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The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

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Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#51

Post by skrebbel »

devwastaken wrote: post #24

I can't help but think that regardless what different browser vendors do there's no competition with v8. Like any language there is a standard library, or environment around it. V8 is to JavaScript what CPython is to python. At least in python you can use other versions and it's a very similiar environment. But if you want to use mozillas spidermonkey without Firefox, it's hoops and bounds worse experience. I'd argue…

About a decade ago I needed an embedded scripting language in a c++ project and chose JS. Embedding SpiderMonkey was a matter of copying all files in the `js` subfolder of the Firefox sources into my project, and calling into it was peanuts. The classes were well named, easy to use and easy to learn.

Did this somehow change?

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#52

Post by _hardwaregeek »

the_duke wrote: post #12

The Mozilla tech blogs are always a good read. Informative and easy to digest. I can only think of one other company blogging with similar consistency/quality: Cloudflare. Firefox performance has seen tremendous gains since their Project Quantum efforts. It mostly feels on par with Chrome for me pretty much everywhere. There is one glaring omission though: a single company where I have problems with FF on multiple ap…

YouTube freezes so damn much. Very annoying. But probably good since I watch too much damn YouTube haha.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#53

Post by patrickmcnamara »

the_duke wrote: post #12

The Mozilla tech blogs are always a good read. Informative and easy to digest. I can only think of one other company blogging with similar consistency/quality: Cloudflare. Firefox performance has seen tremendous gains since their Project Quantum efforts. It mostly feels on par with Chrome for me pretty much everywhere. There is one glaring omission though: a single company where I have problems with FF on multiple ap…

YouTube is faster on Firefox on my laptop for some reason. I get zero dropped frames on Firefox too, compared to Chrome/Chromium.

Still waiting on Firefox to support hardware-accelerated decoding of videos though.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#54

Post by kderbe »

jedberg wrote: post #44
faitswulff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was perfectly fine with Chrome's usability until I started getting a `Hold Command + Q` to quit` prompt on my Mac. Before then, I hadn't even considered the possibility that an application could block me from quickly and easily quitting out of it. Now I have to hold the key combo or double tap it to quit Chrome, and it is the only application I have to do that for. It's so annoying.

Ironically, I love that feature and wish I could have it on my other apps, especially on Firefox. I've fat fingered Cmd-W and Cmd-Q too many times, and while it's easy to restore, it takes a couple minutes, a lot of bandwidth, and spins the CPU to 100% for a while. Which really sucks when you're on battery.

I use the add-on "Disable Ctrl-Q and Cmd-Q" because of this. To actually quit with the add-on enabled, you must click the Quit Firefox menu item.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#55

Post by [deleted] »

jandem wrote: post #25
mikepavone wrote: post #4

One thing that wasn't clear to me from this post is why they still need the C++ interpreter at all. I assume there is some non-obvious cost that makes it not worth it for the coldest of code, but I'm having a hard time guessing what it may be.

> One thing that wasn't clear to me from this post is why they still need the C++ interpreter at all. A lot of code on the web is very cold (executed once or twice) and for such code the Baseline Interpreter would add some overhead (requires allocating a JitScript storing the IC data for example and we would then spend more time in IC code as well). It's possible this could be mitigated or fixed with additional work,…

[deleted]

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#56

Post by tsbinz »

the_duke wrote: post #12

The Mozilla tech blogs are always a good read. Informative and easy to digest. I can only think of one other company blogging with similar consistency/quality: Cloudflare. Firefox performance has seen tremendous gains since their Project Quantum efforts. It mostly feels on par with Chrome for me pretty much everywhere. There is one glaring omission though: a single company where I have problems with FF on multiple ap…

I still need to either use chrome on android or explicitly navigate to the mobile page to get the title text on xkcd.com ... android firefox cuts the title text off with no apparent way to read the full one :/

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#57

Post by shadowfacts »

mr_puzzled wrote: post #43
the_duke wrote: post #12

The Mozilla tech blogs are always a good read. Informative and easy to digest. I can only think of one other company blogging with similar consistency/quality: Cloudflare. Firefox performance has seen tremendous gains since their Project Quantum efforts. It mostly feels on par with Chrome for me pretty much everywhere. There is one glaring omission though: a single company where I have problems with FF on multiple ap…

> Gmail was still dog-slow the last time I tried, Youtube can send my fan into a frenzy and Docs is also regularly problematic. It seems to work fine on my system running Ubuntu 18.04 with ublock origin installed. Which OS are you using?

Anecdotally with Firefox on macOS, Gmail is by far the worst offender. Switching inboxes/labels takes several seconds in FF and is near instant in Chrome. Scrolling performance in FF is also much worse.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#58

Post by mgkimsal »

dagenix wrote: post #7
faitswulff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was perfectly fine with Chrome's usability until I started getting a `Hold Command + Q` to quit` prompt on my Mac. Before then, I hadn't even considered the possibility that an application could block me from quickly and easily quitting out of it. Now I have to hold the key combo or double tap it to quit Chrome, and it is the only application I have to do that for. It's so annoying.

To Disable: Uncheck "Warn Before Quitting" on the "Chrome" menu - in between the Apple menu and "File" menu.

it doesn't help when you're testing via automated software - test runners will open up chromes, then often fail and leave them open, and the 'warn before quitting' is always defaulted to on.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#59

Post by mikepavone »

jandem wrote: post #25
mikepavone wrote: post #4

One thing that wasn't clear to me from this post is why they still need the C++ interpreter at all. I assume there is some non-obvious cost that makes it not worth it for the coldest of code, but I'm having a hard time guessing what it may be.

> One thing that wasn't clear to me from this post is why they still need the C++ interpreter at all. A lot of code on the web is very cold (executed once or twice) and for such code the Baseline Interpreter would add some overhead (requires allocating a JitScript storing the IC data for example and we would then spend more time in IC code as well). It's possible this could be mitigated or fixed with additional work,…

Makes perfect sense, thanks for explaining it for me.

Re: The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70

#60

Post by skybrian »

joaobeno wrote: post #46
skybrian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a JavaScript interpreter. What privacy features did you have in mind?

For example, closing subtle interpreter patterns or behavior differences that may be used to fingerprinting...

I guess that could be an issue after all the non-subtle ways to fingerprint are fixed.
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