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WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#121

Post by TekMol »

flohofwoe wrote: post #73
TekMol wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean the technical differences. I mean the benefit. What will be the gain for the user of a web app?

Compressed download size is indeed only slightly smaller (mostly around 10%), but the parsing is much faster, even noticeable for fairly small demos. (edit: replied to the wrong comment, apologies)

Is the "parsing" what is displayed as "compile script" in Chromes profiler? That seems to take almost zero time. For example jquery.min.js compiles in 0.1ms here.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#122

Post by TekMol »

flohofwoe wrote: post #72
TekMol wrote: post #56

What are the main benefits of WebAssembly over asm.js? I understand that asm.js was a subset of JavaScript that allowed the compiler to create faster code. For example because it could be sure that variable types do not change during runtime. But what do we gain with WebAssembly? Faster download+compilation times? How much faster?

Here's a good overview from the emscripten author: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/why-webassembly-is-faster-... TL;DR: much faster parsing over asm.js (10x to 20x faster), parsing should also use much less memory, 10%..20% smaller downloads (when comparing the compressed sizes, uncompressed WASM is several times smaller then asm.js), 64-bit integers (these have to be emulated on asm.js),

    much faster parsing
Isn't parsing super fast already? From my experiments, jquery seems to compile in a staggering 0.1ms.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#123

Post by ablankst »

jeswin wrote: post #78
SimonPStevens wrote: post #55

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

Even if thousands of developers from HN switch, that would hardly move the needle. Ordinary users just won't care about any of this. Servo, which I think is the most important software project in the world, is where it will start to change. That's when those of us who may not be directly contributing code into Servo need to come out and do our thing. I still fondly remember the NYT ad and the crop circle. We should d…

> Even if thousands of developers from HN switch, that would hardly move the needle. Ordinary users just won't care about any of this.

Thousands of developers from HN make websites. If they switch to Firefox, at the very least, the websites they make will support Firefox. This won't necessarily make Mozilla commercially viable, but if people are really that concerned about it, they can donate to the Mozilla Foundation.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#124

Post by calcifer »

danielbarla wrote: post #104
simias wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox p…

I don't have a good answer to your question, but for me it was actually performance. And this is particularly baffling, since Firefox seems to do extremely well in all benchmarks, often beating out Chrome. But, as a quick test, I closed Chrome, and it was up again instantly (say 500ms). I did the same with Firefox (after a generous warmup / caching session), and got 4 to 6 seconds each time. Clicking links and page l…

> Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do.

Because Chrome, by default, enables prefetching [0] (it loads links before you decide to click on them). Firefox will never do that due to obvious privacy concerns.

It's the usual "principle vs convenience" thing, where most people choose the latter.

[0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#125

Post by falcolas »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #71
SimonPStevens wrote: post #55

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

> Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. I have given Firefox plenty of chances. It's just too slow: webpages load slower, and when they are loaded interactions feel awful (low FPS on large webapps).

I haven't noticed this myself, and I use both extensively on a daily basis. I currently only use Chrome for work because of Google Meet. Drives me batty that I don't have a choice there.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#126

Post by falcolas »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #84
SimonPStevens wrote: post #55

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

I use FF, although Mozilla focuses on thousand of other things instead of making FF a great browser. As a developer I'm annoyed every time I enter "com.scala.List" in the address bar and FF does not use google to search but thinks this is an url. No, "List" is not a TLD and no that website does not exist.

Enter it in the search bar instead? Not trying to be snarky - but that's why Firefox offers both, so you can be explicit about your intent.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#127

Post by 6DM »

simias wrote: post #85
SimonPStevens wrote: post #55

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox p…

Do you remember when chrome dropped? Gosh it was so blazing fast in comparison to everything else. I think that initial period is why so many regular people use chrome. It hasn't gotten to the point to look anywhere else yet, at least in my opinion. I think the other thing that pushed it this far is just the fact that it's new.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#128

Post by calcifer »

Touche wrote: post #107

WebAssembly is nice and all, but I don't understand why Mozilla is so obsessed with this feature that will be useable by 0.01% of applications. Meanwhile they are falling far behind in a variety of features that are useful to a much bigger % of the web. Safari and Edge have leapfrogged Firefox in providing the important things to web developers.

> Meanwhile they are falling far behind in a variety of features that are useful to a much bigger % of the web

Do tell...

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#129

Post by falcolas »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #114
ComodoHacker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try "g com.scala.List" instead. It's not that much inconvenience.

What other arcane commands do I need to use to make FF work like Chrome?

Why should Firefox work like Chrome? They're two separate products, and Firefox offers an explicit search bar for disambiguating searches from addresses. Especially important since 'List' could indeed be a TLD in the near future.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#130

Post by eli »

spcelzrd wrote: post #90
simias wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox p…

What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.

And they made a pretty solid browser. Tight integration with Windows didn't cause a similar spike for IE 11.
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