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Edge Competitor: Firefox | History and Usage Stats and 2 recent Edge & Firefox Reviews ...
Firefox (and Chrome) have a legitimate new competitor and it is highly likly will both shed share as a result of Microsoft's forcing the install of their new entry on Windows users.
Th following is excerpted from Wikipedia's comprehensive overview of Firefox, which is constantly updated and the latest version is always available here: en.wikipedia.org
>> Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who desired a standalone browser, rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released on November 9, 2004,and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.
Firefox usage grew to a peak of 32.21% at the end of 2009 with version 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7, although not all versions of Internet Explorer as a whole. Usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome.
As of July 2020, Firefox has 8.48% usage share as a "desktop" browser according to StatCounter, but 7.58% according to NetMarketShare, making it the third-most popular browser after Google Chrome with 69% and Safari with 8.74% usage share across all platforms is lower and is third-most popular overall at 4.25% according to StatCounter, and 3.55% according to NetMarketShare. <<
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========================================== Two Recent Top 2020 Browser Ratings and Reviews ==========================================
1. Mozilla Firefox 2, Microsoft Edge 3, Google Chrome 4, Opera 5. Vivaldi
It's a very close-run thing, but we believe that Firefox is the best browser you can download today. It's not without its flaws, but developer Mozilla has committed to supporting its users' privacy and developing tools to stop third parties from tracking you around the web.
The newly released Chromium-based Edge comes a close second. It supports all the same browser extensions as Google Chrome, but is noticeably less RAM-hungry, allowing for faster performance.
>> 1. Mozilla Firefox
The best browser for power users and privacy protection
--> Incredibly flexible --> Cross-platform sync --> Good privacy protection --> A bit slower than rivals
Firefox has long been the Swiss Army Knife of the internet and our favourite browser. Version 72 [now at 78] is particularly good: it can alert you if your email address is included in a known data breach, it blocks those annoying allow-notifications popups, it blocks “fingerprinting” browser tracking and it brings its picture in picture video mode to the Mac version. As before it’s endlessly customizable both in terms of its appearance and in the range of extensions and plugins you can use. Last year’s overhaul dramatically improved its performance, which was starting to lag behind the likes of Chrome, and it’s smooth and solid even on fairly modest hardware.
As much as we love Firefox – right now it’s still our favourite browser – we’re worried about its future. 2019 wasn’t a great year for Mozilla, with a major add-on crisis in May that Peter Saint-Andre and Matthew Miller claimed “was the result of having an interlocking set of complex systems that were not well understood across the relevant teams”. The lack of in-house quality assurance teams was also highlighted – much of Mozilla’s QA is outsourced – and in early 2020 the QA leads were reportedly let go in a round of layoffs. Mozilla’s struggling for income, so if you value Firefox you might want to visit donate.mozilla.org to help secure its future.
>> 2. Microsoft Edge
A genuinely great browser from the former browser bad guys
Operating system: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux coming soon
--> Very, very fast --> Crystal clear privacy tools --> Can save sites as apps --> Windows really wants it to be the default
Older readers will remember Microsoft as the villains of the Browser Wars that ultimately led to the rise of Firefox and Chrome. But Microsoft is on the side of the angels now and its Edge browser has been rebuilt with Chromium at its heart. It’s Windows’ default browser and there are also versions for iOS, Android and Mac.
The new Chromium-powered version is considerably faster than its predecessor and includes some useful features including Read Aloud, the ability to cast media such as inline videos to Chromecast devices, an Opera-style start page and a good selection of add-ons such as password managers, ad-blockers and so on. You can also download web pages as apps which then run as stand-alone applications without having to launch the whole browser. That’s useful for the likes of Google Docs or Twitter.
There are lots of customization options and we particularly liked the Privacy and Services page, which makes potentially confusing settings crystal clear, and the Site Permissions page. That gives you fine-grained control over what specific sites can do, including everything from pop-ups and ad blocking to MIDI device access and media autoplay.
