It's time to give Firefox another chance - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/29/its-time-to-give-firefox-another-chance/ <comment><USER3> I was extremely skeptical of all the changes they were doing - I said it myself 100 times, "they're just building a Chrome clone, they're killing all the features I like in favor of speed".

But here I am, running Nightly because holy shit this thing flies. Their work has paid off and they're not even done yet. Webrender is coming, it's not quite stable enough for daily use yet (mostly just graphics glitching and integration performance issues as far as I could see), but there's a lot of work being done and it's only getting better.

Their whole "Project Quantum" eliminated the UI performance issues that used to plague the browser and they're improving security sandboxing all the time.

To those who loved the power and control like myself, they still offer a ridiculous level of configuration flexibility and extension APIs - while no longer as powerful as they were - are still better than other browsers on the market today.

<comment><USER4> The amount of work, the extent for how long they've been doing so, all relative to the funding they got.. it's even painful to think about. Chrome shadowed them overnight, had Google infinite wallet and started from scratch. Mozilla became the old slug..

Since then they got Rust off ground, servo yielding good fruits, firefox cool n quiet.

Once again kudos.

<comment><USER5> That is not representative of either the time frame or the resources available to Mozilla. Mozilla has had Hundreds of millions of annual income through their search associations [1]. It's surprising how they've wasted that amount of money to finally in 2017 build a browser that can compete again. This is 9 years after google chrome was released!

They have absolutely no excuse for falling this far behind. They squandered a lot of money, while neglecting their core business (their web browser).

I still hope they'll keep it up. I have been a Firefox fan ever since beta 1. Hopefully they can recover their market share loss.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)

<comment><USER6> While Mozilla has had quite a few projects that didn't really pan out, I'm not sure you're giving them enough credit.

They developed (well... became the first and most significant major backer of) an entirely new programming language, purely for the purposes of building a better browser. And then devoted tons of resources for years into developing Servo, a massive and complex project that is only being realized now. I'd rather they think big and be ambitious like this, than be yet another stagnating tech company kept alive by former glory.

Also, it's unfair to argue that they have neglected the browser. Firefox is a massive legacy codebase that couldn't be cleaned up without breaking A LOT OF THINGS, and at every step in the process they faced people begging them not to break their things, despite the alternative being the continued rot of Firefox's internals. But they did try, for years, to move forward without breaking everything - it just came at the cost of glacially slow and cautious progress.

<comment> eric-hu > Firefox is a massive legacy codebase that couldn't be cleaned up without > breaking A LOT OF THINGS, and at every step in the process they faced people > begging them not to break their things, despite the alternative being the > continued rot of Firefox's internals.

I've made a couple small contributions to Firefox. Though I'd been a Firefox user for years, this never occurred to me until I looked at the source in 2015 and saw TODO comments to upgrade a C++ operation to something available in C++11 (that's C++ released in 2011) when Firefox dropped Windows XP support.

I was surprised at the time that so much of the code was ES6. My mentor pointed out that web app companies might need to wait a few years for users to mass-adopt ES6 browsers. On the other hand, Firefox can use ES6 everywhere in its own code where JS makes sense, since it's only going to be running on latest Firefox JS engine.

I think Firefox hit full ES6 compatibility first among the browsers because there was this extra incentive to modernize the codebase.

Chrome didn't have to build off of the Netscape source, so it didn't have the same legacy problems in 2008 that Firefox did. I think Mozilla has done a remarkable job keeping pace with Google, taking this into account.

<comment><USER7> > _I think Firefox hit full ES6 compatibility first among the browsers_

Wasn't it Webkit that hit that first? Whereas Firefox at the time was just 93%.

[https://twitter.com/webkit/status/728643624464883712?lang=en](https://twitter.com/webkit/status/728643624464883712?lang=en)

<comment> eric-hu You could be right. I tried to fact check myself and couldn't find a reference to which browser hit 100% first. I did see this article about safari shipping modules first, though:

[https://www.contentful.com/blog/2017/04/04/es6-modules- suppo...](https://www.contentful.com/blog/2017/04/04/es6-modules-support- lands-in-browsers-is-it-time-to-rethink-bundling/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Boy, I _really_ didn't want to swap to Chrome. I'd held on through about a year ago, even despite knowing it was slower, a memory hog, and so on; at least this way, _someone_ on my team was viewing our site in FF and would notice discrepancies. I hated to let Google manage yet another aspect of my life.

But as some point, too much was too much. Unable to bear vanilla, Google-owned Chrome, I ended up in (closed-source!) Vivaldi. It was...alright.

About two months ago, I tried out FF Nightly. And by god, it's the best browser I've ever used. And the Nightly builds are (typically) _more_ stable than production-issue from other vendors.

So very happy to be back! Mozilla may have their issues, but I'll gladly take imperfect and pro-user over differently imperfect and profit-driven any day.

<comment><USER9> > And the Nightly builds are (typically) _more_ stable than production-issue > from other vendors.

Yeah, I switched to Nightly a couple releases ago (I'd use Dev edition before that because in the past Nightly used to be really unstable) and it's been great. The only time I've been getting crashes are when I flipped stylo on early (which was to be expected), and a couple of random crashes here and there.

In fact, I've had _more_ problems in Chrome (Stable) these last two weeks, where their devtools hanged everything in multiple cases and Netflix wasn't working at all. And Chrome isn't my primary browser -- I only use it for Hangouts and Netflix (Netflix is force of habit, it works great in Firefox now). (I used the devtools because I'm using the new rewritten devtools in Firefox Nightly and they don't have a prettyprint button right now)

<comment><USER10> > _Netflix is force of habit, it works great in Firefox now_

Netflix doesn't work great in either Firefox or Chrome, but that's not the browser's fault. Netflix only streams 720p video to Firefox, Opera, and Chrome whereas it will stream 1080p or better to Safari, IE 11, and Edge:

[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742)

You can see the playback details (formats, resolution, bit rate, etc.) of the video you're currently watching on Netflix by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D.

I use Safari to view Netflix though I'd prefer to use Firefox. I'm paying Netflix for access to 1080p video, but I only actually get 1080p video with Safari.

<comment><USER11> > Netflix only streams 720p video to Firefox, Opera, and Chrome whereas it > will stream 1080p or better to Safari, IE 11, and Edge

Yeah, that's due to DRM.

The simple solution is to disable the EME plugin, and just pirate everything (while still paying for Netflix). You pay for it, and have a moral right to it, and you can watch it in 1080p or 4K easily.

<comment><USER12> If you pay for Netflix, you're paying for the right to watch anything currently available in their library. If you pirate stuff, unless you're careful to keep that library up-to-date with Netflix's, you won't have the moral right to it.

<comment><USER11> Well, that's an interesting question. If you've made a reasonable effort to pay, but have not found an option, some countries even allow you to copy without approval of the copyright owner, legally.

So this is a question that very much depends on ideology and jurisdiction. (I, personally, think that if I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime, I have a moral right to any older content, and if I pay for a movie ticket for newer content that's twice as expensive as a DVD of which the cinema gets less than 10%, I have a moral right to rewatch it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was very critical of Mozilla in the past about all their "science projects" like Rust. While I appreciate Rust, I thought it was wrong for Mozilla to be wasting resources on it, instead of focusing on Firefox.

I was so harsh with them only because I strongly believe that Firefox is my only hope for a free web.

But then I tried 57, and I must admit, boy was I wrong. This thing is fast! I haven't stopped recommending it to friends and colleagues!

Good job folks!

<comment><USER14> Rust was pretty much designed to solve problems for Firefox. It's IMO the best bet Mozilla has made these last few years and we're just starting to see them reaping the rewards.

<comment><USER15> How much Rust is actually in the new Firefox? I'm not seeing any based on a casual click-around in the repo, though I'll freely admit I haven't scanned the entire source tree.

Edit: if there is any, can someone give me a link to the part of the source tree that has it?

<comment><USER14> Read about the first bit of Rust shipping here: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/07/shipping-rust-in- firefox/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/07/shipping-rust-in-firefox/)

And many of the Rust things that make FF56+ fast can be found here: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)

<comment><USER13> Great pointers, thanks.

Do they also have any write-up on how did they find Rust during these changes? Was the back count lower than usual? Did the see an increase on productivity?

<comment><USER16> These components were built as part of the Servo project and then ported to Firefox, so you'd probably just want to ask the Servo team directly. You can find them on IRC, in the channel #servo on irc.mozilla.org.

There is [https://blog.servo.org/](https://blog.servo.org/), but it's mostly gradual updates on things, not a general overview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know what everyone's problem was with Firefox. I never noticed significant slow down with the browser, or at least the slow down I saw I blamed on Javascript bloat on websites these days (it started around the time Bootstrap and jQuery really took off). I was even running Adblock+ / later uBlock, had lots of tabs open all the time and browsed heavy websites.

I remember reading that comic that Google made to describe how Chrome worked back in 2009 or so, and thinking process-based tabs were a cool idea, but the experience I was having with Firefox was not bad enough to merit the switch, especially with all of the privacy invasion that switching to Chrome would have entailed. I also reckoned that Google would eventually start to block or make it harder to install add-ons like ad blockers - they are, after all, fundamentally an advertising company.

I'm glad I stuck it out with Mozilla. They're one of the few web companies worth trusting.

<comment><USER18> It was slow, janky unresponsive compared to Chrome. Also security was much weaker. I think they addressed some of the issues now.

