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Firefox Quantum Is 'Better, Faster, Smarter than Chrome', Says Wired (wired.com)
Wired's senior staff writer David Pierce says Firefox Quantum "feels like a bunch of power users got together and built a browser that fixed all the little things that annoyed them about other browsers."
The new Firefox actually manages to evolve the entire browser experience, recognizing the multi-device, ultra-mobile lives we all lead and building a browser that plays along. It's a browser built with privacy in mind, automatically stopping invisible trackers and making your history available to you and no one else. It's better than Chrome, faster than Chrome, smarter than Chrome. It's my new go-to browser.
The speed thing is real, by the way. Mozilla did a lot of engineering work to allow its browser to take advantage of all the multi-core processing power on modern devices, and it shows... I routinely find myself with 30 or 40 tabs open while I'm researching a story, and at that point Chrome effectively drags my computer into quicksand. So far, I haven't been able to slow Firefox Quantum down at all, no matter how many tabs I use... [But] it's the little things, the things you do with and around the web pages themselves, that make Firefox really work. For instance: If you're looking at a page on your phone and want to load that same page on your laptop, you just tap "Send to Device," pick your laptop, and it opens and loads in the background as if it had always been there. You can save pages to a reading list, or to the great read-it-later service Pocket (which Mozilla owns), both with a single tap...
Mozilla has a huge library of add-ons, and if you use the Foxified extension, you can even run Chrome extensions in Firefox. Best I can tell, there's nothing you can do in Chrome that you can't in Firefox. And Firefox does them all faster.
I've noticed that when you open a new tab in Chrome's mobile version, it forces you to also see news headlines that Google picked out for you. But how about Slashdot's readers? Chrome, Firefox -- or undecided?
The speed thing is real, by the way. Mozilla did a lot of engineering work to allow its browser to take advantage of all the multi-core processing power on modern devices, and it shows... I routinely find myself with 30 or 40 tabs open while I'm researching a story, and at that point Chrome effectively drags my computer into quicksand. So far, I haven't been able to slow Firefox Quantum down at all, no matter how many tabs I use... [But] it's the little things, the things you do with and around the web pages themselves, that make Firefox really work. For instance: If you're looking at a page on your phone and want to load that same page on your laptop, you just tap "Send to Device," pick your laptop, and it opens and loads in the background as if it had always been there. You can save pages to a reading list, or to the great read-it-later service Pocket (which Mozilla owns), both with a single tap...
Mozilla has a huge library of add-ons, and if you use the Foxified extension, you can even run Chrome extensions in Firefox. Best I can tell, there's nothing you can do in Chrome that you can't in Firefox. And Firefox does them all faster.
I've noticed that when you open a new tab in Chrome's mobile version, it forces you to also see news headlines that Google picked out for you. But how about Slashdot's readers? Chrome, Firefox -- or undecided?
Yes Firefox has improved an amazing amount with the Quantum update. Yes- I moved off of Chrome.
But seriously... it's not like the messiah has returned. The hype surrounding this is unbelievable...
My experience is that Quantum is acceptably fast. Not impressively fast. It's only impressively fast when compared to previous versions of Firefox.
Why did I switch? Because Chrome causes problems with my audio subsystem which gets heavy use. I'd like to use my browser while the computer is routing audio streams. Chrome made that impossible (and was the only program which caused that kind of problem).
After 16 months of trying to solve the problem Firefox eeked out Chrome simply because it was no longer a "dog".
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
It's a nice improvement and it seems to be a success with users — except the ones that obsessively collect plugins and extensions — but no, it doesn't beat Chrome. Chrome's PDF handling is still better. Applications that involve panning around maps (google maps, zillow, etc.) work better in Chrome. And Firefox has a long way to go to match Chrome Developer Tools.
Never really thought much of Wired. Between the click bait and the left wing group think I'd say I've had it right all along.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
You can't chromecast, but that's a closed source feature forum google. So not Mozillas fault.
