Hacker News

Firefox 81.0

2020-09-2213:40604225www.mozilla.org

Version 81.0, first offered to Release channel users on September 22, 2020 We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox.

Version 81.0, first offered to Release channel users on September 22, 2020

We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox.

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  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 10
  • Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
  • 512MB of RAM / 2GB of RAM for the 64-bit version
  • 200MB of hard drive space
  • macOS 10.12
  • macOS 10.13
  • macOS 10.14
  • macOS 10.15
  • Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 processor
  • 512 MB of RAM
  • 200 MB hard drive space

Please note that GNU/Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements.

  • Firefox will not run at all without the following libraries or packages:
    • GTK+ 3.14 or higher
    • X.Org 1.0 or higher (1.7 or higher is recommended)
    • libstdc++ 4.8.1 or higher
    • glibc 2.17 or higher
  • For optimal functionality, we recommend the following libraries or packages:
    • NetworkManager 0.7 or higher
    • DBus 1.0 or higher
    • GNOME 2.16 or higher
    • PulseAudio

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Comments

  • By magicalhippo 2020-09-2215:2314 reply

    I wish Containers would get some love. Ability to set root domain for example would be great, so I could keep all Bandcamp sites in a single container without micromanagement for example.

    I also wish there was a simple way to suspend tabs, essentially turning them into the "ghosts" they are when you start the browser. So many times I want to keep a tab around for easy access, but they got some stupid JS framework running sucking CPU for no good reason.

    That said, overall I'm quite pleased with Firefox and hope Mozilla keep developing it. We need a proper Chrome alternative.

    • By spiffytech 2020-09-2215:356 reply

      I use the Auto Tab Discard extension, which turns tabs I haven't looked at recently back into the same ghosts as they are on startup. There's a bunch of configuration for how it chooses which tabs to discard. I'm away from my PC now, but I'm pretty sure it gives a right-click option on the tab to suspend one manually if you want.

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/auto-tab-disc...

      • By eikenberry 2020-09-2221:50

        I used this but had to stop using it as occasionally Firefox would require a restart for some reason or another and when in that state any paused tabs would lose their state if you clicked on them. Lost to much important state and it had to go.

      • By OJFord 2020-09-2217:07

        Sidebery is primarily a horizontal (/tree style) tab lister, but this is also a feature of it (calls it 'unload' I think) on right click, really great if something's being a resource hog, but I might want it again later.

      • By scriptsmith 2020-09-2223:59

        I use Auto Tab Discard along with an extension I wrote to 'garbage collect' (close) the all the discarded tabs by clicking a button in the toolbar

        https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/close-discard...

      • By mkskm 2020-09-2220:051 reply

        Auto Tab Discard works great for me as well. Would love to see something like this built-in, though.

        I've also found cutting the content process limit in half to significantly improve performance. Combined with the above add-on my machine doesn't start swapping or become non-performant even with lots of sites open.

        • By mxmilkb 2020-09-2220:32

          Auto Tab Discard is to Firefox memory problems like uBlock is to online ads.

          The actual discard feature is native, the addon just exposes it.

          Would be nice if ATD didn't kill FF PiP video tabs though!

      • By freedomben 2020-09-2216:522 reply

        Do you use this on desktop? The add on install page is saying that the extension is not intended for desktop, so figured it was worth asking.

        • By jtuente 2020-09-2218:09

          He linked the android version, if you click the warning it goes to the normal desktop page.

        • By SAI_Peregrinus 2020-09-2217:51

          Not the parent, but I do. It works fine IME.

      • By ksec 2020-09-2315:43

        I wish Safari has this feature.

    • By addandsubtract 2020-09-2215:367 reply

      I just want temp containers. With all the cookie bullshit you have to pick and choose on each website, I just want to accept it all and then flush the container once I'm done with the website.

      • By npteljes 2020-09-2215:422 reply

        Do you know about the Temporary Containers addon? While it has some quirks, it seems to do exactly what you described, automatically and quite intuitively. I'm a happy user for two years now I think.

        • By pityJuke 2020-09-2215:551 reply

          Man, I love this plugin. Every time I open a link from HN, CTRL-Click (configured this way) and into a new container it goes. Combine it with Chameleon, and you can really confuse some sites.

          • By andrewl-hn 2020-09-2216:251 reply

            How did you do that? Cmd+Click opens links in the same container for me, and I can't find the right setting.

