Firefox Revamped: Update Brings Speed & Efficiency Boost!

[MarkFL]

Earlier today, when I saw that Firefox was installing an update when I fired it up, I did my usual groaning facepalm and wondered what I might find broken this time. I've been a faithful Firefox user since 2004, shortly after it appeared on the market. But in recent years, my loyalty has been waning as the browser seemed to get less and less useful, more bloated and slow and leak memory like a sieve. I've been seriously considering finding a new browser, and have toyed with Chrome and Vivaldi. Both are nice browsers, but I don't like change and I like Mozilla's open source not-for-profit stance and their respect for user privacy.

When the update finished, I discovered this is the biggest update in Firefox history:

View attachment 7540

It is reported that, the new Firefox performs today at speeds twice as fast as just six months ago and uses about 30 percent less memory or RAM than Chrome. My initial reaction is that it is fast and fluid, and the new interface looks great. I recommend that anyone who migrated away from Firefox because of performance issues give this new update a try...I am loving it so far. (Yes)

 

[Greg]

Hey Mark; thanks for that - I'm always interested in more speed. I've installed this product on my Linux system and it's noticeably faster. I'll post more after I give it a few days.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

Thank you, this is good news.

If you - like me - run a Linux distribution that only offers Firefox ESR ("extended support release") as an official package, you can see from the time line schematic that a new ESR release is expected only in Spring 2018. (There will be point releases in between, but as far as I understand, these will not include "Quantum" features.)

So, perhaps I will just download directly from Mozilla, do a home directory install and give it a try. I am curious.

 

[Ackbach]

Still not as fast as Vivaldi. I'm going to stick with Vivaldi for a while, even though BB codes behave weirdly on MHB during editing (always pushes the codes to the beginning of the post, for some strange reason).

 

[Greg]

Sometimes this process listed as "Web Content" in my ps table shows up, chewing up about 90% CPU usage and a large (about 60%) chunk of my RAM. Other than that it's ok.

 

[Joppy]

Been trying it out since reading this... It's great! Makes me wonder why I've been using Chrome for this long (Smirk).

 

[I like Serena]

Been trying it out since reading this... It's great! Makes me wonder why I've been using Chrome for this long (Smirk).

Firefox is now what Chrome used to be, fast, lightweight, non-invasive.
Chrome is none of that anymore. ;)

 

[Joppy]

Firefox is now what Chrome used to be, fast, lightweight, non-invasive.
Chrome is none of that anymore. ;)

Indeed. I've been living under a rock!

 

[Greg]

Vivaldi's nice, methinks! ;)

 

[Joppy]

Vivaldi's nice, methinks! ;)

Never heard of that before this thread... Tried it out too, very nice! The way everything is customizable is great.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

Thanks to everyone giving positive comments on Vivaldi.

Remembering this thread from a few months ago, yesterday I decided to cheat on Firefox with Vivaldi. It felt very good. I particularly like the "tab stacking" and "tab tiling" for keeping things organized. It is also worthwhile to know that Vivaldi let's you install Chrome extensions, so you can keep using what you are familiar with, or find a close alternative.

 

[Joppy]

Thanks to everyone giving positive comments on Vivaldi.

Remembering this thread from a few months ago, yesterday I decided to cheat on Firefox with Vivaldi. It felt very good. I particularly like the "tab stacking" and "tab tiling" for keeping things organized. It is also worthwhile to know that Vivaldi let's you install Chrome extensions, so you can keep using what you are familiar with, or find a close alternative.

I've almost completely converted :). I didn't know about being able to keep Chrome extensions though. Nice!

 

[I like Serena]

It has already been bugging me for a while that in Firefox I just don't have a clear overview over the open tabs.
Even worse, I have to continuously scroll back and forth to get to an open tab.
So after all the positive comments here, I finally decided to give Vivaldi a go.
It looks promising! (Happy)

 

[topsquark]

I have Quantum and I don't see any difference. Then again I'm only getting 2 GB from my cable hookup.

-Dan