How Firefox Got Fast Again • Hacker News Board

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#51

Post by r3bl » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

milankragujevic wrote: post #39

r3bl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reader view (not sure if chrome has that out of the box nowadays) As far as I can tell, Firefox, Safari and Edge all seem to have it, and Chrome does not. Not on mobile, and not on desktop. There are some extensions that accomplish the same. I've had some good (but very limited) experience using Mercury Viewer some time ago: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mercury-reader/okn...

I think Chrome does have it on mobile, because it prompts me to "reader view" a page when it isn't properly formatted for reading, on Android 7.

Ah, you are correct, it does have it for non-mobile-optimized pages. Completely forgot about that.

I would still argue that its function is different than the "reader view" functions of other browsers, but it does have it.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#52

Post by mapgrep » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available.

My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking protection (not just Do Not Track toggle but actual blocking of trackers). That's something that's just not in Google's interest to put in Chrome.

Browsers are becoming more and more aggressive in protecting the interests of users. Becoming true "User Agents," in other words. See also Safari iOS allowing content blockers and now in iOS 11 blocking some popular tracking behaviors by default. It's absolutely great. And it's not surprising to me that Chrome is not a leader here. It's owned by the biggest advertising company on the internet. I predict Chrome will continue to lag on pro-privacy, anti-nag features.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#53

Post by robin_reala » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #46

mariusmg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

Developer Tools needs to have better UI

That’s a bit … vague. I mean, Fx Dev Tools has a grid visualisation that’s much better than anyone else’s, so that’s better UI right there.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#54

Post by seba_dos1 » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

konart wrote: post #10

mariusmg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

>It's faster Faster than old fox? Yes. Faster than Chrome? Nope. Still long way to go.

Nothing can beat Chrome in being the fastest to become unusable when opening many tabs ;)

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#55

Post by ihaveahadron » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

according to the internet the browsers are comparable with html ability. that's good because it wasnt when the one browser with a monopoly was completely website technology incapable. unreal

chrome is still the most internet capable though. but saying that is kind of not important anymore since chrome is only a little more internet capable than other browsers

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#56

Post by Matterrr » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

One extension I don't find a replacement for is Hide caption titlebar plus. It makes it so there's a permanent title bar even when Firefox is maximized. I had to change an xfce setting to hide the title bar when a window is maximized, meaning I lose the title bar for every application... Not ideal. Does anyone know if there is an argument to launch firefox without a title bar? Or set it in xfce for only one application?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#57

Post by lmkg » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #34

frostwhale wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is about more than market share. A state of the art free non for profit browser makes the market much more competitive and better for the consumer. They are there to keep chrome/ other browsers honest. If chrome / google does something too corporate you don't like, there's an alternative.

Mozilla is NOT a non-profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

The Mozilla Foundation IS a non-profit, with Mozilla Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#58

Post by jacek » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

Stable Firefox 57.0 is already available on Mozilla's FTP server: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/57.0/

I am already using it, but had to reinstall uBlock Origin.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#59

Post by sushibowl » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #38

Am I the only one that is confused by Firefox's "fast again" narrative? I remember that they launched the https://arewefastyet.com/ site a few years ago to fight the idea that FF was slow. It feels like there's a new blog post that essentially says the same thing "we're fast now" every couple of months. So I find this all confusing. Am I just remembering incorrectly, or haven't they already declared "we're as fast as…

> Am I just remembering incorrectly, or haven't they already declared "we're as fast as Chrome now" several times in the past.

https://arewefastyet.com/ refers specifically and only to Firefox's javascript engine. It runs js benchmarks only, not whole websites, and doesn't test responsiveness or rendering performance.

Javascript performance in firefox has been on par with competing browsers for a while now. The current initiative, called Quantum, is complementary to this effort. It is supposed to make the rest of the browser components fast, using among other things a new renderer, a CSS styling engine, and multiprocessing support.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#60

Post by vdnkh » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #46

mariusmg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it keep you away from Chrome ? It's faster, uses less memory, and the "maker", Mozilla is more trustworthy compared with Google. What's missing ?

Developer Tools needs to have better UI

And they need to work better in general. I use dev edition which has a much better UI (it's pretty much Chrome) but it's much slower and has weird bugs - if you disable sourcemaps, it won't let you inspect sources, because sourcemaps is null.