firefox offers best technical advancement since sliced bread.

[ultravio1et]

Yeah... I was gonna say. Opera has been doing this for quite a few versions...

Probably one of the things that they get with basically no effort from using chromium as the base for it...

Ugh...

So many lost features because of that switch though.
I mean, it took forever to even get bookmarks back. Wow.

I miss being able to make tab groups... >_>

Yeah - few years back, I decided to go with Opera as my second browser. Until then it was Firefox, then Chrome and very occasionally I had used Opera, so I basically wanted to swap the last two. When I installed Opera, I wanted to change some fairly trivial setting - can't remember right now what it is, but it was something fairly obvious that I assumed should have been changeable. But I couldn't - I went to the options and...erm, how should I put it - there were no options. There was a single screen of few settings you could choose and going to advanced revealed something like 3-4 more but, it's not what I'd call "options". Especially from Opera which is a browser I know as giving users a large amount of ability to tinker with it. I was confused, for a bit I thought I must have installed some bootlegged version of Opera. I had to google around until I found what had happened.

With the lack of any sensible options, I had to sadly abandon Opera. And I did like Opera until then, I knew it as the browser which drove the innovation and user experience in other browsers - lots of features that became a de facto standard for browsers were started by them - for example tabs and userscripts. I was really sad the browser had moved away from this. Sure, it's still around, and sure, it does do some stuff here and there but it's not really the same, especially when it scrapped some interesting features it had, like tab groups. I waited for so long for this to be added to other browsers but...it wasn't. And I don't think it would now.

Yeah, it's not what it once was. Honestly, initially it seemed mostly like an anemic clone of Chrome with most of the features missing after the switchover.

It's improved, but it's still pretty far off what it once was.

Though speaking of settings I remember in the old version their were several options and setting screens that weren't obvious.
You had to put in the correct thing in the address bar, that was literally the only way to get at some of the more advanced settings...
(There were a lot of them, but hidden amongst like 6 or so such 'settings' pages).

Not sure if any of them still exist, but with the general lack of most of the more complex features of the older opera... I doubt it.

give Vivaldi browser a go, its made by most of the guys who made the original Opera. it just came out of alpha and is quite good

 

[Something Amyss]

Firefox only just now did this?

Yeah. As someone who primarily uses Firefox, my first thought was "sweet. They finally did that thing Chrome did I liked."

 

[Vicarious Reality]

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

 

[DoPo]

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

What was the alternative before that is unavailable now?

Also, you can always use the keyboard - Ctrl+Tab (maybe few times) then Ctrl+W. You don't even need to let go of Ctrl for this trick.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Yeah... I was gonna say. Opera has been doing this for quite a few versions...

Probably one of the things that they get with basically no effort from using chromium as the base for it...

Ugh...

So many lost features because of that switch though.
I mean, it took forever to even get bookmarks back. Wow.

I miss being able to make tab groups... >_>

Yeah - few years back, I decided to go with Opera as my second browser. Until then it was Firefox, then Chrome and very occasionally I had used Opera, so I basically wanted to swap the last two. When I installed Opera, I wanted to change some fairly trivial setting - can't remember right now what it is, but it was something fairly obvious that I assumed should have been changeable. But I couldn't - I went to the options and...erm, how should I put it - there were no options. There was a single screen of few settings you could choose and going to advanced revealed something like 3-4 more but, it's not what I'd call "options". Especially from Opera which is a browser I know as giving users a large amount of ability to tinker with it. I was confused, for a bit I thought I must have installed some bootlegged version of Opera. I had to google around until I found what had happened.

With the lack of any sensible options, I had to sadly abandon Opera. And I did like Opera until then, I knew it as the browser which drove the innovation and user experience in other browsers - lots of features that became a de facto standard for browsers were started by them - for example tabs and userscripts. I was really sad the browser had moved away from this. Sure, it's still around, and sure, it does do some stuff here and there but it's not really the same, especially when it scrapped some interesting features it had, like tab groups. I waited for so long for this to be added to other browsers but...it wasn't. And I don't think it would now.

Yeah, it's not what it once was. Honestly, initially it seemed mostly like an anemic clone of Chrome with most of the features missing after the switchover.

It's improved, but it's still pretty far off what it once was.

Though speaking of settings I remember in the old version their were several options and setting screens that weren't obvious.
You had to put in the correct thing in the address bar, that was literally the only way to get at some of the more advanced settings...
(There were a lot of them, but hidden amongst like 6 or so such 'settings' pages).

Not sure if any of them still exist, but with the general lack of most of the more complex features of the older opera... I doubt it.

give Vivaldi browser a go, its made by most of the guys who made the original Opera. it just came out of alpha and is quite good

Interesting...
Thanks.

