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[Chrysalis]

So I migrated some of my use to chrome today and on the basic resource usage and performance observation, firefox has serious problems.

As an example on this forum my average page load time on firefox is about 200-500ms. On chrome its under 100ms consistently, very impressive.  The gap is much wider on heavier sites like youtube.

Looking at resource usage, chrome also blows firefox away in that department as well.

Then there is the fact firefox has no native privilege separation, or auto sandboxing on windows like chrome and IE as well as no process per tab which makes its crash recovery a joke and explains its slow performance with heavy tab usage  Some info here. http://www.howtogeek.com/165264/heres-why-firefox-is-still-years-behind-google-chrome/

I am not 100% happy, seems is no way to have multi row tabs so I found an extension called tabs outliner which puts the tabs in a list, allowing 100s to be loaded and easy to use.

safe script works well (similar to firefox no script)
ublock origin same as firefox but again seems much faster
editthiscookie to adjust cookie lifetimes
enhancedsteam
proxyswitchomega (not sure if will keep this for my proxy management yet)
tabtothenextright
vanillacookiemanager (also not sure if will keep this yet)
you tube centre dev build (on firefox memory skyrockets with this plugin, chrome seems fine however)

For other chrome users some info here if like to tweak stuff.
url -> chrome://flags/

advanced settings here although labeled as experimental

startup flags here which I used many to overide certian behaviours such as moving cache to ram disk and disabling ciphers.  http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/#cipher-suite-blacklist

for the curious here is my startup batch file (yes is batch file as syntax too long for explorer shell), note I have some experimental stuff I enabled out of curiosity.

Code: [Select]

start ChromiumPortable.exe --cipher-suite-blacklist=0x009c,0xc009,0xc00a,0xcc15,0x009e --disable-backing-store-limit --disable-3d-apis --disable-breakpad --disable-client-side-phishing-detection --disable-cloud-import --disable-direct-write --disable-directwrite-for-ui --disable-java --disable-password-generation --disable-physical-keyboard-autocorrect --disable-preconnect --enable-remote-fonts --disable-suggestions-service --disable-timezone-tracking-option --disable-webgl --disable-webrtc --disk-cache-dir=R:/CHROME --disk-cache-size=524288000 --dns-prefetch-disable --enable-async-dns --enable-bookmark-undo --enable-devtools-experiments --enable-download-resumption --enable-fast-unload --enable-potentially-annoying-security-features --enable-stale-while-revalidate --enable-strict-mixed-content-checking --enable-strict-powerful-feature-restrictions --enable-smooth-scrolling --enable-tcp-fastopen
among the changes is also some stuff for privacy like disabling dns prefetches and speculative connections.

hope people can give me feedback on my thoughts and list the extensions they use, thanks.

[kitz]

For the past few weeks FF seems to have become slow for me. 
It seems to bloat easily and Im wondering if there is some sort of memory issue. (Ive not tested anything).   But Im surprised at just how quickly it can be utilising anything up to 3GB of RAM of late.   I do usually have a lot of windows and tabs open therefore that memory isn't released until all windows are closed... which isnt something I always want to do.   Chrome uses a separate process for each window.

I use a mix of both browsers although FF mostly as thats where all my bookmarks are. I noticed several years ago that chrome was much better at handling certain types of pages and is much quicker..  Ive just never made the transit as there's a few things that niggle me about chrome too.   

[Weaver]

Under recent versions of Windows I wouldn't use anything other than IE (don't know anything about Microsoft Edge) because of IE’s split low-rights design. As I’m sure many will know, recent versions of IE (under Vista and above, not WinXp) when run by a standard user, a non-admin, run the critical half of the browser in a reduced-privileges account which is restricted from accessing certain objects that are accessible to the standard user's normal account.

I need to read more about Chrome’s security design, but I do remember that Google put in some serious work in this area, however whether or not Google exploit native low-rights split design I couldn't say.

[tbailey2]

For me quite the opposite. Chrome kept locking up the PC so I gave up with it and moved to Waterfox for everything some time back except for compatibility testing. Runs fine and I can actually have rows of tabs and a warning when I try to close them all at once.

IE11 is also a non-runner for me but then IE always has been pretty useless IMHO.

[broadstairs]

Well I have yet to better FF on my system, but that is Linux not Windows.

Stuart

[burakkucat]

Firefox ESR (64-bit) just works for me on RHEL6. 

[Chrysalis]

Under recent versions of Windows I wouldn't use anything other than IE (don't know anything about Microsoft Edge) because of IE’s split low-rights design. As I’m sure many will know, recent versions of IE (under Vista and above, not WinXp) when run by a standard user, a non-admin, run the critical half of the browser in a reduced-privileges account which is restricted from accessing certain objects that are accessible to the standard user's normal account.

I need to read more about Chrome’s security design, but I do remember that Google put in some serious work in this area, however whether or not Google exploit native low-rights split design I couldn't say.

