
Firefox’s faster, slicker, slimmer Quantum edition now out - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/firefoxs-major-quantum-upgrade-now-rolling-out-to-everyone/
======
superplussed
My big question is whether people are really noticing such a dramatic speed
difference? I've tried it several times, and it seems like there is a
negligible difference, if any, between it and Chrome. And I'm a guy that uses
Sublime even though I like the feature set on VSCode better because I can't
live with the snappiness downgrade.

~~~
hashkb
No. I try FF nightly very often because I really want to dump Chrome. But then
it crashes (with devtools open, I should say; it's fine for regular browsing)
or grinds to a crawl. Every tab. Total lockup, always within a few minutes of
starting work.

~~~
eitland
OS?

Old profile?

~~~
hashkb
Linux. I will try deleting my profiles.

~~~
rhaps0dy
Perhaps you can install Firefox stable, now that Quantum is available there.
Nightly tends to crash more often; it crashes once or twice a week for me, but
I already expect that. I'm using it to feel good about helping Mozilla.

------
projektfu
I have several atom-based 2-in-ones that are now unusable with edge and
chrome, and installing FF57 (beta) brought them back to life. This is a great
performance improvement.

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reustle
I've been wanting to get back on Firefox for quite some time now, but the main
thing holding me back was that all of my passwords were saved on Chrome. A few
months ago, I moved to 1Password, so this is the perfect time to give it a
real try!

~~~
cthulhujr
For folks not using Chrome as their password manager. Firefox has a built in
utility to import passwords from Chrome. Personally, I use both. Chrome for
the less important things that I want super-quick access to (i.e. autofill)
and 1P for everything else.

~~~
jasim
I've been looking for a way to import passwords from Chrome into Firefox, and
was unable to find it. It is the only thing preventing me from using Firefox.
Can you point to some place have any link where this is documented? (I'm using
Firefox Developer edition.)

~~~
reustle
It looks like you can do it here: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/import-bookmarks-data-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-
bookmarks-data-another-browser)

------
PedroBatista
The UI is kinda sucky and for some reason every couple years they insist in
switching the location of basic things like the refresh button, favorites,
etc.

56 was already fast for me, didn't noticed much difference but it's a good
thing they woke up and started doing the work instead of all talk and fuzzy
feelings about other personal agendas.

~~~
scrooched_moose
I don't like the new default interface at all, but at least it's mostly
customizeable without addons.

I changed to the "light" theme, disabled animations
(toolkit.cosmeticAnimations.enabled;false), turned the title bar back on,
turned off all of the pocket/highlights junk on the new tab window, and
changed the density to "compact".

I like the experience now, except for the square tabs really bug me.

~~~
acqq
I can't make it to show a dropdown arrow in the URL box like any normal
dropdown would, at the far right of the box, always at the same place. They
moved the arrow to somewhere randomly in the middle, depending on the icons
inside of the URL box. Somehow these icons are more importan to them?

It seems their developers don't use that arrow? Or is it because Chrome
doesn't have it? I'm not using Chrome, but it seems the FF developers do, if
true.

------
MrBuddyCasino
I'm on 57 since some time now. It is certainly faster, but still not
competitive on macOS compared to Chrome. Responsiveness and especially cpu
load are quite high as soon as animations are happening. Is it just me?

~~~
tapoxi
Not just you. I've been using it on and off since Nightly and it drains my
battery fairly quickly. I'm back to using Chrome.

Ironically, I read this blog post
([https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-
era-h...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-
firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/)) in Chrome and
Firefox, and on Firefox the scrolling was noticeably slow to the point where I
found it distracting.

