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Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

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Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#51

Post by buro9 »

kaoD wrote: post #5

I began using Firefox a long time ago (when it was called Phoenix) but switched to Chrome. A couple months ago I switched back to Firefox because Chrome lost my open tab session in some cases (hard crashes when loading the old session), due to privacy issues and because it often triggered long swaps (locking the process) when dealing with lots of tabs (I usually have like 50-60 tabs open in several windows). Also bec…

I also switched from Firefox to Chrome.

Then I started to experience Chrome crashes.

These were total crashes, that either kill the browser or freeze the OS - Ubuntu 12.4 Linux. The only thing I could say was consistent is that every time I was in Google docs (if anyone on that team is reading, I'd swear it was a drag event in Drive).

Once you move your main email and Drive browser back to Firefox, you're kinda stuck there. Every link opens in that window, and unless you start the dance of copying links from one browser to another you just tolerate it.

Firefox is now the primary browser again in my work.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#52

Post by randallu »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #36
Gmo wrote: post #6

"No Multi-Process Architecture" This is a feature, and I like it. The rest is just flamebait.

And there is a simple solution to that (poor multi-core utilization): go back to a one-window, one process model (go back, as in delete a lot of unnecessary code); forget the browser tabs - let the OS handle multitasking and let the window manager handle the windows.

The hard stuff isn't the window system/widget integration, it's having multiple processes open for the same domain (or iframes in different processes) and mediating access to local storage/IDB/cookie jar/network cache/etc.

It was only very recently that WebKit2 handled most of this stuff -- up until then they just had a single WebProcess (I think Safari on Mavericks is the first multi-WebProcess browser Apple have shipped). So it's a hard problem and isn't due to some lack of competence that Mozilla have been slow to adapt. FxOS is fully multiprocess afaik.

Actually getting the rendered page image into a window owned by another process is easy: windows and X let you host HWNDs and Windows from other processes (if you choose to allow your WebProcesses access to the window server) or you could draw into a shared memory segment. The hard stuff is all of the regular browser hard stuff.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#53

Post by PavlovsCat »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #26

Well, Chrome can't even be installed without being a pig about it -- no way to set the installation location, no option to disable the background updates or keeping the last few versions of Chrome around. I guess it's okay if you don't really do much with your computer though, and don't mind the resources wasted on Chrome being needy. (e.g. I have old school DSL with 100 kb per second; I like to choose when I want a…

And to the downmodders: granted, I only speak from personal experience, but from that I speak. Since I stopped using Chrome (both regular and canary), and stick to Opera, Firefox and FF Aurora, I can basically do whatever I want. Having 20 websites open in Opera, a bunch more in FF, and a video running in VLC or Renoise playing a song -- while playing L4D2 in a window, zero problems, even with my crappy GPU and otherwise good, but not crazy specs. With Chrome in the picture hard crashes were the norm for me.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #47

Mozilla are leading the way in other areas. Firefox OS is entirely based on HTML5 - even the UI. Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology. They've done a lot with emscripten to compile large native engines to the web, complete with WebGL and Web Audio support. Chrome looks to follow Mozilla's lead by adding asm.js s…

> Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology.

Native Client isn't proprietary, its open -- no other browser vendor has adopted it, but that doesn't change the fact that its open. Backward compatible is a real issue with asm.js vs. NaCl, there is no reason to obscure the real issue by throwing a fake one in with it.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#55

Post by w0rd-driven »

kaoD wrote: post #5

I began using Firefox a long time ago (when it was called Phoenix) but switched to Chrome. A couple months ago I switched back to Firefox because Chrome lost my open tab session in some cases (hard crashes when loading the old session), due to privacy issues and because it often triggered long swaps (locking the process) when dealing with lots of tabs (I usually have like 50-60 tabs open in several windows). Also bec…

I use IE, Firefox, and Chrome for work related activities and my browser of choice is Chrome followed by IE, then FF if that puts any of this into perspective...

I use an extension for Chrome called Session Buddy because even in the initial periods of the browser, session management wasn't seemingly a priority. Session Buddy is way better than any browser's internal implementation, possibly only followed by Firefox but there again I use another session manager plugin so my thoughts are further skewed.

