8 ms·

Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display

59 points by twapi 14y ago

mh- 14y ago
yeah, no. Just downloaded it. http://i.imgur.com/pbGvv.png http://i.imgur.com/pbGvv.png whole thing looks like this.
- melling 14y ago
  Has it been fully implemented? The bug says that it's resolved. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674373 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674373
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    In Mozilla's bug workflow, RESOLVED FIXED means the fix has been checked into Firefox's Mercurial trunk (the "mozilla-central" branch), but the fix won't be available for testing until the next Nightly build. VERIFIED FIXED means QA has tested the Nightly build and confirmed the bug has been fixed.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jonchang 14y ago
  That's because it's not in today's (Sept 29) build yet. It'll be in tomorrow's build. Today's nightly: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c09a0c022b2e http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c09a0c022b2e Last retina changeset: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d3de8da2508 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d3de8da2508 Shortlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/shortlog https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/shortlog
yottabyte47 14y ago
Firefox is at v18? Last I knew it was at v5. Guess they didn't waste any time in their quest to catch up with Chrome.
- azakai 14y ago
  That joke never gets old, let's keep saying it every time a Chrome or Firefox version comes out! (Or like here, just because a Chrome or Firefox version number was mentioned in a random article.)
  - shocks 14y ago
    Joke aside, this whole rapid release thing is irritating when it requires me to restart my browser all the time.
    - abrowne 14y ago
      You would otherwise restart your browser less frequently than every six weeks?
    - notatoad 14y ago
      Pretty sure silent updates got rolled out around v15.
    - azakai 14y ago
      No browser AFAIK has the ability to patch a running process (it's very hard to do in general, but there are some ways to do it to a linux kernel for example). So you must restart to actually run the downloaded updates. Which means until you restart, you are running an unpatched browser which might have known exploits.
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        If each tab is a separate process, they could be upgraded one by one. You could even signal to each tab that it should open all links in a new process. Browsers are probably the app you could most easily transparently upgrade.
        kevingadd 14y ago
        Not correct. Multiprocess browsers like Chrome don't actually run an entire browser in each process (that isn't realistically possible) because the individual tabs need to collaborate for the proper functioning of things like caches, cookies, etc.
listic 14y ago
What is there in a higher-resolution display that actually needs software support from Mozilla?
- cmelbye 14y ago
  More pixels..? Apps that aren't updated are pixel doubled, so images, and in some cases text, are jaggy and blurry until they're updated.
- cheald 14y ago
  I'm not sure, but the entire application looks pixelated and blurry, like it's rendered at half-size and scaled up. It's really bizarre.
- keeperofdakeys 14y ago
  Applications need to be 'retina aware' to actually get the full resolution, otherwise they are told the resolution is 1440x900 (this doesn't include fonts, and other system-rendered features, which the OS can always render at full resolution). The program icons also need to be shipped in a higher resolution.
- asadotzler 14y ago
  Apple does something called pixel doubling. If an application takes no action, it won't just be rendered smaller. Instead, Apple zooms the whole app, causing everything to get very fuzzy.
phoboslab 14y ago
Can anyone with a retina display and the Firefox nightly check this test case for Canvas, please: http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/backingstore/ http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/backingstore/ I hope they didn't screw it up as bad as Apple did with Safari: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/drawing-pixels-is-hard http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/drawing-pixels-is-hard Edit: judging from some comments in the source, the Canvas element still uses a low resolution, so the test case should work as expected in any case.
- tathagata 14y ago
  I just tested this and unfortunately the test case doesn't pass on the nightly. I am seeing (252,40,252) instead of the (255,0,255).
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    Doesn't work in Firefox on Windows either, so maybe the test case is just broken? I see (0,0,0),(212,52,248)
  - chmars 14y ago
    Same here: (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 as downloaded and installed just a few minutes ago.
- paulrouget 14y ago
  Retina support is not in Nightly yet. But very very soon (if not today, tomorrow).
cheald 14y ago
About frickin' time. Firefox looks horrible on retina Macbooks right now, to the point that it's unusable.
- teilo 14y ago
  Relative term, and totally subjective. I have an rMBP, and use Firefox (as well as InDesign) all the time, and it's not horrible. If your entire screen looked that way, you wouldn't even notice.
