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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#321

Post by callahad »

tzs wrote: post #124
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 ?

Faster at what things? On my 2017 iMac (3.4 GHz Core i5, Radeon Pro 570) I get 60 on Mozilla's Speedometer 2.0 [1] test with Firefox 57.0. I get 90 on Chrome and 93 on Safari. On my Surface Pro 4 that gap is smaller, but Chrome is still about 15% faster on that test. [1] https://mozilla.github.io/arewefastyet-speedometer/2.0/

Benchmarks are not comprehensive, nor are they gospel; it's entirely possible for a browser to score lower on a benchmark while also feeling faster in real-world use. For a long time, this was true of Chrome versus Firefox on JavaScript benchmarks: SpiderMonkey is routinely on par with V8, yet Firefox also felt significantly slower.

In the case of Speedometer, it's measuring one specific type of webapp interaction in a single tab; it's not capturing things like perceived speed of opening or closing the browser, switching tabs, loading pages, etc. It doesn't test how the browser performs when many JS-heavy tabs are loaded in the background. It also has lots of corner cases: installing a common password manager halves the score, and a common adblocker nearly does the same again, yet neither show that kind of noticeable degradation in real-world browsing.

Benchmarks are useful for saying "we've improved our browser this much in this area compared to where we were last year," but they're much less useful for making broad generalizations across heterogeneous browsers; there are too many other variables at play.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#322

Post by jwillmer »

Thorncorona wrote: post #201
e40 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

FF just came out with multi account containers about a month ago -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Do they sync?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#323

Post by lightedman »

robin_reala wrote: post #19
lightedman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It's faster" FireFox 52 - BYOND game written by myself - 60FPS. FireFox 57 - 10FPS. Not even.

Sounds like an edge case the developers would be interested in. Have you got a reproducable testcase?

Play "Space Station 13" and see for yourself. And that game normally lags and stutters bad enough as-is on any browser. It's worse in FF57.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#324

Post by mattmanser »

eitland wrote: post #115
fabrice_d wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I posting from Firefox monile now. It's my main browser. If I use Chrome only it is for my sockpuppet accounts. I far prefer FF even on mobile.

I found it ate all my memory and crashed frequent. Nexus 5X.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#325

Post by jrwiegand »

e40 wrote: post #193
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…

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

Yes, as other people have said containers does this magically. I even have Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp sign-ins in their own container. Everything is separate and I honestly feel safer on the net because of it.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#326

Post by addicted »

jonnytran wrote: post #294
jasonkostempski wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most users don't care how fast the browser is at the level they're boasting about. They've been fast enough for many years for most use cases. They should do a commercial showing they can run uBlock Origin on Android, how fast sites load compared to without it, and jump on the "annoying ad" train Apple and Google seem to be bragging about fixing latley by "solving" a few problems uO had solved, the right way,…

I completely disagree. I care a lot about privacy, but I've been unable to use Firefox for a long time now because of speed. Up until now, Chrome has just been significantly faster, to the point where I couldn't justify Firefox for everyday usage. I think a lot of people feel the same, especially those who know less about privacy. I hope the situation changes. If they were in the same ballpark in terms of speed, then…

I agree. Browser speed does not affect consumer choice directly. Very few people chose Chrome over Firefox because it was slightly faster or slightly more stable. The vast majority of users chose Chrome because it felt better.

Also, Google's pushing it helped. Otherwise consider how Chrome has occupied an IE like market share despite the quality Delta between Chrome and IE/Edge, Firefox or Safari is significantly lesser than the Delta between Firefox and IE was a decade ago, yet Firefox peaked at a much lower marketshare than Chrome's today.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#327

Post by _greim_ »

m_st wrote: post #16

I switched from Chrome to Firefox 57 beta and couldn't be happier. Only issue so far was the ugly black title bar on the Mac, but switching to the integrated 'Light' theme fixed that. Too bad 'Light' isn't the default on macOS. Also note their updated Firefox on iOS. It looks and works just fine now and comes with Firefox Sync which gives you access to your tabs, bookmarks and history.

> Also note their updated Firefox on iOS

I was under the impression Apple didn't allow any web rendering engines on iOS except the one mobile Safari uses, thus Chrome, Firefox, etc, on iOS are just wrappers around the Safari engine. Is that not the case anymore? It would be nice to see these speedups on iOS.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#328

Post by mr_johnson22 »

Myrmornis wrote: post #257
freeone3000 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no easy way of switching between them, starting a new firefox instance requires running from a command interpreter with -P specified, even the selection window isn't great. The containers feature is the alternative you want to propose here.

I went deeply into trying to use containers as a profile replacement, replacing Chrome with the new Firefox beta for one month, and I can report that it is not the right direction to go in: - New tabs do not inherit current container - No way to make Ctrl-T do this by customization (I investigated extensions (can't remap Ctrl-T) and even system-wide Ctrl-T remapping with Karibiner; neither gives you what you want) -…

> - New tabs do not inherit current container

Middle-clicking or Ctrl+clicking the New Tab button does inherit the current container. It also opens the new tab to the right of the current tab instead of at the far right of the tab strip. These actions are one in the same, so any extension that opens a tab to the right of the current tab (like Always Right or All Tabs Helper) also make the tab inherit the current container.

It's strange that such a useful feature is barely advertised at all in the UI, but it's there.

But your other criticisms of using containers as profiles are spot-on.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#329

Post by ubercore »

weihanglo wrote: post #143
m_st wrote: post #16

I switched from Chrome to Firefox 57 beta and couldn't be happier. Only issue so far was the ugly black title bar on the Mac, but switching to the integrated 'Light' theme fixed that. Too bad 'Light' isn't the default on macOS. Also note their updated Firefox on iOS. It looks and works just fine now and comes with Firefox Sync which gives you access to your tabs, bookmarks and history.

I thought it is a translucent title bar. At least in Firefox Nightly 59 it is.

Grey bar for me on OS X, 59.0a1 (2017-11-13)

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#330

Post by zeveb »

callahad wrote: post #122
nullspace wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, altho…

Thank you for choosing Firefox. 1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list. 2. Sorry about Hangouts; follows a trend of Chrome-only product launches/re-launches from Google (five this year so far). Wish we could do more, but if Google's OK shipping things that only work on one browser, that's their prerogative. 3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to…

> Are there any specific extensions you need?

Keysnail. It requires the ability to override C-n, though.

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