
Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox - sagivo
http://gizmodo.com/fuck-it-im-going-back-to-firefox-1685425815
======
gvb
I read the article hoping for something insightful, but when I read the
paragraph _...a half-dozen tabs that auto-open on launch thanks to the dozens
of extensions I 've accumulated over the years[...]_ I had to stop and say
"wait, what?"

To leverage his analogy that it is _like coming home to a new house to find
that most of your stuff is already there,_ it is like not cleaning your house
and not taking out the trash for three years and then moving into a new house.
Yeah, it's clean and new, but _why_ is it better and _will it stay better?_

~~~
FilterJoe
The problem is using many open tabs with Chrome. If you use no more than 3 or
4 tabs, Chrome is generally fine. If you use more than that, Firefox has some
built-in features to help with tabs such as delayed tab loading and tab
grouping. It also has more and better extensions for helping with multiple
tabs. Furthermore, it doesn't launch a new process for each tab.

In a browser comparison I wrote last month, I included a section for users who
like to keep a lot of tabs open. Even Opera, which uses the same code base as
Chrome, does tabs better than Chrome:

[http://www.filterjoe.com/2015/01/23/best-
browsers-2015-which...](http://www.filterjoe.com/2015/01/23/best-
browsers-2015-which-browser-is-best-for-you/#ManyTabs)

~~~
jcoffland
I regularly have several hundred tabs open in Firefox with no problems. Some
people may think this is crazy or messy but I find it very useful for
organizing the various projects I'm working on for different clients and my
own personal projects. Tab groups and delayed loading make it all very smooth.
Such usage is just not possible with Chrome. I tried to switch to Chrome but
couldn't find the features I needed and did not wish to change my workflow.

Back when Chrome came out Firefox was buggy. Since then it has become much
more stable. Chrome is the one that's buggy now. One process per tab means
that a bug in one tab does not take down the whole browser but it is much
better to just fix the bugs and not crash at all.

~~~
benjaminpv
I find that over time I end up with a bunch of tabs whose content seems
interesting that grow over time. My working set is off to one side while the
'to read' tabs stack up over to the left.

I'd found a big boon for this workflow in the very simple extension "Export
Tabs[1]." It's really simple: click an icon on the toolbar and it lists open
tabs by title and then by URL.

Now when I notice that I've got a real glut of tabs open I dump them into my
bookmark software so I can comb through later.

Like I said, really simple extension but tremendously helpful.

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/export-
tabs/odafag...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/export-
tabs/odafagokkafdbbeojliiojjmimakacil?hl=en)

~~~
scholia
In Firefox you can just put them into groups, so they stop being tabs. Later,
you can open a whole group when you need it. It's much more organized...

~~~
remarkEon
More than being more organized, it's really changed the way I browse.
Throughout the day I'll build buckets of things to read/deal with and keeping
them in groups makes it incredibly simple (and less stressful) to run through.

------
nvk
The biggest issue I have with Chrome is how aggressive it's been about linking
Google IDs with the browser. I've lost data twice by bugs related to not
having a linked ID.

Please Google, understand this; I don't want my browser linked with my Google
account.

~~~
macNchz
This was the driving reason I switched back to Firefox as my main browser
about a year ago. It reached a tipping point when I discovered that there was
no way to unlink a Google apps business account from Chrome without resetting
the browser entirely.

Being that I'd never intended to 'sign into Chrome' in the first place (the
form looks awfully similar to the gmail login), I essentially rage-quit Chrome
and haven't looked back since. I've embraced Firefox and I feel better using
free and open source software.

Performance has been excellent. The only thing I regularly notice is that many
startups seem to only QA their products in Chrome.

~~~
edgarallenbro
Google's way of handling accounts is infuriating.

I have multiple g-mail accounts. One of them is my primary personal one, and
another one I use is a shared account that my band uses for business and
soundcloud.

Google makes it hellish to sign out of one and into the other. For the longest
time, I had them linked, and my band mates could see my personal e-mail. I
don't know if they could get past a log in point, but the fact that its so
hard to keep them un-linked and log into one or the other is infuriating.

~~~
StuieK
Create a chrome user for each google account. There is then a hotkey for
quickly switching between users.

~~~
thisisnotatest
The keyboard shortcut that I found is Control-Shift-M to open a box around the
profile, down-enter to select "Switch person", then Tab-(Tab-)enter to select
the other account. Anyone know if there's a shorter shortcut?

~~~
StuieK
On mac it's just cmd + `

------
FreakyT
Firefox on Mac still has too many visual issues, and the devs often drag their
feet on fixing them. Lion (released 2011) added "bounce" scrolling and auto-
hiding scrollbars. It took them nearly half a year to fix the lack of auto-
hiding scrollbars nightly builds[1], and even longer for it to finally make it
to mainline Firefox. Firefox _still_ doesn't have bounce scrolling. To add to
that point, the first high-dpi (retina) laptops were released in 2012, and
nearly three years later, Firefox still contains a reasonable number of icons
that aren't in 2x (Retina) resolution. I suspect that these and other similar
issues relate to the unfortunate decision to continue using a cross-platform
UI toolkit (XUL).

Personally, I've also found that, despite Firefox's distinction as the browser
to popularize the idea of extensions, it now tends to lag in that department.
Sure, you can get Adblock, but the stuff available on Chrome tends to be much
more diverse these days. Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's
finally getting there.) [2]

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564)
[2]
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap)

~~~
pcwalton
> Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.)
> [2]

In fact, Nightly now is by default.

~~~
frik
You mean one main "firefox" process that holds all tabs and one child process
that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat).

So if one tab hangs (e.g. WebGL demo) then still the whole Firefox is slow as
hell. Firefox should finally spawn child processes for every other tab with
less permissions ("sandbox" technique) so that if one tab hangs or crashes
every other tab and the UI still is responsive. It seems we have to wait for
Rust based Servo engine to get that feature - but that would also rescue us
from XUL based UI (FirefoxOS already has an HTML5 based UI).

~~~
ubercow13
It's one process for tabs and one for the UI. Plugins have been in a separate
process for years.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's still far less than optimal. Under Chrome (Chromium) I can kill
individual tabs if they start getting sluggish. Not so w/ Firefox.

------
lisa_henderson
This has been exactly my experience. I was an early convert to Chrome, and I
loved how fast it was, but now I find it slow and buggy. There are some
partial workarounds: Chrome does a cache lookup on your history when you type,
so if you delete your history, then you get a speed bump. But I'm annoyed that
I have to erase my history. If I never erase my history, Chrome gets very slow
after a few months of history piling up. And when I have many windows open it
is slower, and when Flash is running, it often crashes. I've switched back to
FireFox.

~~~
colin_jack
Its been my recent experience too, I keep a lot of tabs open and began to
notice Chrome was filling up my memory.

Very strange that Google let the situation get so bad. Mind you I find the
Chrome developer tools far more powerful and intuitive than those in Firefox
which stops me moving entirely.

~~~
Morphling
I hear quite a few people talking how they have 30-50 tabs open, how do people
manage something like that? And why would anyone need so many simultaneous
tabs open?

~~~
scholia
The problem is that you're doing something that uses lots of tabs, and with
luck you remember to close them down. Still, at the end of the day, you may
have an extra five tabs open, and that's 100 a month. After a few months you
have 500 tabs.

So then you devote a couple of hours to going through and closing tabs, and
find you still have 300...

The solution, if anyone ever gets this far down the page, is to use Session
Manager to save the tabs, close Firefox, and then just uncheck the boxes for
the tabs you don't ever want to reload.

~~~
Morphling
See that "you don't remember to close them down" part gets me, or rather
doesn't. I mean I have a lot of tabs open when I'm working, but at the end of
the day I close my browser and I don't have any fixed set of pages that it
opens or last session, it just opens on the new tab page and asks for
commands.

I just can't stand if my browser has so many tabs open I can't read the what
the hell it is from the header and since I always use browser only on half of
my screen with editor on the other side (actually since I have 21:9 screen
I've split it in 3 so I can have project | editor | docs) that gives me at
most like 15+-5 tabs to work with.

But maybe I'm just the weirdo out of everyone.

------
groovylick
I returned to Firefox from Chrome about 1 year ago due to nagging rendering
bugs with linux. Running out of video memory triggered a bug where Chrome
would leave a stale buffer of the window on screen. My inputs still got to
browser, I could change tabs, scroll, go full-screen it just won't repaint the
window. I would have to restart my window manager to get it to repaint. The
only solution was to disable GPU rendering but then scrolling was terrible. I
know I was pushing the limits of my 7 year old Thinkpad, but I liked my
keyboard and 3 real mouse buttons. I moved to Firefox and even with GPU
rendering enabled never had that problem.

Months later that Thinkpad's battery died and I moved to working on a modern
dual monitor desktop machine. Thinking my problems with Chrome would be gone
with plenty of horsepower I discovered a new bug. My monitors are
(unfortunately) BGR pixel order not much much more common RGB. It's pretty
easy to setup in Cinnamon/Gnome just change 1 dconf key and font rendering is
great. Chrome completely ignores this setting and renders fuzzy haloed fonts,
plus it not just for Linux, Chrome does the same under Windows. The best
workaround is to enable grayscale sub-pixel rendering in chrome://flags but
fonts are still fuzzy. From what I found while debugging the problem Chrome
used to support different pixel orders but broke it recently.

Once again Firefox renders fonts just fine by reading the pixel order set by
the OS. Chrome isn't alone in the pixel order problems, Sublime Text and Atom
both suffer from the same problem.

