I haven't used FF in years but I've been so impressed with 57 that I've finally come home. I'm wondering if I'm alone. If you switched, please let us know why you decided to switch.
I have switched to Firefox a long time ago. The main reason is privacy. I just trust Mozilla much more than Google (I actually don't trust Google at all).<p>From Google Chrome Privacy Notice [1]:<p><pre><code> [...] Chrome usage statistics include information about the web pages you visit and your usage of them.
[...] We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners —
like publishers, advertisers or web developers.
</code></pre>
[1] <a href="https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/index.html</a>
I've used Chrome continuously ever since it was released, but today I switched to Firefox on both my work and personal laptops.<p>Both machines are Macbook Pros, one 2012 and the other 2017, and Chrome feels laggy on both. Scrolling is not smooth, and certain web applications are just downright unpleasant to use (notably, Jupyter notebooks and Facebook).<p>I gave Firefox Quantum a try, and it's an amazing improvement. This is more how I imagined computers to function in 2017 to be honest. There is no noticeable lag on either machine. So I'll be sticking with Firefox for the foreseeable future.
I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config - privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use: production and staging.
I've been using Nightly for about 2 months for personal browsing, and have recently switched to using it for my web development job using containers, and it's been great.<p>Biggest feature I'd like to see is a keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab in a particular container, as opposed to Cmd+T opening an uncontained tab.<p>The Developer Tools still have a ways to go before they beat the performance of Chrome (large source files lag), but it's perfectly usable and getting better all the time.<p>All in all, I've been very happy with my switch, especially when Quantum landed in Nightly: a noticeable increase in speed and snappiness!
Me, far too many times.<p>Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome.<p>However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla, non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages.<p>Now, the reason I always switch back to Chrome was because of the dev tools. With FF Quantum, the dev tools have vastly improved and is on par with Chrome. Its a bit wonky in some parts, but I can see that their UI are already in place, getting ready to be fully implemented in future releases. I've been using it as my main browser, wrote an add-on using their new API.<p>For those considering to switch, I suggest you give it a few days to be familiar with the dev tools' UI/UX as it is not a direct copy of the Chrome UI/UX. Other than privacy, its a really great product. Its worth the switch.
Switched to Firefox on Macbook Pro.<p>It feels faster, but my two main complaints:<p>1. While using the touchpad to go 'back', a page on Safari will show you the page you're going back to. Chrome will at least offer an arrow animation backwards. Firefox offers no such thing, often leaving me confused as to whether it's registered. A couple times so far it has instead scrolled me up the page a bit.<p>2. I have nothing else open, yet certain actions (i.e. scrolling through Zillow pictures earlier) will result in it sporadically using so much memory that my computer's fans are audibly loud and the computer gets quite hot.<p>Nonetheless, I still would narrowly recommend it, though some of that is likely to do with wanting to support Mozilla.
I've switched to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago in order to reduce my reliance on Google's products (also switched to duckduckgo at that time). I can't say I've noticed a big difference with version 57 as it was already fast enough for my use previously.
With the exception of casting things to my chromecast, I've switched to Firefox for everything. Performance isn't an issue, development tools are really good, I can be "that guy at work who catches firefox bugs," and I'd rather support Mozilla than Google at the end of the day.
I never left FF so picked 57 up as a normal update. Love everything about it so far except the new theme which is taking me longer than I'd like to adjust to (not a big fan of the dark blue/cobalt menubar).
Switched yesterday, so far loving it! My objection to Chrome was mostly on principle (anti-Google), so it's nice that there's a performance-based reason to switch to Firefox as well.<p>Though I just ran into a problem that reminded me of why I stopped using Firefox in the first place: I used xdg-open a lot (in Emacs), and Firefox tries to supplant that whole functionality. It advertises itself as being able to open pretty much every file under the sun, and then prompts you to choose an application to <i>actually</i> use to open the file.<p>I wasn't asking you, Firefox, I was asking xdg-open.
I switched a few weeks ago when 57 hit the Nightly channel. The main incentive towards Firefox for me has always been the Tree Style Tab extension[1]; it's just that Chrome's better performance used to be a stronger incentive. Now they're more-or-less equal on that front.<p>[1]: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...</a>
I switched recently because someone here said they switched due to privacy concerns AND that it was really good. It struck a chord with me, I'm tired of goog and all seeing corporations. And it really is good! I don't miss Chrome one bit. Well done, Mozilla!<p>By the way, I also defaulted to DuckDuckGo as the search engine, and so far I'm a happy camper.
