4 ms·

From reading a lot of mailing list and bugzilla posts I get the impression that they do care about Macs but the current (very old) renderer is just never going

by opencl 7y ago

From reading a lot of mailing list and bugzilla posts I get the impression that they do care about Macs but the current (very old) renderer is just never going to play nicely with MacOS without a major overhaul, and that major overhaul is Webrender which has been in development for several years but has yet to land in stable because writing a new renderer is just a really large undertaking. Webrender and planeshift should bring a pretty huge performance and power efficiency improvement when they finally land in stable.

wingworks 7y ago
That's great to hear. I keep Firefox installed on MBP for dev testing and each time do the update and see if it's worth changing too. Hopefully, the answer will be yes once Webrender arrives and smooth Mac like scrolling. It has come a long way, and I want to like it, just really hard in its current form.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  Just checked it (I have a recommended setup) - it's whooping fast.
  - akras14 7y ago
    I don't know what these commenters are talking about. I've been using FF on Mac for over a year now on 3 different Mac Machines. It's super fast, as good as Chrome. May be you need to reset it or something to get it working properly. The only issue I had with FF is Developer Tools, which are also have improved a lot with latest release, and continuing to improve.
    - hellofunk 7y ago
      As I noted, the issue affects many, but not all, Mac users. It seems to be a special configuration of display resolution and other factors that can be difficult to replicate. That’s great for you that it’s working, but you shouldn’t discredit this very serious problem for the general user base.
      - akras14 7y ago
        Sorry, it came of stronger than I wanted to. I actually run into high CPU utilization shortly after I posted it. Haven't had it for a full year, may be something in later version got messed up. I did go away after refreshing FF though, so I do recommend trying it to see if it will fix things. I am routing for FF, but it's definitely not perfect.
ColanR 7y ago
How close do you think webrender is to landing in stable? I've not heard much about it before.
- opencl 7y ago
  Hard to say. It's actually already in stable but currently limited to a very specific set of OS/hardware combinations and they're working on gradually adding more. FF67 enabled it in stable for desktop NVIDIA hardware on Windows. AMD and Intel GPUs on Windows and Linux are currently enabled in the nightly channel, presumably MacOS is next on the list once those are stable. Webrender is mostly done and at the stage where there are mostly just lots of little bugs left to fix so it's naturally kind of hard to estimate how long things will take. They have a webrender newsletter with progress updates usually every couple of weeks, one of the recent posts talks about the release timeline but it's all kind of vague at this point: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-ships-webrender-mvp/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-sh...
  - horsawlarway 7y ago
    Yeah, I went and installed Firefox on my home machine after this landed in 67 since I have the right hardware and... It's SO much fucking better. Lots of folks on here claiming that Firefox has been just as good as chrome in terms of performance for years, and frankly that's an utter load of BS. On top tier hardware (and honestly - most hardware in general) chrome was always blindingly fast, and Firefox just wasn't. It was perceptibly slower at just about everything. It was just annoying enough that I'd always switch back to chrome for personal use. Not anymore. This last week is the first time I can remember that I honestly can't tell the difference in speed. If anything, Firefox may actually be legitimately beating chrome in terms of speed. It's been a pleasant breath of fresh air. Google may lose me as a chrome user (personal use at least), which is something I just couldn't have imagined a year ago.

by opencl 7y ago

wingworks 7y ago

That's great to hear. I keep Firefox installed on MBP for dev testing and each time do the update and see if it's worth changing too. Hopefully, the answer will be yes once Webrender arrives and smooth Mac like scrolling. It has come a long way, and I want to like it, just really hard in its current form.

chupasaurus 7y ago
Just checked it (I have a recommended setup) - it's whooping fast.
- akras14 7y ago
  I don't know what these commenters are talking about. I've been using FF on Mac for over a year now on 3 different Mac Machines. It's super fast, as good as Chrome. May be you need to reset it or something to get it working properly. The only issue I had with FF is Developer Tools, which are also have improved a lot with latest release, and continuing to improve.
  - hellofunk 7y ago
    As I noted, the issue affects many, but not all, Mac users. It seems to be a special configuration of display resolution and other factors that can be difficult to replicate. That’s great for you that it’s working, but you shouldn’t discredit this very serious problem for the general user base.
    - akras14 7y ago
      Sorry, it came of stronger than I wanted to. I actually run into high CPU utilization shortly after I posted it. Haven't had it for a full year, may be something in later version got messed up. I did go away after refreshing FF though, so I do recommend trying it to see if it will fix things. I am routing for FF, but it's definitely not perfect.

ColanR 7y ago

How close do you think webrender is to landing in stable? I've not heard much about it before.

opencl 7y ago
Hard to say. It's actually already in stable but currently limited to a very specific set of OS/hardware combinations and they're working on gradually adding more. FF67 enabled it in stable for desktop NVIDIA hardware on Windows. AMD and Intel GPUs on Windows and Linux are currently enabled in the nightly channel, presumably MacOS is next on the list once those are stable. Webrender is mostly done and at the stage where there are mostly just lots of little bugs left to fix so it's naturally kind of hard to estimate how long things will take. They have a webrender newsletter with progress updates usually every couple of weeks, one of the recent posts talks about the release timeline but it's all kind of vague at this point: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-ships-webrender-mvp/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-sh...
- horsawlarway 7y ago
  Yeah, I went and installed Firefox on my home machine after this landed in 67 since I have the right hardware and... It's SO much fucking better. Lots of folks on here claiming that Firefox has been just as good as chrome in terms of performance for years, and frankly that's an utter load of BS. On top tier hardware (and honestly - most hardware in general) chrome was always blindingly fast, and Firefox just wasn't. It was perceptibly slower at just about everything. It was just annoying enough that I'd always switch back to chrome for personal use. Not anymore. This last week is the first time I can remember that I honestly can't tell the difference in speed. If anything, Firefox may actually be legitimately beating chrome in terms of speed. It's been a pleasant breath of fresh air. Google may lose me as a chrome user (personal use at least), which is something I just couldn't have imagined a year ago.