Is it me or is Firefox slow as hell?

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I'm a longtime loyal Firefox user here, and I've tried Chrome on a few occasions. I even use Chrome at work, but have never really liked it.

But at the same time, Firefox is doing EVERYTHING to make me want to switch.

- Google+ loads slow as hell? Loading a page for example on my 2008 MacBook Pro (with an SSD drive) takes 30 seconds. It locks up for a solid 30 seconds before loading the site. I can't do a thing about it. I try this on my 2012 Lenovo T420 from work and it's still slow. Something like 15-20 seconds.

- Other Google sites seem to load slow as hell too. Is Google doing something intentionally to cripple Firefox? I notice IE11 doesn't have these issues.

- In general the browser loads sites slower and seems to be less responsive (kinda like the whole Android vs iOS thing, except this time Chrome is faster).

I don't even have that many extensions running (XMarks, Adblock Plus, Greasmonkey with no scripts activated, LastPass, Pushbullet).

As for my main reason for not switching to Chrome? The address bar sucks at picking up history. I can type in the title of any site like "Gad" and Firefox will take me to Mobile Devices & Gadgets since I visit it frequently, I often have trouble invoking browser history on Chrome. It seems to focus on searching webpage content more than titles. Who the hell remembers website content anyway? I notice they've been better especially in the past year or so, but this has plagued Chrome since its beginning days well into 2012.

 

[Ketchup]

I have found that add-ons are the main thing that will slow down Firefox.

On the Google front, going to their home search page normally signs me in, securely, to my Google account, so that may be the cause of the extra time you are seeing (if you don't use your Google account on the other browsers.) I have a Gmail account, for example.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't have those problems. Could it be A/V? Some of them do internet scanning crap, and prevent viruses by preventing the user from connecting to the internet :^D

 

[Ketchup]

Great timing lxskllr.

 

[ninaholic37]

Chrome loads Google+ just as slow as Firefox does for me. Even Google Groups loads slow (in comparison to other sites) for me in both, way too many elements and buttons and wrappers cluttering things up when I just want to read the text/conversations. I'm very glad this forum hasn't "upgraded" to their convoluted layouts.

 

[sandorski]

It's not my experience using Firefox.

 

[PliotronX]

Its usually fast for me but with the linkification add on which I love amazon is real laggy even scrolling. Love my addons though

 

[Berryracer]

that's why I switched to Pale Moon, gives me the speed of Chrome but with the interface and features of Firefox, the best of both worlds

 

[nemesismk2]

I use Firefox with Windows XP and AMD FX 4300 and Firefox is fast and 100% stable and the AV i use is Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

[ControlD]

I didn't think Firefox was slow until I started using Chrome. Now I can barely stand to use FF anymore. The recent buggy releases haven't helped things much either.

 

[OlafSicky]

The last release screwed things up for me slow and I still have adobe crashing

 

[Mem]

that's why I switched to Pale Moon, gives me the speed of Chrome but with the interface and features of Firefox, the best of both worlds

To be fair my Firefox is fast and yes I've tried them all Chrome,Opera,Pale Moon,Waterfox etc , there is not much difference in any of them speed wise.


I think the suggestions from others members sounds right ie could be a bad or too many extensions,AV or something like that.

Firefox has always been fast in my experience unless your ISP is doing maintenance(happened to me awhile back).

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I have found that add-ons are the main thing that will slow down Firefox.

On the Google front, going to their home search page normally signs me in, securely, to my Google account, so that may be the cause of the extra time you are seeing (if you don't use your Google account on the other browsers.) I have a Gmail account, for example.

ding ding ding! PEBKAC issue here. I should've tried all my add-ons, but I found the suspect add-on. It's for one of my MMOs...

Maybe Firefox is still slightly slower than Chrome, but it's probably just splitting hairs at that point. The removal of the add-on sped things up 5000x.

 

[lxskllr]

Maybe Firefox is still slightly slower than Chrome, but it's probably just splitting hairs at that point. The removal of the add-on sped things up 5000x.

Subjectively, I think Chrome is a touch faster than Firefox, but that's not the only metric to judge a browser by. Speed is the only thing Chrome does better, and not by that much.

 

[Remobz]

Subjectively, I think Chrome is a touch faster than Firefox, but that's not the only metric to judge a browser by. Speed is the only thing Chrome does better, and not by that much.

I have the latest chrome on a Windows 8.0 laptop and I get a lot of broken pictures and websites. I get better results with IE 10.

 

[alangrift]

I have slow load times on Google+ and Facebook on Firefox. Those sites are super speedy for me on my Chromebook though.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Subjectively, I think Chrome is a touch faster than Firefox, but that's not the only metric to judge a browser by. Speed is the only thing Chrome does better, and not by that much.

I agree. I'm very happy with my FF installation now. In general FF is less memory intensive so my whole system feels better (damn work computers and their AV and slow magnetic drives). With Chrome, even if the browser itself is snappy, alt+tab out and the system is already slowed down to a crawl by the massive memory use.