Don't get me wrong, Quantum does a lot of great things. But it takes a big dump on power users. Gone are pretty much all the extensions that separated Firefox from Chrome. Hopefully more users switch over than the existing install base, because a lot of us are leaving. I don't want to see it die, but damn, I've got needs and they're not all about speed.
I wonder how much they got paid.
So, all this "it's blazing fast" hype is a barebones Firefox with no extensions. The *whole idea* of Firefox is that you add extensions to it to make it usable. Without them, Firefox is weak and useless. So, once you've installed the necessary 10-15 extensions that make the browser worth using, how's that performance then?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This is a paid ad btw.
This was also the first time I saw Firefox being advertised at the top of YouTube! Which must cost a fortune!
Don't get me wrong: I would never in a million yeara use any browser by a corporation, let alone a closed-source one.
(Nor do I approve of WebExtensions ruining the point of Firefox.)
But this advertising is more effective in tuining towards alternatives than all their previous WhatTheFuckWG and UI insanities combined.
I've just developed this habit that the more something is advertised, the more I will avoid or even boycot it.
If I can't use my addons as they were intended, then I don't care. Webshits be damned.
Switched to Quantum, lost my precious Scrapbook, mouse gestures, image saver, javascript blocker ... Nah, back to previous version.
Great performance on the desktop and the newer addons work well Agree the article is a proper representation of the new firefox missing a great image magnifier, but it is coming soon
Besides bizarre and arbitrary UI changes (where's the reload button)...
Speed isn't as important as blocking CNN etc. autoplaying videos.
Speed isn't as important as blocking the addin element spam on every wikia page.
Speed isn't as important blocking facebook bugs, twitter bugs, taboola, adblade, outbrain.
Speed isn't as important as blocking ads on Forbes.com whi\ch have been known to serve malware.
Quantum completely broke noscript, and umatrix+ublock isn't cutting it.
I looked at the code and behavior, and Google Maps deliberately uses massive amounts of requests in Firefox but much fewer requests in Chrome. Even though the exact same thing would have worked in Firefix too. Which leaves only deliberate behavior as an option.
Not surprising, coming from Data Kraken "do more evil" Google.
The whole idea of Firefox is *PRIVACY*. Chrome has access to the Google 'Advertiser ID', which in turn is linked to Google play, and google accounts, your credit card, name, address, phone number, linked to the location service (i.e. GPS track), the Wifi near you (i.e. who you are with) and if Google Assistant is onboard then recordings of everything you every said to it, and every website you ever visited that has a Google advert, Google metrics, Google content service, Google Tag Service etc etc etc etc. i.e. every website you ever visited.
So, anyone who's understands what Google is actually doing, switches to DuckDuckGo and Firefox to reduce the amount of data we voluntarily hand over to Google.
Firefox's main selling point is privacy.
Doesn't explain Bing maps or Zillow. They're all janky in the same way as google maps in Quantum. I think you're full of it.
I don't even understand how halfway intelligent people are using a browser made by the most privacy-intrusive and most powerful marketing operation that has ever existed.
Lemmings.
Now, if only Firefox could make their CSS rendering as reliable as Chrome then it'd be great.
I believe that for some situations version 57 is faster than previous versions, but in my experience if RAM is limited and the CPU is weak, the new version 57 is much, _much_ slower to the point of being almost unusable.
Last week Firefox ran fine on a weak netbook (single-core CPU, 1GB RAM); this week it's really painful to use as it brings the machine to its knees, even if nothing else is open. Starting Firefox takes much longer, opening a new tab takes much longer, the awesome bar reacts much much more slowly to typing, and loading a new page takes much longer too.
It seems that their emphasis on (slightly) speeding up the big-RAM, multi-core experience has come at the expense of the weaker systems, so much so that it's nearly unusable.
Maybe there's a way to configure this new Firefox to be more forgiving of weak systems, or maybe it needs to be uninstalled and replaced with something sleeker?
