Upcoming Firefox 57 ("Quantum") is twice as fast as Firefox 52

Blackjack Davy · 12 Dec 2017 at 12:05

If they're not available in the new Web Extensions format which is radically different from the old legacy framework they simply won't work. Too many authors are no longer on the scene or have simply thrown in the towel due to the complete rewrite/recode necessary.

for me personally

cookie whitelist
session manager
unMHT
new tab homepage
Undo Closed Tab

no longer work.

Orcvader · 12 Dec 2017 at 12:28

@Pawnless Endgame found an unMHT alternative:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-as-firefox-52.18794379/page-10#post-31366850

New Tab Homepage should still work, is it on the latest version?

You can right click the + icon and there's an undo close tab option. Or clock the library icon -> history and view recently closed tabs.

Scort · 12 Dec 2017 at 12:57

Gave it a quick whirl, looked nice, but I've gone back to Chrome - FF doesn't really offer much more for me, and the spell check doesn't work; even though it's enabled.

Glanza · 12 Dec 2017 at 13:18

Scort said:
Gave it a quick whirl, looked nice, but I've gone back to Chrome - FF doesn't really offer much more for me, and the spell check doesn't work; even though it's enabled.

You need to install a dictionary file for it to start underlining spelling mistakes (caught me out when I tried FF)

Glanza · 13 Dec 2017 at 09:52

Still getting the 'cold boot' issue and a few other little niggly problems on certain sites, switched back to Chrome for the time being hoping that Mozilla get these resolved.

dante6491 · 13 Dec 2017 at 20:54

Strange add on has appeared in my installation. "Looking Glass 1.0.3"

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7jh9rv/what_is_looking_glass/

jpaul · 13 Dec 2017 at 21:32

interesting, so after scanning that, the moral appears to be

app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled = false
extensions.shield-recipe-client.api_url = ""
extensions.shield-recipe-client.enabled = false

I will also continue setting
extensions.update.enabled;false
too, plus disable ff updates themselves (.... next thing they will have an anniversary update and a creators update)

snowdog · 18 Dec 2017 at 22:42

I don't get the RAM use hate, use my ram please, as much as possible, use my fast ram instead of slow SSD's or HDD's, put anything I remotely might use or want to load in the ram pre-emptively, please! I find it a huge shame my pc only uses only about 12 gb of ram when idle or browsing...

Anyone, ontopic, I use FF for porn or testing, and it does seem much snappier now! With Chrome becoming seemingly slower sometimes with rendering pages or responsiveness, I'd be tempted to try Firefox instead.

jpaul · 18 Dec 2017 at 23:40

Quantum is not off-loading data from RAM onto slower storage - is that what you have observed ? (you can move cache into RAM too if you want)
A typical 4GB-8GB RAM user wants to be able to do other things on their PC than watching porn so reducing memory footprint is helpful

snowdog · 19 Dec 2017 at 09:22

No it's not. Like I said it feels much snappier.

jpaul said:
A typical 4GB-8GB RAM user wants to be able to do other things on their PC than watching porn so reducing memory footprint is helpful

A typical user wouldn't use Firefox in the first place imo (most just use IE, Edge or Chrome out of habit). My use for FF is irrelevant, for my main browser I usually have 20+ tabs open, and anyone who works seriously (Developing or management/administration/testing/troubleshooting remotely or enthusiasts (like this forum)) at a pc has much more than 8gb of ram .

LiE · 19 Dec 2017 at 09:26

I'm testing this browser out now, I have noticed Chrome feeling a bit sluggish lately on various pages. Firefox at the moment seems to perform better in my use cases.

snowdog · 20 Dec 2017 at 17:28

While FF does render pages much faster, after testing it more, it doesn't always respond to user input while loading.

Eg. YT, I open 5 new vids in new tabs with mmb, try to go by them asap to pause them (but that they start buffering), I can see the Video player registering my ''pause'' (with a pause animation), but they keep playing, until I try a 2nd time. This happens when you click on it to pause quickly after it being loaded. Very annoying.

jpaul · 20 Dec 2017 at 18:13

snowdog said:
Eg. YT, I open 5 new vids in new tabs with mmb, try to go by them asap to pause them (but that they start buffering), I can see the Video player registering my ''pause'' (with a pause animation), but they keep playing, until I try a 2nd time. This happens when you click on it to pause quickly after it being loaded. Very annoying.

I realise you were talking about a generic event problem, but for yt can use click to play.
(I have failed to find a YT add-on though, that will just retrieve the title of the video, not even the preview window; I would choose to ignore/view it on that basis.)

jpaul · 21 Dec 2017 at 23:11

When using firefox on smaller RAM tablets eg 2GB, has anyone investigated add-ons that will limit the cache disk resources that will be allocated to individual web-sites ?
unfortunately OC is often a good example when there has been ill-disciplined posting of many large bitmaps in threads (outside of spoilers) so I would like FF to load bitmaps on
demand, or even provide click to see, rather than proactively loading.

Rroff · 23 Dec 2017 at 04:48

I use a Toshiba Encore 8 (2GB/32GB) with Firefox quite a bit and using FF with hardware acceleration when available and content process limit 4 generally works pretty well - sometimes if its been open for awhile though its like some background maintenance scripts kick in or something and slow it down until they are done then it will be speedy again for awhile.

There seems to be something not quite right with Firefox and Atom Z3xxx generation tablets though - I get some odd slowdowns, etc. at times that my almost identical spec and almost identical OS setup X8350 tablet doesn't get.

Lartyconshayo · 23 Dec 2017 at 06:09

Blackjack Davy said:
If they're not available in the new Web Extensions format which is radically different from the old legacy framework they simply won't work. Too many authors are no longer on the scene or have simply thrown in the towel due to the complete rewrite/recode necessary.

for me personally

cookie whitelist
session manager
unMHT
new tab homepage
Undo Closed Tab

no longer work.

CTRL + SHIFT + T will reopen closed tabs in the order you closed them in from most recent closed.

opethdisciple · 5 Jan 2018 at 19:05

Any one know what the difference is between the language pack and just the dictionary addon?

On Ubuntu when Firefox updated it also included the language pack.

On my Windows system I just added the dictionary.

jpaul · 5 Jan 2018 at 19:58

opethdisciple said:
On Ubuntu when Firefox updated it also included the language pack.

sounds like the multi-language menus&gui ...versus the dictionary for spell checking

LoadsaMoney · 7 Jan 2018 at 18:48

The latest version came out a couple of days ago (v57.0.4), with the security fixes to address the Meltdown and Spectre timing attacks.

Rroff · 7 Jan 2018 at 18:52

LoadsaMoney said:
The latest version came out a couple of days ago (v57.0.4), with the security fixes to address the Meltdown and Spectre timing attacks.

Definitely worth updating to assuming no other problems as this will help to close off one of the biggest possible vulnerabilities to those for most people.