
Firefox 33 - digitalcreate
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/33.0/releasenotes/
======
romanovcode
Jeez FF really stepping up the game. Seems like 32 was released just
yesterday.

I'm not sure if there are any performance issues since I switched to FF about
a year ago when bought new laptop with SSD and 16 gigs of ram it's as fast as
Chrome. As for webdev tools, they are not worse, you are just too used to
webkit ones. I might even say that FF has better dev tools because you can
modify request and re-send it.

I switched because Google is trying to integrate Google too much into Chrome.
That's definitely not something I look in a browser since I would like it to
be independent and not spy on what I type/do.

Anyway, if anyone who is contributing to FF reading this I just want to thank
you for best browser ever.

~~~
scope
> I'm not sure if there are any performance issues

I also use Firefox on a MacBook Pro(2014), I don't know if this existed before
or not but, under battery > Apps using significant enery, Firefox is one of
em', opening the same exact tabs on Safari doesn't show safari on the list

is this because apps that come with Apple are not included in the list or is
Safari better at Energy consumption?

~~~
nfriedly
I believe it's the later: safari is really good at not wasting energy.
Anandtech looked into this not too long ago:
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8327/browser-faceoff-
battery-l...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8327/browser-faceoff-battery-life-
explored-2014)

~~~
Yoric
Yeah, Safari is good at it. I seem to remember that Apple has had battery-
consumption measurement instrumentation that they only made available to
outside developers recently.

We have an ongoing project to make Firefox very good, too, but as all big
projects, this might take time.

------
nemetroid
> Improved search experience through the location bar [1]

Really happy to see this one. Previously single-word searches were so slow
that I'd usually have time to remember that they are slow, press C-e, and
enter the same search term in the search bar, all before the browser realises
there is no matching host and does a web search instead.

1: [http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-
snappier-...](http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier-
searches-now-in-firefox-aurora/)

~~~
k_
That's actually the thing I want to make sure I can entirely disable before
even thinking of updating to FF33. I'm sick of browsers and other software
trying their best to send as much data as they can to search engines (hi
google). If I want to perform a search, I do it, period. I know it's
absolutely not the case for most users, though..

~~~
Yoric
I'm pretty sure that Firefox doesn't send anything from the location bar. At
least, my location bar doesn't perform any search outside of history +
bookmarks, unless I press "return".

~~~
worklogin
Nope. On FF33, when I type in a one-word, no-TLD hostname in location bar, it
takes me to my default search engine, while asking "Do you want to go to
hostname?"

The whole point of having separate bars is to clearly distinguish use, and to
ensure data doesn't leak. This bothers me, too.

~~~
jakub_g
Note that you can use `//` prefix to mean `[http://`](http://`). E.g. if you
want to go to `[http://foo`](http://foo`), you type `//foo` in the address
bar. You can also use `//` URLs in HTML, it expands to `[http://`](http://`)
or `[https://`](https://`) depending if the page is served via HTTP or HTTPS
(this is cross-browser)

~~~
ygra
And use the ? prefix for searches from the address bar that would otherwise be
interpreted as something else, also cross-browser.

~~~
mcovey
that's an interesting one. I usually use a single quotation mark when
searching a URL since Google doesn't interpret it as "verbatim" anymore and
seems to just discard it.

------
riquito
The "ev" tag next to the DOM elements with events seems really useful

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector#Examining_event_listeners)

~~~
masklinn
Especially if there's support for jquery-bound events as current inspectors
are kinda useless for those (they link to jquery's internal binding functions)

~~~
mmastrac
Didn't the change the introspect jQuery event structures land recently? Is
this in FF33?

[http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-
events...](http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-events-in-
firefox-devtools/)

~~~
masklinn
The page linked by riquito indicates that jQuery events introspection will
land in FF34.

~~~
mmastrac
Ah thanks, missed that. Shame they didn't stuff that into the release -- it
would have been incredibly valuable.

~~~
mbrubeck
You can use it now in the Firefox Aurora test channel:

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-
inspector-j...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-inspector-
jquery-events-iframe-switcher-more-firefox-developer-tools-episode-34/)

(It'll be in Firefox Beta later this week, too.)