  - cheald 14y ago
    Maybe yours does something that mine doesn't, but here's a screenshot: http://cl.ly/image/2O2K1g411N3l/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-29%20at%208.52.31%20PM.png http://cl.ly/image/2O2K1g411N3l/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-29%2... Left is Firefox, right is Chrome. Nothing special done to either. MBP is at the factory resolution. Very ironically, the screenshot at half-size looks better on my 24" Windows display than it does on the actual MBP does, presumably as Chrome is doing some resampling to downsize it. Look at it at full zoom to see what I mean. I'm doing active web development on a number of browsers across a number of devices (Macs, Windows, iOS, Android), and Firefox on the Mac is easily the worst of the lot, by a rather large margin. I would easily notice if the whole screen looked like it - text is blurry and awfully aliased, to the point that it's jarring to read. I spend most of my time on Windows, which by most accounts has less beautiful text rendering than OS X, and switching over to Firefox on the rMBP feels just awful. Given that I spend 99% of my day looking at a 94 DPI screen, I don't think it's too much to ask that the same application on my 220 DPI display not look like I'm playing Minecraft.
    - kevingadd 14y ago
      It's pixel-doubled like every other non-native-Retina app on your Mac. Why is it Firefox's problem if Apple didn't bother to go to the trouble of making non-Retina applications readable on a Retina display? The fact that they don't even bother to do filtering when pixel doubling is probably a big contributor to readability issues (note that Vista and W7 do filtering when doing DPI adjustment, likely for this exact reason), not to mention the fact that it appears to be doing subpixel antialiasing when there are no subpixels to address (WTF, Apple?)
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is fabulous, now if I could get it for the iPad, tell it to lie about what kind of device I was so that I would not be stuck with the 'mobile' version of Gmail. That would be a usability win.
- eurleif 14y ago
  Gmail's mobile version has links at the bottom: 'View Gmail in: Mobile | Older version | desktop'
navs 14y ago
So do Retina apps mean we now have to deal with larger software packages, even if we don't have retina displays?
- chmars 14y ago
  I guess so, same as on iOS devices. The example of iOS, however, shows that Retina will become the standard sooner or later … :)
akurilin 14y ago
I wonder at what kind of resolution we will no longer need anti-aliasing. Did they provide any Retina screenshots with AA off? You'd think that with small enough of a pixel it would no longer be necessary.
- cpach 14y ago
  I think I managed to downvote you by mistake. Sorry…
- tathagata 14y ago
  Not there yet. I turned off AA in the Terminal and it looks smooth, but not completely. If I use a lower scaled resolution like 1440x900, then it looks even smoother, but again not completely smooth. So I guess an even higher dpi is needed. It would be interesting to see non-antialiased fonts on the iPhone which has a much higher dpi.
- Retric 14y ago
  There is no clear cut answer to that. Even at 10,000ppi you can still get visual artifacts without anti-aliasing. The problem is pixles are averaging a single point source over a 'full' pixel so with some patterns they can become vary sensitive to slight motions. Think chain link fence, all the pixels could be on the fence and it looks solid, or between them and it looks clear, and if your rotation it can swap between them.
Aardwolf 14y ago
Why do you need "support" for a screen resolution? PC's have had different screen resolutions forever, why were there never news articles about "Firefox Gets Support For 1280x1024" or "Firefox Gets Support For 1920x1200"?
- ringm 14y ago
  1920x1200 does not equal high dpi. Think 1920x1200 on a 10" display. If your app runs on a high DPI screen, and the OS and your app has no support for this, all fonts and UI elements become tiny, which is unacceptable. Windows XP had abysmal support for high DPI which usually resulted in broken UI layout. Vista introduced "DPI virtualization" requiring you to declare and provide explicit support for variable dpi in your application. Otherwise it is run at 96 DPI and raster scaling is applied. This prevents any UI layout issues but results in a a blurry image. I guess Apple uses the same approach: if your app has no explicit support, it runs under raster scaling.
chmars 14y ago
OT: When does HN upgrade it's voting arrows for Retina displays?
- chrisdroukas 14y ago
  Preferably it would be CSS. .upArrow { width: 0; height: 0; border-left: 6px solid transparent; border-right: 6px solid transparent; border-bottom: 6px solid #828282; }
  - chmars 14y ago
    CSS is fine with me. On the desktop, we could even replace the non-Retina arrows with own CSS and images, however, Safari on iOS doesn't offer this possibility.
lawnchair_larry 14y ago
I'm confused about this. I've been running the sept 11 Nightly and it has retina support. Did they take it out, and this is just about re-adding it? Prior to that I used the "retinizer" app and the about:config hack to disable acceleration, but performance was really bad. Since running nightly, it has been fully retina enabled and smooth.

