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How Firefox Got Fast Again

hacks.mozilla.org

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#101

Post by nullspace »

mariusmg wrote: post #5
theduality wrote: post #2

I have been using 57 in beta, and I have to say, I'm impressed. It is a huge improvement. Whether it keeps me off Chrome in the future remains to be seen though!

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 ?

Personally, it has to a large extent. Somethings that are not yet there:

1. Since Webextensions are new, some extensions that I use in chrome, need to be ported over. Most are not must haves to be fair.

2. Hangouts for work. :(

3. A solution to manage different personas - Chrome has the "user profile" thing linked to google accounts, firefox as container tabs. I think user profile is better than container tabs, although both are kinda bad.

Except hangouts, none are deal breakers - I use firefox as much as I can, and in fact overall it feels more faster and more repsonsive than Chrome starting with Quantum. It also looks and feels better than chrome.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#102

Post by fabrice_d »

eitland wrote: post #72
mattmanser wrote: post #18

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

Depends a bit: if devs switch back I'd say definitely. If devs are ready to repeat the IE 6 story, this time with Chrome. Getting companies to do cross browser testing seems hard even if it it should be simpler than ever before.. :-/

Until they figure out a way to address their irrelevance on Mobile, devs will never fully switch since they have to do testing on mobile devices.

It is really sad that Gecko is becoming so good, but is mainly used to power a product in what is becoming a niche market (yes, desktop is becoming a niche in terms of users relative to mobile).

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#103

Post by StavrosK »

symlinkk wrote: post #95

I'm still worried about how secure Firefox is in relation to Chrome. From what I understand, Firefox exploits only go for $30k at Pwn2Own, while Chrome exploits go for $80k. Should I be worried?

It depends, are you worth between $30k and $80k to someone? If yes, I would switch to Chrome.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#104

Post by jasonlotito »

mattmanser wrote: post #18

Serious question, is this too little too late? Firefox has taken a massive nosedive in the last few years, in the UK at least. My two big clients have them on less than 2% share. Just checked one, 5 years ago they had 9.55% share, today it's 1.8%. Even taking into account the growth of mobile, that's dire.

Considering where Firefox started and the dominant browser at the time, it's in a much better position than the first time around.

Remember, Firefox was never the dominant browser, and where it is now is where it has almost always been.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#105

Post by ihale »

mtgx wrote: post #87
mapgrep wrote: post #52

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…

For those who don't know, if you sign in to your Google account in Chrome, Google will automatically save all the searches you've done in the omnibox. I don't remember Google ever warning me specifically that this was happening in the background, and after I checked https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and noticed it was doing that, I was so furious that I deleted all the data Google kept on me there, and paused…

That data is never truly deleted, not for a while at least.

I suppose it has benefit now with Android, and multiple devices, but Google, and Youtube both started saving searches long before the release of Chrome.

Quite terrible.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#106

Post by digi_owl »

b0rsuk wrote: post #85
johansch wrote: post #48

At a high level my main question is: Why has Mozilla generally been so slow to react to market trends and taken so insanely long to deliver products that are competitive in other ways than fuzzy aspects like openness, freedom etc? This goes back back all the way to like 1998. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I remember it feeling like they were in rebuilding mode until like 2005-2006. And then Chrome launched in 2008...…

I think Mozilla wasted some effort on some questionable initiatives, like Firefox OS. They became a little complacent and didn't put money(?) where their mouth is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mozilla_products In particular, check out the list of their abandoned projects. But some experimentation is necessary. You're never completely sure when you strike gold.

Effectively Mozilla, like a growing number of big name FOSS projects, got hijacked by SJW busybodies wanting to pad their resume. Thus they spun up a bunch of "social consciousness" projects that sapped time and resources.

And now they have decided that to make Firefox competitive they have to throw out all that made Firefox distinct, and clone Chrome behavior by behavior. Just watch them up and decide that maintaining their own engine will be too much and go Blink in a few years...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#107

Post by AndrewDucker »

Touche wrote: post #61
robin_reala wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn’t a marketing site, it was a tracker to measure the increase in performance over time due to the ongoing work the newly-spun-up performance team was doing.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was a marketing site. But there was marketing surrounded it, and I distinctly remember it being used to show that they were, indeed, as fast as the other browsers. I remember a narrative being that the problem wasn't Firefox being slow, but FF being slow in certain perceived-speed areas (like new tab speed). That's why I find these sorts of announcements confusing, I can remembe…

No, you're right.

They'd declare that the JS engine was just as fast (or faster) - but that didn't cover the whole of the UI, and laggy bits of the UI could slow things down no matter how fast the JS engine was.

Thankfully they now seem to have improved the whole UI.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#108

Post by colanderman »

mtgx wrote: post #87
mapgrep wrote: post #52

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…

For those who don't know, if you sign in to your Google account in Chrome, Google will automatically save all the searches you've done in the omnibox. I don't remember Google ever warning me specifically that this was happening in the background, and after I checked https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and noticed it was doing that, I was so furious that I deleted all the data Google kept on me there, and paused…

It's pretty easy to accidentally enable uploading all your cleartext passwords to Google's cloud service too (the dialog to do so is a dark pattern). I similarly was furious when I discovered that. Firefox is now my go-to, and what I recommend to friends and family.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#109

Post by fabrice_d »

addicted wrote: post #98
pmoriarty wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mozilla makes money from having users" Wait, how does that work again? Last I checked you couldn't deposit users at the bank or pay your rent with them.

When a user searches Google from the Firefox toolbar (or Yahoo, or Bing) the relevant search engine pays them a little bit of money.

Not really "per search"... the deals are negotiated for N years. If that was per search Mozilla's finances would not be in such good shape, which could actually help them focus on chasing the right targets.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#110

Post by digi_owl »

johansch wrote: post #97
b0rsuk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Mozilla wasted some effort on some questionable initiatives, like Firefox OS. They became a little complacent and didn't put money(?) where their mouth is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mozilla_products In particular, check out the list of their abandoned projects. But some experimentation is necessary. You're never completely sure when you strike gold.

Maybe the complacency came from having too much money from the first rounds of Google search deals in like 2004-2008? They had already fulfilled their primary goals (openness, transparency etc.)... I worked at Opera Software between 2004-2015. We also got loads of Google search placement money in that period, but for all of their other faults, our exec team(s) were able to keep us hungry for more.

Possibly. FOSS projects are notorious for going with rewrites rather than throttle back and maintain what is already there.
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