I usually have around 100+ tabs open in Chrome at any given time on my 2014 macbook pro. I have been testing out Firefox 57 for about a month now. I am very impressed by the devtools UI and the customization features. The speed is something I don't have to worry about at all, and makes it easier to compare Chrome to Firefox. I am fortunately not in a situation where any of my addons/extensions are unsupported on either browser. It has been fun to compare them and I think I will be switching completely to Firefox.
Me! I have been running nightly for the past couple of months and it is really good. I use uBlock, Res, Ghostery and Imagus. I use Compact and Dark UI mode and it seems more compact than chrome. Also I noticed it consumes a lot less memory, but CPU is 50/50 I'd say. One thing that I find a bit weird is that I find that some Google services work worse, like YouTube eats more CPU than on chrome when it is not maximized and sometimes my connections to google time out for seemingly no reason.
I thought network speed was the limiting factor for web browsing. But then I tried Firefox Quantum.<p>I really don't have very many requirements for a browser except correctly rendering content, having bookmarks, and auto-filling as many forms and logins as possible. Since every browser more or less does these, I prefer Firefox for the speed, and because I want to support both Mozilla the organisation, as well as choice in the browser market.
I never stopped using Firefox, but for years was only using it for an isolated development environment.<p>But I've been using Firefox 57 for a few month, and it's great. I still use Chrome, but I'm probably spending equal time in both now.
Back when Firefox originally came out I was one of the first few adopters of it (primarily to escape Internet Explorer), but left it back in 2008 when Google Chrome came out because of it's speed. However, almost a decade later after having issues with Chrome on my new Linux rig and hearing all the fuss about Quantum I tried the Firefox Beta about a week ago (I'm not a patient man) and immediately fell in love with it. Not only was it faster, but it used half of the system resources that Chrome was using! I know some people are not thrilled with the loss of extensions, but having come to it at this time of transition I found all the extensions I had on Chrome and a few others that made my web browsing experience better than ever. I'm very excited about the new changes in Firefox and can't wait to see where they go from here.
I guess I'll start it off. I've done a apples-to-apples compare on memory usage of 7 tabs with the same content and FF57 came in at 514 MG to chrome's 512 so that's basically a wash.<p>The speed has been the main factor along with being able to step away from Google, if only a little bit.
Yes! I wanted to switch back once Electrolysis [1] was turned on, but didn't believe the speed was comparable enough. Now, it is though.<p>I stayed on Chrome for a while because Google Chrome became the best supported way to run flash for Linux users. Fortunately, these days I see flash less and less. So I'm not even going to bother installing it in Firefox (though I did think this plugin to run Google's flash plugin was interesting [2]).<p>There are a few things I'll miss from Chrome. I'm currently a Project Fi subscriber, so I get my texts over hangouts (despite it looking like the writing is on the wall for that service) and used the hangouts extension heavily. I'd like to have the ability to cast a tab to my Chromecast. I'll also miss the fact that Chrome has a setting that allows relaxed localhost SSL verification (via chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost - am I missing a Firefox setting?) Lastly, this has been mentioned in a few other comments, but for some reason I really like to be able to scroll through my tabs via mousewheel.<p>Changing browsers has caused me to reevaluate my workflow. I never really looked into changing this in Chrome, but the tree style tab add-on really is a better way to handle lots of tabs. And I very much welcome the multi account containers add-on as well [3].<p>I'm repeating the blog of Mozilla when I say, this is just the beginning. I do believe that as more and more Rust is utilized, things will become even better. Super glad I'm able to enjoy using Firefox again!<p>[1] <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis</a>
[2] <a href="https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin</a>
[3] <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...</a>
I tried (again) to switch to FF yesterday when 57 was released, and unfortunately still ran into a known bug that makes it practically unusable for me: FF treats underscores as punctuation that breaks up a word, so given text "foo_bar", if you double click on "foo" or "bar", it doesn't select the entire word. This goes against all conventions of Chrome, other text editors, etc. It seems trivial, but as developers we deal with underscores a lot, and copy text out of our browsers frequently.<p>There's been a bug open about this for 15 years now: <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175</a>
I switched long ago from chrome to Edge because chrome can't scroll smoothly, it just can't. Firefox also wasnt able untill I think about 2 months ago? Not sure. Either way, I switched from Edge to Firefox 2 months ago because 1) Edge is a really poor browser aside from 4k video and the scrolling experience and 2) Mozilla is a great comany with a great product with such an insane amount of fearures. I just like smooth scrolling so much that I wasn't able to use it till it finally offered that feature. Couldn't be happier with Firefox ATM. Thanks Mozilla
I had switched to Chrome a few years back, and had more recently switched to Opera (Blink) before it was bought up by the Chinese. I switched to Firefox when Nightly 57 was released, and haven't looked back since. Couldn't be happier.<p>It's a pity so many long-time users of Firefox feel distraught about the Extensions kerfuffle, but fwiw if that allowed Firefox to get fast, then I was all for it.<p>For my use cases, the available Web Extensions are enough. And I have even started to use Tree Style Tabs, while I was more than fine with regular horizontal tabs before.