<comment><USER19> I agree with the GP -- I never noticed this in Firefox and years back I was surprised to learn after the fact that Chrome had come to dominate in market share. Was Firefox less performant on Windows or something? I never really got what people were complaining about as a user of Firefox on Linux...

However, the new beta is purely awesome. I don't think I've ever been so excited about a new software version release! What a fantastic validation of Rust too in the process.

<comment> amiga-workbench I've used them side by side before and the default scrolling behaviour felt janky as hell.

I'll be very pleased if they have improved performance as much as everybody is saying, I want off the Google botnet.

<comment><USER20> have you tried waterfox ?

Alternatively have you tried enabling smooth scrolling ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It's no secret that Mozilla squandered a lot of time and energy on various > projects that went nowhere (think its mobile phone OS, IoT services, > creating a built-in video chat service, etc.).

The "built-in video chat service" is a webstandard. Called WebRTC, got mainly pushed by Google. Every modern browser implements this. Mozilla just decided to build a service which implements the server-side of this protocol. Which they needed anyways to test their client-side implementation.

So, the only squandered time and energy is that of the UX people that polished that server-side implementation up for public use.

And in return for that, Mozilla got excellent testing of their client-side implementation and direct feedback, if maybe people would want the Foundation to allocate some money to run such a service.

<comment><USER21> The WebRTC servers for the "Firefox Hello" service were maintained by Telefonica. Mozilla just built the front-end UI and WebRTC client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had tried to migrate back to Firefox so many times that I got burned on it and decided it wasn't worth trying again. Despite this, when I heard the Quantum announcement I decided to give it a download and immediately fell in love again. Photon looks great, the dev tools are wonderful, and it's Fast. And this thing doesn't have annoying Chrome idiosyncrasies - I can tell Firefox to permanently trust my Kubernetes cert without painstakingly adding it to the OS trusted certificates list. Firefox Sync works well and I like being able to send tabs to my phone. Speaking of which, you know what really rules? Installing plain old uBlock Origin on my phone. Which I did. I am loving everything about this and I really hope we're turning a new corner. Say Google, want to get Hangouts working in Firefox yet?

<comment><USER23> Curious, before this last time, when was the last time you tried to migrate back? Because I've been enjoying the majority of the things you've cited (other than quantum) for the last few years or so now.

<comment><USER22> A couple major releases ago. To be fair, most of this isn't new, but other problems had precluded my ability to move for a long time to enjoy these features. For example, the app we developed at my workplace was painfully unusably slow in Firefox (even slower than Edge sometimes!)

I also previously had problems with single tabs causing stuff to lock up or at least respond slowly. This happened with SoundCloud a couple times. Seems good now!

Nightly always helped a bit, but I had trouble with that too. This nightly has yet to crash once across the 4 computers and 2 Android devices I've installed it to, so I'm very impressed. I previously used LastPass which broke several times on Nightly builds in the past. Since then I've migrated to 1password, an unrelated but definitely pleasant change for using Firefox.

But mostly, boy those perf improvements are real. Side by side, it's hard to believe how fast performance changed between versions.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > the app we developed at my workplace was painfully unusably slow in Firefox

Have you considered addressing this bug?

<comment><USER22> From which end? FWIW, Quantum seemed to fix it. There doesn't seem to be a "bug," just stuff that used to be slow in Firefox. I think people understate how much faster Chrome had been for certain real world workloads.

Of course, the app is being improved too, but apples to apples, Quantum makes it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Never abandoned Firefox. Now what? :)

And please, donate to Mozilla, if you can. They _really_ do deserve some help. Fighting against giants like Google, MS and Apple... They have products running on all kinds of possible platforms, also on old Android phones! And they have some of the best extensions.

<comment><USER25> > And they have some of the best extensions.

Sadly 11 of the 14 extensions i use do not work on Firefox 57 (i just tried it). The browser is indeed faster - it feels faster than Chrome and Edge - <USER2> i never really had an issue with its performance. On the other hand i have a very big issue with the functionality that is lost. Stylish, FireFTP, Greasemonkey (with its own extensions), Better Reader, DownThemAll and a bunch of other addons are things i rely on almost daily (e.g. the internet became way brighter the moment Stylish stopped working :-P) and there are either no plans to update, no alternatives or the alternatives are simply way inferior (e.g. FireFTP is my favorite (S)FTP client for years now, i use DownThemAll for pretty much every download, i use Stylish themes in many sites to tone the sunburns down, i use Better Reader to make Reader mode actually usable, etc.

Firefox is sadly solving a problem i never had and in the process it introduces a problem that for me is a showstopper.

<comment><USER26> same with me. vimperator doesn't work on fx57, which means i won't be updating soon.

it's a _big_ dealbreaker for me.

<comment><USER27> They're transitioning _way_ too quickly. There is going to be scorched earth if they stick to the plan to stop supporting legacy extensions in version 57. Over 10 basic extensions I use no longer work and have no replacement that works with the new webextensions... there's not even the ability to export all cookies for wget -- they need to reevaluate their timeline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Firefox has been my daily driver for 2-3 years now. I'd switched to Chrome several years before that but when FF fixed its lag issues I went back right away.

Mozilla overplay the "not for profit" card but with Google you can be sure they are collecting and archiving absolutely everything that passes through their servers.

<comment><USER29> Firefox is fast but I'm using several profiles (one for programming websites, one for sysadmin accounts, one for personal, one for politics) and running ~3 instances is sluggish. Chrome has built-in profile management so it's just as fast with 1 or 3 instances. I don't believe it's such an unusual usecase, even my parents ask me all the time how to protect their privacy. A good idea that Ted Cruz might have missed.

<comment><USER30> Firefox has tab containers.

<comment><USER31> Now that I've used tab containers quite a bit they do require much more cognitive work than profiles. Having to always be aware of which tab container you are on rather than which browser window profile.

Maybe that's just me though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Firefox's strength was originally that technically astute people liked it and people who saw them liking it followed suit. They lost a lot of geek mindshare to Chrome when Chrome hit the scene, but I see this as a return to roots. People who know enough to understand the difference, see that very interesting things are happening with Firefox, and in addition it's not offered by the world's biggest advertising company.

<comment><USER33> Firefox was better than IE, but eventually, Chrome became better than Firefox for a majority of people. Silent auto-update, anti-phishing, sandboxing, extensions that "just worked". It also came with it's own flash plug-in, which was great for non-technical people back when Flash was relevant.

Chrome did a lot of things right and for a while, it was the browser I installed on friends and family PCs because it was trouble free and I knew they would always have the latest version installed automatically.

<comment><USER34> Well that, and paying every adware from here to eternity to bundle a Chrome installer...

<comment><USER35> And sticking 'Google service X is better with Chrome' on all of their sites probably didn't hurt either.

<comment><USER33> I would have problem with this if Chrome was total anti-user garbage, but like I said, it was (and still is) a solid product that brought forth a lot of good things for non-technical users, plus Chromium is open source.

Google is not a charity, so they used their sites to advertise their own product. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Edge, even on Windows 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just switched to Firefox beta to test this out. Looking good so far!

The other thing that I've been waiting for is better multi-profile support. You can get a (pre-release) version of that now by opting into the Containers experiment: [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers)

<comment><USER37> Firefox containers are heading in the direction, after using them for a couple of hours though I ended up missing the window-based system which Chrome uses.

I have one Chrome profile for my personal apps, and one for work -- creating a new tab in one of the windows will automatically open it with the same context as the rest of the window. My experience with Firefox was that I'd have to manually choose which profile to open the tab in.

1\. This required me to use my mouse (geh, maybe I could use keybindings to change this though? not quite sure how difficult that would be) 2\. I'm not sure if this is just a me thing, but if I create a tab stemming from my 'personal' gmail account there's a pretty strong chance that it should also be a 'personal' tab. Maybe this is just a difference in how me and the Firefox team use tabs though?

Once I figure out how to get around those issues, (and when Streak's gmail extension works on Firefox...) that's when I'd be able to move over.

edit: apparently Firefox has had true instance profiles for ages! awesome. now I'm just waiting on Streak lol.

<comment><USER38> I had the same complaints until someone told me that Ctrl + '.' opens up the container menu and you can use `tab` to cycle through containers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Switched to Firefox a while ago. I love it. My little tip is to go into add- ons > Appearance, and change over to a compact theme. It looks a lot better than the default theme imo!

<comment><USER40> Damn it, I was hoping this was going to alleviate my main worry with this new Firefox - the UI. It's so Microsoft Edge-ified.

I had more trouble finding this setting than I should have. Appears to be hamburger menu -> customize -> (bottom of page) density drop-down -> select compact. Still not sure if I like it. The tabs alone are still way too big for my liking.

Coupled with Ubuntu 17.10 and the Gnome that brings, the top of screen is going to be eaten up by way more UI than I would like. Is there any way to get Gnome to have a unified Ubuntu/application menubar like Unity?

<comment><USER16> You can shrink the tab height further with userChrome.css. [1]

Putting this into there should shrink it down a bit further:

      @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

      #TabsToolbar {
          height: 24px !important;
          --tab-min-height: 24px !important;
      }

Obviously, you can replace those 24px with even smaller values. it just starts to look silly at some point, because the icons get squished. There's probably a way to tell those icons to scale down differently, if you do want to go even smaller.

You can load the URL "chrome://browser/content/browser.xul" to get the browser UI displayed like a webpage, allowing you to easily use the devtools to inspect the different CSS identifiers, so that you can mess around a bit by yourself.

