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News Mozilla launches speedy Firefox Quantum beta

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 27 Sep 2017.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Again, not a million miles away from Chrome. It doesn't have that bizarre, massive title bar and rounded-edge tabs look it used to have for a start. It also has the address bar at the top, whereas the next version of Chrome on Android is moving it to the bottom because... Nup, I got nothin'.

    Screenshot_2017-09-28-12-36-17.png
     
  2. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Oh, say what now? I was kinda hoping they'd put it running diagonally across the screen :(

    I have to say that pointless and unwanted changes to UI are one of the things that will make me abandon a browser for the competition - I got so fed up with FF changing their UI that I was more than happy to switch to Chrome, but if Google are playing silly buggers then I'll switch again. Stuff like switching the keyboard shortcut for "back" from Backspace to Alt + Left Arrow is another example of an infuriating change that really grinds my gears (although I can see the sense in that one to a limited extent). At the very least, allow me to revert to the old setting via an option, because I don't want to have to relearn twenty years worth of muscle memory because some developer has had a brainwave :D
     
  3. Xlog

    Xlog Minimodder

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    And FF path to complete chromatization continues...
    While speed improvements are nice, the move to WebExtensions and restrictions that it imposes are not. I've been faithful FF user since 2.0, but it seems its time to finally move on.
     
  4. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I've got you beat, there: I used Netscape Navigator, which then became Firefox. I've been on this codebase for my primary browser since the mid-90s - and only switched to Chrome about half a decade ago 'cos the performance of Firefox had gone down the terlet.

    Now I'm back, baby!
     
  5. Ice Tea

    Ice Tea Minimodder

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    Is there much involved in getting the new Beta to run on Ubuntu?
     
  6. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Simple as:

    Code:
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next
    sudo apt update && sudo apt install firefox -y
    
    That'll add the official Firefox beta PPA to your system and keep Firefox Beta up-to-date through apt, just like any other package. S'what I did.

    Note, however, that Firefox Beta is packaged as firefox, meaning that if you're running a non-beta version it'll be upgraded to the beta release; this is in contrast to Chrome, which installs as chrome-beta alongside chrome if already installed.
     
  7. Ice Tea

    Ice Tea Minimodder

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    This is why i'm thinking of going back to Ubuntu , it's just so quick and easy. :)

    With Slackware i had to unpack the folders and copy them over and then the guest account decided to no longer associate itself with Firefox. :D
     
  8. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    How do you even survive?! :D

    Installed on desktop and mobile, set up FF Sync, now I don't have time to actually do anything with it until... Monday? Real life getting in the way, again. Loading pages felt really snappy so far. Scrolling picture-heavy pages on mobile is a lot slower than Chrome, though. Not laggy, just the scrolling itself is slower.
     
  9. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    2017: The Year of the Linux Desktop!
    Can't say I've noticed that myself, although I have found myself pulling-to-refresh and getting annoyed when it doesn't work. I'll miss that particular Chromeism.
     
  10. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Might have to look into it. If they've improved the dev tools I'll be tempted but as someone with a ton of tabs open all the time I'm not sure.
     
  11. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    At peak times, I'll have anything up to a hundred tabs open across three or four windows. So far, it's been rock-solid stable, entirely responsive, and with lower memory usage than Chrome.
     
  12. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    This is close to what I do at home. I have tabs open thinking "This is interesting I'll go back and read this at some point" then end up deleting them after a couple of days. I'll have to give it a go later when i get home.
     
  13. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I use Pocket for that, which is built into Firefox these days (though you still need to sign up for an account or log in with Google/Facebook/Twitter.) Helps keep the long-term tab count down!
     
  14. Chicken76

    Chicken76 Minimodder

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    How do you guys manage so many tabs? Do you scroll like crazy left/right the tab bar or do you use an addon to display them on multiple rows?
     
  15. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Personally...

    Firefox - Tab Groups [assuming that's still a thing in FF]
    Edge - 'Set tabs aside'
    Chrome - Multiple windows/wonder where all your RAM went.
     
    Hex likes this.
  16. Chicken76

    Chicken76 Minimodder

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    I'm using Firefox exclusively, but even with Tab groups it gets frustrating when you have more than 10 tabs in a group. I used to use Tab Mix Plus, but that's going away with the next version and I'm looking for a different way to have tabs on multiple rows.
     
  17. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Edge's 'Set aside' is the same, it gets a bit unwieldy after about a dozen. That and you still can't set aside individual tabs. Basically past 10 or so tabs all of the current options suck.
     
  18. Ice Tea

    Ice Tea Minimodder

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    I didn't realise how slow firefox was until this came out.
     
  19. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Right, been using it exclusively for a while now and have hit the following pain points in order of owchieness:

    No hardware accelerated video on macOS: Using Firefox Quantum on my macOS laptop last night, the thing got super hot and kicked in the fan while the battery dropped before my very eyes. Switched back to Chrome and everything got a lot cooler and quieter. Annoying, that.

    The CMS here chugs a little bit in Firefox, particularly when typing in tags and company names as it searches for possible matches. Chrome would have what I'm typing appear in near-real-time despite the background search, but in Firefox things often don't appear until I've actually finished.

    The "I know where you want to go" guessing doesn't seem as good as Chrome, but that may just be because Chrome had five year's history to work with.

    Other than that, so far so good!
     
  20. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    You leave our poor CMS alone.

    May have a solution to this from when we fixed it on another site. Will look into it now, may be able to speed a bunch of stuff up.
     
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