Is Firefox Doomed?

Techx said:
never used chrome, only use FF + noscript & i'm not changing those habits until someone can prove another browser is more secure
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Wow, so you're using FireFox with Javascript turned off. Not only that you can't really enjoy most web sites, but that won't actually help you with security.

I've seen 2 things with FireFox:
1) I had a trojan embedded in a cookie in the browser cache. Something like that is done with PHP, which you can't control by the way.
2) I had information stolen from my browser's cache, again with a PHP script.

You're clueless about security. You should also know that FireFox is a single process browser. That's why when you're opening too many tabs it slows down, or sometimes a single tab can crash the whole browser. Opening another browser window doesn't help either, because it runs on the same process. Inside that single process run multiple threads that share the same memory buffer. Since FireFox is only 32bits, it can only allocate 2GB for itself. Chrome for example can allocate 2GB per process. Also, it creates a new process for every new tab or window you open. Guess which one is more secure?
 
I don't know if more the world needs more browsers. On one hand, I like the competition. On the other hand, I like when webpages are formatted for my preferred browser. (Either Chrome or IE9).
 
I sure hope FF isn't going anywhere. The extensions alone make it the best browser available IMO.
 
I like the idea behind FF, the ad blocking is top priority, that is why I use FF. They do have a 3.X version for corp. users. I have seen firefox crash a lot lately tho, which is odd....
 
sfsuphysics said:
Pretty much my view, having tried all the way to FF7, I reverted back to 3.6. It was perfect, not sure why they need to reinvent themselves every month.
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WTF I thought it was a joke saying they were at Firefox 8. Takes them 9 years to get to Firefox 4, and then within a year they're at Firefox 8 with Firefox 9 in beta? Find better ways to innovate other than incrementing the version counter.

Oddly I gave up Firefox maybe ~1 ago for Chrome. Seemed less bloated than Firefox. Remember back in the day when Firefox was Phoneix and it was awesome because it was lightweight compared to the bloated POS Mozilla? Oh times have changed. Now that Firefox is becoming bloated crap we need a stripped down firefox with a new name, lol.
 
mt2e said:
I like the idea behind FF, the ad blocking is top priority, that is why I use FF. They do have a 3.X version for corp. users. I have seen firefox crash a lot lately tho, which is odd....
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Try a fresh install. I had a problem initially when they released v.8 with blank confirmation windows popping up when trying to close FF. After backing up bookmarks, extension data, etc. I did a complete uninstall by removing anything in the ProgramData folder, the registry, etc. Reinstalled FF8 and everything is golden.
 
GotNoRice said:
How many people who use Chrome actually made a conscious decision to do so? It pulls every borderline-malware tactic to install itself onto people's computers these days. How much crap is it bundled with?

The thing that is significant about firefox is that the people who use it aren't generally just using whatever browser that came on their computer (IE) or some browser they got tricked into installing (Chrome) but a browser that they actually decided to seek out because they wanted a better alternative.
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Entertainer said:
This is troubling me also. Apparently its ok for Google to do this, but its not ok when other companies do it.
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jrrandell said:
This a 1000 times. Chrome came as bloat ware on my new laptop and it wouldn't even uninstall properly. Had to manually remove it...
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Hate to tell you guys but FF also comes pre-installed on LOTS of laptops for at least the last couple of years now and if I remember right it also used to be bundled with software with the check mark checked by default on installation. Isn't it also set as the default browser with most Linux distros also?
My g/f bought a new laptop last year and it came with FF pre-installed and because of this she uses it for her default browser now. So no she did not make a conscious decision to use FF, they made that decision for her.

So it is no different than what you say Google does with Chrome ;).
 
To be fair, Google's hilarious version naming is partly why other browsers have been playing 'version catch-up'. I mean, seriously, it's version 15 and 3 years old and unless I focus hard I can't even tell version 1 from 15. But, yeah, I don't use Chrome. IE9 generally works fairly well, Firefox is nice for its plugins, and Opera is still the annoying redhead always whining for attention. Chrome is that hot little number that likes writing down things about you constantly.
 
I'm for Firefox all the way. Though I think people make valid points when it comes to ad blocking, I'm not very worried about Google winning a battle in the so-called browser wars, but I am worried for Firefox. It just seems to be the fastest for what I do on the machines I run.

I've never had a Firefox crash either... Not sure about the people who say they do. Too many porn sites?

ocellaris said:
Do no evil!
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"Do no evil?" You misquote Google just like Steve Jobs was fond of doing.

It's, "Don't be evil." Totally different. Also, its specifically directed to how the company treats its customers; not its competitors. However, using ethical business practices to compete is not evil in a capitalistic society by any means.

