Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

extremetech.com

101–110 of 124 posts

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#101

I am using it on my macbook pro. FF8 is faster compare to FF5 I was using. Schubert-it PDF plugin, Adblock, XMark, Flashgot works. Firebug, Google Dictionary, Download statusbar don't work... and there are some minor bugs with mouse hover effect.

How about 1Password?

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#102

20% sounds good, but unless versions 5, 6 and 7 also had 20% improvements, it would still be slower than the current version of Chrome on canvas stuff. For the relatively simple canvas rendering I'm doing, I can watch Firefox chugging along at 10fps struggling to render a few dozen filled rectangles, while Chrome is happily pegged at 60fps (via RequestAnimationFrame). It's just night and day.

> It's just night and day.

It's mostly night and day in the opposite direction. Firefox 4+, like IE9+, uses Direct2D on Windows. That leads to canvas being much faster than Chrome (if your graphics card supports that).

On other platforms, results may differ, and it depends on your graphics card. I am guessing that you happen to have a configuration that Chrome runs better on, but most benchmarkers have found (as expected) than Firefox and IE have faster Canvas implementations than Chrome (since they tested on Windows, with cards that can utilize Direct2D).

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#103
post #53
post #21

What about type rendering? If FF on OSX no longer uses quartz to perform drawing operations, what implications are there for type rendering? Will OSX users be subjected to the (IMO) ravages of freetype? Or will each platform continue to use native type rasterization?

AFAIK Firefox still uses Quartz; in fact it's now supposed to be Quartzier with less Cairo overhead.

RTFA: "Azure removes the Direct2D and Quartz (OS X) go-between and allows Firefox to write directly to the underlying 3D subsystems (Direct3D and OpenGL)."

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#105
Just had a play with Firefox 8. It's certainly fast but they've copied Opera & Chrome with removing the "http:// from the URL bar. I can see the arguments for the change but this feels really wrong to me. I hope there's an about:config tweak somewhere to change it back; even if there is, it's a shame Mozilla have gone down this route.

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#106
Hmm.. If a browser really wants to make a dent I think they need to diversify their marketing push. It needs to be cool to the people who need cool, safe and trustworthy to the people that need that, technically sound, exciting and promising to us geeks.. At the moment it seems that they try to do a bit of all this at once, but maybe separate voices focussed on these markets would be more effective?

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously going to over-analyze specific tenses of words? Each major version will include different features. Stop just trying to distract the conversation.

Apparently saurik and I are the only ones confused! I found it very jarring to read that Firefox 6 isn't out yet, but the thread talks as if Firefox 8 is actually out, or very close to being released. In my mind I'm envisioning a weird, staggered, neither increasing nor decreasing of version number release cycle. I think you're coming from a different angle where all of this is very familiar for you, so you can't rel…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#108

I am using it on my macbook pro. FF8 is faster compare to FF5 I was using. Schubert-it PDF plugin, Adblock, XMark, Flashgot works. Firebug, Google Dictionary, Download statusbar don't work... and there are some minor bugs with mouse hover effect.

Yeah, I just downloaded firefox-trunk in ubuntu, and it certainly is fast, fast enough that I can go back to using it for Microsoft Exchange webmail (which was the real killer before.) But not having the extensions is going to be a pain. I think I might try to port "It's All Text!" to 8...

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#109
post #103
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Firefox still uses Quartz; in fact it's now supposed to be Quartzier with less Cairo overhead.

RTFA: "Azure removes the Direct2D and Quartz (OS X) go-between and allows Firefox to write directly to the underlying 3D subsystems (Direct3D and OpenGL)."

Maybe for WebGL, not plain page content.

Re: Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14

#110
post #14
post #4

Mozilla needs to do something to de-dramatize what some people see as version inflation. A lot of people get anxious to see these very frequent bumps because major x releases are associated with add-ons not working, bloat, etc.

True, but on the other hand people will get used to it, just like they did with Chrome. The version number doesn't matter, all that matters is that it works. I like to see Mozilla responding. I don't know if development has speeded up, but it seems to have done. If they can keep this up without letting security slip I'll be impressed.

Chrome also doesn't throw version numbers around constantly and it silently auto-updates. I installed Chrome 9 when I switched away from Firefox, then I later saw an article about a new feature in Chrome 12 and was surprised when I was already running it.
Post reply on HN