~~~
AceJohnny2
I have a similar experience, and also switched back to Firefox on Linux. There
must be something in my setup [1] that screws with Chrome's expectations,
because its performance and stability are horrendous on this computer.

It runs fine and dandy on my Windows machine though.

[1] Ubuntu 12.04, dual-monitor, AwesomeWM, Nvidia Quadro FX 580, 8-core and
8GB RAM,

------
jrochkind1
I think there's a general principle here, that can be applied to nearly any
case of "That software is big and bloated and disorganized, it's time to
create a lean alternative from scratch."

It's easy(ish) to create a first release of a product that is lean and
efficient and has well-organized code.

Then you start addressing all the edge cases that it turns out you really want
to handle but weren't, and adding various features that you realize really are
important (that the original 'competitor' may have had some version of already
too)...

Pretty soon you realize that keeping your software lean and efficient and
well-organized is _hard_, the reason the original competitor was bloated and a
mess was _not_ that their developers aren't as smart as yours. It's cause it's
way harder to do this with living evolving software past the 1.0 release.

Doesn't mean it's _impossible_ to keep post-1.0, mature, feature-complete
software lean and efficient and well-organized. It's just hard. And will slow
down your new-feature release cycle.

This cautionary note can apply to just about any "Why is X so bloated and/or
such a mess internally or in it's API's, can't we write a new one without
those problems?" Popular X's might include "Rails", or an existing programming
language in favor of a new hot programming language.

Now, the experience of the first one that "went wrong" might be useful in
creating a second one that does better -- but for it to be so, you actually
have to _understand_ the experience of the first one, why various decisions
were made at various times that led to "the mess". Not just assume it's
because you've got smarter devs than them. And in many cases, might require
making some fundamental different decisions about scope, architecture, or
other goals, than the first one did -- and sticking to them.

This is related to, and kind of a generalization of, the famous Joel
"rewriting software is a mistake" argument, but shouldn't be oversimplified to
"never bother trying to create new software that's better than software
already out there", of course.

------
jarcane
I have some serious issues with Chrome (the permaloading, it's new download
blocking 'feature', poor startup time), but I did not find Firefox remotely an
improvement. On my system it is half as fast, twice as buggy, and even more
memory hungry than Chrome is.

I think people overstate Chrome's memory usage as a factor of performance; IME
it's still less than FF in total most times, and largely that memory cost
doesn't seem to come with the performance impact of FF's because of the way
Chrome handles processes.

On my Win8.1 system at the moment, Chrome uses about 400mb of RAM. Firefox
routinely ballooned up to a full 1GB or more. Even on FreeBSD, it was not at
all unheard of to glance at top and find FF consuming as much as 1.4GB.

The idea of switching back to FF because of Chrome's memory consumption seems
frankly laughable to me. FF's memory leakage is infamous, and literally goes
clear back to FF Beta, and _still_ hasn't been fixed a decade on.

And since Opera is a joke now, and Safari a toy, and there being zero real
viable alternatives, that means Chrome, for good or ill.

I'd really appreciate it if they'd stop telling me what I'm allowed to
download though. At least they disabled the autodelete function.

~~~
vor_
What makes Safari a toy?

~~~
jarcane
Safari on Windows has always been a toy. Now it's an unsupported toy to boot.

~~~
Greenisus
So it's a toy because it's a toy?

------
theVirginian
The worst part about chrome for me is that I can't access my Gmail accounts
through Chrome. That's right, I have to use Firefox to access Google's own
product because Chrome won't play nice with my school Google Apps account that
my school provided us for email. Whenever I try to get to my school account it
redirects to the gmail account I used to sign into Chrome - this happens
regardless of whether I try to access the account directly through the
school's website, or through the gmail website. The only way to get around it
is to completely sign out of the browser, restart it, then make sure I don't
visit any other sites than my school email. Obviously this is an enormous
hassle and it wasn't always this way. I used to be able to use the multiple
accounts feature with ease until one day Google up and broke it.

~~~
johnward
Click your user icon. Click add account. Add school account. Now you can use
both.

~~~
vhost-
This doesn't always work. Right now, on both Firefox and Chrome, I can only
use one account.

On Firefox I click the user icon, choose my work account and my personal
account loads.

On Chrome I click the user icon, choose my personal account and my work
account loads.

It's so fucking frustrating. I've cleared cookies, cache and history
completely and the problem just comes back later that day.

~~~
johnward
This does happen to me sometimes. I'm a consultant so I end up having to use
customer gmail accounts and my personal account. So of course it always logs
in with my personal since the browser logs in with that. Then I add this
customer. Sometimes when I click to switch accounts it keeps sending me back
to my personal account. I'm sure someone from the GMAIL team is on HN so they
might see this.

------
shmerl
_> Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome?_

I remember the hype, but I never switched. Firefox was always good enough for
me. And really, Firefox overtook Chrome in performance a while ago already.
And naturally Mozilla's manifesto is way better to support than Eric Schmidt's
"you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide" idea.

~~~
metastart
Firefox gets nearly $1mn/day from Google...they're using your browsing history
to target new tab page ads to you...they're not a good choice if you care
about privacy. They have, though, pressured Yahoo to do some good stuff --
they have zero leverage over google, in fact google has tons of leverage over
them. Try the Epic Privacy Browser if you care about privacy!

~~~
e15ctr0n
Mozilla no longer gets $1mn/day from Google. The new default search engine is
Yahoo for US users. [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-
choice-an...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-
innovation-on-the-web/)

------
gorhill
For what it's worth, one fact and an anecdotal observation:

One fact: Currently, Chromium-based browsers suffer from a nasty memory leak:
each time one bring up an extension's popup UI, a big chunk of memory is
leaked.[1] This alone for me justify using Firefox over Chromium if one has an
extension which popup UI must be accessed often.

Anecdotal observation: I have noticed since a couple of versions now that it
appears Chromium's garbage collector can be very lazy sometimes. To the point
where I am wondering if this is a bug, because the memory would just not be
reclaimed by the browser until I forced it through the developer console: upon
clicking the trash can in the Timeline tab, 60 MB were re-claimed for one of
the extension (from ~130MB to 70MB). This was after waiting for an hour to see
if it would be reclaimed. Yes, there was a lot of idle time while I waited.

[1]
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500)

~~~
gorhill
I would like to understand why what I said above was deemed a nuisance.

------
MBlume
Can I just take a moment to say that this is all a success story? Firefox was
old and busted, slow and unstable, Chrome was the new hotness, now Chrome is
starting to get long in the tooth, but in that time Firefox has been spurred
on to get leaner and faster and more capable. Chrome did exactly what Google
told us it was supposed to do when it was released -- it spurred competition
and pushed the Mozilla devs to put out the best browser they could. As more
people switch to Firefox, that same pressure will fall on the Chrome team. At
the end of the day, we're all better off, and I'd like to thank the folks at
Mozilla, at Google, and yes, even at Microsoft for all they've done.

------
justizin
I don't have to agree with the author's justifications, I switched back some
time ago for primary browsing because FireFox makes a browser for _me_ and
Google makes a browser for _them_.

Privacy Extensions always seem to work better in FF because it's produced by
an organization, if imperfect, whose values center around privacy and not
subservience to advertisers.

I've worked in offices of companies with ad-supported site where we could
barely support the product without an ad blocker, but these days I primarily
lean toward privacy badger or other privacy-oriented extensions like
Disconnect.

~~~
metastart
Many privacy extensions do protect some privacy on one hand, but then take
away some on the other hand e.g. block trackers but collect other information
on your browsing to sell (data business model). Using addons is thus risky.
Firefox uses your browsing history to target new tab page ads to you. They get
nearly $1mn/day from Google. They have done some good things in privacy with
Yahoo, but they're overall probably not the best choice for one who cares
about privacy and security (chromium is way ahead in security out-of-the-box
than other browsers). Try giving the Epic Privacy Browser a spin!

~~~
zobzu
You do realize that Mozilla does not actually get 1M/day from Google right
now.. right?

------
atesti
I run Chrome with "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
\--renderer-process-limit=9 and it's much better that way: Less total memory
consumption and killing a renderer unloads many tabs at once.

It seems to me that the focus on security by isolating every webpage from each
other went to far recently. When I started with Chrome I think they used to
limit the maximum amount of render processes much more. Of course if there was
a serious security hole in e.g. webkit/blink then one tab could have stolen
data from another tab more easily. But it consumed much less memory

------
emodendroket
I'm so sick of people obsessing over "bloat" on desktop programs. All the most
"bloated" programs (like, say, Visual Studio, or Word, or Emacs, or whatever
other example you care to name) also happen to be the most useful, because,
hey, it turns out you use some fraction of those "unnecessary" features.

"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because
it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your
needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web
browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. If that's
what you need, you've got options..." \-- jwz

~~~
hatu
I don't think they've really added that many new features(visible to users) to
Chrome. I've been using it since it came out and it still looks the same and I
use the same features I used to. Maybe I'm wrong and just missed them since
they were added so slowly. I guess the Dev Tools have been improved?