[1] [http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css](http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Firefox 57 is great. The interface is no longer ugly, and it's no longer oddly sluggish. Once Lastpass has their extension updated to work with WebExtensions, I'll switch.

<comment><USER42> This was what I was thinking, until three days ago someone mentioned here about Bitwarden. It's perfect, no more LP for me, you should try it too :) [https://bitwarden.com/](https://bitwarden.com/)

<comment><USER43> Why is it people never offer 1Password as an alternative? Sure, it's paid and slightly more expensive, but they have regular security audits and their apps on each platform are really well made and second to none. Their change logs are also always a pleasure to read, they even mention each bug by issue tracker number! Only problem is no Linux app.

<comment><USER44> Password managers are kind of a funny niche; the Venn diagram of people who use them, and power users, are probably more overlapping than most. I would venture that those (power) users want full cross-platform compatibility (Win, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android).

Additionally, it's probably not helping that their historical pricing model makes no sense for users who interact with many platforms on a daily basis. I didn't even know it had changed until I re-checked it after reading your comment.

Just my 2¢ as someone who previously considered 1Password once upon a time, and dismissed them. They may deserve a fresh look these days, but now they're competing against much more robust competitors than they were back in 2010(?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I use Firefox primarily because of the Awesome Bar.

I just have to remember like two or three substrings from an URL or page title and bam! the page is there.

For comparison, Chrome's omnibox generally only searches for whole words, while the Google search suggestions take up much precious space, while it is known that most web browsing is directed to pages already visited. Firefox's decision to keep the URL bar and the search bar separate seems sensible.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you'd like to try out Firefox Quantum on Windows without impacting your existing local or portable version, you can grab either the 57 Beta or the 57 Developer version in portable form from PortableApps.com. It's self-contained with its own profile and settings that are kept separate from the normal install. It doesn't require admin rights to extract it and try it out. And you can "uninstall" it just by deleting a folder.

[https://portableapps.com/news/2017-09-28--try-firefox- quantu...](https://portableapps.com/news/2017-09-28--try-firefox- quantum-57-risk-free)

</comment><comment><USER47> Switched from Chrome to Nightly as my main browser 2 days ago when KeepassHttpConnector [0] got it's 1.0 release. Speed is absolutely on par with Chrome (which is something I never had in my earlier tries, usually gave FF a chance 2 times per year). Had 1 full browser crash which never happened with Chrome (in recent years), but then I was also running stable vs nightly now.

I'm still missing one extension (Join for Android), but I can live without it for now and might actually just help joaoapps in developing it.

One thing that annoyed me was the large min tab size as I didn't like scrolling tabs. Someone on Reddit pointed me to the right userChrome.css tweak though [1]

Overall I'm pretty happy being back on Firefox after many, many years.

[0]: [https://github.com/smorks/keepasshttp- connector/releases](https://github.com/smorks/keepasshttp-connector/releases)

[1]: [https://github.com/Timvde/UserChrome- Tweaks/blob/master/tabs...](https://github.com/Timvde/UserChrome- Tweaks/blob/master/tabs/prevent-tab-overflow.css)

<comment><USER48> > I'm still missing one extension (Join for Android)

AFAIK Firefox extension is pending addition of push API support in extensions. Joao has filed a bug report[0] for that, but there hasn't been much activity on it for some time.

[0]:[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378096](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378096)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've been a Chrome user since it was first available. I've tried to go back to Firefox multiple times. When the containers plugin hit the front page a week or two ago I decided to try it out.

I'm not using the beta or nightly builds because I'm lazy. However, Firefox with containers has sold me and I've switched to it for everything except development. I'm too used to Chrome Dev tools it's been hard to switch :|

I absolutely love Firefox+Containers though. I just wish I could make it auto- open-in-container with wildcards. For example, open all *.mywork.com pages in my Work profile.

<comment><USER16> Mozilla provided an add-on API for the Container Tabs, so maybe someone writes an add-on to do this. Or if you want to get your hands dirty yourself, you can try writing one yourself. I imagine hard-coding a few URLs and respective Container Tabs wouldn't be that much work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Someone started a spreadsheet of webextension alternatives to addons [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU0GPoSmRqZ7A0VBvqeKYVSww/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER51> FYI the U2F key support landed in Nightly (probably stable in 58). Enable "security.webauth.u2f" and "security.webauth.webauthn" to enable it.

Of course, now it's up to the developers to allow U2F support via Firefox (instead of hard-coding it to Chrome/Chromium). I've successfully verified that it works on three different services that don't hard-code the support to Chrome/Chromium.

<comment><USER11> Works with all test sites, and most other sites...

...except for Google.com, which still hardcodes it to Chrome (doesn't even seem to work in Chromium there for me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Did benchmarks on an i7-MBPr (4 cores @2.7Ghz) and an iPhone 7. I'm aware that JetStream and SunSpider aren't about the CSS and rendering but I was curious:

                    Chrome    FFNightly Safari    Safari
                    OSX       OSX       OSX       iOS
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      MotionMark(↑) 348.82    190.23    474.55    295.12
      JetStream (↑) 166.84    173.96    239.03    171.27
      Sunspider (↓) 225.2ms   178.4ms   115.2ms   198.5ms

I was surprised about FFNightly's MotionMark result, so I did a second run which again returned a low score of 182.79. Maybe some could double-check and test this too.

<comment><USER13> Although benchmarks can be valuable tools for the developers, as end user I don't care about them.

What I really care about was that with previous versions of Firefox, my MacbookPro would start getting hot as soon as I would fire it up, and every page load would feel like a drag.

With 57, my Macbook is cool and everything feels snappy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> As well as the vastly better Firefox, I've been very impressed by the new Brave browser[1].

Actually, _extremely_ impressed. I normally do dev with Chrome for heavy JS (even compared to new devel edition ff) and even though Brave's devtools seem to match up to an older version compared to Chrome, page updates etc are just so much faster in Brave than in Chrome. Fast renders matters a LOT when you're developing. (Btw, there's a bug in the install script if you're using Brave on Debian[2].)

It's still early days and doesn't have as many features as FF and Chrome (in particular for me, Stylish is missing, but the privacy and ad blockers that I prefer are there), but, wow... rendering is faster than Chrome in the common case, or at least strongly feels that way.

I also like how they're focused first and foremost on privacy and ad blocking, but also make it easy to donate to your favorite sites in place of ad revenue. It seems like a balanced approach. Brave seems to be very similar to Mozilla with its strong focus on user privacy.

It's nice to see competition heating up in the browser space again.

1\. [https://brave.com](https://brave.com) 2\. [https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/issues/6902](https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/6902)

<comment><USER40> Maybe I'm missing something, but my impression of Brave was that behind the scenes it was just another Chromium browser. All the same little issues I have with Chromium were present in Brave when I tried it - exact same configuration tweaks (other than privacy stuff in Chrome) I needed to make to get me to a happy state. So aren't any of the visible speedups just a matter of the native adblocking? Are you comparing the speeds to Chrome/Chromium with adblocking?

Maybe Brave is more heavily customized than I thought?

<comment><USER53> Right, so it is definitely a fork from Chromium (or at least the devtools seem to match an older version of Chrome's), and agreed completely with regards to config tweaks, but I definitely see a huge speedup versus using adblockers (ABP+UBO+PB) in Chromium, including on local dev sites with no ads/privacy to block. It (at least seems to) render much, much faster.

Always take non-indie benchmarks with a grain of salt, of course, but given that their CEO is the developer of JS, it's probably not too much of a stretch to imagine that this is a true or mostly-true claim from their main website page[1]: "Brave loads major news sites 2 to 8 times faster than Chrome and Safari on mobile. And Brave is 2 times faster than Chrome on desktop."

I haven't tried installing chrome extensions in it yet, but if that works, then Brave is definitely my new browser. It seems simple and clean; a worthy successor to both FF and Chrome.

1\. [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I was using developer extension and it disabled all of my beloved plugins. I hurried back to the "normal version". How is the update of the plugins to the new browser? Will it go live with uBlock, Tree tabs etc?

<comment><USER51> This is the version that breaks the legacy plugins and switches over to WebExtensions API.

Add-on developer are still catching up, but I think that the majority will be ready for the 57 release in November. I tried switching maybe two weeks ago, and I couldn't, simply because of one extension that wasn't ported.

Looking around, and I was able to find out that they've been working on it and two days ago I've installed the testing version of the add-on and made a complete switch to Nightly.

<comment><USER16> There's a lot of add-ons that are unmaintained and those won't get ported. For those, you'll want to look for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I was a Firefox user since it was called Phoenix, and finally switched to Chrome in mid 2015. With the latest release, I finally feel comfortable enough to switch back. FF is a true competitor in the browser space again.

</comment><comment><USER56> As a Chrome extension developer with 500,000+ installs the number of requests for a Firefox version has increased enornmously the last couple of months. It seems that Firefox is gathering a lot of momentum recently.

</comment><comment><USER57> There are certain legacy extensions I simply cannot live without. Tab Tree is one. Are there any routes to move forward with legacy extensions?

<comment><USER58> Forward, not really. Mozilla has very much already used the opportunity to rip out tons of legacy code and so most legacy extensions are already not anymore compatible, even if you tell Firefox to load them.

And just as well, most of these performance improvements would not have been realistically doable, if Mozilla were still forced to not break compatibility.