I love the new Firefox. It IS fast.
and Google sucks for privacy, openness, and choice.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The new Firefox actually manages to evolve the entire browser experience, recognizing the multi-device, ultra-mobile lives we all lead and building a browser that plays along.
I've read this sentence about 50 times and I still don't know what would possess someone to write something like this. What is the point of writing this? If these things are true and manifestly evident, there's no need to write this at all. If these things aren't true, what's the end game for this idea? To make these things true? Who would buy into this idea that hasn't already?
This smacks of "hey fellow kids, I'm cool too" type rhetoric. I don't agree that these are good/true things regardless, so you should not attempt to speak for "we all." You can piss off with your mobile bullshit and leave my desktop alone.
OTOH, I switched to Pale Moon long ago and regret nothing. The UI changes in Firefox were unacceptable and there's no user-based reason to continuously change the UI. The newer privacy features in Firefox are very nice and I'm sure they'll land in Pale Moon since it's a fork. But removing configuration/functionality outright, moving more configuration out of the UI and into about:config, and changing the UI every 10 versions make it untenable. I don't want Chrome, I hate Chrome too. I don't care about rapid releases or whatever other fad is going on. I care about quality software that does what I want and has a minimum in terms of barriers to doing so. Despite being run ultimately by one guy, Pale Moon is surprisingly effective at this.
Ever time a story that gets posted on Slashdot regarding Firefox or Chrome, there would be responses in the threads talking about Palemoon browser.
But still you'd see editors/story submitters say things like this:
Chrome, Firefox -- or undecided?
There are more than two choices. Palemoon is by far, a better browser than both. It's about time that Palemoon get their own Slashdot stories without these Google/Mozilla Slashvertisement filters. It's sickening to see, to be honest.
I don't have bad experiences on any of those sites.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Does Quantum do a better job of freeing RAM when you close a tab? The older versions of Firefox keep web pages in RAM even after you close a tab, resulting in gigabytes of RAM hoggage.
But since Quantum uses Rust, it has better memory GC than the old FF written in C++, right?
Don't believe the hype. Its just hype.
Every time I use it I get over >115% cpu usage =[
Wow, the Mozilla spin machine is still in full swing. They must be hemorrhaging users at a worrying rate.
I wonder how much it costs to buy a "story" in wired. I wouldn't imagine it's cheap.
I looked at the code and behavior, and Google Maps deliberately uses massive amounts of requests in Firefox but much fewer requests in Chrome. Even though the exact same thing would have worked in Firefix too. Which leaves only deliberate behavior as an option.
Not surprising, coming from Data Kraken "do more evil" Google.
"Google Maps aren't done until FireFox won't run", then? :D
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
so 15 stories on a dying browser this month. As darth vader would say "Impressive!"
Seems like it has some issues with some html5 and javascript compared to Chrome
I have the following html5 speed test hosted on a local lan web server. Chrome can max out my network link with it, new FF can only seem to pull about 30mbps and the ping and jitter readings sky high compared to chrome.
https://github.com/adolfintel/speedtest
I also use the following photosphere viewer in a gallery on my personal site which works great in chrome, FF manages to hang up the driver for my nvidia card.
https://github.com/JeremyHeleine/Photo-Sphere-Viewer
If it meant I had better extentions. Every single XUL extention needs to be ported or emulated, which it can’t at the moment due to the limited api of web extentions. Quantumfox is not real Firefox. 56 for life.
If they want me to use this browser they need to allow other options for sign in, such as Google and/or Facebook and/or Twitter. There is no way I am making another account just for Firefox. I am in fact rapidly getting to the point where I refuse to make accounts with any new sites... Offer me an OpenID login or I walk.
I moved from Firefox to Chrome 10 years ago, and have never even considered going back.
Now that Wired says move back, I'm 100% sure I made the right decision.
Come on Firefox, at what state are you going to realize your marketing team have shit for brains?