------
hackuser
This is really about the tech equivalent of fashion. You're not still using
last year's cool browser, are you?

I doubt there is enough difference between the browsers to make a meaningful
productivity impact for most end users (the population at HN might probably
has more exceptions to that statement). The only significant difference is
confidentiality, where I trust Mozilla far more than Google.

Here is what is really going on:

1) IE defined the web for most people, with 95% market share.

2) Firefox became the new, cool alternative, with some social/political appeal
(free-as-in-speech, non-profit mission, openness, anti-corporate), and the
appeal of being the cutting-edge and the shiny-new thing.

3) 'New' and 'cool' have shelf lives, slowing your subjective experience of
browsers and skinny blue jeans. Also, Mozilla lacked a marketing budget and
department to manage and refresh their image, as other vendors might have
done: 'In limited release beta preview: Firefox XE! Be the first person you
know to get it! It's _burning up_ the 'net!'

4) Google was an uber-cool company, and they put out a browser, which became
the new uber-cool thing. 'You're not still using Firefox, are you?' (Actually
said to an end-user I was helping by a technorati wannabe.)

5) Chrome might have performed better for a time, but the browsers were neck
and neck in performance tests for many years while people rationalized their
love of cool. As I said, I doubt there was much real difference, except in
some specialized circumstances.

6) Now repeat #3, except this time for Chrome. The subtext and whole point of
this article is, 'is Chrome no longer cool?' It's as if the author is throwing
some red meat in the waters, to see if the piranha are ready to swarm.

Perhaps Mozilla and Google should pump in fake engine noise.

~~~
zobzu
this comment is sadly very accurate ;) The worse part IMO is that companies
indeed play on that effect, and people, even smart techies will always fall
for the new cool.

We have such a tendency to have to follow trends in groups.. its a little
scary at times.

------
malkia
Wow! Hold right there. Chrome uses shared memory among it's spawned processes
on all operating systems.

If you use Task Manager (Windows) / Activity Monitor (OSX) or something
similar in Linux, you would see memory over-reported.

Google for this:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory"](http://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+"shared+memory")

Some info: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-
backgrounder](http://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder)

Some more info: [http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-
usage-...](http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/google-chrome-memory-usage-good-
and-bad.html)

Best tool to see the memory usage is chrome itself: about://memory -> check
the real sum at the end of the page.

~~~
zobzu
Note that it still uses way more ram than firefox regardless. in firefox right
now.. ive 4 tabs open and been using it for 2 hours.. 246megs used. I just
started chromium 42.. open hacker news and theverge.. boom already at
311megs.(thats measured with about:memory)

Another funny thing is that chromium "measures" ff memory but measures it as
more than the OS or Firefox itself. Not too sure whats going on there, albeit
its still lower

~~~
malkia
I get this, but before any conclusion is made correct memory usage must be
done.

------
cpeterso
Firefox also has (experimental) built-in tracking protection without needing
to install a third-party extension. The tracking list is based on Disconnect's
list. You can activate Firefox's tracking protection by switching the
"privacy.trackingprotection.enabled" about:config pref to true.

~~~
slasaus
Wow, that is cool!

for others that are interested, see [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/tracking-protection-fir...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox)

------
nostromo
I recently switched to Safari for similar reasons.

Safari is much faster than it used to be. It's also tightly integrated with my
phone, including password management functionality (similar to LastPass) that
works on all my devices. You can also get AdBlock for Safari now, which wasn't
always the case. It also has a snazzy built-in RSS reader and just looks
better than Chrome.

~~~
tashoecraft
Exactly, Safari handles 90% of web needs and doesn't clog up my memory the way
Chrome does. It handles my battery exponentially better then Chrome as well.
Then with adblock plus, lastpass and pocket I'm all set on extensions.

~~~
Zombieball
_> doesn't clog up my memory the way Chrome_

What exactly is "clogging up memory" that everyone here complains about? I can
understand if Chrome is using 6 / 8gb of your ram and you are simultaneously
running photoshop and it can't grab any memory due to Chrome, but is this the
case?

Shouldn't Chrome use as much RAM as it can to ensure speedy performance
provided its not starving out any other applications?

I have little experience in writing desktop applications & memory management
in an environment of this nature. Genuinely curious what the normal practice
is.

Edit: To clarify, I am assuming the memory growth is not due to any sort of
leaks :)

~~~
Outofthebot
Superfluous RAM use hurts battery life a lot. Using Safari over Chrome easily
saves 2+ hours for me.

~~~
inclemnet
> Superfluous RAM use hurts battery life a lot

Do you have a reference for why this should be? A quick search yields results
suggesting only the opposite (for instance,
[https://superuser.com/questions/738848/does-more-ram-
usage-c...](https://superuser.com/questions/738848/does-more-ram-usage-cause-
more-battery-usage)).

~~~
mitchty
More ram in use generally means more javascript crap running. Which means
higher cpu/energy use. Its not the memory use its what is using the memory.

~~~
inclemnet
So...the claim is that chrome runs a lot more javascript than safari?

~~~
mitchty
I'll phrase it more that I see significantly more memory use in Chrome for
long lived processes than I do with Safari.

That said, eventually both get to 6g of ram in use and a restart is needed
anyway.

------
hjeldin
Wait, has gizmodo turned into a blog lately? I mean, that's not journalism,
that's a rant supported by no benchmarking or any evidence of sort...and while
i do agree on the message, i believe that anyone who wants to be called
journalist should at least write like one.

~~~
unreal37
What do you mean "turned into"? Gizmodo describes itself as a "Technology blog
focused on gadgets."

~~~
hjeldin
Well, they have editors, writers and so on...do blogs have the same structure
as news outlets?

~~~
Sgt_Apone
There is a lot of editorial guidance for many of the more popular blog sites
including the Gawker network. Most of the popular blogs, outside of one-man
operations, work in a similar manner.

------
chiph
Something I noticed the other week - Chrome on Windows will scan my desktop on
startup (all the icons go back their generic version, and then return). Why
would they do that? My desktop isn't where the cache is.

~~~
justcommenting
My experience with relatives' computers has been that trying to completely
remove Chrome from Windows is a lot like trying to remove a rootkit,
specifically one that phones home a lot.

If any other company did those sorts of things in persisting pieces of their
software all over the OS without easy removal for non-technical users, people
would be calling it malware or spyware.

~~~
fizzbatter
Interesting, what specifically are you having trouble with?

I would think it just uninstalls. Are you claiming otherwise? I'd love to try
and reproduce what your claims are (fact check).

~~~
zobzu
A bunch of adware reinstall it actually, because they get money from Google
for that. On a clean system its pretty simple to uninstall.

------
talleyrand
After reading this, I tried out Firefox for Android on my old Nexus 7 tablet.
The performance improvement over Chrome is significant. Chrome simply can't be
run on low-RAM devices any more, IMHO.

------
MrGando
I've been using Safari since Yosemite, before I was using firefox since 2010
or so (back from Chrome). I love what Firefox means, but I don't love that
they receive a shitload amount of money from Google and that constraints them
a lot from their true mission. Just go to about:config and search 'google',
there are several settings that use google by default to send information. I
understand that they need the money, but the state of affairs is a bit sad.

I pick Safari because now it's fast, memory and _battery_ efficient (I think
it's the most battery efficient browser that I've used on the Mac). Apple
seems very wary about defending it's users privacy, and it's actually in their
best business interests to do so. They have the money and weight to actually
put a decent fight on the subject.

That's why I use Safari.

PS: I do use Thunderbird for my e-mail needs though ;)

~~~
slasaus
About the deal with Google, that bothered me as well, fortunately it has
expired last year and has not been renewed. Instead a deal with a lot more
companies has been made, based on which part in the world you live in. For the
US Mozilla has made a five-year partnership with Yahoo, part of that deal is
that Yahoo respects the Do-Not-Track preference of Firefox clients.

