Firefox or Chrome on Kindle Fire: comments?

vailr · 01-04-2013, 03:07 PM

Have any Kindle Fire (or Fire HD) owners tried running an alternate web browser, such as Firefox or Google Chrome?
Any comments comparing either of those with the native Kindle Fire "Silk" web browser?
TIA

Note: there are YouTube tutorials showing "how to" install either alternative web browser:
Firefox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rsaLeGjSoU
Chrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XnHMumfi78

ChronoReverse · 01-04-2013, 03:14 PM

I'd try Dolphin or Opera Mobile (not Mini) instead. Both Chrome and Firefox for Android aren't quite up to snuff in various ways.

Ravynmagi · 01-04-2013, 05:19 PM

Not sure why, but I had dramatically different experiences with Chrome on the Kindle Fire HD 7 and Fire HD 8.9.

Not sure why, but on the Fire HD 8.9 Chrome was pretty slow and I had to use Dolphin instead. On the 7 inch Fire HD Chrome runs impressively fast and is my main browser. Dolphin runs great on both, but I prefer Chrome because it's what I use on my desktop and all my bookmarks and tabs sync nicely between the devices.

richierich1212 · 01-04-2013, 11:04 PM

Boat Browser is the best Android browser

Chiropteran · 01-04-2013, 11:40 PM

I use chrome exclusively on my Kindle Fire HD 7. I hate the default amazon browser.

lothar · 01-05-2013, 12:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richierich1212

Dolphin is the best Android browser

Fixed.

Oyeve · 01-05-2013, 09:29 AM

I prefer chrome on my android based devices. Haven't had any issues yet.

dguy6789 · 01-05-2013, 09:50 AM

Chrome's pretty buggy now(it used to be much better) but it's still probably the best Android browser.

ponyo · 01-05-2013, 10:27 AM

I like Chrome because of other devices sync but it has uneven performance on mobile. Dolphin I like but I can't stand all the banner ads on websites, especially Yahoo. Both Chrome and Dolphin lack Flash support so I find myself using AOSP browser the most. It's the fastest and best performing browser and it works with Flash.

clamum · 01-07-2013, 03:07 PM

I use Dolphin just cause it was required to install Flash. Maybe I'll give Chrome a shot.

ChronoReverse · 01-07-2013, 03:13 PM

Chrome is has improved a bit on Android but it's slower than the Stock browser (which do the syncing Chrome does) and doesn't support flash. Not a huge fan of it because of that.

lxskllr · 01-07-2013, 08:17 PM

I like Tint2 but it requires ICS+. For all versions I like Zirco. I pretty much stick with libre software, so I don't use Opera or Dolphin, but they're both functionally good browsers. Firefox has been a disappointment. I'm a huge fan on the desktop, but the mobile browser's a real pig. Functions/features are good, but it uses a tremendous amount of ram.

lothar · 01-07-2013, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lxskllr

I like Tint2 but it requires ICS+. For all versions I like Zirco. I pretty much stick with libre software, so I don't use Opera or Dolphin, but they're both functionally good browsers. Firefox has been a disappointment. I'm a huge fan on the desktop, but the mobile browser's a real pig. Functions/features are good, but it uses a tremendous amount of ram.

Firefox on desktop is a memory hog as well.
Not sure how you don't notice this.

lxskllr · 01-07-2013, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lothar

Firefox on desktop is a memory hog as well.
Not sure how you don't notice this.

Desktop doesn't use significantly more ram than other major browsers. I'm using 525mb with 20 tabs open. In any case, that's an insignificant fraction of my 8gb installed. I'm more concerned about the 21mb apk size, and a 120mb used with 3 tabs open on my tablet since I only have 1gb on that. It's also a bit laggy. That contrasts with 18mb used on Zirco, which is snappy, but not very pretty.

ChronoReverse · 01-08-2013, 01:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lothar

Firefox on desktop is a memory hog as well.
Not sure how you don't notice this.

It hasn't been since version 5. We're on version 17 of Firefox. Chrome generally uses more RAM than Firefox (not necessarily a bad thing) nowadays because of the per-tab-process design.

But Firefox on Android is pretty bad.

lothar · 01-08-2013, 03:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChronoReverse

It hasn't been since version 5. We're on version 17 of Firefox. Chrome generally uses more RAM than Firefox (not necessarily a bad thing) nowadays because of the per-tab-process design.

But Firefox on Android is pretty bad.

I left Firefox in version 4.x last year or the year before and never looked back.
How the hell has it reached version 17 already in only 2 years or less?

It is a bad thing when you have to end process or one tab crashes your entire browser. That's what I hated about Firefox.
With Chrome, I get the notification about the offending tab and kill the page and continue browsing as usual.
If it was Firefox, the misbehaving website will make the browser unstable and make the system slow to a crawl and I would have had to press the ctrl-alt-delete button to start task manager and kill Firefox process and notice it eating gigs of ram. The kicker for me was after terminating the Firefox process and launching it again, it goes back to its memory hog ways. Only a system reboot cured the problem.
Since I started using Chrome, I've never had to start task manager for any reason at all so maybe that's why I never noticed.

And yes, I am one of those people who have dozens of tabs open.
On my desktop, I probably have 50+ tabs open right now.

/posting from my Nexus 7 in bed.

ChronoReverse · 01-08-2013, 09:19 AM

Yeah, stuff like that is usually resolved after a while. Misbehaving sites is usually due to javascript or flash. Plugins run in a different thread now so that's just about the same. Meanwhile, long-running scripts bring up the dialog asking whether you want to stop it so that has a partial solution.

In any case, Chrome on the desktop is a great browser, I only wanted to point out that if memory usage really was a problem (rather than being just a number you saw and being worried about it), Chrome would be exacerbating it.