I have noticed significant performance improvements in Firefox 57, so I'm happy about that. I have noticed a HUGE improvement when running Firefox 57 on my tablet. Prior versions would barely even load, much less function on my tablet. But 57 loads quickly and is then usable. Good job, Mozilla!
The only thing that was keeping me from completely ditching Chrome in favor of Firefox 57 was the unavailability of NoScript. But today, when checking on the progress of NoScript in Firefox 56, I was notified that I needed a newer version of Firefox in order to download NoScript. Yay! It was the last extension I use that hadn't been ported yet.
I am now happily on Firefox 57 on my main computer, and will be upgrading all of them ASAP.
Forcing Linux users to install PulseAudio is an absolute no-go for me. So claiming that Firefox is about freedom is hypocrisy. Until Mozilla fixes that I will stay away from Firefox, no matter how fast it is.
The multi-device and linking to a phone is troublesome. Will I get doxxed by one of their leftist lunatic employees who are handling my bookmarks if there's too many conservative bookmarks?
just loading google, it takes almost a full second before the progressbar it shows in the tab has reached its completion.
Also there are only 75 extensions or so. none of which offer a download statusbar.
Their advertising of speed is the opposite of what I as a user experienced, and they make it so goddamn hard to go back to the previous version.
Adblock finally works on my phone, but the tabs.... They're so sharp...
Slower, it crashed more, and I disliked it immensely.
Proof? Because talk is cheap.
On my 15inch MacBook Pro 2016, Firefox with zero extensions, Chrome with 1.
http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/
Firefox 58 gets 103
Chrome gets 158
Safari gets 178.
There's a variability of 10% in runs. The big surprise was Safari consistently beats Chrome by a fair margin. I like this test as its a DOM focused test using everyday libraries, instead of convoluted Javascript ones doing crap you'd never really do in real life.
Does this matter? Probably not - all open webpages quickly. But I really don't find Firefox Quantum quicker in any way so far.
Other interesting aside - running on Retina screen as opposed to standard def makes a very small difference, so GPU is not heavily stretched.
Nevermind that Maps has to make those requests because it needs to see if the browser actually has the functionality it's asking for but is already baked into Chrome.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
People mod up ACs for hearsay around here now? Show your face so that I know your words are more than FUD and I might take on board what you have to say.
That was part of the title of TFA.
Too bad 2018 is a month and change away.
By then FFox will be the browser for 2017, and some other will be the browser built for 2018 (and beyond)
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Speed? No idea actually, don't visit sites that need 'speedy' rendering I guess.
But the memory footprint is huge. Right now I have two FF browser instances open with task manager showing 5 FF processes running with their cumulative memory footprint being 800MB and I've had two occurrences of FF using just over 5GB of memory (according to task manager in Win10) which slowed my entire machine to a crawl. Interestingly the page involved in both those occurrences was slashdot! Meanwhile the same layout in Chrome has 11 processes running with a cumulative memory footprint of ~480MB. Not sure what exactly that all means, but pretty sure there's a memory challenge in FF.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Google Chrome might have some proprietary APIs used by Google Maps that improve its functioning ; that wouldn't be surprising, and these would only be used by Google products. APIs that obviously Firefox cannot have.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Hard to believe a +5 for an AC saying "Which leaves only deliberate behavior as an option"
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I didn't like the new Firefox v57 (extensions problem) so I just re-installed Ubuntu 16.04 from my DVD and am refusing all offered browser updates. So it's Firefox v47.0 for me! It's probably very out of date security-wise but at least I don't have to struggle with this "best Firefox ever" s**t.
I started using Firefox pretty soon after it first came out and stopped using it early this year as it would always slows down to a crawl before crashing whenever I had too many tabs open. This problem is extremely annoying when you're in the middle of doing research online. I have since been using Chrome which doesn't slow down or crash from too many tabs. To be honest though, I preferred Firefox, if not for its stability problems. Chrome is also faster.