See [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-
an...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-
innovation-on-the-web/) for the details.

~~~
MrGando
That's really cool, thanks for sharing :)

------
ErikRogneby
Ironic that shortly after reading this, chrome crashed on me. I've only got 2
extensions loaded other than the 3 Google doc ones that came pre-loaded.

One thing I did notice the other day is that chrome will reload webpages on
it's own even if they don't have focus. I was running an express.js app on
localhost and periodically I would see traffic in in the logs even though I
wasn't interacting with it. It may just be enforcing some ttl/cache header
that was automagicly set, but it will make me close my browser more often.

It might be worth installing firefox and see if it behaves the same.

------
flyrain
Though most of time, I still use Chrome, yeah, most of time, because
recently(about one or more years), Chrome crashes a lot and when it keep
crashing in some pages, I have to use other, like Firefox, I plan to switch to
Firefox as well. Chrome crashes everyday. That's really annoying. I am on
Ubuntu 12.04.

------
at_
The reliability of Firefox's post-crash 'session restore' is what made me
stick with it for good over Chrome. Life of a power tabber.

~~~
rockdoe
I'm not sure how you can use Chrome with a lot of tabs anyway. Maybe with a
mouse with a DPI switch so you can hit the few pixes they size down to if you
have 20+?

~~~
jrochkind1
Keyboard controls to switch tabs. But I can have about 20 before they get too
small to click on my laptop -- but they've already become too small to know
what is in what tab at that point. I do it anyway. Because my browser is just
about as messy as my physical desktop or my apartment.

------
pkmishra
I have tried it many times but failed. The reason - if firfox memory goes too
high, which happens frequently, there is no option to kill single tab(in the
stable version) like Google Chrome. I have started using Firefox Nightly
(because of separate process feature) but it keeps on crashing. So I am ready
to jump on it as soon as we have new stable build with separate process for
each tab.

~~~
rockdoe
1) What do you do to make "Firefox memory goes too high" 2) What does
about:crashes say for the crashes you get? Are those known bugs?

~~~
kenrick95
If you use AdBlockPlus, you can switch to uBlock
([https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)) to
achieve better memory performance.

~~~
Max_Mustermann
How painless is the transition with a fairly large collection of custom
filters and the like?

~~~
wtallis
If you use custom filters instead of subscribing to one of the popular
filtersets, then you should check to see whether you're even using the kind of
rules that ABP doesn't handle well. The memory and CPU usage only gets bad
when you've got a lot of broad-spectrum CSS element hiding rules; regular URL-
based blocking rules are plenty scalable.

------
jwr
I don't understand why people on Macs don't simply use Safari. It's good, it's
fast, and it works really well.

~~~
acheron
Lack of a good adblock plugin is what made me give up on it, though that was
awhile ago.

~~~
_cudgel
I've been very happy with Ghostery on Safari.

------
dbg31415
When selecting software, I seldom say, "Fuck it, I hate X so much I'm using a
competitor." I normally say, "I like Y so much, I'm using it."

For me, I like that Firefox isn't constantly bombarding me with "link your
accounts" crap. And I like how Firefox still has the option built in to reset
the browser / delete all data on close.

Performance seems like a wash these days, and frankly isn't something I care
about even a little -- it's basically a problem solved by adding more RAM and
RAM is cheap. 16 GB in my laptop these days... 32 GB in my workstation... who
cares how it gets used.

Also I like some of the Firefox plugins over Chrome.

I do like how Chrome doesn't require a restart for plugins... Firefox needs to
get on that train.

But I add plugins once a week at most, so it's kind of moot.

Anyway I like Firefox more than I like Chrome, that's why I use it.

------
DontBeADick
My favorite "feature" of Chrome is the way it invites people to look through
your browsing history every time they open a new tab, and there's no way to
disable it. There _used_ to be a way to disable it, but they removed it
sometime last year.

Because users don't know what they want, right Google?

~~~
Truespeed
There's the "Blank New Tab" extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfdloiaebhgmjpaclb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfdloiaebhgmjpaclbbodcmlmppkakjh)

It's only 1.7 KB

------
mark_l_watson
Interesting discussion, and surprising comments about browser workflow. I tend
to not check my email while programming or writing. I also don't keep any fun
reading or "research" tabs open. While working in about 1 hour sprints, I will
have very few tabs open if I am even running a browser. If I visited a page
briefly while reading hacker news during morning coffee, I can kill that tab
and find the web page later using browser history or from memory during lunch
break, etc.

If I need to do a Google or Bing web search, starting a browser or opening a
new tab is no hassle, and a minute later the tab is gone.

Anyway it was interesting to read that people keep a browser running for days
or longer with many tabs open. I am not being judgemental, and I hope that I
don't sound so, I just have different working preferences.

------
51Cards
I was one who never left Firefox just because I found Chrome (while faster) to
be too minimalist for my desires. I clung to Firefox's ability to be
customized and to this day my layout is still reminiscent of browsers I
started on in the 90's. That's where my motor memory looks for buttons, etc.

I fully expected a couple years ago to eventually be the last hold-out user of
Firefox in a Chrome world but I have watched things turn around. I'll never
say Chrome is bad... but I prefer to see a market where there is still browser
competition and choice for the user. It looked like Chrome was going to be the
next IE with some vast percentage of the market locked up. I'm glad to see
signs of some balance being restored.

------
idbentley
This article annoyingly misses to mention THE reason to use Firefox over
Chrome. Supporting Mozilla.

~~~
eridal
..plus supporting the open web!!

~~~
nashashmi
Nobody seems to remember the original Google/Chrome vision: seemless
experience between the desktop and the web. No need for desktop apps. And all
web content instantly loads on computer without any internet and browser
delay. Just as though the content was always on your computer.

------
Apocryphon
It's almost as if browser bloat is a cyclical phenomenon, as formerly kings of
the hill struggle against the upstarts that displaced them by streamlining and
improving technologies. Firefox has made strides against Chrome, but IE is the
current major underdog.

------
fapjacks
This has got to be a joke. Firefox is not better than Chrome in the most
important capability. Without the ability to _precisely_ see what tabs are
causing CPU and memory problems and to destroy those tabs, using more than a
handful of tabs at one time makes it totally impossible to use Firefox. I get
that the Firefox devs really, _really_ don't want to expend the herculean
effort required to make per-tab process management possible in Firefox. But
that's really the core of it. I _want_ to love Firefox. I want to ditch
Chrome. But the fact remains: Chrome is the only browser with the granularity
of control necessary to make browsing usable with my habits.

~~~
freditup
It's not perhaps the prettiest, but 'about:memory' in Firefox can give you a
good look into where memory issues are coming from.

------
bentcorner
I really like Firefox but the big annoying part that I run into is that Sync
seems to blow away extension-specific settings whenever I install Firefox on a
new machine. Like, the new machine doesn't have any of my settings for the
extensions it knows I already have installed on a different machine, and then
Sync happily syncs the _new settings_ to the other machines, blowing it away
there too. Thanks, Sync.

I'm a big fan of NoScript and RequestPolicy, but having to "redo" all the
whitelisting is a major PITA.

Does anybody else run into this? Am I missing a setting or is there a file I
can manually sync (or just backup and restore) to ensure I don't need to
endure this pain again?

~~~
wtallis
NoScript and RequestPolicy each allow exporting and importing of their
rulesets so you can manually back up those settings where a bad sync can't
delete them.

------
spain
In my experience I stayed with Firefox after I learned about tab groups. Sure
you can run an extension on Chrome to do the same (and you can run extensions
on Firefox to do things Chrome does) but after seeing just how much extensions
can bog down a browser I prefer to run mine as close to vanilla as possible.

It's not even "if you download a poorly made extension your browser will be
slower" but it seems like extensions have that effect in general. It's
probably irrational but I've honestly seen a lot of the most popular
extensions falling into this category, extensions like AdBlock and HTTPS
Everywhere come to mind.

------
capedape
I've got a bad habit with tabs that Chrome doesn't enable. The only solution
I've found that works is to use Tab Mix Plus and set it to allow up to nine
rows of tabs. Once I start getting past about three rows it starts to shut out
the viewable screen space and I up saying F this and going on a deleting
spree, or bookmarking all open tabs.

The second reason I don't use Chrome is with a logitech mouse on Mac, there
are no good gesture extensions that I know of that will allow me to right-
click / scroll wheel to zoom through open tabs. Actually, all gesture
extensions seem crippled in some way or another.

------
navait
I love firefox, mostly because of the pentadactyl extension(not compatible
with firefox 35, sadly) but it has a huge number of problems. Namely, it
crashes far too often. It's extremely frustrating, and no number of bug
reports I fill out or new releases ever seems to address the problem. I'm
thinking of trying to find a better productivity extension, or go back to
emacs type shortcuts with chrome or safari.

Of course, maybe the grass is always greener on the other side. I left chrome
a few years ago because I had an linux install where any non-trivial js would
cause the computer to lock up.

~~~
nickysielicki
cvim for chrome is really fantastic. I was like you, up until a month ago. I
don't miss FF at all.

I'm waiting for someone to encorporate vim bindings, umatrix, and webkit into
a package... I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't use it.

~~~
navait
yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. This is so much better than the
other "vim" chrome extensions. Thanks.

------
Symmetry
Firefox's performance has improved a lot and that's really impressive. I tried
moving back to Firefox but in the end I just prefer the Chrome UI too much.
Using a custom search engine on Chrome can be just a matter of a couple of key
presses after opening a new tab whereas in firefox I'm either stuck holding
down alt and using the arrow keys or switching to my mouse. And adding new
search engines is super easy in Chrome as well.

