7 ms·

Firefox's problem is not lack of features. It's performance. To be sure, Firefox isn't the worst by many metrics, but it's no longer the stand-out that it was

by ktamura 10y ago

Firefox's problem is not lack of features. It's performance. To be sure, Firefox isn't the worst by many metrics, but it's no longer the stand-out that it was circa 2005-2008. That's why Firefox users left it for Chrome. And here we are in 2016, I feel that Firefox has a legitimate chance of fighting back if they get their act together. Chrome has become heavy on resource usage while Safari can be sluggish at times. Microsoft has done a great job with Edge but it's bound to Windows 10. This is the opportunity that Firefox should seize. Yet, they seem to be permanently confused about what they want to do. Chucking Firefox OS was a brave and laudable choice (I say this as a former user, not just an owner, of Firefox OS). But then they work on this? Seriously? Just keep your heads down and concentrate your resources on making Firefox faster and more efficient. Everything else will come with it.

mdibaiee 10y ago
They are working hard towards making Firefox (and every other web product) faster and more efficient, Servo. I'm pretty sure Firefox will be faster than any other browser once Servo is used inside Firefox instead of Gecko, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258
- tasnent 10y ago
  That was a great read. Thank you for linking it.
- sp332 10y ago
  But there are no plans to put Servo in Firefox. Servo is a new embedable rendering engine that can be put in other apps. It's not aiming to replace Gecko in FF.
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    Browser vendor makes a browser engine, and you believe they don't plan to put it in the browser? If you do a risky project that might fail or not pay off, and you don't want to get bad PR, you can do only two things: Keep it entirely secret, or develop it in the open but make no promises whatsoever. For an open source company, the choice is pretty easy. I always thought it was a public secret that of course they're going to put it in the browser, but they don't dare promising that before they know it's going to work out. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if nextgen Firefox is just going to be Servo + browser.html.
    - the8472 10y ago
      And considering onging projects (webextensions, e10s) it should be fairly obvious that even if they started today it would still be a multi-year project just to get to a point where pain-tolerant users might be willing to use it.
    - sp332 10y ago
      It wasn't just secret, they explicitly denied it. A few years ago they had a big disclaimer that they weren't aiming to replace Gecko. http://paulrouget.com/e/servo/ http://paulrouget.com/e/servo/ I guess that's been changing though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295698
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        Nothing has changed. The singular goal of Servo is to make a great browser engine. There are lots of things that can be done with a great browser engine. Let's talk about what we can do with a great browser engine once it exists. The reason why you can't find an answer as to whether Servo will replace Gecko is, in fact, that there is no answer to that right now. Any sort of wild speculation as to whether Servo is going to replace Gecko is extremely premature at this point.
  - callahad 10y ago
    While Servo will not replace Gecko wholesale, the two absolutely will share code before the end of the year. Bugs to watch: - https://bugzil.la/1135640 https://bugzil.la/1135640 - (oxidation) Add rust compiler support - https://bugzil.la/1243581 https://bugzil.la/1243581 - (stylo) implement support for Servo's style system in Gecko - https://bugzil.la/1151899 https://bugzil.la/1151899 - Integrate the rust-url parser into necko
  - choudanu4 10y ago
    This incorrect. While Gecko is not in its entirety going away, components of Gecko will be replaced with Servo's code. Such is detailed at Servo's roadmap. https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap Specficially: >> Internally committed 2016 goals >> Ship one Rust component in Firefox Nightly, riding the trains >> Experiment with the uplift of a major piece of Servo into Gecko
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
azinman2 10y ago
I was just talking this week to one of the guys on the original chrome team. He told me in the beginning they were obsessed with speed -- there was a benchmark in place for time to load from cold boot that wasn't allowed to go up (80ms). So if you wanted to do a new feature you had to jump through hoops to make sure it didn't slow anything down. Eventually chrome became mainstream, Google started advertising it on their homepage, and features started becoming a priority over speed. At some point the benchmark test case for load time broke and no one fixed it, and things started to slide. I'm hoping servo provides the necessary investment and juice to restore Firefox to a good browser again (after many, many years).
Aldo_MX 10y ago
TBH, I used to hate Firefox's performance, because even loading Facebook froze the entire browser for several msecs (enough to be perceptible), but recently I turned e10s[1] on and the browser feels almost as responsive as Chrome now. The documentation seems to be outdated, there seems to be an A/B testing right now, and it's recommended to turn off some extensions[2], but this is how I forced e10s to be turned on in `about:config` in the beta: { e10s.rollout.cohort: "control", e10s.rollout.cohortSample: 78, extensions.e10sBlockedByAddons: false } [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis [2] https://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://www.arewee10syet.com/
- the8472 10y ago
  That applies if you're on beta. Dev Edition and Nightly get e10s by default
- felipc 10y ago
  Thanks for testing e10s! There's a simpler a better way to test it though, which is just setting `browser.tabs.remote.autostart` to true. These prefs that you mentioned won't stick (they will be reset after startup) and are just used for some internal state. I'll make sure the info on that wiki page is up to date for people who want to test it. Note: Multiprocess is not available in the Release channel yet. Please use our Developer/Test channels if you want to use it. Also, if you have add-ons, multiprocess is by default blocked from running on Beta (but allowed on Nightly/Aurora). If you're on Beta and want to use it together with add-ons, look at that wiki page to see how to work around that. Or just use Aurora :)
  - Aldo_MX 10y ago
    Thank you and every person involved for e10s! :)
bitmapbrother 10y ago
What makes you think Edge is less resource hungry than Chrome? Last time I checked the resources used by Edge it was similar to Chrome and even worse in some cases. Any browser that implements a process-per-tab architecture is going to consume significantly more resources than one that doesn't. Visiting The Verge, Hacker News and Ars Technica yields the following usage: Windows: Chome 51: 337MB Edge: 399MB Mac: Safari: 396MB Chrome: 452MB
- callahad 10y ago
  We're pretty consistently seeing Edge use fewer resources than Chrome, though there might be measurement challenges. Here's one recent benchmark: http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/
- barnacs 10y ago
  About 15 years ago a fraction of that memory was enough to run an OS and open two news sites and a forum with the same functionality. Something went terribly wrong along the way...
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    15 years ago the average PC had a CPU < 1 GHz and less than 1 GB of memory. Everything is relative.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
eps 10y ago
You'd think that the fact it sometimes crashes when trying to save a file being downloaded is also a bit of an issue. But here we are, two years in with this problem, every crash diligently reported to Mozilla, but all we get back is Hello, Pocket, Sync, Promoted Tiles and what have you. Priorities are certainly ain't set right somewhere in the development pipeline.
otabdeveloper 10y ago
> That's why Firefox users left it for Chrome. No, the real reason is Google's highly aggressive 'bundling' (i.e. crapware) strategy.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  No, Chrome was never bundled with Windows so your argument is void.
have_faith 10y ago
Firefox isn't losing market share because of minor performance differences. We live in a world now where the browser that comes with your computer/phone/tablet is usually good enough for most people. Firefox isn't even a consideration anymore, and I say that as someone that uses Firefox as their main browser. Firefox's popularity grew when IE was seen as bad even by non-technical users. There's not much selling points for the average person to replace their default browser anymore.

