
Ask HN: When did Firefox become so broken? - martokus
I don&#x27;t want to sound like a rant but that&#x27;s the reality for me.<p>TL;DR Been using Firefox as my main browser since 2005. Refused to move to Chrome when a lot of people did. As of today both my home and work machines default to Chrome. So what happened?<p>Earlier this year the problem started on my personal laptop. I&#x27;m based in UK and Firefox suddenly decided it will start searching in google.com rather than google.co.uk. I made sure my Google preferences say UK, my PC location is set to UK, reinstalled Firefox, nothing. IE and Chrome still search in google.co.uk. After a month of struggling I gave up and switched to Chrome.<p>I kept Firefox as my brain browser on my work PC. It was still searching in google.co.uk so all good. All good until like 2 weeks ago when opening a Google Hangout in Firefox started resulting in the browser taking up to 900Mb of RAM with 3 tabs opened (gmail, hangouts, website) and crashing. We use Google Apps at work so I spend a lot of time in hangouts... Again I struggled for 2 weeks and gave up. As of today Chrome is my default browser on all PCs.<p>What went wrong with Firefox really? I could easily blame my PC setup but I don&#x27;t think so. 2 very different issues on 2 machines, yet other browsers still function normally on both of them.<p>I&#x27;m even considering the ridiculous probability of Google subtly screwing with Firefox users on random bases just to get them unnerved and switch to Chrome.<p>Is anyone else experiencing such a degradation of their Firefox experience?
======
arien
Both things you mention have to do with Google, who happens to own Chrome. Why
do you think it is a ridiculous proposition? After all, you gave in and
switched to Chrome...

I've actually done the opposite, switched back to Firefox after many years of
using Chrome. Was a bit wary, but no issues at all, runs fine in both PC and
Mac. Although I don't use hangouts on it.

~~~
robbyking
I recently switched back to Firefox, too, after almost 6 years with Chrome. In
that time it felt like the two browsers switched roles, and now Firefox is
lightweight and privacy minded, while Chrome is bloated and invasive.

I recently launched Chrome to see if an issue a website I was visiting was
experiencing was Firefox specific (they weren't), and I was really taken back
by how _old_ Chrome felt†. It lacked the "crisp" feeling Firefox has††, and
the UI (new tab screen especially) just felt stale. It was actually really
surprising.

† I was updated to the current version.

†† I understand how caching works.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> It lacked the "crisp" feeling Firefox has††, and the UI (new tab screen
> especially) just felt stale.

> †† I understand how caching works.

I'm confused. Do you mean Chrome lacked Firefox's speed? Or you simply like
Firefox's UI better?

~~~
robbyking
In my opinion, both. Chrome's new tab screen looks very out of date to me, and
both the UI and page loading feels faster on Firefox.

------
SixSigma
We call this "begging the question".

You have decided Firefox is broken. I have zero complaints about it, it is my
default browser on Android, Windows and OpenBSD, all three of which I use
daily without issue.

------
inetsee
I've been using Firefox on Linux for quite some time. My default search engine
is DuckDuckGo. I haven't had any problems with Firefox.

My wife uses Firefox on Windows 7 (she hated Windows 8, so we switched back to
Windows 7) and she had been having some problems with Firefox (can't connect
after auto-upgrade, Firefox using lots of CPU resources, etc). I finally
figured out the connection problems (it was our Norton firewall needing to be
told about the Firefox update), and doing a Firefox refresh
([https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-
reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-
ons-and-settings)) seems to have solved the excess CPU usage problems.

------
conradfr
I'm a bit in the same boat.

Firefox is better than before for me : it crashes less, less memory leak with
better cleaning.

BUT I still have to restart it regularly. At some point during the day it
becomes less responsive, closing a tab freeze the browser (during which
Windows task manager indicates that FF uses 25% of the cpu for xx seconds, may
be related to my quad core), etc.

I don't even have that much tabs (like 2/3 windows, ~20/30 tabs).

The worst offenders are GMail, Google Images (or even Imgur, lots of images
seem to kill FF) and a forum page full of Youtube videos.

Removing Adblock helped a bit but other than that I haven't find an extension
I could blame (Classic Theme Restorer was a problem though, it's fixed now).

------
justathrow2k
Isn't this question better suited for a FireFox dev/complaint forum?

------
jrm2k6
I have the same issue when it comes to the slowness. It crashes really easily,
and takes up a lot of RAM. Chrome runs just fine with the same websites. Each
time I switched to a new opened tab, it hangs, that is deeply annoying.

It might be better to open an issue on a forum/dev complaints board, but I
feel like it is always the same answers. Do a reinstall/reset to factory
settings or this kind of thing, which is not helpful as I have obviously done
it.

------
nickpsecurity
Maybe this might help:

[http://westhouseit.co.uk/tech-blog/how-to-fix-firefox-
search...](http://westhouseit.co.uk/tech-blog/how-to-fix-firefox-search-to-
use-the-local-google-search/)

------
FooNull
Fwiw, by running the firefox nightly, I've seen far fewer memory issues,
crashes, and general crappyness...

------
nautical
I disagree that its broken , have been using it on mac and linux both , works
like a charm every time .

------
jdlyga
Chrome just got a hell of a lot better and Firefox more or less stayed the
same.

------
th0waway
Have you tried the below? It helped me.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-
reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-
ons-and-settings)

~~~
martokus
I will! Thanks

