New faster Firefox browser released

[mouser]

Mozilla is getting some attention for a big new revamp of their Firefox browser that is supposed to be much faster and more memory efficient..

Their official blurb:

Firefox Quantum is over twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago, built on a completely overhauled core engine with brand new technology stolen from our advanced research group, and graced with a beautiful new look designed to get out of the way and let you do what you do best: surf a ton of pages, open a zillion tabs, all guilt free because Firefox Quantum uses less memory than the competition. Your computer will thank you.

https://blog.mozilla...ing-firefox-quantum/

Lots of reviews all over the web.. Who has tried it and has some thoughts?

[Curt]

The one question they don't answer in their articles is if I can keep my old version of Firefox, the one with all the addons that I have come to appreciate. The new "Firefox Quantum" still has a lot of them, just not my favourites ones.

Well, I am going to test this out right now. If I am frustrated when I return, you'll know why.

[Curt]

No, you can't keep the old version, UNLESS the new is say 64-bit and the old one 32-bit. I have kept my old version 48 (32-bit), but I lost ESR 52.4 (64-bit), the one with all my favourite addons... So, yes, I am frustrated and will remove the new (and fast) version 57 right away! 57 is just a Firefox, ... but faster. ... and with less addons

[anandcoral]

Updated. Found most of my favorite extensions. Searching for the rest. Hopeful to get soon.

Regards,

Anand

[Shades]

https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/
https://mozilla.github.io/extension-finder/

With the links above you have an overview from the state of the most popular FF add-ons and a place where you might find an alternative for use in FF 57.

[rgdot]

v57 feels less of a resource hog, this is the first time I have been able to say this about Firefox. But I have only used it briefly, will see if it lasts.

[tomos]

Who has tried it and has some thoughts?

-mouser (November 15, 2017, 01:58 AM)

Freshly installed -- most of my addons no longer work (FWIW I haven't used Firefox much in the last while).
It is being *very* responsive -- with just two active extensions anyways :-)

The big test for me is video -- Firefox has been a disaster for years in terms of watching video -- fullscreen especially.
That seems to be resolved now.
Might say more later..

[anandcoral]

https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/
https://mozilla.github.io/extension-finder/

With the links above you have an overview from the state of the most popular FF add-ons and a place where you might find an alternative for use in FF 57.

-Shades (November 15, 2017, 06:47 AM)

Thanks Shades

Regards,

Anand

[tomos]

Could imagine sticking with it.

Some odd things:

• I'm unable to get it to start with 'Windows & tabs from last time' (option is greyed out). And there's no decent session manager addon yet.
• History not working here -- is blank (can be changed in options >Privacy)
• Unfocused tabs are transparent here (Windows 7 w. a transparent theme) so unreadable with dark desktop behind

EDIT// #1 is available when #2 option is changed.

[Ath]

Well, I've been 'improving' the minimum tab-width on my updated FF installs, as the default of 76px is quite narrow, so IMHO quite a silly default value (read: not really backward compatible).
And I've been a bit disappointed that even popular add-ons like NoScript don't have their updates available yet, while the release-date of this breaking FF version has been announced many moons ago. But that may just be me, working in the software industry for 30+ years. Planning has been flawed/poor for many developers (including myself )

[Deozaan]

Well that sucks.

I was using a tab-grouping extension which had about 100 tabs open and organized into various groups I use when working on different things. I shut down Firefox when I rebooted my computer for a Windows update and when I got back and opened Firefox, it automatically updated, getting rid of my tab grouping extension and forgetting about the existence of all my tabs except for the ones which were in the last group I had active before closing the browser. I see no way to recover the old tabs.

Thanks to Mozilla for breaking things during an automatic update I had no choice to install simply because I tried to use my browser!

[wraith808]

Thanks to Mozilla for breaking things during an automatic update I had no choice to install simply because I tried to use my browser!

-Deozaan (November 15, 2017, 02:53 PM)

Well, I'd downloaded, but I hadn't installed.  I think I'll wait on that until the all-clear at this point...

[Deozaan]

Thanks to Mozilla for breaking things during an automatic update I had no choice to install simply because I tried to use my browser!

-Deozaan (November 15, 2017, 02:53 PM)

Well, I'd downloaded, but I hadn't installed.  I think I'll wait on that until the all-clear at this point...

-wraith808 (November 15, 2017, 04:27 PM)

To be fair, the thing that broke was due to an incompatible add-on. I'm just frustrated that the update happened automatically and didn't give me a warning or even a chance to cancel the installation before upgrading to something that was incompatible with what I was using.

Other than my frustration with losing all of my tabs in the various tab groups, the updated browser does seem to run well.

And in the process of trying to find another tab grouping add-on I found one called Multi-Account Containers which is a little clunky but basically allows you to set up different sessions (containers), so you can be logged into multiple accounts on the same site at the same time. And it even allows you to configure certain websites to open in certain containers by default.

So for instance, if I visit a bunch of gaming websites, such as Wikia and GameFAQs, I can configure those sites to always open in my "Games" container so they don't get in the way of my "Work" container, or whatever.

It's not quite the same as the Tab Groups were, since using the groups would de-clutter my screen and only show the tabs for the active group. But I do like how I can have separate logins/IDs for each container. I don't know about anyone else, but I like to keep identities separate, so I have a couple of different Gmail accounts, etc. Having a "Personal" container and a "Business" container which can both be logged into their own Gmail accounts at the same time, for example, is pretty nice.

