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Firefox on Mac still has too many visual issues, and the devs often drag their feet on fixing them. Lion (released 2011) added "bounce" scrolling and auto-hidin

by FreakyT 12y ago

Firefox on Mac still has too many visual issues, and the devs often drag their feet on fixing them. Lion (released 2011) added "bounce" scrolling and auto-hiding scrollbars. It took them nearly half a year to fix the lack of auto-hiding scrollbars nightly builds[1], and even longer for it to finally make it to mainline Firefox. Firefox still doesn't have bounce scrolling. To add to that point, the first high-dpi (retina) laptops were released in 2012, and nearly three years later, Firefox still contains a reasonable number of icons that aren't in 2x (Retina) resolution. I suspect that these and other similar issues relate to the unfortunate decision to continue using a cross-platform UI toolkit (XUL). Personally, I've also found that, despite Firefox's distinction as the browser to popularize the idea of extensions, it now tends to lag in that department. Sure, you can get Adblock, but the stuff available on Chrome tends to be much more diverse these days. Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=636564 [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap

pcwalton 12y ago
> Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] In fact, Nightly now is by default.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? EDIT: Ok, downvote me all you want but it's a fact, not opinion. I'd give FF another shot once it's in stable but as it is now I'm not going to waste my time playing on a nightly build.
  - ecnahc515 12y ago
    This kind of major potentially havoc wreaking change takes time. Google also has a much larger team then Mozilla, so I wouldn't exactly rush these things.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    > So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? Chrome is a much newer browser. At the time Chrome was released, it was the only browser with this design, because it's much easier to do when starting from scratch. Chrome benefited greatly simply from observing the design decisions of Firefox, IE, etc. that had had several years to play out by that point. In ten years (assuming Chrome is still around then), it will also have similarly antiquated design decisions that make sense to us now, but will be frustrating and obsolescent a decade from now. It doesn't mean that Chrome won't be able to keep up at all with these changes eventually; it just means that it's not great to compare a brand-new browser with one that's been around (and used!)[0] for a long time. Electrolysis (the name for the project) took much longer in Firefox because they had to essentially retrofit an existing browser that hadn't been designed this way from the start. [0] If Firefox hadn't had significant market share, it could have made this change much more rapidly without fear of breaking things for existing users. But of course, making sure the browser remains stable for its millions of users is a top priority as well, alongside developing these new features.
    - joshstrange 12y ago
      IIRC Chrome did not have this feature day 1, they added it after the fact. That's not to say they didn't plan for it but still.... Also "Chrome benefited greatly simply from observing the design decisions of Firefox, IE, " Yes and Firefox benefited from observing the browsers before it, so what? > "In ten years (assuming Chrome is still around then), it will also have similarly antiquated design decisions that make sense to us now," You can't say that with any certainty whatsoever maybe Chrome will fair better than FF has or maybe we will see a re-write of Chrome's core to deal with future changes. As I said elsewhere in this thread I will use the browser I deem best at the current point in time. Right now, for me, that browser is Chrome (I couldn't care less which browser has been around longer). As for "it just means that it's not great to compare a brand-new browser with one that's been around (and used!)[0] for a long time" this is so wrong.... of course I can compare the two, they both do the same thing at the end of the day (provide a portal to the internet). When FF came out (and in it's heyday) no one said "You can't compare FF to IE, FF is a brand new browser" No, instead they/we all switched to FF because it was BETTER. Now, at least IMHO, Chrome is BETTER and so I've switched again. If that changes I will switch yet again.
  - saalaa 12y ago
    I don't remember hearing any complaint back when Chrome was all beta and experimental.
    - joshstrange 12y ago
      This makes no sense at all, I didn't use Chrome till it was stable....
- frik 12y ago
  You mean one main "firefox" process that holds all tabs and one child process that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat). So if one tab hangs (e.g. WebGL demo) then still the whole Firefox is slow as hell. Firefox should finally spawn child processes for every other tab with less permissions ("sandbox" technique) so that if one tab hangs or crashes every other tab and the UI still is responsive. It seems we have to wait for Rust based Servo engine to get that feature - but that would also rescue us from XUL based UI (FirefoxOS already has an HTML5 based UI).
  - ubercow13 12y ago
    It's one process for tabs and one for the UI. Plugins have been in a separate process for years.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      That's still far less than optimal. Under Chrome (Chromium) I can kill individual tabs if they start getting sluggish. Not so w/ Firefox.
  - dblohm7 12y ago
    "one child process that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat)." Not true. Each plugin module gets its own plugin container. Flash instances share a separate plugin-container from the one shared by Acrobat instances.
  - the8472 12y ago
    you can split the tabs over more than one process (by increasing dom.ipc.processCount), but that's even more experimental than e10s itself
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Good to know but a hell of a long time coming.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
Firefox has a far more diverse selection of extensions. And Firefox extensions are far more powerful than Chrome extensions with much deeper integration into the browser. This can also be a curse with a poorly written extension, though. It's worth noting that multi-process is why Chrome has a much higher memory footprint than Firefox these days for users running several tabs. Firefox pulls out plugins (Flash, etc) to a separate process so when they crash, they don't take out the browser. It will still cause the browser to pause for a few seconds as it waits to be sure Flash is hung up before asking you to stop the plugin.
Spiritus 12y ago
Completely agree. The complete lack of OS X native feel turns me off. There's not even a swipe animation for going back/forward in history. I know most of the work is done, but just finish this already, it's been ongoing for like 4 years now.
seanalltogether 12y ago
That interesting because one of the reasons I abandoned Chrome on mac is because of all the visual problems I had. Image loading is the biggest annoyance, why can't they simply load an image scaled correctly to the viewport of the window without scrollbars. https://i.imgur.com/yffoLQY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yffoLQY.jpg Take a large image like this, first off it loads full size instead of scaled, and when you click teh magnifying glass to scale it, you still have to scroll to see the whole thing
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  This image loaded totally fine for me. Chrome 40 on OS X 10.8.

