Mozilla Firefox 89.0 - very, very slow and ugly new look - alternatives? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 11:58:20 am
content: Got an update today, to v89.0, and Firefox is now close to unusable. They ruined it.The ugly new look can be disabled by going to "about:config" and type "proton" then click on the found items to set them to "false". At least temporary, it works (will still have only icons in the shortcut's home page instead of snapshots of the bookmarked websites).My problem is that v89 is incredibly slow when compared to the previous one. I'm on a desktop, i7-4790K 8 cores at 4GHz+, Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, 32GB of RAM.Anybody else seeing big speed loss after the upgrade to v89?Any way to get the speed back to normal?LATER EDIT:YouTube is very choppy, like it would be a 10 frames per second video game, thought there are no lost frames and with other browsers same video plays OK. This was the last drop, now I want to migrate to a better browser.What would be a good browser alternative to try? Preferably something that can import from Firefox. Must have these features as plugins or native:- Dark theme (preferably native)- Dark Reader (plugin to auto-convert any webpages to dark mode)- uBlockOrigin (or alike, must be able to block a custom element, no forced whitelisted adds)- SingleFile (annotate and save webpages offline, as HTML)- Tab Backups & Restore (can save or export a text list of tabs and their addresses)- Tab Manager Plus for Firefox (tab manager with good search in tabs capabilities)- Stylus (Grease Monkey like plugin, to override CSS or webpage rendering)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 12:22:31 pm
content: Maybe Mozilla added a new feature for mining crypto currencies like Norton 360 (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/cryptocurrency/norton-360-antivirus-now-lets-you-mine-ethereum-cryptocurrency/).Nope, but it seems that their goal for the last few years is to piss off users. A few improvements and a lot of bad changes. When they started forcing linux users to PulseAudio I switched to another web browser as my main browser.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 12:43:04 pm
content: Well, you could switch to the ESR branch. Then maybe when that gets updated later this year most of the issues will be worked out. As far as Youtube goes, you have to be aware that Google has been working for years to make it run like crap on everything except Chrome. I personally use Pale Moon about 98% of the time, but I don't use any extensions or themes with it, just NoScript and uBlock Origin.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 01:02:51 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 11:58:20 amWorks fine here on OpenSuse Leap 15.2 and Plasma desktop.

author: newbrain
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 01:16:32 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on June 03, 2021, 01:02:51 pmSame here on a Windows 10 laptop, 16GB, i5-8350U. Will try later on an i3-4010U with 8GB and Ubuntu.I kinda like the new look, too.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pm
content: Probably not enough opened tabs to notice the slowing down, right now I have about 1200 tabs in 73 windows.The new FF 89 even manages to rise the proc temp to 75*C instead of the usual 40*C, and put the processor's fans on high during startup, which startup now takes about double the time. The only other time when the proc fans went to high was when I was compiling Gentoo with all the cores to 100%.

author: radar_macgyver
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 03:55:33 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pmOne of the other changes they made isfission, to run each domain in a separate task. With 1200 tabs, I suspect this may be the reason you're noticing a slowdown. In fact, it's listed in their "known issues" on the page linked to above.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 05:04:59 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pmAnd why is that?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2021, 06:01:15 pm
content: I dumped Firefox several years ago when they kept making it more and more like Chrome. Now I use Pale Moon and for sites that really like Chrome I use Brave.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 03:52:19 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pmPro tip: It is actually possible toclosetabs in Firefox.Just click the little "x" that appears on the right side of the tab.And when you want to remember a website for later use, there's a concept calledbookmarksor favorites, but let's not get into that now...Sorry, could not resist.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 04:56:02 pm
content: Got 89.0 here, both on Win 7 and on Linux. No issue. I didn't notice any slowdown. And I have a large number of tabs open on average. Although it's hard to tell exactly, it seems to use a bit more RAM than previous versions though, so that may be the problem on your machine. Dunno. My machines go from 16GB to 64GB RAM and this is absolutely no issue.I don't mind the new look either. Actually, the changes are pretty minimal all in all.If you want something else, you can try Chromium. I'll personally stick to Firefox.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 05:54:33 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pm

