
Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57? - alistproducer2
I haven&#x27;t used FF in years but I&#x27;ve been so impressed with 57 that I&#x27;ve finally come home. I&#x27;m wondering if I&#x27;m alone. If you switched, please let us know why you decided to switch.
======
jacek
I have switched to Firefox a long time ago. The main reason is privacy. I just
trust Mozilla much more than Google (I actually don't trust Google at all).

From Google Chrome Privacy Notice [1]:

    
    
      [...] Chrome usage statistics include information about the web pages you visit and your usage of them.
      [...] We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners —
      like publishers, advertisers or web developers.
    

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

~~~
on_and_off
>We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and
with partners — like publishers, advertisers or web developers.

I don't really understand the issue people have with aggregated information.
All the companies I have worked for have been tracking how people use their
product. It does not feel like I am invading somebody's privacy by tracking
that 20% of our users clicked on the banner in order to see the screen 'xy'
and among them, 67% clicked on 'ok' .

To be clear, I am only talking about aggregated information

~~~
jacek
I believe that no information about user actions and behaviors should be
recorded by a browser. It does not benefit the user in any way, only Google
and advertisers.

Also we should remember that data needs to be stored first before it is
aggregated. What happens with information about each single event?

~~~
tsuujin
As a web developer, this claim is patently false.

Reviewing aggregated user behavior data is how good UIs get built. It helps us
to identify pain points, confusing or misrepresented user paths, poor
hierarchy or site structure, poorly indicated calls to action, and many other
valuable metrics.

Every positive user experience you've ever had online has been derived from
countless hours of studying user behavior, and the larger the source the
better it gets.

Also note that aggregated user data is typically anonymous, but there is a lot
to be said for keeping it identifiable. Some of the best tools for debugging
customer support issues start by recording your clicks so a developer can see
exactly what caused an issue, rather than guessing and hoping.

~~~
butno
Those things are much more appropriately addressed by targeted usability
testing (eg in lab studies) where participants are aware of, accept, and are
compensated for being monitored.

Not by mass surveillance.

The perspective expressed, basically that anything is acceptable as a means to
optimise "user experience" (most likely so more money can be extracted) verges
on unethical and immoral, if the bigger issues of group and individual privacy
rights are considered.

Nevertheless, as a web developer you are most likely only gathering stats from
your particular web site, which is a different kettle of fish to browsers
gathering and aggregating data across many sites.

------
Xcelerate
I've used Chrome continuously ever since it was released, but today I switched
to Firefox on both my work and personal laptops.

Both machines are Macbook Pros, one 2012 and the other 2017, and Chrome feels
laggy on both. Scrolling is not smooth, and certain web applications are just
downright unpleasant to use (notably, Jupyter notebooks and Facebook).

I gave Firefox Quantum a try, and it's an amazing improvement. This is more
how I imagined computers to function in 2017 to be honest. There is no
noticeable lag on either machine. So I'll be sticking with Firefox for the
foreseeable future.

~~~
ConnerFritz
This has just convinced me to try it.

------
dmlittle
I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config -
privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me
to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different
browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use:
production and staging.

~~~
jelder
Chrome has this as a first-class feature, "People." I have one window open for
personal, and another for each of the AWS accounts I have access to. Sounds
from your description like FF can do this at the tab level?

~~~
inetknght
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think "People" also saves the browser session to
a third party server so that you could resume the session from another
machine. That's definitely _not_ something I want.

~~~
dragonwriter
Chrome has a sync feature that does that with or without using People, but
AFAICT People doesn't require using that feature.

------
scotttrinh
I've been using Nightly for about 2 months for personal browsing, and have
recently switched to using it for my web development job using containers, and
it's been great.

Biggest feature I'd like to see is a keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab
in a particular container, as opposed to Cmd+T opening an uncontained tab.

The Developer Tools still have a ways to go before they beat the performance
of Chrome (large source files lag), but it's perfectly usable and getting
better all the time.

All in all, I've been very happy with my switch, especially when Quantum
landed in Nightly: a noticeable increase in speed and snappiness!

~~~
smasty
When using the extension, you can use Ctrl+[dot] to open the container
selector and then use arrows/tab and enter to select the container to open a
new tab in. It's not as good as a dedicated shortcut, but it lets you open new
container tabs without leaving your keyboard.

------
vatotemking
Me, far too many times.

Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right
thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed
and go back to Chrome.

However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla,
non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was
immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages.

Now, the reason I always switch back to Chrome was because of the dev tools.
With FF Quantum, the dev tools have vastly improved and is on par with Chrome.
Its a bit wonky in some parts, but I can see that their UI are already in
place, getting ready to be fully implemented in future releases. I've been
using it as my main browser, wrote an add-on using their new API.

For those considering to switch, I suggest you give it a few days to be
familiar with the dev tools' UI/UX as it is not a direct copy of the Chrome
UI/UX. Other than privacy, its a really great product. Its worth the switch.