59 points by twapi 14y ago

mh- 14y ago

yeah, no. Just downloaded it. http://i.imgur.com/pbGvv.png http://i.imgur.com/pbGvv.png whole thing looks like this.

melling 14y ago
Has it been fully implemented? The bug says that it's resolved. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674373 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674373
- cpeterso 14y ago
  In Mozilla's bug workflow, RESOLVED FIXED means the fix has been checked into Firefox's Mercurial trunk (the "mozilla-central" branch), but the fix won't be available for testing until the next Nightly build. VERIFIED FIXED means QA has tested the Nightly build and confirmed the bug has been fixed.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jonchang 14y ago
That's because it's not in today's (Sept 29) build yet. It'll be in tomorrow's build. Today's nightly: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c09a0c022b2e http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c09a0c022b2e Last retina changeset: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d3de8da2508 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d3de8da2508 Shortlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/shortlog https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/shortlog

yottabyte47 14y ago

Firefox is at v18? Last I knew it was at v5. Guess they didn't waste any time in their quest to catch up with Chrome.

azakai 14y ago
That joke never gets old, let's keep saying it every time a Chrome or Firefox version comes out! (Or like here, just because a Chrome or Firefox version number was mentioned in a random article.)
- shocks 14y ago
  Joke aside, this whole rapid release thing is irritating when it requires me to restart my browser all the time.
  - abrowne 14y ago
    You would otherwise restart your browser less frequently than every six weeks?
  - notatoad 14y ago
    Pretty sure silent updates got rolled out around v15.
  - azakai 14y ago
    No browser AFAIK has the ability to patch a running process (it's very hard to do in general, but there are some ways to do it to a linux kernel for example). So you must restart to actually run the downloaded updates. Which means until you restart, you are running an unpatched browser which might have known exploits.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      If each tab is a separate process, they could be upgraded one by one. You could even signal to each tab that it should open all links in a new process. Browsers are probably the app you could most easily transparently upgrade.
      - kevingadd 14y ago
        Not correct. Multiprocess browsers like Chrome don't actually run an entire browser in each process (that isn't realistically possible) because the individual tabs need to collaborate for the proper functioning of things like caches, cookies, etc.

listic 14y ago

What is there in a higher-resolution display that actually needs software support from Mozilla?

cmelbye 14y ago
More pixels..? Apps that aren't updated are pixel doubled, so images, and in some cases text, are jaggy and blurry until they're updated.
cheald 14y ago
I'm not sure, but the entire application looks pixelated and blurry, like it's rendered at half-size and scaled up. It's really bizarre.
keeperofdakeys 14y ago
Applications need to be 'retina aware' to actually get the full resolution, otherwise they are told the resolution is 1440x900 (this doesn't include fonts, and other system-rendered features, which the OS can always render at full resolution). The program icons also need to be shipped in a higher resolution.
asadotzler 14y ago
Apple does something called pixel doubling. If an application takes no action, it won't just be rendered smaller. Instead, Apple zooms the whole app, causing everything to get very fuzzy.

phoboslab 14y ago

Can anyone with a retina display and the Firefox nightly check this test case for Canvas, please: http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/backingstore/ http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/backingstore/ I hope they didn't screw it up as bad as Apple did with Safari: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/drawing-pixels-is-hard http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/drawing-pixels-is-hard Edit: judging from some comments in the source, the Canvas element still uses a low resolution, so the test case should work as expected in any case.

tathagata 14y ago
I just tested this and unfortunately the test case doesn't pass on the nightly. I am seeing (252,40,252) instead of the (255,0,255).
- kevingadd 14y ago
  Doesn't work in Firefox on Windows either, so maybe the test case is just broken? I see (0,0,0),(212,52,248)
- chmars 14y ago
  Same here: (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), (0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252), (252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0),(252,40,252),(0,0,0), Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 as downloaded and installed just a few minutes ago.
paulrouget 14y ago
Retina support is not in Nightly yet. But very very soon (if not today, tomorrow).

cheald 14y ago

About frickin' time. Firefox looks horrible on retina Macbooks right now, to the point that it's unusable.