            • By SAI_Peregrinus 2020-09-2217:54

              In Temporary Containers settings: Isolation tab, Global, Mouse click. Set "Ctrl/Cmd+Left Mouse" to anything but "Never".

        • By skykooler 2020-09-2223:42

          Thank you for this comment! That extension is exactly what I was looking for for a while.

      • By nicky0 2020-09-2215:432 reply

        "Cookie AutoDelete"[1] extension might be what you want. It flushes cookies after you close all tabs for a site. There's an allowlist of sites for which to retain cookies.

        It's nice when paired with the "I don't care about cookies"[2] extension which auto-accepts cookie requests and makes sure you never see any cookie permission dialogs.

        1: https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete

        2: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

        • By davidhyde 2020-09-2216:321 reply

          On Firefox you can select “Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed” under the browser privacy and security settings. You white list a bunch of sites you want to stay logged into using the “Manage Exceptions” button. No need for a plug-in. For all other sites you can use Firefox’s remember password feature.

          Then, instead of using “I don’t care about cookies” you can simply tick all the boxes in the “Annoyances” section of uBlock Origin. That way you only need one plugin and not three.

          • By andrewaylett 2020-09-2217:571 reply

            That does assume that one closes Firefox, however. While Cookie Autodelete will remove cookies for a site within a few seconds† once the last tab is closed, and correctly handles tabs in containers.

            †in case you're redirecting briefly for SSO or similar.

            • By davidhyde 2020-09-2310:511 reply

              I found that having cookies actively deleted like that often crashes websites inadvertently and it ended up being a pain to manage. Allowing a website to track you for a day or so is not the same as being tracked for months. I believe that it is not nearly as useful to marketers. Closing and reopening my browser after a heavy web session is not a big price for me to pay. I do it to free up resources on my machine anyway.

              • By andrewaylett 2020-09-248:35

                Sites I log in to I don't clear. Other sites _shouldn't_ be able to tell the difference between deleting cookies and being a fresh visitor. This brings a new problem, in the form of cookie and GDPR banners. But there's an extension for that, too: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/.

        • By gruez 2020-09-2215:452 reply

          I don't recommend it as a comprehensive solution because it misses some stuff, such as indexeddb and service workers. For maximum isolation you'd want temporary containers.

      • By sundarurfriend 2020-09-2217:002 reply

        Is that different from opening in an incognito window? Genuine question, I don't know how cookies are handled in private windows and what other weirdness they might invite, but they do seem to serve this purpose very well for me. I often 'Open in Private Window' websites that have been linked from reddit or HN but that I don't trust to play nice with my privacy.

        • By the_pwner224 2020-09-2217:201 reply

          You can only have one private window instance, with all your private window contents mixed in that scope. And this instance cannot be discarded until you close every single private window. It would be better to have multiple temporary instances so you don't have different websites mixing and don't need to close everything to reset your session on one site.

          • By eulenteufel 2020-09-238:251 reply

            Are you sure about that? I was testing some web app earlier this year and everytime I opened a new icognito window I was able to log in again as an other user. Opening another tab in the same window shared the state of the window.

            • By the_pwner224 2020-09-2322:33

              Maybe it's different in Chrome. In FF they all share an instance.

        • By skykooler 2020-09-2223:46

          A couple things:

          - If you need to restart the browser, temporary containers are persistent. Several times I've lost a session from an incognito window because Firefox wanted to restart and wouldn't let me load any new pages until I did so.

          - Pages visited in containers are still included in your browser history, which can be useful if you want to find something again later

          - You can have multiple temporary container sessions running at once; while all incognito windows share a session, cookies, etc.

      • By OJFord 2020-09-2217:111 reply

        I block all cookies by default with uMatrix (yes, I know.. still using it for now at least though) and then 'Cookie Auto Delete' add-on cleans up anything I whitelist in uMatrix (e.g. to make a checkout work) that I haven't also whitelisted in itself (e.g. I let HN keep a cookie rather than login every day or tab close).

        • By WilTimSon 2020-09-2217:372 reply

          > yes, I know..

          Wait, I think I missed something, is uMatrix bad somehow?

          • By OJFord 2020-09-2218:00

            Sorry, that was lazy of me:

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532973

            It's great, it just might not survive too many Firefox version bumps now. Hopefully there'll be a clear successor fork to switch to before long.

          • By jkob_ 2020-09-2217:42

            It got archieved, meaning the development of it is on hold

      • By dheera 2020-09-2219:512 reply

        You could just block all cookies and make exceptions to enable them for the few websites that you need to log in.

