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Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

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Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#181

The question for firefox was never been is it fast. The question for firefox was always “why its using 10GB RAM?”

I've literally seen people commenting that they don't use firefox because chrome seems faster. (...and also, how on earth did you get it to use that much memory? I'm sitting over 500 tabs, albeit mostly unloaded, and 6 extensions, on a system with only 6GB installed)

Just curious (not being snarky): what is the advantage of kepeing 500 tabs open? How does it work?

I rarely have more than 10 open, and I've been using tabs ever since tabs on browsers were invented. (I was using browsers before tabs existed) I feel I might have missed some trend here.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#182
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have Lockwise. Pocket had millions of users already when Mozilla integrated it. A lot of people seem to like the recommended articles. The minority who know and care Mozilla was dishonest about why it was integrated 5 years ago would just keep criticizing Mozilla for not removing it.

Lockwise is just another password manager. It’s also free, which means it’s never going to generate revenue. We need something that can rival “Log on with Facebook” and can generate enough money to self-sustain. I would happily pay to have Mozilla act as an independent super-secure auth provider for me, in a way I’d never do with any small startup.

They tried that already (Persona).

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#183
post #11

It's nice to see some actual good news involving Firefox. With all of the leadership and financial struggles lately, it's made me worry that the browser I've been using for the last 17 years doesn't have long to live. Hopefully that is not the case.

Mozilla (the Company) has always had problems. They want to be something they're not. But the people on the Mozilla engineering team are top-notch and rarely affected by company drama (and probably feel the same way as you do about it). Mozilla is one of the few places you can do this specific type of really interesting engineering work, without having to be at Google/Apple/etc. (ex-Mozillian here :) )

What happens to the Firefox core dev team if the Mozilla Foundation's main revenue source -- the Google search tie-in -- dries up? Google is probably just waiting for the day that Firefox market share is below a threshold of viable competition, at which point they'll pull the plug on the search engine contract and it's game over for the Mozilla Foundation, unless the Mozilla Corporation can step in and save it, which clearly it is not in a position to do.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#184
post #180
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this link about a similar (or same?) issue it sounds like filters are done on the CPU in Firefox unless you enable a flag but it may be outdated: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025 > Safari and Chrome both do blur on the GPU Firefox does it in software unless WebRender is turned on. You could try turning on the gfx.webrender.all pref and that should improve things.

webrender is on by default for Windows 10, but Mozilla is still struggling with mac and Linux drivers, so it's still off by default there. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where To check if you're using webrender, check about:support. Check the graphics>compositing section. (Edited to correct first paragraph.)

In the Firefox Release channel, WebRender is currently only enabled on Windows 10. Windows 7/8 support should be coming soon in Firefox 83 (2020-11-17) and macOS and Linux after that. As you say, GPU drivers are the biggest problem.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pg sums it up the best: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html "The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you're so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you're a marginal company." I'd say there's a few major reasons: protecting the name and signaling we're a real company to larger corporations. For us, we also host websites that allows JS/…

Whew, that is the sentiment of a true plutocrat and elitist. You're weak unless you're rich and pay to rent in the good part of town. Sure, it's desirable to look serious to commercial partners and investors, but mostly it's an Internet branding tax. Most of your customers will Google your site.

I definitely look down at people with .info domains. The effect is alive.

(TLDs are stupid at this point. If it was up to me we would kill all of them except .com and .org)

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, Chrome has autoplay on? How can anyone stand that? It reminds me of IE7 with auto-installed toolbars that took 1/3 of the screen.

Firefox does... and I can't turn it off. The websites, especially news sites, completely and utterly override the "off" settings for autoplay in firefox. And the dev team keeps changing the way those options are named as well as confusingly having a bunch of similarly named options. I'm confident that they're doing it on purpose because autoplay off hurts ad serving and it also probably pisses off traditional media s…

Firefox currently autoplays video that has no audio. This is a delicate balance. If browsers disable autoplay by default, then advertisers will find other ways to push video ads in users' faces. I read an anecdote that Google tried disabling autoplay on mobile and advertisers started playing video ads using an H.264 video decoder in JavaScript that paints video frames to a canvas. So users still see the video ad, but now using more bandwidth, memory, and CPU.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially it was an option to become the engine, then after a time it simply became the place to try and engines and they said it would never be the "new" browser engine. It was a prototyping area.

Successful parts of Servo where integrated in Gecko, as was intended. So, in a way Gecko is largely Servo.

The two major Servo components are the style system and WebRender. But I wouldn't say that it is "largely" Servo by any means.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla (the Company) has always had problems. They want to be something they're not. But the people on the Mozilla engineering team are top-notch and rarely affected by company drama (and probably feel the same way as you do about it). Mozilla is one of the few places you can do this specific type of really interesting engineering work, without having to be at Google/Apple/etc. (ex-Mozillian here :) )

What happens to the Firefox core dev team if the Mozilla Foundation's main revenue source -- the Google search tie-in -- dries up? Google is probably just waiting for the day that Firefox market share is below a threshold of viable competition, at which point they'll pull the plug on the search engine contract and it's game over for the Mozilla Foundation, unless the Mozilla Corporation can step in and save it, which…

Some search engine will be willing to pay for the spot, whether bing, ddg, or something more esoteric (ali-something?)

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#189

It's sad how these valuable optimizations are unknown to the average person. When I hear "the browser" discussed in almost any parlance, the implication is Chrome. It's rare to even hear someone say "Chrome," as it's the defacto choice for the non-mobile web. Convenience breeds ignorance.

> When I hear "the browser" discussed in almost any parlance,

Well at least it's an improvement over the browser being referred to as "Internet" before.

Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's technically true, but most average users probably don't care. It's like optimizing your car's fuel efficiency by changing your spark plugs more often. When was the last time you changed your spark plugs?

Every oil change

So you change your oil every 20,000 miles?
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