------
pontjho
Love the improvements but how about an html5 date picker? Surely that is not
hard?

~~~
sillysaurus3
What do you mean? I'm having trouble understanding how an html5 date picker is
related to firefox.

~~~
dorward
It is a feature in HTML 5 that has been defined for a while but which Firefox
hasn't implemented yet.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294)

------
xenophonf
So here's something I've noticed that's confused me about Firefox's cookie
handling: I have cookies turned off, but a PREF cookie for google.com keeps
getting set. I've even tried blocking cookies from google.com, but I still see
this cookie. I turned off Do Not Track but haven't tried disabling
SafeBrowsing or all my extensions, so maybe it is one of those. Has anyone
noticed this, too?

~~~
ewang1
It's probably related to their Google search partnership.

~~~
justcommenting
It's more likely to be associated with built-in malware protection/phishing
protection from Google. In Firefox's settings under Security, you can un-check
"block reported attack sites" and "block reported web forgeries" and these
cookies should disappear after running BleachBit.

these types of cookies may seem benign and helpful to users (and maybe they
are), but i also wouldn't doubt that Google uses this information for
persistent tracking.

it's already been disclosed that NSA uses Google PREF cookies to track users:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/12/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/)

hence my other dispirited comment about the cookie UI... edit:
reworded/clarified

~~~
xenophonf
At first I was only concerned about web page access tracking via this cookie
(which indeed is set because of Safe Browsing---I turned both settings off,
cleared my history, and the cookie is gone). If this cookie could be abused
for location tracking, maybe it would be a good idea to leave Safe Browsing
disabled.

------
skrowl
Best browser keeps getting better. "If you know a Chrome user, get them to
switch to Firefox" is going to be the new "If you know an IE user ..."

~~~
spindritf
I use Firefox as my main browser but that is, sadly, not true. Chrome remains
faster, especially with js heavy webapplications. Some don't work in fx at
all.

~~~
dangayle
Unless you have open a bunch of tabs, like I typically do. With multiple tabs,
Firefox is easily the best performer.

Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into
overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet.

~~~
morganvachon
> Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into
> overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet.

This is even more obvious on older Macs. I've got a Core 2 Duo mini that
absolutely chokes on more than a few tabs in Chrome/Chromium, but runs
acceptably well with Firefox even with ten or more tabs open, and flies with
Safari. I really wish someone would put out a Chromium based, stripped down
browser for OS X versions older than Mavericks. I think the rendering engine
is solid, it's all the fluff that slows it down.

------
zobzu
Interestingly this is not mentioned in this huge post, but according to
[http://arewefastyet.com/](http://arewefastyet.com/) Firefox JS is faster than
Chrome and Safari in all benchmarks in both 32 and 64bit modes since quite a
few month!

It used to be that Chrome marketing was pushing for this as being so much
faster on Chrome than others so that's a pretty nice feat.

~~~
ksec
Because JS Speed don't matter any more, at least out of 90% of times for 90%
of internet users. Speed for casual users, means rendering speed, network
speed, Browser and web page responsiveness, startup speed etc. Although
Firefox did make many incremental steps over the years. It is still not
anywhere near the Blink / Chromium offers such as Google Chrome and Opera.

e10s should make Firefox competitive. And its still quite a while before it
lands.

~~~
zobzu
i still think being faster than chrome js is a nice feat. specially for html5
gaming.

i dont think chrome having faster js back in the days did change much user-
wise. gmail was as fast in firefox as it was in chrome... ;)

------
Spiritus
I wish they would put some effort into making Firefox feel more native on OS
X, for example:

\- Builtin support for Keychain (without relying on an extension).

\- swipe-animation when going forward/backwards in history.

\- "over-scroll" (you know, when you can sort sort scroll past the top and
bottom of the page).

I know it sounds a bit vain, but I simply can't make a switch unless the look
and feel is native to OS X.

~~~
rdatajef2
I agree that native to OS X would be nice, but I would immediately disable
over-scroll if it were on by default.

Luckily, FF is pretty good about giving power users this kind of flexibility.
I haven't found a way to disable it on Safari for instance, though it's not my
primary browser so it's not too big a deal.

Another small OS X thing that FF is missing is three-finger tap to view
dictionary definitions.

