Firefox: An Edge user's perspective

Nov 19, 2023

I’m sure everyone has their favorite browser. That one browser that they can’t not use. That is the first thing they install no matter what. My one, for the last 9 months, was Microsoft Edge. Make fun of me all you want, it was quite good. But now I feel as though I’m missing something. Like something isn’t right, it isn’t as it used to. So, I decided to try out Firefox! Here’s my opinions after a few hours of using it.

Let’s start with UI. I use Windows 11 and love its UI. This was where issue number 1 arose. The UI is not exactly the best. But, it’s definitely not the worst, and I like it. It’s not Edge level, but it sure is good! It’s a slightly modern theme with rounded corners and a relatively nice gray colour. Hex code: 2b2a33. It’s overall aesthetically pleasing and I like it.

Another thing that is very important to most is the speed. How much dedotated wam does it need, how fast is it, how smooth and fluent is it? Well, in my testing, it’s very smooth. I ran Browserbench 2.0 speedometer and Edge won by just over 2 times. Scores:
Edge: 163±13
Firefox: 85±6.9
Chrome: 191±11
These benchmarks show that there is a MAJOR gap in Firefox and Edge/Chrome. This is also while consuming about 2x as much ram. This doesn’t matter to me as I’ve got 32 GB of it, but if you have 8, or even 16, then it will be an issue.

Extensions are another issue for me. It not being based on chromium means that a large amount of extensions won’t exist. And while that might be an issue with AdBlock related extensions, it’s still nice to have.

So, is it worth swapping to Firefox if you already use a browser you like? No. There’s not a lot of benefit.