Why you SHOULD be using Firefox

mrk · 7 Aug 2023 at 00:02

smogsy said:
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

How many VMs are you running at any given moment? I highly doubt you are using that many requiring so much RAM to be free at any moment to give to a new VM, f that was the case then you wouldn't be running a system with only 32GB of RAM

- To me this sounds more like an excuse to have a moan that a browser that does its job as designed, is doing its job as designed.

RAM is meant to be used, and one of the reasons why Firefox now loads so instantly, even though it has more features than ever before, is because of its broad memory use.

Murphy · 7 Aug 2023 at 11:41

mrk said:
RAM is meant to be used, and one of the reasons why Firefox now loads so instantly, even though it has more features than ever before, is because of its broad memory use.

^^That^^. I've never understood the this program uses so much RAM thing, that's what you want programs to do.

As much as there's things that annoy me about Windows its memory management is not one of them, if something needs more RAM it will typically do a good job of garbage collection and releasing memory to the process with priority.

MichaelAwkward · 7 Aug 2023 at 11:47

darael said:
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.

Not sure if it's the same issue but Firefox has been for a while set to purge trackers automatically. It was annoying me too.

If you search for "Purge" in about:config you can disable this.

darael · 7 Aug 2023 at 12:30

MichaelAwkward said:
Not sure if it's the same issue but Firefox has been for a while set to purge trackers automatically. It was annoying me too.

If you search for "Purge" in about:config you can disable this.

I'm not sure if it's something to do with YouTube or not. A few days after posting, I restored a backup of my Firefox folder in appdata - suddenly YouTube seemed to work just fine and has done ever since.

To be safe, I've kept a backup of the channels I watch (a lot more than I realised

) in case it happens again.

smogsy · 7 Aug 2023 at 15:34

mrk said:
How many VMs are you running at any given moment? I highly doubt you are using that many requiring so much RAM to be free at any moment to give to a new VM, f that was the case then you wouldn't be running a system with only 32GB of RAM - To me this sounds more like an excuse to have a moan that a browser that does its job as designed, is doing its job as designed.

RAM is meant to be used, and one of the reasons why Firefox now loads so instantly, even though it has more features than ever before, is because of its broad memory use.

Yes memory is good to use. IF theirs a benefit, More security, speed, caching. A reasonable reason

However Chrome variant Vs Firefox for the same tab your looking at a 3GB difference. That's only OK if you know that 3GB is being used wisely. We as a collective Do NOT know
as an example
if that 3GB is it Struggling to cache symbols & its 3GB of a bunch of 0000's to display the % in Cache
If that 3GB is used to run Hyper isolated layer between tabs. (which could be good)

So yes using memory is good IF used wisely, if it was 500MB-800MB difference sure, i wouldn't care but 3GB every 5 tabs? id like to know where that's being used & by what before i say Firefox is using it wisely & it doesn't matter

its no different to saying
Rocket league is using 4GB of VRAM, then the next update its using 8GB of VRAM, Would you not care either? most gamers are going mad right now for the same thing in a different space.

i was a Firefox canary/nightly tester for many years, then i moved on, So not against Firefox in any way & i use my time testing many open-source software for Developers.

3GB Usage difference Would to me raise a flag to be described What this extra ram is used for & their benefits. not just go on Pure Will That its worth it.

mrk · 7 Aug 2023 at 15:40

The funny thing is though that Chrome in later years has been more renowned for being a bigger "hog" than Firefox though!

iron_monkey · 7 Aug 2023 at 15:43

I've just upgraded to Windows 11 and some of my plugins don't work anymore, does anyone know a plugin that allows just the icon showing on the favorites bar but shows the text when you hover over it?

smogsy · 7 Aug 2023 at 17:14

mrk said:
The funny thing is though that Chrome in later years has been more renowned for being a bigger "hog" than Firefox though!

sure heard the same, i moved away from google 'chrome' many years ago i browser hopped for a while

tested brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, & a few others
* Brave was nice, But had many bugs on My Work laptop in OSX. specially with certs. & if you wire-shark Traffic on opening it sends a decent amount back to Brave, just the same resources as chrome

* Opera was nice but again resource Heavy & bloated but did nice things

* Vivaldi same as above, had some killer features like 4 way spilt windows & tabs inside tabs which i loved it, but overall Felt like what i call a 'from-software' development - janky, unintuitive, Slow & lot of insecure bugs, but they are only a 7 man team if i recall.

