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Anyone here use Firefox?
- Thread starter max2
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I love the Firefox feature set and UI. Mozilla has put a lot of work into the application and it runs on Mac better than it ever has. I also like the Mozilla philosophy and dedication to the user experience, and that they are NOT out to monetize my browsing. But… even simple pages force my CPU temps into egg frying territory. On benchmarks, FF is consistently the slowest yet most resource hungry. That has to come from Firefox being 100% ported software. It supports few, if any, MacOS features, tools, or even use MacOS dialogs. It runs on Mac but it’s not Mac software.
I guess I'm not sure? What's the big deal with 57? I do like that they now have a warning when entering login or other information over insecure http that you get a warning.
Most add-ons will not be supported anymore. Only Web extensions will work. Unless said add-on is ported to a web extension.
So for example Classic Theme Restorer will not work anymore.
No Script should if it is ported completely to web extension in time.
I use it occasionally for web dev testing and stuff. It doesn't beat Safari for me, but it seems decent these days.
Sounds like a lot of unnecessary self-harm to the browser as far as I understand it. And if Noscript in particular is out, then that kills the entire point of using Firefox at all.
Fortunately, staying on Snow leopard, I am restricted to v.48.0.1 - complete with all the add-ons I want.
I have a thread (in my signature) that deals with About:Config tweaks for a PowerPC Mac browser based off Firefox. I bring this up because the tweak settings are universal. They work regardless of platform.
On page one I have a link to the prefs file I use for Firefox on my MBP.
Just putting this out there in case you may wish to try it. The whole point to my tweaks is to reduce CPU load and ram usage.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/my-tenfourfox-about-config-tweaks-and-my-addons.1838393/
Firefox, both OS X and Windows, has become more buggy as they move forward. As a web developer for a large corporation it makes it difficult to keep things working and generally it is not the software I work on but the dependent services we use. < sigh />
WebExtensions use a new API that is suitable for the new multi-process architecture (which will make Firefox more secure and robust). Most of the major plugins are being migrated to the new API (and yes, that includes Noscript which already includes an embedded WebExtension in the latest version). The API will also be largely compatible with the APIs used by Google Chrome and Opera, so many of their extensions will work with small modifications. Mozilla has put a lot of effort into making this a smooth transition. They are also working with other browser vendors in the W3C to work towards the goal of cross-browser extensions.
Okay so....why does the OP seem to be recoiling in horror?
This doesn't seem like a BFD...
I've been using Firefox for a long time, a decade, but lately I noticed that with about 10 tabs open it really starts sucking up my cpu. I was getting lots of spinning balls. I've since switched back to Safari and that has stopped. Safari is relatively well behaved in that regard.
I stopped all my Add-ons recently and started seeing some stability. They're labeling most of their Add-ons as Legacy with the new transition with the exception of the few already ahead of the curve and updated their code.