I switched yesterday from Chrome to FF 57 on my MBP 2014. Chrome was faster, but now FF is the clear winner. On Windows, I have been using FF for the past 10 years. Also, Firefox Sync is just amazing.
I already use container tabs for my dev. (Usually have to test an app using multiple test accounts). I have not figured out how to run a second copy of Firefox that is fixed into a different workspace -- but if I ever do, I will switch on my work laptop.<p>My personal laptop, an old 2011 Mac Air is definitely switching. Chrome just runs too poorly on that now, and container tabs is too useful.<p>It's really interesting, feel like coming to full circle. 10 years ago, I switched to Chrome because of the multi-process isolation -- Firefox leaks pretty badly then.
I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable).<p>The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some-service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some<TAB>my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the dev store.
I did, because it just felt good to be back again. I also switched to Firefox on my Android now, because I can't life without the bookmark sync and stuff.
Can any Firefox pro here help me with the bookmark manager of FF? I can assign keywords to bookmarks (shortcuts), and I like that a lot. So if I assign the keyword `hn` to `<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com`" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com`</a> I just need to enter `hn` in the URL bar.<p>But assigning a keyword to a bookmark is too many clicks away: I need to open the bookmarks manager (`show all bookmarks`), select a bookmark, look at the bookmark properties in the bottom, expand two more fields: keyword and description.<p>Now is there a shorter way to get this? Or an add on that works with FF 57?<p>Also: Is there a way to filter all bookmarks with keywords assigned to them? This question has been asked in [1] several years ago, and back then it was possible to add a `keyword` column to the existing columns in `manage bookmarks`.<p>[1] <a href="https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can-filter-bookmarks-with-non-empty-keywords" rel="nofollow">https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can-fi...</a><p>Edit: Added an explanation for the `keyword` feature.
I just switched. Long time chome user aswell. The new FF has adopted the same design as Chrome and that is what brought me over. I think Chrome will lose some market share soon. I am actually a loyal person but Google started abusing its power to dictate how developers should write code. Aswell as putting unecessary constraints on things. Pissed me off
Firefox was my first choice ever since it came out, but I stopped using it when it got unstable a few years ago (even on a brand new macbook!). I've been using nightly for about a month with no crashes, so I'm mostly happy with it. Sometimes it goes crazy with CPU and I have to close a few tabs. I'm still using Chrome as well, for now.
I switched on my work laptop a few months ago, with the knowledge that 57 was the one to look out for. Got the update yesterday and was impressed enough to switch at home as well.<p>I've also been using Firefox on my phone for a while now, specifically so that I can run ublock origin and video speed controller, since mobile chrome doesn't support extensions.
I did a few weeks ago. (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.)<p>Chrome developed a weird habit of trying to render a semi-random URL as the default home page. Google's customer service folks asked for a couple of screen shots, then went radio silent.<p>I've switched & love the improvement - it's quite impressive. Unfortunately Chrome is on its way to being the iTunes of browsers.
I've given it a decent shot - but it still has very average profile support, which I use daily. In Chrome, it's easy to see what profile I'm using (top right corner of the window), and very easy to switch.<p>In Firefox, you need to go to about:profiles to even see what profile you're currently using.
Nobody else has a problem with new tab? Really?
I used to have a (local) html page as new tab. Guess what? They disabled this option a year ago. Ok, a nice person created an addon to recreate this option. It's called "new tab override". There is a version of this addon for firefox 57. But firefox doesn't allow addons to access file: urls for security reasons. So the recomendation of "new tab override" is to install a local web server. Wait a moment. I need an addon + a local web server to run a html file in new tab? Seriously?
By the way: mouse gestures don't work in new tab (nor on mozilla.org) because its a chrome-url and addons are not allowed to access chrome-urls.<p>Firefox 57 is really nice. But somehow it is a little pain.