> I wish I knew a way to assign and send browser audio streams explicitly to one audio device output, say a set of headphones while keeping any other audio output attached to the primary playback device (speakers).
On Linux there are many ways to do that. This page lists three (plus another one just for Flash):
http://jackaudio.org/faq/routi...
Although the title of the page says Flash, three of the four methods are for the browser.
In Linux you can use patch bays to go crazy with arbitrarily complex connections between audio sources, effects, and outputs:
https://qjackctl.sourceforge.i...
"recognizing the multi-device, ultra-mobile lives we all lead"? Speak for yourself. I do 99.9% of my web browsing from my desktop PC, and so do a lot of people, even if it's not trendy. How about making some software for untrendy stationary people?
This space intentionally left blank
That's a 32-bit, 1GB, Windows 7 based mini-laptop that I use when I travel. Previous versions of Firefox ran so slowly that I was about to replace the laptop by something more capable (think '20s delay when switching tabs'), but Firefox 57 runs well enough on it that this won't be necessary.
Oh, and why I like that laptop: unlike a tablet, it has a large enough disk that I can make backups of my photos during the trip. And it's light, small, and so cheap that it isn't worth stealing, so I don't feel worried leaving it in the hotel.
Firefox Quantum Is 'Better, Faster, Smarter, and Much Less Functional than Chrome' now that most plug-ins do not work.
How well does "Send Tab to Device" work in these three scenarios?
Mobile web browsers other than Firefox Someone might prefer Chrome for Android over Firefox for Android or Safari for iOS over Firefox for iOS. The combination of a QR-generating extension and a QR-scanning mobileapplication routes the URL to the default browser of the mobile device, which is Safari on iOS and (usually) Chrome on Android. I don't own an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad on which to test this myself, but an article published 9 months ago states that Firefox for iOS didn't support receiving tabs through Send Tab to Device. Offline LAN Firefox and a mobile browser can be used to view documents served from an HTTP server on a local area network that is disconnected from the Internet. Because the combination of a QR-generating extension and a QR-scanning mobile application does not need to connect to the Internet, it can work even when Mozlila's server cannot be reached. Privacy-paranoid user As I understand it, Send Tab to Device in Firefox requires the user to create and log in to a Firefox Sync account. Doing so requires sending the user's email address to Mozilla. In addition, each URL is sent to Mozilla. The combination of a QR-generating extension and a QR-scanning mobile application sends no PII to Mozilla.So to avoid QR, you must 1. have an Android device, 2. install and use Firefox for Android, 3. be connected to the Internet, and 4. use Firefox Sync.
Using in-browser mining as a test, Chrome Version 62.0.3202.94 (Official Build) (64-bit) gives me a hash rate of 15~16 on my computer, using 2 threads at 80%.
Firefox Quantum 57.0 (64-bit) gives me a hash rate of 19~20 on the same computer with the same settings.
Feel free to mine for an hour or two on your computer using the URL above! Thank you in advance, KTHXBYE.
FTFY.
I've learned that there are three major classes of extensions.
First, those that improve security and privacy. These break nothing, other that badly or obnoxiously coded websites (which in the majority of cases are easily replaced by a different website, less badly or obnoxiously coded).
Second, minor tweaks to the UX. These also break nothing, other than totalitarian design fantasies of desktop + tablet supreme codebase unification. My most important UX tweak is the addition of a right click menu that enhances cut and paste behaviours (Make Link) by auto-formatting URLs in a variety of online formats along with various page metadata elements. I use it 100 times a day.
Third, major and intrusive tweaks to the UX. Into this category falls most of the tab bar tweaks. These extensions did consistently break, or become deprecated, or change their behaviour to cope with shifting ground under their feet.
Apparently you should curate your reading more carefully, because you've mainlined a biased sample. You've also fallen for the squeaky wheel fallacy, because this power user—who does know the difference between one type of extension and another—has never complained about technical developments to make Firefox more stable, and never abandoned FF in the first place.
