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Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

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Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#111

Post by kccqzy »

Zekio wrote: post #7
Doches wrote: post #2

> We’ve been motivated by the improvements we’re seeing in our telemetry data, and we’re convinced that our efforts this year are having a positive effect on Firefox users. Mozilla gets a lot of flak (especially around here!) for their sometimes heavy-handed usage analytics, but it's nice to see that used for its stated purpose! Great use of data here.

Especially considering that google and microsoft probably collects 10x the data

Chromium is open source. And unsurprisingly all the data collection bits are open source too. (They call it UMA metrics in the codebase.) Search in the codebase for things like UMA_HISTOGRAM_ENUMERATION or SCOPED_UMA_HISTOGRAM_TIMER and with a free afternoon you'll have a pretty good idea what kind of telemetry Google really collects.

Example: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:bas...

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#112

Post by wldlyinaccurate »

myfonj wrote: post #95

I can subjectively confirm that Firefox feels snappier recently and deeply appreciate and enjoy all improvements. But I have some itching concerns about that methodology with heavy anonymisation and stuff there: Couldn't it be that the web itself got faster, and folks have better hardware? I mean, yes, generally these sloppy script kiddies with bloated frameworks produce less and less effective code … but I can imagi…

The web is getting faster, yes. This manifests as a constant (albeit slow) downward trend in global aggregate metrics. We think this trend is mostly due to Google pushing performance metrics being linked to search rankings.

However the data presented in this post shows obvious step changes in performance that correlate with browser version rollout. It would be disingenuous not to attribute this to a concerted effort on performance improvements from the Firefox team.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#113

Post by rhdunn »

joduplessis wrote: post #110

Love headlines like these. As opposed to what, fake users?

Synthetic benchmarks or tests. For example, improving performance of an empty loop is useful for starting somewhere [1], but does not show how fast the browser is on a real page with complex JavaScript such as a vue/react component used to render a tree-based select control with searchable items.

[1] E.g. creating the new jitter for Ladybird.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#114

Post by jacobyoder »

orev wrote: post #109
southernplaces7 wrote: post #98

Sounds wonderful, but they've been claiming speed increases for years, causing me to go and check if they're true, and being deeply disappointed. I don't use powerful laptops with fancy hardware for my browsing, but how stupid can a browser be if it only works well even with heavy use if your hardware is great? Not everyone has that luxury even if they'd like a bit of privacy features. As much as I detest and avoid a…

Firefox is definitely on par with Chrome these days, so if you’re seeing issues like this, I would first suspect that it’s the web sites you have loaded in those 50+ open tabs instead of the browser itself. So many sites use bad JavaScript and that’s often what causes the problems.

> Firefox is definitely on par with Chrome these days,

The GP is likely going to be triggered by those words, because... I've seen this repeated every X months/years... "Oh... yeah, you had problems in the past, but it's so much better now"... and... it rarely is. GP will just need to try out again at their own schedule and make their own determination.

I had this standard issue with desktop/laptop linux for years... "xyx doesn't work well"... "Oh yeah, it's so much better now - no problems now". Try the new recommendation - still broken.

I had a f2f with someone at a local meetup, and we got in to "xyz is subpar/broken on linux" (some gnome thing possibly). This happened to be a linux user group, and someone challenged me with "no, you're wrong, it's fine now". So... I pulled out the laptop and fired it up and showed the irritation/bug. The response - after showing that what I was saying was a bug - was a shrug and "Oh, I don't care about that - doesn't affect me". The verbal equivalent of "WONTFIX". In person.

tldr: telling people who've been burned - often for years - that things are "better now" is generally not all the productive. Most of the time, people who have specific/legit issues will figure out if/when they're fixed or tolerable enough.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#115

Post by Centigonal »

zanellato19 wrote: post #61
Centigonal wrote: post #15

I switched to Firefox from Chrome for personal browsing several months ago, after the Manifest v3 debacle. So far, it's been good! Very few sites only work on chrome. Firefox is fast, and the auto tab discard works better for me than Chrome's equivalent (or the Marvelous Suspender), I really like container tabs, and the whole experience feels pretty snappy. There are some product affordances I don't get with Firefox…

> ex. being able to run math expressions in the address bar This works here for me just fine, at least for simple ones

division breaks it, because FF doesn't want to send a potential URL to google (which evaluates math expressions). details here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1318813

Thanks to your comment, I did some more research and discovered an about:config flag (browser.urlbar.suggest.calculator) that fixes this for me!