~~~
Excavator
Over-scroll was backed out due to performance issues¹, the bug² number for the
future implementation of it is 939480.

1:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862)

2:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480)

------
SloopJon
The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. It seems like a big improvement for
such a simple change (granted that it took one developer two months to do).

Activity Monitor reports that Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac. That
makes for sluggish performance, even with 32 GB of RAM. Looking forward to
trying Firefox 33.

~~~
ehsanu1
Your insane memory usage is probably due to some plugin or other. Adblock is
known to consume something like 40mb per tab open for example, due to
injecting a large stylesheet into every single page ever opened.

~~~
tome
Wow. Is there any way to mitigate that?

~~~
masklinn
[https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-
plus...](https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-
on-firefoxs-memory-usage/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_pluss_effect_on_firefoxs_memory_usage/)

The only true fix is to remove it, although changing the ruleset and finding
out which tab has humongous numbers of iframes is probably a good start:
according to link 1 ABP has a static memory consumption of ~60MiB, plus
3~6MiB/iframe (since it's caused by the stylesheet size, I expect the precise
ruleset impacts that)

------
dannysu
I read the changelog and saw that proprietary window.crypto functions are
removed. I actually make use of window.crypto.getRandomValues(), and good
thing that's not going away:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Propri...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Proprietary_window.crypto_Functions)

~~~
bzbarsky
getRandomValues is not proprietary. The in-progress spec is at
[http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-
getRa...](http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-
getRandomValues)

------
nd7
Please tell me, how to return the gray background in a new tab? And how to
return to the number rows and columns of picture thumbnails not decreased when
the window changes at

half-screen, non-rounded thumbnails? That new UI makes me sad...

~~~
kevincrane
It looks like you still have the same number of rows, but each tile got larger
so they can't all fit on a laptop screen anymore. If you zoom the page out
(Ctrl/Cmd + minus) a few times, the bottom row shows up.

Firefox guys in this thread, how do we get the old sizes back? 9 thumbnails >
6.

~~~
cpeterso
The about:config prefs for "browser.newtabpage.rows" and
"browser.newtabpage.columns" seem to work in Firefox 32, but not 33. I don't
know if this is a bug or a design change.

UPDATE: This is Firefox bug 1005596. The prefs only work when you zoom out.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596)

~~~
nd7
Reddit suggested a temporary solution to this issue by installing the
extension(not bug fixes, but still):
[https://addons.mozilla.org/ru/firefox/addon/new-tab-
tools/?s...](https://addons.mozilla.org/ru/firefox/addon/new-tab-
tools/?src=api)

~~~
kevincrane
Oh awesome, thanks! I was looking for addons yesterday, but I must've missed
this one. It does everything I want, so I'm placated for the moment.

------
justcommenting
still no cookie UI fix.... very disappointing, especially for an organization
that claims to pride itself on protecting user privacy while dropping google
analytics and google cookies on users... probably because they're so heavily
dependent on google's money.

~~~
ep103
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456)

~~~
justcommenting
when you go to getfirefox.com, you'll be tracked by google analytics as you're
reading about mozilla's "commitment to your privacy".

think one cookie is better than two? maybe, but the context matters here. it
took mozilla seven years to stop sending other google cookies along with
safebrowsing update requests, including about half a year _after_ the
washington post reported that NSA was using this behavior/functionality for
targeting:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255)

Mozilla never seems to have anything to say about Google PREF cookies being
trivially correlated to google logins from the same IP within a certain
timeframe.

more to the point, Firefox still can't be trusted to even tell you which
cookies have been dropped in its default configuration through the UI, let
alone have a default configuration that limits persistent forms of tracking
from its primary sponsor. i find this galling given their marketing push
around mozilla's "commitment to your privacy".

------
chdir
I'd be delighted to use FF on iPad. I do a lot of leisure browsing/reading and
I want to support FF on all my devices. Is their stand still the same i.e. _We
refuse to bring Firefox to iOS until Apple lets us use our web engine_ ?

