Why you SHOULD be using Firefox
- Thread starter opethdisciple
- Start date
Man of Honour
The solution is to brute force your way through such vendor sided battles. They can't hog your memory if you have too much memory 
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- 30 Aug 2015
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I've been rocking Firefox 56.0.2 ever since I tried and rolled back Quantum 4(?) years ago
Lately i've been running into issues where websites won't load fully or anything under the CloudFlare umbrella just flat out tells me my browser is too old.
The easiest solution (and most secure) is to upgrade of course, but I stuck with 56 because of FlashGot and the more flexible use of add-ons. Is there anything else I can switch too? Apparently Waterfox works off the same fork as Firefox 56, but i'm not sure how like for like it is or if that has the same problems now too.
Lately i've been running into issues where websites won't load fully or anything under the CloudFlare umbrella just flat out tells me my browser is too old.
The easiest solution (and most secure) is to upgrade of course, but I stuck with 56 because of FlashGot and the more flexible use of add-ons. Is there anything else I can switch too? Apparently Waterfox works off the same fork as Firefox 56, but i'm not sure how like for like it is or if that has the same problems now too.
Man of Honour
Do you really need an ancient download manager? Modern Firefox has had a capable download manager for years now, it will resume if something is paused etc.
I was a holdout when they switched to the new layout and used Pale Moon for a while but after a year or so the drawbacks caused too many problems so i made the jump, by the time i did most addons i used were either updated or there were decent alternatives.
After spending sometime finding alternatives and doing some Userchrome.css tweaks I'm happy with it, i couldn't remember what FF 56 looked like but FWIW this is what mine now look like..
The rest is just the website with the status bar pooping up when i hover over a link.
The only extensions i use are BlockTube, ClearURLs, Download Manager (S3), Greasemonkey, I don't care about cookies, New Tab Override, uBlock Origin. (and 10 Greasemonkey scripts).
TBH I'd try swapping to the latest version rather than using a fork, I'm sure people would be more than willing to help you out with suggestions for alternative addons or Userchrome.css tweaks to get it looking/working how you like it.
e: If anyone cares this is my Userchromes.css..
After spending sometime finding alternatives and doing some Userchrome.css tweaks I'm happy with it, i couldn't remember what FF 56 looked like but FWIW this is what mine now look like..
The rest is just the website with the status bar pooping up when i hover over a link.
The only extensions i use are BlockTube, ClearURLs, Download Manager (S3), Greasemonkey, I don't care about cookies, New Tab Override, uBlock Origin. (and 10 Greasemonkey scripts).
TBH I'd try swapping to the latest version rather than using a fork, I'm sure people would be more than willing to help you out with suggestions for alternative addons or Userchrome.css tweaks to get it looking/working how you like it.
e: If anyone cares this is my Userchromes.css..
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* only needed once */
/* URL bar gradient color from let to right and font size */
#nav-bar {
background-color: transparent !important;
background-image: linear-gradient(to right, rgba(255, 255, 255, .4), transparent) !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
font-size: 14px !important;
}
/* Hide add from url bar context menu */
.menuitem-iconic.context-menu-add-engine,
.menuseparator-add-engine {
display: none !important;
}
/* Reduce Button padding */
#back-button, #forward-button, #reload-button, #stop-button, #back-forward-dropmarker {padding: 0px !important}
/* Move the hamburger menu to the left */
#PanelUI-button {
order: -2 !important;
border-inline-start: none !important;
border-inline-end: none !important;
}
/* Hide item from hamburger menu */
#appMenu-print-button2 {
display: none !important;
}
/* Hide right click context navigation icons */
#context-navigation,
#context-sep-navigation {
display: none!important;
}
/* Force context menus colour to grey */
menupopup{
--menuitem-hover-background-color: #e0e0e6 !important;
--menu-background-color: #f9f9fb !important;
--menu-color: #15141a !important;
--menuitem-disabled-hover-background-color: rgba(224, 224, 230, 0.4) !important;
--menu-disabled-color: rgba(21, 20, 26, 0.4) !important;
--menu-border-color: #cfcfd8!important;
--menu-icon-opacity: 0.7 !important;
}
/* Hide email context menus */
#context-sendvideo,
#context-sendimage,
#pageAction-panel-emailLink {
display: none !important;
}
/* Hide print context menu entry */
#context-print-selection { display:none!important;}
/* Hide inspect acesability properties from context menu */
#context-inspect-a11y {
display: none !important
}
/* Hide set image as desktop background and its seperator from context menu */
#context-setDesktopBackground {display:none!important}
#context-sep-setbackground {display:none!important}
/* Hide Move tab and share in tab context menus */
#context_moveTabOptions,
#context_shareTabURL {
display: none!important;
}
/* Hide show all bookmarks (bottom entry), sidebar, toolbar, other, and open in new tabs from bookmarks menu */
