9 ms·

i just want to say, Firefox is seriously fast now, while Chrome continues to get slower [1]. my 10M datapoint uPlot benchmark runs in half the time, for both p

• Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > also, better default form input styling would be nice. it's so...Windows 98....but i'm on Windows 10. :\ Google and Microsoft seem to agree with you, but I totally don't get it! If the website doesn't specify a style, my browser should fall back to a design that matches my OS, not whatever the browser developer thought was pretty! And if Windows is coming back and telling the browser to use Windows 98 styled buttons, Microsoft should fix Windows!
  • dstaley 6y ago
    > The underlying problem is Windows suggesting Windows 98 styled buttons I'm almost positive that Firefox doesn't use OS-native controls; they've specifically styled their controls to look the way they do, so yes, this is a Firefox problem, not a Windows problem.
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Really? The reason I assumed otherwise is that, the buttons on Mac look like Mac buttons to me. And furthermore, the buttons on my Mavericks Mac (pre Apple's flat redesign) look different than the ones on my High Sierra Mac.
      • chc 6y ago
        I think it's an imitation. They're not stock UI elements. For example, on my Mojave system, if I just make an HTML button, I can see it doesn't respect the systemwide dark setting, the highlight color looks slightly darker than a normal light-theme button and it doesn't invert the text color when highlighted.
        • saagarjha 6y ago
          In dark mode, buttons have a darker highlight and don't invert their text color.
      • neurostimulant 6y ago
        Safari on windows were showing osx-styled default buttons, so I think safari also implement their own UI controls, not using system's ui elements.
        • saagarjha 6y ago
          Safari buttons on macOS are native unless you style them in a way that causes their font or size to change.
        • kitsunesoba 6y ago
          That’s because Safari was ported to Windows by porting a large chunk of AppKit to Windows - it didn’t make direct use of Win32.
          • neurostimulant 6y ago
            Wow this is interesting! Does that means technically we could have any OSX app compiled for windows while still retaining OSX-like appearance? Did Apple ever released this AppKit windows port for others to use? Does apple still maintaining the port for MacOS as well or did it die along with Safari for windows?
            • 6y ago
    • dblohm7 6y ago
      They are not OS-native, but they use OS theming information.
      • roca 6y ago
        Right. Browsers can't use the OS control implementations, because the demands of DOM/CSS simply can't be handled by those native implementations. But Firefox is trying to emulate the look and feel of the OS controls, using native theme drawing APIs when possible. It is very hard to get 100% right, which is why no browser does.
        • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
          Huh. I wonder if that applies even to Safari on Mac and iOS, given how integrated Apple likes to be with their UI controls.
          • saagarjha 6y ago
            Some of them are native, if you don't style them.
            • roca 6y ago
              That isn't true. Browsers reimplement the native look and feel (in some cases) but they do not use the actual native control implementation.
              • saagarjha 6y ago
                Safari on macOS uses native controls. The reply button I'm about to click to submit this comment is 100% native, because Hacker News is using nothing fancy beyond <input type="submit" value="reply">. (Interestingly, Safari will outright ignore font sizes it cannot draw a native control for…)
                • roca 6y ago
  • leeoniya 6y ago
    > The underlying problem is Windows suggesting Windows 98 styled buttons. Microsoft should fix Windows. i think that's the canned WONTFIX response for every bugzilla issue ever closed about it in the past, what, 7 years?
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      ...but does that make it wrong?
  • nyanpasu64 6y ago
    Unstyled buttons look like Aero. CSS-styled buttons (custom color, border appearance) look like 9x.
• simonklitj 6y ago
  Would love to see how Safari handles your benchmark! I find it pretty fast, but maybe that's just bias because it treats my battery nice.
  • leeoniya 6y ago
    there's an artificial 500ms delay in there between fake data gen and chart drawing so it's easier for me to isolate the two in the perf timeline :) > Would love to see how Safari handles your benchmark! i don't have access to a Mac, so you won't get this from me!
    • simonklitj 6y ago
      Fair enough! Thanks anyway, though.