~~~
Manishearth
Please let us know if you'd like to see the devtools improved!

Also, the devtools are actually a React app ([https://github.com/devtools-
html/debugger.html](https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html)), and this
means that you can hack on them using ... your devtools (and any other
HTML/JS/React tooling you like)! And you can hack on them in any browser, and
use them to debug any browser (however some browsers may not support the same
debugger protocol features the Firefox devtools support). They're super easy
to work on and it's really fun.

(Of course, there's also a devtools "server" on the firefox side that responds
to the queries of the React devtools client, and hacking on that is harder,
but a lot of the stuff can be done without needing to touch this)

~~~
matty22
I really wish I could create my own theme for the dev tools. I just can't get
into the colors of the existing themes.

The dark theme is too dark/not enough contrast between background color and
text colors (pastel fonts on dark bg).

The light and firebug themes are too light and don't have enough contrast
between background color and text colors (pastel fonts on white bg).

The lack of bg/font contrast in the dev tools always drives me back to Chrome
despite really wanting to be a Firefox user.

------
alehul
Switched to Firefox on Macbook Pro.

It feels faster, but my two main complaints:

1\. While using the touchpad to go 'back', a page on Safari will show you the
page you're going back to. Chrome will at least offer an arrow animation
backwards. Firefox offers no such thing, often leaving me confused as to
whether it's registered. A couple times so far it has instead scrolled me up
the page a bit.

2\. I have nothing else open, yet certain actions (i.e. scrolling through
Zillow pictures earlier) will result in it sporadically using so much memory
that my computer's fans are audibly loud and the computer gets quite hot.

Nonetheless, I still would narrowly recommend it, though some of that is
likely to do with wanting to support Mozilla.

------
laurent123456
I've switched to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago in order to reduce my
reliance on Google's products (also switched to duckduckgo at that time). I
can't say I've noticed a big difference with version 57 as it was already fast
enough for my use previously.

------
bichiliad
With the exception of casting things to my chromecast, I've switched to
Firefox for everything. Performance isn't an issue, development tools are
really good, I can be "that guy at work who catches firefox bugs," and I'd
rather support Mozilla than Google at the end of the day.

------
corford
I never left FF so picked 57 up as a normal update. Love everything about it
so far except the new theme which is taking me longer than I'd like to adjust
to (not a big fan of the dark blue/cobalt menubar).

~~~
dochtman
You know there's a light theme you can switch to in Customize mode, right?

~~~
corford
I do now :) Thanks.

------
girzel
Switched yesterday, so far loving it! My objection to Chrome was mostly on
principle (anti-Google), so it's nice that there's a performance-based reason
to switch to Firefox as well.

Though I just ran into a problem that reminded me of why I stopped using
Firefox in the first place: I used xdg-open a lot (in Emacs), and Firefox
tries to supplant that whole functionality. It advertises itself as being able
to open pretty much every file under the sun, and then prompts you to choose
an application to _actually_ use to open the file.

I wasn't asking you, Firefox, I was asking xdg-open.

~~~
scrollaway
It's better than it used to -- until a couple of years ago, Firefox altogether
had its own awful version of xdg-open; had all the logic to detect file
associations, select apps etc.

In any event, you can edit ~/.config/mimeapps.list to fix it up. Hope that
helps.

~~~
girzel
I believe it's better!

But it is still trying to handle application/octet-stream. Ie, it must have
registered itself as a default fallback somewhere, and I can't find where...

~~~
scrollaway
Your DE may be at fault as some of them try to do "smart" defaults. xdg-open
itself may also be at fault (it's an _atrociously bad_ shell script -- you can
take a look at it if you want to debug it).

------
apetresc
I switched a few weeks ago when 57 hit the Nightly channel. The main incentive
towards Firefox for me has always been the Tree Style Tab extension[1]; it's
just that Chrome's better performance used to be a stronger incentive. Now
they're more-or-less equal on that front.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

------
exlurker
I switched recently because someone here said they switched due to privacy
concerns AND that it was really good. It struck a chord with me, I'm tired of
goog and all seeing corporations. And it really is good! I don't miss Chrome
one bit. Well done, Mozilla!

By the way, I also defaulted to DuckDuckGo as the search engine, and so far
I'm a happy camper.

