Firefox - More fire and fewer cancer warnings than California

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Firefox - More fire and fewer cancer warnings than California

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

MachinTrucChose posted:

Won't the thread title become outdated by next week?

I updated to FF4, really hated it (I don't like it when the interface changes for no positive reason), and moved to Opera. Been using it for about 6 weeks. Good browser, but it's just not as good in terms of extensions.

But the move made me realize something. I don't like Firefox, and I don't miss it. There's nothing special about the vanilla browser other than the fact that it's open-source. It's the 3rd-party extensions that make it special.

So I'm planning on going back to FF3.x until the dust settles. If by FF8 (which supposedly really improves performance) the extension API is stable and all my favorite extensions are on board and and they fixed all those BS compatibility issues and it's all merry and future-proof, I'll update and I'll try to adapt to their poo poo interface. If not, hopefully a lot of those extension people will have written Opera versions by then, and I can move back to Opera. And if not that, then I'll just keep using 3.x until the Internet ends.

I don't get the "interface" issues people have with Firefox. With just a few clicks, version 4/5/6 (and probably 7 and beyond) can look just like Firefox 3, 2, or whatever.
Put the tabs on bottom, put the status bar back, etc.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2011 18:35

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:19

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

Firefox has lost it's magic for me. It keeps doing poo poo I don't want it to with an attidue of "welp if you don't like it either find an extension or deal with it", it's become buggy as hell annd I think the love affair is over. I started way back in Firebird beta, so changing is really hard

Has Mozilla explained why they made it look like Chrome besides a whole bunch of "design functionality" horseshit in that one video? And what's the deal with the infinite updates, did they just decide to change minor updates to whole new version numbers to encourage people to switch?

I don't understand this line of thinking. Firefox is better than ever, and the beta shows there are no signs of slowing down.

If you don't like how Firefox looks, then change it. I believe I posted screenshots before of how Firefox 4/5/6 can look just like Firefox 3. Yeah, it may need a Status bar extension and a userChrome file, but it's not some huge ordeal to change or "fix" the layout.

Extensions have always been THE reason to use Firefox. I think their motto was "Take back the web", and extensions allow just that.
Chrome doesn't give the same kind of control to extension authors as Firefox does. Adblock and NoScript were never as good on Chrome as they are on Firefox.
Plus, other stuff I'm so use to with Firefox, like middle-click auto-scroll doesn't exist on the Mac version of Chrome. An extension is required for that (and may not work right). And the Chrome status bar? I saw one extension that partially implements that.

If you're concerned with Firefox not being how it use to be, switching to something totally different and foreign like Chrome doesn't make sense.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2011 18:19

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

I didn't see it mentioned the past few pages.

Gmail's new look is just absolutely terrible on Firefox 7. It seems to work just fine under IE (9) and Chrome (15).

It looks fine, but performance is bad. Really bad. Slow, choppy animations for everything.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2011 20:45

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Fangs404 posted:

It works just fine for me (7.0.1). Try clearing your cache and checking for any weird extensions.

I tried clearing my cache, cookies, everything.
With ALL extensions disabled (no Themes, no userChrome.css), it still performs like crap.
However, when I start Firefox in "Safe mode", Gmail performs way better. It says Safe mode disables all extensions, but it's obviously doing something more than that for Gmail to work so differently compared to a non-safe mode that also has all extensions disabled.

This isn't a profile issue, as it happens on multiple profiles and even on multiple systems (Windows, Mac).

It's not just me:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=5010559f7ebdb2d1
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=086271ff9f0b1529
http://www.skamid.com/web/new-gmail-interface-bad-performance/

# ¿ Nov 6, 2011 06:46

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Fangs404 posted:

I wonder if it has something to do with hardware acceleration. I bet safe mode doesn't have hardware acceleration enabled. Try disabling that to see if it fixes your issue (options -> advanced -> uncheck hardware acceleration). If it does, maybe try updating your graphics drivers (do that anyway).

Disabling Hardware Acceleration greatly improved the Gmail performance on my Windows system. It's now close to that of Firefox on my Mac system.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2011 21:25

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Dodoman posted:

What about dolphin/icab/atomic etc.? Do they do the same thing?

All "alternative" browsers on iOS are just re-skins of Safari. Not even full Safari (with the iOS 4.3+ Nitro JavaScript engine), but just the pre-4.3 Safari engine. At least, that is how it was before (I don't know if Apple changed that).