EDIT: Oh, and there was also having my browser UI lock up when a page had a
misbehaving script but that might have been due to an older version of
firefox.

~~~
davmre
Not sure if this would solve your issues, but next time you try Firefox you
should check out Instantfox ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/instantfox/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/instantfox/)). It implements a Chrome-like unified URL/search
box and lets you run custom search engines with single-character prefixes
(e.g. "w Barack Obama" hits Obama's Wikipedia page).

~~~
Symmetry
Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted. I've got Firefox 35 now and if the
UI stutters are gone I'll be back permanently.

------
Orangeair
I've felt this same sentiment recently, but regarding the Chrome browser for
Android. It used to be perfectly fast, but over time (with updates) it just
seemed to get slower and slower on my Galaxy S4, to the point where now it
sometimes can take fifteen seconds to register a scroll event on a site like
Reddit. Heavier sites are practically unusable. Even as I type this, I see my
characters suddenly appearing in groups of twenty or so at a time, where
several months ago it was not a problem. And I never even have more than three
tabs open normally.

------
chrismarlow9
I've been using firefox + duckduckgo as default browser for a week now on my
personal box. No problems at all.

------
azinman2
He mentioned it briefly in the article, but I'm now finding safari to be a
great browser on OS X Yosemite. It's seemingly fast/faster than chrome, has
great retina and media support (Netflix without plugins!), integrates well
with safari on my iPhone, but not mentioned here otherwise? It has better
aesthetics. It got really good looking in a way that makes all the other
browsers look super dated. Who cares about a cloud to butt plugin? I've got
privoxy + 1password, don't need anymore than that.

------
dbalan
As someone who made the switch a month ago, here's the problems I've felt -
but they are not major I warn you. I still use it.

1\. Firefox's private window still runs your plugins - its not a sandbox clean
browser 2\. You still have to restart if you installed a plugin (ugh! its
2015) 3\. You can search from the address bar, prepend a "?". i.e
"?google.com" will search with keyword "google.com".

Otherthan this it was a joy to use firefox - works faster than my "chromium"
build on osx yosamite.

------
chm
I don't understand why one would use a single web browser for everything. I
don't have any evidence to prove its effectiveness, but the following
combination has been pretty good for me and I've used it for years:

Firefox with NoScript/Ghostery for e-commerce and article/blog reading. I have
a selection of unblocked websites.

Vanilla Safari for banking.

Vanilla Chrome for anything that would require a lot of unblocking in FF.

This means that at any time I can have three browsers opened with multiple
tabs each. I never seem to have any problem.

------
LukeHoersten
Same problem with Chrome for me. I ended up switching to Safari and have been
really happy. In iOS, lots of apps only have an option to open pages in Safari
and because I use cloud tab sharing etc, Safari on the desktop was really the
only option for me. I started using Safari's built in style-stripping reader
and reading list and have been really happy. Also, they have consistent swipe-
for-history across iOS and OS X. Chrome did not and I'm still not use to it.

------
attozk
Still using Opera 12.16 for borwsing, the best browser there is. It still has
far more "useful" feature than many other browser, to name a few:

\- ctrl + tab that really works like it should, no sequential switching
through tabs \- per site user-agent/js settings

For development I still use firefox; chrome has been too aggressive with their
caching in my experience. Plus some one else mentioned, I don't like my
browser to link to my account!

~~~
CrazyRabbit
it's time to upgrade, boss! download 12.17 please

------
bdcravens
What drives me nuts is the fact that even after I explicitly close it, Chrome
insists on opening up all the tabs I had open before. Reloading those tabs
takes time, and I can only pray it's not some poorly coded webpage that
performs an undesired action based on the URL. If I explicitly close an app,
my expectation is that all the resources I had open close as well (to be fair,
Atom does the same thing)

~~~
emodendroket
So turn off that setting then.

------
tomkin
I'm happy I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Hopefully Google pays
attention, because the marketshare they enjoy may soon see a decline.

Chrome's performance has taken a major hit on iOS and OS X. It regularly
freezes up and seems to be getting worse with each new update. Now _Chrome to
Mobile_ is being axed soon, to be "replaced" with Google Sync - which isn't
even the same thing.

------
isaiahg
I have some harsh news for you. I did exactly that. I moved back to firefox
after probably 3 years on chrome. It's not much better.

There's one thing about chrome that has spoiled me. The fact that when
something crashes only the tab or tabs crash. After the third time firefox
crashes and the whole browser locks up you go back, like me. Also chrome's
task manager is magnificent.

------
Scarbutt
My only beef with Firefox is multiple webpages don't render well for me, but
those pages render fine in Chrome and IE.

I haven't stop once to debug why (I just switch to Chrome but sometimes do
report the websites to Mozilla), can the reason be in Firefox being more pure
and the others browsers allowing more quirks? If this is the case, isn't this
bad UX?

~~~
mbrubeck
You can report these issues to
[https://webcompat.com/](https://webcompat.com/) where Mozilla staff and
others will help debug them and report them to browser developers or web site
publishers, as appropriate.

------
1amzave
As of late I've been using a mix of Chrom{e,ium} and Firefox, and frankly at
this point I've basically resigned myself to the fact that browsers, as a
class of software, are just universally terrible. So I say "fuck it, I'm going
back to my shell and text editor."

I cannot wait for the current trend of all-things-must-be-web-things to die.

------
skywhopper
I switched to Chrome very soon after it came out, and I've been happy with it
for the most part for years. I typically have dozens of tabs open at a time if
not more and it's never been a problem, until the last few months when Chrome
on Linux has started becoming unstable after running for a day or so to the
point that I can't rely on it working for anything but Gmail. Other pages,
even simple ones, will blow up with the Chrome BSOD until I completely restart
it. I used to be able to leave things up for literally months. How this makes
sense with Chrome's process architecture, I do not know. On Windows I haven't
had these problems, and maybe it's just a particular combination of libs at
fault, but I may soon switch to Firefox on my Linux box at least just to avoid
the hassle.

------
basicguru
This article is full of whiny nonsense. Sounds like one of those rants you
hear from those who think they are savvy because they can install apps on
their phone. Chrome eats batteries for lunch, but it's still super fast and
stable, and I use quite a few 'useful' addons.

------
oliv__
This is probably me being my annoying self but one thing I absolutely cannot
_stand_ on Chrome are those disgusting grey circled arrows that show up
whenever you swipe left or right on the trackpad to go forward or backward in
history.

That's enough for me to stick with Firefox.

------
ttflee
A little bit OT.

I tried to go back to Firefox as I wrote an internal tool for company. Two
problems did not go well: a) Firefox failed to provide a reasonable size for
SVG elements, and by calling getBBox() I got a bounds that is not cropped by
the container frame but the inner one which has been extended by elements
drawn into, whereas in Safari/Chrome I could just call
.offsetWidth/.offsetHeight; b) I cannot view node data as quickly as I could
in Safari/Chrome and this is a pain when debugging __data bound in D3.js.
Maybe I will try installing Firebugs later.

For now I guess I have to stick to Chrome-first strategy or just ship it with
nw.js.

------
taf2
Meh the issue here is not chrome or Firefox... It's that people still use IE
and more people are using Safari with all of its broken features... Both
chrome and Firefox are open source and can be excellent browsers. Neither are
limiting the content we can access via the web. Both agree to support the web
as a platform. Contrast this with safari and IE and you see IE avoiding WebRTC
due to an 8 billion dollar purchase of Skype and a safari avoiding WebRTC
because of FaceTime... I'm not even sure the state of webgl but can only
imagine it's worse...

The two browsers and opera are the only browsers I plan on supporting...

~~~
zobzu
to be a little more fair safari made webkit possible (and thus chrome)..

------
erichate
Chrome has been making some pretty awesome improvements to the dev console as
well as performance related to HTML5 on desktop and mobile.

Our game [http://www.FreeRiderHD.com](http://www.FreeRiderHD.com) has always
performed best on mobile and desktop through Chrome.

That being said the most recent stable build of Chrome desktop is constantly
triggering 'Aw Snap' crashes without any crash data where the issue does not
appear to exist in previous or future beta builds. Not just limited to our
game as I have been experiencing crashes on Facebook and Twitter as well.

------
lizzard
If anyone would like to give feedback on how addons are working with e10s
(multiprocess) enabled on Nightly, have a look here:
[http://arewee10syet.com/](http://arewee10syet.com/)

There are bugs in progress linked from this tracking site, and so, for
example, if you want to help test Greasemonkey or Vimperator or whatever,
search down the page, go to the bug, and see if there's something useful you
can add to the comments in bugzilla.mozilla.org.

If you're willing to do some testing and go back and forth with developers a
bit, it can be really helpful!

