from Hacker News

Talk me out of it – switching from Firefox to Chrome

by Tekker on 8/22/15, 4:42 PM with 16 comments

I've used "Firefox" since Mosaic, then Netscape, then Mozilla Firefox. But, damn, more and more Firefox bogs down on me (and I have few, if any add-ons installed). Flash was locking it up, and I'm keeping it disabled unless I particularly want it on, and animated GIFs seem to bog it down. Othertimes it just seems to bog down - I assume a memory resource leak - and a restart fixes it. Sometimes not.

I'm loyal to the heir of the first browser, but frankly am ready to trade - same quandry when I had to abandon Borland for M$oft (but that was a business decision).

Alas, although I know it's open source, I'm not in a position to fix it myself.

Anyone else hanging in there, know what the bog down is, or what are people doing? I know I'm not the only one with this issue.

  • by a3n on 8/22/15, 5:22 PM

    I've had uBlockOrigin, Ghostery and Disconnect installed for awhile.

    I recently went through Ghostery's and Disconnect's settings, choosing the most agressive blocking. I am amazed at how quiet my laptop runs.

    I recently went to a Wired article, and uBO blocked 133 requests. That's 133 bits of content or code that my browser and cpu did not have to work on.

    It may not be Firefox that's causing you trouble, it may just be that the Web sucks more with each passing day.

  • by cdvonstinkpot on 8/22/15, 5:41 PM

    I switched from Firefox to Chrome about a year or so ago. No complaints so far. I'm not going to talk you out of it. I think it's a good idea to switch.

    Multiple threading= 1 process per tab

    A bit more lightweight than Firefox when both are loaded with plugins.

  • by Gustomaximus on 8/24/15, 10:03 PM

    Why limit yourself to one browser?

    I use many browsers. Though Chome tends to be my main goto on the desktop for personal stuff mainly because of the good syncing system they set up early and Opera Mobile on the phone (I dropped Chrome here as it seems to be getting worse). IE I save for work on screen presentations so you don't have browser history showing up as you type plus the odd archaic system that demands IE. I use FF for some work areas to keep separate accounts. Also FF still have the best best extensions environment. And Opera for the accounts reason too.

    Another browser and possible contender for my main desktop browser is Vivaldi. While not quite there this is still early days. It's being founded by some of the old Opera Browser team. They are trying to rebuild a browser with the old core Opera values and create a power user product. Check it out: https://vivaldi.com/ I'm using this also and keeping a close eye on how it developes.

    Also if your browser is bogging you down due to hardware limitation try Opera 12 (old version before the big shift). It's very resource friendly.

    Disclaimer: Ex-Opera employee

  • by cweagans on 8/24/15, 7:41 PM

    I've found https://github.com/dfkt/firefox-tweaks/blob/master/firefox-t... to fix a lot of the things that piss me off about Firefox. I don't use Firebug anymore, and that change alone sped things up pretty significantly.

  • by tmuir on 8/22/15, 6:14 PM

    Are there any extensions/add ons that exist for multiple browsers that allow you to actually measure browser performance on an arbitrary site? If you had such a thing, you could easily and quantitatively test the websites you visit most often, and figure out which browser best suited your specific use case.

  • by Tekker on 8/22/15, 7:59 PM

    I disabled everything but Ghostery, since in reality I don't use Firebug much. We'll see what happens with that as the only add-on. Otherwise, I'm jumping ship. I don't mind some inconveniences, but when I can't get anything done...

  • by smt88 on 8/22/15, 4:53 PM

    How powerful is your hardware? What OS do you use? Do you have any irreplaceable extensions?