Firefox is slower, not because it’s worse, but Gecko is a minority engine in the web (~3-4%) and because of this the most webs are optimized for Blink. That is the only reason and because most current Browsers are using it, a devils circle. The result of leaving Google hands-free for too long and that for 20 years the number of available engines has remained stagnant (3 and some testimonial exotic forks) because it is the most complicated part of a browser. Little can be done now.
Well, Apples WebKit is even worse than Gecko, as a small consolation for FF users.
Maybe not the best image to use. Sheep bleating on about Firefox.
This might be known already, but I bet that Microsoft decided to switch Edge to Chromium instead of forking Gecko/Firefox because Google either bribed them or threatened to lower Microsoft sites’ ranks in search results.
Otherwise why would MS use a web browser controlled by one of their very few competitors?
Edit: maybe they were enthralled by the promise of using Proton/Chromium based “desktop applications” (which just contain an entire Chromium browser in their install directory) to cheaply create apps that people are forced to use in their jobs, like Teams. Which is still awful even after they made it a full UWP desktop app. Like Skype already was.
I have been on the firefox train since it was new. I witnessed the rise of Chrome and Chromium, and never really felt the pull, and worried about everyone targeting the same platform. Figured I’d stay on FF until I had no choice. Don’t see myself leaving.
Figured I’d stay on FF until I had no choice. Don’t see myself leaving.
i’m in a similar boat and given the overwhelming majority popular use of chrome, it feels clear to me that firefox will eventually stop working and i wonder what surfing will like like for me in the future.
i suspect i’ll have to go back to use chrome again.
Shame YouTube and other sites are completely fucked on Firefox.
Wym? Youtube works just fine for me with uBlock Origin. Very rarely there’s some wonkiness but nothing unbearable.
I’ve got uBlock and Privacy Badger but turning them off or going incognito doesn’t help at all. The most common issue I get with YouTube is the video keeps freezing. Apparently this is because Google deliberately fuck it so that other browsers have to play catch up constantly. I have heard this is why Microsoft gave up and adopted Chromium.
The other issue is that if I open more than one YouTube tab my laptop sounds like it is about to take off into space. I can have an unlimited number of tabs from any other website open though.
Sounds to me like some hardware issue, I’ve literally never experienced any of this in the last 5 years on Firefox. My guess is considering it works fine with other browsers the graphics drivers are a bit wonky, or maybe Firefox is falling back to software rendering for some reason. Are you using Linux or Windows?
Are they? I watch YouTube on Firefox all the time, seems fine on my machine.
I think maybe 5+ years ago there were some performance issues caused by YT relying on features that were only implemented in Chrome, but I don’t recall having any issues wrt that for years.
I wouldn’t say “completely fucked”, but for a few years I noticed YouTube on Firefox has this occasional quirk where videos will quit playing and infinitely buffer at the exact same timestamp. Like there’s no way around it except skipping about 30 seconds ahead with the seek bar, or doing a Ctrl-F5 (hard refresh) and starting the whole video over. Opera GX doesn’t seem to have this problem at all.
But it’s still not a big enough deal to make me give up Firefox completely.