------
egfx
I'm a developer focusing on mass appeal internet web apps. Chrome is number
one there and that's what I use for everything but testing. Chrome HAS been
crashing more and more but I could just as easily attribute it to the
countless chrome extensions I have installed in 30+ tabs. Btw, Chrome seems
fast and light enough to be able to handle the load. Actually, it just seems
like I'm pushing chrome more and more lately. I do agree, flash crashes all
the time, the browser crashes sometimes. It's not the end of the world, I
wouldn't switch.

------
kaffeinecoma
This article prompted me to dust off Firefox to try it out again. Right away I
notice a nice improvement over Safari- Firefox seems willing to cache a page
for "back button" behavior longer than Safari. I always hate when sites fail
to set their cache-control to something reasonable (Reddit is especially bad
about this). So you click a link, read it for 5 seconds then go back- bam,
full (slow) page reload. Firefox instantly fetches the page from local cache
without hitting the server again. I really like this.

------
Morphling
Unless Firefox opens sites instantly (instead of 1-2 sec wait) then I don't
see any speed benefit.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the author probably has a lot of heavy
addons that do stuff that is not needed. Biggest example probably is AdBlock
Plus which bogs down any browser considerably and poking around with family's
and friends' Chromes I see that a lot of them have several ad blocking
extensions as well as couple privacy extensions is it any wonder Safari or
Firefox with no addons is faster?

------
TheHypnotist
I love chrome. I have almost no problems with it. That said, I love Firefox
and recommend my coworkers use it as often as possible. This is because while
I know I am capable in keeping my Chrome running, I know the majority of them
are not.

My one major gripe is how poorly it works with Sharepoint. There have been
times in the past where I have been working in Sharepoint using Chrome and I
can't use a particular function because... well because Chrome? I don't really
know why. I just know it works in FF and IE.

------
mattchew
I'd like to switch back to Firefox, but they do not support inverted colors
like Chrome does.

Hacker Vision on Chrome is sooooo good. The closest I've found for Firefox is
Color Toggle, but it fails in a lot of places, enough that FF+CT is not usable
as my main browser.

(This difference might be laid at the feet of the plugin writers, but I have
the idea that there is inversion support available in the browser in Chrome
but not in FF.)

Unfortunately, after getting used to Hacker Vision, good color inversion is a
must-have feature for me.

~~~
dblohm7
File a bug for it. Maybe somebody will implement that for you!

~~~
mattchew
There exist related bugs in bugzilla, frex
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825578](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825578)
.

The css invert filter was very recently added to Firefox. Haven't played with
this but sounds like it could make the job easier, so maybe FF will catch up
here.

------
ivan_ah
One thing that's tremendously useful in Firefox is the "Group tabs" feature.
You can have multiple Groups of tabs and (e.g. work tabs, research tabs, and
news tabs). After a tab group has not been in focus for some time it gets
unloaded from memory: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-
organize-tab...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-
tabs#w_how-do-i-create-a-tab-group)

------
eyalweiss
I'm usually keeping 100-150 (!) tabs open, using "Tabman" to navigate between
them [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabman-tabs-
manage...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabman-tabs-
manager/hgmnkflcjcohihpdcniifjbafcdelhlm) (disclosure: I made this extension)
and using also "The Great Suspender" for the performance. This works great
with so many tabs on my 2 year old laptop.

------
am0x
This is mainly a Mac only issue. I discovered that I was getting about 1/8th
the amount of battery time recently. I thought it was a Yosemite issue, so I
got some stuff to watch what was eating all my resources and causing my
computer to overheat on what I would consider normal use.

Chrome was the culprit. Switched to Firefox and the issue is gone. However, I
have recently gone back to Chrome when plugged in because FF has been crashing
a lot and seems sluggish.

------
igl
I do not understand this article. You can't load up any browser with add-ons
and bookmarks for a few months and then complain about it being slower than a
fresh install of another one.

I hardly use any add-ons other than ad-block and a handful of selected ones
and do not have the problems described. Quite the opposite actually! I do have
the occasional freezes and crashes with ff using webgl, html5 video and even
firebug (with less than 10 tabs open).

------
cevaris
Haha, just had this realization myself. Safari -> Firefox.

------
ihaveajob
Did that last year and couldn't be happier. Whether performance and memory use
is better or worse, I've grown wary of Google's pervasiveness.

------
Touche
My biggest reason for not using Firefox is that I always keep 2 browser
windows open in Chrome, one is for my work account and the other is for my
personal account. I like this separation. IIRC you can't have 2 profiles open
at the same time in Firefox and even switching between profiles is not easy. I
do use Firefox on my personal laptop, but I spend 8 hours a day on my work
laptop and need this feature.

~~~
bloodorange
firefox --new-instance --ProfileManager

~~~
Touche
Good to know. Only thing remaining would be a way to distinguish between them.

~~~
osw
different theme per profile

------
scolfax
I worked for a company that turned out to be a bit shady. My takeaway from the
whole experience was: Chrome is the safest browser. Any process can change
your preferences etc on IE or FF by simply modifying registry settings or
system files. Chrome is _locked down_. I recommend it to everyone now.

Even if it was a bit slower than the competition (not convinced that it is) ,
I would rather be safe.

------
mmanfrin
I made the switch a few months back when I got a new computer, but found that
Firefox was _slower_ for me with less extensions than Chrome (on mac).

That being said, I keep the number of extensions I use low: json formatter, a
rest client, adblock, cloud-to-butt, clearly, and pocket. Chrome works a lot
better with multiple windows open in my experience (on a new iMac with 2
external monitors).

------
evjim
When I got my windows 8.1 convertible I was disappointment that Firefox's
scrolling is terrible with touch. IE metro is actually pretty awesome but I
hate being fullscreened in something and I don't like. And that you can't
install adblock or disconnect or tree tabs. But Chrome keeps crashing, so I
think I will have to use firefox and just suffer with a mouse.

------
imchillyb
I use chrome on every device that allows the install.

I've not experienced these slowdowns or crashes, on any of the machines that I
use. (PCs, Phones, Tablets...) Perhaps something you've installed (your
extensions maybe?), is giving you issues.

Your problem could be as simple as you're using the wrong versions of java and
chrome together. Mix-n-match 64-32 bit doesn't work well at all.

------
kriro
I've used Firefox forever and I don't think I'll switch. Conceptually Chrome
has some advantages but the difference is not big enough for me to care all
that much. The Zotero integration has been great forever and I use that a lot.
Guess that and vertical tabs are the two features I use most (I'm sure
vertical tabs exist for all browsers).

------
waxjar
I'd like to use Safari (instead of Chrome) but there's a couple of things
holding me back.

\- No omnibar with custom search engines by keyword. I use this extensively.
\- Closing multiple tabs is annoying, because they resize. Chrome solves this
well.

The couple of times I used Firefox weren't pleasant. It seems to not work as
well on OS X. Granted that has been a long time ago.

~~~
strange_quark
> No omnibar with custom search engines by keyword.

Safari 8 has this feature. Not as elegant as the way Chrome handles it, but
you can search domains you've previously searched by typing in the first few
characters of the domain and hitting tab.

> Closing multiple tabs is annoying, because they resize.

Not sure when this was changed, but tabs only resize once you've moved your
mouse away from the tab bar.

I switched away from Chrome a year or so ago when they changed the new tab
page to have the huge, redundant search box and fewer frequently visited pages
and haven't regretted it. I find Safari's UI to be leaps and bounds better
than Chrome's, scrolling is much smoother, and it drains my battery way less
than either Chrome or FF. There aren't nearly as many extensions for Safari,
but the ones I use (1Password, Reddit Enhancement, etc.) are all available for
Safari.

~~~
waxjar
Interesting. I'm not on the latest OS X yet, but that's good to hear. Might be
enough to make me switch.

------
hisyam
If you have too many extensions that consumes memory you can easily switch
them on/off using the Extensions Manager plugin:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-
manager...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-manager-aka-
sw/lpleipinonnoibneeejgjnoeekmbopbc)

------
kyllo
The only reason I don't use Firefox anymore is because it doesn't
automatically pick up changes in my proxy settings, whereas Chrome does. So
with Chrome I can have tabs open on my laptop at work, then bring it home and
continue to use the same tabs, while with Firefox I have to remember to go in
and change my proxy settings.

~~~
wanderview
I asked our networking folks and there are couple parts to fix this. First,
this bug recently landed which allows us to respect the system network status
better:

    
    
      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939318
    

I believe thats enabled on windows in FF35, but won't be enabled in Mac/Linux
until FF38.