        The only downside is the GDPR warnings keep coming back. I've been making custom CSS and JS injection rules to get rid of GDPR warnings though by removing or hiding them from the DOM -- any Adblock-style plugin to get rid of all of those? If I hide all the GDPR popups with custom CSS, I will have never seen them, and therefore never agreed to them, and if I block cookies they can't track me anyway.

        • By eythian 2020-09-2310:02

        • By worble 2020-09-2220:392 reply

          uBlocks "Annoyances" list should cover a lot of cookie and GDPR notifications. If that doesn't go far enough there's also a really great ultra annoyances list that'll unstick and remove just about anything that tries to constantly stick itself on your screen.

          https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances

          • By GekkePrutser 2020-09-230:311 reply

            It does but very often a site won't let you proceed until you clicked the ok button on their annoying popup. And because the pop-up is blocked, there's no way to proceed then :(

            I've seen this on several sites now. Understandable but having to turn off ublock puts you on the radar of all the trackers again.

            • By dheera 2020-09-231:301 reply

              Maybe we need a more advanced plugin that auto-agrees to all those tracking cookies to make the websites think they got permission and work, but then blocks/deletes those cookies so that they don't actually get to track.

              Or even better, if the tracking uses some commonly available libraries, actually mess with their tracking data and send it back so that it's a lost cause on their part to even try to track people. Doubly awesome if FireFox can ship a browser that in its default configuration messes up tracking data with false data (hee hee).

              • By GekkePrutser 2020-09-2313:49

                It would be amazing if it could to that! But with the current marketshare of Firefox, it would be a drop in the ocean :)

          • By dheera 2020-09-2222:02

            Oh thanks, this looks amazing!

      • By weaksauce 2020-09-2218:53

        use the temporary containers addon... the multi-account containers addon is nice too.

      • By Santosh83 2020-09-2215:461 reply

        With browser fingerprinting persisting across all these flushes, discarding cookies and trackers won't help. You'll still be identified.

        • By kohtatsu 2020-09-2216:26

          Browser fingerprinting is a problem, but the solution isn't to throw your hands up and spoonfeed them identifiers.

          Blocking tracking scripts does thwart fingerprinting. I really hope we can figure out a decent access model for JavaScript someday.

    • By npteljes 2020-09-2215:461 reply

      There's an addon called Containerise that seems to do what you describe. The basic usage in the description could be easily used to isolate the bandcamp sites.

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/

      • By waz0wski 2020-09-2216:25

        Works great in combination with multi-account + temporary containers extensions.

        Grants the ability to regex match on domains & url paths for sites that do auth redirects or to isolate corporate & personal accounts on the same domain (github, google etc) - MAC should have this functionality built in, and there are several open issues requesting it.

        Containerise does have builtin limited temporary container functionality, but I found the separate extension to have more useful configuration options for how temp containers are handled

    • By j1elo 2020-09-2216:20

      You've been recommended Auto Tab Discard.

      Another one I use, and it works very well, is UnloadTabs [0]. I discovered it because it's one of the addons recommended by Tree Style Tab [1].

      [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/unload-tabs/

      [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

    • By mFixman 2020-09-2216:195 reply

      > So many times I want to keep a tab around for easy access, but they got some stupid JS framework running sucking CPU for no good reason.

      Why not keep it as a bookmark? I don't understand why people live inactive tabs open.

      • By andrewl-hn 2020-09-2216:31

        I'm a tab hoarder. I open several tabs releted to some task and keep them opened for weeks and months.

        Later when I search for it in address bar and Firefox offers me to jump to one of the tabs, I do that and instantly see related tabs to the left and right of the current tab. My current tab may not always be the exact one I was looking for, but the one I need is still easilly trackable.

        If I don't do that and try searching the web my search may not be precise enogh to bring the needed page.

        Overall, it's just a different mode of browser use. It suits some people and doesn't suit others. Good thing that Firefox can accomodate both types of users.

      • By SAI_Peregrinus 2020-09-2218:03

        Bookmarks discard a lot of (potentially valuable) context that tabs don't. History, for one. Parent & child tabs, if using Tree-Style Tabs, for another.

      • By slightwinder 2020-09-239:11

        Bookmark-Workflow in Firefox (and probably all browsers) sucks. It's far to much hazzle to manage all the crap for the low benefit it gives you. Because Session-Managment in Firefox is now working so well, there is not much benefit for bothering with bookmarks.