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#116

Post by SoftTalker »

dinkleberg wrote: post #80

Gotta say I’ve been using Firefox for years as my daily driver and it has been great. Maybe it is because I’m running on higher end machines for the most part, but I’ve had no complaints with it across Linux, windows, and Mac.

Same. And I'm not using high-end machines, all of my daily drivers are 5 years old or more. I've been completely happy with Firefox + uBlock Origin.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#117

Post by pornel »

kccqzy wrote: post #111
Zekio wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially considering that google and microsoft probably collects 10x the data

Chromium is open source. And unsurprisingly all the data collection bits are open source too. (They call it UMA metrics in the codebase.) Search in the codebase for things like UMA_HISTOGRAM_ENUMERATION or SCOPED_UMA_HISTOGRAM_TIMER and with a free afternoon you'll have a pretty good idea what kind of telemetry Google really collects. Example: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:bas...

Chrome is closed-source though. There’s no way to make a reproducible build of Chrome (the Google binary adds DRM and could be adding more).

I’m mentioning this, because this open-closed ambiguity is a typical Google strategy. Similarly, Android in the AOSP flavor is open, but the OS that actually ships on phones is different.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#118

Post by StressedDev »

user3939382 wrote: post #89
Doches wrote: post #2

> We’ve been motivated by the improvements we’re seeing in our telemetry data, and we’re convinced that our efforts this year are having a positive effect on Firefox users. Mozilla gets a lot of flak (especially around here!) for their sometimes heavy-handed usage analytics, but it's nice to see that used for its stated purpose! Great use of data here.

I just don't like being bullshitted. Constant marketing about privacy while they're phoning home a bunch of data when you start and stop the browser. I did at some point find a doc page with a zillion steps to disable all of it but that doesn't remediate the hypocrisy IMHO.

What telemetry are you objecting to? Telemetry has good and bad uses. For example, sending in automatic crash reports helps companies find bugs. It can also expose sensitive information which was in ram at the time of the crash.

Another example is usage telemetry tells developers what part of the app is being used and can help them focus popular features or on working to let people know about useful but under used portions of the app.

My main complaint about people who dislike telemetry is they never acknowledge its good uses and they never state what telemetry is objectionable.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#119

Post by ceejayoz »

user3939382 wrote: post #91
ceejayoz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A zillion? Preferences > Privacy > Firefox Data Collection and Use. Uncheck a couple boxes.

That's some of it but not all of it. If you uncheck those and proxy FF when it's starting you'll see the chatter. I have the doc page I'm talking about somewhere but I have no idea where it is. Fully disabling it is a long complex process involving about:config. * Found this: https://github.com/K3V1991/Disable-Firefox-Telemetry-and-Dat... I haven't compared their list to the one I've used before but it's along the sa…

Those largely appear to affect local collection of telemetry.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7k3r9u/mozilla_is_...

> Telemetry data is stored locally by default. As long as the relevant options in the settings' UI are unchecked, or datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled is set to false in about:config, this data won't be sent. https://medium.com/georg-fritzsche/data-preference-changes-i...>

There's likely to still be some non-telemetry chatter, like checking for available Firefox/plugin updates etc.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#120

Post by barbariangrunge »

noman-land wrote: post #57
smegsicle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla definitely hold a public perception of being more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft 100% true, definitely

Mozilla, the legally registered non-profit foundation with a mission statement[0], for sure is more trustworthy than a for-profit data behemoth whose sole revenue comes from collecting as much data a possible, or a for-profit tech company with a history of corporate abuse and user hostile behavior. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Technically, google doesn't sell people's data. It uses data to train AIs to predict people's behaviour, modify that behaviour, modify attitudes/beliefs (it's an ad company), and eventually replace people
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