Brave, a browser that blocks ads by default | The Compost Bin | Forums

KVR said
Is it just me or has chrome become slower than heck? It works okay on one of my laptops using windows 8, but my laptop with win 7 and the one with xp I have to use firefox or it's basically unusable.

G.Chrome spawns a new process for every tab. It's supposed to prevent the entire browser from crashing if only one tab dies. IN THEORY.

In reality, I can STILL count on one hand the number of times that's happened in I don't even know how many years. When it crashes, the whole thing dies, and with a mere fraction of the tabs I've run in Firefox.

So Firefox has less crashing, handles heavier usage, and has better session management. Both are resource hogs and FF has gotten bloated, but at the same resource usage, I'm likely running more tabs in FF. Given that both crash, session management is my greatest concern. I want to know that if it dies, I haven't lost my tabs or the history of any of the tabs. I'm not saying Chome can't do this, but I've not see it done as well. There may well be an extension I'm unaware of, but frankly I've not looked. Chrome simply doesn't have as many addons/extensions as FF.

FF has been my goto browser since it replaced Netscape. But in the past year or three they've steadily been making changes that have infuriated me. About a month ago, I got fed up and followed a lead I'd been sitting on to a sibling browser that kept the good from FF and refused to adopt the bad changes.

That browser is called Pale Moon. (PM for short)

PM also trimmed out some of the bloat and fat. It trimmed certain legit features that 1% or fewer users use, and it has a focus on security much stricter than FF... and I consider FF to have pretty decent security.

I'm still in testing phase so I'm not ready to go gushing over PM yet, and it already has some clear pitfalls, but they've had minimal impact thus far, and I'm LOVING having "my old Firefox" back, only it's not FF, it's PM.

By "my old Firefox", I mean the interface (no "Australis" BS), the customization capabilities, my entire layout and workflow are back, and I've even been able to reinstall some favorite add-ons that I lost to FF updates (like "Australis").

There are downsides which haven't proved a problem for me, but your results might vary.

(ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!! --- I happen to be writing this post in G.Chrome and just lost an entire paragraph because I made the mistake of hitting the WYSIWYG undo, and because unlike in FF and PM, the extension "Lazarus: Form Recovery" ISN'T WORKING. Thats TWO middle fingers Google. Aaaaaaaand back to retyping everything below from scratch... sarcastic "yay".)

Pale Moon's lead developer is strongly principled in his convictions about what features are good or bad for a browser. So far, I've not only agreed with 100% of his choices, but I've learned a bunch in the process.

• YouTube: Google has been implementing changes on YT you may not be aware of. They have begun phasing out Flash support in favor of HTML5 video. This isn't such a bad thing on the surface. Flash has increasingly become an ever increasing vulnerability that has not kept pace with it's security flaws. HTML 5 video is more efficient, lighter-weight, and has better accessibility. Google has limited view options for Flash forcing users to use Google's implementation of HTML 5 video. This is Google trying to phase out Flash. The problem lies not with HTML 5 video, but with Google's implementation of it. Google uses something called "Media Source Extensions" (MSE) to deliver their HTML 5 video. PM's lead developer (Mr. M.C. Straver, BASc aka Moonchild) has stated that PM will never include MSE support (unless someone writes an extension) because:
  

  "MSE is a delivery method that should not be in a browser; it is also the perfect setup for DRM (Digital Rights Management) in the browser which will not be included in Pale Moon out of principle."
  Source: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=7435#p48312
  Source: http://www.palemoon......ap.shtml "Media support" section
   

• Add-ons/Extensions: Unlike with Firefox, adding extensions to Pale Moon can be a multi-step process...
  
  1. Check Pale Moon's "Compatibility List" and the Extension Updates and History threads at the PM forum. Read what you can find about your extension and if people cite problems, or offer suggestions, you must weigh that information with the next steps.
  2. Pale Moon has it's own extensions. They mostly exist to substitute pre-existing Firefox extensions which do not operate correctly in Pale Moon. When they are available, you should use them over their FF counterparts. For example, FF has "AdBlock Plus" which had trouble in PM, so PM released "AdBlock Latitude".
  3. If no PM version exists or you prefer a particular FF extension over one in the same category on PM, then you must check the current FF extension to see if it is compatible with PM. Many are and can be installed just as they are for FF. A green or yellow install button indicates compatibility, while a gray install button indicates incompatibility.
  4. If a current Firefox version is not compatible, you can follow the instructions on Pale Moon's Compatibility List to find that extension's version archive. Then just hover your mouse over each install button. As before, green or yellow indicates compatibility, while a gray indicates incompatibility. Just work down from the top till you find a compatible version. Install the older version on PM.
  5. Once installed, CHECK EACH EXTENSION to verify that it is working correctly. Most will, some won't, and some will have hiccups.

I use a lot of extensions to extend my browser's capabilities. I've found that most of them work. I've found that most which don't work in PM, are ones which had already stopped working in FF.

I've found PM handles fewer tabs than FF before it destabilizes, but I tend to average a MINIMUM of 100 tabs across 1 to 3 windows and have run as many as 8 windows each running between 2 and 50 tabs each. (Just since writing this post, I've spawned 15 tabs in G.Chrome and I'm already pushing my luck.) Chances are, you don't run near as many tabs as I do so you may never encounter instability from too many tabs. That said, certain websites tend to hog more resources and permit fewer tabs. Gmail and Youtube are the main offenders here and they cause the same troubles in any browser. The more media rich and/or the more scripts in a webpage, the more likely you are to have your browser (and browser) bog down and/or crash.

And that brings me full circle back to session management. PM not only runs the FF session manager extension, but I've found that PM does a better job of saving crashed sessions than FF!

So there you have it, a reply turned review which I hadn't planned to write till I had more time with PM under my belt.

I use PM, FF, and G.Ch now in that order of preference. I only use MSIE when I am forced to, and I've been known to side-step that by using IE emulating tabs from within FF.