Anyone still use Firefox?

By sinetheo
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sinetheo

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I am typing this right now inside partedMagic as I need to do a secure erase off a SSD.

 

While waiting I saw a firefox icon and clicked on it. Wow is it slow to respond (I am running this off a ramdrive/usb) though with ISOLinux which PartedMagic uses to do it's business. I left Firefox shortly after 4.0 and started flirting with Chrome and IE 9 which became popular in early 2011 and only once or twice used it in 2012 before eventually switching predominantly to Chrome.

 

It's so foreign now and different.

 

I am curious. Does anyone still use Firefox anymore as their main browser?

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Brandon H Supervisor

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i use it on my laptop as I tend to have 50+ tabs open and prefer Firefox's tab scroller. my tower and work computer use chrome as their main.

 

It is definitely the fact you're on RAM causing it to be slow. it does pretty well to keep up with chrome (it's pretty much slowly becoming chrome) speed wise and for now is still more customizable

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DavidM

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Yes, I never left. I just never felt like Chrome or IE had any real reason to pull me away. I have never understood the need to have the "fastest" browser, if it lacks something I want or need.

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techbeck

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Use FF at home and at work mainly.  Use Chrome for work mostly but only when I have to.  IE only for MS related stuff that does not open properly in other browsers. 

 

33 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

i use it on my laptop as I tend to have 50+ tabs open and prefer Firefox's tab scroller.

 

I use the Tabmix Plus addon.  Allows more options to the tabs.

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+Raze Subscriber²

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Yes, using current Firefox x64 release with uBlock Origin.   Runs great, no problems.  I've tried Vivaldi and it's still not ready for primetime for me, yet. 

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The Evil Overlord

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4 minutes ago, LimeMaster said:

He asked if anyone still used it. It was a yes from me.

He was talking about it being different from ff4, and the side issue might have been hardware related (I think)

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ThaCrip

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Try 'Pale Moon x64' (i.e. http://www.palemoon.org/palemoon-win64.shtml ) as that's been my browser of choice for years now. it's much more RAM efficient (and i would assume Firefox is to) than Chrome is when having a lot of tabs open and left running for days etc as Chrome burns up RAM like crazy where as with Pale Moon it's typically 1-2GB with many tabs open and left running for days etc. plus, one thing install on Pale Moon x64 (or Firefox) is the FireGestures v1.8.7.1 extension which allows me so i can hold the right click and scroll the mouse wheel up or down to instantly change tabs left/right of the current tab as that's much quicker than manually clicking them as once you get used to it going without it sucks simply because it makes using the browser that much more efficient.

 

plus, Pale Moon's interface i think is like Firefox's from a while ago. so it's interface might be more to your liking as i have not used Firefox in years but i imagine it's interface is a fair amount different from Pale Moon's by now. here is some screenshots of Pale Moon... https://www.palemoon.org/screenshots.shtml which i think is similar to Firefox 4 or so.

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HoochieMamma

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I use it as my main browser, I can't use Chrome as it doesn't support the capabilities of using mouse gestures on a blank webpage or it's own settings page, annoys the hell out of me.

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+virtorio MVC

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Sometimes. It's the only browser that seems to work when acquiring a code-signing certificate from the company I get them from. 

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Darrian

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I have been using Firefox since it was Phoenix, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.  I may take half a second longer than Chrome to load or whatever, but it still serves my needs well.  I check out other new browsers occasionally when they (rarely) come along, but I still end up going back to Firefox within a day.  I do use an extension to enable the developer theme, though, because the default theme sucks and theming in general for Firefox has pretty much died out.

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arrrgh

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Of course.. I have both Firefox and Chrome typically installed but always go back to Firefox. Chrome just can't get to the same level of perfection in scrolling even with addons (Firefox doesn't need any to get the scrolling right, just some about:config tweaks). Plus cookie handling in Firefox is superb (I throw away all cookies except white listed ones).

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jupe

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I have been using the Nightly version since it was the preview for version 4, it was called Minefield at the time, but I have always found it pretty good considering I've been using a pre-release product all this time.  The odd time I use Chrome on someone else's computer I find myself long to get back to using Firefox.

 

I am not looking forward to the pending loss of most of the extension functionality because that has been the main reason I use it over other browsers, but I will have to wait and see if solutions arise for the loss of my most favored extensions.

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ThaCrip

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1 hour ago, LoboVerde said:

Been using Firefox forever! I always like to try other browsers and will use another as a secondary to see how certain sites function in them, like Chrome and IE9. But Firefox just always remains tried and true.

 

They are getting ready to change over to the Web Extensions API, this year I believe. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions

 

 

 

Exactly.

 

besides the RAM hog issues with Chrome, it's, like you basically said, the overall feel of Firefox seems to be just right all around. because i think even if Chrome fixed it's RAM hog issues, which would obviously be a big boost in it's favor, it still would not be quite on Firefox level overall as i think extensions help Firefox cause. so i guess for those who use their browsers in a basic state and don't do too much with them then Chrome is not a bad option but if you tend to have a lot of tabs open and leave the browser running for at least several days before reloads then Firefox (or in my case Pale Moon x64) is your all around best choice, especially if you ain't got much RAM as i figure for those around 4GB and less Firefox is definitely a better option than Chrome is but even with my 8GB (which should be more than sufficient for general use for the foreseeable future) i still prefer Firefox because it generally does not exceed 2GB of RAM in use and keeps things freed up for other stuff and the OS etc.

 

p.s. i am actually using Pale Moon x64 but i assume this is similar enough to Firefox since they pretty much use the same extensions. but speaking of Pale Moon x64... it's pretty good but since it's not as standard as Chrome/Firefox there can be an occasional glitch that pops up but it's largely a non-issue but with that said to the average computer user i would tell em to stick with Firefox or as a alternative Chrome. but taking a quick look online in terms of web browser market share it appears Chrome is just shy of half of all browser usage out there as of Feb 2017. but what's funny is it seems more and more must be going with alternative browser (like myself with Pale Moon x64) as that makes up 27.27% of browsers out there, which is the second largest chunk of the pie chart behind Chrome, according to netmarketshare.com

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+JR1966 Subscriber²

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When MS released W10 they stated there were 1.5 billion Windows users out in the wild with the vast majority being on desktop. The last numbers I saw had Firefox recovering to around 12% all of which are desktop users. There are a couple of hundred million users using Firefox and why wouldn't there be. MS has devalued IE and Edge can't even get developers to make extensions for it. Firefox has rebounded thanks to MS's inexplicable decision to release Edge as the default browser when it clearly wasn't ready.

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muratoner

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i use firefox since v2 and never changed my main browser.Sometimes i may need Chrome where some sites needs flash and i don't wanna install flash, but other than that it has always been firefox for me.I prefer the x86 developer version. (aura i believe what it was called)

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