Firefox Quantum released

[Nuckles]

Introducing the New Firefox: Firefox Quantum – The Mozilla Blog

It’s fast. Really fast. Firefox Quantum is over twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago, built on a completely overhauled core engine with brand new technology stolen from our advanced research group, and graced with a beautiful new look designed to get out of the way and let you do what you do best: surf a ton of pages, open a zillion tabs, all guilt free because Firefox Quantum uses less memory than the competition. Your computer will thank you.

It’s by far the biggest update we’ve had since we launched Firefox 1.0 in 2004, it’s just flat out better in every way. If you go and install it right now, you’ll immediately notice the difference, accompanied by a feeling of mild euphoria. If you’re curious about what we did, read on.

I just tried it and it definitely feels faster than the old firefox. Unfortunately a lot of add-ons aren't compatible yet, they still need to be updated.

Click to read more...

 

[Osprey]

I've never been a Firefox user. I've installed it a number of times, but never found any compelling reason to use it over the competition. Reading "surf a ton of pages, open a zillion tabs, all guilt free because Firefox Quantum uses less memory than the competition. Your computer will thank you" has me intrigued, though. I hate how bloated Chrome is with memory. I like having dozens of tabs open all of the time and it's nuts how they so many of them use up over 100MB of memory each, with some exceeding 200MB. How does a website that consists of only a few MB of files use up so much memory and why isn't more of it freed up after a while? The last time that I tried Firefox, it was just as bad. I hope that Mozilla's improvements with Quantum are really as revolutionary as they make them sound and that, by "less memory than the competition," they don't mean just 10% or something (Edit: Oh, I see that they advertise 30% less than Chrome). I'll give it a spin. Thanks, Nuckles.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I'm a full on Opera user at the moment, but I'm considering a return to Firefox to check this out.

 

[kingsboy11]

As a longtime firefox user, I can confirm that this new firefox is...fast.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

I've always used firefox...just got the update...>FASTTTT

 

[Moskau]

It's about as good as Firefox when it first came out. It will eventually bloat to the point where there's a Quantum 2 in about 4 years. Which is the norm with browsers now.

 

[Commander Clueless]

It's definitely snappy. I like it.

I agree that it feels like what Firefox used to be.

I don't think it'll replace Opera as my daily driver though.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Is it better then google/safari then? Last time I used it it was only a little slower. But that was years ago

 

[Vikke]

Pros and cons compared to Chrome? Been using Chrome for the past 4-5 years I think.

 

[sabresfan129103]

I use firefox for like 99% of my browsing. Is this a completely different browser? Will all my addons work with it?

edit: nvm. I just updated to it and yes everything still works. And wow what a difference. Definitely a lot faster.

 

[Gardner McKay]

I'm a full on Opera user at the moment, but I'm considering a return to Firefox to check this out.

Same. Well, at least for my home computer its the same. Always liked Firefox though. Going to give it a shot.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Well it loads NHL.com in about 2 minutes instead of 2 days.

Pros and cons compared to Chrome? Been using Chrome for the past 4-5 years I think.

At the moment I'd have to say it's a similar speed to Chrome, but so far it seems to be less memory hungry.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I might give it a try because the old firefox was a goddamn catastrophe.

Chrome is great if you have lots of ram (which I do) but I'll give it a try anyways.

 

[SeidoN]

"faster and less ram usage than chrome"

interesting since it seems slower and uses 30% more ram than chrome for me

 

[Commander Clueless]

"faster and less ram usage than chrome"

interesting since it seems slower and uses 30% more ram than chrome for me

Really? I haven't noticed the RAM usage yet but I've only tested it out lightly.

I don't know that it's faster than Chrome really. Seems pretty similar.

 

[Mitchy]

I've been using Firefox for HF since HF on Chrome became basically impossible for me to use. Firefox was a pretty big improvement over Chrome for HF and now the difference is insane with the new update. It's using way less memory.

 

[Intoewsables]

I've been using Firefox for HF since HF on Chrome became basically impossible for me to use. Firefox was a pretty big improvement over Chrome for HF and now the difference is insane with the new update. It's using way less memory.

Yeah, the difference on HF especially is night and day. The site constantly freezes up for me on Chrome but I haven't had any issues with that on the new Firefox yet. Not to mention the pages load much faster as well.

 

[Osprey]

You can block javascript for HF in Chrome (here) and it gets rid of all of the slowness, though you lose embedded videos and tweets.

Does Firefox Quantum have a "restore tabs" feature like Chrome so that, if the system crashes, I reboot and open Firefox, it'll open every tab that I had open at the time of the crash? That's a pretty vital feature of Chrome that I don't want to lose.

 

[SniperHF]

In pre-quantum Firefox it was called "restore previous session"

 

[Osprey]

In pre-quantum Firefox it was called "restore previous session"

Yeah, I figured that older Firefox versions had a similar feature. It's just not a given that a totally new version of a browser will have all of the same features, though, as anyone who's used Edge knows that so many IE features are still missing, and that's probably partly why Edge is so fast. Similarly, Quantum may be fast and use less memory largely because it dropped a lot of code that has yet to be re-written.

 

[John Price]

Looks nice so far but some add-ons are not compatible!

 

[mouser]

You can block javascript for HF in Chrome (here) and it gets rid of all of the slowness, though you lose embedded videos and tweets.

Does Firefox Quantum have a "restore tabs" feature like Chrome so that, if the system crashes, I reboot and open Firefox, it'll open every tab that I had open at the time of the crash? That's a pretty vital feature of Chrome that I don't want to lose.

Yes, it has that. Though they've moved it from the start page into a menu command.

 

[mouser]

Looks nice so far but some add-ons are not compatible!

It's not just that many addons aren't compatible, FF has blocked dropped support for many of the different methods in which addons were previously implemented.

Some developers are switching over FF's WebExtensions support, but not all of them. Disappointed that many of my favorite extensions aren't working right now, and some may never be ported to the new version.

 

[KingBran]

Edge > all

 

[RandV]

Should have figured the new version it wanted to install was this upgrade, but kind of annoyed it didn't really announce it. Now I'm back in the previous version with all my plugins needed to be reinstalled.

I'm sure the new version is great and would like to use it, but I can't use the internet without noscript.