Even so, I think Vivaldi is going to remain my primary browser for the time being.

[wraith808]

Even so, I think Vivaldi is going to remain my primary browser for the time being.

-Deozaan (November 16, 2017, 12:25 AM)

I've been trying that out... it hasn't usurped Chrome for me yet...

[tomos]

And there's no decent session manager addon yet.

-tomos (November 15, 2017, 10:38 AM)

this seems mainly due to a Firefox bug:
if you restore via a session manager extension, it cannot load a tab 'inactively' -- all tabs restored will be fully loaded.
https://bugzilla.moz...w_bug.cgi?id=1378647

Oddly, it *can* do this natively: i.e. if I use the options to restore tabs on restart, they are *not* all loaded -- they are only actively loaded when I click on them.

[IainB]

Interesting and articulate post at binaryturf.com which seems to pretty much nail it for Firefox: Here’s Why Firefox Quantum Is The New IE6
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

By Shivanand Sharma, 18 Nov, 2017

So Firefox just updated itself. And here’s a note by none other than Chris Beard, the CEO of Mozilla.
[@IanB note: Image here is of the CEO's message, which, amongst the seeming platitudes and meaningless clichés appears  to say two-fifths of five tenths of SFA.]

I have just a few points to make:

• Firefox killed IE6 and became the most popular browser.
• 10 years later Firefox has become the new IE6.
• Google Chrome is the new king.
• Firefox became a clone of Chrome. Mozilla lost sponsorship of Google. Lack of funds means cutting down on business. Not much to pay anyone. So take chromium source and repack it as Firefox.
• Firefox lost all USPs primary of which was that it was everyone’s own browser: Firefox looked unique on every PC it was installed on… pretty much like how each Linux desktop is unique. Now you can’t customize it much.
• As far as speed is concerned, Firefox from 10 years back runs faster than Firefox 57 on today’s hardware.
• And for all the speed gains touted, it’s still a poor catch-up show with Chrome and an utter failure at that.
• For all the new source code copied from Chromium and ported to Firefox, you’ll need to re-build and finish this browser from scratch for all the bugs you’ve inherited and introduced during this plagiarization.

So why use a browser that’s a clone of a better performer out there? Have any reasons?

Moral: Choose your CEO’s wisely lest they close shop.

Copied from: Here's Why Firefox Quantum Is The New IE6 - <https://www.binaryturf.com/wordpress-consulting/articles/heres-firefox-quantum-new-ie6/>

[xtabber]

Pale Moon has just released Basilisk, described as:

A XUL-based web-browser demonstrating the Unified XUL Platform (UXP).
This browser is a close twin to pre-Servo Firefox in how it operates.

Clearly designed to provide the closest possible alternative for those Firefox users not willing to trade customization for speed, but also offering a path forward for XUL based extensions.

[Curt]

Basilisk 64 installs in Program Files\Basilisk. Yet it tells me to close Basilisk before launching Basilisk, and the only thing running was Firefox!
Because of this, I have removed it again, before closing Firefox.

[Shades]

I tried the portable version (the zipped version) from Basilisk in combination with the portable version of Firefox on my system. Both worked fine and independently from each other, because each uses a different user profile folder.

The installed versions of these browsers were more than likely trying to control the same user profile folder.

The installed versions of these browsers have the advantage that these can create a separate user profile folder for each Windows user account on your computer. The portable versions can only use the user profile folder inside their own folder, regardless of the Windows user account you start these versions up in.

According to this Mozilla page you can use the parameter: -P <fill in a profile name>   to start FireFox (or Basilisk) with a different user profile. That way you can still use both browsers without them getting into a fight over who is allowed to access the standard user profile folder (for the current Windows account you have logged into).

[TaoPhoenix]

v57 feels less of a resource hog, this is the first time I have been able to say this about Firefox. But I have only used it briefly, will see if it lasts.

-rgdot (November 15, 2017, 08:54 AM)

The big use case that rips apart both Pale Moon and Sub-56 copies of FireFox for me is the hour long music mixes. I'm starting to get clusters of good recommendations, and these begin to chew up memory.

Brief glance, the new one looks multi-process, much like Vivaldi (also something I'm testing!). So I haven't pushed FireFox 57 to the hilt because it hasn't played nice with Dexpot virtualizer for some time now, and the v57 added a new bug.  :/

I'll try to remember to report in when I take a weekend and just do my thing but purposely load it all into FF.

[tomos]

Mozilla is getting some attention for a big new revamp of their Firefox browser that is supposed to be much faster and more memory efficient..

-mouser (November 15, 2017, 01:58 AM)

initially it seems to be more memory efficient.
And it is definitely more CPU/page file efficient -- where older Firefox sinned a lot for me.
But on a Win.7 laptop with 8GB memory, I have already gotten this warning a couple of times (FWIW never used get it before)
--------------
Microsoft Windows
Your computer is low on memory
To restore enough memory for programs to work correctly, save your files and then close or restart all open programs.
[OK]
------------------
this after leaving a window open a while with a bunch of tabs -- less than twenty, many of them video (mostly youtube) -- but all video except one either paused or not playing.
Closing Firefox releases ~ 4.5GB.
FWIW on restart it behaves.

[rgdot]

A few more days with 57 it is still better and less hungry than < 57 but Chrome still wins, both Win 10 and Mint.