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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

#211

Post by dmix »

wongarsu wrote: post #174
bombledmonk wrote: post #76

The killer app for Firefox is it still allows some flexibility in tab management. Sidebery and TreeStyleTab have been my anchors in the FF ecosystem. The experience is so vastly superior for tab hoarders and tab-todo methodology that I really can't imagine using something else. I also use FF on android because it has ublock origin and dark reader addons. This make browsing the web on mobile far better. I actually hol…

> I just haven't found any Chromium based browser that works as well for me. The native vertical tabs in Edge are also pretty good. Not nearly as feature-rich, basically just vertical tabs with automatic unloading and tab groups; but in return it's incredibly stable and bug-free.

Is there a reason Chrome hasn't adopted this? Tabtree is the only reason I'm using FF (not that I'm unhappy with FF I just use Chrome for work cuz the devtools is better).

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#212

Post by hotnfresh »

kevingadd wrote: post #206
hotnfresh wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see the problem of someone recording the actions you take using your own computer in your own home or office? It's like having a stranger sitting over your shoulder watching you. It's creepy and weird, and it's gross that people try to do it at all.

It's one thing to argue over whether basic user facing software like an image compressor or a text editor should have telemetry, but a web browser is one of the least controversial scenarios for telemetry I can imagine. It is constantly sending and receiving data on your behalf with hundreds or thousands of servers spread across the internet as a user agent. Your usage patterns - i.e. is it crashing, is the feature y…

> It's one thing to argue over whether basic user facing software like an image compressor or a text editor should have telemetry, but a web browser is one of the least controversial scenarios for telemetry I can imagine. It is constantly sending and receiving data on your behalf with hundreds or thousands of servers spread across the internet as a user agent.

It's probably no accident that spying on users got popular just as this became the case. Constant network traffic while web browsing didn't start to become the norm until late in the '00s, either. If you weren't clicking links, you could often open Wireshark or sniff with Netcat and see nothing. Not from your browser, not from anything. Certainly ~nobody was collecting heatmaps of where you move your mouse, or firing a network request if you selected text. Or recording entire user sessions for playback, or so you can watch them live (god, those tools are creepy as hell)

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#213

Post by aetherspawn »

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…

It was starting to really “feel like a hog” to me over the last 6 months, including random crashes and stutters, and I considered switching to Chrome.

I hadn’t noticed until I read this, but I think that feeling has gone away recently and I had already stopped thinking about switching.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#215

Post by kevingadd »

hotnfresh wrote: post #212
kevingadd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to argue over whether basic user facing software like an image compressor or a text editor should have telemetry, but a web browser is one of the least controversial scenarios for telemetry I can imagine. It is constantly sending and receiving data on your behalf with hundreds or thousands of servers spread across the internet as a user agent. Your usage patterns - i.e. is it crashing, is the feature y…

> It's one thing to argue over whether basic user facing software like an image compressor or a text editor should have telemetry, but a web browser is one of the least controversial scenarios for telemetry I can imagine. It is constantly sending and receiving data on your behalf with hundreds or thousands of servers spread across the internet as a user agent. It's probably no accident that spying on users got popula…

The prevalence of "every app you use is a web browser now" is absolutely a catastrophe for user privacy and software reliability for this reason, IMO. Every tiny component now has a thousand moving parts that can spy on you.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#216

Post by ColonelPhantom »

LoganDark wrote: post #198
jraph wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> running without overcommit is a recipe for disaster (but yes, it probably is, even with 40GB of memory. I bet many things are designed on Linux with overcommit as an assumption)

Well, that was just the wrong answer, since their software is supposed to be releasing memory back to the OS properly. Overcommit is just a coping mechanism, you should be addressing the root cause. I have since enabled the page file for other reasons - LLMs demand up to 50GB of memory sometimes, and my new desktop only has 16. The change of machine is why I should probably try Firefox again to see if it behaves.

Overcommit != Swap.

Overcommit is allocating virtual memory without any backing. Swap is allocating physical memory backed by disk.

Overcommit is useful in some cases, for example to preallocate a large heap without immediately making it all resident. Or to allocate 'guard' pages to fight buffer overflows. On Linux, overcommit is commonly assumed and as such disabling it tends to break some programs, as it's not out of the ordinary for something to allocate 100s of GBs of virtual memory.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#217

Post by littlestymaar »

aetherspawn wrote: post #213
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…

It was starting to really “feel like a hog” to me over the last 6 months, including random crashes and stutters, and I considered switching to Chrome. I hadn’t noticed until I read this, but I think that feeling has gone away recently and I had already stopped thinking about switching.

I mostly use Firefox but I have to use Chrome on a regular basis[1] and Chrome feel slower than Firefox despite having only one open tab. On a pretty old Linux computer.

[1] Because Slack still doesn't support WebRTC on Firefox after 8 years…

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#218

Post by saagarjha »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #202
post_break wrote: post #130

Has anyone at firefox used the iOS app? I want you to track what the workflow is to access a password in the app. Tap tap tap left side, right side, can't get out of the settings to check the website while doing so. It's maddening. Besides that... it's lovely.

Is it complex in all iOS browsers due to the whole 'you're actually running Safari underneath' thing? Or is it Firefox specific on iOS?

This sounds like a UI issue?

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#219

Post by MiddleEndian »

ro-ka wrote: post #155
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…

As older Firefox versions are still in use, too, it’s possible to check whether the improvements come from updates in Firefox itself or the web in general.

>the web in general

That would certainly be overly optimistic.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#220

Post by CuriousCosmic »

ksec wrote: post #142
xedrac wrote: post #33

I like seeing Mozilla actually improving Firefox instead of just shuffling UI components around. I've been a longtime user, and am happy to support the underdog here to try and keep some balance of power on the web. Having Mozilla focus more on their tech, and less on politics is a good thing. Regardless, Firefox is a good piece of software and I have no major qualms with it.

>Having Mozilla focus more on their tech, and less on politics is a good thing. And not just a focus on Tech but also focus on product. i.e Firefox. You could have them focus on Tech and they spend all their resources on Firefox OS.

Spending time on Firefox OS honestly would have been a productive use case and it'd probably also be a decent revenue source for Mozilla rather than abandoning it and letting KaiOS pick it up.

Especially given that it's now become the third largest mobile OS with over 100 million active users worldwide.

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