Chrome honestly hasn't improved much in a while. It's kind of like where Firefox was back in 2012. Now that Firefox is faster and more efficient, maybe they'll start putting more effort back into it.
WTF? Chromium (2016)
41–50 of 112 posts
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is not slower, it's just that most websites are optimised and tested only or mainly under Chrome. We are slowly getting back to the way things were with IE, but I hope that Mozilla won't give up and switch to blink or webkit like everybody else.
I'm curious as to how you can optimise a site to be faster specifically for Chrome?
I don't write JS-heavy websites these days so I don't have a technical example to give, but for instance I've opened the Vue cinema website recently on Firefox mobile. The thing was unusable - when I typed my postcode, nothing would show up on screen, the whole website seemed frozen while waiting to load something. I had to press several times certain buttons for something to happen.
On Chrome however everything worked fine right away. Overall it was just a few images, some text and a search bar, so no matter the performances of the browser that should work everywhere, but since it was probably only tested on Chrome and Safari, it only worked in these browsers.
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#43The love for Firefox seems misplaced, given that 1% of Firefox downloaders get a version that sends what you type to a third party (Cliqz). HN discussion was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708
Only 1% of German users.
Yet, even though it affects only a super small set of users, it's still a ridiculous thing for Firefox to do.
From the article: "One of Mozilla’s core privacy principles is No Surprises: we will use and share data in ways that are transparent and benefit our users. That is why we are telling you about this today. "
Which doesn't make sense. If one of your core privacy principles is to tell your users what you're using & collecting, why not just tell them before/while downloading? Or better yet, let this be opt-in?
This isn't big enough of a mishap for "the love" to be misplaced, but it is enough to always be wary of what even the most privacy-minded companies do with their products.
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#44As lame as Firefox is, it always works when I need it to (unless I use add-ons). Thanks for sucking the least, Firefox.
Check out the Beta, or wait for Firefox Quantum to get released next week. It's FAST!
I don't need fast, I need a secondary browser. It can be slow as long as it works. (Firefox hasn't been fast or unbloated since Phoenix/Firebird 1.5)
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is not slower, it's just that most websites are optimised and tested only or mainly under Chrome. We are slowly getting back to the way things were with IE, but I hope that Mozilla won't give up and switch to blink or webkit like everybody else.
I'm curious as to how you can optimise a site to be faster specifically for Chrome?
Optimize for the v8 engine and/or browser-specific errata like the way chrome handles composition or svg etc.
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#46Or just use Firefox, even if it is slightly slower than Chromium it's at least a browser that works for you not one that treats you as a pawn. A Chrome monoculture is harmful, even if Google has the best intentions which I don't think they do - they definitely value their profits over an open web.
Firefox is not immune to this behavior. Please look up the preference "experiments.enabled" before recommending blindly. In fact, Firefox has increased in the amount of unwarranted telemetry and "experiments" a lot in the last years, a direction I'm really not happy with. The main difference is that Firefox still gives you pretty liberal access to most internal settings, while Chromium is abysmal, if not ridiculous.
>In fact, Firefox has increased in the amount of unwarranted telemetry and "experiments" a lot in the last years
I can understand "experiments" (Pocket comes to mind), but what are you referring to wrt "unwarranted telemetry"?
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is not immune to this behavior. Please look up the preference "experiments.enabled" before recommending blindly. In fact, Firefox has increased in the amount of unwarranted telemetry and "experiments" a lot in the last years, a direction I'm really not happy with. The main difference is that Firefox still gives you pretty liberal access to most internal settings, while Chromium is abysmal, if not ridiculous.
>In fact, Firefox has increased in the amount of unwarranted telemetry and "experiments" a lot in the last years I can understand "experiments" (Pocket comes to mind), but what are you referring to wrt "unwarranted telemetry"?
I'm not talking about Pocket.
I'm talking about A/B testing internal features exactly like Chrome, such as ip v4/v6 path preference, pipelining support, TLS faststart (and so on) according to a random cohort selection.
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#48Would the author be happier if Chrome/Chromium didn't do these "field trials", and instead just enabled whatever feature they were testing for all users, and the author was hit with the same problem, along with everyone else? When you cut through the rhetorics, the author is basically complaining that Chromium decided to update itself. Well, maybe it warrants complaint, but I fail to see what's such a big deal. (The…
>the author is basically complaining that Chromium decided to update itself. Well, maybe it warrants complaint, but I fail to see what's such a big deal. (The alternative is millions using browsers ridden with last year's vulnerabilities.)
You're misrepresenting mandatory enrolment in A/B testing with plain software updates. Firefox is an example of a browser that does software updates, but does not force you to use potentially buggy features - and yet they do not have "millions using browsers ridden with last year's vulnerabilities", because their alternative is to give users a choice to enroll in experiments. I do participate in experiments since I wish to improve Firefox, but I could switch to any time to no experiments at all.
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#49This reminds me of this Twitter thread about DiagTrack: https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/869631096719261696
Re: WTF? Chromium (2016)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is not slower, it's just that most websites are optimised and tested only or mainly under Chrome. We are slowly getting back to the way things were with IE, but I hope that Mozilla won't give up and switch to blink or webkit like everybody else.
I'm curious as to how you can optimise a site to be faster specifically for Chrome?
A trivial example is that a 'for' loop vs. 'while' loop can be faster on one browser compared to another.
These differences are even starker if you use newer features without polyfills. For example, 'forEach' implementations as of a year ago varied by orders of magnitude.
Native array sorting is another obvious one. Chrome, Firefox and especially Safari use quite different algorithms each based on array size with varying results.
If you add up all those little changes and always go with the option that's fastest in Chromium, in a reasonably complex SPA you could easily generate noticeable differences.