What you can do, is to move to Firefox 52 ESR. It won't have the performance, but it has the legacy extensions and will continue to get security updates until June 26, 2018.

There's also some forks, namely Pale Moon and Waterfox, which seem motivated to try to keep this legacy extension system alive for longer, so maybe that works for you, too. Personally, I doubt they're able to. The old extension system was a major maintenance burden for Mozilla, so I can't imagine the far smaller teams behind Pale Moon and Waterfox taking that on.

Lastly it should be noted that Tab-Tree-like extensions will be possible with the new extension API and some implementations are already underway:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree- tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/)

(Not a tree, but tabs in a sidebar: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tab-center-re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> So torn by this.

I've always been a Firefox user and one of my favourite addons is Tab Groups. Unfortunately it will stop working with 57.

I'm really keen to update to 57 but until Tab Groups gets updated I'm going to be sticking to 56.

Please someone take over the dev!

<comment><USER60> It seem that there will be alternatives as people answered me in different thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15342731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15342731)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've been running Nightly for several weeks, and am _so_ impressed. It's fast, stable, and the combo of Containers and CookieAutoDelete (which allows you to set per-container rules) is killing it for me.

</comment><comment><USER62> As someone with lots of tabs (multiple hundreds) and windows (usually about two dozens) open in a session, I was very surprised and amazed how quickly the latest few Firefox versions started up. Before, there would be this constant fear of having to close the browser more often than every couple of months (due to updates or high ram usage, which also seems to have gotten better) because it would take several minutes of waiting idle until all windows and contents were slowly loaded and usable, whereas now everything is available in a minute or two at worst.

</comment><comment><USER63> Nice to see competition with multiple good options.

For me, privacy was always a large advantage of Firefox but now I also trust Apple, Safari, and Apple's privacy stance.

Honest question: what privacy advantages does Firefox have over Safari?

</comment><comment><USER64> I expressed fear in the last Firefox thread about losing my most essential add-on, Rikaisama, and it seems that the latest version of Firefox has officially killed it off.

However after a lot of searching I found Yomichan, which seems to be better in every way when compared to Rikaisama, but its fairly difficult to find. I highly recommend it to any Japanese learners looking for a replacement.

[https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/](https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/)

<comment> TD-Linux Thanks for this! Rikaisama had already sort of broken with e10s, and I had considered trying to port the Chrome version, but this is far better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Worth looking at this resource, which seems to suggest that Chrome still leads in some of the benchmarks, even in memory usage:

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox- quantum-bench&num=1)

Just one study among many, but, worth keeping in mind. Firefox is making strides, but Mozilla still has work to do if they want to stop losing market share. I say this as a Firefox user.

<comment><USER66> Most of those benchmarks are (directly or indirectly) benchmarks of the JavaScript engine. The few that aren't are instead benchmarking the <canvas> implementation or the compositor. The main speedups in Firefox 57 are in styling and the DOM which are more of a "feels faster" thing than something you can easily benchmark in real-world scenarios other than "how long does this page take to load?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This new UI is exactly what I've been waiting - I've been wanting to switch off chrome for the same reason I switched off of android - to simply diversify the services I use a little bit.

The old Firefox UI always felt old fashioned and made the adjustment that much harder.

This new version of firefox has been great - as others have mentioned it's really fast and the UI is simplistic with a side panel for bookmarks to boot.

Definitely kudos where kudos is due, looking forward to using firefox for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER68> I am not trolling, I am asking seriously, but who the hell cares about a couple of extra seconds of page rendering? As long as the page looks and works correctly in the end. But the features that Firefox drops in favor of doing browser equivalent of street racing with Chrome are not being replaced with anything. So far, I am pretty sure I am dropping Firefox once release 57 hits. If it is going to become a Chrome clone, I might as well use Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER69> I've stopped using chrome everywhere because of all the goodness in Firefox since 55

</comment><comment><USER70> I tried to like the new Firefox, maybe I didn't give it a fair chance, but it instantly disappointed me.I opened 5 gifs in new tabs and CPU usage rushed to 100% an all cores for half a minute.

But often it's the small things that make or break it. For me it was that HTML5 videos don't fullscreen to a new workspace on macOS like they do in Chrome or Safari.

<comment><USER51> Hey, if you've tried the beta or nightly versions, you can't expect them to be stable until the enter the stable version.

If you've tried the stable version, the stable version is still one version behind the changes that are coming.

I honestly recommend giving it a go again in two months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Firefox Nightly on Android has the best tab management work flow far more usable than Chrome ... have been using FF nightly on linux laptop for past several years and love how Sync seamlessly shares bookmarks and open tabs across devices ... in general I find FF uses less RAM and CPU than Chrome ... Congrats on the hard work over at Mozilla !!!

</comment><comment><USER72> Just downloaded and it's been super fast and beautiful so far, going to try it out for a week and see how it goes!

</comment><comment><USER73> Is there a seamless way sync all my Safari bookmarks with Firefox? I detest Google, that's why I'll never use Chrome. Would love to use Firefox on my MacBook. But I keep going back to Safari because it gives me an increadibly streamlined experience on all of my Apple devices (bookmarks, reading list)

Edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER74> I wish I could be as excited as everyone else re: the new Firefox. I've never switched to Chrome, and dealt with some of the previous performance issues. I dealt with these issues because of Vimperator, which as far as I know, won't work with the new version of Firefox. A real bummer.

<comment><USER75> Good news! It won't (Ok that part sucks). Good news it looks like the Keyboard API has approved.

[https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut- api](https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api)

This is one of the last requirements for having a viable product. cmcaine's working on replacement successor:

[https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl](https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl)

It still a long ways off, but its possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> SeaMonkey (mozilla suite) is the only web browser I have ever truly enjoyed using. I use the browser, email client, irc client, address book, and calendar every single day.

Extremely disappointed that Mozilla has basically given a big middle finger to the SeaMonkey/Thunderbird (comm-central) communities with the removal of XUL/XPCOM add-ons, necessity of multi-process, introduction of webextensions, removal of support for complete themes (show me a single Persona that doesn't look like shit), etc. in FF 57.

The reverberations of this decision are so stark that the SeaMonkey council has announced that it can no longer build off of the nightly mozilla-central tree; they're in the process of building RELEASES from the Firefox ESR branch. It's an absolute mess.

<comment><USER77> Very few people are bothered by the movement to WebExtensions, multi-process, or removal of complete themes. Many, however, have stopped using the browser as it has felt slow and clunky for quite a while now. The recent changes have actually attracted me back to the platform after a decade of using Chrome.

<comment><USER78> I am however one of those. While I understand the technical reasons for the switch I don't think it has been handled well. Extensions I rely on daily are going to cease functioning because the WebExtensions API isn't mature enough for the developers to migrate. Are they going to wait? Probably not... most affected will probably abandon their projects because FF rushed the transition and their user base is about to drop off a cliff due to no fault of their own. I would feel pretty abandoned.

<comment><USER16> They had to sort of rush it, because they wanted to rush out multiprocess, to stop the bleeding of users (which has very much worked [1]).

And then they needed to follow up with the switch to WebExtensions relatively quickly, so that extension authors wouldn't start porting their extensions to multiprocess and then after that effort have to rewrite their extensions to be WebExtensions-compatible. They wanted extension authors to be able to just directly port to WebExtensions.

And I do think that a lot more extension authors would have probably abandoned their projects, if they had just ported to multiprocess and then had to port to WebExtensions.

Also, a lot of extensions sort of just continue to function without active maintenance. Those are why it would have just as well been really disruptive to space out multiprocess and WebExtensions by a few years. Then we'd have to start over at 0 extensions twice.

[1] Multiprocess was rolled out in Firefox 48, on the 2nd August 2016: [http://netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpcustom...](http://netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpcustom=Firefox&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=200&qpnp=24&qptimeframe=M)

<comment><USER79> Developers can't port to APIs that don't exist. Mozilla holding to the November deadline as implementation has slipped hasn't helped them in any way.

Mozilla kept pushing developers to make their XUL extensions multiprocess- compatible even after WebExtensions was announced. At one point, they were going to keep the multiprocess compatibility shims until the WebExtensions deadline, but then they decided to start removing them sooner.[1] SDK extensions were mostly multiprocess-compatible already.

Developers are currently maintaining multiple branches of their extensions because 52 ESR is missing APIs and 57+ won't support hybrid extensions. Aligning the WebExtensions transition with the ESR cycle would have made things a lot easier for them.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/02/16/the-road-to- firef...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/02/16/the-road-to- firefox-57-compatibility-milestones/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I have said this multiple times, but I am going to say it again. I have always used Firefox and Chrome, side by side since Chrome first came out and I have never, ever, in all that time, even once thought that Chrome was faster than Firefox (or vice-versa) for my day to day use. Speed has just never been an issue, yet I see it quoted in almost every comparison between Firefox and Chrome...

Firefox has always been my main browser, with Chrome only used if required, although I generally have them both open. I am a heavy user of tabs and multiple windows, and Firefox eats Chrome's lunch in this area, while using far less memory.

Still, very good to see Mozilla back on track again and producing great browser software. Keep it up Mozilla!

</comment><comment><USER81> _If you're like me, you switched your default browser over to Chrome years ago and never looked back._

Why should I take browser advice from someone who doesn't pay attention? Especially someone who lauds the "simplicity" of Chrome...

I do love how fast Firefox 57 is though.

