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Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

hacks.mozilla.org

251–260 of 296 posts

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#251
post #227

Please anybody still clinging on to Chromium based browsers on perception of speed being an issue, at least give FireFox a try. I haven't looked back and really enjoy it these days, and it's really important to the future of the web that browser diversity remains strong.

I'm using Brave with rewards, vpn, wallet disabled and around 20 flags modified. It works faster, better extension support for me with fewer bugs, less memory usage when fewer tabs are opened. I chose brave because it can sync.

I'm impressed with Firefox and tried a fork called floorp. It has some useful additions and find it better than regular Firefox while still supporting sync and was using ungoogled chromium before.

https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/releases

Unfortunately some websites still work better with chromium browsers in my experience. This is anecdotal but I also feel some negative fingerprinting from Google owned websites on Firefox, more memory leaks as well. It's only a matter of time before I change to Firefox (forced manifest V3) but I will stick with brave for now.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#252

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.

In iOS you can add Firefox as a password manager auto fill option. Then when you tap in a password field, the relevant passwords should prompt to auto fill.

I haven’t tested this with Firefox’s password manager, but I did test in firefox and Bitwarden is auto filling correctly, and in iOS settings I see Firefox is listed as a password manager.

It’s settings->passwords->password options. I don’t think apps can automatically enable auto fill, you might have to manually enable this.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#253
post #227

Please anybody still clinging on to Chromium based browsers on perception of speed being an issue, at least give FireFox a try. I haven't looked back and really enjoy it these days, and it's really important to the future of the web that browser diversity remains strong.

I'm using Brave with rewards, vpn, wallet disabled and around 20 flags modified. It works faster, better extension support for me with fewer bugs, less memory usage when fewer tabs are opened. I chose brave because it can sync. I'm impressed with Firefox and tried a fork called floorp. It has some useful additions and find it better than regular Firefox while still supporting sync and was using ungoogled chromium bef…

What's wrong with firefox's sync?

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#254
post #67

In the Speedometer 2, Firefox is much slower than Chrome, which is a bit slower than Edge. But who cares! In real life, this makes no real difference. I respect and trust the privacy of Mozilla. Features like containers and the ability to run Ublock and Tampermonkey on mobile are priceless!

also: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#256

> Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. Yes, explaining away a blatant self-contradiction can be challenging. You're not holding yourselves to the highest standards of privacy, you've explicitly prioritized data collection over privacy.

There not much harm as long they're making sure users are aware of the telemetry and can disable it if they choose to. Opt-in is best, but collecting data with consent isn't a problem

So how many users in your estimate are aware?

(Opt-in is a method of verifying consent)

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#257
post #155
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 data will be biased though. Few people will buy new hardware and install old firefox versions.

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#258
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.

What's great about it? They can't tie to a specific website, the data is dirty with other factors (as they acknowledge themselves), so what's the benefit vs just testing in on an sample of actual websites to see what is slow?

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Read up on Windows. Windows does not do overcommit whatsoever, unless swap is enabled, in which case it only allows overcommit up to the size of the swap file. Overcommit cannot be enabled without a swap file, whatsoever. This differs from Linux that can tend to have overcommit enabled without swap.

You're correct, that's why having pagefile is important for Windows even if there's enough RAM. Why don't you enable it?

Re: Firefox got faster for real users in 2023

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of telemetry in any browser (I love Lynx because of this), but Mozilla is definitely more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft. Edit: I'm not saying that Lynx should be a daily driver or that it's more secure, but it's a neat little project that avoids some of the bad patterns in modern browsers.

How do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.

By reading up on those decades-old bugs in the issue tracker, by making said issue tracker easier to vote on and pleasant to look at, by making other easy feedback submission mechanisms that don't become black holes themselves, by many other options mentioned elsewhere
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