Edge looks like Chrome and works like Chrome, but we like it more than Chrome: it’s noticeably faster on our Mac and the customization options are superb. <<
They choose Google's Chrome as the best web browser
>> The best Chrome alternative: Mozilla Firefox
Firefox comes in a close second — a very close second. Mozilla takes real strides to make its browser a truly modern way to surf from site to site, thanks to efforts like its upgrade to Firefox Quantum and the virtual reality-focused alternative, Firefox Reality. It wasn’t too long ago that Mozilla rebuilt the familiar old standby browser’s interface, offering a cleaner, more modern take on what a web browser should be, and even introduced a password-free browsing experience.
The changes weren’t just skin deep, however: There’s some impressive engineering going on behind the scenes. Firefox Quantum is designed to leverage multi-core processors in ways that its competitors just aren’t doing. It’s not going to make a huge difference in your day-to-day browsing, but the Mozilla Corporation hopes this design will give it an edge moving forward. By engineering for the future now, Firefox Quantum is in a better position to take advantage of quicker and quicker processors as they emerge year after year.
More recent updates include better privacy protections with anti-tracker support, improved password syncing across devices, improved readability, and integrated breach alerts.
Beneath those changes, it’s still the same Firefox we all know and love. It’s a capable browser, with a deep catalog of extensions and user interface customization. The new Firefox Mobile app also received the Quantum treatment, so it’s quicker and more streamlined than ever before. Grab the mobile Firefox app and you can share bookmarks between devices, but you must sign up for a separate Firefox account. Unfortunately, managing settings across platforms isn’t as seamless as Chrome.
Even with a few major overhauls, Firefox is a comfortable, familiar standby. There’s a bit of a fringe benefit, too. Since it’s been around longer than Chrome, some older web apps — the likes of which you might encounter at your university or workplace — work better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. For that reason, it never hurts to keep it around. The most recent version, Firefox 76, does an even better job than ever of keeping you safe from sites that want to track your activities as you surf the web.
As a primary browser, Firefox is more privacy-centric than Chrome and is comparably fast, but its feature set isn’t quite as expansive elsewhere. >>
>> The web browser with the most potential: Microsoft Edge
Microsoft developed an integrated browser for Windows 10, dubbed Edge, that uses an in-house browsing engine and updates along with the operating system. This project is arguably a failure, as Edge remains unable to gain a substantial market share despite it serving as Windows 10’s default web browser.
In response, Microsoft rewrote Edge using the open-source Chromium web browser engine, taking Google’s lead and making something all its own. The new version launched on February 5, 2020, which replaces the legacy version pre-installed in Windows 10. Currently, you must download and install this browser versus upgrading through Windows Update.
At first glance, Microsoft Edge looks and feels like Chrome. It prompts you to import Chrome’s bookmarks toolbar and other settings. This is great if you previously hated Edge and want to give Microsoft’s browser another shot. Even more, it supports Chrome extensions, though the browser leads you to the Microsoft Store for add-ons. You must manually load the Chrome Web Store to install anything not listed in Microsoft’s repository.
The big news here is performance. Microsoft optimized the Chromium-based Edge for Windows 10. As a quick experiment, we loaded six identical pages/tabs in Chrome and Edge. Looking at Task Manager showed Chrome consuming 1.4GB of memory while Microsoft Edge only used 665MB. That’s extremely good news for PCs with low memory amounts.
Microsoft Edge provides simpler privacy settings, too. In Chrome, you merely have a list of toggles for safe browsing, “do not track” requests, page preloads, and more. Microsoft Edge provides a more graphically friendly interface, displaying three security levels: Basic, Balanced, and Strict. With Balanced set as the default, many sites request you to disable your pop-up blocker even though one isn’t manually installed.
At this point, the new Microsoft Edge shows promise, but it won’t gain any real ground serving as a separate download. Microsoft said in January that this version will roll out in a future update. As of May 2020, this version of Edge still remained as an optional download. [This obviously changes now that Microsoft will be forcing updates to the New Edge for all Windows Users on a 6 week schedule for updates to the initial update to it] <<
Being something of a throwback initially I was somewhat disconcerted with the lack of a Menu Bar in Edge. Thanks to Martin Brinkmann of GHacks I found one and am now much more comfortable in an Edge session after adding it despite its limitations.