Guess I'm not the only one that missed some of the abilities of the old browser. XD
Seems at least some of the Opera staff felt so too. XD

Anyway...
I shall have to have a look at it, see how it compares to Opera (both new and old)...

 

[Strazdas]

As a Chrome user (I finally got fed up with Firefox eating every ounce of memory it could get its grubby little digital hands on), this is how I feel about OPs announcement.

quite ironic since Chrome is the most ram-hungry browser in existence rivaled only by the newly released Edge while Firefox's ram usage always comes smallests in tests.

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

ctrl+W closes active tab. ctrl+tab to move to the tab you want to close. no mouse needed.

 

[DefunctTheory]

As a Chrome user (I finally got fed up with Firefox eating every ounce of memory it could get its grubby little digital hands on), this is how I feel about OPs announcement.

quite ironic since Chrome is the most ram-hungry browser in existence rivaled only by the newly released Edge while Firefox's ram usage always comes smallests in tests.

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

ctrl+W closes active tab. ctrl+tab to move to the tab you want to close. no mouse needed.

Do those test take into account memory leaks? I download Firefox every once in a while, and after heavy use it always ends up eating everything. Never had that issue with Chrome or Firefox.

 

[Strazdas]

As a Chrome user (I finally got fed up with Firefox eating every ounce of memory it could get its grubby little digital hands on), this is how I feel about OPs announcement.

quite ironic since Chrome is the most ram-hungry browser in existence rivaled only by the newly released Edge while Firefox's ram usage always comes smallests in tests.

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

ctrl+W closes active tab. ctrl+tab to move to the tab you want to close. no mouse needed.

Do those test take into account memory leaks? I download Firefox every once in a while, and after heavy use it always ends up eating everything. Never had that issue with Chrome or Firefox.

firefox fixed its memory leaks 3 years ago. your information is out of date.

 

[Major_Tom]

The "Sliced bread" thing is actually really impressive considering how pre-sliced, packaged bread that didn't go stale is a fairly recent phenomenon that took a fairly long time of technical achievement to develop. It also changed the ways in which and the amounts of bread was consumed. It was originally marketed as ?the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped? - which has since become the current saying of "the greatest thing since sliced bread".

Here's a cool breakdown:
http://priceonomics.com/the-invention-of-sliced-bread/

Here, the sliced bread is only used for toast, and nobody thinks it's great. Probably because there's a bakery on every corner.

 

[DoPo]

As a Chrome user (I finally got fed up with Firefox eating every ounce of memory it could get its grubby little digital hands on), this is how I feel about OPs announcement.

quite ironic since Chrome is the most ram-hungry browser in existence rivaled only by the newly released Edge while Firefox's ram usage always comes smallests in tests.

Good, though this means you have to move the mouse to be able to close tabs with something playing now

ctrl+W closes active tab. ctrl+tab to move to the tab you want to close. no mouse needed.

Do those test take into account memory leaks? I download Firefox every once in a while, and after heavy use it always ends up eating everything. Never had that issue with Chrome or Firefox.

I've got 16 tabs open in Chrome right now. It takes up a gig of memory. You can't really see that easily because of the one process per tab, but give it a go and tally up the memory each process uses. This is the difference with Firefox which just has the one thread that has the memory all in one place.

They both take up a lot of memory but given the separation that Chrome uses, it should take up more memory on at least some situations - with one thread per tab, you'd need to duplicate resources that could otherwise be shared.

 

[DefunctTheory]

firefox fixed its memory leaks 3 years ago. your information is out of date.

I only switched to Chrome a little over a year ago, after years of infuriating Firefox issues, and after I threw one too many rage fits at it. It was certainly having memory issues then.

I dunno, maybe I do weird stuff with my browsers that makes my experience different. But Chrome was certainly better then, and its performed admirably since.

Don't know what else to say. It wasn't a numbers thing, Firefox was just outright giving me a shitty experience. And yes, I kept it up to date all the time.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Didn't realize chrome already had it but seriously this should have been implemented about 5 seconds after the first auto playing advert was released.

It should have been implemented way back when people were making GeoCities sites that automatically played MIDI music when you visited.

 

[lechat]

Didn't realize chrome already had it but seriously this should have been implemented about 5 seconds after the first auto playing advert was released.

It should have been implemented way back when people were making GeoCities sites that automatically played MIDI music when you visited.

Don't think we had tabbed browsing back them but I guess at the same time sound cards didn't have the option to mute web pages or midi. Luckily we did have lots of flashy colours and gifs..... tons and tons of gifs...

 

[FalloutJack]

If this is the best they can do instead of outlawing audio ads, I say to hell with them.