Live data from Hacker News

WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

robert.ocallahan.org

131–140 of 375 posts

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#131
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile is where the war is being fought. A better browser can ship with hundreds of millions of mobile devices. Firefox-next with ad blocking and better support for parallelism is just what phones need. Users will use what came with the phone.

Firefox's performance on Android is horrible though. I tried switching to it a few times but always have to switch back because of performance issue.

It doesn't has text reflow after zooming, which Opera has. For all the other features I don't see anything horrible. It used to be slow at drawing pages but it's not anymore. I've been using it since Opera changed hands and it's nice to have uBlock on the phone too.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#132
post #17

I don't really like the headline. I don't want Mozilla to "win", and I don't think Mozilla wants to either; I want the open web to flourish. That said, the article is very informative, and well-balanced. It was really good of Google and the other browsers to join the wasm bandwagon. And yes, although as the author himself points out, "proclaiming a "winner" is unimportant or even counterproductive", Mozilla does dese…

It is joke - we had 'Chrome won' the other day. There is a hidden point being made which you would probably agree with.

> There is a hidden point being made which you would probably agree with.

I do, that's the second part of my comment :)

That said, I actually read the other headline, but just forgot. So much for my memory...

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use FF, although Mozilla focuses on thousand of other things instead of making FF a great browser. As a developer I'm annoyed every time I enter "com.scala.List" in the address bar and FF does not use google to search but thinks this is an url. No, "List" is not a TLD and no that website does not exist.

Try "g com.scala.List" instead. It's not that much inconvenience.

[deleted]

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#134
post #19
post #17

I don't really like the headline. I don't want Mozilla to "win", and I don't think Mozilla wants to either; I want the open web to flourish. That said, the article is very informative, and well-balanced. It was really good of Google and the other browsers to join the wasm bandwagon. And yes, although as the author himself points out, "proclaiming a "winner" is unimportant or even counterproductive", Mozilla does dese…

Potentially the article title is a reference to a story that was posted a few days ago called, Chrome Won .

Yeah I actually forgot that >.<

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#135

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

You make it sound like Mozilla is somehow fighting against Google for the open web. But virtually all browser vendors are aligned on this issue, and have been working towards improving the web through standardization, improved performance, and functionality for years now.

And yet I can still only use Google Meet in Chrome. And many "standards" are only partially implemented in other browsers, or require browser-specific prefixes.

I'd also go so far as to say that Google's AMP project, as implemented, displays a distinct step away from an open web.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#136
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox p…

I don't have a good answer to your question, but for me it was actually performance. And this is particularly baffling, since Firefox seems to do extremely well in all benchmarks, often beating out Chrome. But, as a quick test, I closed Chrome, and it was up again instantly (say 500ms). I did the same with Firefox (after a generous warmup / caching session), and got 4 to 6 seconds each time. Clicking links and page l…

> Am I the only one that feels this way?

Nope. I really want to like Firefox but its performance is just so much worse across the board than Chrome.

Another example is video playback: Firefox, when viewing video, heats up my laptop to the point where the fans kick in at full blast. Chrome stays nice and cool on the same material. The difference in battery life is noticeable too.

Sorry Firefox, you need to do better.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#137

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

I'll try Firefox after they complete the switch to Project Quantum. It will be a very serious competitor, especially on mobile phones, where using multiple processors and GPU rendering matters even more. But I'll switch because it will be safer and faster, not because of ideological reasons.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try "g com.scala.List" instead. It's not that much inconvenience.

What other arcane commands do I need to use to make FF work like Chrome?

No reason to force X to work like Y.

The point of these commands (invented by Opera by the way) is to give you choice what search engine to use while not sacrificing your performance. Google's approach is different: remove choices that might confuse or distract you. Choose what you like.

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#139
post #24

Is WASM platform independent?

To the extent that asm.js and JavaScript are, yes. Everything is well-defined, so in theory any Turing machine should be able to run it, but it's certainly going to be easier to implement efficiently on a typical modern 32-bit or 64-bit CPU in a computer or phone than on something more unusual.

PowerPC and SPARC are still around and well, no? (haven't checked in a while, and I remembed something about PowerPC being able to switch endianess)

Re: WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a good answer to your question, but for me it was actually performance. And this is particularly baffling, since Firefox seems to do extremely well in all benchmarks, often beating out Chrome. But, as a quick test, I closed Chrome, and it was up again instantly (say 500ms). I did the same with Firefox (after a generous warmup / caching session), and got 4 to 6 seconds each time. Clicking links and page l…

> Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do. Because Chrome, by default, enables prefetching [0] (it loads links before you decide to click on them). Firefox will never do that due to obvious privacy concerns. It's the usual "principle vs convenience" thing, where most people choose the latter. [0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en

Actually http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.prefetch-next says

> Link prefetching is when a webpage hints to the browser that certain pages are likely to be visited, so the browser downloads them immediately so they can be displayed immediately when the user requests it. This preference controls whether link prefetching is enabled.

> Possible values and their effects

> true

> Enable link prefetching. (Default)

You can check the value in your Firefox with about:config and searching for network.prefetch-next

My one is "false" and it's shown in bold face, meaning that I changed it to that value. Privacy concerns and also legal concerns: what if a site links another site that the legislation of your country (or the country you're travelling to) doesn't allow you to access? At least I get some hints of where I'm heading to if I'm loading pages myself.

Post reply on HN