I guess tl;dr is I don't believe a browser really needs perfect session management internally, especially given how full featured these plugins are. My only gripe is they aren't magically grafted in but I suppose due to the sheer number of plugins and feature parity means choosing one wouldn't be easy and you'd want to promote a system where it could be replaced easily. The current mechanism of finding plugins that suit your needs is good enough to me but I'm a developer, not a grandma.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#56

Post by AshleysBrain »

dragonwriter wrote: post #54
AshleysBrain wrote: post #47

Mozilla are leading the way in other areas. Firefox OS is entirely based on HTML5 - even the UI. Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology. They've done a lot with emscripten to compile large native engines to the web, complete with WebGL and Web Audio support. Chrome looks to follow Mozilla's lead by adding asm.js s…

> Mozilla invented asm.js, an open, backwards-compatible and fascinating alternative to Google's proprietary Chrome-only Native Client technology. Native Client isn't proprietary, its open -- no other browser vendor has adopted it, but that doesn't change the fact that its open. Backward compatible is a real issue with asm.js vs. NaCl, there is no reason to obscure the real issue by throwing a fake one in with it.

Oh, fair dos. But I think asm.js is so much of a better idea that there's no reason to support NaCl - asm.js does everything it's supposed to do but better. I think it was a pretty nice move from Mozilla.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#57

Post by belorn »

artmageddon wrote: post #31
Gmo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more than a 100 tabs open at once, it DOES add up.

So you're for or against Firefox using a multi-processor architecture? For me, FF becomes unbearably slow when I have about 15-20 tabs open.

I'm not sure whats causing your 15-20 tabs to slow down the browser, but I managed at one time to build up over 256 tabs[1], and I can't say I noticed any performance drop over having single digit tabs. I haven't tested doing that in chrome, through I suspect the individual processes with no shared memory (sandboxing) would cause some trouble.

[1]: Restore tabs on exit. If one do not clean up after a while, the tabs will just continue to increase.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#58

Post by numbsafari »

He gives a bunch of "ways" in which FireFox is (in his opinion) behind Google Chrome.

The only "reason" (why) he gives is mentioned very briefly:

> With so many former Firefox developers now working on Chrome at Google, perhaps it makes sense that the innovation has been happening in Chrome, not Firefox.

The real question we should be asking is what happened to investment in FireFox? Why has mozilla had a hard time retaining or acquiring talent? If the community values the existence of FireFox, and a real (top to bottom) open-source alternative to the IE-Chrome-Safari triumvirate, what can be done to get Mozilla back on track?

Most importantly, what happened to Mozilla that it stopped being an innovator and became an imitator? Is it something inherent in it's status as a "not for profit"? Is there something wrong with it's values and goals that prevents it from being truly innovative?

Those are intended as mostly rhetorical questions. My point is that the article has a bad title. It should be "Here's How FireFox is Behind Google Chrome" not "Here's Why".

"Here's Why" is a much more difficult conversation to have--and I don't pretend to know enough about Mozilla to have any insights or opinions on the matter.

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#59

Post by nathan_long »

Assuming these criticisms are all valid, this quote is important:

>> The fact that we have an open-source browser created by a non-profit organization only looking to make the web a better is great for the web. That’s why it’s a shame Mozilla has allowed Firefox to fall so far behind.

We should be asking "how can we help make/keep Firefox a strong competitor?"

Re: Here’s Why Firefox is Still Years Behind Google Chrome

#60

Post by randallu »

Gmo wrote: post #6

"No Multi-Process Architecture" This is a feature, and I like it. The rest is just flamebait.

The current round of multi-process architectures (that is: Chrome) don't really scale though. After you have so many renderer processes they start shoving unrelated pages together, so if you short-lived heap-fragmenting pages bundled into the process of a long-lived page then you lose your memory "forever", even when you close the short-lived bad tag.

I wonder if you could keep every page in its own process, but manually freeze unused processes and write them out to disk -- an application driven disk paging system basically. For pages where there's no state the browser could just kill them and reload them, iOS style (though the iOS browser doesn't care if it nukes state).

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