5 ms·

I use it and like it, and they'll be rolling out an update somewhat soon with a complete makeover of the rendering engine (switching to GeckoView from whatever

I use it and like it, and they'll be rolling out an update somewhat soon with a complete makeover of the rendering engine (switching to GeckoView from whatever they have now), so I'm hopeful that rendering will get faster. I like it because: - syncs with desktop Firefox - has extensions (I mostly use Bitwarden and an ad blocker) - interface is nice to use - available in F-Droid It's fast enough for me, though I haven't used mobile Chrome for years, so I guess I don't know what I'm missing.

Brakenshire 8y ago
The switch to Geckoview is for Firefox Focus, which previously used Blink (the Chrome rendering engine). Standard Firefox for Android has used Gecko from the start. It is gradually being upgraded using the Quantum improvements, but the rate of change seems slow. I thought that the emphasis on multi-threaded processing in Quantum would be particularly useful for mobile, because the single threaded processing capability of mobile (and particularly non-Apple mobile chips) is very limited, but there don't seem to have been massive improvements. I think it’s a shame they relegated Servo to a research project, integrating Servo into Gecko has been long-winded, and the most important target of porting a parallel/multi-threaded layout engine isn’t even being discussed. Frankly, given their $500m budget, their core mission of browser development, and the massive importance of mobile, they probably should have pursued both Gecko and Servo at the same time. Even if Servo only supported flexbox layouts it could be very useful as a wrapper while wider compability was being pursued. The emphasis now is on WebVR, which seems not very relevant to the mass market.
- Yoric 8y ago
  The Servo team is very active. Unfortunately, it's trying to hit a fast-moving target, and that's really hard. Which is the reason for which I believe nobody else is currently pursuing any new web engine.
ishitatsuyuki 8y ago
I also used Firefox on Android for a pretty long period, but to be honest I ended up moving to Brave. I run Nightly so I get the improvements quickly, but even with that Firefox is still far behind Chrome. - Firefox does not have a JIT for 64-bit ARM (AArch64). Didn't benchmark but this does make a difference. - Running a extension based ad blocker seems to degrade performance and the difference visible on a smartphone SoC. I think Brave has it written in native code and deeply integrated, and it seems to perform without making things super slow. - While I can't judge on the UI (actually I miss the tab gestures on Firefox), Firefox often glitches like not loading custom tabs, page search getting stuck and some others. This was quite stressful. - The sync is super glitchy. It can easily be days outdated unless you trigger it manually.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  if you're concerned about performance, why would you use nightly? i've never benchmarked the difference between other people's release, beta, and nightly builds, but i know at my day job the daily builds are likely to have performance regressions that won't necessarily be fixed until beta or release.
  - ishitatsuyuki 8y ago
    Because it's also the first to get major rewrites. The Stylo CSS engine used to be Nightly only, and Nightly is basically the only channel you can test the latest Quantum components.
    - yoasif_ 8y ago
      There are no real improvements coming to Firefox Nightly on Android. All the real action is happening in Firefox Focus with GeckoView: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Release-tracks#nightly https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Release... and in Fenix: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix Fennec (Firefox for Android) is basically in maintenance mode. FWIW: Firefox Focus Nightly is a much better implementation of Gecko on Android than Fennec ever was, with the caveat that Sync, sessions, or extensions are not available.

Brakenshire 8y ago

The switch to Geckoview is for Firefox Focus, which previously used Blink (the Chrome rendering engine). Standard Firefox for Android has used Gecko from the start. It is gradually being upgraded using the Quantum improvements, but the rate of change seems slow. I thought that the emphasis on multi-threaded processing in Quantum would be particularly useful for mobile, because the single threaded processing capability of mobile (and particularly non-Apple mobile chips) is very limited, but there don't seem to have been massive improvements. I think it’s a shame they relegated Servo to a research project, integrating Servo into Gecko has been long-winded, and the most important target of porting a parallel/multi-threaded layout engine isn’t even being discussed. Frankly, given their $500m budget, their core mission of browser development, and the massive importance of mobile, they probably should have pursued both Gecko and Servo at the same time. Even if Servo only supported flexbox layouts it could be very useful as a wrapper while wider compability was being pursued. The emphasis now is on WebVR, which seems not very relevant to the mass market.

Yoric 8y ago
The Servo team is very active. Unfortunately, it's trying to hit a fast-moving target, and that's really hard. Which is the reason for which I believe nobody else is currently pursuing any new web engine.

ishitatsuyuki 8y ago

I also used Firefox on Android for a pretty long period, but to be honest I ended up moving to Brave. I run Nightly so I get the improvements quickly, but even with that Firefox is still far behind Chrome. - Firefox does not have a JIT for 64-bit ARM (AArch64). Didn't benchmark but this does make a difference. - Running a extension based ad blocker seems to degrade performance and the difference visible on a smartphone SoC. I think Brave has it written in native code and deeply integrated, and it seems to perform without making things super slow. - While I can't judge on the UI (actually I miss the tab gestures on Firefox), Firefox often glitches like not loading custom tabs, page search getting stuck and some others. This was quite stressful. - The sync is super glitchy. It can easily be days outdated unless you trigger it manually.

leetcrew 8y ago
if you're concerned about performance, why would you use nightly? i've never benchmarked the difference between other people's release, beta, and nightly builds, but i know at my day job the daily builds are likely to have performance regressions that won't necessarily be fixed until beta or release.
- ishitatsuyuki 8y ago
  Because it's also the first to get major rewrites. The Stylo CSS engine used to be Nightly only, and Nightly is basically the only channel you can test the latest Quantum components.
  - yoasif_ 8y ago
    There are no real improvements coming to Firefox Nightly on Android. All the real action is happening in Firefox Focus with GeckoView: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Release-tracks#nightly https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Release... and in Fenix: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix Fennec (Firefox for Android) is basically in maintenance mode. FWIW: Firefox Focus Nightly is a much better implementation of Gecko on Android than Fennec ever was, with the caveat that Sync, sessions, or extensions are not available.