Must be the most misquoted motto ever.
 
BDS23 said:
I made a conscious decision to use IE9. Maybe it's the word fragmentation that scares me. I don't like the idea of different brands/titles/whatever running in my PC. I prefer sticking with one, and a sprinkle of other brands.
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Enjoy the shitball HTML5 and CSS3 support.
 
Bigbacon said:
FF was once better than IE, chrome beats both...

but not FF is a slow lumbering piece of shit...Even IE 8 is better than FF now.
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You must have a terrible system or it is full of junk if it's slow and lumbering.

The same goes for people that say all it does is crash. Clean up your system and stop blaming the browser. If it runs without a hitch on one person's system and it is crashing left and right on yours, then your system has a problem. Get over it.
 
03grandam said:
Hate to tell you guys but FF also comes pre-installed on LOTS of laptops for at least the last couple of years now and if I remember right it also used to be bundled with software with the check mark checked by default on installation. Isn't it also set as the default browser with most Linux distros also?
My g/f bought a new laptop last year and it came with FF pre-installed and because of this she uses it for her default browser now. So no she did not make a conscious decision to use FF, they made that decision for her.

So it is no different than what you say Google does with Chrome ;).
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Well, if that is the case, then see my other post:

Entertainer said:
Just a quick observation:
Prop up FF with support
Learn FF strengths and weaknesses
Build similar system
Gain significant market share
End support of FF
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I have problems with this statement. Most people I know clinge to IE, but Firefox is usually their second choice. Chrome though is installed on every machine, but nobody installed it themselves. Usually comes with Google Earth, or some free open source application.

It's installed in every PC because it gets into everything.
 
If they didn't support firefox for using google as the default search option, Bing or yahoo will. And that is something google does not want.
 
Chrome all the way, unless I have to use IE (for work I have to as the voice logging system doesn't play nice with any other browser BOOOOO). FF has become a fat bloated gaseous turd.
 
Eisenblut said:
You must have a terrible system or it is full of junk if it's slow and lumbering.

The same goes for people that say all it does is crash. Clean up your system and stop blaming the browser. If it runs without a hitch on one person's system and it is crashing left and right on yours, then your system has a problem. Get over it.
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Actually FIreFox does run like shit on anything. It's because FireFox runs everything on a simple process. I know a thing or two about processes and threads because I also manage a couple of web servers. Could you imagine the mess if I would serve every apache request in the same process? I mean it would crash with a couple of people requesting a page from the server. Same goes for FireFox: it crashes or runs slow because it's a single process application, so all the JavaScript, Flash and everything else shares the same memory pool. Add to that the fact that FireFox comes only in 32bit flavor, and in year 2011 you got a piece of shit web browser that's about as good as IE 9. Sorry, but both Opera and Chrome are better browser.

Mozilla Foundation either brings the Gekko Engine up to date and makes it multi-process (and I keep hoping for a 64bit build), or they had a great run for the past 10 years and now they can call it a day, because in the shape that FireFox is today it won't make it another 2 years.
 
I'm staying with Firefox, Opera sometimes and EE when needed. I'd rather use Safari over Chrome.
 
Switched to chrome a while back after slow firefox got slow and started crashing often.
 
armand45 said:
The day Chrome has better APB support, supports HTTPS anywhere, and stops giving me search results based on my geo location, the day I leave FF, as of right now, I prefer IE to Chrome.
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+1

and...

NoScript, Force-TLS, Flashblock, ...
 
Call me suspicious, but Firefox is 100% open-source and has been thoroughly scoured by thousands of developers, while Chrome is closed-source and produced by one of the most evil and government-compliant tech companies out there.

I am far from a Linux/GNU freetard, but there are two pieces of software in this world that move so much sensitive user information that they absolutely have to be open source: disk encryption, and web browsers.

I'll be using Firefox until it's dead, and then I'll be moving on to whatever the next big open-source browser is.
 
I don't like Opera, its never been all that stable in the times that I've tried it. I prefer Opera.
 
So, I've a few questions:

- Which is the best and safest version of IE to use right now?

- Given that FF uses things such as NoScript, AdBlocker etc., which actually make things safer (ads and scripts can both host trojans) why are people believing IE is somehow "better" in that regard?

I've not used IE in many, many years, but it has no ad or script blocking, which is how I've always been nailed by viruses etc.

FF might be a bit slower and a memory hog with more tabs open, which definitely sucks, but I don't see how IE, known for being seriously weak where security is concerned, can be the better choice.

