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I work on Firefox compatability for a major website, and while obviously I agree that we need to stop building websites that only work in Chrome, it isn't alway

I work on Firefox compatability for a major website, and while obviously I agree that we need to stop building websites that only work in Chrome, it isn't always as easy as you suggest. A large web app is almost guaranteed to run into one of Firefox's many long-open bugs. But the biggest reason in my experience is performance. Gecko's rendering engine is poorly-optimized, to the point where I regularly see a DOM modification take 10ms in Chrome (easily within a single frame) and 1000ms in Firefox (locks the UI and causes the page to flash white).

callahad 10y ago
If you can isolate that DOM performance bottleneck or point me to a live example, I'm happy to pare it down to a minimal test case and make sure it gets fixed. (We have some enormous architectural changes inbound which should help, but I'd still love to make sure we have a test to prevent regressing)
- ux-app 10y ago
  unfortunately for Firefox, performance issues are a case of death by a thousand cuts. Here's a product that I'm working on https://www.ux-app.com/dev/editor?m=trial https://www.ux-app.com/dev/editor?m=trial In Chrome it's buttery smooth on any decent computer made in the past 5 or 6 years. In Firefox it's usable on a powerful computer, but notably worse than Chrome. On an under powered laptop Chrome is still very usable, not quite 60fps, but probably 30-40fps on moderately complex designs. Firefox is a choppy mess on low end hardware. This is a recurring issue with Firefox. It's just ok for regular web browsing, and it's a hot mess for any web app that needs to do any moderately taxing DOM manipulation. As much as I love Firefox, it's just leagues behind Chrome in regard to performance.
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    So long as my web browser is competitive when web browsing I'm happy.
  - Musonius 10y ago
    That's a pretty niche issue though, Firefox is much faster web browsing and uses far less resources than Chrome.
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    Impressive app.
    - ux-app 10y ago
      Thanks :)
- alexbecker 10y ago
  The single largest issue is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1159042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1159042, but as another comment mentioned, there are many different cases that trigger performance bottlenecks.
joshstrange 10y ago
I agree completely, I only use Chrome and only open FF when I'm about to push a feature or if QA kicks something back. In the same way I don't use a production size DB locally when writing new code (but need to test performance after the feature is complete) I don't use a slower browser in my day to day development because why would I? It would be like given the choice between two computers to work on choosing the slower of the two.

callahad 10y ago

If you can isolate that DOM performance bottleneck or point me to a live example, I'm happy to pare it down to a minimal test case and make sure it gets fixed. (We have some enormous architectural changes inbound which should help, but I'd still love to make sure we have a test to prevent regressing)

ux-app 10y ago
unfortunately for Firefox, performance issues are a case of death by a thousand cuts. Here's a product that I'm working on https://www.ux-app.com/dev/editor?m=trial https://www.ux-app.com/dev/editor?m=trial In Chrome it's buttery smooth on any decent computer made in the past 5 or 6 years. In Firefox it's usable on a powerful computer, but notably worse than Chrome. On an under powered laptop Chrome is still very usable, not quite 60fps, but probably 30-40fps on moderately complex designs. Firefox is a choppy mess on low end hardware. This is a recurring issue with Firefox. It's just ok for regular web browsing, and it's a hot mess for any web app that needs to do any moderately taxing DOM manipulation. As much as I love Firefox, it's just leagues behind Chrome in regard to performance.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  So long as my web browser is competitive when web browsing I'm happy.
- Musonius 10y ago
  That's a pretty niche issue though, Firefox is much faster web browsing and uses far less resources than Chrome.
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Impressive app.
  - ux-app 10y ago
    Thanks :)
alexbecker 10y ago
The single largest issue is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1159042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1159042, but as another comment mentioned, there are many different cases that trigger performance bottlenecks.

joshstrange 10y ago

I agree completely, I only use Chrome and only open FF when I'm about to push a feature or if QA kicks something back. In the same way I don't use a production size DB locally when writing new code (but need to test performance after the feature is complete) I don't use a slower browser in my day to day development because why would I? It would be like given the choice between two computers to work on choosing the slower of the two.