The prevailing opinion now seems to be that FF has improved itself and is no longer the hog it was considered. Chrome on the other hand used to be a great lightweight browser and is now gaining the rep FF is shedding
I believe I started on Netscape 2. Spent a ton of time on 4.7. Tried the post-AOL releases but did not like them at all. Eventually settled on SeaMonkey until Firefox matured enough to become my daily.
Baconreader user here. Same fate as the rest of the good apps. Trying out Jeroba for the Fediverse. Seems nice so far.