Remember when you ditched Firefox for Chrome and pinkie-swore you’d never go back? Yeah, me too. But recently I needed to test a Web-based app in Firefox, so, with some hesitance, I took the plunge and installed it.

 

I opened the browser, and saw a lean, minimalist user interface with cool, gray icons on the toolbar. But where was orange-y Firefox? Did I launch the wrong browser?

 

 

Turns out, the good folks at Mozilla took their shrinking market share to heart and fought back with one of the most notably improved products I have seen in recent memory. Impressive performance improvements (Mozilla claims that Firefox is now the fastest of the top three browsers), a customizable menu and toolbar, 64-bit architecture, streamlined ‘reading’ view, and a way-better-than-Chrome-or-IE settings manager that could easily set a new standard.

 

Firefox also boasts excellent browsing privacy. I don’t like snoopware, and the Web browser behemoths have been getting on my nerves lately. Snoopware isn’t just cookies. If you’re a Chrome user on Windows, take a look at the processes running in your Task Scheduler in Windows. You are likely to find at least two, sometimes more, such as Google updater and other Chrome-related tasks running in the background on your PC or laptop pretty much around the clock. And just when you thought you had defeated rogue processes by tweaking your msconfig settings.

 

 

Browsers like Chrome and IE seek to ‘manage’, or at least stealthily observe, as much of your online life as possible.

 

Firefox takes a refreshing approach to Web privacy. It actually seeks to protect it. Many of the privacy settings are part of the ‘private browsing’ feature. With ‘private browsing’ enabled, Firefox operates in stealth mode, where no information -- such as cookies, passwords, files, browsing history etc. -- is saved to the user’s computer.

 

It also provides ‘tracking protection,’ which prevents websites from tracking your browsing data across multiple sites. How often have you made a search on Amazon, only to see ads for the very product you searched for appear on websites afterwards? Tracking protection prevents this from occurring. You can essentially stay in ‘private browsing’ mode by enabling the ‘do not track history’ setting.

 

Another notable improvement is the move to 64-bit architecture, which Mozilla rolled out late in 2015. Although many older add-ons aren’t compatible with the new 64-bit version, the improved performance and fault tolerance far outweigh this minor inconvenience.

 

These improvements are great, but I saved my favorite feature for last, the new ‘Reading View.’ This is an option to view a streamlined version of the Web page you are on, eliminating videos, ads, and background images. The Reading View allows you to get straight to the heart of the content, with no frills or distractions. I really appreciate the clean format for doing research and reading news, especially when traveling and needing to conserve bandwidth.

 

Mozilla offers online support with quick solutions to common issues such as how to optimize Firefox to work with specific sites such as Facebook and YouTube, or how to run a Firefox Health Report, which provides information about your browser’s performance and stability over time. The Firefox Developer edition provides tools that are not available in the standard version. Firefox is also available for Android and iOS.

 

The new Firefox is definitely worth another look. I actually switched back to it as my default browser. This time I didn’t pinkie-swear but instead vowed to never say ‘never’ again.

 

 

This story, "Why I switched back to Firefox" was originally published by Network World.

I just installed it. v46. So far it's looking good.

 

Thanks for the post.

If you subscribe to the weekly US-CERT Vulnerability Summary bulletins, you will see that FF still tends to have more newly reported vulnerabilities than the other major browsers - and they have for quite awhile now. You have to follow week to week to get the full picture (or else this last bulletin would make you think Chrome is the worst).

 

I still personally prefer IE11 because, well, I'm used to it - but also because it keeps excelling in security against socially engineered threats - the most prolific kind (Chrome is a very close 2nd). But for a FF alternative, I might suggest you check out Pale Moon. It also has a very minimalistic look (unless you enable everything). Pale Moon is designed for speed on modern hardware where FF is designed to be compatible with just about any hardware Windows runs on. They accomplish in part by not including many of the rarely used features stuffed into FF.

 

While add-on support for FF is often seen as its major advantage, that is also a security concern. See, NoScript and other popular Firefox add-ons open millions to new attack.

Nine of the top 10 most popular Firefox add-ons contain exploitable vulnerabilities.

:(

 

While PM supports many add-ons too, it does support such a wide-open variety. I think PM is worth checking out if you like FF but want to try an alternative to it. It comes in native 32-bit or native 64-bit versions. I use the 64-bit with no problems.

Thanks for the Link, Cindy.

I am on Firefox update 46.0.1 on all computers and liking this update.

Firefox is finicky on OSX. For no apparent reason it lock up. It has other quirks like html5 videos will stop playing half way through. On rare occasions it crashes and freezes OSX and I have to do a forced reboot. It seems that Firefox is the only thing that crashes on me. I hang in there with it since Chrome just isn't for me and Safari while better then in the past still has a ways to go for me to use it.

I have never used any other browser than Firefox... maybe I just don't like change!

 

I do get to sample other flavours on customers computers, but so far I have never seen anything that would persuade me to change over.

maybe I just don't like change!

I think that is how I am.

 

Many years ago back in the mid 90s I used and loved Netscape and refused to let go of it. It took my company threatening to discipline me for me to finally move to IE5. Then I learned to like it and switch my personal systems over to IE too. I never believed all the hype about IE6 being unsafe so I never switched to FF when that browser war became intense. Turns out I was right because if you kept your computer updated, used a decent security setup, and avoided being click-happy or participating in risky behavior, you could use any browser and remain safe. I used to ask my colleagues who insisted IE was unsafe if they STOPPED getting infected just by switching to FF? Turns out they weren't getting infected before with IE. Oh well.

 

So I have stuck with IE up through and including IE11. I have FF, Chrome, and Pale Moon installed but only use them to verify a site is working or not if it does not render right in IE. I am not looking forward to the day when IE goes away (if IE goes away!?) and Edge takes over. Edge is okay, certainly very fast and has a minimalistic look too (if you disable everything). But I prefer IE by a long shot. But again, that may be because I don't like change. ;)