Hacker News Reader

Comment by zac23or | Hacker News Reader

I use Firefox, Chrome, and Edge on a Windows 10 machine.

I use Chrome 90% of the time because Firefox is slow and has many bugs on video sites like 9gag. The screen goes black, the video loses vertical sync, etc. The same happens with Edge.

In my experience, the problem with Firefox's popularity is technical. I'll use Firefox more often if it improves. Before Firefox 3.6 (probably that version), Firefox was my most used browser, but after that version, Firefox started getting slower and more buggy. I switched to Chrome because IE was unusable on some sites.

I've never used Firefox much on Android, but when I did, it was slower than Chrome.

It's likely that if Firefox fixes the issues, they'll gain traction again, but right now, I don't see that happening. Mozilla's goals are different.

View on HN

> Before Firefox 3.6 (probably that version), Firefox was my most used browser, but after that version, Firefox started getting slower and more buggy.

Haha, I remember that same feeling, with 3.6 being "peak" Firefox back in the day. My 3.6 was heavily hand-tailored to my needs via about:config etc. Just some dedicated end-user here, but I did know it very well. Version 4 felt considerably worse on a WinXP system, some essential-to-me add-ons broke, etc. I remember feeling really - as in, really - frustrated when I finally had to make the switch.

Apparently, 3.6 is the longest supported Firefox version ever, 27 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.6#End_of_life

I seem to recall similarly about things starting to go downhill after 4.x or so. Performance, optimization, and stability seemed to take a back seat to flashier things like new features and UI themes. It stopped being the lean, mean minimal browser that it’d become famous as and turned into something a lot more unremarkable (albeit, more flexible). They wouldn’t seriously prioritize performance again until many years later with Quantum.

Looking at it that way, it’s no mystery how it lost ground to Chrome (though Google’s marketing muscle is also largely responsible). Mozilla just tossed Firefox’s claim to fame out the window and expected things to work out somehow, which is a bit like a restaurant that’d become popular for its award winning burgers deciding to pivot to the same dry turkey sandwiches you can get at most of the restaurants in town. Yeah, you’re gonna lose customers.

I had known that 3.6 was released when Firefox was at its absolute peak in terms of market share but I am somewhat surprised (not really) that this seems to also correspond with its peak in overall quality for some people. This is not the case with Internet Explorer.

So after all of the things you outlined, you're still fine with using Chrome despite the ads?

Yes, in my case, for some sites like 9gag, Chrome is the only browser that works!

Nothing is free, and ads are inevitable (Firefox makes money from... ads). I don't think ads are the worst thing about the internet.

Where I'm sure Firefox works without problems, I use it: (hackernews, for example), OR on sites where ads are the problem, pop-ups are the problem. I hope it improves so I can use it more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com