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0 pointspfranz7y ago0 comments

I was doing some work with very large data sets in Google Sheets last week. I started hitting row and cell limits. Personally, I think a database is more appropriate for what I was doing, but spreadsheets are more grokable by non-techies.

In Firefox, macOS was showing 4+GB of memory usage and formulas would take hours to run. I switched to Safari where memory usage was closer to 1-2GB, but it had this habit of refreshing the page as soon as you switched away (before a formula would finish running). I finally switched to Chrome and memory usage was about 1-2GB and heavy formulas behaved in a way more predictable manner.

0 comments

raptorfactor7y ago

Do you have examples which aren't Google sites?

pfranzOP7y ago

Is that really relevant? I'd be happy if you could point me to a more capable tool. Zoho and Excel Online have never really made it onto my radar, but if they perform better in this situation I'd check them out. A lot of people are tied to the constraints they have.

Using both for years, Chrome has just been faster and more reliable. I don't do web dev professionally, but I use multiple browsers in tandem and often try to use one full time every once in awhile. On my old laptop, I'm pretty sure Chrome was the only one to support webGL for whatever reason. At work we're stuck with Firefox 38.3.0 ESR (Cent6/7) and Prometheus Alert Manager (and I also believe Prometheus graphing interface) has broken widgets, but Chrome works. Chrome has always seemed to better support the very few websites that require crazy performance. This was even the case when we would have an ancient version of Chrome and a new version of Firefox. It sucked when Firefox switched plugin architecture and Google Hangouts never added support. Now Google Meet does not support Safari.

I'm not saying any of these comparisons are "fair" but its what I deal with day-to-day.

AsyncAwait7y ago

> Is that really relevant?

Kind of, only because Google uses the ShadowDOM API to break its product on competing browsers and playing into it will only reinforce this behavior.

Guest109283917y ago

I get issues almost daily with well respected sites not working in Firefox.

Today I'm browsing the Adidas website, and the images don't load for any of the products in Firefox.

https://www.adidas.com/us/ultraboost-all-terrain-ltd-shoes/B...

Apparently they're WEBP images and my version of Firefox (version 64) doesn't support them, but searching online I read that the upcoming Firefox version 65 is suppose to fix that issue.

Strangely enough, the images were working fine a few weeks ago on the Adidas website, but I had a different Firefox issue. When I clicked the images to see the fullscreen view and zoomed in, they wouldn't pan or drag correctly, so 80% of the image was hidden off the screen. In Chrome, they worked as expected.

That's one example, but as I said, I get these kind of issues almost daily from companies that should know better. I still primarily use Firefox because I have no trust in Google, but I'm forced to open Chrome on a regular basis to resolve random quirks.

clouddrover7y ago

> Apparently they're WEBP images and my version of Firefox (version 64) doesn't support them

I loaded the page with Firefox 65 beta and all the images worked for me. The site doesn't seem to be serving WebP images to Firefox. When I checked all the image types via Page Info they were mostly JPEGs with some PNGs and one SVG image.

There's probably some other reason why the site is broken for you. Have you perhaps changed your browser's user agent string and so the site is giving you WebP images because it thinks they will work?

1 more reply

feanaro7y ago

I'm on Firefox 64 and all the images load for me.

mirimir7y ago

I'm using Firefox 60 in this Debian VM, and that site is definitely serving WEBP, which I can't view (on anything).

bmer7y ago

I am able to access the website just fine. All the images show up for me (Firefox 64.0.2).

Zarath7y ago

My own personal anecdote is that Firefox spins my laptop fans audibly, while Chrome does not.

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