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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

#101

Post by vy8vWJlco »

bengoodger wrote: post #81
vy8vWJlco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is optimizing for the wrong thing (developer convenience vs. user experience). People like using tabs in their browser more than windows. This also ignores the other important benefit of mparch: sandboxing. The browser needs some elevated access but the page content does not.

I don't see developer convenience and user experience as mutually exclusive. If an application is simpler and more consistent, that can save time for both users and developers.

(I also don't see how a one-process-per-DOM model prevents any other forms of sandboxing inside the browser. The OS doesn't understand webpages and cannot isolate them from each other - the browser does - so sandboxing pages is the browser's responsibility...)

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

#102

Post by q_revert »

jervisfm wrote: post #99
nathanb wrote: post #67

This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care. * I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better. * I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linu…

> There are extensions I like which have no equivalent (that I know of) in Chrome Can you give an some examples of useful extensions you use that are available in Firefox but not yet in Chrome ?

vimperator is probably the most useful web extension i've ever used.. and it doesn't have a good chrome equivalent

http://www.vimperator.org/vimperator

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

#103

Post by mehrzad »

Estragon wrote: post #85
SeanDav wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this list you can add the deal breaker - Firefox is not mining your data and then passing it on to the NSA.

Even if this were true (and there's no reason to believe that Google Chrome is being used in this way), there's still the open-source Chromium browser.

Which is a Nightly as well as being a pain to update. (though I hear it's different on GNU/Linux)

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

#104

Post by hittaruki »

jervisfm wrote: post #99
nathanb wrote: post #67

This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care. * I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better. * I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linu…

> There are extensions I like which have no equivalent (that I know of) in Chrome Can you give an some examples of useful extensions you use that are available in Firefox but not yet in Chrome ?

downthemall, But I use chromium and go to firefox when I need it.

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

#105

Post by AJ007 »

Estragon wrote: post #85
SeanDav wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this list you can add the deal breaker - Firefox is not mining your data and then passing it on to the NSA.

Even if this were true (and there's no reason to believe that Google Chrome is being used in this way), there's still the open-source Chromium browser.

Which Google has made intentionally hard to find. Could your mom or grandmother figure this one out? http://build.chromium.org/f/chromium/layout_test_results/

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

#106

Post by criley2 »

SeanDav wrote: post #76
nathanb wrote: post #67

This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care. * I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better. * I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linu…

To this list you can add the deal breaker - Firefox is not mining your data and then passing it on to the NSA.

Seeing as it's extremely likely that the NSA is tapping into fiber at exchanges near major corporations, and almost everything you do online is tracked by someone, it seems like a moot point anyway.

Who cares if Mozilla or Google is providing the NSA with access when the NSA is monitoring all the data heading to and from them without permission?

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

#107

Post by diegocg »

rogerbinns wrote: post #61
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 too recently tried to switch back from Chrome to Firefox, but gave up. Lots of tabs highlighted the single process model. I love Certificate Patrol. Ctrl-W closes tabs with Flash just fine in Chrome, but required a click outside of Flash first in Firefox. And while Chrome went it alone with Pepper, at least they did something to really isolate and contain Flash. The final straw though was wanting my vertical space…

The "temporarily hung interface" is definitively one of the worst things about Firefox. Fortunately they recently set up a project dedicated to fix it, next releases will probably behave much better. A few links for those interested

https://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2013/04/1...

https://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2013/04/2...

https://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2013/05/2...

https://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2013/06/0...

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

#108

Post by Digit-Al »

jervisfm wrote: post #99
nathanb wrote: post #67

This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care. * I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better. * I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linu…

> There are extensions I like which have no equivalent (that I know of) in Chrome Can you give an some examples of useful extensions you use that are available in Firefox but not yet in Chrome ?

GMarks. There are a couple of Chrome extensions for integrating with Google Bookmarks, but they can't touch GMarks on Firefox.

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

#109

Post by mistercow »

>The future is an ever-increasing amount of CPU cores, and computer programs will have to become capable of doing more work in parallel to take advantage of all this processing power.

The idea that multiprocess browsing is somehow related to multicore computers is a myth. In almost all use cases, there is virtually no performance benefit whatsoever to loading separate tabs in separate processes. This is because most web pages do essentially no work while in the background.

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

#110

Post by wolfgke »

mtgx wrote: post #82
nathanb wrote: post #67

This article is, in my opinion, not very good. It documents areas where Firefox differs from Chrome, yes, but it fails to make the case why I should care. * I don't want a multi-process architecture, I want it so one tab can't kill my entire browser. If Firefox can get there in a different way than Chrome, so much the better. * I don't care whether or not my browser utilizes certain Windows features, since I run Linu…

Why wouldn't you want a multi-process architecture? It's bad enough that so many apps can utilize the quad core CPU's we have in our PC's. At least the browser is one app that can fully take advantage of multiple cores, unlike most apps out there.

Scaling (and taking advantage of multiple cores) can be done by using threads instead of processes, but processes (and IPC) have larger overhead than threads. Processes need more RAM than threads.

Google (and Microsoft) argue that using processes make the browser more stable in the sense that if one tab crashes, not the entire browser crashes, too (correct, as long as no deadlock in IPC between the processes occur - which has happened in some past Chrome relases) and makes the browser more secure (but not everybody agrees here). Thus they argue that the overhead of processes over threads is worth it.

But if you just want the scalability there are more easy solutions.

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