#BMB_searchBookmarks,
#BMB_bookmarksShowAll,
#BMB_viewBookmarksSidebar,
#BMB_bookmarksToolbar,
#BMB_unsortedBookmarks,
#BMB_unsortedBookmarks+#BMB_mobileBookmarks+menuseparator,
#BMB_bookmarksPopup .openintabs-menuitem,
.bookmarks-actions-menuseparator {
display: none !important;
}
/* Set maximum width of bookmarks menu */
menu.bookmark-item,
menuitem.bookmark-item {
max-width: 17em !important;
}
/* Make Tab close and speaker icons bigger */
.tab-close-button {
padding: 3px !important;
margin: 0 !important;
height: 20px !important;
width: 20px !important;
}
.tab-icon-overlay {
transform: scale(1.5, 1.5);
}
/* Everything bellow is taken from https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html */
/*** Tighten up drop-down/context/popup menu spacing (8 Sep 2021) ***/
menupopup:not(.in-menulist) > menuitem,
menupopup:not(.in-menulist) > menu {
padding-block: 4px !important; /* reduce to 3px, 2px, 1px or 0px as needed */
min-height: unset !important; /* v92.0 - for padding below 4px */
}
:root {
--arrowpanel-menuitem-padding: 4px 8px !important;
}
/* Adjust tab corner shape, remove space below tabs to connect them to the URL bar again */
#tabbrowser-tabs {
--user-tab-rounding: 0px;
}
.tab-background {
border-radius: var(--user-tab-rounding) var(--user-tab-rounding) 0px 0px !important;
margin-block: 1px 0 !important;
}
/* Container color bar visibility */
.tabbrowser-tab[usercontextid] > .tab-stack > .tab-background > .tab-context-line {
margin: 0px max(calc(var(--user-tab-rounding) - 3px), 0px) !important;
}
/* Override Normal Density height to Compact Density height only for tabs */
#tabbrowser-tabs {
--tab-min-height: 29px !important;
}
/* Inactive tabs: Shadow style */
.tabbrowser-tab:not([selected=true]):not([multiselected=true]) .tab-background {
background-color: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 8%, transparent);
}
/* Hide unified extensions button */
#unified-extensions-button, #unified-extensions-button > .toolbarbutton-icon{
width: 0px !important;
padding: 0px !important;
}
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It is a possibility in my case - I've got multiple network adapters (none Killer based though) on this system including wired (3x Intel NICs including the integrated one), WiFi, USB dongle based NIC and virtual adapters, I've not hammered any of my other systems to the same extent to see if it happens there.
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Soldato
115.0
Firefox Release
Version 115.0, first offered to Release channel users on July 4, 2023
In January 2023, Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. As a consequence, this is the last version of Firefox that users on those operating systems will receive. Users on Windows 7 and Windows 8 will automatically be migrated to the ESR 115 version of Firefox so that they continue to receive important security updates. Visit this Firefox support article for more information.
Similarly, this is the last major version of Firefox that will support Apple macOS 10.12, 10.13, and 10.14. Users on those operating systems will be migrated to the ESR 115 version of Firefox so that they continue to receive important updates. Visit this Firefox support article for more information.
We want to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox!
New
- Migrating from another browser? Now you can bring over payment methods you've saved in Chrome-based browsers to Firefox.
- Hardware video decoding is now enabled for Intel GPUs on Linux.
- The Tab Manager dropdown now features close buttons, so you can close tabs more quickly.
- We've refreshed and streamlined the user interface for importing data in from other browsers.
- Users without platform support for H264 video decoding can now fallback to Cisco's OpenH264 plugin for playback.
Fixed
- Windows Magnifier now follows the text cursor correctly when the Firefox title bar is visible.
- Windows users on low-end/USB wifi drivers and with OS geolocation disabled can now approve geolocation on a case by case basis without causing system-wide network instability.
- Various security fixes.
Changed
- Undo and redo are now available in Password fields.
- On Linux, middle clicks on the new tab button will now open the xclipboard contents in the new tab. If the xclipboard content is a URL then that URL is opened, any other text is opened with your default search provider.
- For users with a Firefox Colorways built-in theme, the theme will be automatically migrated to the same theme hosted on addons.mozilla.org for Firefox profiles that have disabled add-ons auto-updates. This will allow users to keep their Colorways theme when they are later removed from Firefox installer files.
- Certain Firefox users may come across a message in the extensions panel indicating that their add-ons are not allowed on the site currently open. We have introduced a new back-end feature to only allow some extensions monitored by Mozilla to run on specific websites for various reasons, including security concerns.
New firefox is way better than the palemoon era, back then firefox was a massive stutterfest to use when using loads of tabs. They finally seemed to kill the issue with the combination of E10, 64 bit, and killing old extension system.
But yeah any modern browser now days is a memory hog, its the nature of the beast as they are now effectively an operating system.
