How's it going guys I'm ThioJoe and statistically I'm willing to bet that you're probably using Google Chrome
Considering that at the moment it has about a 60% market share
But we're talking about a different web browser that had a complete overhaul recently that you probably actually have heard of called Firefox
I'm sure many of you are familiar with it
It used to be a really great browser used to be the best, but then Google Chrome a few years ago
Just broke into the scene and completely took over so Firefox actually responded to this by
Completely redoing their web browser and they released a new version called Firefox quantum, and I'm gonna talk about that today
I've been using it for about a week and a half since it came out
and
I'm gonna talk about why you might want to consider switching to it because it is a
Pretty good browser and could possibly be better than Google Chrome in your situation
Before we get into my experience we can talk about the different claims the company makes which is Mozilla
They make Firefox, and they say that the new Firefox is twice as fast as the previous version
It's faster than Chrome, and it uses 30% less memory than Chrome
So it seems like the main selling point is performance
Especially in the cases when lots of tabs are open. They say that it's gonna perform well
Whether you have 10 tabs open or a hundred so that's pretty bold stuff although
We do know that Google Chrome does start to get pretty sluggish the more tabs you open another big feature is the?
Visual design the look of it, which does look really nice, and they're calling it the photon design
It's a very flat type style very much like the material design that Google uses you have square simplistic tabs
Everything just seems flat and right in front of you
Which I do?
Happen to like and they also say with this different framework that they use to design this it's going to perform a lot better on
high DPI displays
So I assume that means that if you have like a 4k display or something
It's gonna scale really well and look just as good as it would on a typical monitor with a 72
Dpi which is pretty average
Because Windows what it would normally have to do
Is kind of make one pixel into multiple to make things look the same size even though
It's using the more pixels, but sometimes that can screw things up if it's not a correct ratio
But anyway they say that with higher resolution displays this should look pretty good so before I get into things
I do like and don't like I can give you a general impression and that is that I really do like this new browser. I'm
Considering switching to it. I've noticed that just browsing it seems to be snappier
I don't know if it's placebo, but it does feel very fast
It seems like it's just maybe a little bit faster and quicker to load
Then Google Chrome is or maybe when closing tabs and opening new tabs. It just seems to be a little bit more ready, though
I really need to keep in mind that on my computer. It is a pretty good computer. I've got a ton of RAM
It's a top-end CPU although
it is a couple years old, so I've never really had any issues in general before anyway, so
The fact that it does feel a little bit snappy
I think is pretty significant, but you might want to try it out if you're on older hardware
It might be a really big difference one of the main reasons. It's a lot faster than previous versions of Firefox
Is that it now allows support for multiple processes running on the same browser instead of just one process
Handling everything which means it can now support multiple CPU cores and different threads
So that's obviously gonna be a huge advantage
Google Chrome does do that so it's not like that's an advantage over google chrome
But it is a big advantage if you were using Firefox in the past
And you thought it was really slow it might be worth it to give this a chance because that is a big change
Another cool thing in regards to that is if you go into the settings. It does actually allow you to choose
how many cores or processes you want it to use separately so if you have a
Lot of cores like six or even eight cores in your CPU you might allow it to use eight different
Processes if you have quad-core you could limit it to four if you want to limit it to just one
Process you want to allow
Every other process on your computer to have an advantage then you can limit it to just one so as for
Performance it is very good
I don't know if it's a huge improvement in my case over Google Chrome
But it does seem to be a little bit of an improvement
But in your case it might be a huge improvement or maybe not like I said, so you've really got to try it yourself
But why don't we talk about some features that it has?
That do actually seem really awesome, and that you don't really get in google chrome and other browsers now
I must say that probably my favorite feature of Firefox quantum
Which is really dead? Simple is the built in screenshot feature? This is something. I use a lot in making videos sometimes
I have to screenshot websites and that sort of thing and before I would have to use extensions and sometimes
They wouldn't really work very well, but now with Firefox quantum. The feature is built right in you can capture
Just what's visible you can capture the entire page and because it's obviously natively built into the browser
It works really well, and it's so convenient. It's not like you have to add another extension
That's gonna
Take up resources, so I'm really glad they added that I don't know why other browsers
Haven't done
So either another cool feature which is kind of in the background is that Firefox Quantum has built in phishing and malware protection
Now other browsers do this as well
But I haven't really seen them make this as a main selling point so I'm gonna hope that Firefox is
Really focusing a lot and maybe partnering with different websites and services that
Specifically work on this type of security
And this is basically just gonna allow you to maybe scan different files as they're downloading
It'll take a hash and compare that to maybe other Firefox users that have downloaded it
And it'll just warn you if you're going on a website. That is
Malicious you have a better chance of surviving that or your computer rather of course that doesn't replace the need for
Antivirus we're gonna. Take a little detour. Don't worry, and that would be that obviously you always want to have a standalone antivirus
Don't let your computer go unprotected
This is not a replacement you always want to have something especially that has so-called internet security a lot of times
That's what an antivirus will call it basically that just means that it will monitor
Incoming traffic so if you have to go on a website
It'll use a firewall to block that or if you download a file
it'll actively monitor what you're downloading and doing instead of just scanning once a week first stuff that you've already downloaded and
potentially infected yourself with so obviously it's awesome that
Firefox has this stuff built in it'll be great for people who maybe aren't as proactive as they should be it'll just add
another layer of security another feature is the
Customizability now. I already mentioned that I think it looks great
But if you do want to change some things around you can do that
they have a
Specific customized menu where you can adjust the toolbar and drag and drop icons you can take icons off you can add
icons like stuff for launching a
private window or maybe you want to add the download bar take the download bar away at
bookmark bars and also in the settings you can make it so either the search bar is separate or built in to the
URL bar kind of like the omnibox in google chrome
so you can see here this menu offers a lot of different stuff you can mess around with and add to the bar and
It just offers a lot of customized ability that you don't really seem to see in Google Chrome
Another couple quick features is that it has a built-in QR code reader?
