Opinion: well its in fig, I'm going back to Firefox

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Recently we came across a cry from the soul of a man named Eric Lymer. He, like many other OS X users, has had to face one problem for a long time. A problem called Google Chrome.

Remember the time we all switched to Chrome?

Chrome was lightweight, simple, and damn fast. As if I went to the Internet from a brand new computer. Chrome is now an overloaded, slow and constantly crashing browser. I have reached the extreme point.

For a while, I talked myself out of the switch, and Chrome just got worse and worse. The problem was known and talked about for years. Back in 2011, Google was looking for ways to reduce the size of the browser distribution, although of course the size of the installer is nothing compared to the problem of memory usage. You just open Activity Monitor and you see this:

We add here frequent crashes of both Chrome itself and Flash Player. Hangs, half a dozen tabs that open themselves at startup thanks to extensions accumulated over the years.

I've been trying to optimize the whole thing for months. Installed Flashblock, disabled Hangouts and other things, but it got worse. I just can't do that anymore.

I knew things were bad, but the defining moment was when I needed to check if one bug on the site was specific to Chrome only (and I wouldn't be surprised if it really was).

I launched Safari and was amazed. Everything became so … fast!

So why then Firefox and not Safari?

Basically for the same reason why I didn't switch to Opera or something like that in those days. When Chrome first came out, Firefox was far from the fastest and lightest. In fact, it was one of the most overloaded back then, but now it has better performance than Chrome, and offers many of the same features that kept me in Chrome until the last moment.

Firefox has a huge library of extensions that has everything you need in Chrome. Firefox even works with the Oculus Rift. Most importantly, Firefox is faster and more reliable than Chrome.

The migration was simple and easy. After transferring history and settings from Chrome, installing Firefox makes it feel like you've moved to a new home, and all your belongings are already in place. I had to spend a little time looking for some extensions and change the default search engine. For some reason, my Gmail didn't want to load until I cleared the cache. But with all this, the migration was painless. Much easier than I thought. Why did I delay this moment for so long?

Firefox, my old loyal friend, I didn't even realize how much I missed you.

If you are tired of crashes, memory wasting, performance problems, congestion, then move on. Just go over. You've probably already thought about this, and this post may help you make up your mind.

The problem described above is not actually made up. The internet is full of complaints about Chrome, but over time the situation does not improve, on the contrary, it gets worse.

This problem, by the way, is also relevant for Windows users. Your humble servant sometimes notices slight freezes and slowdowns of Chrome on a powerful gaming PC.