Chrome was fast and minimal when first released while Firefox famously ate all of your memory. No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible.
This was in the days of “don’t be evil” and people even liking google. Firefox had its advocates, but it wasn’t the simple “just way better than IE” that chrome was. I shamefully moved from Firefox to chrome. For the tabs man, I needed those tabs.
No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible.
Confused about this comment. At all points during the history of even single-process Firefox, as far as I know, it could handle far more tabs than Chrome, as in not even worth comparing. Chrome would start actively falling apart at 100 tabs. Firefox could eat up all of your memory with 20 tabs, but would only be marginally worse at 1000 tabs.
Firefox died because it systematically started eliminating all of its advantages over Chrome and imitating it in even superficial ways, and became openly user-hostile as it became completely financially dependent on Google. Imo it had only a little bit to do with Chrome's performance, which was often based on visually cheating and assuming that nobody needed more than 20 tabs, but also had tab isolation so the browser wasn't always hard crashing. Still, plenty of people are impressed by a quickly appearing unresponsive UI, plenty don't need more than 20 tabs, and hard crashes suck.
For the tabs man, I needed those tabs.
I needed tree-style vertical tabs, so I was locked in because Chrome wasn't flexible enough to build them.
And the thing was, in those days when Firefox was a memory hog, it was a 32-bit process. So it was limited to a max of 4GB anyway. It made efficient use of that 4GB and worked surprisingly well with 1000 tabs, even though there were inconveniences now and again. By this time, buying an extra 4GB of RAM for Firefox was pretty cheap.
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Chrome was fast and minimal when first released while Firefox famously ate all of your memory. No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible.
This was in the days of “don’t be evil” and people even liking google. Firefox had its advocates, but it wasn’t the simple “just way better than IE” that chrome was. I shamefully moved from Firefox to chrome. For the tabs man, I needed those tabs.
Confused about this comment. At all points during the history of even single-process Firefox, as far as I know, it could handle far more tabs than Chrome, as in not even worth comparing. Chrome would start actively falling apart at 100 tabs. Firefox could eat up all of your memory with 20 tabs, but would only be marginally worse at 1000 tabs.
Firefox died because it systematically started eliminating all of its advantages over Chrome and imitating it in even superficial ways, and became openly user-hostile as it became completely financially dependent on Google. Imo it had only a little bit to do with Chrome's performance, which was often based on visually cheating and assuming that nobody needed more than 20 tabs, but also had tab isolation so the browser wasn't always hard crashing. Still, plenty of people are impressed by a quickly appearing unresponsive UI, plenty don't need more than 20 tabs, and hard crashes suck.
I needed tree-style vertical tabs, so I was locked in because Chrome wasn't flexible enough to build them.
And the thing was, in those days when Firefox was a memory hog, it was a 32-bit process. So it was limited to a max of 4GB anyway. It made efficient use of that 4GB and worked surprisingly well with 1000 tabs, even though there were inconveniences now and again. By this time, buying an extra 4GB of RAM for Firefox was pretty cheap.
You are almost certainly right. I blamed all the memory eating on the tabs, but it probably had nothing to do with it.
Opera had tabs before Chrome even got released. So i'm assuming the key difference was the ability for Chrome to advertise its features to you.