Perhaps my experience or usage of the browser was different from most, but I would not characterize my experience with Firefox pre-Quantum as "slow and buggy". I rarely noticed bugs and it always seemed to be as fast as Chrome was. Granted, I did have ad-blockers installed and I never ran benchmarks but I never noticed much of a difference.
Firefox was slower than other browsers at the time. A lot slower, and buggier. There are plenty of benchmarks. I’m a Firefox user now, but before Quantum I didn’t touch it because it really was terribly dated.
I've been a consistent Firefox user since the days of 3.5, and only Firefox at that. Before Quantum it was noticeably slower than the competition; even Internet Explorer, let alone the people I saw using Chrome on comparable hardware.
I’ve been using Firefox since the Quantum version is out. It feels slightly slower to Chrome but it's negligible to me. Otherwise I can't tell a difference (except some heavy web based Office like solutions screaming 'Your browser is not supported!' but actually works fine).
I wish I had your experience. But I switched from Chrome when Quantum came out, and it felt like a big downgrade in performance. And I feel that is still the case these days when comparing Firefox and Chrome. Granted, I hadn't used Firefox prior to the Quantum release for a long time because of the performance so I likely didn't notice the improvement as you did.
I just wish it was better, because while it does get annoying at times, I do want to support Mozilla :-/
I have been using Firefox, and only Firefox, on the desktop since before Firefox 1.5 (released in 2005) and Firefox has had plenty of performance issues over the years and still have some. The performance issues still reaming after the Quantum release are mostly caused by shitty websites who only optimize their crappy code just enough for it to work in Chrome. A couple of culprits which slow down my browser significantly are Trello and Twitch. Another issue is that 3D acceleration does not work well on Linux so it is disabled by default and often cannot be enabled without compromising the stability.
Before Quantum on the other hand I had to regularly restart Firefox since it seemed to slow down over time and hog all of my CPU no matter if I had many or few tabs and no matter if I closed tabs so I am not surprised many got burned by Firefox and how it could not handle today's bloated websites until Quantum. The UI also got jankier and jankier the more CPU Firefox started using.
Chrome probably has had its own performance issues but I cannot comment on them since I have not used it much other than on mobile.
My experience with Firefox quantum was the opposite. Ff became immediately faster and more useable. Experience seems to vary by hardware, sites, and add-ons.
That's been my experience/preference as well. In fact I have been very taken aback by all the "Firefox is back" and "time to try Firefox again" headlines. I guess I didn't realize what sort of exodus occurred when chrome came out. But honestly, I never ran into performance issues with Firefox over the years and various versions, including the overhaul with Firefox 3.
I typically have 2-8 tabs open (hasn't changed much over the years). Maybe other usage patterns used to cause problems... Also worth noting I was always on Linux; maybe Windows/Mac versions weren't as good?
When quantum came out, I didn't personally notice a big performance improvement in terms of user experience (though I don't doubt it's there, and I don't watch CPU/MEM constantly). I've seen these headlines and have just been thinking to myself "but it's always been good!"
I switched for that exact reason - Firefox was starting to become really slow. After a few years of exclusively using Chrome, Firefox (thanks to Quantum) became my default browser again. It still sometime feels slower than Chrome, especially on Google sites (YouTube and GMail are incredibly slow). But that could just be my current pc starting to show its age.
These are all just anecdotes. I use a low-end laptop from 2010 and Firefox works fine on it. I switched to it from Chrome years ago when they removed some functionality (I think it may have been the backspace to go back but it may have been something else) and I didn't notice any performance issues. If anything it got faster with the Quantum update though I haven't used Chrome since so I don't know how they compare.
I wonder if the "new" Firefox is about as good on old PCs as Chrome as it improved quite a lot with Quantum/Photon. For me the switch to Chrome was also caused by the abysmal performance of Firefox at the time, but I immediately switched back when the performance was at least tolerable. Granted Chrome is still the faster browser from what I've seen in benchmarks and reviews.
I use both daily and both are fine when it comes to speed. Where chrome shines over firefox quantum is in blocking ads. I use uBlock Origin on both and yet I see some sponsored ads on firefox while I see nothing on chrome. It's not a deal breaker but an occasional annoyance that I can live with.
I agree, to me Firefox and Chrome were both seemingly to the naked eye for me at about the same speed but now I notice some pages Chrome chokes up on Firefox just keeps on rolling along. As for the Quantum comment, I just think of Nuka Cola Quantum and it amuses me a bit, but maybe I just play a little too much Fallout 4.
Our particular web dev workflows likely differ, but I really didn't notice much difference when I switched from Chrome to Firefox with their Quantum release.
You're making a significant assumption there. Let's not pretend that people only switch to Chrome because of some perception about performance. If that were the main or only reason, shouldn't lots of people have switched to Firefox later, if Quantum made it so much faster?
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