by ktamura 10y ago

mdibaiee 10y ago

They are working hard towards making Firefox (and every other web product) faster and more efficient, Servo. I'm pretty sure Firefox will be faster than any other browser once Servo is used inside Firefox instead of Gecko, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11175258

tasnent 10y ago
That was a great read. Thank you for linking it.
sp332 10y ago
But there are no plans to put Servo in Firefox. Servo is a new embedable rendering engine that can be put in other apps. It's not aiming to replace Gecko in FF.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Browser vendor makes a browser engine, and you believe they don't plan to put it in the browser? If you do a risky project that might fail or not pay off, and you don't want to get bad PR, you can do only two things: Keep it entirely secret, or develop it in the open but make no promises whatsoever. For an open source company, the choice is pretty easy. I always thought it was a public secret that of course they're going to put it in the browser, but they don't dare promising that before they know it's going to work out. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if nextgen Firefox is just going to be Servo + browser.html.
  - the8472 10y ago
    And considering onging projects (webextensions, e10s) it should be fairly obvious that even if they started today it would still be a multi-year project just to get to a point where pain-tolerant users might be willing to use it.
  - sp332 10y ago
    It wasn't just secret, they explicitly denied it. A few years ago they had a big disclaimer that they weren't aiming to replace Gecko. http://paulrouget.com/e/servo/ http://paulrouget.com/e/servo/ I guess that's been changing though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295698
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      Nothing has changed. The singular goal of Servo is to make a great browser engine. There are lots of things that can be done with a great browser engine. Let's talk about what we can do with a great browser engine once it exists. The reason why you can't find an answer as to whether Servo will replace Gecko is, in fact, that there is no answer to that right now. Any sort of wild speculation as to whether Servo is going to replace Gecko is extremely premature at this point.
- callahad 10y ago
  While Servo will not replace Gecko wholesale, the two absolutely will share code before the end of the year. Bugs to watch: - https://bugzil.la/1135640 https://bugzil.la/1135640 - (oxidation) Add rust compiler support - https://bugzil.la/1243581 https://bugzil.la/1243581 - (stylo) implement support for Servo's style system in Gecko - https://bugzil.la/1151899 https://bugzil.la/1151899 - Integrate the rust-url parser into necko
- choudanu4 10y ago
  This incorrect. While Gecko is not in its entirety going away, components of Gecko will be replaced with Servo's code. Such is detailed at Servo's roadmap. https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap Specficially: >> Internally committed 2016 goals >> Ship one Rust component in Firefox Nightly, riding the trains >> Experiment with the uplift of a major piece of Servo into Gecko