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-
to-b...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-to-bring-
firefox-to-ios-until-apple-lets-us-use-our-web-engine/)

~~~
soperj
I'd blame apple, not firefox. What's the point in them wasting their time just
skinning something that is guaranteed to be slower than Safari?

~~~
amartya916
Yes, Apple is definitely to "blame" as far as handicapping UIWebViews are
concerned. That being said, the new WKWebview is supposed to have all the
Javascript optimizations (and the Nitro engine) that mobile Safari uses.

Chances are that it might still not be as fast as Safari, but Firefox should
bite the bullet and just do it because:

a. Firefox cannot afford to not be on all platforms. With computing devices
converging and relying on handshakes (data syncing?), missing out on a major
mobile platform is foolish.

b. In a related point, syncing bookmarks/tabs via Firefox sync is severely
handicapped by it's absence on iOS.

c. There is a fantastic niche where FF can fit in on iOS. It'd be as privacy
centric as Safari and with an iOS launch would be cross-platform like Chrome
(without Google peddling their products front and centre). They could also get
some inspiration from mobile Opera on iOS that has fantastic data saving
features in-built.

~~~
apayan
For what it's worth, WKWebView is still astonishingly buggy and hangs quite a
bit when loading some pages with XHRs. There are some other bugs that trigger
these 10+ second hangs, but we couldn't delay shipping anymore so we reverted
back to UIWebView.

~~~
amartya916
Darn. Thanks for letting me know. I was thinking of starting to experiment
with WKWebView for an app that currently uses UIWebViews. So I guess FF using
WKWebViews (even if they can get over the philosophical/techinical difference
with Apple) is some ways off.

------
munimkazia
The "send to chromecast" feature on Firefox android app is awesome, but I was
kinda hoping that they added this to the desktop application too. I know that
stuff like this is usually left for add-ons, but there isn't a good firefox
add on which does Chromecast, unlike the several options on the Chrome web
store.

~~~
mmastrac
Is there even a stable, published API for this that a desktop app could use? I
always believed that Chromecast support was a platform thing handled by the
Chromecast API which is effectively a binary blob.

Regardless, I imagine that Firefox will end up with some sort of support for
pushing streams when the MatchStick is released, but whether it supports
Chromecast is a question yet unanswered.

~~~
munimkazia
Oh. I am kinda surprised that the API isn't an open API. I don't know why I
just assumed that it is.

------
Animats
It's disappointing that the H.264 video player support is not open source.
Most of the patents managed by MPEG-LA have expired, and the ones that remain
are either encoding-side only or for features nobody uses much, like
interlace. Check out the patent lists.

[http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_M...](http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2_H_264/)

[http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Au...](http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Audio_Layer_3_patents)

Most of the remaining patents expire in 2015. There are a few for 2017, but
they're for features nobody really needs in a computer decoder.

~~~
thristian
You mean this H.264 video player?

[https://github.com/cisco/openh264](https://github.com/cisco/openh264)

~~~
Animats
Cisco paid for the MPEG-LA licenses on that. Back in 2013, they probably had
to, but more patents have expired since then, and it's probably out of patent
now, unless they put in extra stuff like N-channel audio.

~~~
drdaeman
If/when patents are gone, you could legally use and distribute self-compiled
binaries, since source is already under BSD license.

------
AshleysBrain
I think Firefox 33 also enables Direct3D 11 rendering on Windows. Can anyone
confirm? I've just been digging through bugzilla and can't find a clear
reference to that, but it's an interesting change if so.

~~~
maxerickson
It's mentioned here:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositi...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositing)

(which is the destination of the not very obviously named link in the
"Windows: OMTC enabled by default" change, I had followed it earlier to see
what OMTC meant)

------
bsbechtel
Since upgrading to the last version (32), Firefox has become a significant
resource hog on my machine. It has become considerably worse than any other
browser. Has anyone else had this issue?

~~~
tokenizerrr
For me it's Chrome that has been the resource hog and Firefox that has been a
lot more swift. Chrome frequently uses 100% of one of my cpu cores for minutes
on end and is very sluggish with creating new tabs (where it's sometimes
faster to start up Firefox and use that to search than to open a new tab in
Chrome). I'm not quite sure what's going on, but it seems some browsers just
occasionally have issues with certain hardware configurations?