It's similar to how there are dozens of browsers for Windows that just use the IE engine.

Opera Mini is the only "true" alternative browser on iOS.
The "fake" alternative browsers on iOS aren't bad, either. Some may not notice the JavaScript performance difference, and the alternative browsers (such as Dolphin, Atomic, iCab, etc) offer features like user agent changing (appear as Desktop browser), file downloads, etc. Some even have the cross-platform bookmark sync.

I use Dolphin quite a bit on my iPhone. I use it to get to Desktop-only sites, and I can save my bookmarks there and then load them on my Android devices. JavaScript performance has never been an issue.
Firefox on iOS would need to use the Safari engine.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2011 16:33

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Guerrand posted:

Wow, you're full of horseshit. Chrome is notoriously bad at scaling its memory use with the number of tabs.

This is Chrome's memory report with 13 tabs open in each.

Yeah, I had to remove Chrome from older, low-memory systems. Besides eating up all my RAMs from just displaying a page, it keeps its Google Updater running in background even when the browser is closed.

If memory is an issue, switch to Opera.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 19:08

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Fangs404 posted:

The constant updates won't be an issue come FF 12 when they implement silent updating (like Chrome).

Will the "silent" updates mean Firefox will install to the local user's profile like Chrome?

Issuing a thousands updates won't mean anything if Firefox is still installed to a system location.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2012 20:34

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

So, from what I've seen, it has really taken them until version 19 to get Firefox to look the same on each platform?

# ¿ Dec 5, 2012 20:41

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Fangs404 posted:

I use Firefox on OSX and Windows every day, and it looks and performs essentially identically on each system (and it has for a long time). What are you referring to?

They look nothing alike.

Firefox on Windows looks nothing like Firefox on Mac OS X. The default layouts are totally different - the Windows one has the one big button to access menus, and the back/forward/home buttons have their own style. Even if you mess with UserChrome.css files and customize/drag/drop/rearrange the interface, they still look nothing alike, as all the widgets and buttons are different. Maybe with some 3rd-party theme installed can you make them look similar.

The Firefox 19.0 screenshot has them finally looking at least similar, instead of as two completely different products.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2012 15:56

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Is there a way to turn off the "Add page to Reading List" button in Firefox 39? Or at least, make it stay visible in the URL bar instead of only appearing when I mouse over it?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 13:01

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Xenomorph posted:

Is there a way to turn off the "Add page to Reading List" button in Firefox 39? Or at least, make it stay visible in the URL bar instead of only appearing when I mouse over it?

I set browser.readinglist.enabled to false to disable it.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 02:51

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

So is Adblock really as evil as I keep reading about? I've been suspecting it as the cause of my performance issues.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 08:49

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

I don't mind ads.

I've made money from ads.

I HATE distracting, terrible, lovely ads. I also hate ads that track me from site to site. I don't need some obscure Amazon or eBay search leading to "related products" showing up in my Facebook feed. I always used the "Element Hiding Helper" extension with Adblock to easily erase annoying parts of sites. Many times blocking a domain or script (via NoScript) leads to a bunch of empty boxes on the site.

However, It seems like since disabling Adblock Plus, all the performance issues I've had with Firefox disappeared.

Edit, actually, I take that back. I left it enabled, but disabled their stupid default list of 100,000,000,000 things to block. With just my custom list, things are still fast.

Xenomorph fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Mar 29, 2015

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 03:43

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:19

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Well, I'm finally trying out Firefox, again.
It was my primary browser starting with Phoenix 0.1, but (like many others), I found Google Chrome scaled and performed much better on newer hardware, so I switched to it some time ago.

This new Firefox 57 seems to finally perform as well as Chrome, so I'm giving it another shot.

The default look is so ugly, though. Square, boxy tabs makes it look like some old version of Opera.
I then found this page:

https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis

Its userChrome.css settings seem to give Firefox 57 the nice, rounded tabs again.

cis autodrag posted:

Why are you worrying about ram in 2017?

Not everyone uses a computer with a ton of RAM. My primary Laptop and Desktop have a ton, but my secondary systems (and a lot of the computers my clients use) still only have 2-4GB of RAM.

Firefox (pre 57) performed best on those systems due having fewer processes and using limited RAM.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2017 17:40

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