teilo 14y ago
Relative term, and totally subjective. I have an rMBP, and use Firefox (as well as InDesign) all the time, and it's not horrible. If your entire screen looked that way, you wouldn't even notice.
- cheald 14y ago
  Maybe yours does something that mine doesn't, but here's a screenshot: http://cl.ly/image/2O2K1g411N3l/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-29%20at%208.52.31%20PM.png http://cl.ly/image/2O2K1g411N3l/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-29%2... Left is Firefox, right is Chrome. Nothing special done to either. MBP is at the factory resolution. Very ironically, the screenshot at half-size looks better on my 24" Windows display than it does on the actual MBP does, presumably as Chrome is doing some resampling to downsize it. Look at it at full zoom to see what I mean. I'm doing active web development on a number of browsers across a number of devices (Macs, Windows, iOS, Android), and Firefox on the Mac is easily the worst of the lot, by a rather large margin. I would easily notice if the whole screen looked like it - text is blurry and awfully aliased, to the point that it's jarring to read. I spend most of my time on Windows, which by most accounts has less beautiful text rendering than OS X, and switching over to Firefox on the rMBP feels just awful. Given that I spend 99% of my day looking at a 94 DPI screen, I don't think it's too much to ask that the same application on my 220 DPI display not look like I'm playing Minecraft.
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    It's pixel-doubled like every other non-native-Retina app on your Mac. Why is it Firefox's problem if Apple didn't bother to go to the trouble of making non-Retina applications readable on a Retina display? The fact that they don't even bother to do filtering when pixel doubling is probably a big contributor to readability issues (note that Vista and W7 do filtering when doing DPI adjustment, likely for this exact reason), not to mention the fact that it appears to be doing subpixel antialiasing when there are no subpixels to address (WTF, Apple?)

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is fabulous, now if I could get it for the iPad, tell it to lie about what kind of device I was so that I would not be stuck with the 'mobile' version of Gmail. That would be a usability win.

eurleif 14y ago
Gmail's mobile version has links at the bottom: 'View Gmail in: Mobile | Older version | desktop'

navs 14y ago

So do Retina apps mean we now have to deal with larger software packages, even if we don't have retina displays?

chmars 14y ago
I guess so, same as on iOS devices. The example of iOS, however, shows that Retina will become the standard sooner or later … :)

akurilin 14y ago

I wonder at what kind of resolution we will no longer need anti-aliasing. Did they provide any Retina screenshots with AA off? You'd think that with small enough of a pixel it would no longer be necessary.

cpach 14y ago
I think I managed to downvote you by mistake. Sorry…
tathagata 14y ago
Not there yet. I turned off AA in the Terminal and it looks smooth, but not completely. If I use a lower scaled resolution like 1440x900, then it looks even smoother, but again not completely smooth. So I guess an even higher dpi is needed. It would be interesting to see non-antialiased fonts on the iPhone which has a much higher dpi.
Retric 14y ago
There is no clear cut answer to that. Even at 10,000ppi you can still get visual artifacts without anti-aliasing. The problem is pixles are averaging a single point source over a 'full' pixel so with some patterns they can become vary sensitive to slight motions. Think chain link fence, all the pixels could be on the fence and it looks solid, or between them and it looks clear, and if your rotation it can swap between them.

Aardwolf 14y ago

Why do you need "support" for a screen resolution? PC's have had different screen resolutions forever, why were there never news articles about "Firefox Gets Support For 1280x1024" or "Firefox Gets Support For 1920x1200"?

ringm 14y ago
1920x1200 does not equal high dpi. Think 1920x1200 on a 10" display. If your app runs on a high DPI screen, and the OS and your app has no support for this, all fonts and UI elements become tiny, which is unacceptable. Windows XP had abysmal support for high DPI which usually resulted in broken UI layout. Vista introduced "DPI virtualization" requiring you to declare and provide explicit support for variable dpi in your application. Otherwise it is run at 96 DPI and raster scaling is applied. This prevents any UI layout issues but results in a a blurry image. I guess Apple uses the same approach: if your app has no explicit support, it runs under raster scaling.

chmars 14y ago

OT: When does HN upgrade it's voting arrows for Retina displays?

chrisdroukas 14y ago
Preferably it would be CSS. .upArrow { width: 0; height: 0; border-left: 6px solid transparent; border-right: 6px solid transparent; border-bottom: 6px solid #828282; }
- chmars 14y ago
  CSS is fine with me. On the desktop, we could even replace the non-Retina arrows with own CSS and images, however, Safari on iOS doesn't offer this possibility.

lawnchair_larry 14y ago

I'm confused about this. I've been running the sept 11 Nightly and it has retina support. Did they take it out, and this is just about re-adding it? Prior to that I used the "retinizer" app and the about:config hack to disable acceleration, but performance was really bad. Since running nightly, it has been fully retina enabled and smooth.