I have complained about Mozilla's degenerating principles and priorities. Just on the communications front alone, they've treated their extension developers like shit. And why is that? Because Mozilla's decisions have been less and less technical, and more and more political.
I don't even know what values Mozilla truly holds anymore. I do know that it's not Chrome, and that Chrome is already too big for its britches, so I use Chrome as little as possible, because I value autonomy and self determination.
Self determination. You should try it some day. Sure beats posting as an AC fuckwad.
A modified chromium for quantum is quantium.
Firefox Quantum has a big parental control problem, which the previous versions did not have. I think that Firefox Quantum does not help me to protect my children! Thoses are essentials parental control features which don't find anywhere in firefox Quantum (57 and +) -Disable Private Browsing menu option and keyboard shortcut. (Password protected). -Disable deletion of browsing history. (Password protected). -Disable the "disabling" or removal of any installed add-ons (WebExtensions). (Password protected). ALL of the extension that helped me to activate those features are Not compatible with Firefox Quantum : -Disable Private Browsing Plus by RichieB2B. -Public Fox by publicfox. Firefox please help us protect our children! Those Feature should be included natively in Firefox ! I don't want my kids to be able to disable my Parental Control Add-ons like: -Enforce Safe Search / Adult Content Filter -ProCon Latte Content Filter by Hunter Paolini (Another problem! This one is Not compatible with Firefox Quantum!) I feel that Firefox Quantum does not care about the safety of our children. Please help us! Please let our children live their childhood! Please sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/https... Thanks!
Has anyone else noticed odd bugs with the latest version of Firefox built on Quantum on OS X?
I've been trying for over three hours now to upload a photo to facebook on my mobile with ff 57. Used to work, now it doesn't
I looked at the code and behavior,
And then put zero effort into understanding it and therefore you're at a loss as to why it works the way you see it working and therefore blame it on some evil conspiracy.
It's great that Mozilla came out with Quantum at the time when I needed to switch from Chrome. The problem more than anything is that Chrome is so buggy, maybe it's the extensions, I don't know. But on W10 after recovering from sleep mode it hangs downloading a proxy script, or I get random connection errors that mysteriously recover after a second or two. Edge never had these problems and so I got Firefox and so far so good. The free market is nice, in that you can switch when one provider not longer provides a satisfactory product.
A "better chrome"? A "faster chrome"? A "smarter chrome"?
That's all nice and good, I guess, if you want a chrome-like browser. I used to have a deeply-extensible platform which also just happened to have a web browser on top. And a Mail & News client. etc.
Instead of revamping Mozilla's inner workings and opening it up for even more expressive extensibility, they've just thrown everything down the drain and went the chrome route.
See subject: It eats a TON of RAM & if Microsoft Security Essentials begins an autoupdate of its signature + I have a lot of tabs open, between the 2 of them, I can CONSISTENTLY CRASH MY SYSTEM (w/ the dumpfile stating "out of memory" etc. type messages clearly defining this) if an update doesn't complete (per the logfile it keeps named "MpCmdRun" in %TEMP% folders) - this happened 3x the past week & BOTH DATES in the files match.
* This tells me that either FF isn't allowing paging by the OS (strange as that sounds) & locking the memory areas exclusively somehow vs. it (as technically you ought never run dry of RAM free via paging).
My main reason for testing it was to see Javascript performance (occasionally I have to use sites that have it, ordinarily I don't allow it) & it is "up there" with Vivaldi (only Chrome/WebKit type browser I use).
