Firefox Quantum is surprisingly good
Since people keep raving about it, I took the Firefox Quantum Beta for a test drive today. The final version is supposed to be released in November. Like many people I’ve switched from Firefox to Chrome many years ago. I tried Firefox out a few times again over the years, but aside from the speed issues I just much prefer the Chrome developer tools, so I always went back to Chrome.
However, since Firefox Quantum is supposed to be twice as fast as the current Firefox and therefore faster than Google Chrome, I had to check it out. The browser itself feels snappy, but honestly I rarely see slow websites, even on my Mac Mini which is not exactly a fast computer.
The only exception is sites with lots of Gifs. So I put Firefox to the test on Tumblr’s Gif page, which always made Chrome stutter while scrolling on my Mac Mini. And no, I don’t use Tumblr, but it’s the only site I can think of that I’ve seen where I would have wanted a faster browser.
And the result with Firefox Quantum is… Amazing! It handles the site without a hitch. Smooth scrolling all the way, even after scrolling down many pages full of Gifs.
Looks like they really did a great job of optimizing here. All the sites I tried were really fast. I didn't try any benchmarks myself, they've already been done, yes it is even faster in those, but I personally prefer to see the results on actual websites I might use, benchmarks can be misleading.
Like I said, I prefer Chrome’s developer tools so I don’t know if just more speed is going to make me switch to Firefox any time soon, but I’ll keep trying it out for a while, who knows, maybe I’ll even get used to the Firefox developer tools :)
I do love the screenshot function, which lets you easily take screenshots of websites and even upload them and host them on a Firefox website with just a single click. By default the screenshots get deleted after 14 days, but you can change that to hours, day, weeks, years or even indefinitely. The pictures in this post were actually made using this screenshot function and are hosted on Firefox’s new screenshot website.
If you have already tried the browser out yourself, I’d love to hear about your experience with it. Do you like it? Enough to switch from Chrome or whatever browser you are currently using? Or did you always use Firefox? Tell me in the comments!
You can download Firefox Quantum Beta here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/
A faithful Firefox user, I was always irritated how it slowed the system down, being open for more than an hour or a few. Could you tell if they fixed that?
I can't tell you how it compares to the last Firefox version since I didn't use that, but I haven't noticed any slowdowns yet and I've been using it all day every day since I wrote this post, so four days now. 0.01% CPU usage when it's in the background, 722 MB physical RAM with two tabs open right now. It might also depend on what OS you are using, I'm on macOS High Sierra, your mileage might vary on Windows.
Here, at work I still have Windows XP (which I like, actually).
Not sure if this newest version even supports it.
It is good to see that this newer version is getting off to a good start. Code efficiency and a solid user experience will prove super important in helping Mozilla regain ground it lost to Google's Chrome browser over the years. Thanks for sharing your findings.
And it cannot be stressed enough how important that is. We don't want a repeat of the Internet Explorer fiasco which arguably held the Internet back for a decade because its market share was so big that nobody could compete with it and therefore Microsoft de facto controlled the web, without any real competition, which meant there was less market incentive for them to do a good job.
And I'm not saying that to rip on Microsoft either, it always end badly when one organization has that much control, it would have been the same with Google or Mozilla I'm sure. So no matter which browser you like, be it Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, wish the other two good luck, it'll be better for you as a user in the long run.
Funny, I have stuck to FF because of it's developer tools as well. Are you speaking of the integrated tools or the extensions?
I know, I think generally people prefer the Firefox dev tools, I'm the odd one out who doesn't. I tried both the integrated dev tools and Firebug. But that was years ago. The dev tools in Firefox Quantum look actually nice. I'm going to try them out soon on my projects and see how it goes.
I might actually switch to Firefox now, I'm really liking it so far. I've been using it as my main browser since I wrote the post and only go back to Chrome once in a while since I haven't imported all my bookmarks and passwords yet (my Chrome is always a mess, I bookmark way too much, been using Pocket on Firefox now for sites I just want to remember but don't visit daily).