5 ms·

FWIW Firefox is only slow on Windows. It's much faster on Linux.

yetanother12345 3y ago
It was[0] excruciatingly slow on 32 bit Linux too. Had to use an alternative lightweight browser most of the time, but some sites worked only with FF (eg banking and such). There was no alternative for these sites, as no Chromium or MS browser supported 32 bit Linux. There was plenty of lightweight browsers that would work with anything else than these (very few) sites though. I've read somewhere that FF will soon no longer support 32 bit at all (if it has not happened already) [0] Probably still is. "Was" because the most used keys on the keyboard of my 32-bit 12 YO laptop went fubar around half a year ago, so I had to go 64 bit only for a while until I got a replacement KB. I've not used FF on the 32 bit machine since.
JohnBooty 3y ago
Is Chrome "slow" for you on Windows as well? Because Firefox beats it or is within ~50% on every benchmark I can find. Can you talk about what kinds of sites are slow in Windows or what kind of machine you're running? I've been doing full-stack development since the 90s using a range of browsers and I just don't feel the FF performance issues that others swear are a problem.
- rational_indian 3y ago
  YouTube is particularly janky on Firefox on Windows. For example the full screen transition on Firefox uses a fade to / from black screen animation to hide the sluggishness. You have to disable this in about:config to see the behind the scenes jankiness. Edge and Chrome (on windows) are slower than Chromium / Firefox on Linux for me but still faster than Firefox on Windows. On Linux Chrome is faster than Firefox, but barely. IPython notebooks render seamlessly when scrolled in Chrome but the rendering is laggy in Firefox. Machine spec: AMD 5800X Ryzen, 64GB RAM, 1TB Samsung Evo NVME SSD, NVIDIA 1660 Ti GPU
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Let me make sure I understand what you're putting out here. Google's web site, YouTube, which they have demonstrably gimped in Firefox at times, has a slightly nicer "window to full screen" transition in Chrome (a Google browser) than Firefox. I just compared it on Windows (Core i5 13400 64GB, AMD 6600, 1080p) in FF versus Chrome and the transition is.... I don't know, a hair faster on Chrome? I don't even know what is "janky" about the Firefox version. I might even say it looks a little nicer in Firefox because of that fade. If I was to describe what I'm feeling right now, I think "exasperation" would be the closest word but that doesn't really begin to describe how frustrating that sort of "evidence" for Chrome's superiority is. I don't have a Linux desktop environment at the moment to compare the rest.
    - rational_indian 3y ago
      > I don't even know what is "janky" about the Firefox version It is a bit too slow for me (tries my patience). Also Firefox does a weird multi-step transition to full-screen in which it changes to an intermediate video size which is larger than the current video size but smaller than the whole screen. I may be hallucinating this since I don't use Windows that often. I think the Firefox team agrees with me since they felt the need for a fade to/from black screen animation. > If I was to describe what I'm feeling right now, I think "exasperation" would be the closest word but that doesn't really begin to describe how frustrating that sort of "evidence" for Chrome's superiority is. I get that but I also provided a non-google example. Jupyter notebook on Firefox is laggy too (regardless of OS).

It was[0] excruciatingly slow on 32 bit Linux too. Had to use an alternative lightweight browser most of the time, but some sites worked only with FF (eg banking and such). There was no alternative for these sites, as no Chromium or MS browser supported 32 bit Linux. There was plenty of lightweight browsers that would work with anything else than these (very few) sites though. I've read somewhere that FF will soon no longer support 32 bit at all (if it has not happened already) [0] Probably still is. "Was" because the most used keys on the keyboard of my 32-bit 12 YO laptop went fubar around half a year ago, so I had to go 64 bit only for a while until I got a replacement KB. I've not used FF on the 32 bit machine since.

JohnBooty 3y ago

Is Chrome "slow" for you on Windows as well? Because Firefox beats it or is within ~50% on every benchmark I can find. Can you talk about what kinds of sites are slow in Windows or what kind of machine you're running? I've been doing full-stack development since the 90s using a range of browsers and I just don't feel the FF performance issues that others swear are a problem.

rational_indian 3y ago
YouTube is particularly janky on Firefox on Windows. For example the full screen transition on Firefox uses a fade to / from black screen animation to hide the sluggishness. You have to disable this in about:config to see the behind the scenes jankiness. Edge and Chrome (on windows) are slower than Chromium / Firefox on Linux for me but still faster than Firefox on Windows. On Linux Chrome is faster than Firefox, but barely. IPython notebooks render seamlessly when scrolled in Chrome but the rendering is laggy in Firefox. Machine spec: AMD 5800X Ryzen, 64GB RAM, 1TB Samsung Evo NVME SSD, NVIDIA 1660 Ti GPU
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Let me make sure I understand what you're putting out here. Google's web site, YouTube, which they have demonstrably gimped in Firefox at times, has a slightly nicer "window to full screen" transition in Chrome (a Google browser) than Firefox. I just compared it on Windows (Core i5 13400 64GB, AMD 6600, 1080p) in FF versus Chrome and the transition is.... I don't know, a hair faster on Chrome? I don't even know what is "janky" about the Firefox version. I might even say it looks a little nicer in Firefox because of that fade. If I was to describe what I'm feeling right now, I think "exasperation" would be the closest word but that doesn't really begin to describe how frustrating that sort of "evidence" for Chrome's superiority is. I don't have a Linux desktop environment at the moment to compare the rest.
  - rational_indian 3y ago
    > I don't even know what is "janky" about the Firefox version It is a bit too slow for me (tries my patience). Also Firefox does a weird multi-step transition to full-screen in which it changes to an intermediate video size which is larger than the current video size but smaller than the whole screen. I may be hallucinating this since I don't use Windows that often. I think the Firefox team agrees with me since they felt the need for a fade to/from black screen animation. > If I was to describe what I'm feeling right now, I think "exasperation" would be the closest word but that doesn't really begin to describe how frustrating that sort of "evidence" for Chrome's superiority is. I get that but I also provided a non-google example. Jupyter notebook on Firefox is laggy too (regardless of OS).