* Edge Has its issues but overall, quick fixes, least amount of telemetry from Wireshark (surprisingly) some great features coming through like spilt windows, its tab eco made makes it super lean & adjustable to ignore domains if you wish. collections are super useful.

Murphy · 7 Aug 2023 at 17:27

Biggest problem with Chrome IMO is that it's made by an advertising company.

smogsy · 19 Aug 2023 at 15:58

putting firefix through long term test (Beta version) out of interested & HW acceleration is taking up to 1.5GB so thats half of the 3GB with just youtube open at 1440p video res being used @mrk

rumple9 · 29 Aug 2023 at 14:42

When I have lots of tabs open, even after closing them all my virtual memory is at 100%, despite having 32gb ram and other programs won't run without rebooting the comp

Nexus18 · 29 Aug 2023 at 15:31

I've gone back to chrome after using firefox since start of this year due to the adblocker news but tbh, unless I am missing something, ads are still being blocked on chrome with ublock?

Chrome is just a nicer experience on the whole and it definitely uses less resources on my end (not an issue though)

Glanza · 29 Aug 2023 at 16:09

Nexus18 said:
I've gone back to chrome after using firefox since start of this year due to the adblocker news but tbh, unless I am missing something, ads are still being blocked on chrome with ublock?

Chrome is just a nicer experience on the whole and it definitely uses less resources on my end (not an issue though)

Manifest 3 was pushed back, that was what caused all the social media posts that had people switching to FF.

Glanza · 30 Aug 2023 at 08:34

117.0 Firefox Release

Version 117.0, first offered to Release channel users on August 29, 2023

New

Support for credit card autofill has been extended to users running Firefox in the IT, ES, AT, BE, and PL locales.
macOS users can now control the tabability of controls and links via aboutreferences.
To avoid undesirable outcomes on sites which specify their own behavior when pressing shift+right-click, Firefox now has a dom.event.contextmenu.shift_suppresses_event preference to prevent the context menu from appearing.

Fixed

YouTube video lists now scroll correctly when navigating with a screen reader.
Various security fixes.

Changed

Firefox no longer shows its own screen sharing indicator on Wayland desktop environments. The system default sharing indicator will be used instead.

Enterprise

You can find information about policy updates and enterprise specific bug fixes in the Firefox for Enterprise 117 Release Notes.

Developer

Developer Information
Web compatibility inspection has been enhanced with our new CSS compatibility tooltip in the Developer Tools Inspector. An icon is now displayed next to properties that could lead to web compatibility issues. When hovered, the tooltip indicates which browsers are not supported and displays a link to the MDN page for the property so the user can learn more about it.
console.clear() no longer clears the Console output if the "Enable persistent logs" option is enabled.

Web Platform

Support for improved CSS nesting is now enabled by default.
Firefox now supports RTCRtpScriptTransform.
ReadableStream.from is now supported, allowing creation of a ReadableStream from an (async) iterable.
Firefox now supports the math-style and math-depth CSS properties and the font-size: math value.

Community Contributions

With the release of Firefox 117, we are pleased to welcome the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 9 of whom were brand new volunteers! Please join us in thanking each of these diligent and enthusiastic individuals, and take a look at their contributions:
- Cassio Neri: 1828326
- David Turner: 1836063
- Devesh Bisen: 1840583, 1841131
- Lin Runze: 1842131
- Logan Rosen [:Logan]: 1692849, 1843815
- ren: 1753033, 1842971, 1844492
- Vinny Diehl: 1262782, 1707974
- Willy R. Vasquez: 1829765, 1843418, 1843419, 1845186, 1845798
- Xi Ruoyao: 1841040

Glanza · 26 Sep 2023 at 14:42

118.0
Firefox Release

Version 118.0, first offered to Release channel users on September 26, 2023