Looking for a Firefox replacement

By th3rEsa
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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Grand Master

TAZMINATOR

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Haha, I used Waterfox when it started - even helped MrAlex a couple times too. But yeah eventually stopped using it too when I didn't notice any performance differences between Firefox and Waterfox.

I kept my eye on their change log from time to time..... I stay on FF.

Edge looks promising..... I look forward to it when they release extensions support for it. Once it's released, I will test it out and see how it goes.  If it's good, then I will use both of them... If Edge is very good, then I will use FF less and use Edge more.

We will see.

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Grand Master

MS Bob 11

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Try Maxthon with WebKit mode (Ultra mode) and never use Retro mode (Trident). It's a bit slower though on old computers. But offers more customization than Chrome if Firefox and its forks are no longer under consideration.

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Grand Master

Mando

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Try Maxthon with WebKit mode (Ultra mode) and never use Retro mode (Trident). It's a bit slower though on old computers. But offers more customization than Chrome if Firefox and its forks are no longer under consideration.

im quite partial to Maxthon in windows also, using it on my iphone for work too.

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Grand Master

MS Bob 11

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-  Maxthon has an RSS icon in address bar and an RSS reader too
-  UI is extremely customizable and very nice. Best UI of all browsers IMHO. It hasn't gone full retard yet and turned into another copy of Google Chrome
-  adblockplus is integrated
-  It has Bookmark sync and open bookmarks in groups, add all open tabs to bookmarks
-  It has customizable keyboard shortcuts
-  Tab management is great, very customizable
-  Support for user scripts via ViolentMonkey extension
-  Has built-in decent download manager
-  It has an ugly sidebar which I always turn off, default settings have to be tweaked a lot because it is full featured.

Don't know about other stuff you want. It is weak on extensions but better than Edge :D Coming from IE to Maxthon, personally I am happy with its out-of-the-box features and don't need many extensions except one to show visited links in different color, play navigation sounds like IE and page scroll buttons (Go to top, go to bottom, page up, page down).

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Rising Star

monkeylove

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In my case, I moved from IE to Maxthon to Chrome to other forks to Chromium to Firefox to various forks to Cyberfox. I find the Cyberfox with the classic theme the best so far, especially given lots of add-ons available.

 

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Mentor

Tidosho

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Mozilla were too damn slow to pick up new features and stay competitive. Now Mozilla are trying to turn Firefox into some weird Chrome wannabe.

Mozilla had a start page quite a few years back that said, "Mozilla is free from pressure to compromize". It just made me laugh because Mozilla have been putting themselves under pressure to copy Google. I lost interest in Firefox when they started increasing build numbers rapidly, yet the heart of the browser got slower, more bloated.

I use Pale Moon, but recently it started crapping out for no reason randomly. Hardly any tabs open, the browser just quits and I get "Pale Moon has stopped working". I restart and can't restore my tabs. Even does it on a fresh profile and installation. I like Opera, and use Chrome primarily for auto translate, I like Japanese sites, and need Chrome for when my Japanese girlfriend isn't around to translate for me :)

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Grand Master

simplezz

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It's disappointing the direction Firefox is going in. Of all the browsers, it has the best extensions.

I'll probably just transition to Chrome eventually.

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Experienced

th3rEsa

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I'm currently fiddling with Vivaldi again. It always has tabs on the left side, I can use KeePass with it (through chromeIPass), it has Xmarks, Tampermonkey, and uMatrix. :o

Now if there is just a good download manager for it ...

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Grand Master

DevTech

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Power user perspective:

(or how each browser brings your computer to its knees with 1500 tabs open)

1. Firefox and variations

I use Cyberfox which has a slight advantage over vanilla Firefox but everything applies to both

- smallest RAM footprint maxes around 4 gigs with 1500 tabs

- slowest but fast enough

- best extensions by light years

- it crashes in a predictable manner and Session Manager never loses anything

2. Google Chrome

- fast

- doesn't really handle more than 400 tabs

- horrible horrible RAM management - even with 10 tabs it somehow wants every scrap of RAM on the computer to itself

- go to settings and turn off background helps a bit but it still leaches into the O/S in a way that slows down everything on the computer in order to speed browsing by a millisec or something

- needs constant restarting to keep under control

- great web dev tools

- I have started to weed out this weed of a browser from all my computers. It used to be my #1 choice back when it was lean and mean

- it crashes in a predictable manner but often loses state information even with Session Buddy

3. Microsoft Edge

- fasted browser by far

- buggy buggy buggy

- has a max of 50 to 100 tabs before crashing

- excellent on managing RAM - uses less than Firefox but in trivial comparisons since it is impossible to compare in a large tab scenario since it crashes

- it does NOT crash in a predictable manner. Often it takes out the O/S when it crashes.

4. Others

- I haven't tried Opera and others recently since in the past these alternatives were not even close to being able to manage large RAM situations.

5. The Special Case of HTML5

- The ability to handle 1500 tabs flies out the Window with modern web sites that use HTML5 features. Even CSS is now GPU accelerated these days and every site assumes they are the only one you will load. This is NOT a  RAM issue as such. Load enough "Modern" sites and every browser cries out in pain.

- I haven't done any recent testing but I would guess that Chrome might be able to handle more HTML5 sites at once.

- I can have 10 copies of Photoshop and 3D design progs open, but not so for the latest and greatest web pages!

- Browsers are still the most primitive brain dead inefficient software you can run on a computer even in 2015

 

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Neowinian

Timothy Loucakis

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My understanding of Palemoon is, it is using a fork called Geohenna (sp) and already some extentions require modification to function properly.