<comment><USER82> I think "never looked back" is more a turn of phrase than anything here. Obviously the author has looked back, otherwise he wouldn't be writing this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> About 80% of my addons might stop working with Firefox 57, seeing as they are plastered with the "legacy" label currently. If that happens, it's bye bye Firefox for me. This matters far more than some tiny rendering speed improvement.

</comment><comment><USER84> Thankfully I never switched to Chrome/ium; at first there were some FF extensions still not ported to Chrome that kept me from switching, then came privacy concerns keeping me away from it, finally when I was still running a slow machine as main PC and FF started to become slow and bloated it came Palemoon offering the same functionality at higher speed. Now Although I still run Palemoon on my main PC and all netbooks/laptops, I install Firefox on all customers/friends/relatives PC plus a basic set of addons for privacy protection (ublock origin + disconnect + https everywhere) and have to admit it got really better with time.

</comment><comment><USER85> I found Firefox very inefficient when working with large file says a 2GB file. It doesn't have filesystem api like Chrome does. There is no ability to do low-level create, read, update and delete (CRUD) file operations. For example, you cannot write bytes in the end of a file and continues to grow it. IndexedDB only allows adding and removing whole files. As the file size get big, the inefficient file handling will cause Firefox to run out of offline storage and the processing time will get longer exponentially as the file size increases.

Speed improvements are good, but the lack of basic features is what kills Firefox. It is not ready for heavy duty web app.

</comment><comment><USER86> I tried it again on my notebook having seen the Project Quantum dev edition announcement here. Initially impressed by its speed, I've been using it since (3 days I think?). I've found after a few hours it slows down in two very irritating respects -- scrolling gets very janky and reluctant, and switching tabs takes nearly a second. I suppose this may be due to an extension, but given I only use my notebook for work, I don't think I'm going to go through a process of elimination to find which one right now. Back to Chrome for the time being, but I like the current FF incarnation enough to give it another go.

<comment><USER87> Can you run the profiler [https://perf-html.io/](https://perf-html.io/) and when this happens next, capture a profile of some janky tab switching. Once you've captured a profile you can share it which gives you a link. Then can you file a bug at https:/bugzilla.mozilla.org and include the link to your profile and a description of the symptoms.

<comment><USER87> I should have said more about the profiler in case you're new to it. Let it run. It's overhead is really quite low. Then when you notice the slow tab switching or janky scrolling, you hit Capture Profile and that stops the profiler and loads the profile for you to view. IN that view you'll find a "share" button in the top right that makes the profile remotely available and gives you a link you can use to file a bug at [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org)

<comment><USER86> I will. I was actually intending to put Firefox aside for a beta release or two, but I've enjoyed using it so much aside from those issues that I think I shall persist for a while.

Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Tons of extensions don't work. My personal blocker is mouse gestures; the webextensions API simply doesn't support the workflow I've been following for 15+ years. Mouse gestures will NEVER work well on Firefox 57+, just as they will NEVER work well on Chrome.

Additionally, mouse gestures are completely broken on both linux and MacOS due to Firefox's implementation of right-clicking and that is not slated to be fixed before v57 releases.

Oh-- and there's no functional LastPass addon yet either. And 57 is in beta 4 and will be released very soon.

It is pretty fast, though. Good for benchmarks if not for actually using. Personally, I switched to Vivaldi.

<comment><USER16> 57 just entered Beta. It will be released on the 14th November. That's a whole 6 weeks still.

It also is not the end of all Firefox development. Just because it's not necessarily done for 57, doesn't mean that it won't get fixed or that it will "NEVER" work well.

It's also nonsense to make assumptions about what will work in Firefox in the future based on what works in Chrome, as Mozilla is introducing additional APIs that Chrome does not have.

If you're happy with Vivaldi, your thing. But there also is Firefox 52 ESR, which will continue to get security updates until the 26th June 2018.

<comment><USER88> Unfortunately many of my blockers, such as functioning in new tab and other internal pages and anywhere on the chrome of the browser, are WONTFIX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I switched from FF to chromium (not chrome), because I don't spend a lot of money on computers. I use fairly slow hardware and FF was very sluggish.

Sounds like FF Is making a comeback, I'll definitely try it out once it becomes stable.

</comment><comment><USER90> This has been nice timing for me as I've been looking to cut my ties from "being the product" with Google. I'm using the current beta FirefoxDeveloperEdition and am looking forward to the upcoming rewrite in 57 (59?).

Others have mentioned pocket's integration, but I can't wait to see the open- source code, I've already set-up my own Shaarli and Wallabag instances.

I'm still evaluating Brave and Vivaldi after being a long time (2+ years) user of Chomium. The only thing that's hardest to find is the separate identity management and Sync that comes so easily in Chrome/Chromium.

</comment><comment><USER91> My laptop is slow in general (Mac 2008) and I've considered Chrome as a culprit.

Is there any way I can easily objectively measure the impact from moving to FF? Like taking average memory footprints for a few days with each browser?

<comment><USER92> I can tell the difference in daily usage, where I would have to restart Chrome every day or two on Linux because of excessive RAM usage (I do keep a lot of tabs open, and simultaneously run IntelliJ IDEA among other JVM programs/docker containers), and I don't have to with FF 54/55+ anymore. Each tab in a new process became the default in 54/55 as long as all of your extensions are updated. I haven't looked back since.

I have tried switching away at points before this, and something would bring me back to Chrome/Chromium, but not this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I hate Chrome. Never stopped using Firefox

</comment><comment><USER94> Not much about privacy in the comments here, surprisingly. I'd have a lot more jollier sentiments for Firefox if they'd address the sort of issues exemplified here: [https://browserleaks.com/](https://browserleaks.com/) FF is my preferred (chromium 2nd) browser, but there aren't many alternatives. I'm not a dev, but my impression is that modern browsers are designed as advertisement and data-leak protocols with incidental browsing capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER95> Going to switch over to the beta for a week and see how I get on.

From first impressions though, I'm very impressed by how snappy it feels.

One downside is a personal site I host uses client side certs for auth, and that stopped working in Firefox (whereas it was fine in Chrome), turns out the Javascript fetch API needs you to structure the request like

`fetch(someUrl, { credentials: 'include' })`

So I had to go through the code to fix that.

Presumably this is a web standard that Firefox is adhering to, whereas Chrome is a bit more relaxed on this?

</comment><comment><USER96> I could never make the switch to Chrome in the first place. Sure, I use Chrome for the things it does better, like live editing of script in debugger, but Firefox was always streets ahead for customisation – both plugin- and preference-wise. I always found Chrome's preemptive tendencies frustrating, and its general "Chrome knows what's best for you" attitude intolerable for web development work. I also trust Mozilla a hell of a lot more than Google.

</comment><comment><USER97> I was just thinking I need to try Firefox again the other day.

We need to give Firefox as many chances as it needs because it's one of the most important projects on the Internet today.

<comment><USER19> Please do. There is something to be said for using open source technologies even when they are not the fastest or most full-featured.

And has Firefox on Linux always been more performant? Because over the years, as everyone else migrated away to Chrome, I never really noticed all of the things that were supposed to be so horrible about Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Does the upcoming Firefox start as fast as Chrome? Rendering was never what I had problems with; startup speed is literally the one reason why I haven't switched.

<comment><USER99> There's still that "Firefox is installing updates" modal that shows up the first time you launch the new version.

But after that bad first impression, launching Firefox 57 is _very_ snappy.

<comment><USER98> Hm, I just installed it. It's fine enough, it's just not quite matching Chrome or otherwise what I would call snappy (I have a relatively high bar for that). Though now my main problems with it are that my extensions don't work and Gmail threads appears way too big for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> More like it's time to quit firefox for waterfox which has the added benefits of removing most of the unnecessary crap (signed extension, pocket, telemetry, EME, profiling, sponsored tiles, data collection) and will not drop support for legacy extensions.

[https://www.waterfoxproject.org/blog/waterfox-55.0-release-d...](https://www.waterfoxproject.org/blog/waterfox-55.0-release- download)

</comment><comment><USER100> I am definitely willing to give it a shot but they need to fix the dev tools.

I'm on 56 atm in Windows 10 / 16 GB RAM / Core i5-3570K and for whatever reason when I press F12 to open up the console it is really sluggish and takes a good whole second to draw itself.

Does 57 solve that?

That said I could see myself just using Chrome for development and FIrefox as main browser. I did the opposite for a while until Firebug was phased out and Chrome Dev Tools became better.

</comment><comment><USER101> Can someone explain the difference between the process / thread architecture of chrome and firefox desktop apps and the implications of this difference? On MacOS Chrome appears as many processes named Chrome helper or something, whereas Firefox appears as a single process with many threads. Given that the two are trying to solve the same problem and are so superficially similar, is the difference in architecture surprising?

<comment><USER102> Firefox now uses multiple processes too. By default Firefox is limited to one UI process and four web content processes. Chrome will use roughly one content process per tab (though that's an oversimplification). Firefox's choice to use fewer web content processes result in less memory usage, but if a content process crashes you'll have to reload 1/4 of your tabs.

Both browsers use threads extensively within each process as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> AFAIK this quantum release was mostly about a new/better CSS engine, right? If this helps this much, I'm very excited for webrender.

<comment><USER58> The new (written from scratch) CSS engine definitely did give a big performance boost, but I'd say it was only about 1/4 of the increase from 56 to 57.