------
vinnymac
I usually have around 100+ tabs open in Chrome at any given time on my 2014
macbook pro. I have been testing out Firefox 57 for about a month now. I am
very impressed by the devtools UI and the customization features. The speed is
something I don't have to worry about at all, and makes it easier to compare
Chrome to Firefox. I am fortunately not in a situation where any of my
addons/extensions are unsupported on either browser. It has been fun to
compare them and I think I will be switching completely to Firefox.

------
trumpeta
Me! I have been running nightly for the past couple of months and it is really
good. I use uBlock, Res, Ghostery and Imagus. I use Compact and Dark UI mode
and it seems more compact than chrome. Also I noticed it consumes a lot less
memory, but CPU is 50/50 I'd say. One thing that I find a bit weird is that I
find that some Google services work worse, like YouTube eats more CPU than on
chrome when it is not maximized and sometimes my connections to google time
out for seemingly no reason.

~~~
fhood
Should I get out my tinfoil hat or is it more likely that Chrome is just
taking advantage of optimizations that other browsers don't have access to or
knowledge of.

~~~
bugmen0t
They optimize for Chrome, since this is where their users mostly are and where
they want them to be. No tinfoil hat required.

~~~
trumpeta
yes, I don't think its intentional, just a consequence of Chrome having so
much market share.

------
matt4077
I thought network speed was the limiting factor for web browsing. But then I
tried Firefox Quantum.

I really don't have very many requirements for a browser except correctly
rendering content, having bookmarks, and auto-filling as many forms and logins
as possible. Since every browser more or less does these, I prefer Firefox for
the speed, and because I want to support both Mozilla the organisation, as
well as choice in the browser market.

------
Humphrey
I never stopped using Firefox, but for years was only using it for an isolated
development environment.

But I've been using Firefox 57 for a few month, and it's great. I still use
Chrome, but I'm probably spending equal time in both now.

------
aewens
Back when Firefox originally came out I was one of the first few adopters of
it (primarily to escape Internet Explorer), but left it back in 2008 when
Google Chrome came out because of it's speed. However, almost a decade later
after having issues with Chrome on my new Linux rig and hearing all the fuss
about Quantum I tried the Firefox Beta about a week ago (I'm not a patient
man) and immediately fell in love with it. Not only was it faster, but it used
half of the system resources that Chrome was using! I know some people are not
thrilled with the loss of extensions, but having come to it at this time of
transition I found all the extensions I had on Chrome and a few others that
made my web browsing experience better than ever. I'm very excited about the
new changes in Firefox and can't wait to see where they go from here.

------
alistproducer2
I guess I'll start it off. I've done a apples-to-apples compare on memory
usage of 7 tabs with the same content and FF57 came in at 514 MG to chrome's
512 so that's basically a wash.

The speed has been the main factor along with being able to step away from
Google, if only a little bit.

------
jpeeler
Yes! I wanted to switch back once Electrolysis [1] was turned on, but didn't
believe the speed was comparable enough. Now, it is though.

I stayed on Chrome for a while because Google Chrome became the best supported
way to run flash for Linux users. Fortunately, these days I see flash less and
less. So I'm not even going to bother installing it in Firefox (though I did
think this plugin to run Google's flash plugin was interesting [2]).

There are a few things I'll miss from Chrome. I'm currently a Project Fi
subscriber, so I get my texts over hangouts (despite it looking like the
writing is on the wall for that service) and used the hangouts extension
heavily. I'd like to have the ability to cast a tab to my Chromecast. I'll
also miss the fact that Chrome has a setting that allows relaxed localhost SSL
verification (via chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost - am I missing a
Firefox setting?) Lastly, this has been mentioned in a few other comments, but
for some reason I really like to be able to scroll through my tabs via
mousewheel.

Changing browsers has caused me to reevaluate my workflow. I never really
looked into changing this in Chrome, but the tree style tab add-on really is a
better way to handle lots of tabs. And I very much welcome the multi account
containers add-on as well [3].

I'm repeating the blog of Mozilla when I say, this is just the beginning. I do
believe that as more and more Rust is utilized, things will become even
better. Super glad I'm able to enjoy using Firefox again!

[1]
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis)
[2]
[https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin](https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin)
[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

------
jnevelson
I tried (again) to switch to FF yesterday when 57 was released, and
unfortunately still ran into a known bug that makes it practically unusable
for me: FF treats underscores as punctuation that breaks up a word, so given
text "foo_bar", if you double click on "foo" or "bar", it doesn't select the
entire word. This goes against all conventions of Chrome, other text editors,
etc. It seems trivial, but as developers we deal with underscores a lot, and
copy text out of our browsers frequently.

There's been a bug open about this for 15 years now:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175)

