or by right clicking a shortcut on
a desktop/search result in your OS? I've never heard of someone expecting that
option to be available from _within_ the application. And even so, that seems
like an absurd thing to cause you to throw your hands up and say to hell with
the rest of it.

~~~
esturk
No, this is in the menu bar of OSX that shows [File, Edit, View...] of which
should embed an item that says "Open Location...". It is there for Safari and
Chrome. This isn't just any item, it allows quick access to the omnibar. As it
is, it defaults to command+L and I want to map that.

It is part of the application and it use to be there. The fact it regressed in
feature is unfortunate but more so the shortcut allows me to perform
quicksearch on the omnibar which is actually very important to have. (Instead
of using the mouse to click on it). Just because you have never heard of
someone using it, please don't downplay its importance to others. It can be a
make or break feature.

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guywaffle
Try to avoid double negatives.

