Firefox: The Chromening

[Dante of the Inferno]

Yesterday, Mozilla took to it's blog to announce some rather sweeping changes coming to Firefox over the next 3 - 4 versions. Included in those changes are:

• Creation of the WebExtensions API (which allows Opera and Chrome extension compatibility)
• Requirement for extensions to be validated and signed by Mozilla
• Deprecation of XPCOM- and XUL-based add-ons (existing add-ons require re-write with WebExtensions)
• Migration to multi-process coding

That last point is of particular concern to me. I use Firefox (and not Chrome, Opera, IE, or Edge) largely because it displays as a single process in Task Manager. If Firefox splits every single tab into a separate process, then I'm officially done with Firefox. For those who love Chrome, Firefox has become a pure vassal. For everyone else, we may need to look for alternatives.

What do you think of these latest changes? Do you know of any comparable alternatives, possibly based on similar code, such as Waterfox?

[Wolfe La Piroko]

Midori is very popular with the opensource crowd. I personally just stick with Chrome, I dont have any problem with it on either of my pcs (Gaming Rig with ridiculous stats and a work laptop with mediocre stats). I used to get problems when I used a very very old laptop but its fine now.
What dont you like about it?

I dont use Firefox because Chrome has all my passwords and such and Im a lazy ****

[Dante of the Inferno]

Originally Posted by SeraphimofEden

Midori is very popular with the opensource crowd. I personally just stick with Chrome, I dont have any problem with it on either of my pcs (Gaming Rig with ridiculous stats and a work laptop with mediocre stats). I used to get problems when I used a very very old laptop but its fine now.
What dont you like about it?

I dont use Firefox because Chrome has all my passwords and such and Im a lazy ****

I don't use Chrome because I prefer that my bookmarks etc remain private. Furthermore, Firefox kept everything as a single process (which is fine - tabs don't crash, plugins do). I run A LOT of tabs (1481 currently), but Firefox keeps almost all of them hibernating until I click on them throughout the session. A process for each tab would render Task Manager utterly useless. Firefox's deep add-on access also allows my handy Session Manager add-on to regularly automatically (as well as manually) save my session tabs, just in case Firefox corrupts the session list (it happened once before - it was a total pain to fix). I could probably figure out something a bit less painful, but I too am lazy - after all, it isn't broken.

I'll have to investigate whether or not Midori supports any sort of extensions. Browsing without NoScript or FlashGot would be unbearable.

[Cosmic Eagle]

You could desync the Chrome browser from connecting back to the Google servers if you are worried about them seeing your bookmarks and stuff..


And really, how do you have so many tabs....

[Marcus H.]

I've switched to Chrome ever since Firefox decided to eat up my RAM every time I use it.

[Wolfe La Piroko]

Have fun investigating midori.


Maybe have a look into your tabs habbit. You seem to have a problem

[larethian]

Originally Posted by Dante of the Inferno

Yesterday, Mozilla took to it's blog to announce some rather sweeping changes coming to Firefox over the next 3 - 4 versions. Included in those changes are:

• Creation of the WebExtensions API (which allows Opera and Chrome extension compatibility)
• Requirement for extensions to be validated and signed by Mozilla
• Deprecation of XPCOM- and XUL-based add-ons (existing add-ons require re-write with WebExtensions)
• Migration to multi-process coding

That last point is of particular concern to me. I use Firefox (and not Chrome, Opera, IE, or Edge) largely because it displays as a single process in Task Manager. If Firefox splits every single tab into a separate process, then I'm officially done with Firefox. For those who love Chrome, Firefox has become a pure vassal. For everyone else, we may need to look for alternatives.

What do you think of these latest changes? Do you know of any comparable alternatives, possibly based on similar code, such as Waterfox?

Why don't you try to understand the reason why they switched to a multi-process app first?
One of the key advantages for that is better support for sandboxing.
For your concern, I believe that even for multi-process implementation, there should be a parent process that spawned the new processes and it also make sense for a process to keep track of active tabs (each in its own process), so all you need to do is to change your process view to tree view, and there should be a way for you to kill all your children processes. Just speculating here. But this is true for chrome as I can restore all previously opened pages when I reopen chrome, so there must be a specific process that tracks this. Try using process explorer instead of task manager for more functionality: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../bb896653.aspx

I've not technically programmed for a decade but I'm still a mid-level enthusiast for computer related stuff. Threads were preferred to processes previously due to their lightweight nature. But now with the current hardware (increased ram, multicores blah blah blah) and corresponding improvements in OSes (memory management, scheduler etc.), this is less of a concern, and there are probably advantages to the new shift in design paradigms. Firefox might be long overdue for this, just my opinion and I'm probably not updated enough to give more details other than the trends in application.