~~~
Mandatum
That's possibly one of their strangest edge-cases I've seen for someone to
dismiss a product. Or is this a case of HN-level trolling?

~~~
jnevelson
Haha. I can see how someone would think I'm trolling, but I assure you I'm
not. It's a pretty deeply-ingrained behavior that I perform quite often, so
yes, it does make a difference. FF57 is still not so much better than Chrome
(to me, anyways) that it's worth dealing with re-learning this for me.

------
hetspookjee
I switched long ago from chrome to Edge because chrome can't scroll smoothly,
it just can't. Firefox also wasnt able untill I think about 2 months ago? Not
sure. Either way, I switched from Edge to Firefox 2 months ago because 1) Edge
is a really poor browser aside from 4k video and the scrolling experience and
2) Mozilla is a great comany with a great product with such an insane amount
of fearures. I just like smooth scrolling so much that I wasn't able to use it
till it finally offered that feature. Couldn't be happier with Firefox ATM.
Thanks Mozilla

------
jvzr
I had switched to Chrome a few years back, and had more recently switched to
Opera (Blink) before it was bought up by the Chinese. I switched to Firefox
when Nightly 57 was released, and haven't looked back since. Couldn't be
happier.

It's a pity so many long-time users of Firefox feel distraught about the
Extensions kerfuffle, but fwiw if that allowed Firefox to get fast, then I was
all for it.

For my use cases, the available Web Extensions are enough. And I have even
started to use Tree Style Tabs, while I was more than fine with regular
horizontal tabs before.

------
Cyph0n
I switched yesterday from Chrome to FF 57 on my MBP 2014. Chrome was faster,
but now FF is the clear winner. On Windows, I have been using FF for the past
10 years. Also, Firefox Sync is just amazing.

------
hosh
I already use container tabs for my dev. (Usually have to test an app using
multiple test accounts). I have not figured out how to run a second copy of
Firefox that is fixed into a different workspace -- but if I ever do, I will
switch on my work laptop.

My personal laptop, an old 2011 Mac Air is definitely switching. Chrome just
runs too poorly on that now, and container tabs is too useful.

It's really interesting, feel like coming to full circle. 10 years ago, I
switched to Chrome because of the multi-process isolation -- Firefox leaks
pretty badly then.

~~~
bugmen0t
What you call workspace is likely called profiles. Try running Firefox --new-
instance -p

~~~
hosh
What I call workspaces are an OSX-specific feature. I already knew about the
`-p` flag.

------
joshka
I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable).

The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add
search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-
service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that
service again by typing `some<TAB>my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed.
Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the dev store.

~~~
forapurpose
You could use bookmark keywords in Firefox, which provide a similar function:

1\. Create a bookmark for some-service.example.com/search?q=foo

2\. Open the properties for the bookmark. Replace "foo" with "%s" (the
universal string for bookmark keyword variables). In the keyword field, type
some letter or string you'll remember; I'll use "q". Close the properties
dialog.

3\. In the URL field, type "q my-search-terms".

(At least that worked in older versions of FF.) It requires more setup, but
works permanently.

~~~
ospfer
It appears that this process has been streamlined a bit. If you right-click in
a search field on any site, the context menu has an option to "Add a keyword
for this search." The new bookmark will then be created with the "%s" string
in the appropriate position in the URL to make this work.

I've set it up for a number of sites since converting over to Firefox
yesterday and have yet to find a site that this method doesn't work for.

------
FabianBeiner
I did, because it just felt good to be back again. I also switched to Firefox
on my Android now, because I can't life without the bookmark sync and stuff.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Is it on the Play Store yet? Whenever I look it up, the non-beta version is
still at 56 on my Nexus phone.

------
submeta
Can any Firefox pro here help me with the bookmark manager of FF? I can assign
keywords to bookmarks (shortcuts), and I like that a lot. So if I assign the
keyword `hn` to
`[https://news.ycombinator.com`](https://news.ycombinator.com`) I just need to
enter `hn` in the URL bar.

But assigning a keyword to a bookmark is too many clicks away: I need to open
the bookmarks manager (`show all bookmarks`), select a bookmark, look at the
bookmark properties in the bottom, expand two more fields: keyword and
description.

Now is there a shorter way to get this? Or an add on that works with FF 57?

Also: Is there a way to filter all bookmarks with keywords assigned to them?
This question has been asked in [1] several years ago, and back then it was
possible to add a `keyword` column to the existing columns in `manage
bookmarks`.

[1] [https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can-
fi...](https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can-filter-
bookmarks-with-non-empty-keywords)

Edit: Added an explanation for the `keyword` feature.

~~~
Mandatum
It appears they've removed the "Import" button, or hidden it away somewhere.
In the meantime, if you're looking to make the switch and can't find it - it
looks like you can drag and drop from Chrome bookmarks one at a time.