        If they would improve bookmark-handling it might be a different story. I thing it would probably not even so hard doing this. There are already many addons implementing significant improvements on certain parts. Just combining them and streamlining the whole stuff might be enough.

      • By at_a_remove 2020-09-230:26

        Honestly?

        As a tab hoarder, I have wondered why I do this so many times. I think the answer is that Firefox's bookmarking is ... not great. It is always slow and clunky-feeling to use. You're forced to put these bookmarks into a tree structure, which isn't awful until you realize that you have to remember just how you stored it later. Just for reference, I often find myself running SQL commands against Firefox's places.sqlite DB to locate a page I visited.

        I think tab hoarding could be greatly reduced by a series of thoughtful improvements to bookmarking.

      • By magicalhippo 2020-09-2218:01

        Take Gmail. I want it easily accessible, but I don't need it running in the background as my phone will ping when I got a new mail.

        When developing, I'll open a new window and keep some tabs relevant for what I'm working on. Frequently it involves me piecing together bits from different APIs or parts of APIs, so require switching between multiple tabs. Often I'll have to come back, and it may take a day or two. No need to keep the tabs running, I just want to quickly pick up where I left.

        Stuff like that.

    • By thrwn_frthr_awy 2020-09-2215:292 reply

      I agree on the containers. It's such a powerful feature, but it feels weird to need extensions to make containers work the way many feel they should intuitively. For instance I have a Google container, but I can't figure out how to make outbound search links open in a different container.

      • By gruez 2020-09-2215:422 reply

        afaik multi account containers should work, if you set google as "always open in google container". temporary containers (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...) would also work.

        • By thrwn_frthr_awy 2020-09-2215:482 reply

          I use multi account containers and it doesn't work for me. For instance, if I go to amazon.com directly, I get my Amazon container. But if I do a search in Google and then click an Amazon link I will still be in the Google container.

          • By mkskm 2020-09-2219:161 reply

            This is fixed now with the Limit to Designated Sites feature. It's a little buried though: click the multi-account containers button in the title bar > the arrow next to your Google container > Manage This Container > Limit to Designated Sites.

            • By thrwn_frthr_awy 2020-09-2219:35

              Thank you. This is the what I am after. Unfortunately Limit to Designated Sites does not work when combined with the Containerize add-on.

          • By bickeringyokel 2020-09-2215:58

            You can right click to open in a specific container. Take a bit of forethought though.

      • By jhoechtl 2020-09-2217:58

        Google feeds Mozilla. I am astonished this extension is even available in the store.

    • By mkskm 2020-09-2217:32

      Relatedly, it would be great to be able to edit site lists manually. Often sites redirect to a short URL briefly at login, which breaks when using containers. Seems to be most common for me with banks.

    • By solstice 2020-09-2215:31

      Your could try this extension. I mostly use it for its auto suspend but you can also manually suspend tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

    • By perfectstorm 2020-09-2219:32

      my only complain about containers is that it doesn't work well when you want to authorize an app. For example, I want to sign in with Google on my Zoom app but since i told them to always open google domain on my B container, it opens it in B while my gmail account for personal use is in A container. My workaround for now is to change the default browser app and revert it back once i'm logged in. I wish there was a solution for this.

    • By ihuman 2020-09-2215:502 reply

      > Ability to set root domain for example would be great, so I could keep all Bandcamp sites in a single container without micromanagement for example

      I think you can already do that, unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you use the "Always open this site in..." menu option while you're on the bandcamp website, it'll automatically change the container then next time you visit any bandcamp.com url.

    • By firecall 2020-09-2223:051 reply

      The way Chrome has integrated the switching between 'Google account' is super useful and well done.

      I've got a lot of marketing clients I work with, and having everything in the context of a google account for that client is deeply embedded as part of my workflow.

      I could do the same with Firefox accounts, they just need to implement it!

      • By GekkePrutser 2020-09-230:33

        The whole idea of having everything in the context of a Google account is the exact reason I use Firefox and not Chrome :)

    • By okso 2020-09-2216:001 reply

      Suspending tabs would be very useful. I used to suspend tabs in Chrome by freezing the process of the tab (kill -STOP | kill -CONT), but Firefox shares the same process for multiple tabs.

      Has anyone tried to implement a "suspend tabs" extension that would pause the debugger ?

      • By clairity 2020-09-2216:251 reply

        yes, if firefox gets ornery (with entirely too many tabs open all the time), i just kill some/all of the "FirefoxCP Web Content" processes (on macos) and then reload only the tabs i'm interested in at the moment. not the ideal level of granularity, but works ok in a pinch to reduce memory/cpu usage.

