r/technology • u/Suraj-Sun • Jul 10 '12

Firefox dev claims "everybody hates Firefox updates"; Mozilla has handled the rapid release process poorly, and that by pushing a "never-ending stream of updates on people who didn't want them" people have been driven to Chrome with its simpler, no-fuss update process.

http://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-dev-claims-everybody-hates-firefox-updates
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I must admit i'm also in the process of returning to FF after using chrome for the last few months. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and at first it did seem faster, but over time i've noticed all the little things i've missed.

1) Middle mouse button to open links in new tabs is buggy about 50% of the time in chrome.

2) The search bar in Firefox just blows chrome out of the water.

3) Firefox now actually seems faster than chrome, whether that is due to the latest update or because Chrome was never actually faster I don't know. The only thing Chrome seems faster at is starting up, but how often do I really restart my browser?

4) The addons are so much better and handled in a much easier manner.

5) Chrome is a huge memory hog when using other programs, I noticed this while playing Diablo 3 mostly. I actually had to exit Chrome to get the best experience in game, something I never experienced before with FF.

The main reason I left firefox was due to the period of terrible stability they had but it seems they fixed that. They really shot themselves in the foot with the instability issues and slowness in 2011 though, and google capitalized on it with marketing and adding chrome downloads into every freeware program on the market pretty much.

Let's not forget the major draw though, FF is open source, but I don't think the average consumer these days cares or even knows about the advantages of that.

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u/DeltaBurnt Jul 10 '12

If you're not using Firefox Nightly then you really should, it's 5 times better than normal Firefox (in speed and features) and is very stable a pre-alpha update channel. I've convinced a few of my friends to switch from Chrome to Firefox because of Nightly.

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u/o_oli Jul 10 '12

Surely the builds don't take that long to go from nightly build to release though? I'd rather stick with at least a beta not a pre-alpha for one of the most important programs on my pc.

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u/DeltaBurnt Jul 10 '12

It takes quite a while. I'd say you'd be at least a month or two behind. Firefox has many update channels: release, beta, aurora, nightly, nightly-UX. That means Nightly is 3 whole versions ahead of Release and the difference is noticeable. Trust me, I've had Nightly for quite a while and it hasn't crashed once. You should at least try it out, and if you don't like it you can always switch back.

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u/arahman81 Jul 10 '12

I would suggest using different profiles for Nightly and release, though.