EDIT: It appears to be completely removed from 57.
[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.places.importBookmarksHTML](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.places.importBookmarksHTML)
no longer exists. It makes sense given they've heavily moved away from the
HTML storage.

It was nice however, being able to quickly and easily share my workstation
setup with new hires.

------
kbd
Was considering switching, but didn't see a way to select multiple tabs at
once to drag into a new window like you can in Chrome.

~~~
guilhas
With this add-on you can select multiple tabs. Since before chrome existed.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multiple-
tab-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/)

------
gressquel
I just switched. Long time chome user aswell. The new FF has adopted the same
design as Chrome and that is what brought me over. I think Chrome will lose
some market share soon. I am actually a loyal person but Google started
abusing its power to dictate how developers should write code. Aswell as
putting unecessary constraints on things. Pissed me off

------
alanbernstein
Firefox was my first choice ever since it came out, but I stopped using it
when it got unstable a few years ago (even on a brand new macbook!). I've been
using nightly for about a month with no crashes, so I'm mostly happy with it.
Sometimes it goes crazy with CPU and I have to close a few tabs. I'm still
using Chrome as well, for now.

------
ohazi
I switched on my work laptop a few months ago, with the knowledge that 57 was
the one to look out for. Got the update yesterday and was impressed enough to
switch at home as well.

I've also been using Firefox on my phone for a while now, specifically so that
I can run ublock origin and video speed controller, since mobile chrome
doesn't support extensions.

------
mud_dauber
I did a few weeks ago. (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.)

Chrome developed a weird habit of trying to render a semi-random URL as the
default home page. Google's customer service folks asked for a couple of
screen shots, then went radio silent.

I've switched & love the improvement - it's quite impressive. Unfortunately
Chrome is on its way to being the iTunes of browsers.

------
ojame
I've given it a decent shot - but it still has very average profile support,
which I use daily. In Chrome, it's easy to see what profile I'm using (top
right corner of the window), and very easy to switch.

In Firefox, you need to go to about:profiles to even see what profile you're
currently using.

~~~
ccakes
Check out Containers - it goes a long way towards solving this problem. I also
used to rely heavily on Chrome profiles

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)

~~~
ojame
Containers seem like a compromise that I can live with to give FF57 a better
shot.

They share history/bookmarks, which I'm not a fan of. I prefer my work
profiles not to have reddit/hacker news etc. in the auto fill address bar.

------
dorgo
Nobody else has a problem with new tab? Really? I used to have a (local) html
page as new tab. Guess what? They disabled this option a year ago. Ok, a nice
person created an addon to recreate this option. It's called "new tab
override". There is a version of this addon for firefox 57. But firefox
doesn't allow addons to access file: urls for security reasons. So the
recomendation of "new tab override" is to install a local web server. Wait a
moment. I need an addon + a local web server to run a html file in new tab?
Seriously? By the way: mouse gestures don't work in new tab (nor on
mozilla.org) because its a chrome-url and addons are not allowed to access
chrome-urls.

Firefox 57 is really nice. But somehow it is a little pain.

------
submeta
It's been years that I abandoned Chrome ;) Was using Safari mainly and Firefox
for web dev purposes. But FF 57 impressed me so much that I switched a couple
of days ago, moving all my bookmarks, history, plugins etc to FF. Goodbye
Safari, hello FF. :)

------
bad_user
I switched to Firefox about 3 years ago (can't remember exactly), because it's
a better browser for me.

Chrome was built for web apps, the other browsers were slow to adapt, so my
initial use-case for Chrome was keeping stuff like Gmail and Slack active. But
this slowly faded away. Slack has a desktop app and continues to be a piece of
shit and for email I use MailMate ([https://freron.com/](https://freron.com/))
which is awesome btw.

This meant that keeping persistent tabs with apps around wasn't such a
priority. And in terms of usability, Firefox has had the better browsing
experience for quite some time.

Of course Firefox is now multi-process, stability and speed improved, I see it
using less resources than Chrome and it's now good for web apps as well.

I love Firefox's Awesome Bar, I love its new "Multi-Account Containers" add-on
[1]. I also used an add-on for vertical tabs which was cool, but now due to
the migration the community has to rebuild those. But seeing what they
delivered with Quantum, I don't mind.

From a technological, under the hood perspective, Chrome used to be the cool
one. But now Firefox is slowly getting powered by Rust, which gets integrating
for multi-core rendering algorithms. How freaking cool is that? Mozilla
invented their own programming language in order to make Firefox better.

Firefox is the best browser right now, but even if it weren't, I would still
use it because I've learned to trust it and Mozilla that they are protecting
my interests — I don't want another Internet Explorer, which Chrome is
becoming due to its huge market share.

Oh and I also use Pocket, now that Mozilla bought them. Could use some
improvements, I'm still waiting on them to deliver the source code as
promised, but it's a cool service and I'm happy to pay them some money.

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

------
cannonedhamster
I just switched back on the latest release.

* Sadly I'm missing a single really important Add-on and there are some annoying and apparently long-standing bugs that have been ignored and I've had to work around, but otherwise it's a major improvement and it's good enough to work with.

* I'm glad that they've ditched the rounded tabs and cleaned up the interface.

* I'm still annoyed that Pocket is integrated into everything without an option to disable it.

* It is dramatically improved in speed and stability.

* The browser animations are very pleasant.

I'm giving it a chance to shine for the next week or so, if there are no
blockers I'll probably end up sticking with it.