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I've switched to Chrome ever since Firefox decided to eat up my RAM every time I use it.

This was what happened to me back in the days when Chrome was just out. Probably a leak somewhere.
With numerous tabs opened and left open overnight, the memory usage increased to ridiculous amounts by the time I woke out compared to the night before. And they are all static pages not running flash, vids or other kinds of stuff. All ads blocked. This made it easier for me to jump to Chrome when it was out, not to mention the snappiness of the browser itself.
They probably fixed it though.


One of my favorite things about Chrome is its incredible sync feature which is useful to me who has multiple platforms active at different places at the same time. I could leave my house with my PC on and chrome active. And I can open my active opened pages on chrome at home (which may contain info I need) with the chrome browser on my laptop. Which means I can continue looking at the pages in the same state from my laptop or mobile when I suddenly need to rush out or something.
Chrome is also the most HTML5-compliant browser I last remembered.

And even with some sort of list shortcuts, I won't be able to keep track of that many tabs......

[Wolfe La Piroko]

Originally Posted by larethian

One of my favorite things about Chrome is its incredible sync feature which is useful to me who has multiple platforms active at different places at the same time. I could leave my house with my PC on and chrome active. And I can open my active opened pages on chrome at home (which may contain info I need) with the chrome browser on my laptop. Which means I can continue looking at the pages in the same state from my laptop or mobile when I suddenly need to rush out or something.
Chrome is also the most HTML5-compliant browser I last remembered.

Exactly. Firefox tried that but my testing shows it failed, or at least to reach chromes standard in this respect. I reinstall my pc alot for work, and every time I need everything from google its just one sign in and presto, Im ready to go.

[Honoakari]

@OP: But no one is forcing you to update or anything. Just stick to the old version if you don't like the new one.

I, for example, am still using Firefox 28.0 (last version before Australis), and it works just fine. No need to fix it if it's not broken.

[IceHism]

Uhh, after reading the blog post. The real most troubling part is the depreciation of XUL and XPCOM. Firefox will never be chrome because their engines are fundamentally different. Firefox is moving to the Servo engine which simply has the framework to support chrome addons after minor revisions or rewriting (which is how Microsoft apps now supports IOS and Android Apps) and doesnt seem to be based on blink while Chromium is still based on the blink rendering engine. The blink engine is the most offending part of chrome as well since its a huge memory hog and also kills the battery life of your mobile laptops and devices. Not to mention, overheating (android phones and chromebooks excluded, you can guess why). In fact, moving Firefox to webextension is a far better move because chrome developer tools are the best in the industry. They are very well documented and easy to use.

There is nothing inherently wrong with multi processes. Multi processes are easier to sandbox and ensure that when one tab goes down, the rest of the browser doesn't go with it. For people who don't have the extensions, this is a good thing as they don't have session managers and the like. It is also more secure. This also won't be as bad as chrome. Again, the engines are different.

Lastly, Most Firefox extensions right now make use of XUL and XPCOM. Considering that Firefox is getting rid of those first before even moving to webextension ensures a lot of unhappy developers who were fine with the way that things were before. There are also quite a number of things that you CANNOT do with the new API that were possible before. Basically, if you used Firefox before for the extensions, then there is a possibility that you will get screwed over pretty hard. For me, I need my noscript and other important addons and will have no use of Firefox anymore (I usually use both ff and chrome) if they stop working. I am rather optimistic about this move but it depends at the end of the day: what new things can Firefox do now and what can't it do now? The main appeal of Firefox is its customization. Getting rid of that kills all reasons to use Firefox.

Right now the chromium code is pretty damn messy so I hope Edge and Firefox step up for the sake of my laptops and windows tablets. It seems that Google are making chrome better on OS X right now for el capitan so I don't mind if they step up as well.

Edit: 1 more thing. Pale moon and waterfox are based of Firefox and will probably still support XUL and XPCOM. So use those if you need them.

[AnimeFan188]

It’s time to give Firefox another chance:

"If you’re like me, you switched your default browser over to Chrome years ago and
never looked back. Chances are, before you made the switch, you used Firefox or — God
forbid — Internet Explorer. What made Chrome stand out back then was its speed and
simplicity, especially at a time when Firefox felt like it was getting slower and heavier
with every update. But times have changed. It’s now time to give Firefox another
chance.

Earlier this week, Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind Firefox, launched the first
beta of Firefox 57. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but version 57 is the most
important Firefox release in years. It’s the culmination of years of work on many of the
moving pieces that the user never sees but that allow the browser to quickly display
your Gmail inbox, YouTube video or cat forum. To mark the fact that this is such a major
release, Mozilla has dubbed this release “Firefox Quantum.”"

See:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/29/it...nother-chance/