It's been years that I abandoned Chrome ;) Was using Safari mainly and Firefox for web dev purposes. But FF 57 impressed me so much that I switched a couple of days ago, moving all my bookmarks, history, plugins etc to FF. Goodbye Safari, hello FF. :)
I switched to Firefox about 3 years ago (can't remember exactly), because it's a better browser for me.<p>Chrome was built for web apps, the other browsers were slow to adapt, so my initial use-case for Chrome was keeping stuff like Gmail and Slack active.
But this slowly faded away. Slack has a desktop app and continues to be a piece of shit and for email I use MailMate (<a href="https://freron.com/" rel="nofollow">https://freron.com/</a>) which is awesome btw.<p>This meant that keeping persistent tabs with apps around wasn't such a priority. And in terms of usability, Firefox has had the better browsing experience for quite some time.<p>Of course Firefox is now multi-process, stability and speed improved, I see it using less resources than Chrome and it's now good for web apps as well.<p>I love Firefox's Awesome Bar, I love its new "Multi-Account Containers" add-on [1]. I also used an add-on for vertical tabs which was cool, but now due to the migration the community has to rebuild those. But seeing what they delivered with Quantum, I don't mind.<p>From a technological, under the hood perspective, Chrome used to be the cool one. But now Firefox is slowly getting powered by Rust, which gets integrating for multi-core rendering algorithms. How freaking cool is that? Mozilla invented their own programming language in order to make Firefox better.<p>Firefox is the best browser right now, but even if it weren't, I would still use it because I've learned to trust it and Mozilla that they are protecting my interests — I don't want another Internet Explorer, which Chrome is becoming due to its huge market share.<p>Oh and I also use Pocket, now that Mozilla bought them. Could use some improvements, I'm still waiting on them to deliver the source code as promised, but it's a cool service and I'm happy to pay them some money.<p>[1] <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...</a>
I just switched back on the latest release.<p>* Sadly I'm missing a single really important Add-on and there are some annoying and apparently long-standing bugs that have been ignored and I've had to work around, but otherwise it's a major improvement and it's good enough to work with.<p>* I'm glad that they've ditched the rounded tabs and cleaned up the interface.<p>* I'm still annoyed that Pocket is integrated into everything without an option to disable it.<p>* It is dramatically improved in speed and stability.<p>* The browser animations are very pleasant.<p>I'm giving it a chance to shine for the next week or so, if there are no blockers I'll probably end up sticking with it.
2010 macbook, Chrome user. Things are generally slow, but felt like they got a bit snappier after the High Sierra upgrade. I tried FF57 but for me it feels a bit slower than Chrome on this older device.
Switched back when Rust went alpha. It encouraged me to really look into some of the side projects that Mozilla had going on and it made me really want to support them and see those projects succeed.
I have couldn't be more happier. The ability for Firefox nightly to modify requests and resend is a bonus. Also less sluggish and quicker. Ublock origin and last pass both supported with nightly.
I've been on FF Nightly for the last couple of months but recently switched back to Safari. On a MacBook 12" (i5) Firefox did terrible things to the battery life and generated enough heat that I'd often find the CPU throttling.<p>Neither Safari or Chrome have the same issues. I haven't really tried FF since the nightly jumped to 59 but I keep it updated and occasionally check to see whether this has been fixed.
I tried to yesterday.<p>Gave up after two minutes when I did not see any performance change. I have a recent machine where Chrome is already pretty fast, I am not sure in which conditions it slows down, but it looks like they don't apply to me.<p>Also, I would need a plugin in order to allow me to access my chrome tab history in Firefox.<p>That way I would keep the same multi device experience while switching to FF on desktop.<p>Otherwise, I lose a big feature I use extensively.
Not switched default browser yet but I'm using FF57 as my main browser on my home PC and mac. On chromebook I'm stuck with chrome lol.<p>So far browsing websites seem to be faster in general but when I use complex webapps like Spotify, JIRA, Netflix, etc. chrome still seems faster. I'll probably use for 2 weeks before I commit on a full switch (and import my bookmarks and switch over my work PC).
I switched a few weeks ago, and this week I've switched to Nightly. I haven't used FF in around 5 years, and it's much, much nicer now. Containers are great, the customizability is awesome too: I wanted the bookmarks toolbar to only show up on the new tab page, and it took a single CSS rule to make that happen. Not to mention I feel it's more privacy-friendly.