~~~
quesera
You can disable pocket.

Nav to about:config then search for extensions.pocket.enabled and do the
obvious thing. :)

~~~
cannonedhamster
Nice, thanks for the heads up on that. A small thing makes a surprisingly big
deal. I'm unsure as to why that isn't available in options other than the
monetary reasons. Nothing against pocket personally, I just clutter it up
enough on my own. :) Cheers.

------
dtf
2010 macbook, Chrome user. Things are generally slow, but felt like they got a
bit snappier after the High Sierra upgrade. I tried FF57 but for me it feels a
bit slower than Chrome on this older device.

------
bowlich
Switched back when Rust went alpha. It encouraged me to really look into some
of the side projects that Mozilla had going on and it made me really want to
support them and see those projects succeed.

------
chrisdavar
I have couldn't be more happier. The ability for Firefox nightly to modify
requests and resend is a bonus. Also less sluggish and quicker. Ublock origin
and last pass both supported with nightly.

------
ccakes
I've been on FF Nightly for the last couple of months but recently switched
back to Safari. On a MacBook 12" (i5) Firefox did terrible things to the
battery life and generated enough heat that I'd often find the CPU throttling.

Neither Safari or Chrome have the same issues. I haven't really tried FF since
the nightly jumped to 59 but I keep it updated and occasionally check to see
whether this has been fixed.

------
on_and_off
I tried to yesterday.

Gave up after two minutes when I did not see any performance change. I have a
recent machine where Chrome is already pretty fast, I am not sure in which
conditions it slows down, but it looks like they don't apply to me.

Also, I would need a plugin in order to allow me to access my chrome tab
history in Firefox.

That way I would keep the same multi device experience while switching to FF
on desktop.

Otherwise, I lose a big feature I use extensively.

~~~
yoklov
You should be able to import your history from chrome, and then use firefox
sync.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're looking for?

~~~
on_and_off
I mean being able to :

\- use chrome on Android (with chrome tabs and autofill it is a pretty nice
experience)

\- firefox on the desktop

And from any of these two, access a common list of opened tabs on all my
devices. Actually, since Chrome on Android does not support extensions, no way
to do this both ways, bummer.

~~~
neurostimulant
You can use firefox mobile instead of chrome on your mobile device to get the
bookmark/history syncing with desktop firefox.

~~~
on_and_off
yeah but that means moving all my usage (desktop and mobile) to firefox.

I feel it is harder for FF to compete on mobile.

How does it integrate/compete with Chrome tabs on Android ?

------
jitix
Not switched default browser yet but I'm using FF57 as my main browser on my
home PC and mac. On chromebook I'm stuck with chrome lol.

So far browsing websites seem to be faster in general but when I use complex
webapps like Spotify, JIRA, Netflix, etc. chrome still seems faster. I'll
probably use for 2 weeks before I commit on a full switch (and import my
bookmarks and switch over my work PC).

------
ethhics
I switched a few weeks ago, and this week I've switched to Nightly. I haven't
used FF in around 5 years, and it's much, much nicer now. Containers are
great, the customizability is awesome too: I wanted the bookmarks toolbar to
only show up on the new tab page, and it took a single CSS rule to make that
happen. Not to mention I feel it's more privacy-friendly.

------
grahamgooch
I downloaded FF today, it's zippy. But I rely on dozens of Chrome extensions.
That's one of the things I like about Chrome -- its extensibility. HOwever,
Chrome is a memory hog, it routinely destroys the 16gb of memory and the
battery of my MBPro.

When FF has sn equivalent set of extensions, I will happily dump Chrome. Until
then, it appears I'm stuck with Chrome

~~~
Manishearth
Chrome extensions are now compatible with Firefox.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-
store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-
foxified/) may help converting the format.

Extensions which are incompatible can usually be ported with minor changes;
IIRC at this point Firefox has all the APIs chrome does (and more), however
certain things slightly differ (e.g. the chrome.foo API is browser.foo in
firefox).