~~~
r721
>very sluggish with creating new tabs

There was a bug
([https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126)),
but it seems to be fixed. However last comment there hints on another related
bug:
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889)

Maybe you have bookmarks with foreign characters on bookmark bar too?

~~~
tokenizerrr
I used to have a large amount of bookmarks on the bookmark bar, which did
cause sluggish tab switching. I've recently removed all of those which did
improve the tab switching speed, but not the tab creation speed. I should
probably do some more hunting through that issue tracker at some point...

------
megablast
I had a real problem updating from 31 to 32. What usually is done
automatically did not work. It kept on asking me if I would like to, and after
saying yes it just kept stalling. This was in 2 different workplaces and at
home, where I have not had trouble before.

I ended up having to download it from the website, which was not an obvious
experience.

------
hosay123
_Note: Firefox currently uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC and not for the <video>
tag, because OpenH264 does not yet support the high profile format frequently
used for streaming video. We will reconsider this once support has been
added._

Yay, another decade before we get YouTube on OS X

~~~
acdha
YouTube usually already works as long as you don't have the Flash plugin
installed (YouTube uses Flash by default for many videos even if you've opted
in to the HTML5 beta) since they've transcoded most of the video to WebM.

In any case, the bug to watch for OS X is actually different:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654)
That uses Apple's system implementation so it has great performance and it
currently appears to be slated for Firefox 35; use the Nightly builds if you
want it now and like to live dangerously.

~~~
cpeterso
YouTube seems to be defaulting to HTML5 (WebM) video for Firefox Nightly and
Aurora browsers, even though I have the Flash plugin installed and enabled.

~~~
acdha
I'd suspect most places are in the process of switching to use Flash as a
fallback now that the native support has shipped for more visitors. Even if
you don't care about the format, the improved performance, rendering quality
and networking are compelling.

------
jodybdesigns
I am currently running Win10 Dev preview full fledged on a daily work machine.
Off topic, Win 10 works great except for a few USB bugs not allowing me to
format USB drives.

My usage is not as high as im reading. But a lot of my usage comes from
Adblock. I have 5 browser windows open, with about 5-10 tabs each, im
currently @ 760mb on Win 10.

A nice bug I get is from Firebug. When I am debugging a site, and I try to
hover over my Taskbar icons to grab a new window, it flashes for about 2
seconds on whatever im hovering, and I have to try again, the second try
usually leaves my taskbar windows open. If I close Firebug, this problem
stops.

I also notice when I run flash (I stream mixtapes from datpiff.com), my usage
goes sky high. I have been trying some debug options in about:config, and I
think I have knocked the usage down by modifying a few lines.

Also another bug I experience on Win10 with Firefox is my top bar will
completely disappear, I have to alt+F4 to close out Firefox and re-open. Maybe
Firefox 33 will fix some of these issues.

~~~
jodybdesigns
* I managed to fix my top bar issue within minutes of my post. Don't know why, but I decided to add a skin to my Firefox ui - this fixed my issue 100% it seems, I am not getting the error at all anymore _

------
ck2
34 beta1 is also out and looks good

was hoping for native h264 to be working by now but apparently not

[http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0b1/)

------
SloopJon
Hmm, after upgrading and restoring the session, all of my Hacker News tabs now
show a Secure Connection Failed error: "The OCSP response contains out-of-date
information. (Error code: sec_error_ocsp_old_response)"

~~~
SloopJon
Failed the first few reloads, but they're starting to work again.

------
AndyKelley
Still doesn't have the one feature I've been waiting for:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831)

------
twombly
Do the Firefox releases have anything to do with the Spidermonkey releases?
I've been seeing the placeholder page for Spidermonkey 31 for a couple of
months now...

