Live data from Hacker News

Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

robert.ocallahan.org

301–310 of 338 posts

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#301

This is cool, but Firefox still feels a lot slower to me than Chrome. I think Mozilla would get a lot of mileage out of improving the performance of the rendering engine. FF doesn't feel slow because of JS, it feels slow(-er than Chrome, at least on my Mac) because repaints and layout seem to take longer.

They are working on it on several fronts, constantly cutting off tasks from the main thread onto their own ones (downloading, cache v2, Awesomebar), making other things asynchronous (project snappy), garbage collection improvements also help in some cases. Most of these are smaller wins, and several big ones like OMTC, tiled rendering or e10s are yet to come.

Edit: It may not be as responsive as Chrome (I don't know as I don't use it), but I believe it is miles ahead of it's former self.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#302
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Especially as Google becomes more and more evil, Chrome looks less attractive. Even on mobile, I use FF, despite it needing a lot of work and having a lot of rendering and input issues. And Chrome on Android looks very sexy. On desktop, FF is fine, once more. Rust is also one of the most promising languages with a potentially massive impact on the world. Not only safer software, but exposing more programme…

I am actually still going back and forth between chrome and firefox and it's design was something that was holding me back, specially in a stacking window. Now looking at this I looked through themes and found Simple White[1] something that way out dones chrome and et all in sexy factor. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simplewhite/

Amazing theme! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#303

As soon as firefox gets per process tabs in stable I'll switch back, I really want to switch from chrome but that's a deal killer for me.

As soon as firefox gets per process tabs in stable I'll switch back As strange as it sounds, this is a reason why I don't use chrome as my "default" browser. I seem to find the web sites that leak resources and leave them open in tabs (one of my projects at work is a big culprit too). With firefox a runaway tab or two simply results in a single CPU pegged at 100% and max about 2GB of ram consumption. With chrome it w…

The default for Firefox will be to have only 2 processes, one for chrome and one for the tab content. So it won't have that disadvantage.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Firefox really needs some sort of "top". Right now, idling, my Firefox is taking between 20% and 40% of my CPU. I'm sure it's some tab running some dumb javascript, but there's no way for me to figure out which one. Sad, because spidermonkey must know which window a javascript context is associated with, so it could feasibly keep track of run time.

SpiderMonkey itself actually has no concept of windows at all. So it doesn't know what window anything has to do with. The browser itself does, though. Some sort of "top"-like utility is in fact being worked on, for both websites and extensions.

If a script hangs, Firefox has a little popup on that tab that asks if you want to kill it or let it keep running. So something in the browser knows which tabs are JS-intensive.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, Google was head and shoulders above all other search engines. Today Google's competition are almost as good, so other parameters might affect Mozilla's search engine defaults.

We are not talking about whether or not other search engines are probably, maybe now in a better place to compete with Google in terms of quality. Let's assume that they are, even. In fact, let's assume that they are, in fact, better . What we are talking about is this question: Is the default search position in Firefox for sale to the highest bidder? If Bing today is the better search engine, or if it's slightly inf…

I think theres 3 arguments that are really important here:

- which is the technically better search engine?

- which will pay the most money? (gotta keep lights on!)

- which is the one the users actually want?

Google used to check all 3. Then only 2 (Pretty sure Bing would have paid more).

Today? I don't know.

Sadly engines like Duckduckgo probably can't afford to pay Mozilla enough to keep the lights on.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Especially as Google becomes more and more evil, Chrome looks less attractive. Even on mobile, I use FF, despite it needing a lot of work and having a lot of rendering and input issues. And Chrome on Android looks very sexy. On desktop, FF is fine, once more. Rust is also one of the most promising languages with a potentially massive impact on the world. Not only safer software, but exposing more programme…

I've been using FF for a while, but partly switched off when I got a Surface (on account of IE's better touchscreen support). But soon I'll be moving from iOS to Android, the wonderful land of being able to change your default browser. And I'll be using FF there for the bookmark syncing. Firefox on 2/3 devices ain't bad. There was a lot of hate over the australis redesign, but I like it better than Chrome.

I actually think that while its very debatable on desktop, firefox for android may be the best all around android browser.

Now for surface I hear you - i was sad they discontinued the work for that. Even on touchscreen latpops.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#307
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Especially as Google becomes more and more evil, Chrome looks less attractive. Even on mobile, I use FF, despite it needing a lot of work and having a lot of rendering and input issues. And Chrome on Android looks very sexy. On desktop, FF is fine, once more. Rust is also one of the most promising languages with a potentially massive impact on the world. Not only safer software, but exposing more programme…

I am actually still going back and forth between chrome and firefox and it's design was something that was holding me back, specially in a stacking window. Now looking at this I looked through themes and found Simple White[1] something that way out dones chrome and et all in sexy factor. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simplewhite/

Thanks a lot for the tip, that theme is beautiful!. It's now my default :)

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#308

I can really feel the swing back to Firefox happening like the switch to Chrome back 5-7 years ago. Go Firefox!!! p.s. Great work on Firefox OS too!

Yeah. Unfortunately for Mozilla, they don't have a download button on the #1 page on the web (google.com) and they dont bundle it either with any OS (Windows + IE, Mac/iOS + Safari, Android + Chrome) or software (Chrome auto installed from Flash upgrades, etc.)

So I don't know how strong the switch back would be...

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget that a large chunk of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google I'd love to support Mozilla as much as possible, but no way I'm keeping the default Google-search when you have stuff like DDG around. Hopefully me wanting privacy doesn't impact Mozilla's financials too hard. Firefox + DDG only seems like the most natural combination: both are powerful and privacy-centric.

Plus it doesn't forbid people to make a donation to support the software they like right ? That's what I do, knowing FFx isn't making any money from me, and knowing that I'm using years and years of development is a good enough reason for me.

When you donate it goes to Mozilla Foundation while search deal money goes to Mozilla Corporation AFAIK.

That means they actually need donations for the foundation to run (but its not 800 employees so its much less money). Legally you can't fund the Foundation with the Corporation money - since that would make 2 Corporation and zero Foundation then :)

I don't know if the opposite is possible (send donations from Foundation to the Corporation) but I suspect it has the same problem/effect.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Your first link says nothing about search suggestions. I based my comment on my experience of having to disable search suggestions every time I start a new browser. I hope you're right…

Here's a Quora answer from Asa Dotzler, to make you feel better: http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-Firefox-merged-their-search-b... Obviously, I can't prove that it doesn't send search suggestions by giving you a link to the code, since it isn't there. If you want to make sure for yourself, I advise using Wireshark.

Oh. The search suggestions I get come from my DuckDuckGo Plus extension (installed it a long time ago). But my point stands with other browsers: Opera, Safari, and IE all have the unified bar, and I was referring to those browsers in my comment (specifically Safari).
Post reply on HN