Another big factor is the new UI. It's partially just more efficient, partially uses animations to make it look faster / more responsive, partially enables new performance features, such as "tab warmup", which starts loading in a tab as you hover your mouse over it, so that it's instantly there when you actually click.

Then they're still benefitting from the new multiprocess architecture. A lot of performance problems can be solved by just throwing a lengthy task into a background thread.

Then the deprecation of the old extension API is also significant. The old extension API had essentially no abstraction from Firefox's source code, so Mozilla couldn't even really refactor code without breaking extensions. Now that that's deprecated, they were able to throw out big chunks of code [1] and refactor what's left.

I presume that made it a lot easier to work with the code and find performance problems, but also just in general, they put a lot of effort into fixing hundreds of smaller performance issues that taken together did make a big difference, too.

Not to mention that lots of those old extensions had performance problems themselves as well.

And lastly, they also just made sure that the right things have the right priorities. Your background tab is not as important as the tab that you're looking at and so on. Again benefitting from the multiprocess architecture.

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1347507](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1347507)

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> "It feels fast and light and I may just make it my default browser again once the stable version comes around."

"Is Firefox Quantum significantly better than Chrome? No. But they are on par again"

Well this ringing endorsement sure sold me. Anyone else? Bonus: you can mix your own Firefox Quantum using two regular Firefox Colas, some Jet and Nuclear Materials at any crafting bench.

<comment><USER105> Is that fallout 4 specific, or could you do that in fallout NV too?

<comment><USER104> Need the Firefox World expansion pack for F4

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447)

Looks like some interesting ideas on the user interface in the new Firefox.

Anyone worked out how to hide the tab bar with a single tab in 57 yet? (I'm odd, and I like to use my window manager to manage Web sites in windows.)

</comment><comment><USER107> The problem of firefox is not the desktop, it's on android where it really need to catch-up with chrome. I am not sure everything that was said here also applied to firefox for android. Also I would have done the speed comparison on mobile. The new UI of firefox and android is really ugly. It actually looks like you are in a webview.

</comment><comment><USER108> I'm a little confused on how they tested loading speed. I.e. they use webpagetest suite which is made for testing website speed NOT web browser speed. In other words it's being tested on live websites, subject to network latencies and what not? Doesn't seem like a very robust methodology. Am I just confused here?

</comment><comment><USER109> The battery usage on MacOS has been atrocious in Firefox 57. Has anyone else had this problem? Am I doing something wrong?

<comment><USER110> That's too bad. Battery on my work MacBook (and making my whole system beachball constantly, even with only a handful of tabs open) is what got me to switch from Firefox to Chrome ~6 years ago, and from there to Safari for even better battery life (and avoiding Google).

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> [https://pasteboard.co/GMJ4leH.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/GMJ4leH.jpg)

[https://pasteboard.co/GMJ4vn9.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/GMJ4vn9.jpg)

Still some problems to fix in rendering, u could notice upvote button rendered in chrome and Firefox above

</comment><comment><USER112> Chrome user from the early days of Chrome. I tried switching to Firefox/Safari multiple times. It was Chrome Devtools which was holding me back in the end. Now I use Safari for most of the browsing. Getting started with Firefox for everything else. I miss the floating bookmarks in Chrome though.

</comment><comment> j-pb The firefox team killed the ready to go WebSQL which could have also nicely standardised SQLite and pushed IndexedDB a standart thats broken and only half implemented across browsers even today. And ironically they still use SQLite for their IndexedDB implementation.

Never forgive never forget.

<comment><USER85> The Firefox team killed the ready to go Filesystem api, which could have also nicely standardized.

Never forgive, never forget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Wow! Just installed the beta, and it's great. Waiting for the LastPass extension now before it can become a daily driver.

Most of my monitors are high Hz (144 or higher), and the scrolling is definitely smoother than Chrome when there's plenty of images to be loaded. Like butter.

</comment><comment><USER114> Wait... I just downloaded 57beta, and loaded CNN and USAToday, two sites with terrible video autoplay.

Immediately upon loaded CNN, my fan starts spinning up loudly (2016 macbook pro). When I loaded USAToday in another tab, I had to just quit FF because CPU was maxed out and laptop was overheating.

So...?

</comment><comment><USER115> Does the latest version get video hardware decoding when it is stable? I like the new Firefox's speed but YouTube videos shoot up to 40–100% CPU usage while Safari's impact is so low the fan doesn't even spin up. Tested Firefox Dev Edition 57 beta on macOS High Sierra.

</comment><comment><USER116> I'm on Firefox 56. Is there a way to see if my extensions (and FT DeepDark theme) works on 57?

<comment><USER117> If you go to the add-on page of your extension there's a "Works with FF57+" if it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> Started using Firefox Developer Edition today. Ye gods, it's incredibly fast. Killer job, FF team!

</comment><comment><USER119> FF56 has a weird problem. It seems all keyboard shortcuts are extremely slow with a delay of several seconds. For example closing a tab with "X" is fast, but pressing "Command+W" causes several seconds delay.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

<comment><USER21> Maybe check the macOS Activity Monitor or top to see if there are any processes hogging the CPU.

<comment><USER119> It's only the keyboard. the same action with the mouse is fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I'm a bit confused. I can't tell the difference between normal windows and incognito windows. I mean visually, they have nothing that distinguishes them, at least as far as I can tell.

EDIT: And is it possible to block third party cookies?

</comment><comment><USER121> I hope they make it easy to rebrand their browser, just like webkit did. That way, companies don't feel compelled to develop their own code, with of course all sorts of compatibility problems that come with it.

</comment><comment><USER122> Firefox has been great for a few years, except I can't figure out how to get a good Windows touch experience. Is there an add on or theme anyone recommends? The touch points are too small and close.

<comment><USER16> The new Photon UI in Firefox 57 comes with a Touch UI. It's under Customize -> at the bottom "Density" -> Touch.

No idea, though, how well it works, I don't have a touchscreen...

<comment><USER122> Thanks for the note, it is much better for a touchscreen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> The only thing that is keeping me on Chrome is buttery-smooth gestures (swipe left / right to go to previous / next page) on a MBP touchpad. If they have that built in I'd probably switch.

<comment><USER124> Also, Chrome has proper two finger pinch zooming on touchscreens. Firefox just simulates ctrl+scroll wheel, which is 1. slow and 2. not nearly as useful for the user. But that's not something I use often, I gladly switched over to Firefox again, this new version is really something.

<comment><USER123> This is a deal breaker for me as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> On Android, the nightly build looks pretty good, however, GPU accelerated CSS animations are fairly choppy. By comparison, on Chrome or Safari, they're really nice and smooth.

</comment><comment><USER126> Can't agree more. Plus the developer edition is just great.

</comment><comment><USER127> Safari wait time to me is pretty much non existent already. Even if it is a bit faster, do I want to change browsers for an example 100% speed increase from 100 to 50ms?

</comment><comment><USER128> "Internt for people, not for profit"

This is a great slogan, but actions speak louder than words. Why hasn't FF implemented basic privacy protections and block trackers like Safari does? If Firefox is really "for people," this seems like an area they should be leading in. A cynic (like me) might suggest that it is because Mozilla has become utterly dependent on ad revenue for their survival.

Long gone are the days when Mozilla was funded by donations and t-shirt sales. There was a time when it was more than just a browser maker, it was the spearhead of an internet movement for open source. I miss those days.

<comment><USER129> I think that it's likely because Apple has much more leverage and their major source of funding isn't their browser. I could imagine a world where ad-based services started blocking/paywalling Firefox user-agents. Hopefully now that Apple has opened the door Mozilla is safe to walk through too.

<comment><USER130> You actually think that websites would ban Firefox' user agent?!?

<comment><USER129> Publishers are already treating adblock (not tracking protection) users far more aggressively than they have in the past. I imagine if the number of users that are hampering advertiser value went up by an order of magnitude that these publishers may react in a far more aggressive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> TBH, Lazarus Form Recovery was one of the only things keeping me on Chrome. But since all development has stopped, maybe the doors to Firefox have opened again.

</comment><comment><USER132> I am glad I never gave up on Firefox. Of course I did not give chrome a shot as I did not want to shift from Firefox. I never found it to be slow either.

</comment><comment><USER133> From what I've gathered, the new Firefox is fast because it makes better use of multiple cores. But is F57 still faster on a single core?

</comment><comment><USER134> I like 57 as much as the next guy and it's my main browser, but I still develop with Chrome, cause inspector is so much better :/

</comment><comment><USER135> for $BAR :: CPU, GPU, MEM, IO

What's the best way to visualize the relative $BAR usage of browser tabs in real time in the browser UI?

Could each tab have an instantaneous or averaging resource demand indicator shown? ...by a font modification, performance dial, color scheme, or animation...?

What's the best way to sort or select from all tabs, or a selection of tabs, by $BAR usage or a query on $BAR usage?

</comment><comment><USER136> Never left. Thanks for the hard work guys :D

</comment><comment><USER137> Is there a plugin for it to use Chrome sync? I'm way too invested in Chrome sync to lose it at this point.

<comment><USER138> What would you lose? You can just import the bookmarks and find alternate addons.

If you have passwords Xmarks isn't a webextension but you can use it on Firefox 56 and then upgrade.

<comment><USER139> FYI, it looks like they are working on a webextension version of Xmarks.

[https://forums.lastpass.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=266745&star...](https://forums.lastpass.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=266745&start=10)

This was a big relief for me, as it was the one extension I was really sweating on.