------
Eleopteryx
I can finally watch 60FPS videos on YouTube thanks to the HTML5 player being
fully functional now.

~~~
Excavator
Link to an example video? Anything more "advanced" than 720p@30FPS seems to
require DASH support or the like?

------
pearjuice
Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet? Stop saying
that not used RAM is wasted RAM. I would like to do things with a browser in
the background instead of closing and opening it everytime due to
disproportionate RAM usage.

For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue.

~~~
pessimizer
>Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet?

>For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue.

I don't think this problem exists. I have 450 tabs open in Firefox on a 6 y/o
computer with 4G of RAM. Last time I tried something like that on Chromium (a
long time ago, I admit), blood started leaking from one of the USB ports.

------
yarrel
Did they remove the DRM infection mechanism in this build?

------
whoisthemachine
Anxiously awaiting the Waterfox build!

~~~
nly
I don't get the appeal of Waterfox. In my experience Intels C++ compiler isn't
that good outside of SIMD, with inferior code generation to both GCC and
Clang. What compiler are they benchmarking against on their homepage?

~~~
verbatim
I don't either, but I looked at their home page, and am not really inclined to
trust performance claims of someone that uses a graph like the one under
"General Benchmarks: Higher is Better" which uses a nice smooth curve to
demonstrate... nothing, since the different data points are unrelated.

~~~
whoisthemachine
Yes I agree, his benchmarks seem like mostly fluff to me.

------
notastartup
I begin to use Firefox more now than Chrome. Chrome has gotten really slow.
like I navigate to a url, it will redirect to about:blank;

watching youtube or soundcloud sends cpu crazy active.

i remember I switched to chrome from firefox 5 years ago because of those
reasons. now I find myself using firefox for the same reason, chrome is
sluggish. I also don't feel creeped out.

------
zenciadam
Is this the version that doesn't use 100% of your memory with more than three
tabs open?

~~~
elektronjunge
It hasn't done that in years. I have ~20 tabs open and about 500 MB of memory
used. For comparison chrome uses the same amount of memory at about 10 tabs
open.

~~~
zenciadam
Just had to killall firefox. So I beg to differ. They just blame the third
party addons. Like ABP, because it's your fault for installing one of the most
popular plugins.

~~~
nnethercote
We can't act on vague complaints. We need data.

Fortunately there's an easy way to get it. Can you visit about:memory when
memory usage gets high, click on the "Measure" button and post the results
here, or email me, or file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org and put "[MemShrink]"
in the "whiteboard" field? Thank you.

------
J_Darnley
I asked this last time...

Does this remove the horrible Australis UI?

~~~
lucb1e
In that case I am obliged to ask:

I love the Australis UI, did they make it stay?

------
melling
Hmmm...

Don't most of HN users just use the Nightly's or the Canary build for Chrome?

[https://nightly.mozilla.org](https://nightly.mozilla.org)

People complaining about the memory usage all the time seem a bit strange.
Just buy a nice machine and help test betas so Google and Mozilla can move
faster.

------
Figs
Great... so what long standing piece of UI did they screw around with this
time that'll make me want to tear out my hair for a week until I either force
myself to get used to it or give in to installing more 3rd party plugin crap
to restore the functionality of?

I've seriously come to dread browser updates lately.

~~~
orthecreedence
They made the location bar a search bar, which is a joyous occasion for me
personally. Typing one-word searches in the location bar was actually what
made me tear my hair for a week, and I'd find myself coming up with searches
that included two words instead of one just to skip the lengthy DNS lookup.

------
magsafe
Apparently someone out there still uses Firefox.

~~~
berberous
I refuse to use any browser without vertical tabs.

~~~
muyuu
Chromium/Chrome with "tabs outliner" is quite sweet.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

There's an add-on for simple vertical tabs, but I think this is even better.

~~~
dubcanada
The simple fact it is a separate window bothers me. I know you can't change
the Chrome UI without using C++ but the Firefox version looks and works much
better.

~~~
hackmiester
Until Chrome lets people modify the browser UI like Tree Style Tab and other
addons do, I won't be interested in switching. It's a good browser for my
parents, computer labs, etc. but I could never use it on my workstation.

