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Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

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Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#11

Post by kgtm »

"the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser"

Quite surprised to see this, judging from the fact that empirically the average human brain-hand response is around 200 ms. Only in competitive CS have i seen network latency in a non-LAN setting makes a difference in that scenario, but only when you are not on the very top of the relevant Bell curve.

Seems like a moot bragging point. I'd love to hear from a more knowledgeable person what i'm missing.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#14

Post by mrcharles »

kgtm wrote: post #11

"the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser" Quite surprised to see this, judging from the fact that empirically the average human brain-hand response is around 200 ms. Only in competitive CS have i seen network latency in a non-LAN setting makes a difference in that scenario, but only when you are not on the ver…

Brain-hand response is not the same thing as a perceived delay.

Once latency becomes greater than 50ms, it becomes human noticeable -- aka "not instant."

Given that UI response isn't used to trigger human reflexes, you are just misunderstanding the intent.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#15

Post by lovskogen »

kgtm wrote: post #11

"the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser" Quite surprised to see this, judging from the fact that empirically the average human brain-hand response is around 200 ms. Only in competitive CS have i seen network latency in a non-LAN setting makes a difference in that scenario, but only when you are not on the ver…

This might be a good read for such things: http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#16

Post by Strom »

kgtm wrote: post #11

"the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser" Quite surprised to see this, judging from the fact that empirically the average human brain-hand response is around 200 ms. Only in competitive CS have i seen network latency in a non-LAN setting makes a difference in that scenario, but only when you are not on the ver…

The 200ms braind-hand response time you are refering to is the time it takes to see a change on the screen, brain reacting and sending a signal to the hand and then to actually press the button. What the firefox roadmap is talking about is from the time the button was pressed until something changes on the screen. These are two different things and they actually add up. Then there's also the final delay between the changes happening on the screen and the brain recognizing this.

So the user experience delay is the sum of three different sub-delays. Firefox wants to improve it by reducing the middle part.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#18

Post by timtadh »

From the road map it looks like their main focus will be on product polish. They will be adding some features to the system. These features seem to cluster around "Web Platform" features (ie. HTML5, CSS3, Social stuff, etc...) and continued improvements to their add on system.

The polish focuses on improving interaction times for all user interactions. Their goal as previously mentioned is to get it down to 50ms from user action to visible response. They also say the have 50 common usage paths (identified from testing) that need to be improved.

This looks like a reasonable though ambitions plan for Mozilla and if they stick to it they will remain competitive and relevant.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#19

Post by orev »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

It looks like Windows 7 64-bit will be officially supported with FF5, too. You're kidding, right? Do they REALLY not support the fastest growing OS version + platform combo? OEMs are finally paying attention to 64-bit computing, and Windows 7 has been replacing Vista like wildfire.... and FF is still two releases away from official Windows 7 64-bit support? EDIT: Oops. Seems stupid Aol/Weblogs/Switched/DowloadSquad (…

Firefox is far from becoming "more and more irrelevant". Just because you've switched to an alternate browser doesn't mean the rest of the world has. Chrome may be incrementally gaining some share, but it's mostly at the expense of IE. Firefox has almost 25% of the market, while Chrome is 5%.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#20

Post by msmith »

I'm pretty excited about Account Manager, the identity management feature, that's scheduled for Firefox 5. It has the potential to make the web both more secure and simpler to use. Usually those goals are opposing.

Of course, the biggest obstacle will be getting people to add support for the feature to their site.

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