There is a separate issue to deal specifically with recovering from proxy
settings that have gone bad, though:

    
    
      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1121800
    

Work has not started there, but its on our radar.

~~~
kyllo
Thank you for the helpful response. There are a lot of other little things I
don't like about Chrome, so once this little issue with Firefox is fixed I
want to switch back to it. Good to know that there is a bug filed for it!

------
baddox
I'll admit to not using Firefox extensively for several years, but I also have
had _zero_ issues with Chrome. The closest thing to an issue is that I really
don't care for the profile name UI in the top right of the window, which they
just added. That's certainly not enough to switch browsers over.

------
Ezhik
I hate what Google did to Chrome. Went from a browser to some sort of a
franken-OS inside of your own OS. Seriously, a user switcher? You mean that
one feature that _every single OS Chrome runs on_ has?

Also I hate how Google switched all of its apps to webapps, which work worse
and use more resources than their native counterparts.

------
bovermyer
I hate having lots of tabs open, and so the bazillion-process problem doesn't
apply to me.

The difference between Chrome and Firefox, for me, is that some sites that
work on Chrome don't work on Firefox. Other than that, it's mostly muscle
memory of things like Chrome developer tools that keep me in Chrome.

------
martokus
And just yesterday I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome. Based in the UK and
the latest Firefox searches google.com instead of google.co.uk Never had this
problem before and seems it cannot be fixed.

Even tried a fresh install of Firefox but no dice. I love Firefox but getting
the wrong search results is a deal breaker for me.

Any ideas?

~~~
zobzu
Its more of a google issue to be honest. Anyway just click here with firefox
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-
uk/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-uk/)

and you'll have google.co.uk :)

------
matrus
I'd like to switch back from Chrome to Firefox but I have over 200 random
passwords saved in Chrome and no way to import them into Firefox
automatically. On the other hand it was totally painless to switch _away_ from
Firefox as Chrome features comprehensive profile import from other browsers.

------
telepoiss
Firefox is at the time being the only browser capable of displaying correct
colors with a wide-gamut display.

[http://davidjohnstone.net/blog/2013/06/be-careful-when-
buyin...](http://davidjohnstone.net/blog/2013/06/be-careful-when-buying-a-
wide-gamut-monitor)

------
tomgg
This[1] bug from 2012 is the reason I switched; 30 months (still incrementing)
to fix a massive usability break seems slow to me.

1\.
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619)

------
znowi
In my case, the reason I keep using Firefox is privacy. Chrome is trying too
hard to enforce the walled garden on you and collect data. There's also one
"little", but very telling point - you can not set a homepage in Chrome. I
could not believe when I first discovered it.

------
DKnoll
For me the performance has never been a problem, but the end of NPAPI support
may also force me back to FF.

~~~
joshstrange
Uh, aren't they both dropping support? [0]

[0] [https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/browser-
plugin/issues/13](https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/browser-plugin/issues/13)

~~~
dblohm7
Mozilla is not dropping NPAPI support. Having said that, we are trying to
replace NPAPI plugins whereever we can (PDF.js, Shumway)

------
taivare
Went back to Firefox as well, same issues as author, plus my system security
frequently flags Chrome extensions, I also feel better about supporting
Firefox and open-source, I also enjoy Opera's speed-dial for surfing &
bookmarks. Opera speed-dial is fast on my slow computer.

------
baby
> Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome?

Nope. Vertical tabs are the future and Chrome never had that.

------
ashish01
I read this article and decided to try Firefox again after 2 years but I was
disappointed. A javascript heavy page can still make the whole browser
unresponsive. This is not acceptable. It was a fresh install of FF with no
extensions installed.

------
andywood
I've had to use Safari lately because Hulu simply won't work in Chrome. I've
also found that some sites that are unusably slow in Chrome scroll like a
dream in Safari. It's too bad, because I prefer Chrome's UI. YMMV.

------
Uroboric
I still use Chrome for one reason only: it's the only browser with a built-in
default zoom feature.

I don't like manually zooming for every single page I visit, and the zoom
extensions that exist for Firefox and Safari always break on certain pages.

------
frade33
this has been the case with all of us, and what is even worse, the google has
developed a steady habit of screwing things up, and it does not even consider
the risks involved., the risks here being the user
adoption/retention/abandonment. _cough_ barely anyone cares for users anyway,
these days.

But from a business point of view it's dire mistake, but it's kind of
outrageous too in some way, when you would promise one thing and do another.

anyway fuck users, what about the competitors, Google perhaps is the most
alienated enterprise of its size anyway too. Not because they were totally
unreasonable, just because google have no respect for any of them.

------
praetorian84
I use both Firefox and Chrome pretty heavily at work. I still prefer the web
dev experience in Chrome. The general browsing experience gap has definitely
narrowed. Flash + Firefox used to be painful, but I'm not noticing that
anymore.

------
paul_milovanov
Competition is good. Above all, for a long time Chrome has been the tide
lifting all boats, or pushing other browsers to improve. That Firefox is now a
leaner, more secure browser is a testament to Mozilla as well as the Chromium
project.

------
jwiley
Signed extensions also seem like a nice addition

[https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-
signing...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing-
safer-experience/)

------
hackerhasid
After reading this I fired up Safari (on Yosemite). Never really tried Safari
before - opened it once when I got my first Mac, wondered who moved my cheese,
and downloaded Chrome. But the last half hour with it have been great
actually!

------
Surio
A few questions were asking for chrome "alternatives"

FWIW, there is SRWARE Iron:
[http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_faq.php](http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_faq.php)

------
rjohnk
Firefox is dirt slow on my Asus T100. Only reason I run Chrome is because it's
decent speed on the T100. I think it has to due with the separate processes.
The Quad Core Bay Trail chokes on single threaded processes.

------
evolme
I'd be happier if Firefox got around to supporting 60fps on YouTube. There are
a number of small things that irk me about Firefox, but no 60fps is one of the
bigger ones. I still use it as my main browser though.

------
ripberge
He'll change his mind once he starts encountering more SVG (which is becoming
increasingly popular). Firefox SVG performance is so bad compared to
Chrome/Safari/IE. Some sites are unusable.

------
greggyb
For now, for me, Chrome is my go to #2 browser because of native HTML5 Netflix
on Linux. My primary browser is Midori, but it does not render all sites well,
and since I already have Chrome installed....

------
linuxhansl
I never understood the allure of Chrome.

Everybody said it was faster. So I did countless benchmarks with a stop watch
for the pages that I frequent and for every single one of them Firefox
rendered the pages faster.

------
sdfjkl
I dropped Chrome (and told everyone to stop using it) when it sprouted that
infernal "Not signed in to Chrome - You're missing out" button. A browser
should not come with an agenda.

------
tzamora
The only reason I still use chrome is because of this little flag: \--disable-
web-security that allows me to test my local sites without the need to add
them to a CORS config file.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Why not just run a development web server?

------
MatthewWilkes
I've never seen a Chrome install so slow that someone would describe Safari as
fast in comparison. The author has clearly customised his install to the point
of ruining it.

------
dinkumthinkum
Why does a gizmodo writer only uses one browser? Anyway, is he sure he isn't
installing a lot of addins? I don't have these problems. I think Chrome works
well.

------
spydum
Poor browsers, the punching bag of all technologists. About the only software
more despised/criticized/argued about is systemd.. that's saying something.

------
apa-sl
I'm happy with Opera browsers since the times when they were still serving ad
banners and started to release promo codes for their users to remove those ads
:D

------
mikecmpbll
I don't think Firefox or Chrome, I think Mozilla or Google.

Easy choice.

------
jeromegv
I moved to Safari a year ago when I bought my retina macbook pro. For some
reason it was painfully slow in Chrome and super fast in Safari. Never looked
back.

------
WizzleKake
I'll switch back to Firefox when they stop re-arranging the UI. Every year or
so it gets changed. It's what drove me to Chrome in the first place.

~~~
frederickf
Ug. I know how you feel. I've had success using
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/)

------
pcthrowaway
I tend to keep 15+ tabs open at any given time and I can't remember the last
time Chrome crashed on me. Chrome's extension ecosystem is better too.

------
owly
Ditto. FF and µBlock are a solid combo now. I typically have 10 to 20 tabs
open without issue. I uninstalled Chrome completely, I just don't need it.

------
Glyptodon
I love using firefox on my Android device. But it has more to do with it
letting you use browser extensions (unlike mobile chrome) than anything else.

------
Shivetya
and here I am on my Mac having to swap to Safari at times for youtube and
other video presentations because Firefox gives me errors, errors which claim
to be provider issues yet Safari does fine including allowing me to see
through the videos without stalls.

To each his own, but Firefox can go full retard just as well as any other
browser. (their SSL fix is aggravating too)

------
sidcool
[satire] At some level the blog seems like it's written by Microsoft PR team
that is too ashamed to pitch IE as an alternative.

------
joshstrange
I find Chrome's web dev tools to be vastly superior to FF and last time I
tried it it didn't look good on my Mac and I had the same memory problems as
with Chrome.

Until FF get's much faster or better devtools than chrome I'm not interested.
Not to mention how often does a Chrome extension hit the front page of HN vs a
FF one?

Don't get me wrong, I don't love Chrome unconditionally (the RAM usage is
crazy but so is FF) but I still think it's the better of the two. Just my two
cents...

