So we all know about the infamous Chrome - the speedy, snappy browser that seems to be sucking people in everyday. Then there's this other browser who used to be famous - Firefox. It's now labeled as "bloated", "slow", "laggy", and other painful to see names. Once a star, now at the bottom of the pile. Even IE9 is seemingly better than Firefox! Will Firefox 4 ever trump those new stars? Or is Firefox (and Mozilla) doomed to become irrelevant in today's fast paced world?

My position: Maybe, still hopeful.
I've recently tried out a trunk build of Firefox 4, and I have anything but praise for it. It's horrifyingly slow, memory HOGGING (and I thought it was famous for being light on memory!), and very laggy in GUI response. It would even freeze for 5-15 seconds! (Something I've never seen in Chrome) I'm hoping that they're doing SOMETHING to improve speed. It's multithreaded, but they're not being efficient with it. Sometimes I would wonder when they would scrap the entire codebase and start out fresh, like what Microsoft did with IE9.

Anyway, that's my thoughts. What about yours?

I'm currently running Beta 6, and was running the nightlies. It's *AWESOME*.

Slow? Not at all.

Memory hog? Nowhere near what Chrome gobbles.

Random freezes? Haven't had any happen here, but it is a beta.

Laggy GUI response? Same as above.

Panorama? HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE GREATEST THING SINCE TABS!!!!

Also, IE9 > Firefox? Bwahahaha, no, not a chance. IE9 no longer sucks, but that just makes it mediocre. Firefox is still *good*

Lastly, Awesomebar >>> everything else. Not to mention that there still isn't another browser with even decent extension support (Chrome's *sucks*), much less the ridiculously awesome extension support Firefox has.

As for Chrome, it's still too unstable, hogs too much memory, and randomly om-noms an entire CPU core all to itself before becoming a sluggish POS. For short term light browser, Chrome is great. For long term, leave the browser running for hours or days, Firefox is still the champ by far.

I agree with Kllrnohj. I've never had any of the problems you're talking about in all of my years with Firefox.

Also, albert, you're the only person I've ever heard say anything like that about Firefox. I never hear anyone else complain about it.

From a web designer's perspective? Firefox cares a wee bit more about standards than IE does.

Man, why am I even being polite? IE can go straight to Hell. End of story.

Kllrnohj: Awesome? Sure, if you're running with a nice GFX card and a decent, multi-core CPU. But for the rest of the world, like me, they only have a mediocre computer (Celeron's popular, despite it's suckiness). And sucky memory too. And guess what? Firefox lags it horribly. FF2 was interestingly FAST, but it ate memory. FF3 became slower, but lessened on memory usage. FF4? Slower and eats more memory.

If you're not using a slow computer, you're not seeing the slowness.
Chrome is shockingly snappy on this one. If it wasn't for the snappiness, I wouldn't have made the switch.

Tab candy? Pure awesomeness. But that doesn't make much of an effect if the whole GUI locks up for 5-15 seconds.

IE9 not good at all? Come on, it was enough to elicit a positive review from many people, including tech blogs. And the raw data shows their speed trumping FF4's speed. And people like the new GUI too. How is IE9 not good?

Awesomebar is AWESOME. I hate Chrome's suggestion bar - it never gives me websites I want, just some random page I happen to visit a lot. Firefox actually gives me the relevant page. If I type random keywords, it'll find the page. Nice, eh? Chrome definitely sucks there.

In the end, it really comes down to usability for the masses. It's great for memory, but if it's not fast, it's not going to get anywhere. Think of it this way: would you rather eat a soggy, nasty hamburger with tasty condiments, maybe even interesting? Or a non-soggy, normal hamburger with just ketchup?

Mufin: I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Look at the browser usage stats, whether it be Netcraft or others. I'm pretty sure millions agree, especially with that growing market share of Chrome, and stalled/decreasing market share of Firefox.

In the end, it's all about the speed. If it's not snappy fast, lags 10 seconds, and acts slow all the way, Firefox will become that kid in the corner who failed.

For the record, I'm a fan of Firefox, and hoping that Firefox 4 will be an awesome release. I'm probably the only few people to stare at http://arewefastyet.com/ and https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/2010-09-28. I see some progress, but from the painful experience of using the trunk builds (from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/), it's not looking pretty. Even the guys MozillaZine are somewhat skeptical themselves.

Weregoose: You're wrong. Microsoft should go to hell, along with IE.
And Firefox is a LOT more dev friendly than Chrome or IE. Chrome doesn't even let me use my LOCAL (on the HDD) Javascript.

What the hell are you talking about? No one that I talk to called Firefox bloated, slow, or laggy, and it's only your opinion that IE9's better. This paragraph reads really weirdly; did you pull it from somewhere? And Chrome has plenty of speed and bloat problems of its own.

Hehe, it's just a random thing my little brother invented

And I don't think IE9's better, but others do. I think Engadget wrote in favor of them, but idk.