  • twhb 6y ago
    I ran three trials of each on a min spec 2019 MacBook Pro 16". All numbers are ms rounded to the nearest integer, all browsers are latest stable. I also loaded the page with dev tools closed since that affected times. Browser: (trial 1 prep, trial 1 chart), (trial 2 prep, trial 2 chart), (trial 3 prep, trial 3 chart) Chrome: (649, 347), (638, 343), (618, 358) Firefox: (353, 307), (358, 307), (361, 308) Safari: (281, 264), (287, 258), (309, 262)
    • freediver 6y ago
      Similar experience. Beating WebKit on macOS in rendering performance or energy use is very hard for both Chrome and Firefox (and the clones).
    • simonklitj 6y ago
      Very interesting. Thanks a lot! Firefox did really well, that’s cool to see.
• skykooler 6y ago
  It seems that it's faster on every website I use except Gmail, Google Voice, and Youtube. I wonder whether Google is using some sort of Chrome-specific javascript to make those sites run faster in their own browser?
  • kroltan 6y ago
    I'm not sure if this is still the case, but Youtube used to use WebComponents v0 which has to be emulated in JS in non-Webkit browsers, since only Google ever implemented v0, while everyone else agreed it required a bit more work, and other engines run v1 instead, which is not compatible.
    • konart 6y ago
      Youtube was updated to the v1 quite some time ago with a fresh Polymer version >Polymer.version 3.4.0 Polymer uses v1 WCs since Polymer v2
      • kroltan 6y ago
        Thanks! I had no idea how to check if it was still the case.
    • chrismorgan 6y ago
      The main YouTube site seems to still be lousy in Firefox. Buttons that should open dropdowns (e.g. the top right corner user icon and notifications icon) don’t. If I want to actually see notifications, I need to tack ?disable_polymer=1 onto the URL and experience the ancient site! YouTube Studio doesn’t suffer from these problems.
      • kroltan 6y ago
        Hmm, seems to work fine for me.
        • chrismorgan 6y ago
• badrabbit 6y ago
  I commented many times on this, I don't care how much faster it is relative to before, right now I cannot use only firefox for daily work because it literally can't handle it. It chokes and takes down my whole system (32GB ram! Windows) with it. I am a fan of FF and I am glad so many of HNers like it too. But I am literally running 3 browsers right now. IE for corporate b.s. sites, Firefox for light browsing such as checking email,googling things,privacy sensitive stuff and a webkit based browser for everything else. I only use firefox because I like it, it offers me near 0 value in a work setting where there is 0 expectation of privacy, matter of fact considering Google's security practices and history using Firefox provides negative value. This isn't to put down FF, but I fear all this circlejerk will prevent resource allocation to these things because Mozilla folk are HN types and fairly certain outside of FF telemetry they rely on threads like this one for feedback. Here is my feedback: "Great work,keep at it but you are very far from where you need to be to compete". Even Microsoft has succumbed to webkit! The internet needs a competing alternative, not a novelty product.
• arsenalist 6y ago
  I recently switched to Firefox after being a Chrome user for the most part of my life. In the past I couldn't switch to Firefox due to a lack of alternatives for the extensions I use on Chrome (particularly Google Dictionary) but I recently use Firefox again and decided that the performance difference is worth the change. I still miss the extension options I had sometimes but I have to admit that my overall browsing experience is markedly improved on Firefox. Glad to see that my anecdotal browsing experience is backed by benchmark.
• mschuetz 6y ago
  My LOD 3D models still take ~10ms per batch to load from binary file in Firefox, whereas Chrome needs ~1ms per batch. Mostly because of DataView but Mozilla recently assigned someone to work on it so I'm hopefull for the future.
• hackcasual 6y ago
  Firefox uses Direct2d on windows, while Chrome will just use Skia.
• chrismorgan 6y ago
  Concerning form input styling, many of the responses that have been made before this time are broadly technically incorrect or insufficient (roca’s comments are excellent, as a developer in this very space), and no one’s mentioned that work is actively happening in this space. On Windows, Firefox currently uses Windows APIs to draw the form controls, scrollbars, &c. where possible, and imitates the style in the places that there is no native API for it. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381938 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381938 introduced a new style, available behind the widget.disable-native-theme-for-content pref. I’ve been using it for the last three months and reporting various bugs and problems. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1615105 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1615105 is tracking the remaining work before it can be turned on by default. My opinion: the new control styles are… fine, I guess; but they could do with some not-flatness (especially for buttons), and increases in size and padding are seriously problematic on many existing sites.