Chrome copies that split low rights design check this screenshot.

Note also the ASLR which firefox and its crummy 32bit doesnt support.

Mozilla's attitude to windows is pretty bad, IE and chrome have had this built in security for years.

Sadly I am moving to chrome from chromium.

Chromium I cannot get flash working plus it excludes all the nice netflix html5 stuff.

Chrome makes it very hard to use extensions not from their store, there is a workaround for you tube center but not the tabsontheright extension, so I have lost that for now.

[loonylion]

That's exactly why I don't use chrome. I don't want 900+ browser processes clogging up my process list.

Also 'security' and 'IE' don't belong in the same sentence.

[Chrysalis]

The single process is holding firefox back big time tho.

Try having dozens of tabs open in firefox, the entire browser, the gui, garbage collection, content etc. all shares one process, bad for security, bad for performance, and if one tab crashes the entire browser crashes, its an outdated model.  It is even explained in the link I provided in the first post.

Also by the way firefox will go multi process, they are forced to move with the times, they are working on an E10 project currently but it seems a bit of a mess as they have had to hold it back to only one process for all tabs. Seperate from the main process.  In particular the multi process structure is critical for the low level rights.

I have tried to stay loyal to firefox and used it for years, their ineptitude was in part proven when I moved to cyberfox 64bit, that stopped all the crashes I was getting (when their devs claimed 32bit only is enough) however it didnt improve performance as thats all bogged down with their old code design.

In my opinion IE is more secure than firefox.  Firefox does no auto sandboxing and doesnt drop its rights, that is a pretty big flaw.

Firefox improves with the likes of noscript, but IE has noscript functionality built in with its security zones.

[loonylion]

I currently have 998 tabs open in firefox and it's not causing any significant issues. plugins are sandboxed. Firefox is way better for web development than chrome also.

IE is far too tightly integrated into the OS, holes in IE allow the entire OS to be compromised, and some dont get fixed for years and years.

[Weaver]

about Chrome’s use of integrity levels/low-rights design here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Integrity_Control

[tbailey2]

I currently have 998 tabs open in firefox and it's not causing any significant issues. plugins are sandboxed. Firefox is way better for web development than chrome also.

IE is far too tightly integrated into the OS, holes in IE allow the entire OS to be compromised, and some dont get fixed for years and years.

Fully agree. Can't go quite that high but I have 229 tabs open currently with no problems. Also I'm running the 64-bit version, not 32-bit. Likewise for development it's far better. The other BIG problem with Chrome and its subsidiaries is the company that owns it. Google is getting way too big and invasive for me.

[Chrysalis]

chrome unloads idle tabs which would shut down the processes.  There is also extensions to speed up that process.

As tony said 64 bit systems are far capable of using heavier loads than 32bit (which the official firefox is stuck on).

Also have the google concerns which is why I stayed away from chrome for so long its also probably why I will still use firefox for some stuff, so I can assess if they fix their problems which would make me move back.

To give an idea of the problems I been having.

32bit - browser start been unstable, crashes and not responding hangs and such usually within a day of usage.
32bit - memory usage grows to 1.5gig within a day or so, at that point it will be running much slower due to constant aggressive garbage collections running every few seconds of which I can see constantly spiking system cpu usage and will be close to crashing due to 32bit limits.
64bit - no crashes but memory will quickly grow to over 2 gig of memory and it still slows down like the 32bit version, the difference is no crashes and doesnt completely hang like the 32bit version, but still stutters when scrolling etc.  Also this version doesn't have the DRM libraries needed for html5 netflix as Mozilla only have them for 32bit.

firefox is so aggressive with garbage collection, I have filed bug reports and so on but no one there is interested in fixing that issue. e.g. I can have the browser sitting idle and exactly every 6 seconds it does a cycle collector and garbage collector run, spiking cpu usage and causing stutters in the browser, if I load a page, it does one during the page load which slows it down and then at least 3 more after its loaded in quick succession.  This aggressive behavior suggests the age old memory leak problem still exists and they using GC to try and cover it up as older versions of firefox were not this bad.

Firefox works ok if very low tabs e.g. less than 10 but it still is slower than both IE and chrome in that configuration and has excessive memory usage as well.  They probably need to start from scratch but cannot as it would trash the user base they got.  With E10 they have had to make many concessions to keep existing addons working.

[tbailey2]

chrome unloads idle tabs which would shut down the processes.  There is also extensions to speed up that process.

FF will go to separate processes by the end of the year they say.

I don't see any evidence of garbage collection, didn't even know it existed. When idling it does just that no spikes at all. Maybe just 32-bit? However, just looked at FF 32-bit on another terminal with 8 tabs open and none of which are refreshing automatically and CPU usage is static at 0% 

[broadstairs]

FF for Linux has had 64-bit official releases now for ages, which is what I run.

Stuart