Edit: Turns out scrolling a simple page up and down causes Firefox to use 40%
CPU. Is it not using any hardware acceleration?

~~~
majewsky
Not sure if it's using hardware acceleration _right now_ (i.e. in v57), but
there's a new rendering component (WebRender) coming in one of the next
releases which does everything on the GPU.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Hardware acceleration is a feature in the options. I've not found that it's
very useful and had to turn it off for performance reasons.

------
arkitaip
I've decided to make Firefox my main browser after yesterday's discussion.
Migrating from Chrome was relatively painless:

* Firefox could import my bookmarks and, equally important, most passwords without a problem.

* Firefox's syncing capabilities seems to sync everything that's important.

* There's a built-in dark theme, people! It isn't applied to empty tabs, though.

* You can customize the toolbar. Not nearly as powerful as Opera's visual editor but better than Chrome's.

* Many plugins haven't been ported to 57.

* It uses a lot of RAM. I only have two tabs open and 5 plugins active yet Firefox uses 500 MB. Doesn't really bother me because I can sacrifice RAM for performance.

* The unified address/search bar is better than Chrome's because it actually consistently searches your bookmarks and not randomly like Chrome. Also, because you can add metadata to your Firefox bookmarks, you can add synonyms and what not to make searching for bookmarks even more powerful.

* I absolutly love that Firefox makes it possible to create custom search engines via the context menu. Also, you can easily add shortcuts to specific bookmarks? Brilliant.

~~~
seba_dos1
>It uses a lot of RAM

I think Firefox uses a bit more RAM than Chrome when being just opened with
fresh session. The point is - that value doesn't increase so massively when
opening more tabs as with Chrome. On my machine with 8 GB RAM, Chrome is just
unusable, as it eats the whole RAM and everything starts to swap. If you
actually use the browser, Firefox clearly wins regarding RAM usage.

Here, right now, with 136 tabs open and 20 extensions, Firefox Nightly uses 2
GB of RAM, with 0.5 GB being used by 1 one of 8 content processes (so probably
mostly by long-running Facebook tab, which is massive resource hog). Chrome
would eat the whole 8 GB somewhere around 30-50 tabs already.

------
bochoh
I am happy to see a return to the simplified options menu. When I do remote
technical support it's much easier to say click on the icon with three
horizontal lines then click "Preferences" rather than find the gear icon that
may be moved due to screen resolution.

~~~
Crespyl
Same.

I still miss Classic Theme Restorer, but the main reason I used it was to
bring back the old FF menu button, as I refused to use the weird "bag of
squares" menu that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Still feels like it's in the wrong place, and I feel like I should be able to
move it, but I'm starting to get used to the new one.

------
moduspwnens14
It's supposed to support FIDO U2F devices, but I'm unable to log into my
Google or Github accounts like I do in Chrome. I'm not sure if it's on their
end or Firefox's.

I get that it's an edge case, though. Has anyone else noticed this or looked
into it?

~~~
r3bl
It's available from 58 (so, not current release) and you have to explicitly
enable it in `about:config`. Search for "security.webauth" and enable what you
would like.

With that method, you can successfully login to GitHub and other services
using U2F. Unfortunately, not Google, because Google doesn't check if Firefox
has U2F support or not. Instead, it makes the assumption based upon the
browser agent.

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vermaden
Being faster is one thing (good thing).

Having most of extensions unusable - not quite.

Till 'UnMHT' or 'Custom Tab Width' and several other extensions are not
present for Firefox Quantum, I stick to 'slow' Firefox 56.

------
jljljl
Has anyone else noticed really slow performance on Google sites (especially
Inbox and Docs) with Quantum? Are there any theories on what’s causing it?

I really want to use Firefox more but I spend a lot of time in GSuite.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Google likely doesn't test/optimize for browsers other than Chrome as much as
they do for Chrome. It's similar to how Microsoft used to mainly test/optimize
for IE and if anyone complained they just told them to use IE.

------
blantonl
_should remain quick and responsive even under heavy load with hundreds of
tabs._

What is the use case where someone would require hundreds of tabs to be open?

~~~
Yoric
Actually, I'd like to revert the question: why would I close tabs? I generally
have a few hundreds of them opened, because it works.

Once in a while, I realize that I'm not going to read all of these things and
I remove most of them. But I'm glad my Firefox scales up to these use cases.

