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Engineering code quality in Firefox

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Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#71

Post by webmobdev »

acdha wrote: post #45
webmobdev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opera felt small and fast because it did less and ran websites doing less. Let us assume that is true (even though it isn't) - what's Firefox and other browsers excuse for running slower than Opera on these same sites, during the same period? Opera presto supported a lot of the features of HTML5(1). So it didn't necessarily "do less" than the others. And second, if you really want to compare Opera presto with other…

Nobody is arguing that Opera wasn’t fast, only that there’s been more than a decade of massive improvements which is not reflected in your comments. I used, and paid for, Opera but its golden age is past.

> ... only that there’s been more than a decade of massive improvements which is not reflected in your comments ...

Oh ok. I see the confusion - I was speaking specifically about Opera (Presto engine) versions. Not the current Opera Chromium clone. And the point I was trying to make is that it was a much, much better product than its competitors. And if it had survived, with the original team still working on it, it still would be better than Firefox / Gecko and Chrome / Blink of today.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#72

Post by [deleted] »

eitland wrote: post #63
bergheim wrote: post #49

I just wanted to say that, despite a few mishaps, firefox is what _everybody_ on hn should be using. I can give my browser-time credentials, but really. Firefox is amazing. Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox!

> Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox! And remember: Chrome is the new IE. (Since a number of people have misunderstood this quote in the past I'll explain it up front: 1. IE was in some ways technically superior to competition until they became dominant. 2. At the same time devs stopped caring about other browsers, and then 3. Microsoft lost interest in it. We are repeating this it se…

[deleted]

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#73

Post by alephnan »

eitland wrote: post #63
bergheim wrote: post #49

I just wanted to say that, despite a few mishaps, firefox is what _everybody_ on hn should be using. I can give my browser-time credentials, but really. Firefox is amazing. Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox!

> Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox! And remember: Chrome is the new IE. (Since a number of people have misunderstood this quote in the past I'll explain it up front: 1. IE was in some ways technically superior to competition until they became dominant. 2. At the same time devs stopped caring about other browsers, and then 3. Microsoft lost interest in it. We are repeating this it se…

For people who don't care about privacy, what would be the motivation for making the switch?

Chrome is good enough. The interface is still streamlined. Microsoft didn't just lose interest in IE, but it became bloated with the toolbar. The UI wasn't well proportioned in general.

Web development wise, it was a struggle to be compatible with IE. Chrome may be setting the web standard for better or worst, but atleast developers are more comfortable developing and testing Chrome. The sentiment is that writing code to work I.E. would be exceptional, whereas now writing code for non-Chrome browsers would be the exceptional case. In fact, developers sometimes only test Chrome. Some popular E2E JavaScript testing frameworks only work with Chrome.

Also, I don’t know if there are examples of Chrome implementing non-standard behavior that rivals IE having an event bubbling system that was inverted from every other browser.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#74

Post by alephnan »

juskrey wrote: post #70
alephnan wrote: post #23

We had an "open-ended" project in an undergraduate Computer Security course to discover a 0-day in Firefox. The professor (a researcher, not lecturer, by trade) didn't really have a curriculum, and said this artifact accounted for 70-80% of our grade. Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. IIRC, Firefox is built on some esoteric architecture / design pattern that's def…

He is neither a researcher nor teacher - typical academic parasite. Makes a bet on trendy advanced task and, if it works, lets you be a coauthor. If it does not - no big deal some naive student spent 1/2 year on something virtually impossible w/o deep industry experience.

Actually, they were an industry researcher coming in as a guest lecturer.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#75

Post by juskrey »

alephnan wrote: post #74
juskrey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is neither a researcher nor teacher - typical academic parasite. Makes a bet on trendy advanced task and, if it works, lets you be a coauthor. If it does not - no big deal some naive student spent 1/2 year on something virtually impossible w/o deep industry experience.

Actually, they were an industry researcher coming in as a guest lecturer.

Are you sure he doesn't employ the same tactics instead of actual research? (I am generally suspicious of anyone who voluntary pursues academia)

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#76

Post by eitland »

alephnan wrote: post #73
eitland wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Care for the open web, fear ie6, and at the same time enjoy firefox! And remember: Chrome is the new IE. (Since a number of people have misunderstood this quote in the past I'll explain it up front: 1. IE was in some ways technically superior to competition until they became dominant. 2. At the same time devs stopped caring about other browsers, and then 3. Microsoft lost interest in it. We are repeating this it se…

For people who don't care about privacy, what would be the motivation for making the switch? Chrome is good enough. The interface is still streamlined. Microsoft didn't just lose interest in IE, but it became bloated with the toolbar. The UI wasn't well proportioned in general. Web development wise, it was a struggle to be compatible with IE. Chrome may be setting the web standard for better or worst, but atleast dev…

I wrote a blog post last year that touches into it: https://erik.itland.no/are-you-making-a-chrome-application-o...

As a developer you get a lot for free by developing in Firefox, most importantly if it works in Firefox the it will likely work in all other browsers as well. This is, in my experience as developer and code reviewer not the case for code written and tested exclusively on Chrome.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#77

Post by eitland »

Bnshsysjab wrote: post #22
djanogo wrote: post #4

I was thinking about Firefox development quality while trying to figure out why the f does Firefox CPU usage fluctuate between 1 and 5% with one background tab open and only one plugin installed (containers). The same URL when opened in safari goes to 0.1% or 0.0. I tried to look up dom timeout config settings and tried to set aggressive timeouts, but in the end I gave up. There must be something fundamentally wrong…

I’ve gotten in the habit of killing Firefox before going to bed, the processes seem to run away and peg the CPU periodically throughout the night. It seems to be generally Facebook, but other JS heavy sites have similar issues.

Google Calendar has had some serious issues with doi g something weird in the background.

At some point Google search results page also would spinn up one core on my machine one or twice a minute if left unattended but last I saw that was years ago. (FWIW I don't use Google search much these days, so it might slip by without me noticing.)

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#78

Post by the_arun »

spyridonas wrote: post #6
rstefanic wrote: post #3

> Our next major challenge: We are dealing with 21 million lines of code. I think I just fail to understand the true complexity of a browser, but how is Firefox 21 million lines of code? How can a browser be 21 million lines of code? That just seems so large for what a browser does.

Chrome is 25M, so they are close. Yeah i think its too much as well.

Seems like modern day browsers are not just HTTP Client, they are close to an Operating System. But still surprised by size of LOC.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#79

Post by dontbenebby »

alephnan wrote: post #23

We had an "open-ended" project in an undergraduate Computer Security course to discover a 0-day in Firefox. The professor (a researcher, not lecturer, by trade) didn't really have a curriculum, and said this artifact accounted for 70-80% of our grade. Trying to compile Firefox was already a challenge. That, and each compile took an hour. IIRC, Firefox is built on some esoteric architecture / design pattern that's def…

You can’t arbitrarily change the syllabus to a student’s detriment. I’d have argued up the chain.

Re: Engineering code quality in Firefox

#80

Post by dbmueller »

juskrey wrote: post #75
alephnan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they were an industry researcher coming in as a guest lecturer.

Are you sure he doesn't employ the same tactics instead of actual research? (I am generally suspicious of anyone who voluntary pursues academia)

> I am generally suspicious of anyone who voluntary pursues academia

That's very unfair imo. The majority of people I know in academia don't fit this profile at all. There is obviously disappointing stuff happening, but people generally still are working/teaching in good faith.

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