
Ask HN: How is Firefox Quantum for you? - MaxLeiter
Using Firefox Quantum on my Macbook Pro 2015, and overall enjoy it. However, definitely lags&#x2F;slows down&#x2F;hangs on sites like Messenger, Google Drive, Facebook, etc. Interested in hearing others anecdotal experiences.
======
brudgers
It is faster. It lacks a compelling use case for me. Quantum breaks the
productivity tools that make Firefox the best alternative for me. It flat out
breaks Firemacs and Menu Wizard.

More importantly Quantum broke my Greasemonkey code. It looked like an
ordinary "upgrade bug." I went to fix the upgrade bug. Objects created by
Greasemonkey code are no longer accessible from the developer console. That
kind of sucks but the fix is not that complex so I open the built in editor. I
save. Now more code is broken because dependencies can't be found. I roll the
code back and save. dependencies still can't be found.

I installed Firefox Extended Support Release [1] along side Quantum.
Reinstalled and reconfigured my addons. Copied my Greasemonkey files to the
appropriate location and now I am back up to productivity. One thing I have
noticed is that Firefox ESR is much faster than the last version of Firefox
before Quantum. I thought Firefox seemed to be getting slower for the past few
months. I think it was and that's part of why Quantum feels so much faster.

I hate not being able to trust Mozilla. But after this, I trust it less.

    
    
      Faster != more powerful
    

Quantum is closer to the sort of thing that concerns Stallman. It takes power
away from users. It has hard coded non-overridable keys. It impedes users from
modifying the Javascript running in their browser. It only reflects industry
practice. There's nothing best about it.

[1]: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/)

------
wj
Really fast for rendering but slows my whole system when watching video.

The biggest drawback for me is that I have taken Chrome's PDF support for
granted. I love being able open PDFs inside of the browser and then save them
from there to whichever directory I choose. With Firefox I have to save a copy
to the Downloads folder and open that in Preview prior to exporting a new copy
to where I want to save it.

Also miss the print preview in Chrome.

We'll see how long with experiment lasts for me. I love how much easier Google
has made my life over the years but I would like to move away from their
browser.

~~~
bzbarsky
You should be able to pick a location to save to directly from the prompt
Firefox puts up that asks whether to save or open in an app, and if so which
app...

------
arunc
Long time Firefox user here. Switched to Chrome when FF 53 got released.
Chrome, albeit RAM hungry, is fast! Tried Firefox Quantum after all the hype,
and was disappointed to see Firefox struggle with Whatsapp Web[1] and MS
Exchange webmail. The behaviour is same with beta and nightly channels. IMO,
Firefox is not there yet.

[1] [https://web.whatsapp.com/](https://web.whatsapp.com/)

~~~
Tomte
What does "struggle" mean?

WaWeb is working here.

------
LarryMade2
I'm on a i5 Linux System - Seems faster, haven't noticed as long stalling out
on long-scrolling infinty pages as previously.

Really miss my favorite plug-in "Tilt 3D" \- that, apparently, died of
attrition.

The transition from firebug to whatever has left me with stuff that doesn't
seem to work as reliably. Whether it is old UI remnants or new bugs it's hard
to tell...

------
EnderMB
I've switched over, and I'm loving it so far. The dark theme looks great, and
it's as quick as Chrome for me.

The only major downsides for me so far are:

* I have a lot of bookbarks on my toolbar that I ported over from Chrome, and they're pretty squashed together on Firefox. A bit of extra spacing would work wonders.

* Downloads being in a separate window near the top of the browser. I miss being able to visually see my downloads on the bottom, and having to deal with them when they were finished.

* The separate bars for address and search, especially when the address bar basically does search for you anyway.

* The dev tools. I was a huge Firebug fan, but when the dev jumped over to Chrome their dev tools became much better, and Firefox's native tools were far worse than before. They've caught up, but Chrome still feels years ahead of them in this regard.

------
kkoppenhaver
One of our writer's opinions:

[https://www.howtogeek.com/333393/why-i-switched-from-
chrome-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/333393/why-i-switched-from-chrome-to-
firefox-quantum/)

TL;DR

"I’ve been using Firefox Quantum non-stop for more than a week now, starting
from before its official release. For years, every Firefox release has felt
slower than Chrome to me. But Firefox is now a real, speedy, modern option
again. Enough so that I’m switching from Chrome back to Firefox. ... Overall,
Firefox Quantum feels about the same as Chrome (maybe even faster!) and offers
nicer text rendering and a few bonus features Chrome doesn’t. It’s an
excellent browser, and I’m sticking with it."