------
gtklocker
This is making me really curious because while Chrome is buttery smooth on my
Macbook Pro, Firefox 57 is really sluggish, especially when creating/closing
tabs. You can literally see the animation stuttering. Other times when a page
loads it won't paint for some seconds even if it appears that it has completed
loading. Is anyone else having these issues?

~~~
rene_bg
I have some similar issues. Sometimes Firefox lags after loading the page
(around 1 sec), but eventually works fluently afterwards. It feels like it
needs to warm up the engine.

I noticed that disabling "smooth scrolling" in the settings helps with initial
scrolling issues.

However, in general I have the feeling that FF57 is faster than before. Could
also be that I now focus on the loading times more than usual. A restart of
Firefox helped yesterday after the upgrade to 57.

I have a MacBook Pro 2015 and am Firefox user since 1.0 ;-)

------
scrollaway
I really, _really_ wanted to switch, but I saw that switching tabs with
mousewheel (which can be done in Chrome and most other Linux apps) is still
not possible, and the Tab Wheel Scroll extension, which I previously used to
work around the issue, is no longer compatible.

So Firefox is unfortunately an unusable web browser for me :/

------
aylmao
I use Chrome as my secondary browser only when I need to inspect/develop, but
I'm using Firefox more often now.

------
pllbnk
I have been always using Firefox and also Chrome (and more recently Opera) as
a side browser for various less important activities. 57 didn't surprise me at
all. It was good before and is still good now, nothing dramatically changed
from the user's perspective since the 56 or other versions before that.

------
YouKnowBetter
I try / use FF every once in a while again. Always for specific test cases.

But switching? NO. Why? Since currently only Google takes security serious and
has the resources to actually do that. I understand and accept that "google
knows thing via chrome" but they are not (a significant) part of my
threatmodel.

------
elrodeo
I switched already 2 months ago on mobile because I got tired by non blockable
ads in Chrome and absence of any reading mode. To be in sync with the desktop
I switched on the desktop too. Never looked back. And now with the new UI it
even looks nicer than Safari imo. Looking forward to 57 on mobile.

------
baggachipz
I have, temporarily. Some bugs and occasional slowness, coupled with more
memory hogging, have me reconsidering.

~~~
derefr
FF57 still consumes more memory _than Chrome_? For the same tabs? Or are you
maybe experiencing some
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation)
— opening more tabs because they mostly "feel" lighter-weight?

~~~
baggachipz
I opened the same exact tabs in both FF57 and Chrome (7 each) and sorted by
memory usage in Activity Monitor. When adding up the main task and helpers,
FF57 used significantly more.

~~~
seba_dos1
The pattern I noticed is that with small amount of tabs Firefox can consume
more RAM, but the situation quickly changes in favor of Firefox when opening
more of them.

------
potta_coffee
I'm proudly using Firefox, for several months now. When they initially
launched FF Developer edition I tried it out, but it was just too slow. Now
Firefox is very fast, the developer tools are great. I love it and I'll never
willingly use Chrome again (maybe for testing/ QA).

------
x25519
Is there any way to disable alphabetical sorting of network monitor's HTTP
response headers?

From 53.x (IIRC) to 56.x, Firefox keeps the original order set by the server
(like the one you see in the _raw headers_ section or `curl -I`), and I like
it that way.

------
steven_pack
Yep. Like to see some competition and I’m a huge fan of rust, so like to
support it any way I can.

I hit minor compatibility issues on some sites, but it’s rare.

Main thing I miss is auto shrinking tabs. FF doesn’t support the bajillion
tabs methodology so well right now.

~~~
Grumbledour
Ha! That's funny! I used to say the same thing about chrome because the tabs
shrunk so much I found them unusable. Also, opening too many tabs always gave
me out of memory errors.

But maybe you can get it more to your liking by tweaking browser.tabs.tab in
about:config?

~~~
steven_pack
Yes! This helps a lot actually. Thanks!

------
tbirrell
I tried to switch, but FF does not allow local files to be loaded. Since I use
a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts (which I save and edit locally), it was a non-
starter for me. Perhaps if they ever fix this issue, I might try again.

------
hprotagonist
I never stopped using FF.

I'm holding off on upgrading until I find a replacement for TabMixPlus. I need
something that will ensure:

1\. middle-click to open links in new tabs. 2\. address bar, search bar, and
bookmarks open in a new tab by default.

~~~
scrollaway
Your #1 is already the case by default. Mid-clicking bookmarks and items in
the URL/search bar should also just work to open in new tab.

If you're talking about entering an url and having it open in a new tab, that
I don't know.

Still looking for scroll wheel to switch tabs though... :|

~~~
hprotagonist
yeah, i want whacking the enter key to basically be guaranteed to give me a
new tab.

