Firefox Dumped : Opera Looking Good

After having put off updating FF for some time now (every update creates issues that require customisation back to preferred setup), I decided to update it. Short version of reasons is that FF 40 just wasn't behaving when using Flash vids, or streams, such as Twitch TV.

So went to the default update page and discovered that it's now a 64-bit version (FF 55). Ok then.

Well it's one hell of a slow starter. It takes about 5-10 seconds to start, and hogs resources bigtime. A single tab open with a Twitch stream gave the following (FF top, Opera bottom, with mem totals by me):

https://ibb.co/dtY4mk

That's not some gfx-heavy stream either.

So at 466Meg and 46% CPU heavier, I think I'll be binning FF now. It's been a pain in the arris for some time now, with updates disabling add-ons without consent, then configure, or worse, install add-on 2 to correct the issues with add-on 1. We're not talking rocket science either. Just home page focus add-ons and the odd dev tool.

I had the choice of fairly heavy 32-bit FF, very heavy 64-bit FF, or fairly light Opera. No contest.

how FF has killed itself is beyond depressing.

Ok am not a big fan of google, dont think chrome is excellent. But I feel I been forced to use it because of the implosion inside FF.

The 64bit browser was long overdue, they had to migrate, 32bit binaries are lacking various security mitigation's and have a lot of limitations in what they can do, with browsers becoming more and more feature heavy, those limitations were becoming more apparent every year.

Likewise E10 was about 10 years too late, and its still only a job half done today.

The issue I got with mozilla is they have put a lot of effort into basically cloning chrome, with the user interface changes, the extension coding changes and also inbound policies. The problem with that policy is that they cannot make a better clone than the original, so all they are achieving is frustrating their previously loyal user base. Of course firefox has had longstanding performance and in particular garbage collection issues, and if it turns out its all caused by their legacy extension system, then it gives some merit into what they doing, but I feel they been too aggressive. There must have been a middle ground, that would allow a way for old extensions to be used even if it became unsupported.

Take a look at this article.

This is what firefox was lacking for a decade before E10 as it has no multi process system. Noscript saved it from a security nightmare probably.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 21-Aug-17 12:04:08)