I downloaded FF today, it's zippy. But I rely on dozens of Chrome extensions. That's one of the things I like about Chrome -- its extensibility. HOwever, Chrome is a memory hog, it routinely destroys the 16gb of memory and the battery of my MBPro.<p>When FF has sn equivalent set of extensions, I will happily dump Chrome. Until then, it appears I'm stuck with Chrome
This is making me really curious because while Chrome is buttery smooth on my Macbook Pro, Firefox 57 is really sluggish, especially when creating/closing tabs. You can literally see the animation stuttering. Other times when a page loads it won't paint for some seconds even if it appears that it has completed loading. Is anyone else having these issues?
I really, <i>really</i> wanted to switch, but I saw that switching tabs with mousewheel (which can be done in Chrome and most other Linux apps) is still not possible, and the Tab Wheel Scroll extension, which I previously used to work around the issue, is no longer compatible.<p>So Firefox is unfortunately an unusable web browser for me :/
I have been always using Firefox and also Chrome (and more recently Opera) as a side browser for various less important activities. 57 didn't surprise me at all. It was good before and is still good now, nothing dramatically changed from the user's perspective since the 56 or other versions before that.
I try / use FF every once in a while again. Always for specific test cases.<p>But switching? NO. Why? Since currently only Google takes security serious and has the resources to actually do that. I understand and accept that "google knows thing via chrome" but they are not (a significant) part of my threatmodel.
I switched already 2 months ago on mobile because I got tired by non blockable ads in Chrome and absence of any reading mode. To be in sync with the desktop I switched on the desktop too. Never looked back. And now with the new UI it even looks nicer than Safari imo. Looking forward to 57 on mobile.
I'm proudly using Firefox, for several months now. When they initially launched FF Developer edition I tried it out, but it was just too slow. Now Firefox is very fast, the developer tools are great. I love it and I'll never willingly use Chrome again (maybe for testing/ QA).
Is there any way to disable alphabetical sorting of network monitor's HTTP response headers?<p>From 53.x (IIRC) to 56.x, Firefox keeps the original order set by the server (like the one you see in the <i>raw headers</i> section or `curl -I`), and I like it that way.
Yep. Like to see some competition and I’m a huge fan of rust, so like to support it any way I can.<p>I hit minor compatibility issues on some sites, but it’s rare.<p>Main thing I miss is auto shrinking tabs. FF doesn’t support the bajillion tabs methodology so well right now.
I tried to switch, but FF does not allow local files to be loaded. Since I use a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts (which I save and edit locally), it was a non-starter for me. Perhaps if they ever fix this issue, I might try again.
I never stopped using FF.<p>I'm holding off on upgrading until I find a replacement for TabMixPlus. I need something that will ensure:<p>1. middle-click to open links in new tabs.
2. address bar, search bar, and bookmarks open in a new tab by default.
I switched on a trial basis, I am definitely liking the smooth UI, I can't stand the way it handles many tabs though, I find it even worse than chrome hiding the fav icons, for me Opera is doing it better.
I switched. I really like the performance boost, and it just generally feels "snappier". I also had a long seeded desire to support FireFox, so now felt like a great time to jump ship.
- It feels a lot faster than Chrome
- It uses less memory (especially with many tabs open)
- multi-account containers are a game changer
- I think it also looks better than Chrome
I've been running FF Nightly for weeks now, and I really like it. It feels snappier than Chrome, and I hope it can bring back a significant portion of developers as well.
I want to uninstall chrome, but can't find a good replacement for chrome report desktop. It just works so seamlessly on all devices, including mobile. Any suggestions?
I have been wanting to switch to FF for a lot of time, but insufficient performance used to hold me back. With FF 57 there are no excuses anymore, it's fantastic!
I switched to test it, not sure yet whether or not I will stay using it all the time. I definitely notice the speed and the built in screenshot support is pretty nice.
I'm switching over today. Performance was my only gripe with Firefox previously, and I really dislike the idea of feeding Google my usage information.
I rely on Chrome and Google's integration. I'm pretty sure I would catch on fire if I try to change...<p>ps: I use both, chrome for personal stuff and FF for work.
does anyone know how to disable those annoying requests to send notifications? in chrome you can disable them but I have not found a way to do it firefox
I switched to a few weeks ago but it seems really laggy recently whenever I'm running Youtube in the background while on the private mode.<p>I don't trust Chrome at all, and I'd much rather use Firefox, but it's unusable for me.