5 ms·

Firefox 13 Beta Turns On the ‘SPDY’

69 points by Kenan 14y ago

aluhut 14y ago
I would love to have an old school version. Slim and "let me design it the way I want".
- icebraining 14y ago
  You mean, of the browser? You could try uzbl; the core part doesn't even have an URL bar: http://www.uzbl.org/ http://www.uzbl.org/
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  What exactly do you want taken out? I think if you hop back to when FF was truly slim (say, v1.5) you'll discover the Good Ol' Days(tm) weren't quite as rosy as you thought.
HeXetic 14y ago
Kinda crummy article to mention that SPDY is actually present in earlier Firefox versions, but just turned off. How about telling us how we can turn it on?
- HeXetic 14y ago
  I looked it up: In Firefox 11 and newer, punch in about:config in the URL bar, then find network.http.spdy.enabled and turn it on.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Basically everything is in about:config, and it has a search function. I don't think it's crummy of the article to not mention the exact details.
goatforce5 14y ago
I'm a little unclear on how SPDY works. Is it correct that it only speeds up HTTPS connections? Does that mean you need to redirect traffic for: http://example.com/ http://example.com/ to: https://example.com/ https://example.com/ before you know if the client has SPDY support enabled?
- wmf 14y ago
  No. If both the browser and server support SPDY, all http: and https: URLs will go over SPDY, and SPDY is encrypted. So even http: URLs that look unencrypted are actually being secured "by accident".
  - modeless 14y ago
    This is not true. Only HTTPS URLs get SPDY. Perhaps you're thinking of HTTP Strict Transport Security, which transforms HTTP URLS to HTTPS on the client. You can see whether you're getting SPDY or not (in Chrome) at chrome://net-internals/#events&q=type:SPDY_SESSION%20is:active One reason for this is that proxies and other buggy/evil bit-twiddlers in the path of your connection don't understand SPDY, so the only way to punch SPDY through them is to use a protocol they're not allowed to meddle with.
    - wmf 14y ago
      I can't find any documentation to corroborate that. The draft 2 spec mentions HTTP several times: "...it should be used in preference to HTTP/HTTPS. ... all HTTP requests can "piggyback" on an existing SPDY session. ... all future http requests to that host port pair should use the SPDY session rather than opening a new HTTP connection." http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol/spdy-protocol-draft2#TOC-Deployment http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol/spdy-protocol-dra... (Curiously, the deployment section is completely missing from draft 3 and the IETF version.) If Chrome does something different, I wonder why.
      - modeless 14y ago
        Interesting, I hadn't seen that part of the spec. Since it was removed from later drafts, perhaps there was some objection. It's clearly not implemented on google.com. Edit: Chrome and Firefox do appear to contain support for the Alternate-Protocol header described in Draft 2 of the spec, so it does appear possible to configure your server to tell them to send HTTP:80 requests over SPDY:443 instead. However, this does not allow one to use SPDY without encryption, and it does not add significant security to plain HTTP since the first request is still unencrypted. After further research, while Alternate-Protocol is implemented, it appears that it might not end up being standardized due to security concerns. I wouldn't rely on it.
cosmotron 14y ago
The Tabs-on-demand feature that the article mentions... isn't that the "don't load tabs until selected" feature that has been around since FF9?
- zobzu 14y ago
  nah it will load tabs that you open in the background without that option, even in FF13 but if you restart the browser, it won't, ONLY for the tabs it restores at startup. Means basically if you open a tab via click or contextual menu and u don't have "only load tabs when selected" it WILL load the tab. But when you restart the browser (or start) with your 100tabs, it will only load the first one. Before that itd both be slow if you had a bad connection and be slow (obviously no browser can instant-render 100 pages)
  - terhechte 14y ago
    I'm currently downloading FF13 only because of that feature. I always have 100+ tabs open, and oftentimes, when a browser is "full" (i.e., too many tabs) I switch to another browser until I have time to clean up the mess. There were situations where Chrome, Safari, and Opera were "full". Really looking forward to this new feature.
amix 14y ago
The team behind nginx plan to roll out SPDY support at the end of May [1]. Will align nice with Firefox's support for SPDY! [1] https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/192301063934705665 https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/192301063934705665
justauser 14y ago
Microsoft has submitted a proposal that is interesting for a few reasons. The requirement for encryption is optional and also the API/framing is closer to Websockets. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mobility-01 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mo... If encryption is required, I can see many complaining about the burden of certificates. Will this finally drive an alternate solution such as Moxie Marlinspike's Convergence project to help us do away with the certificate authorities? Also, I can see a huge increase in the number of IP addresses unless some serious progress is made with SNI. On the otherhand, that might finally open the floodgates for widespread IPv6 adoption.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  That proposal has a pile of problems: http://www.belshe.com/2012/03/29/comments-on-microsofts-spdy-proposal/ http://www.belshe.com/2012/03/29/comments-on-microsofts-spdy...
  - justauser 14y ago
    Yes it does. As does the original proposal and I mentioned some issues in my post.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Shame there isn't a SPDY test site I can find. spdytest.com, by the way, does not run over SPDY. It's a plain HTTP/HTTPS site.
- deno 14y ago
  Google and its suite of apps all use SPDY. Works great on Firefox Aurora. Get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicator/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicato... FWIW, a screenshot: http://static.deno.pl/pub/hn/spdy-firefox.png http://static.deno.pl/pub/hn/spdy-firefox.png
  - vetinari 14y ago
    Most of Google apps use SPDY, but for some reason, ipv6.google.com does not.

