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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#541

Post by comatose »

jakub_g wrote: post #401
tspike wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reminder. I just downloaded the latest FF beta and exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role. All the back-and-forth about speed and features is understandable, but misses the point that Firefox needs our support if we are to have any real non-proprietary options for what is quickly becoming the base system abstraction layer for most computing.

BTW: if using Android, if FF is not for you, try Brave instead of Chrome. It feels exactly like Chrome (it's Chromium-based), but has a built-in adblocker, tracker blocking, HTTPS everywhere, no nagging to sign in, and does not throw "suggested news" (with no opt-out) upon you. Brave's founder is ex-Mozilla's CEO (Brendan Eich). However latest FF on Android is actually not bad, at least if you have a modern phone (th…

I use ff on my galaxy s5 and the ui isn't noticibly slow, but I'm on lineageos (cyanogen) and keep apps from running when not needed so ymmv

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#542

Post by sctb »

digi_owl wrote: post #106
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.

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 maintaini…

This is not the kind of civil and substantive comment we're here for. If you'd like to make such a claim, please leave out the insults and include some tether to reality so we can learn something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#543

Post by mcjiggerlog »

jazoom wrote: post #421
allenz wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer FF over Chrome on mobile. FF mobile allows extensions such as uBlock Origin and Google Link Fixer which I find essential. FF supports sending tabs to other devices, if that's what you mean by Chrome tabs.

Firefox on Android has awful scrolling physics. I will never be able to use it while the scrolling is different to every other app on my phone.

Glad I'm not the only one - I love everything else about the app but, as you said, it scrolls differently to every other app on my phone. So frustrating. Sticking with Chrome for now.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#544

Post by norswap »

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…

Counterpoint: as a longtime Firefox user, I have to restart it every couple day. It still hemmorhages memory and just gets unusable after a while.

Even if it's the extension fault, why they aren't sandboxed properly, or even why there eisn't basic reporting about the offenders boggles my mind. Maybe it's because of the API... I find it hard to believe it isn't possible to retrofit some of that on the current design to be honest.

And now, because they couldn't handle it, we're getting extensions with crippled power, that are very (very) far away from feature parity with the old ones.

I wasn't happy before, and I'm not happy now, albeit for different reason.

The fact that I'm using Firefox of course means I'm not thinking too much of other browsers. The fact an extension in chrome can't add a frigging sidebar is a personal pet peeve of mine.

I remember when Firefox was the lightweight alternative to Internet Explorer 6...

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#545

Post by justatdotin »

dewiz wrote: post #457
fencepost wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signing into an account in Chrome almost got someone fired at a small customer of mine a few weeks ago. Fortunately they called me first to look into it, I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. I also wrote this up for the owners to send to the…

This story would deserve a blog post of its own. Google might not realize it, but the ease of being tracked by them is also a risk in work place.

> Google might not realize it,

LOL

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#546

Post by ken »

dogprez wrote: post #100

Somewhat tangentially, I really like the cartoons Lin has made. I’ve found I’ve naturally anthropomorphized code. Often when I start working with someone new they get confused when I start talking about constructs like people. I think it’s given me a different perspective on encapsulation and concurrency than most people. I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with someone that thinks the same way. When I work on code that…

Me, too.

I think about a lot of concepts in terms of real-world objects. When I'm in the shower looking at the tiles, that's an array -- how do I store my data there efficiently, and minimize the need to move blocks of tiles around? When I'm stuck in traffic, I'm the data in a network packet -- how do traffic engineers solve this problem? What's the software equivalent of a carpool lane, or a double-decker bus, or a side street? How is a stop sign different from a street light (latency versus throughput)? Layout constraints seem exactly like theatrical stage positions to me -- maybe that's why I find the Cassowary system perfectly intuitive, and CSS layout not at all.

I liken this to Einstein's thought experiments: what is the experience of riding on a photon at the speed of light? I find it tremendously useful, and I'm not sure why it seems to be more popular in physics than in computer science. Perhaps it's as simple (and arbitrary) as "Einstein was a fan, and Dijkstra was not."

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#547

Post by NikolaeVarius »

Y_Y wrote: post #504
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF is insanely slow on mobile. Scrolling in janky and rendering seems to be about 50% slower than Chromium

Maybe it's your phone?

Nexus 6 and yet doesn't make sense that all my non Firefox browsers are perfect

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#548

Post by stcredzero »

One common theme I've read in threads here, is that there is a general problem with ads, add-ons, and extensions having malware or taking up too much memory or CPU. Shouldn't those all be sandboxed?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#549

Post by orbat »

moomin wrote: post #338
Santosh83 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until all the big corps start censoring the same kinds of contents and behaviour by an unspoken consensus. At that point it becomes effectively as easy to live without all the major online services as it would be to live as an outlaw. Easier or more difficult to get by without shouldn't distract us from the core point GP made, that corporate (arbitrary) censorship, with no redress, should be taken as seriously as gov…

Consider this: imagine the guy sat next to you at work starts yelling at you with a loudhailer all day. Every day. And he never ever shuts up. (Alternatively, imagine that he just whispers "fuck santosh" all day.) Would you expect him to be free to continue doing it? Would you expect the government to stop him? Or would you expect your employer to stop him? The answer is: groups of people (and corporations are groups…

Telling companies that they can't terminate user accounts without a redress or data recovery mechanism (which is what my original point was) isn't a restriction on free speech any more than us telling corporations they can't sell you poisonous food is. This sort of American "reductio ad free speachum" is really peculiar, especially when it's stretched to fit corporate actions like this that aren't even remotely related to anything anybody would classify as speech

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#550

Post by jopsen »

davesque wrote: post #262
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…

I recently (a couple of weeks ago) finished giving Firefox another try for about two weeks. Sorry to say, but it just felt laggy compared with Chrome. I'll give it another shot when the new rendering engine is fully integrated into the release channel.

All the stuff they are talking about is being released with 57 tomorrow.

So maybe give it another spin :)

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