no, it's not just you.

the only issue is, firefox is still the best browser, even after getting worse and worse. 😒

To me it's not Firefox, but I use adblock and noscript to block a lot of the stuff eating up CPU and RAM....to me it's more of a "state of the web" thing. That's why I still can surf on a Linux equipped ThinkPad T61 comfortably enough.

It used to be, when you opened a website, only one URL was being opened - the one for the page of which you were visiting. The HTML Code fit in minor kilobytes of space, and there were no scripts running pulling from other web-facing resources. And if they were, you were probably on some porn or warez site.

Today, every major website tends to have so much crap loading at once it's ridiculous. A major inappropriate allocation of resources for things that should not take them up so much. So I need 256M of my RAM to be taken up by one site because I'm not just pulling web20bullshit.com, but I'm attempting to pull stupidzone.com, google ad services, eaturmemorytoday.com, cachedadsco.io, fazbearentads.cdn, salesforce.info, buyitnow.2dy, sell2u.com, onthebrinkofinsanity.net....and all of these are pulling scripted ads, videos, and other crap embedded into the website - what we used to call "hotlinking" IIRC....and it's bloody annoying. Looking at the news? Look at Washington POst or Wallstreet Journal too much? You get a nice paywall promising a subscription. I get that these people want to make money, and like Sally STruthers said in the 80's "Sure we all do", but the way they are going about it makes me want to just turn around and say "you know what, forget this site".

About the only places I really trust on the web to be just that one thing are here (Vogons), VCFED, wiki.preterhuman.net, neocities.org, and a handful of others, because when I look in noscript, I don't see 20 things being pulled by the site after the main URL has loaded.

Sometimes, when I want to view something mainstream or heavily scripted I uend up using Links on the 486 because it breaks all that crap and only loads the main site, especially if I want to just read whats on the page and don't care about pictures, or want to just download the file. That's a whose second, practical purpose for retro-computing for me, is stripping out all the "modern" b.s. from my web activities when I Don't need them, or don't want to play guess-a-roo with NoScript.

I stopped using Firefox nearly a decade ago after they introduced the "save images in random locations" bug/feature and then refused to fix/remove it. (I know they later added a setting to restore the old behavior, but by then I had moved to Chrome and didn't care.)

(And I noticed that Notepad++ recently started doing something similar, saving your files everywhere on the disk except where you want them. What the hell is wrong with developers? However, unlike Firefox , NPP later reversed this and restored the old behavior, presumably after enough people gave the devs shit over it.)

Even now, all these years later, I still routinely come across images on my computer that have been saved in completely the wrong locations. Oh Firefox.

It isn't just you. I mostly hate all modern browsers but FIrefox is just terrible. They keep trying to "reinvent" themselves and their UI suffers every single time.
It shouldn't be difficult to update, or change homepages,/search engines and what not, just one or two clicks. But Mozilla and Microsoft can't seem to figure this out.
I somewhat understand Microsoft's motivations at least, even if I don't agree with them (they try their damndest to force you to use Bing) But Mozilla....just what the crap.
I won't even get started on profile migrations.....

Everyone knows Mozilla is running Firefox into the ground, with the exception of Mozilla themselves. I haven't budged off 56.0. I see PaleMoon mentioned a lot in these discussions - I might jump ship eventually.

On the lamentable state of the web these days; I find myself wishing Facebook would hurry up and embrace and extend it ("metaverse", anyone?) so everyone would piss off and we can get back to Web 1.0. You remember in SimCity 2000 when the arcologies blasted off into space and you went back to playing the game? That.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-12-22, 18:29:

I won't even get started on profile migrations.....

That's the one thing I think Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have over Firefox. LInks trumps them all for me though....I just copy the cfg directory over to whatever computer I'm using, 🤣. Upgrade? Just download the new one in 3 minutes of 802.11b backup the old ones, rename the new ones to the old ones.

Big Pink wrote on 2021-12-22, 18:38:

Everyone knows Mozilla is running Firefox into the ground, with the exception of Mozilla themselves. I haven't budged off 56.0. I see PaleMoon mentioned a lot in these discussions - I might jump ship eventually.