The Menu Bar, once a given for any desktop web browser, has been removed from the majority of web browsers. Some, Firefox or Vivaldi, still support a menu bar but even these need to be configured to display the toolbar permanently in the browser. Firefox users may use the Alt-key to display the menu bar at any time.
Microsoft's new Edge web browser does not support a menu bar at all; that is no surprise as Chromium does not come with a menu bar.
If you like to use a menu bar in your browser, you may install a browser extension in Microsoft Edge to restore it (also available for Google Chrome).
All you need to do is install the Proper Menubar for Microsoft Edge extension from the official Microsoft Edge Addons website to add it to the browser. The extension requires no special permissions which is always good.
Note that the extension does not alter the browser's user interface but adds a row underneath the address bar of the browser that acts as a menu bar.
The menu bar displays the usual entry points such as File, Edit, View, or Bookmarks. Its nature limits some of its functionality as the extension does not display browser-specific data such as the last visited pages or bookmarks.
While that is limiting, users who like to work with menu bars do find some useful options attached to it. Here is a short list of useful options:
• Open or close Tabs or Windows. • Zoom in or out. • View Source • Enter Full Screen mode. • Minimize or maximize windows. • Mute Tabs. • Jump to different internal pages, e.g. downloads, bookmarks, history, flags, or the settings.
Obviously, there is a bit missing when you compare it to native implementations. If you take Vivaldi's for example, the browser is also based on Chromium, you find the missing data entries for the history and bookmarks, as well as options to hide or show panels or toolbars, import options, and more.
Closing Words
Proper Menubar for Microsoft Edge adds a limited menu bar to the Edge web browser. Some users may like the functionality that it adds, others may dislike its limitations when compared to native solutions.
The extension could be improved by allowing it to access the history and bookmarks, as these could then be displayed in the history and bookmark menus. <<
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Voila! There it is ...
That 4 tier Edge toolbar arrangement is very similar to my Firefox toolbar array ...
Now if only I had an additional search box with selectable search tools and ....
Note: The Proper Menubar extension is also available for Chrome.
The new Microsoft Edge is here! Built on an open-source foundation called “Chromium", it will help you browse the web reliably, securely, and productively while protecting and respecting your privacy with powerful features like Collections, Tracking prevention, Extensions and more. Learn more about the new Microsoft Edge.
• How to manage and organize favorites in Microsoft Edge (April 16, 2020)
I'm getting a lot of what appears to be a black formatting screen that flashes between sites before loading the page. It's instantaneous and too fast to read but highly annoying.
Do I need to reset something? Anybody else getting it?
If you keep an eye on memory usage on your Windows devices and run a device with Windows 10 version 2004, you may have noticed that Microsoft's new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser uses less memory on that version of Windows.
The new Microsoft Edge web browser uses the same core as Google Chrome, and Google's browser is notorious for using a lot of RAM when it is in use. Memory use depends largely on the activity on the Internet; users who open just one or two sites will see less memory usage usually than users who open lots of sites and keep them active.
Microsoft seems to have found a way to reduce the memory usage of the company's new web browser but only on Windows 10 version 2004. The company released the feature update for Windows 10 last month and has rolled it out slowly to eligible devices.
According to a blog post by Microsoft Principal PM Manager, Microsoft Edge, Kim Denny on the Microsoft Edge Dev blog, the new Microsoft Edge may use up to 27% memory less on the new version of Windows 10 than on previous versions.
Denny explains that Microsoft implemented Windows segment heap memory improvements in the browser that reduce memory usage.
With the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, Microsoft Edge has leveraged the Windows segment heap memory improvements now available for Win32 applications to manage memory more efficiently. Early internal testing results of devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge.
Segment Heap has been available to UWP applications only in previous versions of Windows 10. Microsoft announced Project Reunion recently in an attempt to unify the Windows development platform. With UWP having stayed behind expectations, Microsoft decided to unlock UWP specific APIs such as segment heap so that Win32 programs can use these as well.
Microsoft Edge is the first Win32 application that makes use of segment heap but the API is available for all developers. It is possible that other browsers, e.g. Firefox or Chrome, and also other programs, make use of the API to reduce the memory usage of applications that run on the Windows 10 <<
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ZDNet has a comprehensive take on this here: zdnet.com
