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> Today we’re proud to announce the initial rollout of multi-process Firefox for Desktop to our general audience. With this, we’re taking a major step forward i

> Today we’re proud to announce the initial rollout of multi-process Firefox for Desktop to our general audience. With this, we’re taking a major step forward in improving Firefox for Desktop. Users should experience a Firefox that is less susceptible to freezing and is generally more responsive to input, while retaining the experience and features that users love. Really? That's it? I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great. But I kind of assumed FF already had this. Didn't Chrome roll this exact feature out like 6 years ago?

morganvachon 10y ago
If you use Firefox and Chrome side by side every day, you can definitely tell that Firefox lacked it until now. This is especially evident on older Macs and most Linux distros I've tried. Chrome/Chromium's performance is leaps and bounds ahead of Firefox, RAM usage notwithstanding. I'm eager to try this out when I get home tonight.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  I definitely don't use Firefox except when testing how our website looks in Firefox. But it's not because of laggy behavior. Come to think of it, it's because Firefox just feels... weird and unnatural, compared to Chrome or even Edge.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    That's just familiarity talking, though. Every browser has its slight scrolling and rendering and UI quirks to get used to.
    - porjo 10y ago
      This. As a Firefox user I have the same 'feeling' going back the other way. With regards to developer tools, I find the tools that I use constantly - console, inspector, network activity - to be superior on Firefox... Each to his own I suppose.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    Are you sure that it's not anyways, because of lagginess (i.e. did you try the new release)? The addition of e10s has also majorly improved scrolling performance (through the implementation of Asynchronous Panning and Zooming [0]), which I've personally found to be exactly that, it felt weird beforehand, but I couldn't have told you what was wrong exactly... [0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/02/smoother-scrolling-in-firefox-46-with-apz/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/02/smoother-scrolling-in-fire...
Sylos 10y ago
Chrome was designed with multi-core processors in mind. Firefox wasn't, since obviously multi-core processors weren't really a thing when Firefox was initially released. As a result, Mozilla had to tear up a big chunk of the architecture to implement it. That's why it took so long. A simple case of technical debt.
- c0nducktr 10y ago
  And they also didn't work on it for the entire six years since Chrome was released. The project was shelved temporarily while development was focused on other things. I have been running Firefox Nightly along side Chrome for the past year or so, and have been using it as my main browser for a few months now, and I've been really happy with its performance.
- gcp 10y ago
  Not only tear up the architecture, but also accept that a major competitive advantage (the add-on ecosystem) would be for some part collateral damage in the transition.

morganvachon 10y ago

If you use Firefox and Chrome side by side every day, you can definitely tell that Firefox lacked it until now. This is especially evident on older Macs and most Linux distros I've tried. Chrome/Chromium's performance is leaps and bounds ahead of Firefox, RAM usage notwithstanding. I'm eager to try this out when I get home tonight.

sdegutis 10y ago
I definitely don't use Firefox except when testing how our website looks in Firefox. But it's not because of laggy behavior. Come to think of it, it's because Firefox just feels... weird and unnatural, compared to Chrome or even Edge.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  That's just familiarity talking, though. Every browser has its slight scrolling and rendering and UI quirks to get used to.
  - porjo 10y ago
    This. As a Firefox user I have the same 'feeling' going back the other way. With regards to developer tools, I find the tools that I use constantly - console, inspector, network activity - to be superior on Firefox... Each to his own I suppose.
- Sylos 10y ago
  Are you sure that it's not anyways, because of lagginess (i.e. did you try the new release)? The addition of e10s has also majorly improved scrolling performance (through the implementation of Asynchronous Panning and Zooming [0]), which I've personally found to be exactly that, it felt weird beforehand, but I couldn't have told you what was wrong exactly... [0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/02/smoother-scrolling-in-firefox-46-with-apz/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/02/smoother-scrolling-in-fire...

Sylos 10y ago

Chrome was designed with multi-core processors in mind. Firefox wasn't, since obviously multi-core processors weren't really a thing when Firefox was initially released. As a result, Mozilla had to tear up a big chunk of the architecture to implement it. That's why it took so long. A simple case of technical debt.

c0nducktr 10y ago
And they also didn't work on it for the entire six years since Chrome was released. The project was shelved temporarily while development was focused on other things. I have been running Firefox Nightly along side Chrome for the past year or so, and have been using it as my main browser for a few months now, and I've been really happy with its performance.
gcp 10y ago
Not only tear up the architecture, but also accept that a major competitive advantage (the add-on ecosystem) would be for some part collateral damage in the transition.