3 ms·

I get desktop speed for Chrome, Safari, but FireFox does lag for me. The first run does load various UI files on demand, but once cached, most delays go away.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Yeah, what's up with that? I use Firefox a lot, and I've noticed it always has poor performance on heavy JS apps. The off time I need one of such apps is the only reason I keep Chrome installed on my system.
- 93s6oz 8y ago
  Firefox has worse performance than Chrome overall, despite what their synthetic benchmarks might say.
  - ionised 8y ago
    How are you measuring 'overall'?
    - 93s6oz 8y ago
      I am not measuring it, that's the point. Synthetic benchmarks are useless when real life experience shows the opposite.
      - xori 8y ago
        As an enlightened individual as I'm sure you are, we strive to remove personal bias when possible. This includes measuring statistics. Which can take the form of synthetic benchmarks, but also real life tests, like page load times of notoriously bad news sites, or heavy cpu bound tasks like image resizing in the browser.
      - ionised 8y ago
        If you're not measuring it then it's pretty much subjective, no? You can't quantify what you don't measure. I don't know how you use Firefox and Chrome (I use both in work) but they behave pretty much identically as far as I can tell, once ads and other crap have been blocked. The only difference is Chrome is snappier on Google sites and seems to use double the memory to open the same tabs.
  - vardump 8y ago
    That probably has nothing to do that everyone is now optimizing for Chrome.
- kbenson 8y ago
  I've noticed that too. I think it might be that these days "idiomatic high-performance JS" might just be another way of saying "makes use of Chrome's quirks, strengths and optimizations". I imagine there's some things Firefox just can't do quite as fast as Chrome because of design decisions. The reverse probably also holds true, but that doesn't help as much if you aren't the market leader.
  - fastball 8y ago
    Chrome's JS engine is optimized for real-word usage. FF's is not.
    - Yoric 8y ago
      As a member of the Mozilla JS team, let me tell you that we're working on optimizing our engine for real-world usage all the time. Some optimizations are better in SpiderMonkey than in v8, some are worse. Unfortunately, whenever a web developer optimizes solely for v8/Chrome, this hurts Firefox.
      - Klathmon 8y ago
        This might be a lot to ask of a random internet comment, but is there anything common you tend to see in apps that make them look/feel overtuned to v8? I'll freely admit that i'm guilty of the "develop for chrome, test in firefox" kind of workflow, and I really want to improve on that. I feel like I have built up a kind of "intuition" about what works well and what doesn't over the years in chrome, and i'd like to start building that up for other browsers.
        mi100hael 8y ago
        I'd guess a lot of that sort of optimization happens at the framework/library level (React, Emscripten, etc) and less so in your typical application code.
      - fastball 8y ago
        I have never once "optimized solely for V8" (I honestly have no idea what runs better in Chrome vs. Firefox). All I know is that I build an app as I think makes sense logically, and 100% of the time it runs faster / less hot in Chrome. JS-heavy apps burn thru CPU cycles far more on FF than in Chrome. I want to use FF as my daily driver, I really do. But it's real-world performance just doesn't cut it for me, and I don't think you can blame that on people "solely optimizing for Chrome", as V8 was a better engine at the moment of release, when nobody had had a chance to optimize for it.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Yeah, what's up with that? I use Firefox a lot, and I've noticed it always has poor performance on heavy JS apps. The off time I need one of such apps is the only reason I keep Chrome installed on my system.

93s6oz 8y ago
Firefox has worse performance than Chrome overall, despite what their synthetic benchmarks might say.
- ionised 8y ago
  How are you measuring 'overall'?
  - 93s6oz 8y ago
    I am not measuring it, that's the point. Synthetic benchmarks are useless when real life experience shows the opposite.
    - xori 8y ago
      As an enlightened individual as I'm sure you are, we strive to remove personal bias when possible. This includes measuring statistics. Which can take the form of synthetic benchmarks, but also real life tests, like page load times of notoriously bad news sites, or heavy cpu bound tasks like image resizing in the browser.
    - ionised 8y ago
      If you're not measuring it then it's pretty much subjective, no? You can't quantify what you don't measure. I don't know how you use Firefox and Chrome (I use both in work) but they behave pretty much identically as far as I can tell, once ads and other crap have been blocked. The only difference is Chrome is snappier on Google sites and seems to use double the memory to open the same tabs.
- vardump 8y ago
  That probably has nothing to do that everyone is now optimizing for Chrome.
kbenson 8y ago
I've noticed that too. I think it might be that these days "idiomatic high-performance JS" might just be another way of saying "makes use of Chrome's quirks, strengths and optimizations". I imagine there's some things Firefox just can't do quite as fast as Chrome because of design decisions. The reverse probably also holds true, but that doesn't help as much if you aren't the market leader.
- fastball 8y ago
  Chrome's JS engine is optimized for real-word usage. FF's is not.
  - Yoric 8y ago
    As a member of the Mozilla JS team, let me tell you that we're working on optimizing our engine for real-world usage all the time. Some optimizations are better in SpiderMonkey than in v8, some are worse. Unfortunately, whenever a web developer optimizes solely for v8/Chrome, this hurts Firefox.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      This might be a lot to ask of a random internet comment, but is there anything common you tend to see in apps that make them look/feel overtuned to v8? I'll freely admit that i'm guilty of the "develop for chrome, test in firefox" kind of workflow, and I really want to improve on that. I feel like I have built up a kind of "intuition" about what works well and what doesn't over the years in chrome, and i'd like to start building that up for other browsers.
      - mi100hael 8y ago
        I'd guess a lot of that sort of optimization happens at the framework/library level (React, Emscripten, etc) and less so in your typical application code.
    - fastball 8y ago
      I have never once "optimized solely for V8" (I honestly have no idea what runs better in Chrome vs. Firefox). All I know is that I build an app as I think makes sense logically, and 100% of the time it runs faster / less hot in Chrome. JS-heavy apps burn thru CPU cycles far more on FF than in Chrome. I want to use FF as my daily driver, I really do. But it's real-world performance just doesn't cut it for me, and I don't think you can blame that on people "solely optimizing for Chrome", as V8 was a better engine at the moment of release, when nobody had had a chance to optimize for it.