4 ms·

I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower. I wonder if thats related to OSX. Regardless, I agree with the move 100%. Thanksfully, while Fire

by zobzu 12y ago

I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower. I wonder if thats related to OSX. Regardless, I agree with the move 100%. Thanksfully, while Firefox may not be the best, its very good/useable for everything. If ever it isnt good enough anymore and there is no other replacement - this is when we'll really be cornered

badloginagain 12y ago
I've tested Opera a bunch, I was pleasantly surprised with it's performance. I haven't given it a dedicated run though. If I find 'Zilla performance to be a continuing issue, I might give Opera a real chance.
jonnyscholes 12y ago
I uninstalled AdBlock after reading this[0] and found it really did make a difference. Esp on sites that loaded a dozen odd ads in different locations [news sites I'm looking at you]. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus...
shakeel_mohamed 12y ago
I've had performance issues with Firefox all the way back to Firefox 3 on Windows. The perf issues don't depend on the OS, in my experience.
adrusi 12y ago
I agree that it might be OS X related. I switched from Chrome to Firefox about a year ago, while I was still using Mac. I did notice a minor performance drop, though not enough to be too upset about. Since December I've been using Linux full time and haven't noticed any lack of performance from Firefox. I tried Chromium about a month ago to see how it would hold up, and didn't notice any performance boost over Firefox. Granted, I am also using different machine with similar but newer processor and (integrated) graphics hardware, I am using a several-versions newer Firefox than I was last year (I was running v27 nightlies at the time and now I run v29 stable). Still I think that some performance drop in Firefox on OS X might be attributable to a lower-performing graphical backend.
- zobzu 12y ago
  So due to this I tried Firefox on OSX and its not all that good indeed. I use Firefox on Windows and Linux where I have zero perf issue. Meh. Good thing I don't use OSX. ;)
subsection1h 12y ago
> I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower. In my experience, people who think Chrome is faster than Firefox never have hundreds of tabs open. I like Chrome and I use it for development, but I use Firefox for general web browsing because it handles hundreds of tabs much, much better. Not only is Firefox's performance better, but Firefox extensions such Tree Style Tab and Session Manager are vastly superior to the tab management extensions that are available for Chrome. For example, I'm still waiting for a Chrome extension that supports the basic task of appending the current window to a previously saved session.
- mschuster91 12y ago
  Funny enough, on Win x64 I experience it exactly the other way round. I guess this may be related to the fact that I don't have much RAM and Windows might be more efficient in swapping out unneeded tabs as each tab is its own process in Chrome, while Firefox mixes everything together in RAM.
- frik 12y ago
  Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). Mozilla is working on a multi-process Firefox, one can activate it with a hidden flag (it is still not production ready, and it will break several old plugins). With multi-process browsers one can have hundreds of tabs open for weeks (if you have enough RAM like 8+ GB).
  - azakai 12y ago
    > Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). It's more complicated than that. For one thing, "have less latency" is often the opposite: a keypress in a multiprocess browser has to travel from the user-facing process to the child process, then the effects have to travel back. In a single-process browser, there is no need to cross that boundary back and forth. You can see this in action in games for example, where you can sometimes see more input lag in multiprocess browsers. Regarding speed, depends how you define it. Definitely multiprocess gives you responsiveness - one slow tab doesn't slow down the others. But throughput, not necessarily. Overall though, multiprocess is a good thing. I'm just saying it isn't a win across the board, like everything it has downsides.
lallysingh 12y ago
Nope, on Linux here and it's slower. Maybe it's how people use it? I leave long-running tabs with gmail open. I think firefox goes into a GC performance-suck cycle.
lh7777 12y ago
On my Windows machine, I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago largely due to better (perceived) performance. I switched back to Firefox this year and haven't noticed any slowdown as a result. Firefox does seem slower than Safari on OS X, but I don't use Chrome enough on my Mac to compare Firefox vs. Chrome.

by zobzu 12y ago

badloginagain 12y ago

I've tested Opera a bunch, I was pleasantly surprised with it's performance. I haven't given it a dedicated run though. If I find 'Zilla performance to be a continuing issue, I might give Opera a real chance.

jonnyscholes 12y ago

I uninstalled AdBlock after reading this[0] and found it really did make a difference. Esp on sites that loaded a dozen odd ads in different locations [news sites I'm looking at you]. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus...

shakeel_mohamed 12y ago

I've had performance issues with Firefox all the way back to Firefox 3 on Windows. The perf issues don't depend on the OS, in my experience.

adrusi 12y ago

I agree that it might be OS X related. I switched from Chrome to Firefox about a year ago, while I was still using Mac. I did notice a minor performance drop, though not enough to be too upset about. Since December I've been using Linux full time and haven't noticed any lack of performance from Firefox. I tried Chromium about a month ago to see how it would hold up, and didn't notice any performance boost over Firefox. Granted, I am also using different machine with similar but newer processor and (integrated) graphics hardware, I am using a several-versions newer Firefox than I was last year (I was running v27 nightlies at the time and now I run v29 stable). Still I think that some performance drop in Firefox on OS X might be attributable to a lower-performing graphical backend.

zobzu 12y ago
So due to this I tried Firefox on OSX and its not all that good indeed. I use Firefox on Windows and Linux where I have zero perf issue. Meh. Good thing I don't use OSX. ;)

subsection1h 12y ago

> I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower. In my experience, people who think Chrome is faster than Firefox never have hundreds of tabs open. I like Chrome and I use it for development, but I use Firefox for general web browsing because it handles hundreds of tabs much, much better. Not only is Firefox's performance better, but Firefox extensions such Tree Style Tab and Session Manager are vastly superior to the tab management extensions that are available for Chrome. For example, I'm still waiting for a Chrome extension that supports the basic task of appending the current window to a previously saved session.

mschuster91 12y ago
Funny enough, on Win x64 I experience it exactly the other way round. I guess this may be related to the fact that I don't have much RAM and Windows might be more efficient in swapping out unneeded tabs as each tab is its own process in Chrome, while Firefox mixes everything together in RAM.
frik 12y ago
Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). Mozilla is working on a multi-process Firefox, one can activate it with a hidden flag (it is still not production ready, and it will break several old plugins). With multi-process browsers one can have hundreds of tabs open for weeks (if you have enough RAM like 8+ GB).
- azakai 12y ago
  > Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). It's more complicated than that. For one thing, "have less latency" is often the opposite: a keypress in a multiprocess browser has to travel from the user-facing process to the child process, then the effects have to travel back. In a single-process browser, there is no need to cross that boundary back and forth. You can see this in action in games for example, where you can sometimes see more input lag in multiprocess browsers. Regarding speed, depends how you define it. Definitely multiprocess gives you responsiveness - one slow tab doesn't slow down the others. But throughput, not necessarily. Overall though, multiprocess is a good thing. I'm just saying it isn't a win across the board, like everything it has downsides.

lallysingh 12y ago

Nope, on Linux here and it's slower. Maybe it's how people use it? I leave long-running tabs with gmail open. I think firefox goes into a GC performance-suck cycle.

lh7777 12y ago

On my Windows machine, I switched to Chrome from Firefox years ago largely due to better (perceived) performance. I switched back to Firefox this year and haven't noticed any slowdown as a result. Firefox does seem slower than Safari on OS X, but I don't use Chrome enough on my Mac to compare Firefox vs. Chrome.