6 ms·

One thing I've noticed about Firefox, especially on mobile, is that transform animations are pretty janky. Does anyone know if this is being worked on? Should

by pitaj 9y ago

One thing I've noticed about Firefox, especially on mobile, is that transform animations are pretty janky. Does anyone know if this is being worked on? Should I submit a bug report?

muizelaar 9y ago
There are no known issues about this. You should submit a bug report.
pcwalton 9y ago
Feel free to file a bug report with your hardware, Firefox version, and test case, yes. These often boil down to simple bugs (hardware-specific or page-specific) that can be quickly fixed when isolated. The medium-term effort to revamp the graphics stack is WebRender. Note that, like Stylo, WebRender is not just meant to achieve parity with other browsers. It's a different architecture entirely that is more similar to what games do than what current browsers do.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  Firefox’ CSS transform/animation performance is terrible on macOS. I filed a bugreport but there’s no interest in solving it unfortunately. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    Those are very general conclusions to draw from one test case. The bouncing ball test runs at 60 FPS for me on macOS; most of the time is spent in painting, as expected. Likewise, Stripe scrolls at 60 FPS for me. I should note that the bouncing ball test is the kind of thing that WebRender is designed to improve—painting-intensive animations—so it's obviously untrue that there's no interest in improving this sort of workload. When running your bouncing ball test in Servo with master WebRender, I observed CPU usage of no higher than 15% (as well as 60 FPS)…
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > With the page at stripe.com, I don't see any difference between FF52ESR, FF56.0.2, FF57.0b14 with servo enabled, or with it disabled. On my 2012 Macbook Air with macOS 10.12, I see about 98-108% CPU on each, according to iStat Menus CPU meter. With Safari it's about 35%. That's exactly what I would expect based on past experience. > I would probably close this as invalid, as it's not something new or specific to Quantum or Servo, or as a duplicate of one of the older bugs, though I'm not sure which. That likely points as to why there's little movement on this bug. It's title can be interpreted to indicate a Quantum regression, but it's a general issue that's longstanding, so it may be the people that are seeing it are not focused on it (they're likely tracking down and fixing actual regressions, not known problems). I know that doesn't help your issue, but it may help you locate the relevant bug report and lend your weight there, if you feel so inclined.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  Kind of OT, but I've noticed both latency and battery-life hits for compositing WMs in X (compared to traditional WMs). Are those things being measured at all in FF? It may be that the tradeoff is worth it (and I have no doubt it can be done better than the median compositing WM on linux), but it would be good to have that data. On the other hand, it may be moot if Wayland does end up taking over from X.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    (Nitpick: Traditional WMs composite as well, they just do it on the CPU instead of the GPU.) That's interesting. I remember the developer of KWin (KDE's window manager) saying that he considered disabling GPU compositing when the battery runs low, but he couldn't prove that this actually saves energy. In fact, on some configurations, GPU compositing was less power-intensive than CPU compositing.
    - aidenn0 9y ago
      I thought traditional WMs had the clients send the draw commands directly to the server, rather than doing any compositing themselves? It's definitely true that different GPUs have different power profiles (and even the same GPU with different drivers).
      - infogulch 9y ago
        Don't forget "race to sleep". If the GPU takes 3x more power but completes 10x faster and can go back into low power mode sooner that could be another power savings.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        No Qt or GTK application sends draw commands to the X server anymore (except for the final "draw window-sized pixmap"). That only applies to xterm or maybe Tcl/Tk stuff.
        aidenn0 9y ago
- ksec 9y ago
  I am still a little sceptical of WebRender. Not for its theory or implementation, but relying on Graphics Drivers and GPU to do the work continue to be a pain. There are lots of Laptop with Graphics Drivers that doesn't ever get updated.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    WebRender doesn't actually necessitate a GPU backend. You could have a CPU backend just as well. (In fact, I might up being the one writing it.) ;)
    - ksec 9y ago
      >WebRender doesn't actually necessitate a GPU backend. Wow to me this is big news! I have long wanted the GFX part to be CPU backend instead of the trend of Hardware Acceleration on GPU. Cant wait to see the results.
cpeterso 9y ago
Stylo is now enabled in Firefox for Android's Nightly builds. You can install Nightly from the Google Play Store to see if Stylo makes a difference for the animation problems. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fennec_aurora https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...
- pitaj 9y ago
  since when? I've been running Nightly for months.
  - johnp_ 9y ago
    Landed ~5 days ago: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/db56323cd08f https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/db56323cd08f
  - kibwen 9y ago
    According to this tweet, four hours ago: https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/935594491339161600 https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/935594491339161600
jrowlingson 9y ago
This blog has a good example of the jank you are reporting. I am observing noticeable jank on the "slideup" animation on #fixedcontent.firstvisit vs. Chrome (62.0.3202.94). (macOS/10.12.6 FF/57.0 late-2013 MBP)
makotech222 9y ago
In about:config, make sure privacy.resistFingerprinting is false. This messes with timer accuracy.