        • By cvrjk 2020-09-232:551 reply

          This is something that bothers me a bit. On my PC memory usage spikes even after having tabs open for a short while.

          I've recently shifted to Firefox and I noticed that after opening 10-15 tabs on about 3 separate firefox windows the memory usage is way higher than Chrome's. I have seen lesser memory usage on Chrome for way more tabs and windows.

          I have very similar observations on my android phone as well. I've had 100+ chrome tabs open on my phone with no hiccups, but about 20-30 in, on Firefox, my entire phone slows down to a crawl and tabs start crashing etc.

          Is it just me?

          • By clairity 2020-09-236:15

            my impression is that all browsers are pretty greedy about memory for the first few dozen tabs. once you get to hundreds of tabs, the serious optimizations and compressions kick in so that the per-tab memory use curtails drastically. but i'm no expert in this area, just a user.

    • By GekkePrutser 2020-09-230:25

      Yes the containers are amazing but I kinda miss the way to change settings in each container. Sometimes I mistakenly chick allow notifications in a container but can't find any way to undo it without deleting the whole container.

    • By ycombinete 2020-09-2215:401 reply

      I wish ctrl+tab would cycle through all recent tabs regardless of what container they’re in.

      • By ycombinete 2020-09-237:25

        I see this works. Either it always did, or has been changed since I first noticed it

  • By filereaper 2020-09-2215:351 reply

    Related, Firefox 80 landed the VA-API Changes for Linux [1]

    It has drastically improved viewing 4k Videos on Linux for me where before the video would use up 100% of my integrated GPU, and now its down to 0%

    AFAIK Chrome isn't using this as seen from intel_gpu_top so this was a major improvement for me.

    [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-...

    • By ylere 2020-09-2217:171 reply

      Firefox on wayland has been a joy to use recently (webrenderer, dmabuf, webgl, vaapi). Everything including video and scrolling is butter smooth and doesn't clog the cpu, even with 200-300+ tabs (i know...) over several windows. Much better than Chrome (on Linux at least). Interestingly, RAM usage also seems to be better in ff (both with plugins), but that might be anecdotal.

      • By jhoechtl 2020-09-2218:01

        Do we still need moz_enable_wayland env variable or is this the default now?

  • By maddyboo 2020-09-2217:149 reply

    I’ve been a Firefox user on Linux for the past 2 years. I recently had to open Chromium to accommodate a site that refused to work with Firefox, and I was quite shocked at how much snappier Chromium’s UI felt. Going back to Firefox the sluggishness is palpable.

    My machine is in the upper-mid range with a TR 1950X + Vega 56, so I can’t imagine it’s a spec issue.

    I’ve read the entire Arch Wiki article on Firefox performance [1], ensured that hardware acceleration and other performance settings/flags are enabled, and tested different configurations of theses settings. Nothing made a discernible difference.

    Chromium, even with hardware acceleration disabled, is dramatically more responsive than Firefox.

    I have been very tempted to go back to Chromium. Ideologically and privacy wise, I really want to support Firefox, but I can’t help craving a lightning fast UI.

    1: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks

    • By bengalister 2020-09-2219:021 reply

      I own a Dell XPS13 9380 with Intel igpu 620 and switched back to Chromium (without the hardware acceleration patch). My OS is Archlinux, LTS kernel and my desktop environment is Gnome Wayland.

      Starting from Firefox 79 I had to disable webrender, otherwise youtube videos crashed very frequently. So except for watching videos, the Chromium experience is much smoother and consumes less cpu. There is this Fishbowl web browser rendering test, for Chromium I can display 100 fish at 60fps, for Firefox (without webrender but hardware acceleration) with 10fish I get only 53fps.

      For watching youtube videos (with h264lify on both), I get on firefox between 15%to25% cpu consumption with Vaapi but without webrender. With both vaapi and webrender it is <15% but very unstable. Note that on Windows10 for the same hardware cpu consumption is between 5% and 10%.

      For Chromium and youtube videos cpu consumption it is more like between 20% and 40%.

      So I hope the webrender is more stable with Firefox 81, but I think I'll keep Chromium for anything other than watching videos.

      • By bengalister 2020-09-230:05

        Quick update since Firefox 81 package has been released in Arch repos, I have been able to test it and it seems that videos instabilities are gone. I get a <10% cpu consumption on youtube videos with webrender + vaapi.

