The new Firefox -- version 57 -- is being touted as faster then ever, with the unspoken message being, "if you do serious work in the web browser, you no longer have to use Google Chrome to avoid pulling your hair out."

I've been testing the new Firefox all morning, and I can say that's pretty much true. That said, there are still some design choices -- and I'm talking about how multiple tabs are handled -- where Chrome still wins. And after a morning of use, Chrome still retains a performance edge.

It didn't used to be a contest. When I used to run Firefox with multiple tabs open, it was a prescription for pain. But with the new Firefox, none of the performance issues I had with previous versions of Firefox are bothering me. I have my usual 15 or so tabs open, and I am able to switch between them with no lag and no blank screens. Nothing is freezing, which means everything is moving. Once my session "aged" a bit, I noticed a lag when trying to select text on a web page for copying. But I could still switch between tabs and start new ones with no trouble and no loss of speed.

About the only complaint I have is an old one: When you have more than, say, 15 tabs open in Firefox, you have to scroll to see them all. In Google Chrome, the tabs just keep getting smaller and smaller, and you can always see them all in your browser window. That's one thing that Chrome still does better -- for me, anyway.

But the fact that Firefox is no longer a performance nightmare compared to Chrome and is once again a viable alternative is huge. Google has much too big a piece of all of our pies to not have Firefox as a backstop against monopoly.

I've already been using the Firefox browser (the privacy version) on my Android phone, where it has been performing well for months. I can't tell a difference between it and the built-in Chrome, with the possible exception being that the Firefox browser is optimized to prevent spying and Chrome is very much not.

I hope Mozilla takes the browser where it needs to go -- performance equal to or better than Google Chrome. We really need the diversity in desktop and mobile browsing that Mozilla brings to a world where Google is the major player and Microsoft and Apple try to snare users of their platforms with each company's own in-house browser.

Things with Mozilla have been awkward. Company CEO (and JavaScript inventor) Brendan Eich's ouster over his anti-gay-marriage activism was the beginning of a very dark period for the non-profit entity.

With all the publicity of how much money Mozilla was getting from Google for search placement, any calls for donations from Mozilla were met (from me anyway) with a "how could they??" Even now, I'd like a bevy of compelling reasons for supporting Mozilla, financially and otherwise. A renewed Firefox that's going places, along with the Rust programming language that at least partly makes that possible is one. Advocacy for an open Web not controlled by "not evil" (in their own mind) corporations is another.

But that brings me back to the financials. Is Mozilla worthy of our money? Does it even need it? I applaud their efforts to bring Firefox back from the dead. It was basically killed by Google Chrome for sheer performance reasons, and Firefox's "return" has been delayed for years, it seems.

If I haven't said it already, we need Firefox, and we need Mozilla in its role as advocate and innovator. I will be using Firefox more, and since I haven't used it at all for the past few years, that should be easy. The open Web is important, but so is a more open world for the mobile devices and networks that have dwarfed "traditional" computer use over the past five or so years.

Mozilla tried to address this with Firefox OS, which failed fairly spectacularly. When the Firefox browser itself also fell behind, that was another ominous sign, and hopefully this week's release is the beginning of a new era for critical software that isn't controlled by an enormous company intent on making money by selling its users to bidders high and low alike.

One of the best, deepest and most innovative solo jazz guitarists working today, John Stowell, plays "Ligia," "Nobody Else But Me," and "Remembering the Rain" during a live session at WEEU-AM 830's The Sound Room in Reading, Pennsylvania.

His harmony is so innovative, and his chords so unconventional, that he's pretty much re-inventing how jazz is played on the guitar. I think Ed Bickert played chords kind of like this, but Stowell is definitely in his own arena when it comes to playing tunes his way.

I just upgraded to the new Firefox (version 57, in case you're playing along at home), and it is a lot faster than the previous version.

Speed is the one thing that drove me away from Firefox and toward Chrome, and truth be told I would rather run Firefox and have Google spying on me just a little bit less.

The other thing that I need in a browser is the ability to have maybe 20 tabs open with the abilty to switch between them without pain. That's a big reason why Chrome became my go-to browser.

If Firefox can handle multiple tabs, it will be a whole new game. I commend Mozilla in advance, and I'll tell you how it goes.

I'm thinking that it's time for me to break out these social-style posts into their own blog.

I haven't done a hard analysis, but if I had to guess, I'd say I'm putting out 50 social posts for every traditional blog post. And since the social posts are in a subdirectory (aka a category), it's easy to go to that category and see all of the social posts, or see all the posts, traditional and social.

But there's no way to exclude the /updates directory and see everything but what's in that part of the filesystem. I'm sure I could code this into Ode, which is nothing if not flexible, but the more "natural" way to handle this is to have a separate blog for social posts, keeping this one for traditional, long-form writing.

It's an idea. The good thing about Ode and its flat-file structure is that I could move all of the "old" social posts into the new blog by simply copying the directory and its contents into the new site's /documents directory.

I'm not ready to do it just yet, but I am thinking about it. If I'm only putting out 10 social posts a day, I think a single blog is manageable for the reader. I am probably doing 25 some days, five on others.

So I may stick with the current arrangement (the preferred choice of the lazy), but another thing having two sites does is simplify the sending of posts to social-media sites. With two separate blogs, there would be no contortions to get traditional updates (post title and post link) automatically sent to Twitter with social updates (post body only) either excluded (I'm using my Blog Poster app to send them to Twitter) or sent automatically.