The Browser Struggle

By Marcel M. Otte[tek-nol-uh-jee]

I were a long-time Firefox user because of the unique addon called ‘tree style tabs’ and this browser is still the only one implementing this feature the right way.

Basically there’s no alternative, period.

So now I’m facing the problem that Firefox gets slower and slower.

First of course I’m a tab whore, 50-100 tabs are normal, because I also use tabbed websites for some kind of ‘read-later’ feature. Tree style tabs come in handy here, because you’re able to collapse a tree and forget it for some time until you need those tabs again. So this is the explainable slowdown of my so beloved Firefox.

Second, it gets slow loading websites – wtf? – that’s not really explainable, all other browsers I’ve tested, even with alot of tabs still load pages fast. And Firefox has even the feature (also with plugins) to not load pages until you activate them. So a lot of concurrent page loadings can’t cause that slowdown.

Last but not least, Firefox is eating ALOT of RAM, I even got problems at my workstation @work with 16GB RAM, swapping like hell. Of course the browser isn’t my only application running… but when you read the stats and the browser is eating more than one third of your memory you’re beginning to ask questions…

So I just do not get around the fact that I have to find another browser supporting my needs. That goes so far that I’m really going beyond my so fuc**ng needed tree style tabs plugin and that I’m ready to ditch it.

The chromium variants existing are of course a good alternative, at work I’m using it with five or six windows opened and minimum 50 tabs with NO slowdown and less memory! Eat that Firefox!

But still I’m missing the good plugins, of course there are some alternatives:

  • Session-Manager -> Session Buddy
  • PassIFox -> chromeIPass
  • NoScript -> ScriptSafe (It’s not so good but still the best @chromium)
  • Bamboo Feed Reader -> RSS Feed Reader
  • uBlock Origin -> uBlock Origin
  • Privacy Badger -> Privacy Badger
  • All-in-One Gestures -> Smooth Gestures
  • DownThemAll! -> Chrono Download Manager

But for those I don’t get good alternatives just maybe at least something close:

  • Tree Style Tabs  -> forget it, nothing compares with TST!
    • I’m using Toby currently to organize a bit, but thats no replacement…
    • Also, at least at home I’m using Vivaldi which got at least a vertical tab bar, that’s a bit closer… And they said they maybe will implement a tree style tab bar.
  • Tab Mix Plus -> nope.

The other browsers aren’t a real alternative:

  • Midori
    • Ahm, nope, seriously.
  • rekonq
    • Maybe, but too bundled with KDE/plasma
  • Opera
    • Maybe, but that one has some different user feel that I’ve tried already in the past and didn’t get along with it.

Am I still missing some? Or do really tree style tabs browser exist? Point me to them if you know some.