So that's always useful if you come across something and another cool thing is they now support Web VR
They added a different framework for allowing like web. Assembly is another scripting framework, so
VR in your web browser virtual reality kind of crazy to think about but maybe if this framework gets more adoption and
People actually start making VR games that you can run in your web browser
Firefox would be one of the few ways you could actually do it
I don't know if it supports oculus rift or anything like that
but I'm assuming that there are protocols that are being at least work towards that if it doesn't do that already and
Finally one of the big features. They talked about a lot is the
integration with different devices
So you can actually log into your Firefox account on all your devices whether it's your computer or an Android or iOS phone there are
quantum versions on mobile as well and
When you log into those you can share information between those so for example
there's a feature called pocket which is basically like a
Mini storage thing where you can save links that you want to read later
And you can also view those links on all your devices and you can also send a tab
To another device so say you're on your phone
And you're reading something and it's gonna take a while so you decide you want to read it on your computer
You can just do send to another device and then
Send your computer to read it on there and the same idea on the computer
or you can save it and
Then read it on any device at any time because it saves that link now even though there are a lot of good things about
Firefox quantum there are also things that I'm not really fan of for example the
Autocomplete box that pops down when you type something into the URL bar is not really good
It's kind of I don't know how to describe it. It's very difficult to read whereas Chrome the autocomplete search
It's very easy to read they're kind of separated
It shows you in bold what you've already typed and the autocomplete and the links below. It are very organized
I don't know what it is about it
But chrome just has that really looking good whereas on Firefox you type something in it
Shows like the whole URL, and it just looks very very cluttered
So I hope they kind of adjust that so it's a little bit easier to read or maybe it's just that chrome has a better
Algorithm for determining what you probably want to see when you're typing it into the browser like for previous
websites that you visited it just seems like maybe with a I
They have that a lot better another thing that is missing
I think is there's no download
Status bar so in google chrome when you download a file it pops up a little thing at the bottom
So you can see the progress and show that it is actually downloading
And how many things are downloading whereas on firefox when you click save file it'll start downloading
But it only shows a little blue thing in the download bar, and that's the only indication that a file is downloading
And it's easy to forget
And then you have to click on that to see the progress
and if it's a big file that means you have to keep clicking it and checking the progress and all that it's kind of a
Pain so to get a analyst status bar actually had to download a separate extension, which doesn't really look that good
It's just purely functional
So I wish they would add some sort of feature to at least allow you to have a status bar to view your currently downloading
Files if you want to another thing you need to keep in mind is because they changed so much a lot of previous
extensions might not work on Firefox quantum
so that's kind of like a double whammy where if there's a
Extension on Chrome that you really like it not only might not be on Firefox at all
But if it is on Firefox, it's possible that it won't be compatible with the latest version of Firefox
So you have to keep that in mind if you have some extensions on chrome that you absolutely need
It might not be available so you need to double check that but possibly the biggest bummer about Firefox quantum
Is that it does not support or at least doesn't really work with you to F
Meaning physical security keys like the Yubikey that I've talked about in other videos the little blue key
Which allows you to do two-factor authentication on?
Websites like Google when you try to log in with the site you you tap the thing and it just says
It's not working try again, because apparently Firefox doesn't work with you to F
And there's a feature in the about config hidden settings that supposedly enables it
But it doesn't work, so I'm really disappointed that they have not introduced this feature or fixed it apparently
There's a new API they want to get working with it
They haven't done yet
But I don't know that's a killer feature that I use all the time and that might actually keep me from switching over permanently until
They get that fixed, but overall I do really like Firefox quantum and for the reasons I kind of mentioned
I haven't really decided whether I'm gonna switch back permanently
I think I'm probably gonna stick with Google Chrome for now although this does look very
Promising so if you do want to check it out you can just go to Mozilla Firefox website
And you can also download different versions, so just like with Chrome there are different release channels
So there's the regular release channel to get version 57
but you can also get the beta Channel which is version of and there's also the
Developer channel, which gets you newer features even still or the nightly build
Which they help date all the time kind of like the canary build on Google Chrome?
So depending on how soon you want updates in trade for stability you can get a newer channel
And I guess that's pretty much all there is to say about it if you've been using Chrome forever or maybe you switched from
Firefox at some point for some reason it might be a good time to at least give it another chance you might like it even
Better, but in any case if you guys did enjoy this video
Let me know what you think and if you want to keep watching. I'll put some other videos right here
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Even if you do subscribe because that stupid algorithm they got, but anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys
So thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Have a good one