    • By berkut 2020-09-2219:172 reply

      I've also (unfortunately) noticed that Chrome is much more responsive on Linux than Firefox on several different machines.

      In fact, on a resource-constrained VDI for internet access (for security reasons), I've also noticed that Chrome seems to prioritise interaction of the UI elements much more than Firefox does: in Firefox I've often noticed that when the page has animated items (whether gifs, videos, etc), Firefox seems to prioritise playing back the content over responding to keyboard or mouse events (i.e. page up or Ctrl+W), and can often take multiple seconds to respond, whereas Chrome responds to events much faster. Maybe it's something with the event loop?

      • By maddyboo 2020-09-2219:37

        This fits with my observations. It’s not that Chromium is faster than Firefox per se, but it responds quicker to user interaction giving it a snappier feel. I think it has to do with prioritization and other tricks to make it ‘feel’ faster than it is (e.g. pre-fetching).

      • By mindfulhack 2020-09-233:13

        If I were a developer, the battleground of the web through Firefox would be one that I would seriously consider putting my time, energy, blood, sweat, tears, pride and joy into.

    • By agumonkey 2020-09-2217:43

      It's a sad pain point isn't it...

      I too dropped Chrome for ideology and the snap was dearly missed.

    • By rocho 2020-09-238:061 reply

      I had the opposite experience. Used Chromium for as long as I could remember, then it started becoming too slow and memory-hungry. I switched to Firefox and it's been so much better! It's super fast and uses way less memory. The only thing Firefox is truly a lot slower on my computer is the startup. But the only case in which I start Firefox is after updates, otherwise it's always running.

      I'm running Firefox on ArchLinux with the 5.8 kernel and an Intel motherboard with integrated graphics.

      • By maddyboo 2020-09-238:501 reply

        Very interesting. What are the rest of your system specs?

        • By rocho 2020-09-244:04

          I have the same setup on my desktop and laptop computers.

          Desktop: quad core Intel i5, 16 GB RAM, SSD,integrated graphics.

          Laptop: quad core Intel i7, 32 GB RAM, SSD, integrated graphics.

    • By rv-de 2020-09-2221:291 reply

      As far as I can tell my Firefox on Linux is as snappy as snappy gets.

      • By buo 2020-09-2222:57

        Firefox is my main browser on Linux, but sometimes I browse using Chromium. Both feel equally snappy to me -- even though I have hundreds of tabs open in Firefox and several add-ons, and none on Chromium.

    • By nahtnam 2020-09-2218:44

      I feel the same on Mac. I really want to use Firefox but as of right now I feel like Chromium is much better built. Another annoyance is the back and forward buttons don't work on Firefox but they do work on Chrome. I'd check out Brave, they've done a few shady things in the past but generally care about privacy and are quick to resolve any issues

    • By fernly 2020-09-2223:371 reply

      There are Chromium-based browsers, like Brave, that might give you the snap while maintaining the moral high ground.

      • By djfdat 2020-09-230:082 reply

        I've been a big fan of Vivaldi for a while now. They seem really on top of adding features and customization options. Everything feels snappy and is a great balance of modern/performant UI.

        I use it as my work browser, and run Firefox as my personal, mostly due to Vivaldi not having an iOS browser (I love me some tab sync).

        • By vorticalbox 2020-09-230:58

          Vivaldi has the the best 'history' page of all the browsers.

          Displaying your browser history as a calendar is one of my favourite features of any browser.

        • By fernly 2020-09-230:53

          Thank you, I hadn't heard of it. Looks like a better job of extending the UI than Brave, which is pretty conventional. Either one is "Chrome withOUT the all-seeing eye of Google".

          https://vivaldi.com/

          https://brave.com/

    • By lytedev 2020-09-2217:291 reply

      This is curious to me. Were you using any extensions?

      • By maddyboo 2020-09-2217:35

        I have tested with a clean profile and didn’t notice a speed up.

        This is not to say Firefox is slow, but that Chromium feels much snappier.

    • By pbsds 2020-09-2217:232 reply

      Have you tried enabling pixel-perfect scrolling?

      • By GekkePrutser 2020-09-230:40

        Funny, for me this is something i need to turn off to make it snappier. Especially the mousewheel scrolling really feels laggy with it on.

      • By maddyboo 2020-09-2217:32

        Scrolling is fine, it’s most other UI interactions like button presses (both browser UI and in-page).

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