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

azinman2 10y ago

I was just talking this week to one of the guys on the original chrome team. He told me in the beginning they were obsessed with speed -- there was a benchmark in place for time to load from cold boot that wasn't allowed to go up (80ms). So if you wanted to do a new feature you had to jump through hoops to make sure it didn't slow anything down. Eventually chrome became mainstream, Google started advertising it on their homepage, and features started becoming a priority over speed. At some point the benchmark test case for load time broke and no one fixed it, and things started to slide. I'm hoping servo provides the necessary investment and juice to restore Firefox to a good browser again (after many, many years).

Aldo_MX 10y ago

TBH, I used to hate Firefox's performance, because even loading Facebook froze the entire browser for several msecs (enough to be perceptible), but recently I turned e10s[1] on and the browser feels almost as responsive as Chrome now. The documentation seems to be outdated, there seems to be an A/B testing right now, and it's recommended to turn off some extensions[2], but this is how I forced e10s to be turned on in `about:config` in the beta: { e10s.rollout.cohort: "control", e10s.rollout.cohortSample: 78, extensions.e10sBlockedByAddons: false } [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis [2] https://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://www.arewee10syet.com/

the8472 10y ago
That applies if you're on beta. Dev Edition and Nightly get e10s by default
felipc 10y ago
Thanks for testing e10s! There's a simpler a better way to test it though, which is just setting `browser.tabs.remote.autostart` to true. These prefs that you mentioned won't stick (they will be reset after startup) and are just used for some internal state. I'll make sure the info on that wiki page is up to date for people who want to test it. Note: Multiprocess is not available in the Release channel yet. Please use our Developer/Test channels if you want to use it. Also, if you have add-ons, multiprocess is by default blocked from running on Beta (but allowed on Nightly/Aurora). If you're on Beta and want to use it together with add-ons, look at that wiki page to see how to work around that. Or just use Aurora :)
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  Thank you and every person involved for e10s! :)

bitmapbrother 10y ago

What makes you think Edge is less resource hungry than Chrome? Last time I checked the resources used by Edge it was similar to Chrome and even worse in some cases. Any browser that implements a process-per-tab architecture is going to consume significantly more resources than one that doesn't. Visiting The Verge, Hacker News and Ars Technica yields the following usage: Windows: Chome 51: 337MB Edge: 399MB Mac: Safari: 396MB Chrome: 452MB

callahad 10y ago
We're pretty consistently seeing Edge use fewer resources than Chrome, though there might be measurement challenges. Here's one recent benchmark: http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/
barnacs 10y ago
About 15 years ago a fraction of that memory was enough to run an OS and open two news sites and a forum with the same functionality. Something went terribly wrong along the way...
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  15 years ago the average PC had a CPU < 1 GHz and less than 1 GB of memory. Everything is relative.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

eps 10y ago

You'd think that the fact it sometimes crashes when trying to save a file being downloaded is also a bit of an issue. But here we are, two years in with this problem, every crash diligently reported to Mozilla, but all we get back is Hello, Pocket, Sync, Promoted Tiles and what have you. Priorities are certainly ain't set right somewhere in the development pipeline.

otabdeveloper 10y ago

> That's why Firefox users left it for Chrome. No, the real reason is Google's highly aggressive 'bundling' (i.e. crapware) strategy.

bitmapbrother 10y ago
No, Chrome was never bundled with Windows so your argument is void.

have_faith 10y ago

Firefox isn't losing market share because of minor performance differences. We live in a world now where the browser that comes with your computer/phone/tablet is usually good enough for most people. Firefox isn't even a consideration anymore, and I say that as someone that uses Firefox as their main browser. Firefox's popularity grew when IE was seen as bad even by non-technical users. There's not much selling points for the average person to replace their default browser anymore.