Disclaimer: I'm a developer at howtogeek.com

------
dorgo
You need to install an addon and a webserver to have your own html file in the
new tab. And even these two things won't give you location bar experience of
about:newtab. Location bar won't be focused and the url won't be selected. So
you can't just start typing. Mouse gestures don't work on about:newtab, nor on
any chrome url (nor do they work on mozilla.com). Mouse gesture are just an
example. No addon works on a chrome-url. At least some addons don't work in
private-mode, which makes private mode useless. I'm really curious how all
this pain does improve security (which was not an issue the last ten or so
years).

~~~
ChrisGranger
Does this help?

[https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/27/how-to-enable-firefox-
webe...](https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/27/how-to-enable-firefox-
webextensions-on-mozilla-websites/)

------
nozzlegear
I've been a Firefox user for a long time and so far really enjoy quantum. It
feels much faster, and I like the new design a lot. My one complaint is that
it doesn't support any of the touch gestures or even TouchPad gestures that
Edge does, so I'm only using Firefox when I've got my Surface Book docked with
a mouse and keyboard. Any other time I miss the gestures too much and switch
to Edge.

To be fair, that's a problem that Firefox has always had, but boy do I wish
they'd support gestures sometime soon.

------
wingerlang
Macbook late 2008, the scrolling feels way too sluggish. Despite having it set
to my main browser I find myself opening Chrome manually most of the times and
sticking there.

------
rl3
Having used Firefox as my primary personal browser since its inception,
Quantum feels like greased lightning to me.

I do use Chrome, but generally only for dev work, or edge cases such as video
on mobile.

It was surprising to learn that Firefox's market share had reached single
digits in recent years.

It's really nice to see Firefox catch up. Also nice to see Rust flex its
muscles.

------
mrdependable
I've been trying it out after all I've heard about it, but I'm just not seeing
what all the hype is about. Several sites I use will hang while loading, but
will work flawlessly on Chrome. Also, their import from Chrome didn't seem to
grab passwords which makes using it kind of a chore.

------
muzuq
I've heard quite a few anecdotal reports of FFQ being slow on certain
websites. I've had no such issues, and in fact really like Quantum. I've used
FF for a long, long time. I may be biased.

Edit: Had no slow-downs or hang ups on any of the mentioned sites (including
the whatsapp linked below)

~~~
MaxLeiter
What OS are you on?

~~~
muzuq
Windows 10

~~~
arunc
I am on Window 10 too.

------
dmarlow
I'm using it exclusively as my main browser to give things a try after hearing
so many people taking about it. I want it to succeed so we have healthy
competition in the browser space.

I cannot understand why modern browsers use so much memory though, it drives
me bonkers.

------
assafmo
I tried it. IT IS faster now but I don't see any difference from chrome. Also
the dev tools UI is not good IMO. What made me quit was when pressing the ALT
key toggles the top menu on ubuntu 17.10 and 5 minutes of googling didn't help
me fix this.

~~~
15DCFA8F
Try set "ui.key.menuAccessKey" to 0 in "about:config".

------
akulbe
Faster. Still an insane memory hog. I had 12 tabs open and it was up over 6GB
at one point.

I have LastPass, Acrobat, Grammarly, and OneTab extensions.

Certainly nothing that would seem like it'd use _that much_ memory. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
bzbarsky
> I had 12 tabs open and it was up over 6GB at one point

The next time this happens, do you mind filing a bug report and including the
about:memory output? That should at least help point in the right direction in
terms of finding what's using the memory...

------
nik736
Am I the only one that dislikes the dev tools completely? Compared to Safari
it feels like going back 3 years in time.

~~~
sebpmtl
So used to chrome dev tools. The debugging is great.and sources.

------
Tomte
Good.

Although I'm desperately waiting for U2F to actually work.

Anecdotally, some people see it working with GitHub, but I don't.

------
dmarlow
Slack calls aren't supported, which is a big downer for me.