They are deliberatly moving away from the present firefox standards, and getting more so as time goes on.

My two cents worth.

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Grand Master

DevTech

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The major problem with 1500 tabs would be (for me) that it seems to be impossible to actually keep an eye on what is actually opened. Why would you want that? 

1. for the purposes of comparing browsers, it is like a stress test and perhaps more importantly shows how each browser has fundamentally different ways of interacting with the O/S and as a "good citizen" with other applications on the computer. Firefox and derivatives come out far on top in these areas.

2. for your curiosity on my use-case, the tabs are typically spread out across maybe 40 browser windows for investigating things and in-depth research in things. I can go real deep at times in finding stuff. So I will branch and divide subjects into sub-topics and drag tabs into new windows to keep it all organized. Actually that's another huge disadvantage of Edge - Microsoft has always had a very awkward drag-catch between windows. Chrome is slightly better than Firefox in that area. Firefox has the convenient "List All Tabs" little arrow to the right of the tabs which I use a lot. I sometimes use a "showcase" extension to show a little picture of all open tabs but it gets useless after 40 tabs in a window.

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th3rEsa

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My understanding of Palemoon is, it is using a fork called Geohenna (sp) and already some extentions require modification to function properly.

It's "Goanna". 

The problem is that Firefox is moving away from Firefox, not Pale Moon. 

2. for your curiosity on my use-case, the tabs are typically spread out across maybe 40 browser windows for investigating things and in-depth research in things. I can go real deep at times in finding stuff. 

 

I use to do some research at times too, but I usually keep only 10-or-so tabs at a time. If a website has enough information, I copy them into Emacs, otherwise I close it anyway. 

Maybe I'm not professional enough. 

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Tidosho

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My understanding of Palemoon is, it is using a fork called Geohenna (sp)

Yeah, it's Goanna. Like Joanna but with a G :)

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Grand Master

DevTech

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Given how horrible Chrome is and how buggy and incomplete Edge is, an obvious option is to stay with Firefox as long as possible and hope they sort it out.

That's my plan. If I have to lock into a specific version, I suspect I can run at least a year or more before hitting any roadblocks. It's not like the code and the extensions will suddenly stop from a "kill switch"

In that "Twilight of the Gods" period of time anything could happen. Google could even decide to be a good citizen again although I suspect "Don't Be Evil" has gradually morphed into a game of opposites...

What I don't expect to see in two years is the Microsoft Edge browser becoming a viable option for Power Users. It is the fastest browser right now and a joy to use if you only have 3 tabs going like checking email and Facebook. It is designed for the "Average Joe" and there it will stay I think. I really hope I'm very wrong there.

 

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Grand Master

DevTech

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On a minor note, the following extensions that address your requirements might be useful:

1. The maker of the discontinued Adblock Edge now has the more sophisticated uBlock which works in both Firefox and Chrome:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

(beware of the many similar-name scams appearing as the reputation grows)

 

2. In Chrome I use Session Buddy for crash recovery. But you can also use it to save groups of tabs as sessions which gives you "open all in tabs"

Speaking of sessions, last time I checked nothing in the Chrome world comes close to the Session Manager extension for Firefox.

http://sessionmanager.mozdev.org/

And as a wonderfully clever thing, Session Exporter takes a crashed or saved session and loads it into Bookmarks.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-exporter/

 

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Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

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At the moment it sounds like you are just bumed about downloadthemall ... Why not try something like "Internet Download Manager". See if that works with Firefox 43. That's what I use.

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GrayW

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Requirements

I have a couple of "requirements", features I learned to love and I wouldn't want to miss. "The browser" should be able to give me most of the following functionality (the more, the better) right from the core or with extensions:

  • An RSS icon in the address bar so I can see if the particular page has an RSS feed available.
  • A decent JavaScript blocker, such as µMatrix or (at least) NoScript.
  • Bookmarks with online backup/synchronisation.
    I've been using Xmarks since it was called Foxmarks, but I could live with moving my bookmarks to a different online service as long as it's in some way integrated in my browser. Pocket doesn't work for me, I need real folders.
  • Something like bookmark groups. For example, I open certain links once a day. In Firefox I have "open all in new tabs". It would be awesome to have that in the new browser too.
  • Tabs on the left side of the browser window. I use to have a plenty of them open at the same time and I like to keep an eye of them.
  • Support for user scripts.
  • Something like Firebug which allows me to modify a website's CSS on-the-fly.
  • A decent replacement for the combination of FlashGot and DownThemAll!, pretty much allowing me to download any media from any website with support for parallel downloads, pausing them, etc.
  • KeePass integration. I use KeePass to hold my passwords in a secure place and I wouldn't want to have them stored in a browser ever again. (Sorry - reasonable paranoia.)


I know most people now say that Opera is basically Chrome but "feel" wise I would disagree and it has been my go to browser for pretty much as long as I can remember. I think the latest (33.0) can certainly hit most of your requirements and I think you'd be really missing out if you shrug it off as a viable option.

I also use Disconnect and HTTPS Everywhere which keeps me happy enough. Give it a whirl, what have you got to loose apart from time! :)

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th3rEsa

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At the moment it sounds like you are just bumed about downloadthemall ... Why not try something like "Internet Download Manager". See if that works with Firefox 43. That's what I use.

I've yet to find a good one which works with FlashGot. I noticed EagleGet seems to be nice software but no chance to make it work with FlashGot. :(

@Grayski: I had a quick glance at "Opera.Next" somewhere in its 20s. Instant dislike. So much missing functionality, such a horrible UI.

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