69 points by Kenan 14y ago

aluhut 14y ago

I would love to have an old school version. Slim and "let me design it the way I want".

icebraining 14y ago
You mean, of the browser? You could try uzbl; the core part doesn't even have an URL bar: http://www.uzbl.org/ http://www.uzbl.org/
sliverstorm 14y ago
What exactly do you want taken out? I think if you hop back to when FF was truly slim (say, v1.5) you'll discover the Good Ol' Days(tm) weren't quite as rosy as you thought.

HeXetic 14y ago

Kinda crummy article to mention that SPDY is actually present in earlier Firefox versions, but just turned off. How about telling us how we can turn it on?

HeXetic 14y ago
I looked it up: In Firefox 11 and newer, punch in about:config in the URL bar, then find network.http.spdy.enabled and turn it on.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  Basically everything is in about:config, and it has a search function. I don't think it's crummy of the article to not mention the exact details.

goatforce5 14y ago

I'm a little unclear on how SPDY works. Is it correct that it only speeds up HTTPS connections? Does that mean you need to redirect traffic for: http://example.com/ http://example.com/ to: https://example.com/ https://example.com/ before you know if the client has SPDY support enabled?

wmf 14y ago
No. If both the browser and server support SPDY, all http: and https: URLs will go over SPDY, and SPDY is encrypted. So even http: URLs that look unencrypted are actually being secured "by accident".
- modeless 14y ago
  This is not true. Only HTTPS URLs get SPDY. Perhaps you're thinking of HTTP Strict Transport Security, which transforms HTTP URLS to HTTPS on the client. You can see whether you're getting SPDY or not (in Chrome) at chrome://net-internals/#events&q=type:SPDY_SESSION%20is:active One reason for this is that proxies and other buggy/evil bit-twiddlers in the path of your connection don't understand SPDY, so the only way to punch SPDY through them is to use a protocol they're not allowed to meddle with.
  - wmf 14y ago
    I can't find any documentation to corroborate that. The draft 2 spec mentions HTTP several times: "...it should be used in preference to HTTP/HTTPS. ... all HTTP requests can "piggyback" on an existing SPDY session. ... all future http requests to that host port pair should use the SPDY session rather than opening a new HTTP connection." http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol/spdy-protocol-draft2#TOC-Deployment http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol/spdy-protocol-dra... (Curiously, the deployment section is completely missing from draft 3 and the IETF version.) If Chrome does something different, I wonder why.
    - modeless 14y ago
      Interesting, I hadn't seen that part of the spec. Since it was removed from later drafts, perhaps there was some objection. It's clearly not implemented on google.com. Edit: Chrome and Firefox do appear to contain support for the Alternate-Protocol header described in Draft 2 of the spec, so it does appear possible to configure your server to tell them to send HTTP:80 requests over SPDY:443 instead. However, this does not allow one to use SPDY without encryption, and it does not add significant security to plain HTTP since the first request is still unencrypted. After further research, while Alternate-Protocol is implemented, it appears that it might not end up being standardized due to security concerns. I wouldn't rely on it.

cosmotron 14y ago

The Tabs-on-demand feature that the article mentions... isn't that the "don't load tabs until selected" feature that has been around since FF9?

zobzu 14y ago
nah it will load tabs that you open in the background without that option, even in FF13 but if you restart the browser, it won't, ONLY for the tabs it restores at startup. Means basically if you open a tab via click or contextual menu and u don't have "only load tabs when selected" it WILL load the tab. But when you restart the browser (or start) with your 100tabs, it will only load the first one. Before that itd both be slow if you had a bad connection and be slow (obviously no browser can instant-render 100 pages)
- terhechte 14y ago
  I'm currently downloading FF13 only because of that feature. I always have 100+ tabs open, and oftentimes, when a browser is "full" (i.e., too many tabs) I switch to another browser until I have time to clean up the mess. There were situations where Chrome, Safari, and Opera were "full". Really looking forward to this new feature.

amix 14y ago

The team behind nginx plan to roll out SPDY support at the end of May [1]. Will align nice with Firefox's support for SPDY! [1] https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/192301063934705665 https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/192301063934705665

justauser 14y ago

Microsoft has submitted a proposal that is interesting for a few reasons. The requirement for encryption is optional and also the API/framing is closer to Websockets. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mobility-01 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-httpbis-speed-mo... If encryption is required, I can see many complaining about the burden of certificates. Will this finally drive an alternate solution such as Moxie Marlinspike's Convergence project to help us do away with the certificate authorities? Also, I can see a huge increase in the number of IP addresses unless some serious progress is made with SNI. On the otherhand, that might finally open the floodgates for widespread IPv6 adoption.

JoshTriplett 14y ago
That proposal has a pile of problems: http://www.belshe.com/2012/03/29/comments-on-microsofts-spdy-proposal/ http://www.belshe.com/2012/03/29/comments-on-microsofts-spdy...
- justauser 14y ago
  Yes it does. As does the original proposal and I mentioned some issues in my post.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

Shame there isn't a SPDY test site I can find. spdytest.com, by the way, does not run over SPDY. It's a plain HTTP/HTTPS site.

deno 14y ago
Google and its suite of apps all use SPDY. Works great on Firefox Aurora. Get this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicator/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicato... FWIW, a screenshot: http://static.deno.pl/pub/hn/spdy-firefox.png http://static.deno.pl/pub/hn/spdy-firefox.png
- vetinari 14y ago
  Most of Google apps use SPDY, but for some reason, ipv6.google.com does not.