On the lamentable state of the web these days; I find myself wishing Facebook would hurry up and embrace and extend it ("metaverse", anyone?) so everyone would piss off and we can get back to Web 1.0. You remember in SimCity 2000 when the arcologies blasted off into space and you went back to playing the game? That.

This is how I feel. I HATE Facebook with a passion, and IG is slowly getting on my nerves as well. Social Media? My neocities website where I have 100% control over my content because it's all just oldschool plain HTML with a little CSS here and there - and it renders on everything more than well enough to look good and be fun to visit.

I think Firefox, despite its mismanagement, keeps getting better actually. The web's getting worse, but that's not Firefox's fault (quite the opposite).

DracoNihil wrote on 2021-12-22, 17:13:

I'm even on the "ESR" releases, and this latest ESR uses way more CPU and memory for the most trivial garbage now, what on earth happened?

Aren't new versions supposed to fix issues and makes things better, not progressively make things worse? They even replaced the UI such that, not only does it clash with my desktop theme, the scroll bars are borderline useless and virtually invisible

Firefox's greatest strength is that it's user interface is entirely customizable through CSS. If you don't like something, you can probably change it. For now, anyway, they've labelled the feature "legacy".

Firefox's greatest strength is that it's user interface is entirely customizable through CSS.

Vivaldi can do that too.

Personally, I prefer Firefox only in one flavor - Tor browser. We've almost reached bleak dystopian future where everything is Chromium-based though.

DracoNihil wrote on 2021-12-22, 17:13:

I'm even on the "ESR" releases, and this latest ESR uses way more CPU and memory for the most trivial garbage now, what on earth […]
Show full quote

I'm even on the "ESR" releases, and this latest ESR uses way more CPU and memory for the most trivial garbage now, what on earth happened?

Aren't new versions supposed to fix issues and makes things better, not progressively make things worse? They even replaced the UI such that, not only does it clash with my desktop theme, the scroll bars are borderline useless and virtually invisible, and I'm pretty sure the ridiculous CPU usage is coming from whatever they've just replaced the UI with.

I had no idea even something as simple as a GIF animation, or the VOGONS logo animation when you mouse over it, is supposed to take 165% CPU to process!

I'm at the point I'd like to ditch Firefox for good but I don't know of any browser that isn't suffering from this problem at this point, I'd also like a browser that let's me disable client side scripting on a global basis, so I can whitelist only specific domains. (basically the equivalent of "NoScript")

Any regulars have recommendations? I'd love to hear it!

no, it's not just you.
Just the simple fact that there is currently no easy clearly visible way to completely disable updates and the update notification which caused me to accidentally update to 91.02 while I was happily running 88.something which still had the integrated ftp funtionality which is now removed and you have to use an external ftp browser was a real AAAAARGH moment for me.

oh yeah and who ever decided that a one year history should be enough ?

I'd like the new Firefox rendering system, memory management, etc. combined with support for both old and new addon formats, please 😀

Been sticking with Chrome for the last few years, but it makes me sad, having been a Firefox user for so long before...

Been a loyal user of Safari since 2010. Before that, I used Netscape on Windows. Also used first incarnations of Firefox when Netscape died.

Edge doesn't look THAT bad from the first impressions I had of it when I tried it. Still, I'd rather use Safari.

Chrome eats RAM with a passion and Firefox is not worse, but its UI/UX constantly changing after every release fires my OCD.

Safari > Firefox > Edge >>>>>>> Abysm >>>>>>>>>>> Poo >>>>>> Chrome.

The latest ESR is running fine on this 32-bit 3.2GHz P4 HT in Linux Mint Debian Edition 4.

I use Slimjet. It's Chromium, but not Chrome (not by Google). Seems a bit faster, more lightweight, and has a very small number of nice features that Chrome doesn't have (or doesn't enable by default).

I used to be a Firefox user, and disliked the fact that Chrome seems to offer a dumbed-down UI. Then Firefox started dumbing-down their UI, while Chrome somewhat improved theirs, and guess what - the difference is not so big anymore. Firefox seems to desperately want to be a Chrome-clone in most meaningful terms (UI, extension support), so why would I use it and not "the original"?