by FreakyT 12y ago

pcwalton 12y ago

> Finally, it's still not multi-process (though it's finally getting there.) [2] In fact, Nightly now is by default.

joshstrange 12y ago
So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? EDIT: Ok, downvote me all you want but it's a fact, not opinion. I'd give FF another shot once it's in stable but as it is now I'm not going to waste my time playing on a nightly build.
- ecnahc515 12y ago
  This kind of major potentially havoc wreaking change takes time. Google also has a much larger team then Mozilla, so I wouldn't exactly rush these things.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > So still not in stable and Chrome has had it for what? 4 years now? Chrome is a much newer browser. At the time Chrome was released, it was the only browser with this design, because it's much easier to do when starting from scratch. Chrome benefited greatly simply from observing the design decisions of Firefox, IE, etc. that had had several years to play out by that point. In ten years (assuming Chrome is still around then), it will also have similarly antiquated design decisions that make sense to us now, but will be frustrating and obsolescent a decade from now. It doesn't mean that Chrome won't be able to keep up at all with these changes eventually; it just means that it's not great to compare a brand-new browser with one that's been around (and used!)[0] for a long time. Electrolysis (the name for the project) took much longer in Firefox because they had to essentially retrofit an existing browser that hadn't been designed this way from the start. [0] If Firefox hadn't had significant market share, it could have made this change much more rapidly without fear of breaking things for existing users. But of course, making sure the browser remains stable for its millions of users is a top priority as well, alongside developing these new features.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    IIRC Chrome did not have this feature day 1, they added it after the fact. That's not to say they didn't plan for it but still.... Also "Chrome benefited greatly simply from observing the design decisions of Firefox, IE, " Yes and Firefox benefited from observing the browsers before it, so what? > "In ten years (assuming Chrome is still around then), it will also have similarly antiquated design decisions that make sense to us now," You can't say that with any certainty whatsoever maybe Chrome will fair better than FF has or maybe we will see a re-write of Chrome's core to deal with future changes. As I said elsewhere in this thread I will use the browser I deem best at the current point in time. Right now, for me, that browser is Chrome (I couldn't care less which browser has been around longer). As for "it just means that it's not great to compare a brand-new browser with one that's been around (and used!)[0] for a long time" this is so wrong.... of course I can compare the two, they both do the same thing at the end of the day (provide a portal to the internet). When FF came out (and in it's heyday) no one said "You can't compare FF to IE, FF is a brand new browser" No, instead they/we all switched to FF because it was BETTER. Now, at least IMHO, Chrome is BETTER and so I've switched again. If that changes I will switch yet again.
- saalaa 12y ago
  I don't remember hearing any complaint back when Chrome was all beta and experimental.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    This makes no sense at all, I didn't use Chrome till it was stable....
frik 12y ago
You mean one main "firefox" process that holds all tabs and one child process that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat). So if one tab hangs (e.g. WebGL demo) then still the whole Firefox is slow as hell. Firefox should finally spawn child processes for every other tab with less permissions ("sandbox" technique) so that if one tab hangs or crashes every other tab and the UI still is responsive. It seems we have to wait for Rust based Servo engine to get that feature - but that would also rescue us from XUL based UI (FirefoxOS already has an HTML5 based UI).
- ubercow13 12y ago
  It's one process for tabs and one for the UI. Plugins have been in a separate process for years.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    That's still far less than optimal. Under Chrome (Chromium) I can kill individual tabs if they start getting sluggish. Not so w/ Firefox.
- dblohm7 12y ago
  "one child process that holds all plugins (Flash, Acrobat)." Not true. Each plugin module gets its own plugin container. Flash instances share a separate plugin-container from the one shared by Acrobat instances.
- the8472 12y ago
  you can split the tabs over more than one process (by increasing dom.ipc.processCount), but that's even more experimental than e10s itself
dredmorbius 12y ago
Good to know but a hell of a long time coming.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

Firefox has a far more diverse selection of extensions. And Firefox extensions are far more powerful than Chrome extensions with much deeper integration into the browser. This can also be a curse with a poorly written extension, though. It's worth noting that multi-process is why Chrome has a much higher memory footprint than Firefox these days for users running several tabs. Firefox pulls out plugins (Flash, etc) to a separate process so when they crash, they don't take out the browser. It will still cause the browser to pause for a few seconds as it waits to be sure Flash is hung up before asking you to stop the plugin.

Spiritus 12y ago

Completely agree. The complete lack of OS X native feel turns me off. There's not even a swipe animation for going back/forward in history. I know most of the work is done, but just finish this already, it's been ongoing for like 4 years now.

seanalltogether 12y ago

That interesting because one of the reasons I abandoned Chrome on mac is because of all the visual problems I had. Image loading is the biggest annoyance, why can't they simply load an image scaled correctly to the viewport of the window without scrollbars. https://i.imgur.com/yffoLQY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yffoLQY.jpg Take a large image like this, first off it loads full size instead of scaled, and when you click teh magnifying glass to scale it, you still have to scroll to see the whole thing

snowwrestler 12y ago
This image loaded totally fine for me. Chrome 40 on OS X 10.8.