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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#651
post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it actually got Quantum DOM as well? I was under the impression that it was merely Electrolysis and Quantum Compositor (i.e. the speedups from Firefox 54), and that the massive on from 57 was still set to arrive?

The prioritization parts of Quantum DOM have landed. There is some work around preemption that still needs to happen. We should have a post talking about this coming out in the next few weeks.

I tried Android Nightly but there are still 2 small yet noticeable things Mozilla should improve (which are not at all linked to the page rendering in itself) - when it's done, it could really rival Chromium-based browsers:

- when you swipe fast, the page only scrolls by like 30%, instead of scrolling by 200% like in Chromium browsers. Basically it's impossible to quickly scroll a long page on Firefox (maybe it's configurable somehow in about:config?)

- when you long-press a link, it takes like 2-3 seconds for the menu to open. As I "open in new tab" by default, this quickly adds up.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#652
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.

Speaking of firefox and macOS integration, does anyone know why they don't support pinch to zoom like chrome and safari do? I tried looking this up, but can't find any specific answers.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#653
post #368
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…

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.

> exiled Chrome to an "only when needed" role

It's been my second browser for Twitch and Netflix only for a while now. I'm bit even sure how useful that is anymore if I'm honest as I've not tried them in firefox for a while - but they used to be unusable and I've become accustomed to having another browser for them

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#654
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 ?

Chrome has a better security model. That's big for some.

Not really anymore. Mozilla has been doing a lot here in recent months, too. The foundation for most of these performance improvements is the recent introduction of multiprocess, which also allowed them to introduce sandboxing in many more places.

To my knowledge, the only bigger architectural difference now is that Chrome sandboxes each tab individually, unless they're from the same domain as another tab, whereas Firefox by default only uses as many processes as you have CPU cores and then round-robins your tabs among those.

This is for performance reasons: You still get almost the same parallelism, but much less RAM usage especially with lots of tabs, and then that free RAM can again be used to speed things up elsewhere.

You can however configure this. Set dom.ipc.processCount in about:config to as many processes as you want to maximally use. If you set it to a really high number, like 1000, then it will create a new process for each tab (until you open your 1001st tab) and those will then all be individually sandboxed.

Another big security difference were extensions. Firefox previously with the classic Linux approach of "If it's installed, it's trusted".

Now they have the same extension model as Chrome with a number of additional APIs. Those APIs are potential security holes, but also allow the implementation of better security, for example NoScript is being ported to Firefox 57, still can't be ported to Chrome.

Well, and then going away from the model itself, Mozilla enables much better security on the extension side, again with the Linux approach, by reviewing extensions and extension updates before they allow the publication. I'd have no concern with my mum installing whatever extension she wants in her Firefox. With Chrome, I would be concerned.

Lastly, only some of us are security super humans. Chrome always gives an option for security to calm security people, but if it benefits Google, they'll leave this option off by default, even if it should clearly be default on.

For example Sync in Firefox is end-to-end-encrypted by default. Only one password needed. In Chrome, it's not. Because Google wants to evaluate your browsing history, bookmarks etc. You can have E2EE, but you need to separately enable it and use a second password for it.

Again, fine for security super humans, but the fewest of us understand browsers enough to know about all potential security holes and we simply do need to rely on browser vendors for our own security.

Don't think Google has actually fixed that Auto-Fill phishing attack either yet, which comes up around here every half year or so.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#655
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

thanks for the direct ftp link, and congrats to the firefox team! i've been using 57 (and 58) via the developer edition and really like the improvements. but i think i'll stick with 56 as my default browser for a little longer since quantum breaks some great legacy add-ons: * NoScript -- control script execution * RequestPolicy (and its variants) -- control content requests * Blend In -- use the most common user agen…

Blend In can be replaced by setting privacy.resistFingerprinting to true in about:config.

It'll set the user agent to the same as the Tor browser, Firefox 52.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#656
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using FF sync for at least 3 years now, probably more. And FF 57 is definitely on par with Chrome in browsing speed. Still not quite there with WebGL, though. The debugger is much better now, too, and surprisingly more responsive than Chrome's.

JS debugging in particular or do you mean the developer tools in general? (I'm the Chrome DevTools tech writer / advocate)

Yes, mostly JS debugging.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#657
post #193
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?

QubesOS. Makes fucking up accounts even harder to do.

https://www.qubes-os.org/

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#659
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using FF sync for at least 3 years now, probably more. And FF 57 is definitely on par with Chrome in browsing speed. Still not quite there with WebGL, though. The debugger is much better now, too, and surprisingly more responsive than Chrome's.

With regard to WebGL, it depends. This demo, for example, runs at 30fps in Firefox for Android and 4fps in Chrome on my Nextbit Robin: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms2SD1

Shadertoy is just drawing a plane with a shader. Many less graphics calls than a regular WebGL app (which is where Chromium still shines). Even then, Chromium renders that link full screen a bit smoother than FF in Linux desktop.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#660
post #646

I was really excited for Quantum, but it appears the switch to WebExtensions is going to gut most of my favourite addons, and completely kill the rest. About half of the addons I use have been updated to be compatible with Firefox 57, so the rest will stop working as soon as I update. Of the ones that have updated, most are missing significant features. The most significant example is Lastpass, which can no longer fi…

You don't know before the update if an extension is supported or not. Firefox 56 doesn't support all of the new features of web extensions so some add-ons (and versions) are only available for Firefox 57. Too bad Mozilla changed the Add-On website a few days ago. You don't see any indication of supported Firefox version anymore. You only see the extensions that work in your current browser, not the extensions for the…

Actually every addon indicates on the addon site whether it is compatible with quantum or not. In some cases, there are indeed addons that are only compatible with 57+ (also indicated there), but the ones I described were accurate; I'm already using the updated versions, but they are seriously hamstrung. I agree that things are likely to slowly improve as the WebExtension APIs are extended and addons go through more updates. Still very difficult to lose so much functionality overnight. I may switch to v52 (ESR) for now, then decide next year whether to stick with Firefox.
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