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Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

robert.ocallahan.org

41–50 of 338 posts

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#41

You know, I just don't know who to believe these days when it comes to browser benchmarks. All browser vendors pretty much say they lead all browsers in _something_. Honestly, I don't even know what all these benchmarks mean most of the time.

The point in this one is SpiderMonkey is beating V8 in the benchmark designed such that V8 wins on it.

Yeah, no. They chose intensive process, many of them are ports of code from other languages and some the tests are using software made by Mozilla such as pdf.jz and zlib (Ecmascripten) and Microsoft (Typescript compiler)

https://developers.google.com/octane/benchmark

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#42
post #3

I have been very impressed by Firefox lately. Kudos to the whole team at Mozilla. Just about 5 years ago, it was looking to me like it was the end of Firefox. It was Chrome all the way. New features were coming out one after another. Faster rendering. Safe process isolation for each tab. Looked better. But I just switched back last month. It happened kind of randomly. Saw an announcement of a new release ( 33, I thin…

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.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#43
This reminds me of the cell phone industry competition. We all benefit from head-to-head fights for performance and value. It's a shame so many markets have little direct competition outside of technology either due to monopoly, regulatory capture, or market dynamics.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#44

Kudos. But they should really invest time in making the UI responsive and fast. This is my biggest gripe about firefox. I also find it incomprehensible that it checks for updates on startup in a modal fashion. Very annoying.

What version of Firefox are you using? It hasn't done that in ages. You have to open the About window to check for new updates and install them.

Non-Windows still has modal update dialog. On startup for non-Windows you are blocked from using the browser until the update is complete. There is a dialog if you run out of date extensions. There is a nag dialog if you have an update pending for over 24h.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#45
While this is great for those keeping track of the stats, I doubt it will have much effect on the average consumer. Almost everyone I know uses Chrome; that includes family members, co-workers, tech-minded and non-tech-minded people alike. For them, it's been IE vs Chrome for awhile and telling them "Firefox is a tad bit faster" isn't enough to make them switch again. Unfortunately, I think Firefox lost too many people during its sluggish phase awhile back and it's going to be tough getting them back.

Also, as much as I keep hearing "Google is evil" in the tech echo chamber, again, the average consumer doesn't care. Even I know Google's policies and still choose to use Chrome purely because it's more convenient.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious if this is a common use case or not. I personally close chrome maybe half a dozen times an hour.

How old are you? I won't get anything done if I kept re-loading my ~200 tabs.

What does age have to do with the number of tabs you keep open? Don't pretend you are perusing the contents of each of those tabs any time soon.

Some people prefer to use bookmarks for that sort of workflow (as they are intended)

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#47
post #32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reminding everyone I know who still uses Chrome to try Firefox again. Many have switched back. It's simply a better browser. One e10s is in stable, it's going to be even better. Google is a for-profit company that makes money selling your data and targeted, personal ads. Mozilla is not-for-profit and just wants to make the web better.

I don't think there is actually any evidence they use Chrome for much more than 1. disrupt IE/MS - i can say for certain they originally backed Firefox for this effort and only decided to split away to build chrome in the first place because they felt starting fresh they could build a better core and i believe they did. 2. enabling more people to build on the web, enables more of their ads to be shown. Firefox achiev…

Google has used it's position in Android and Chrome to undermine privacy. Both platforms encourage users to "knowingly" give up privacy. This is beyond simply preventing monopolies.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#48
post #32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reminding everyone I know who still uses Chrome to try Firefox again. Many have switched back. It's simply a better browser. One e10s is in stable, it's going to be even better. Google is a for-profit company that makes money selling your data and targeted, personal ads. Mozilla is not-for-profit and just wants to make the web better.

I don't think there is actually any evidence they use Chrome for much more than 1. disrupt IE/MS - i can say for certain they originally backed Firefox for this effort and only decided to split away to build chrome in the first place because they felt starting fresh they could build a better core and i believe they did. 2. enabling more people to build on the web, enables more of their ads to be shown. Firefox achiev…

There never was a good reason for Chrome to exist in the first place. Content companies should not produce browsers, it is too much of a temptation for them to optimize their content for their own browser and vv.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#49
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is actually any evidence they use Chrome for much more than 1. disrupt IE/MS - i can say for certain they originally backed Firefox for this effort and only decided to split away to build chrome in the first place because they felt starting fresh they could build a better core and i believe they did. 2. enabling more people to build on the web, enables more of their ads to be shown. Firefox achiev…

1) Google never backed Firefox with a billion-dollar-a-year advertising campaign like they have Chrome for several years now. 2) It's not an accident that Google's webservices work best (sometimes only) in Chrome. They're way past the "disrupt IE" goal. They're into the "tightly couple our web service and Chrome and try to force out other options" goal.

I'd like to see a source for the billion-dollar-a-year campaign, that sounds crazy. That's 3 times Mozilla's entire budget, if memory serves me right.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#50
post #3

I have been very impressed by Firefox lately. Kudos to the whole team at Mozilla. Just about 5 years ago, it was looking to me like it was the end of Firefox. It was Chrome all the way. New features were coming out one after another. Faster rendering. Safe process isolation for each tab. Looked better. But I just switched back last month. It happened kind of randomly. Saw an announcement of a new release ( 33, I thin…

If process isolation is indirectly responsible for the "page freezes, doesn't re-render, doesn't respond to input" symptom then it seems to have cost more than it was worth in the stability department. Those freezes have dogged chrome on both my mac and my pc for the last 4 or 5 years every time I've tried it. Safari and firefox, OTOH, almost never seem to crash or become unresponsive. I'm all for having clever damag…

Note that Safari also uses out-of-process rendering (using WebKit2).
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