APK
P.S.=> I like it though for the most part - especially as NoScript for FF 57 "quantum" has released (works a LOT like the one for Vivaldi/Chrome but seems like an "ALL or NOTHING" deal where you either set exceptions on the ENTIRE website's pages to allow OR disallow script - not by individual script sources as older NoScript did - am I doing it wrong here or missing noting something? Feedback appreciated on all notes concerned here, thanks in advance)... apk
Remember back when Google had Chrome to Phone!? You could simply send ANY web page from desktop to mobile with just a simple click. Also, it was great for phone numbers, too. You could just highlight a phone number, say "Chrome to Phone", and you phone would start calling it. Then Google axed that feature, like they always seem to do, and now it is an "exciting new and great feature in Firefox" all these years later.
Read the goddamn comments for this submission. Read the comments for the other /. submissions about FF 57. There are several common themes:
1. Most users are suffering from broken extensions.
2. Many of these broken extensions can't even be reimplemented using WebExtensions because WebExtensions is so limited/crippled.
3. FF 57 isn't found to be faster than FF 56, and is slower than Chrome, Safari and Edge.
4. The new UI is worse than even the widely-disliked Australis UI.
5. Lots of FF users have decided to move to Chrome or some other browser.
6. FF 57 isn't drawing in many new users, especially relative to how many have had to drop it because of broken extensions or other problems with FF 57.
It's obvious to anyone looking at FF 57 that it has been a terrible release. The user response has been overwhelmingly negative.
Everything Firefox has done is basically what Edge has done. It a good browser capable of doing ok as a browser against Chrome. However, does anyone really switch for milliseconds of speed or slightly better battery life? Yes Firefox has finally caught back up, big deal.
Firefox 57 is definitely faster and more user-friendly for the average user than the old Firefox, but the web extensions are clunky (and NoScript looks like total crap compared to what it used to be).
I refuse to use Chrome. I do use Chromium when I actually need maximum stability. My browser of choice, though, is now Brave, which makes security controls easy without dealing with all these janky add-ons.
I am certainly critical of Mozilla getting nearly ALL of its revenue from Google, but to suggest it is really a grand conspiracy to self-destruct Firefox in defense of Chrome is a huge stretch.
It is more feasible to say that Firefox cannot seriously challenge Google; it will not and cannot bite the hand that feeds it. Mozilla SHOULD have contracted with Startpage and monetized search that way through anonymized Google, and then its undertaking would have been a little more plausible. But as it stands, I do not see how any company which depends on Google for revenue can claim to be the anti-Google.
Brave is the best chance users have at building a real, open source, secure browser that does not depend on any search providers as a primary revenue source.
Excuse me? "Already baked into Chrome"? The web works on open, clearly defined standards. If Chrome is doing something that's not a standard, then it's the problem not the other browsers.
Chrome quickly became the newest version of Internet Explorer with all the "standards" Google is deciding to make up and change without any consensus from anyone outside Mountain View.
And I make that comparison without regret, because Google is using the same creative dissonance Microsoft did to try to force Internet Explorer's dominance back in the day, but everyone using Chrome probably doesn't remember that, either too young, too ignorant or too gullible.
Shouldn't it make those tests when it starts up, then remember the results?
Everyone who considers using Firefox should read its privacy policy.
Firefox collects a lot of personal information, and sends it to a variety of organizations/companies, including Google.
The privacy policy dated September 28, 2017 contains awful stuff like:
I switched from Chrome to Firefox on my Android tablet. I can use Ghostery, which makes web browsing tolerable again.
I don't really care about most of the new features. More speed is always nice.
But I can't live with multiple GB any time I leave a tab open more than an hour or two. It bogs down the whole computer until it takes forever to manually kill Firefox. And audio now comes and goes and crackles constantly.
Chrome isn't perfect either, but Quantum is unusable. Does it really work for anyone else?
Does the fancy new extension API allow support for ALSA to be added? I stopped using Firefox in the first place because Mozilla dropped ALSA support, and 57 still can't play any sound on my computers. Chrome, meanwhile, just works. 57 is an improvement in some regards, but it can't have a default zoom level configured and doesn't support audio, so to me Chrome is the better browser. I don't care which is faster in benchmarks or which has more extensions, unless those extensions add some of Chrome's "features", namely default zoom and ALSA. I tried configuring the minimum zoom level, but it does not apply to sites the browser has not previously loaded.
