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Mobile Firefox: Measuring how a browser feels

85 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

pfraze 14y ago
Speaking of Mozilla mobile, make sure you see this talk [1] on their recent product designs. Don't know if this article's android browser is the same as the ios browser in the talk, but the ios browser looks great. [1] https://air.mozilla.org/product-design-at-mozilla/ https://air.mozilla.org/product-design-at-mozilla/
- mbrubeck 14y ago
  The "Junior" browser in that talk is a prototype built recently by the design team; it does not share any code with Firefox for Android.
  - pfraze 14y ago
    Ah, ok. Well I hope they run with it, because it looks pretty awesome.
- wslh 14y ago
  Opera mobile works better. For example, neither Firefox nor Chrome work well when I try to submit an item on HN. I am talking about the Android platform
  - wslh 14y ago
    Stupid downvote. I write a fact and someone prefers fallacies
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
lucianm 14y ago
Let's hope they will do the same thing on Mac. Maybe they can get some tips from Camino team.
ender7 14y ago
This is a really good step forward, but it's disappointing to see the author using FPS to measure UI responsiveness (I've harped on this before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777058 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777058). While FPS is a decent measure of performance in constant-load applications such as the fishbowl, it's really, really bad for sporadic-load applications such as most UIs. For measuring UI responsiveness, you should really use frame delay, which is the greatest elapsed time between any two concurrent frames during a UI event. If your swipe gesture has a frame delay above ~33ms, it will look bad, even if your measured framerate is ~30fps.
- Retric 14y ago
  One of the big problems with frame delay is it tends to round up. On a 60FPS device 30.1FPS generally means you miss one out of every 2 refreshes. But a 35ms frame delay and you missed 2 refreshes and can even lose 3 which is ~100ms and rather noticeable.
  - ender7 14y ago
    True, but having 30.1FPS doesn't protect you from that phenomenon either. If you maintain 30.1FPS over a long period of time, it means that, yes, you generally get one out of every 2 refreshes. The problem is that UI interaction events can take place over very short stretches -- say ~200ms. That's only a handful of frames, which reduces the quality of any metric that relies of averages (such as FPS). I don't really care if I get 1 out of every 2 refreshes as measured over 2 or 3 minutes, I care about the first 5 frames after I swipe the screen.
densh 14y ago
I don't know if it's a good place to ask this question but what happend to Firefox for Android tablets? I hasn't been updated for some time. Can developers share any details about that?
- sp332 14y ago
  According to http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox-for-android-may-become-your-favorite-android-browser/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox-for-... it's still in active development but isn't yet feature-complete.
  - AaronMT 14y ago
    Right. We currently don't support tablets in this release as development did not finish in time for this '1.0' style release. Fortunately, you can test out Nightly (our developer oriented release channel) which has some tablet-optimized changes available for download at http://nightly.mozilla.org http://nightly.mozilla.org [I'm a Mozilla QA Engineer]

85 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

Speaking of Mozilla mobile, make sure you see this talk [1] on their recent product designs. Don't know if this article's android browser is the same as the ios browser in the talk, but the ios browser looks great. [1] https://air.mozilla.org/product-design-at-mozilla/ https://air.mozilla.org/product-design-at-mozilla/

mbrubeck 14y ago
The "Junior" browser in that talk is a prototype built recently by the design team; it does not share any code with Firefox for Android.
- pfraze 14y ago
  Ah, ok. Well I hope they run with it, because it looks pretty awesome.
wslh 14y ago
Opera mobile works better. For example, neither Firefox nor Chrome work well when I try to submit an item on HN. I am talking about the Android platform
- wslh 14y ago
  Stupid downvote. I write a fact and someone prefers fallacies
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

lucianm 14y ago

Let's hope they will do the same thing on Mac. Maybe they can get some tips from Camino team.

ender7 14y ago

This is a really good step forward, but it's disappointing to see the author using FPS to measure UI responsiveness (I've harped on this before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777058 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777058). While FPS is a decent measure of performance in constant-load applications such as the fishbowl, it's really, really bad for sporadic-load applications such as most UIs. For measuring UI responsiveness, you should really use frame delay, which is the greatest elapsed time between any two concurrent frames during a UI event. If your swipe gesture has a frame delay above ~33ms, it will look bad, even if your measured framerate is ~30fps.

Retric 14y ago
One of the big problems with frame delay is it tends to round up. On a 60FPS device 30.1FPS generally means you miss one out of every 2 refreshes. But a 35ms frame delay and you missed 2 refreshes and can even lose 3 which is ~100ms and rather noticeable.
- ender7 14y ago
  True, but having 30.1FPS doesn't protect you from that phenomenon either. If you maintain 30.1FPS over a long period of time, it means that, yes, you generally get one out of every 2 refreshes. The problem is that UI interaction events can take place over very short stretches -- say ~200ms. That's only a handful of frames, which reduces the quality of any metric that relies of averages (such as FPS). I don't really care if I get 1 out of every 2 refreshes as measured over 2 or 3 minutes, I care about the first 5 frames after I swipe the screen.

densh 14y ago

I don't know if it's a good place to ask this question but what happend to Firefox for Android tablets? I hasn't been updated for some time. Can developers share any details about that?

sp332 14y ago
According to http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox-for-android-may-become-your-favorite-android-browser/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/hands-on-firefox-for-... it's still in active development but isn't yet feature-complete.
- AaronMT 14y ago
  Right. We currently don't support tablets in this release as development did not finish in time for this '1.0' style release. Fortunately, you can test out Nightly (our developer oriented release channel) which has some tablet-optimized changes available for download at http://nightly.mozilla.org http://nightly.mozilla.org [I'm a Mozilla QA Engineer]