by pitaj 9y ago

One thing I've noticed about Firefox, especially on mobile, is that transform animations are pretty janky. Does anyone know if this is being worked on? Should I submit a bug report?

muizelaar 9y ago

There are no known issues about this. You should submit a bug report.

pcwalton 9y ago

Feel free to file a bug report with your hardware, Firefox version, and test case, yes. These often boil down to simple bugs (hardware-specific or page-specific) that can be quickly fixed when isolated. The medium-term effort to revamp the graphics stack is WebRender. Note that, like Stylo, WebRender is not just meant to achieve parity with other browsers. It's a different architecture entirely that is more similar to what games do than what current browsers do.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
Firefox’ CSS transform/animation performance is terrible on macOS. I filed a bugreport but there’s no interest in solving it unfortunately. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Those are very general conclusions to draw from one test case. The bouncing ball test runs at 60 FPS for me on macOS; most of the time is spent in painting, as expected. Likewise, Stripe scrolls at 60 FPS for me. I should note that the bouncing ball test is the kind of thing that WebRender is designed to improve—painting-intensive animations—so it's obviously untrue that there's no interest in improving this sort of workload. When running your bouncing ball test in Servo with master WebRender, I observed CPU usage of no higher than 15% (as well as 60 FPS)…
- kbenson 9y ago
  > With the page at stripe.com, I don't see any difference between FF52ESR, FF56.0.2, FF57.0b14 with servo enabled, or with it disabled. On my 2012 Macbook Air with macOS 10.12, I see about 98-108% CPU on each, according to iStat Menus CPU meter. With Safari it's about 35%. That's exactly what I would expect based on past experience. > I would probably close this as invalid, as it's not something new or specific to Quantum or Servo, or as a duplicate of one of the older bugs, though I'm not sure which. That likely points as to why there's little movement on this bug. It's title can be interpreted to indicate a Quantum regression, but it's a general issue that's longstanding, so it may be the people that are seeing it are not focused on it (they're likely tracking down and fixing actual regressions, not known problems). I know that doesn't help your issue, but it may help you locate the relevant bug report and lend your weight there, if you feel so inclined.
aidenn0 9y ago
Kind of OT, but I've noticed both latency and battery-life hits for compositing WMs in X (compared to traditional WMs). Are those things being measured at all in FF? It may be that the tradeoff is worth it (and I have no doubt it can be done better than the median compositing WM on linux), but it would be good to have that data. On the other hand, it may be moot if Wayland does end up taking over from X.
- majewsky 9y ago
  (Nitpick: Traditional WMs composite as well, they just do it on the CPU instead of the GPU.) That's interesting. I remember the developer of KWin (KDE's window manager) saying that he considered disabling GPU compositing when the battery runs low, but he couldn't prove that this actually saves energy. In fact, on some configurations, GPU compositing was less power-intensive than CPU compositing.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    I thought traditional WMs had the clients send the draw commands directly to the server, rather than doing any compositing themselves? It's definitely true that different GPUs have different power profiles (and even the same GPU with different drivers).
    - infogulch 9y ago
      Don't forget "race to sleep". If the GPU takes 3x more power but completes 10x faster and can go back into low power mode sooner that could be another power savings.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      No Qt or GTK application sends draw commands to the X server anymore (except for the final "draw window-sized pixmap"). That only applies to xterm or maybe Tcl/Tk stuff.
      - aidenn0 9y ago
ksec 9y ago
I am still a little sceptical of WebRender. Not for its theory or implementation, but relying on Graphics Drivers and GPU to do the work continue to be a pain. There are lots of Laptop with Graphics Drivers that doesn't ever get updated.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  WebRender doesn't actually necessitate a GPU backend. You could have a CPU backend just as well. (In fact, I might up being the one writing it.) ;)
  - ksec 9y ago
    >WebRender doesn't actually necessitate a GPU backend. Wow to me this is big news! I have long wanted the GFX part to be CPU backend instead of the trend of Hardware Acceleration on GPU. Cant wait to see the results.

cpeterso 9y ago

Stylo is now enabled in Firefox for Android's Nightly builds. You can install Nightly from the Google Play Store to see if Stylo makes a difference for the animation problems. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fennec_aurora https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...

pitaj 9y ago
since when? I've been running Nightly for months.
- johnp_ 9y ago
  Landed ~5 days ago: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/db56323cd08f https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/db56323cd08f
- kibwen 9y ago
  According to this tweet, four hours ago: https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/935594491339161600 https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/935594491339161600

jrowlingson 9y ago

This blog has a good example of the jank you are reporting. I am observing noticeable jank on the "slideup" animation on #fixedcontent.firstvisit vs. Chrome (62.0.3202.94). (macOS/10.12.6 FF/57.0 late-2013 MBP)

makotech222 9y ago

In about:config, make sure privacy.resistFingerprinting is false. This messes with timer accuracy.