~~~
theVirginian
I heard a rumor a while back that Firefox was developing a browser targeted at
web developers. Not sure if thats unnecessary or what but if it materializes
I'll probably give it a try.

~~~
joshstrange
Yeah, I remember getting excited when I read about that. I'll give it a shot
when it comes out but there are a number of little things that annoy me with
FF web dev tools that I doubt they will fix. Also I really need to dev on the
SAME browser the product will be released on and not some special dev build.

Edit: Oh now I remember why I wrote off:

> Firefox Developer Edition replaces the Aurora channel in the Firefox Release
> Process.

> By using the Developer Edition, you gain access to tools and platform
> features at least 12 weeks before they reach the main Firefox release
> channel.

They just fucking renamed their alpha channel to "Firefox Developer
Edition"....

~~~
e15ctr0n
The Developer Edition packs a ton of features.
[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-
fir...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozilla-introduces-the-first-
browser-built-for-developers-firefox-developer-edition/)

------
boobsbr
I've been using Chrome for a long time now.

Then I had to go back to Firefox on the company computer. What a
disappointment. Still slow as hell.

~~~
kenrick95
Update the Firefox on the company computer maybe? A fresh Firefox can be
installed locally without admin access (I've done this in my school's shared
computer).

------
hgezim
Did the same a while ago due to Google trying to push it's services too hard.
Also, the less I rely on Google the better :)

------
Apofis
I wonder why something so seemingly simple as displaying some text and images
on screen is so difficult to do effectively?

------
Gonzih
I would love to go back to firefox, but sadly pentadactyl extension does not
work with latest versions of firefox.

------
everydaypanos
Just sat on my PC and patted my Chrome window with my cursor for all the bad
things it heard on this thread!!

------
ramigb
Google employees are in the air tonight.

------
teddyuk
If only they ported modern ie browsers to Unix like they did ie 4 and then
this whole thread would be mute!

------
melling
Please just use both Chrome and Firefox. Having both is great. I keep the
Nightly's open for each.

------
kristopolous
Is this what passes for journalism? That was truly awful. Did that take 3
minutes to write? Maybe four?

------
10098
Anecdata:

using both Firefox an Chrome. Chrome on Linux is very fast and responsive.
Firefox on Windows slow and clunky.

------
stank345
I just closed Chrome as a test and am viewing this thread in FFX. Chrome was
using 3 GB of RAM :/

------
dude3
translate3d and CSS3 animations just run much faster on chrome. Javascript is
also faster on chrome. That's why I use chrome. Newer versions of firefox are
getting better tho. The debugger on firefox is sub par compared to the on
chrome for complex applications.

------
dead10ck
Chrome was always a non-starter for me without an option to cycle tabs in
most-recently used order.

~~~
maxxxcohen
So you just gave up on it ? juat like that. It's because of people like you
that software ends up slow and bloated..

~~~
dead10ck
Wow. So you are saying that because I chose not to use Chrome that all
software suffers? I didn't realize that there was only one good choice, or
that Firefox was "slow and bloated," or that my choice of which software to
use somehow contributes to the quality of code that software engineers outside
of Google write.

MRU tabs is essential to my usage flow. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. I
frequently have many tabs open, and I need to be able to quickly switch back
and forth between two or three tabs. People have been clamoring for MRU tabs
since Chrome came out, and Google and the Chromium developers simply ignore
them.
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=161960](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=161960)

------
darrasoturi
Always finally wound up with Firefox, as it has the best mouse gestures
support (with add-ons ofc).

------
bmoresbest55
It is funny. I just switched to Chrome and find it to be much quicker and less
resource hungry.

------
abvdasker
I never left.

------
calinet6
Fine, still an evergreen browser, auto-updates and supports standards. Use
whatever you want!

------
metastart
I use the Epic Privacy Browser, built on chromium and way better than firefox
and chrome.

------
xkarga00
Since uBlock got support for Firefox, using Firefox is a no-brainer for me.

------
narrowrail
Comment-types I find odd in this thread (given this _is_ HN):

1) People that _only_ use one browser.

2) People that use Chrome over Chromium.

3) People that do not have one browser with js disabled.

4) People that have flash installed (there is some overlap with #1 here
because Chrome bundles flash).

Everybody _here_ should know better, IMO.

------
krick
> Remember when we all switched from Firefox to Chrome?

Uhm, no. _We_ didn't.

------
rajeemcariazo
I can't leave Chrome because of its web developer tools

~~~
mewwts
Try the Firefox developer edition. I personally find it better than Chrome dev
tools.[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/developer/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/)

------
plg
just a naive question---on the mac, what's the issue with Safari? Seems really
fast to me. Also I love the Reading List feature.

------
moeedm
Safari is the best browser on OSX hands down.

------
tom4000
Did the same some weeks ago!

------
meapix
i never switched from firefox, with vim like extension, never had problems.

------
ocdtrekkie
It's about time.

------
upgray-d
asston?

------
juliangregorian
I finally gave Chrome the heave-ho when a recent update forced you to browse
under a personal profile. There was a bug in the implementation that would
crash the browser if you deleted the profile it created for you (I just wanted
to use it normally like I always did!) I ended up inadvertently deleting all
my saved bookmarks from the Chrome cloud or whatever. Fed up, I switched to
Firefox and have been remarkably happy.

Right now, I have one tab open in Chrome (was debugging a web page) and,
including "Chrome Helpers", is using 86 threads and 11% of CPU. Firefox on the
other hand has 33 tabs active and, including "Firefox Plugin Content", is
using 104 threads and 8.5% of CPU.

~~~
Navarr
You had always had a profile.. Chrome just made it more visible so that you
knew about Guest mode and stuff..

Of course deleting your user profile deleted all of that profile's data

~~~
juliangregorian
Your condescension is on point, but your reading comprehension could use some
work: what I deleted was not my browser profile (which turns out to be
undeleteable, and crashy), but my bookmarks that have been stored in my Google
account in the cloud for years. Previously the browser-level profile (if
indeed it existed) was invisible to me so it never bothered me. Also unclear
why a "guest mode" needs to be different than the incognito mode which was
already understood by everyone.

~~~
praxulus
[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6130773?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6130773?hl=en)

* Guest mode: A user in Guest mode does not leave any browsing history or cookies on the computer. In addition, they can't see or modify the computer owner's Chrome profile.

* Incognito mode: You don't leave browsing history and cookies on your computer, but you can still see your existing history, bookmarks, passwords, Autofill data, and other Chrome settings.

------
frik
I just tested Firefox 37 (Developer Edition) and Firefox 38 (Nightly).

The multi-process "Electrolysis" support in 38 is great. Several tabs with
flash plugin work fine now, without slowing down the whole browser. Though, I
still see only one main process for all web sites (there is a child process
"plugin-container"), that's a bit disappointing. IE 9+, Chrome and Safari 7+
spawn a new process for every x sites - a child process with little
permissions (a technique known as "sandbox"). Maybe we have to wait a little
longer for Mozilla's Rust based Servo engine.

~~~
wldcordeiro
If you have Electrolysis there should be more than just firefox and plugin-
container. Currently I run Nightly as my main browser and have to keep it
disabled though due to some plugins I use lacking Electrolysis support (the
fix is not on the plugin maker's side.)

~~~
frik
I run the current Firefox 38 Nightly 64-bit Windows version with "Enable E10S
(multi-process)" turned on (default setting). There are only two processes.

~~~
dblohm7
That's temporary. Once e10s has been stabilized with one content process,
they'll look into scaling that up.

------
joesmo
The issue that has me considering a switch is that the latest Chrome dev
tools' network panel tries too hard to show a preview of JSON requests that
are not JSON. When I get exceptions and such, they come through as HTML or
plaintext, sometimes with JSON at the end. Previously, Chrome would realize
that it's not proper JSON and render the HTML. Now it doesn't render the HTML
preview, but does render the JSON which is absolutely useless on both
accounts. What did they say about 'if it isn't broke ...'?

~~~
lttlrck
Did you report it?

~~~
joesmo
I have now, but I don't expect it to be fixed.

------
tdkl
Top 2 things that suck in FF that makes me stick with Chrome, despite wanting
to part ways with Google mothership :

\- sync (Chrome syncs everything while being reliable) \- mobile Android app
(FF mobile has insane scrolling behaviour, that's out of place on the
platform).

~~~
e15ctr0n
Firefox also offers Sync[1]. Its mobile Android app[2] has shown dramatic
improvement recently with support for add-ons[3] and Sync[4].

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/02/07/introducing-
mozilla...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/02/07/introducing-mozilla-
firefox-accounts/)

[2]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/android/)

[4] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-
ne...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-new-firefox-
sync)

------
blumkvist
Did the same.

------
osw
I use surf for most of things, firefox is one fat panda.

------
igorgue
Slow. News. Day.

------
jkempe11
Chrome sucks, Firefox kind of sucks, and Safari is good but it lacks
extensions.

Are we going to go back to the days of no great browser options? Please no.

------
tomphoolery
No you're not. You're gonna be right back in Chrome because it has V8. Admit
it. You liked Chrome because it ran fast because it had a great JS engine and
HTML renderer. We all did. Stop complaining, suck it up, and use Chrome.

