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The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

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Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#31

Post by Klathmon »

swampthinker wrote: post #19
Klathmon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29 has most popular benchmarks across most JavaScript eninges on multiple platforms Edit: actually this view is probably better for people who don't care about JavaScript engine internals: https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=31

What's Chrome turbofan?

It's Chrome's (or more accurately v8's) new-ish optimizing compiler. For some of the tests they like to disable the non-optimizing compiler to see how just the optimizing one runs alone with no fallback.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#32

Post by Pxtl »

thenomad wrote: post #14
dsugarman wrote: post #9

I was waiting for someone to come out and say it. 6 months ago, I couldn't imagine using another browser regularly but chrome has become so slow for me, I can't stand it. I switched to Firefox.

Oddly, I have recently found Firefox so slow - particularly on YouTube where for some reason it's unusable - that I'm considering a full-fledged switch to Chrome.

I've actually started switching browsers by website. General browsing? Firefox. Google Maps or YouTube? Chrome.

Dont get me started on how painful mobile chrome is. The most hilariously bad are ironically mobile "responsive" websites that just make it crawl and the scroll position skips around during long loads so tapping a link is Russian roulette - the link can move after the touch and you get whatever moved into its place.

And just writing this post I got that great "cursor skips around randomly and doubles words when undoing a mistaken autocorrect".

Yeah, I like Google software, but quality isn't really their thing.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#33

Post by Razengan »

dsugarman wrote: post #9

I was waiting for someone to come out and say it. 6 months ago, I couldn't imagine using another browser regularly but chrome has become so slow for me, I can't stand it. I switched to Firefox.

Chrome was (probably still is) the only usable browser left on Windows, but I never used it or had to use it ever since I switched to Macs a few years ago.

Aside from the plugins ecosystem (which I don't need) Safari works infinitely better (loads faster, uses less resources, even with 100s of tabs, and has nice little features like the Reading List, Reading Mode, Force-Touch Peek and so on) and fits into the OS X look-and-feel more naturally than Chrome does.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#35

Post by bluejekyll »

swampthinker wrote: post #19
Klathmon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=29 has most popular benchmarks across most JavaScript eninges on multiple platforms Edit: actually this view is probably better for people who don't care about JavaScript engine internals: https://arewefastyet.com/#machine=31

What's Chrome turbofan?

Dead it looks like.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#36

Post by masklinn »

riprowan wrote: post #5

I've always held that power (features) trumps speed unless we're talking about OLTP. Machines will get faster quickly. Providing a strong platform is more important than being the fastest, today. YMMV.

In the past 5 or so years, "full" computers (desktops and laptops) haven't gotten any faster in ways current browsers can make use of. Mobile devices have, but much of the "faster" is gated behind power issues, and having a web application killing your battery life to a few hours doesn't a great experience make.

[0] hence efforts like Servo, to explore architectural rebuilding such that browsers can actually use multithreading and GPGPU support for their normal workload

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#38

Post by julian55 »

Pxtl wrote: post #32
thenomad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly, I have recently found Firefox so slow - particularly on YouTube where for some reason it's unusable - that I'm considering a full-fledged switch to Chrome.

I've actually started switching browsers by website. General browsing? Firefox. Google Maps or YouTube? Chrome. Dont get me started on how painful mobile chrome is. The most hilariously bad are ironically mobile "responsive" websites that just make it crawl and the scroll position skips around during long loads so tapping a link is Russian roulette - the link can move after the touch and you get whatever moved into i…

I do the same. I was finding Chrome slow and bloated for general use so I switched back to Firefox but I still use Chrome for some Google sites.

Re: The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations

#39

Post by masklinn »

sydneysider wrote: post #8
FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #3

I don't know about that Safari ranking. I get a super-fun rainbow wheel at least 2 or 3 times a day on Safari with only 3 or 4 tabs, and I rarely get that through chrome with upwards of 30. Before you give a score to every browser, why don't you back it up with something objective?

I noticed the adblock extension on safari makes it freeze up for a second when I open a new tab. apart from that, soooooo much snappier than chrome. (desktop, not mobile ofc)

extensions in general are a huge issue for all browsers, it's easy to install a bunch of them and not notice your performances going down until a few months later, at which point you blame the browser (even for developers, evaluating the performance impact of extensions can be difficult).

That's especially true for content-alteration extensions like ad-blockers as it's very easy to implement them in ways which work well enough with few rules but degrade superlinearly at scale. That's a big part of the issues Firefox has/had (not to mention the "depth" available to XUL extensions), but it's not like other browsers are immune.

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