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 06:02:45 pm
content: And I thought my 150 opened tabs are an unmanageable dumpster where I don't even remember what's there.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 06:14:52 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 03:41:45 pmQuote from: RoGeorge on June 03, 2021, 11:58:20 amOne has to assume that you're joking because the alternative is that you're insane.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 08:11:43 pm
content: The Vivaldi browser allows you to save all open tabs as a session, which can be re-opened later. That's a good feature if you often open dozens of windows related to a particular project. Vivaldi also has "hierarchical tabs" where you can group a bunch of related tabs under one "supertab". I think you might get on with the Norwegians on this.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2021, 08:38:18 pm
content: there's also a button top right side called history button, it looks like books arranged side by side (recently closed tabs, recently closed windows) that does magic at resurrecting tabs and windows from the dead. but since OP proved his competency at finding "about:config", i guess the 1200 tabs in 73 windows thing is because he can.. i just upgraded to v89 out of curiosity, it seems still usable with my 2007's 2.66GHz core 2 quad CPU, 8GHz RAM. i'm more concern if there's alternative to my existing brain because it cant handle 1200 tabs and 73 windows properly at the same time.

author: I wanted a rude username
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2021, 02:24:52 am
content: Alsothe OneTab extensionsaves all the tabs from a window into a list, which you can restore later. Useful for projects put on hold, research you're done with but want to save the results of, etc.Similar (and arguably better) functionality is available by saving/restoring all tabs in a window to/from a set of bookmarks [Right click -> Select All Tabs, Right click -> Bookmark Tabs...].

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2021, 02:43:58 am
content: Quote from: I wanted a rude username on June 06, 2021, 02:24:52 amThanks for the handy tip on saving open tabs.I don't really like the new look. But I rarely do when it doesn't overtly benefit me. I haven't noticed FF89 is either slower or faster.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2021, 05:59:03 pm
content: I hope they fixed printing websites under Linux. That got broken in Firefox a few versions ago. I'll probably move over to Chrome if it doesn't get fixed.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2021, 08:02:43 pm
content: Firefox 88:You mean like this on Firefox 89:Surprise surpiseAbsolutely SPAMMY behaviour and an eye hurter!I started a thread on mobiles and this sort of thing now it's in dialogues on Firefox.Flipping large areas from the my screen from light to dark to light after every dialogue and on mobiles all I have to is get the keyboard out to tap the url bar which is why I still use Firefox 68 mobile and an old copy of Chrome that don't do that but I rarely use the mobiles for browsing. I know it does it in the menu on the desktop and that seems to be getting worse.I use Palemoon 2.8 and Vivaldi 3.0 at the moment but I look around sometimes and experiment on all different browsers and see if I can get them near the way I want.Palemoon, doesn't seem to do any dimming so far on anything, seems to work with most of the old extensions from Firefox 22 but one thing missing that'd like is something ported like Stickyducky to take care of the hiders headers/widgets on websites but I read recently on forums about some legal issues with open source licensing on copying extensions.Vivaldi is great (the new one seems to have issues with the tab script) but some dimming does go on, in the native Chrome menu's and in a Chrome message dialogue that appear sometimes on whether to keep downloaded files.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2021, 04:08:28 pm
content: Firefox's home page is fully configurable.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2021, 04:15:25 pm
content: If I can stop the background dimming wherever in Firefox including the dialogues that'd be good.I don't think I explained very well what I mean't by spammy behaviour.On some websites when I am reading stuff a dialogue comes up with an offer in the middle. Now the dialogue itself don't bother me, yes I find them a minor nuisance but dimming the background thereby obscuring the entire content or cutting me off completely beind this dialogue and I find that spammy behaviour and it doesn't matter what dialogue it is and I don't find it nice in fact rude and these are things that intefere with my viewing of the contents and cause me inconvenience and discomfort (my eyes in this case) but that's my opinion.I wonder, imagine trying to read something, I come along and interrupt you and cover up what you are reading now how would you feel?On the other hand just found that Vivaldi 3.8 UI doesn't dim much on stuff especially the close multiple tabs or exit dialogue:

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2021, 02:32:08 pm
content: Use firemin to drop the memory consumption ....I use Palemoon, no problems with the latest firefox version ??Waterfox ?

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2021, 03:17:11 pm
content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbox_(JavaScript)