I’ve been using Firefox as my main browser for many, many years. Before that, I had tried Chrome for a short while, but was astonished at the resources it used. Given that I didn’t want to use Internet Explorer, I went to Firefox.
However, over the last few years, it’s been getting worse. My main issue has been memory leaks, where closing anything over 10-ish tabs will lead to uncollected RAM. The problem is that it would never be freed until the browser had been fully closed, or until it had to because the system was hitting RAM limits (Firefox could sometimes be using into the 10’s of GB).
My other issue is a lack of new features. While I don’t care about a constant stream of features or whatever, something Firefox lacked was Tab Groups and Collections. When I saw a friend using the feature in Opera a few years ago, I’ll admit that I was intrigued by a browser’s features. I was certainly not switching browser because of it, but because I had gotten tired of constantly having to shut down Firefox myself due to memory leaks, I was looking forward to it.
I wasn’t going to go to Chrome, because after having it effectively forced upon me professionally, I was, uh, not enthralled by it. I also hate having a bunch of random apps, so I wanted to give Window’s built-in browser a try, again.
So, here’s how it went.
Memory can still take a while to free up, but it does free up
Edge can still keep using the resources related to closed tabs. However, it feels more just like lengthy Garbage Collection or keeping state when using the “Reopen” feature than any real issue like the one in Firefox, as it usually gets cleared up within a minute or so.
Drag and drop tabs into Favorites
In Firefox, you can directly drag tabs into your bookmarks. I expected it to work the same, and when it didn’t I was a bit miffed. I hate using the Star to bookmark, because it adds it to the last folder you added things to, or other pre-configured places, and not right where I want it.
Thanks to this post, I found that I could use the padlock icon on the left of the URL the same way as tabs in Firefox; click and drag directly to where I want in my Favorites.
Multilingual support
Firefox was pretty good for language support, and most importantly allowed to quickly change between the language used to spellcheck. This was very useful given that I write daily in 2-3 languages.
Edge does spellcheck to multiple languages, contrary to many other posts, but it does it to all languages you have enabled at the same time. This remains the same even when switching from Basic to Microsoft Editor. This isn’t perfect, but it’s perfectly workable.
You can enable languages for spell check in Settings -> Languages -> Writing Assistance, expand the language you want, then enable the Basic spell check option.
It feels more jank
Firefox never crashed on me. Edge does. Not regularly, but enough.
Tab groups are nice
I gotta admit, it really is nice. It’s a very simple productivity feature, but very effective. Definitely beats having blank tabs inbetween my quasi-groups in Firefox.
Fuck off OperaGX
I generally don’t look into any tech product that is marketed, mostly because the marketing is complete BS. The worst was probably the VPNs saying “More Security!” and “Anonymity!”, which were completely bogus claims.
I’m just going to use Edge
Edge is okay, definitely better than when it first came out.
Given that it does the job, and I hate having more apps on my system than I need, Edge is going to stay.