That said, I would love if there was a Chrome sync for Firefox, or Firefox sync for Chrome capability to sync bookmarks across them both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER140> Great to see all this work from Mozilla paying off. Never would have thought I'd see momentum like this.

</comment><comment><USER141> I never switched to Chrome and stuck with Firefox since Firefox is user pro and not profit pro.

</comment><comment><USER142> Wasn't there hate on HN recently for Firefox sharing data with Google trackers?

</comment><comment><USER143> If it's really that fast they should rename it "Phoenix"...

</comment><comment><USER144> Never switched to Chrome. Firefox worked just fine for me all this time.

</comment><comment><USER145> I rather think it's time to give emacs-eww another chance as well.

</comment><comment><USER146> Curious to see what results will look like versus Safari on macOS.

</comment><comment><USER147> I use Brave. It's by far the fastest browser in the market.

</comment><comment><USER148> Are the quantum changes also in the Android version of Firefox?

</comment><comment><USER149> How does Firefox's sandbox stack up against Chrome's?

<comment><USER150> Per [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox/Specifics](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox/Specifics) "The core of the Windows sandbox is Google's chromium sandbox" so I'd expect it to compare favorably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER151> I'd like to, but on Android Firefox is lightyears behind Chrome in many ways (including performance), and I get too much utility out of password/history/bookmark syncing between various devices to switch.

<comment><USER152> Xmarks is still around, albeit less capable than fully integrated Chrome

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> I actually set a reminder for Firefox 57 in my calendar...

</comment><comment><USER154> Tried chrome but never switched to chrome. What feature were you missing in firefox that made you switch to chrome.

<comment><USER155> What made me switch was the performance basically, from the beta I had never used such a fast and responsive browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER156> Is webgl still slow on firefox?

</comment><comment><USER157> Can you duplicate tabs yet?

</comment><comment><USER158> Can it use Chromecast?

<comment><USER159> Unlikely, and I doubt Google would ever allow it.

Chromecast is a closed protocol. There are SDKs for it, but you only have three options: Android, iOS, and Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER160> Lat time uninstall it when it drop support for firebug.

</comment><comment><USER161> And brave

</comment><comment><USER162> Am I the only one here who thinks that nothing can beat the Chrome debugger ? Nothing comes even close.

It's a different story if you are just browsing, like the 95% or more of the internet consumers.

<comment><USER163> While it's true the firefox debugger is lacking in certain areas, it's also better than chrome in others. Debugging CSS animations is much easier in firefox, but firefox lacks a way to look at websocket packets.

One thing I like about firefox is that its debugger is a just a React webapp : [https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html](https://github.com/devtools- html/debugger.html). So it's fairly easy to add to it !

<comment><USER164> I know the chrome dev tools are also just a web app themselves (or at least for the most part are).

I don't know the stack, but I do remember there is a way to open dev tools FOR the dev tools window.

<comment><USER162> > there is a way to open dev tools FOR the dev tools window

I did not know that.

<comment><USER165> Open DevTools > pop it out into a separate window > Ctrl+Shift+I (on Linux) > Ctrl+Shift+I ad infinitum > enjoy devtools-ception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea I never switched from Firefox. I have no idea why everyone else did. Chrome had fewer extensions, wasn't faster and was a huge security risk. I can't remember Firefox ever having a problem with speed. I say that as someone who is unhappy if a command line tool takes more than a few milliseconds to do its thing. I think all that happened is people tried Chrome because Google told them to, and they found it was faster because they had a hundred extensions in Firefox and none in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER166> I use Firefox, Seamonkey and Chromium in rotation to make sure that anything web-related I build works is somewhat cross-browser compatible.

While FF 57 is usable on my Thinkpad 42p I can not say it is twice as fast as the previous version. Maybe the speedup depends on having a multi-core CPU, something which is notably absent in this 2004-vintage machine. Be that as it may, I think FF 57 is about as fast as its predecessor in general: faster in some tasks, slower in others, notably slower in scrolling.

<comment><USER10> > _While FF 57 is usable on my Thinkpad 42p I can not say it is twice as fast > as the previous version._

I think their specific claim was twice as fast as Firefox 52 on one benchmark:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance- test/](https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum-performance-test/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER167> I've switched completely to nightly from Chrome over the past month. However there is one extension that's keeping me from uninstalling Chrome. It's called secure SSH or secure shell, and it's the best SSH client that exists on windows!

</comment><comment><USER168> I wish Opera got another chance. It was so fast. Faster than Chrome. But it didn't render some pages properly, so Chrome it was.

</comment><comment><USER169> Can't wait to see privacy centric forks on ff quantum. How long will that take I wonder.

</comment><comment><USER170> It's time to stop posting techcrunch

<comment><USER171> Seriously, this is a giant advertisement. The diagram of the jet engine with literally zero technical value is particularly egregious.

<comment><USER170> They did this to Jesus too, don't worry

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER172> Still comes bundled with Pocket. No thanks.

<comment><USER173> Even worse, it's a walled garden. You can't edit or make your own extensions without getting each change approved by Mozilla first. They say to use the alpha(dev) or unbranded versions but the former is unstable and the later has no packaging or language support.

<comment><USER174> Yes, if you want to run unsigned addons, you need Dev or Nightly. That makes sense. Not letting "normal" users accidentally install malware extensions is really good.

"is unstable" isn't a good reason to avoid it. I've been using Nightly as my daily (heh) driver for a long time. It's been awesome.

BTW, approval is really fast now: [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/09/21/review-wait- times...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/09/21/review-wait-times-get- shorter/)

<comment><USER173> > Not letting "normal" users accidentally install

I strongly disagree. Browser functionality for everyone shouldn't be gimped to protect a small subset of users from themselves.

>"is unstable" isn't a good reason to avoid it.

I'm not holding a controversial opinion in thinking that alphas are generally buggy for significant subset of the userbase. I get that it might work fine for you but there's a reason aurora isn't release.

<comment><USER174> "small subset"?! Most Firefox users don't install addons _at all_. The number of people who want to install addons from random untrusted places is really tiny.

Developer Edition is not alpha.

<comment><USER173> Well, you're wrong. Developer _is_ taking the place of aurora/alpha as the below quote from [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Firefox/Developer_Editio...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Firefox/Developer_Edition) shows,

>Firefox Developer Edition replaces the Aurora channel in the Firefox Release Process. Like Aurora, features will land in the Developer Edition every six weeks, after they have stabilized in Nightly builds.

<comment><USER174> Sure I guess you could call Aurora "alpha" (but it wasn't named "Alpha" for a reason)…

the point is, they're so confident in the stability of the "alpha" they're offering it as something to be used by, well, all developers. And they should be confident. In the last year or so, Nightly only broke for me _once_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER175> I wanted to try Firefox, but 2 hours into using it I had a meeting in Google Hangouts. Firefox no longer supports Google Hangouts.

Back to Chrome it is.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, that situation is a mess and should be embarrassing for those involved.

I can use Hangouts for simple messaging from Firefox, but as soon as we need to hop on a call I need to boot up Chrome. Often I forget and try to answer in Firefox just to get the error message. Then I have to start Chrome, login to gmail if it's logged out, wait for everything to load, and then answer the call. Ends up taking a fairly long time to answer an incoming call sometimes.

<comment><USER40> I'm really not worried about some downvotes, but am surprised to see them. How is it not embarrassing that as much progress we have made with web standards, a major feature in one of the most popular email services is browser specific?

There is no need to point any fingers, but I find it interesting that for years now we've had key players in major browsers sit around at conferences and talk up how much they're working together on standards yet this is where we end up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER176> Honestly chrome sticks around because: 1\. it's not bad 2\. CMD + Shift + C opens the dev tools and allows you to select DOM nodes. I use that religiously...

<comment><USER177> Ctrl+Shitf+C does the same thing in firefox on my PC

</comment></comment><comment><USER178> The beta seems pretty good, but after noticing some bugs im reminded again of one of the reasons I quit using Firefox in the first place: Tabs look fucked up on MacOS and some Linux themes, a fix exists, but it's been pushed back to version 58 even though 57 is still in beta. If you don't prioritize user experience in a web browser, then what's the point?

<comment><USER179> Do you have any further details on this? The tabs always looked weird to me but I don't know why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER180> I wonder what will be google's response. Faster chrome would be nice. And Firefox - it's still Firefox, with obligatory pocket integration, no full themes support. It's more a company culture than technology thing.

</comment><comment><USER181> I did, didn't work, went back to Chrome.

It was faster and had a smaller memory footprint than I remember, which was great. It also started stuttering on my macs every ~5 seconds or so. The page would just lock up. Couldn't find a solution. The only hints were to disable graphics acceleration, but those were years old.

On my windows machines it crashed, and crashed hard. Single tab has an issue, the entire browser crashed. Lost work.

No thanks FF, I'll try again in another decade.

<comment><USER19> > _No thanks FF, I 'll try again in another decade._

You should hope that you'll have the option to do so in a decade, or maybe by then we'll all be getting extorted by Google after they've strangled the open web to death.

<comment><USER181> Right. A bit dramatic, but I guess I'm in the same camp as the vast majority of other people out there who just wants a browser that doesn't get in my way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER182> It'd be great if they fixed the memory leak so I could leave tabs open for more than a day. at about 2.4 gigs it crashes. Edit: valid problems get downvoted. Great job guys.

