Firefox 54, Faster, Less Resources

[engine]

Mozilla is making great claims for Firefox 54, which it says, is faster, and uses less resources. This was surely needed as it lagged behind the other major browsers. Whether it's catchup mode is enough will tell.
The only way to prove it is in the real world and to run it.

Here's the full release notes [mozilla.org...]
For those of you that have built a browser extension, here's the notes on the new Web Platform and WebExtension APIs.
[hacks.mozilla.org...]

With today’s release, Firefox uses up to four processes to run web page content across all open tabs. This means that a heavy, complex web page in one tab has a much lower impact on the responsiveness and speed in other tabs. By separating the tabs into separate processes, we make better use of the hardware on your computer, so Firefox can deliver you more of the web you love, with less waiting. Firefox 54, Faster, Less Resouces [blog.mozilla.org]

[jojy]

Still too slow with just few extensions installed. I switched from FF to chrome last year.

[azlinda]

Switched from Chrome to Firefox this morning. So far I'm loving it. It used to crash within the first 30 minutes. I've had no problems yet, and it seems very fast.

[graeme_p]

Most users just use the browser that was already on the device

Not sure that is still true. Look at Chrome usage on the desktop.

[keyplyr]

Just tried Firefox for Android mobile again to see if it's any better now with this update.

After an hour it froze a couple times and I felt overall it wasn't as responsive as it should be.

Still don't like it as much as Chrome mobile.

[lucy24]

Most users just use the browser that was already on the device

Not sure that is still true. Look at Chrome usage on the desktop.

Well, it's a multi-tier system. First tier is people who use whatever was on their computer and may not even know what the word “browser” means. Second tier is people who have clicked on the little box saying “Make Chrome your browser”. Third tier is people who use Firefox. Fourth tier is people who download all possible browsers, try them all out and make an individual selection based on personal preference. Fifth tier is people who use different browsers for different functions. And so on.

[engine]

Based upon that, I must be in the fifth tier.

[born2run]

I switched to chrome from ff and I don't wanna try ff again

Reason is that Chrome has all these extensions that are very useful for my work

[mcneely]

there are plenty of Chrome open source based browsers to choose from

Picked up Vivaldi last year and have only been running it full time recently -- FF54 64bit on Windows is, at least to me, clunky still - slow stop-gap natured and still uses too many resources for my taste.

FF on Linux 64bit isn't much better -

It's a trade-off though -- Can't really configure Vivaldi to dump history/cache and cookies at the end of each session automatically like I can in FF, but I'll settle for the faster rendering engine and the use of less resources.

[smilie]

Was just trying to download Firefox 54 for some of office PCs, and apparently duh! It's not available.

Only FF 52.2 is available for Windows XP SP3.

And it has a finny 3-word acronym, as if we need to somehow change perfectly functioning machines. Something ESR?

Tried enabling / disabling some scripts on mozillla's page, was able to actually see Windows XP button, but it doesn't click, or when clicked downloads version 52.

[tangor]

54 will not run on XP ... stay with 52

[ambt]

Firefox has been my absolutely favorite browser for many years since it was launched. I remember version 1. I switched then from the Mozilla browser, which was later replaced by SeaMonkey. But yes, FF can be painfully slow when you have many tabs open.
So, I started to experiment with other browsers. I don't like Chrome for privacy reasons and I find the interface horrible.
I find the current incarnation of Opera excellent. It's based on Chrome and can use Chrome extensions. Nice interface, better privacy than Chrome, the inspector module works nicely.
Now, I use FF for some things and Opera for others.
Vivaldi is not bad, either.
I wish all the best to FF developers. Perhaps the latest version is indeed a little faster, can't tell yet.