------
tym0
I switched on a trial basis, I am definitely liking the smooth UI, I can't
stand the way it handles many tabs though, I find it even worse than chrome
hiding the fav icons, for me Opera is doing it better.

------
FlyingLawnmower
I switched. I really like the performance boost, and it just generally feels
"snappier". I also had a long seeded desire to support FireFox, so now felt
like a great time to jump ship.

------
laci27
\- It feels a lot faster than Chrome \- It uses less memory (especially with
many tabs open) \- multi-account containers are a game changer \- I think it
also looks better than Chrome

------
pitaj
I've been running FF Nightly for weeks now, and I really like it. It feels
snappier than Chrome, and I hope it can bring back a significant portion of
developers as well.

------
skizm
I want to uninstall chrome, but can't find a good replacement for chrome
report desktop. It just works so seamlessly on all devices, including mobile.
Any suggestions?

~~~
Viper007Bond
I use TeamViewer personally. I prefer it to Chrome Remote Desktop.

------
giomasce
I have been wanting to switch to FF for a lot of time, but insufficient
performance used to hold me back. With FF 57 there are no excuses anymore,
it's fantastic!

------
gradyj
I switched to test it, not sure yet whether or not I will stay using it all
the time. I definitely notice the speed and the built in screenshot support is
pretty nice.

------
Mandatum
I'm switching over today. Performance was my only gripe with Firefox
previously, and I really dislike the idea of feeding Google my usage
information.

------
danilocesar
I rely on Chrome and Google's integration. I'm pretty sure I would catch on
fire if I try to change...

ps: I use both, chrome for personal stuff and FF for work.

------
peyloride
I did the switch. The only time I switch the Chrome back is using to debug
some angular code. For an odd reason, Firefox shows stack traces too ugly.

------
fooker
The interface still feels less streamlined compared to Chromium. Also sync was
hit and miss, the same as 3-4 years ago when I last used Firefox.

~~~
Viper007Bond
Odd, sync works great for me. I keep a huge history (365 days) and it syncs
perfectly between all of my many devices.

------
svardhan
Hadn't opened FF for a while now, but started using it as my second browser
along with chrome since yesterday and am pretty impressed.

------
inetknght
I switched from Opera to Firefox with Firefox 56. Firefox 57 is just amazing
-- although I had to go and kill all of that pocket bullshit.

------
asidiali
Switched to Nightly about a month ago and haven’t looked back. Orders of
magnitude better since I ditched FF a few years back.

------
sparrish
I just tried to switch again. Felt slower than chrome for the sites I use and
my computer fans were spinning faster.

------
Scarbutt
I can't, relying heavily on google docs and google keep lately.

I have been browsing with FF 57, Chrome still feels faster to me.

~~~
sp332
What's different in Google Docs in Chrome, that Google Docs in FF is missing?

~~~
Scarbutt
It freezes in FF from time to time.

------
sridvijay
I just switched too, seems very snappy, and honestly I just wanted a change in
browsers (not sure why!)

------
kpwags
I switched about a month or so ago once Nightly hit 57. I have to say I love
the speed and performance of it.

------
esaym
I never could leave FF because only it supported the auto scrolling feature
with the middle mouse click.

------
Master_of_Lemon
Been using SeaMonkey since 2009. Never switched to anything else, and have no
intentions to do so.

------
j45
I switched to Firefox Nightly about a month ago and have made it back into
Chromium less and less.

------
taf2
I tried it out and found lots of edge cases with super high cpu. Also lots of
janky scrolling...

------
fenwick67
I switched when the 57 Beta came out, it was impressive enough to push me back
over to FF again.

------
s17n
I switched for one reason and one reason only: you can disable autocomplete in
the address bar.

------
tmikaeld
Switched after 9 years on chrome, three reasons. Speed, privacy and sync.

------
joejoebob
I am. Really enjoying it!

------
dinoop_p1
I switched to firefox yesterday. it is lag free and fast. great

------
eecks
I have mainly because I am trying to use less Google stuff.

------
omosubi
does anyone know how to disable those annoying requests to send notifications?
in chrome you can disable them but I have not found a way to do it firefox

------
Tomte
I have.

Now websites only need to support U2F with Firefox.

------
hokkos
Yes, for 3 words : Tree, Style, Tab.

------
dominotw
i use chromecast a lot and it doesn't work in firefox :\

~~~
Viper007Bond
That's the only real reason I have Chrome installed, and really the only thing
I use it for.

------
muzani
I switched to a few weeks ago but it seems really laggy recently whenever I'm
running Youtube in the background while on the private mode.

I don't trust Chrome at all, and I'd much rather use Firefox, but it's
unusable for me.

~~~
muzani
Why are there downvotes for this?