<comment><USER58> That's usually a problem with one of your extensions. Maybe you can identify it through about:memory.

But good news, Firefox 57 will probably actually fix that. By 1) breaking unmaintained extensions for good and 2) switching to an extension API which makes it much harder for extension developers to make such mistakes.

Also, I don't know if this will be in 57, but extensions will probably eventually run in individual processes as well. And then you could just shoot down the process of the offending extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER183> Give Firefox another chance, after Mozilla recently announced opt-out telemetry? Give them another chance now that they're siding with the likes of privacy-ignorant Microsoft? The same vendor that keeps bolting on features that seem irrelevant to its user base, such as "assumed touch", app store etc?

Surely one would only offer Mozilla another chance once they have extended an olive branch, rather than a closed-circuit television camera?

<comment><USER174> Telemetry doesn't collect any private data. It's all performance measurements. I run Nightly with all the _additional_ opt-in telemetry flags because I want to help Firefox development.

<comment><USER79> Firefox telemetry includes a unique identifier and system information. The data Mozilla is proposing to collect includes what sites a user visits.

<comment><USER174> The proposed study would use differential privacy and no unique identifiers. (And presumably wouldn't include Private Browsing windows.)

Honestly, (unpopular opinion probably but) I'm really tired of this privacy- mania…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER184> I had been using exclusively Firefox for five years until six months ago but I prefer using Chrome now. Poor documentation, tons of telemetry, shady deals like Pocket or Hallo.

You can make Chrome more private and secure then Firefox with few command line options. Or use ungoogled-chromium.

do shell script "open -n -a 'Google Chrome' \--args --incognito --disable-sync --disable-reading-from-canvas --disable-voice-input --disable-system-timezone- automatic-detection --connectivity-check-url=" & quoted form of url204 & " \--disable-remote-fonts --no-referrers --disable-physical-keyboard-autocorrect --no-pings --enable-fast-unload --enable-media-suspend --enable-offline-auto- reload-visible-only --use-simple-cache-backend --aggressive-cache-discard --disk-cache-size=100663296 --proxy-server=" & quoted form of proxy_url

Checked Firefox 57/58 but can't confirm any visible performance gain. Documentation is lacking. And Firefox 57 has at the moment 58 extensions compatible. And it still has Pocket buil-in.</comment>


ASK HN: What about Facebook fund? - <AUTHOR>

I have read today about FaceBook Fund (http://www.facebook.com/fbFund), but I didn't understand if it helps build applications from idea or just help existing ones grow.
I have an application idea, it doesn't need a lot of investing but it's great and can grow to millions, does any one know about this program and if does it helps.
Also are there other program that helps build facebook apps from idea, or would I better begin to hack into it? <comment><USER2> The 2009 fbFund REV incubator program currently has ~25 startups, and the average funding amount is $25K (note: a few of our startups are non-profits, they do not receive funding).

In general, almost all of our startups have already built out a prototype prior to applying for funding. While we wouldn't rule out funding someone completely at the "napkin concept" stage, it's probably unlikely compared to the # of opportunities that already have some level of development.

likely it would be best if you build out some amount of relevant prototype to test your proposed customer problem/solution hypothesis.

that said, we are not planning to begin a new round of fbFund until next year sometime, so you might want to consider other alternatives as well.

for more info on fbFund, you can read details on TechCrunch here: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/facebook-names-first- cl...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/facebook-names-first-class-of- fbfund-rev-its-new-incubator/)

regards,

\- dave mcclure fbFund REV incubator program investment manager

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be more interested in the fbFund than others.. but if it's available for the next year also, then i would start and make some progress in my application and then turn a simple version public and show it.

if the idea is great and the application seems to be promising, do you think it will be accepted?</comment></comment>


America Needs a New Moon Mission - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-25/america-needs-a-new-moon-mission <comment><USER2> What it needs is something of that scale to galvanize the population around an idea of progress. Doesn't have to be a new moon mission (which might have the opposite effect).

An intense dedicated national effort toward the goal of a fusion power plant is one possibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree completely that our space program needs a new significant mission to stay relevant. However, I don't think going to space matters as much as it did last century. During JFK's reign catching up in space with the soviets was more than about going to space, it was about being able to defend the country. Today I think our new Moon Mission should be about solving climate change. That's an issue the country and world need to come together on to solve.

<comment><USER4> You're going to need to look beyond NASA for earth sciences for the time being - there's about to be a certain change in the US that has already said earth science research is to be scrapped.

The new moon mission will likely literally be a moon mission, as the incoming change has alluded to.

Honestly, not sure what the future is for NASA, other than perhaps the past, and a return to primarily propaganda rather than scientific activities.

Can downvoters please explain which of these facts they disagree with?

<comment><USER5> I doubt that the downvotes come from people disagreeing with you. Rather, I suspect that the "certain change" references are simply off-putting.

Trump. The guy's name is Trump. _Alluding_ to it, vaguely-yet-obviously, makes it seem like you're trying too hard to sound clever.

<comment><USER4> No, I was just trying to avoid the downvotes for a potentially viewed as anti- or pro- trump comment - I'm expressing no opinion on him, just an outcome according to his purported policies. I'm not prepared to say whether I think this is a good or bad outcome, just an outcome. Up to others to decide their own view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> America needs more schools and better basic education, not a moon mission.

So much absurd brainwash simply works because people are basically very uneducated, mostly on a level you might expect in Africa or in the middle age.

The results are obvious.

<comment><USER7> America needs and can afford to do both - better education and a space program.

<comment><USER8> you can only pick one. that is how economy works. no matter how exceptional you think you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> America needs simple, cheap, and routine access to space more than a moon shot, then the Moon and beyond will natural goals. Similar to what is occurring with our interplanetary probes now: cheaper, frequent, and reliable. These hideously expensive single shot missions were great in the 1960s to kick start things, but it's time to move beyond that.

<comment><USER10> "routine access to space more than a moon shot"

Agreed, but it's possible a moon mission may provide the basis for this.

Most NASA engineers in the 1960's were young, and led by hardcore dudes who lived through WW2 - they were the SpaceX of back then.

I worked in space science in the late 1990's and since then - there is a lot of grey hairs protecting their incomes, making sure they can afford to send their kids to Yale.

A more 'entrepreneurial' moon-shot, may be the shot in the arm the industry needs.

I understand that the technology may differ from 'cheap access' somewhat ... but it would also be a good staging type mission for a Mars mission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Instead of putting Men and Women on Moon or Mars or Jupiter's Moon, how about the new mission be "create environment for 100 spaceX like companies to thrive" I reject the premise that government should be creating these missions or setting these big audacious goals

<comment><USER12> The government is leading the way because they have NASA budget to spend on completely unprofitable, but scientifically interesting projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about a mission on the same scale but a little closer to home. Let's take nuclear fusion technology to the point where it's ready for commercial and residential power production!

<comment><USER10> I don't know why you are down-voted.

A 'national program' to back Fusion on the same scale that the US backed the 'moon mission' might yield much more for humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some of the justifications in the article are running against modern rocketry: Who really thinks we can mine water on the moon more cheaply than launching it from Earth on a reusable rocket? Remember that it's not just SpaceX aiming at much lower launch costs, it's also Blue Origin.

<comment><USER15> There are significant chunks of water ice on Moon. Evaporating and re- condensation of that water on Moon surface can be a cheaper and a _more dependable_ source than shipping from Earth.

Ideally, a Moon base should be able to produce key things, like energy, water, bulk building materials from local sources, and only depend on Earth for lighter-weight, high-tech supplies and machines.

<comment><USER14> Less ideally, a Moon base could be an uneconomic way of doing all of these things, eating all of NASA's human spaceflight budget. So after getting ourselves stuck with the cost of the Shuttle and the cost of ISS, now we'll get ourselves stuck in the cost of a Moon base that's less reliable and more expensive than reusable launchers.

The reusable launch thing will be proven out in 5-10 years, long before we could set up production on the moon.

<comment><USER15> I don't see a contradiction here. Reusable launchers bring stuff in from Earth. They are just relieved from doing water tanker missions. But, if there's need, they can definitely bring in some water, too.

A partly self-replenishing Moon base is going to be cheaper to run than the ISS that depends on constant resupply from Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Space mining and manufacturing could be a great focus for a "moon mission" scale project.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yet another obsession to 'put man somewhere'. Why this moon village could not be fully automated without human presence? I think this megalomaniac plans are choking real progress.

Human presence was needed in 1960ties, not in 2020.

<comment><USER18> And the requirement for humant to be present brought amazing amount of real progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why repeat something from 50 years ago? We should be ambitious. Our goal should be to visit and colonise the entire solar system. And we'll need nuclear propulsion to do this at any reasonable timeframe.

<comment><USER20> Alright, buddy, you pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't need a moon mission it needs a Mars mission. 'A Case for Mars' by aerospace engineer Dr Robert Zubrin makes clear why Mars is the only destination that makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER22> The amount of money that could be saved by performing lithography in the vacume provided by space would be enormious. Too bad the cost of geting up there is also... well... enormious.

<comment><USER23> I'd think space would be, relatively, filthy for lithography. Maybe depends where.

<comment><USER24> More filthy than earth, though?

<comment><USER23> Maybe, compared to a semiconductor fab vacuum chamber, especially as extreme UV is ramping up. Charged particles to deal with in space too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A mission to Mars is nothing but a distraction from the real issue(s).</comment>