For some reason, video stops playing and I have to restart it at least once a day.
They make it run like shit either way. Had Google Earth which runs well on 1GHz CPU as an alternative but that is deprecated. Perhaps they're a bunch of autists with i7 laptops.
'Ultra-mobile?' In Western civilization, aren't fast food and obsesity still more much popular than marathons?
This is Slashdot. Mozilla is the devil and can do nothing right, as far as the users here are concerned.
It doesn't matter if Firefox 57 is a pile of flaming garbage or indisputably the best browser in existence. The hate-mongers here will shit all over it.
Take a look around the web and see if those 6 points still make a prominent appearance.
Yet actual people in real life all seem pretty happy with it. A skeptical person would conclude that it seems Google and/or Microsoft are paying people to write negative comments about Firefox...
Fuck that noise. Educate and enlighten your children, teach them responsible habits and how to deal with unpleasant things on the internet. Don't just use heavy-handed blocking tools, because shit will slip through the cracks (or the kids will quickly learn to bypass the blocks).
Eat the rich.
So with my new xubuntu I got firefox quantum.
All my memory hassles and CPU hogs went away. cool.
The lack of tab mix plus is a real bummer.
But still it's useable
Until firefox decided system wide not to play any sound. It may be pulseaudio which hates firefox quantum? vlc works fine. As does chrome. So well... as I need sound, I'm now on Chrome. :-)
Which is also shit, as I'm missing a good password manager.
So I install Kepass2. With mono. So it's a kind of windows port.
Looks like it also ported the crashes as my desktop freezed up shortly after
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Chrome and Firefox can go and fuck each other.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Have switched, back to FireFox. Had been using both FireFox and Chrome for different reasons. Now FireFox seems to fill both slots.
the multi-device, ultra-mobile lives we all lead
Hey, Pierce: you are not everyone. Not everyone is you. Don't tell us what "we all" do.
What a jackass.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happy he likes FQ. I'm happy it looks like it might be serious competition for Chrome (which I've never liked, even without accounting for Google's addiction to spying on users). But, Christ, is it really so hard for the current generation of journalists to distinguish their subjective experience from objective fact, and learn that people are different?
or the kids will quickly learn to bypass the blocks
Well, that would be constructive, anyway. So parental controls aren't completely worthless.
I think that's the real news story: 'Wired' has managed to survive the last two decades hiding under a rock somewhere.
Like a lot of people I know, I do a lot of offline browsing, in places where I have no connection to the Internet, or the connection is poor.
Often, this is required for security reasons. Nobody with any sense puts important work on a system physically connected to the Internet. Not anymore - not with nations and organized crime competing to see who can do the most damage to society by hacking everything and anything. The only reliable firewall is one created by physically disconnecting the system from the internet.
In older versions of Firefox, I could use the MAFF extension to do offline browsing. I saved all my tabs, and moved the saved file to another system for offline use. It was quick and easy and reliable - and this was the ONLY reason to use Firefox instead of the competition, as it was the ONLY browser that had a high quality, flexible, and reliable implementation of this capability.
Best of all, I could do most of my browsing in Linux, because MAFF worked just as well there as on Windows.
But now I can't do that. The author of MAFF has announced that extension is going away in Firefox Quantum - apparently there is no longer support for it - and there isn't a replacement in the new feature set. That's a really dumb decision on the part of the Firefox developers - did you guys get paid by the hackers to do this, or are you just clueless?
Good bye Firefox.
Am I alone in seeing my tabs consume 100-600mb per tab (when Chrome uses 30-200mb/tab)? I start to see slowness when I get around 30 tabs open. I recognize that's a lot, but I also see slowness in videos regardless of how many tabs I open (glitching, freezing). This is with uBlock Origin running and nothing else.
people irl dont use it anyways.
really.