The only case for me to use Firefox anymore is the latest ESR that runs on XP/Vista, for old computers. That's because Firefox has its own certificates/ciphers, whereas the rest use OS-provided ones. As a results, on XP/Vista, a lot of the web becomes inaccessible, since these are outdated.

I was hopeful (and somewhat naïve) about Pale Moon at first, and wanted to support the team; however, once I saw that they cannot really do anything other than chase Firefox's development curve while trying to defiantly stick to the old UI (until that becomes impossible), I dropped it.

But of course, on any browser I install an adblocker (uBlock Origin is currently my choice).

I have no idea about ESR. But firefox on my end barely leaves a dent in my 3900x. That is with multiple tabs/high quality youtube/ and ublock origin.

Maybe on older cpus its starting to get bad? I wouldn't put it past an internet browser these days, they seem to keep getting bloatier and bloatier on older hardware as time goes on.

dr_st wrote on 2021-12-22, 23:21:

The only case for me to use Firefox anymore is the latest ESR that runs on XP/Vista, for old computers. That's because Firefox has its own certificates/ciphers, whereas the rest use OS-provided ones. As a results, on XP/Vista, a lot of the web becomes inaccessible, since these are outdated.

I was hopeful (and somewhat naïve) about Pale Moon at first, and wanted to support the team; however, once I saw that they cannot really do anything other than chase Firefox's development curve while trying to defiantly stick to the old UI (until that becomes impossible), I dropped it.

On XP/Vista instead of Firefox 52.9 or Palemoon I recommend that you should try Serpent. Serpent is a fork of last XP compatible version of Firefox and supports more features and sites of modern web:
http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/

I use Opera. I think it is the superior browser compared to the shitshow that is Google Chrome and the newest Firefox. It is chromium based though. What annoys me is that addon installations aret synced on your account across computers.

I've started running into some sites that don't load on Firefox 68. That amazes me, and I really don't want to let it upgrade again.

One of the most obnoxious things Firefox has done was when they started automatically updating without ever asking if you wanted that feature enabled. So on a fresh install, I disable the network, then run Firefox and turn off the autoupdate option before it has a chance to see the internet. It's ridiculous that somebody should have to fight like that to decline an update.

I get annoyed by Firefox being so resistant to connecting to a site that doesn't use https, or whose certificate is wrong in some way, as if I need an encrypted connection for everything I ever do. This has also impaired my ability to host simple files for people to access, because every browser acts like this now. SSL is a barrier to simple personal web sites.

I miss the ability to type a description box for my bookmarks. I'm sure it didn't get used much, but sometimes it was useful (especially for notes about eBay listings) and now it's gone.

I used to like early Firefox. But in modern times it's just a matter of keeping up with whatever latest scripting nonsense on web sites is forcing me to upgrade.

It's not just you, but it's also not just Firefox. There are equally times when I've felt tempted to have a similar rant about <insert major browser of your choice here>.

Oh you may change, and the specific things that are annoying you right now may go away, but chances are you'll just find yourself in a different flavour of annoyance within a year or two.

I believe it's the nature of complex artificial systems. As complexity grows, the ability to keep everything perfectly aligned erodes, gaps inevitably appear. Then one day you wake up and instead of a crisp perfect glass of ice water, you have a rainbow daquiri espresso with LED strips and a singing frog, wondering why you've suddenly got a headache.

shamino wrote on 2021-12-23, 00:15:

I've started running into some sites that don't load on Firefox 68. That amazes me, and I really don't want to let it upgrade again.

Firefox 68 is pretty badly broken now. I'm not sure what thing web devs are chasing to break a web browser so quickly, which was probably pretty standards compliant at the time. However, a two year own version of chromium 78 did break on a site the same way as Firefox 68, so that was also interesting that when I updated both, both browsers were fixed. So something is going on. Although firefox 68 is pretty bad, not sure why'd you would want to keep it. It definitely was not my favorite "old" version. I think I'd try Firefox 52 / vintage Seamonkey again just to see if it can handle the problematic website better than Firefox 68.