Are those people you talk to owning high end PCs? (I have a speedy Core 2 Quad that makes anything you put on it fast) The case here is mr slow laptop (Celeron). If I ever get a chance, I'll show you the horrors via screencapping (with camera, not software). Not pretty.

Chrome is bloaty with memory, but is certainly VERY fast. Even my dad doesn't complain. (And yes, he calls Firefox slow and bloated for good reasons)

Opinions are easy and fun, and yet research can be at odds with one's worldview; how much of that field work you're willing to put in should be dependent on how far apart from reality you want to let your arguments drift.

Here's a reasonable procedure for getting a point across: after an accusation, explain what—apart from your thoughts, creatively peppered though they may be—might legitimately make it so. If this simple task tends to generate tripe, excuses, or anything that is largely emotionally-fueled, then it's likely that you don't have the proverbial leg to stand on for the sake of upholding that particular argument, in which case the amount of persistence that you feel you ought to commit should depend on how earnestly you want to risk potentially screwing with the worldviews of those who haven't positioned themselves responsibly enough to consider otherwise.

K-Meleon: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

As an aside, I don't believe that gratuitous all-caps help to validate anything. (Totally directed at Kllrnohj.)

I reckon it's really got to the point where picking a browser is now down to personal preference rather than technical merit. They're all generally fast and standards-compliant enough. For my needs I'm yet to find anything that's as good as Opera, so that's what I use.

I'm totally a FireFox fan all the way, and it works fine on my Netbook(takes a few seconds to start, but that's about it). I feel for you though if you can't afford a computer as fast as you need for what you do. I've been struggling to run StarCraft II on low settings and it takes 20 min. to load each map.

from my experience as a web designer, and from experience on many different computers, Firefox is way better on everything but netbooks.

firefox on a netbook is painfully laggy, and thats the only reason i used chrome. other then that i am Firefox all the way

when i am developing websites, i design them on firefox, make some slight changes to make them work for webkit, and then do what i can for ie.

ive run all the browsers out there and this is my experiences

Netbook - Intel Atom HT 1.6GHz
Firefox- painfully slow. took probably 3 min just to start up. switching tabs or even scrolling would make the whole browser lock up for seconds at a time. not to mention the random unresponsiveness.
IE8 - OUt of the question
Chrome- Very nice, started fast and stayed responsive. i would often start this browser up to use while waiting for firefox to load..


Toshiba Laptop - 5 years+ old, intel Pentium M 1 core 2.18GHz
Firefox - Great. i used this computer for web design for a long time so this was my main browser. very speedy for me, all but the start up times.
Chrome - fast, but i had no reason to use it. unstable.
ie7 - used only to test stuff
safari - okay. used it some, but firefox was better.
opera - a good broswer, but once again, no reason to use it. not as great of css3 support.

MSI Gaming notebook - core i7 4 core 8 threads 1.6GHz - 2.8 Ghz
Firefox-Awesome browser. very responsive, no freezing at all. i can run 50 tabs in multiple windows without any problems. even firefox 4 is good, but don use it often for lack of extension support.
Chrome - nice, starts the instant you click it. use it often, but as more so i can have multiple brosers running.
ie9 - MS may finally be catching on, but they are still way behind


So there is my experiences, if you are on a nextbook, chrome may be the way to go. if you are on anything else, use firefox. chrome is a light browsers for light computers. firefox is slightly heavier but you get a much more stable experience, and you can have all the extensions you want, plus, everything will look right and things will just work.

if you want to see my full review on them look Here/ keep in mind that it is a little outdated now

Rhombus, I run Ubuntu on my Atom N270 netbook, and Firefox runs much more speedily than other browsers that I tried. I think the real problem is that you're running Windows on a netbook.

I must be using a different version of Firefox to you, then, Kerm as it has always run significantly more slowly than any other browser on any PC I've used. I don't install extensions. Maybe the British English translation slows everything down?

this is true. i forgot to mention that. Firefox on a ubuntu netbook runs very nicely

Hehe, sarcasm? I don't always go for raw speed in a browser; for example, I'm sure Chrome would go faster than Firefox on my quad-core, 8GB desktop, but in the few hours that I remember trying it a long time ago, its memory requirements were somewhat unacceptable. Firefox did indeed outpace other browsers on Ubuntu on my netbook, though, probably because it's been tweaked and compiled specifically to work well on the platform, whereas other browsers have not.

I stick to chrome, it is alot faster and convenient

Firefox is unbelievably sluggish compared to the other 4 browsers on my laptop, beating out only IE 8 when I boot into Windows. The only reason I keep using it is for ABP + XMarks.

*Chrome *a lot *more convenient *convenient.

What do you mean by "more convenient"?

I spelt convenient right

anyways, by that I mean it is simpler, unlike with Firefox and IE, it doesn't have huge toolbars and such

Yeah, but you forgot the period at the end of the sentence, and indeed the two sentences here too. Firefox can have as few as one toolbar if you want, and Fx4 in particular allows you to only have the tab toolbar if that's what you want. I'll agree that IE has tons of toolbars though.