Also am personally not a fan of windows memory management, instead of only using page file as a last resort to avoid OOM, it tends to load the page file as a preference to reducing cache, which on my system tends to be around the 30-40% ram utilisation point. I observed enabling memory compression makes it behave much more sane as did a researcher who published his results on the net, but compression has cpu overhead so I keep it off, because completely disabling the page file can cause issues I keep it on but at a very low size, so it cant page enough out to cause performance issues.
But yeah any modern browser now days is a memory hog, its the nature of the beast as they are now effectively an operating system.
Also am personally not a fan of windows memory management, instead of only using page file as a last resort to avoid OOM, it tends to load the page file as a preference to reducing cache, which on my system tends to be around the 30-40% ram utilisation point. I observed enabling memory compression makes it behave much more sane as did a researcher who published his results on the net, but compression has cpu overhead so I keep it off, because completely disabling the page file can cause issues I keep it on but at a very low size, so it cant page enough out to cause performance issues.
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Manually tweaking the page file rather than system managed can somewhat reduce, but doesn't avoid, that behaviour in general - however you need to know what you are doing and the right settings for your machine and usage to do so in a meaningful way and it is also pot luck if the system managed behaviour is better or worse for it depending on how Windows decides to behave.
Man of Honour
My Windows is set to system managed and pagefile is rarely touched. This is after using Lightroom to edit and then export multi-GBs of RAW images, and 2x multi-tab Firefox windows open 24/7:
It is kind of odd how Windows uses it sometimes - on some systems it will allocate a huge pagefile and move a lot of Superfetch stuff to and from it despite being plenty of free RAM, on others it will allocate a more moderate size and barely touch it.
depends on many factors
Software used many software will write to page file on purpose like adobe fir in frequent data
How often it needs to be accessed
The % of page file vs ram
Historical data of ram/page file usage
Theirs a few more factors but those are the common ones
Has anybody had issues with Firefox deleting Google/YouTube cookies?
I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't remain signed into either Google or YouTube as I don't want Google's playing nanny with me. YouTube has worked for years liked this for me without issue. But for some reason either Google/YouTube or Firefox are taking it upon themselves to get rid of my cookies for Google/Youtube, meaning I am seeing a lot of tripe being recommended for my viewing pleasure.
Thankfully I had a recent backup of Firefox, but after loading Firefox, closing and loading again, the YouTube recommendations are reset. But with my backup I can at least note down the majority of channels that I like.
I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't remain signed into either Google or YouTube as I don't want Google's playing nanny with me. YouTube has worked for years liked this for me without issue. But for some reason either Google/YouTube or Firefox are taking it upon themselves to get rid of my cookies for Google/Youtube, meaning I am seeing a lot of tripe being recommended for my viewing pleasure.
Thankfully I had a recent backup of Firefox, but after loading Firefox, closing and loading again, the YouTube recommendations are reset. But with my backup I can at least note down the majority of channels that I like.
While l am using Chromium, l also run Firefox to check that everything renders correctly in that browser. It works fine and it handles some stuff better than Chromium-based browsers. For instance, using a transform: scale(1.1) on a .svg element in chromium-based browsers will convert the .svg to raster before applying the animation resulting in some loss in image quality. In Firefox, no funny business like that is taking place resulting in a much sharper-looking graphic.
Soldato
According to this bug, Nvidia's video super resolution should now work on 116: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1838781
Yet for some reason I can't see it work at all (in chromium browsers, HWiNFO64 reports GPU usage on Compute). I tried disabling the flag and enabling it again, even on a fresh blank profile, but still nothing for my 3070.
Yet for some reason I can't see it work at all (in chromium browsers, HWiNFO64 reports GPU usage on Compute). I tried disabling the flag and enabling it again, even on a fresh blank profile, but still nothing for my 3070.
i did retry firefox
but when edge with 5 tabs open is 400MB with 1% cpu
firefox with 5 tabs open is 3GB with 5% cpu
why bother? used to love firefox, but its just a memory hog for no reason now.
edge does the same tab isolation & in a hypervisor & still uses less resources.
& if you watch the pc secruity channel firefox had more phonehome stuff than edge :/
but when edge with 5 tabs open is 400MB with 1% cpu
firefox with 5 tabs open is 3GB with 5% cpu
why bother? used to love firefox, but its just a memory hog for no reason now.
edge does the same tab isolation & in a hypervisor & still uses less resources.
& if you watch the pc secruity channel firefox had more phonehome stuff than edge :/
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The RAM use on Firefox is ludicrous these days - but I've always found the CPU use the other way around, aside from certain sites it usually idles sub 1% whereas Edge is often slightly busy. Fortunately none of my systems are short on RAM for the usage though that is partly because I farm stuff out to more than one system.
sure but 3GB is ludicrous when i could use it accelerate a program that will actually benefit i have 32GB to & i dont use it all, but when you know FF is just litterally wasting it, id rather give 3GB to another VM
