441–450 of 468 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, they act like all of the info Google takes in goes straight to ads, when a lot of it goes to it's analytics platform
I fail to see how the latter prevents the former. This is digital information that can be copied endlessly, not a physical object that can only be owned by one entity at a time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just can't imagine Firefox will ever be performant as Safari. Firefox has (for now at least) a huge leg up in terms of content blockers. IDK if that's enough to even out the energy consumption and performance, but it can't hurt.
I know Firefox is the one browser who isn't switching to the newer, more restrictive method of content blocking, but wasn't the (purported) motivation for Safari's change performance? For my use, I keep many many tabs and windows open. Most of the efficiency gains I see are from handling that better. I don't use desktop Safari heavily. I tend to keep it as the thing I use when I suspect adblockers are messing up cont…
Maybe, but what kind of performance hit will letting all the ads and nonsense through be? I probably could aim to find a trusty ad blocker for Safari, keeping in mind that Apple has left the disingenuously named uBlock up in their extension store. Or I could just stick with uBlock Origin and a browser that works with it.
I've got ~2000 tabs open in Firefox right now and don't feel like performance or battery life is a problem. I use 1Blocker on iOS, but it's clunkier, less effective, and more expensive than uBlock Origin (and I still get tons of in-app ads). That's not something I'm in any hurry to bring over to the desktop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know Firefox is the one browser who isn't switching to the newer, more restrictive method of content blocking, but wasn't the (purported) motivation for Safari's change performance? For my use, I keep many many tabs and windows open. Most of the efficiency gains I see are from handling that better. I don't use desktop Safari heavily. I tend to keep it as the thing I use when I suspect adblockers are messing up cont…
wasn't the (purported) motivation for Safari's change performance? Maybe, but what kind of performance hit will letting all the ads and nonsense through be? I probably could aim to find a trusty ad blocker for Safari, keeping in mind that Apple has left the disingenuously named uBlock up in their extension store. Or I could just stick with uBlock Origin and a browser that works with it. I've got ~2000 tabs open in Fi…
> (and I still get tons of in-app ads)
I'm pretty sure that's expected. 1Blocker's FAQ says it won't work with most third party iOS apps like Chrome.
I'm sure usage varies and I'm glad Firefox works well for you. I have Firefox 70 hidden with about 7 windows and 40 tabs (total) and Activity Monitor points to it as the highest energy suck bouncing between 15-20 of whatever units this measures--in line with CPU usage. I only installed uBlock Origin last night for Firefox. I use it mostly for work stuff which generally doesn't have ads. Chrome, where I'm typing this is about 1/3 to 1/2 the usage (and it's not hidden).
I was hoping for more of an improvement from Firefox. Historically, using Chrome or Safari will get me literally hours longer between charging.
Not mentioned in this article (although it's in the Release Notes [1]): the amazing work done regarding the macOS compositor. This should give pretty noticeable speed and battery improvements on Retina Macbooks. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/70.0/releasenotes/#new
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox can and does aggressively throttle JS in background tabs. However, it's not easy to do this in a way that doesn't break sites. Sometimes background tabs have JS doing actually useful work --- playing audio, running a simulation, receiving notifications, stuff like that. I don't know what Safari is doing differently to Firefox, and no doubt Firefox can improve here, but when people say "it's easy, just complet…
The answer is simply that yes Safari breaks websites, but users are happy to make that tradeoff. It's common knowledge among web developers that browsers aggressively throttle background tabs so anybody who is designing a website that depends on it is misguided. I don't hear anybody complaining about Safari being too aggressive with background tabs, I do hear people complaining that Firefox uses too much battery. So…
These tradeoffs may also be different for different browsers. E.g. if you're Apple, perhaps breaking Web sites isn't a big deal since on iOS Safari is entrenched by fiat, and if users switch from Web apps to native apps, so much the better for Apple. For Mozilla that calculation works out differently.
Generally speaking "site X breaks in Firefox, works in Chrome" is a good way for Mozilla to lose market share.
I am not a Firefox user but know that matching Webkit performance on macOS is going to be very hard. So just fired a test on my Macbook Air - Safari 13 vs Firefox 70. Opened top 10 links from techmeme. Both windows in background. Firefox 70: Energy use 30-200; CPU 20-25%; Threads 82 Safari 13: Energy use 0.1-5; CPU 2-5%; Threads 11 If this is to celebrate I can only imagine what the things looked like before this rel…
Test: open 10 tabs of techmeme.com, on OSX Catalina (10.15 Beta), on a 2015 retina 13" macbook pro. Firefox: Threads 71, %CPU 2.5. Energy: 0.4. Opening the tabs all at once took up ~68% CPU. Energy went up to 75. Safari: threads: 8, %CPU: 0.7-2. When opening the tabs: %CPU: 28%. Energy usage: 2.4. Firefox grew sluggish when opening that many tabs at once. Safari handled it like a champ. Pretty bleak for firefox.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
extensions are one lump sum offer away from becoming malware e: immaigne people down-voting facts https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/-particle-chr...
The same is true of Firefox itself, or indeed any piece of software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same is true of Firefox itself, or indeed any piece of software.
There's slight difference in that in Firefox's case tech journals will be writing about it, everyone else will be talking about it and it will be on front page of HN. In the case of random extension going rogue it will likely get unnoticed for years and when it is finally noticed there's a small chance it will be picked by HN if planets align.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Windows I've been testing the new MS Edge because I've noticed my laptop has significantly higher CPU usage running FF. The reduced battery life is one thing, a hot laptop is another. Currently the new Edge is not as well optimized as the original, but there's more to come on that front. I've been using FF since it was in beta, never left but I'm starting to come around to the reality that native browsers are best…
Yes, I also observe much more power drawn even on a single page (especially if it contains animations) opened in Firefox vs any other browser, and on Windows, IE is significantly less power hungry. I've also checked this newest version, 70 on Windows and my measurement of the power use give practically identical results to the measurements I've done almost two years ago. I see that the power drain comes from the brow…
From what I've read, Mozilla can't really optimize rendering to the level of Safari & Edge. I found this article[0] on WebRender to be very interesting on this front. The author noted-
"Note: Painting and compositing is where browser rendering engines are the most different from each other. Single-platform browsers (Edge and Safari) work a bit differently than multi-platform browsers (Firefox and Chrome) do."
I love Firefox quite a bit, every detail, the way it scrolls with smooth scrolling off, the dedicated search bar for switching DuckDuckGo bangs, the container support. The dedicated search bar is a huge one, I can't imagine why no one else at least offers that, as a feature it can't cause that much maintenance headache. I definitely love FF as much as anyone here but I'm not one who argues that Gecko is necessary for a standards-based web, I'm not convinced by the argument. Webkit can be forked again and it has a significant userbase to act as a counterweight to Blink. It's increasingly difficult at this point to convince myself that native browsers don't make the most sense.
[0]https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f...