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.
I'm certain that people thought Chrome was faster because they went from a Firefox with loads of extensions and browser history etc. to a fresh Chrome. My experience has been the same as yours: Firefox has never been slower than Chrome.
Same here, did not experience performance issues with firefox despite having several hundred tabs open at all time. I do have decent hardware, but having noscript and an adblocker does wonder to keep the browser smooth.
Maybe it's different under windows ?
When a client calls me because his browsing is slow, it was usually caused by a malware ridden computer not by firefox.
On the other hand, running chrome often felt slower for some reason and the rest of the time both were comparable speed.
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.
Seems to me you had a corrupted profile or you installed the wrond extension(s). Have you tried comparing both on a brand new user profile ?
A day and night difference on a fresh profile is unheard of, they should be comparable speed.
I am surprised at how many people can't see (or mind) the obvious difference in speed. Here's a test:
Create a fresh clean profile for both FF56 (or earlier) and chrome without any extensions.
Then, create/import a bookmark folder with 20 sites and sync them to both browsers.
Fire up each browser and watch the cpu usage with top (or task manager). Choose "open all in tabs" and monitor the cpu usage over time.
For me chromium finishes loading 3-5x faster. By "finishes loading" I mean all spinning circles in tabs are gone and the cpu usage drops to nearly 0%.
Firefox uses only 2 processes/threads, while chromium makes use of all cores. I am guessing the more cores your CPU has, the more obvious the difference. But you don't need an 8-core cpu to see the difference, the difference is as noticeable for me on my i5-6200U laptop.
But page loading speed and JS performance aside, what turned me away from firefox is the sluggish UI. Little things like how fast the dev tools open, or the speed at which right-click menus open. It's like firefox freezes for a millisecond on these operations while chrome feels much more fluid. I don't have a test case for this :)
I never really used Firefox, and I give it a go every year or so. I used Opera 12 for as long as I could precisely because of the FF UI responsiveness. Then Chrome came along. I keep looking back but... FF is not there yet for me.
I'm no fan of Google and I really hope the new FF is as good as people claim to be. Remains to be seen, having high hopes!
EDIT:
Obviously if you have a slow internet link then the pipe becomes the bottleneck and both browsers will load sites at same speed. But in that case you could just close all tabs and reopen them and let the browsers load most of the stuff from cache.
Of course. My profiles were not corrupt, also tried with empty profiles, tbh firefox performance degraded much faster after profiles got heavier. This was some time ago though. To be honest it was impossible to not see the performance difference, chrome is always more fluid and snappy.
What kind of hardware and OS were you running when you experienced this ? My own experience over a number of different computers, years and settings is the exact opposite: chrome being less responsive or both being about the same.
At times firefox was slower but it always turned out to be due to a malware ridden computer or a combination of dubious firefox extensions. srware iron did feel faster than both iunder certain conditions though.
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.