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I haven't done profiling of firefox os on a crappy device... but my suspicion is that it really is as simple as: even really-well-optimized html/css/js that ne

I haven't done profiling of firefox os on a crappy device... but my suspicion is that it really is as simple as: even really-well-optimized html/css/js that needs to go through a browser core will suffer performance-wise compared to something with 10-15 less layers of indirection. (Like a traditional windowing toolkit.) The Android UI toolkit isn't exactly efficent (ha!), but still seems to beat Firefox OS on super-low-end hardware judging from the reviews I have seen. The internal windowing toolkit and java-like mini language with a VM that we made for Opera Mini 5/Opera Mobile 10 with both J2ME and C VM implementations was like 3x faster than the Android UI toolkit with Dalvik for typical windowing tasks. Without any super-fancy optimizations...

pcwalton 11y ago
The indirection is a problem with existing browser implementations (and some spec issues, such as lack of Typed CSSOM, which is the current subject of work in the WGs). There is no fundamental reason that I can see as to why there needs to be a gap between the hardware and the graphics and layout of Web apps.
- johansch 11y ago
  That sounds intriguing. But.. how?
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    Look at Servo and WebRender (disclaimer: I work on both), or just read "Fast and Parallel Webpage Layout", Meyerovich 2010 for much of it :)
jgraham 11y ago
As a practical matter, my experience of using FirefoxOS everyday is that performance is not the main issue. Of course it could undoubtedly be improved, but it's acceptable, particularly once you put it onto reasonable hardware (i.e. not the $40 phones). Much more problematic is the lack of "premium content" i.e. services that — even if they are basically just webapps — don't work except on Android/iOS. This is a particularly vicious cycle; it's hard to convince anyone to put in the effort to support minority platforms, and it's hard to get users unless you support the same content as other platforms (see also: Windows Phone, which by all accounts is an excellent product that almost no one uses). There's also the fact that FirefoxOS is some years behind the other platforms in terms of developers and the competition has ~infinite resources, which means that some parts are lagging behind feature wise. Having said all of that, I don't think that Opera is a bad analog for the difficulties FirefoxOS faces, only it's not Opera Platform specifically but Presto in general. It had the same kind of issues with limited support from content creators and relatively available resources.

pcwalton 11y ago

The indirection is a problem with existing browser implementations (and some spec issues, such as lack of Typed CSSOM, which is the current subject of work in the WGs). There is no fundamental reason that I can see as to why there needs to be a gap between the hardware and the graphics and layout of Web apps.

johansch 11y ago
That sounds intriguing. But.. how?
- pcwalton 11y ago
  Look at Servo and WebRender (disclaimer: I work on both), or just read "Fast and Parallel Webpage Layout", Meyerovich 2010 for much of it :)

jgraham 11y ago

As a practical matter, my experience of using FirefoxOS everyday is that performance is not the main issue. Of course it could undoubtedly be improved, but it's acceptable, particularly once you put it onto reasonable hardware (i.e. not the $40 phones). Much more problematic is the lack of "premium content" i.e. services that — even if they are basically just webapps — don't work except on Android/iOS. This is a particularly vicious cycle; it's hard to convince anyone to put in the effort to support minority platforms, and it's hard to get users unless you support the same content as other platforms (see also: Windows Phone, which by all accounts is an excellent product that almost no one uses). There's also the fact that FirefoxOS is some years behind the other platforms in terms of developers and the competition has ~infinite resources, which means that some parts are lagging behind feature wise. Having said all of that, I don't think that Opera is a bad analog for the difficulties FirefoxOS faces, only it's not Opera Platform specifically but Presto in general. It had the same kind of issues with limited support from content creators and relatively available resources.