~~~
falcolas
> why would I close tabs

Anxiety at the "I must read this" a bunch of open tabs can create. Frustration
at being unable to find the tab I actually wanted to pull up out of the
hundreds available to me. Forgetting something I actually wanted to do because
it's buried in an avalanche of windows.

It's kinda funny to watch a colleague who follows that mantra try and find the
right tab, sometimes cycling through the 4-5 copies of the same website to
find the one with the proper state.

Then I see them do the same thing with terminal tabs/windows and cringe
because they can never remember where they are or where their windows are
connected to. Given that they have prod access and are connected out there
while also developing locally, I'm sure nothing will ever go wrong...

~~~
kodablah
That anxiety does not exist for everyone. I do a thing I call "immutable
browsing" with tree-style tabs. I open EVERY link in a new child tab (and I
might try to make my browser [0](shameless plug) support new-tab form
submission). When I no longer need the parent, I just close it and other tabs
move up.

Navigating a tree of your actions or your current context is actually way
easier than re-navigating a website. This is especially true with things like
API docs where you might open a bunch of things and constantly re-reference
them. Saving off trees and supporting a kind of quick-tab-find approach both
help here too. This also helps when navigating things like source repositories
on GitHub.

We don't tell people to retrieve files externally because their filesystem
makes it hard to find things. And we don't really chide people for too many
editor tabs open either because we have a navigation panel. Why is a browser
any different here?

0 - [https://cretz.github.io/doogie/](https://cretz.github.io/doogie/)

~~~
falcolas
> And we don't really chide people for too many editor tabs open either
> because we have a navigation panel

> Why is a browser any different here?

"navigation panel" In which case the tabs are effectively duplicated, and not
of much use.

> Navigating a tree of your actions or your current context is actually way
> easier than re-navigating a website.

It really depends on the size of the tree, and the speed of page loads. For
example, I keep a local copy of the Python, Go, and Boto documentation. This
makes navigation fast and simple, even in the slowest of browsers. Click on a
link, loaded (virtually) instantly. Hit the back button on my mouse, loaded
instantly. One tab, fast as I could ever ask for.

Ultimately, OP was asking why, I answered. No chiding intended, and only a
little judgement - but disorder is incredibly ineffective.

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Karunamon
Did 57 fix the profile rot problem? (wherein the user profile will eventually
start causing the browser to bog down over weeks and months of continual use).

AFAICT, it's still very common for someone with a "slow firefox" issue to be
told to nuke their user profile.

~~~
Anthony-G
I recently heard of user profile resets being touted as a solution to various
issues. I found it interesting because I’ve been using the same set of user
profiles for the past 10 years without issue.

Perhaps it’s a solution for problems caused by too many installed add-ons
(that may conflict with each other). I’m fairly conservative about what add-
ons I install and don’t have more than 10 installed at any one time.

------
rimher
I'm really glad that Firefox is back in the game! But I haven't got a
compelling reason to switch from Chrome just yet.

~~~
vog
Compared to Chrome, Firefox has the huge advantage that it is Free Software,
while Chrome (the whole package) isn't.

Compared to Chromium (the Free Software part of Chrome), Firefox has the
advantage that it has no anti-features in the first place, rather than having
the Chromium community trying to keep after Google removing each anti-feature
as soon as they notice.

~~~
nwah1
Mozilla is an independent advocate for the open web, compared with a for-
profit entity. This means the incentives are better. They try to fight the
good fights, even if they don't always succeed.

That's a key reason to support them.

------
ttoinou
There's no Policeman like extension avalaible now :(

~~~
hiyer
You can try umatrix - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/umatrix/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/umatrix/)

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MechEStudent
I dislike it intensely. What I had was working for me.

~~~
homero
All my add ons got disabled and many will never get updated

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pulimento
FF 57 feels quite good on my Mac, but it has an impediment to me to use it
everyday: Google Hangouts videocalls. I use GSuite on my organization, so I
use it practically everyday.

Any news on that? Will the introduction of WebExtensions might help?