Oh, and I hardly think that FF is "doomed"... huge exaggeration and more than a little sensationalistic, IMO, no matter how you look at it.
 
wolfman3k5 said:
Actually FIreFox does run like shit on anything. It's because FireFox runs everything on a simple process. I know a thing or two about processes and threads because I also manage a couple of web servers. Could you imagine the mess if I would serve every apache request in the same process? I mean it would crash with a couple of people requesting a page from the server. Same goes for FireFox: it crashes or runs slow because it's a single process application, so all the JavaScript, Flash and everything else shares the same memory pool. Add to that the fact that FireFox comes only in 32bit flavor, and in year 2011 you got a piece of shit web browser that's about as good as IE 9. Sorry, but both Opera and Chrome are better browser.

Mozilla Foundation either brings the Gekko Engine up to date and makes it multi-process (and I keep hoping for a 64bit build), or they had a great run for the past 10 years and now they can call it a day, because in the shape that FireFox is today it won't make it another 2 years.
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I having been running the 64-bit Nightly build for a while now, and it is as fast as Chrome or faster and stable on my system.

I figured that people on here would know about a 64-bit Firefox. It's not hard to use Google.
 
I wouldn't mind using an decreepified Chrome variant like Iron but Google *STILL* hasn't bothered to add necessary APIs to enable NoScript functionality.
 
Eisenblut said:
I having been running the 64-bit Nightly build for a while now, and it is as fast as Chrome or faster and stable on my system.

I figured that people on here would know about a 64-bit Firefox. It's not hard to use Google.
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Nightly builds != STABLE RELEASE!!!

I know about 64bit FireFox, and it seems fast because now it can allocate more than 2GB Ram for its own process, which is a 32bit limitation. The other problems remain do, like a single tab being able to crash all the other ones, or if someone is deviant enough, they can create a PHP script that when loaded can snoop on the other threads.

Let me dumb it down one more time: a process is a bundle of threads which share the same memory pool (same buffer). Each tab is run o a thread. Threads don't have their own memory, and a single process is ran on a single core (because of the memory sharing for the threads). So FireFox can take advantage of HyperThreading, but not of multiple cores.

Mozilla will fix this performance limitation and security, the question is how long we'll have to wait. In the meantime, for the rest of us who aren't so ignorant there are at least a couple of alternatives like Opera or Chrome.
 
StreamsOfInferno said:
So, I've a few questions:

- Which is the best and safest version of IE to use right now?

- Given that FF uses things such as NoScript, AdBlocker etc., which actually make things safer (ads and scripts can both host trojans) why are people believing IE is somehow "better" in that regard?

I've not used IE in many, many years, but it has no ad or script blocking, which is how I've always been nailed by viruses etc.

FF might be a bit slower and a memory hog with more tabs open, which definitely sucks, but I don't see how IE, known for being seriously weak where security is concerned, can be the better choice.

Oh, and I hardly think that FF is "doomed"... huge exaggeration and more than a little sensationalistic, IMO, no matter how you look at it.
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As for adblocker for IE you can use a custom host file: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Not only it blocks ads for all browsers, it also blocks ads for the entire system including skype, yahoo messenger, etc.
 
wolfman3k5 said:
Nightly builds != STABLE RELEASE!!!

Let me dumb it down one more time: a process is a bundle of threads which share the same memory pool (same buffer). Each tab is run o a thread. Threads don't have their own memory, and a single process is ran on a single core (because of the memory sharing for the threads). So FireFox can take advantage of HyperThreading, but not of multiple cores.
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So you're saying that a program can't take advantage of multiple cores with threads... you need to use more than one process?
 
i still use FF from time to time, but quite frankly I can'y understand why it takes 1.6gb of memory while just sitting on 2 open tabs,lol, I found this the sole reason why the loading times of a game I had was drastically reduced (well I just have 6gb of memory),lol
 
wolfman3k5 said:
Mozilla Foundation either brings the Gekko Engine up to date and makes it multi-process (and I keep hoping for a 64bit build)
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The 64-bit build has been built every day since this summer, it's not officially released yet, probably because the whole ecosystem also needs to be upgraded (add-ins for instance), but the multi-process effort has been suspended with no ETA. It basically requires rewriting a huge amount of the existing code.

So yeah, it's too bad that each tab does not have its own process, but on the other hand, Firefox memory footprint with this shared memory is much smaller than Chrome when you use dozens of tabs, especially in version 8. Once the 64-bit build is officially released, there won't be any more memory limitation for the user, and Firefox so far has great stability even with its mono-process architecture. Comparing a single user browser to a multiple users web server as you did earlier is not very fair.

I actually dislike the way the Chrome processes hide the other processes in Task Manager when you have many tabs, but apparently Windows 8 Task Manager will be able to group them all together, so it won't clutter the process list anymore.
In any case, Chrome and its extensions trail far behind Firefox in terms of usability and customization, and I hate the Google everything as much as I did the Microsoft everything in the past. Mozilla is mostly dedicated to Firefox and Thunderbird, and they have been making a lot of progress this year. Some transparent to the user, others a little more disturbing, but all in all, I like the way it's going. Took me some time to adapt, like migrating my bookmarks from the deprecated Google Toolbar to Firefox Bookmarks, but it's actually much better than the Google Toolbar, and much much better than Chrome's bookmarks management, it pays to upgrade. And now that I don't use the Google Toolbar, I have no need for the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension anymore, making my Firefox very slim.
And I just couldn't stand the amount of ads and pop-ups in Chrome, even with Addblocker, it's like watching American TV programs with constant ad interruptions instead of web browsing...

I bet Google will renew the ad payback deal, because it's better than letting the competition in and it does not cost them anything upfront, but I fear they will try to negotiate a lower ad payback. It's unlikely Mozilla will get $100M as this past year, they'll be lucky to get half that. They are in a good position to negotiate, because somehow I don't think Mozilla would like to ship its browser with a Microsoft Bing search engine as default. Even if Microsoft's ad payback percentage is higher, many users will replace the default search engine with Google's, so the volume of the ad payback will probably be lower. The stuff I can pull from my arse...
 
I've honestly never had a web browser---any of them---feel slow to me. Except on my POS Pentium 4 at my work's office, that is. You guys benchmarking pageloads and javascript in your free time or something?
 
THis is what happens when a project looses it's focus, Firefox use to be a fantastic browser, but lately it seems that every new version is worse than the one before. Firefox has become a slow, laggy, unstable, bloated, POS of a browser. I'm slowly moving over to chrome and IE, if FF doesnt turn the ship around I'll dump it entirely.
 
NoScript, Flashblock, RequestPolicy, Pentadactyl, TabMixPlus, DownloadStatusbar, Locationbar...

Yea, I'm not leaving firefox for a while. IE can burn in hell and Chrome, while speedy, is not putting users first (extensions, open source, user experience changes, etc).
 
Chimel said:
The 64-bit build has been built every day since this summer, it's not officially released yet, probably because the whole ecosystem also needs to be upgraded (add-ins for instance), but the multi-process effort has been suspended with no ETA. It basically requires rewriting a huge amount of the existing code.

So yeah, it's too bad that each tab does not have its own process, but on the other hand, Firefox memory footprint with this shared memory is much smaller than Chrome when you use dozens of tabs, especially in version 8. Once the 64-bit build is officially released, there won't be any more memory limitation for the user, and Firefox so far has great stability even with its mono-process architecture. Comparing a single user browser to a multiple users web server as you did earlier is not very fair.

I actually dislike the way the Chrome processes hide the other processes in Task Manager when you have many tabs, but apparently Windows 8 Task Manager will be able to group them all together, so it won't clutter the process list anymore.
In any case, Chrome and its extensions trail far behind Firefox in terms of usability and customization, and I hate the Google everything as much as I did the Microsoft everything in the past. Mozilla is mostly dedicated to Firefox and Thunderbird, and they have been making a lot of progress this year. Some transparent to the user, others a little more disturbing, but all in all, I like the way it's going. Took me some time to adapt, like migrating my bookmarks from the deprecated Google Toolbar to Firefox Bookmarks, but it's actually much better than the Google Toolbar, and much much better than Chrome's bookmarks management, it pays to upgrade. And now that I don't use the Google Toolbar, I have no need for the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension anymore, making my Firefox very slim.
And I just couldn't stand the amount of ads and pop-ups in Chrome, even with Addblocker, it's like watching American TV programs with constant ad interruptions instead of web browsing...

I bet Google will renew the ad payback deal, because it's better than letting the competition in and it does not cost them anything upfront, but I fear they will try to negotiate a lower ad payback. It's unlikely Mozilla will get $100M as this past year, they'll be lucky to get half that. They are in a good position to negotiate, because somehow I don't think Mozilla would like to ship its browser with a Microsoft Bing search engine as default. Even if Microsoft's ad payback percentage is higher, many users will replace the default search engine with Google's, so the volume of the ad payback will probably be lower. The stuff I can pull from my arse...
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I didn't know that they where pulling in about ~$100,000,000 millions every year, but now I know. With that much money they could write a new web browser every 3 months from scratch!

What's even more disturbing is that some idiot that has power at Mozilla decided that the browser has to be single process. With so much money, now I can see how a bunch of lazy fucks can sit around all day.
 
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