[HN Gopher] Firefox: Performance in Progress
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Firefox: Performance in Progress
Author : EMM_386
Score : 150 points
Date : 2021-08-05 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| vehemenz wrote:
| I'm not sure when it happened, but in the past few months I
| started noticing slower responsiveness in Chrome. Which is weird,
| because historically that was the type of thing I tolerated in
| Firefox.
|
| It looks like Firefox is the new speed champ on MacOS, at least
| among serious browsers. If Safari's WebExtension ecosystem
| actually progresses with Safari 15, that may be worth another
| shot, too.
| cwizou wrote:
| It's definitely not slow on macOS but for some reason the UI
| font just looks wrong to me on macOS and I can't quite put my
| finger on it.
|
| The font doesn't look system (maybe it is), and every element
| is a tad too small. Spacing between letters is also more
| cramped that on every other macOS app.
|
| I know doing cross OS development is hard but to me this is
| what's stopping me to move full time from Safari to Firefox on
| mac, the UI just looks wrong (despite all the things I don't
| like in Safari like not having uBlock Origin and relying on a
| subpar extension with an app).
| the_jeremy wrote:
| I have the opposite behavior on my macbook pro - Chrome can
| handle videos at 2x speed just fine, but Firefox will stutter
| or go sound-only for a few seconds if it heats up at all.
| causality0 wrote:
| I wish Mozilla spent ten percent as much time un-fucking their
| old features as they do coming up with new ones. Firefox Mobile
| still doesn't have a user agent switcher. The "tab closed" popup
| still blocks you from opening the next tab. There's still no
| option for moving the New Tab button to the top of the screen.
| taeric wrote:
| That "tab closed" pop-up is maddening. I've mainly assumed I
| was just doing it wrong, it is so bad.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Does "request desktop site" not change the user agent?
| causality0 wrote:
| Not fully. It requests a desktop layout but sites still know
| you're on a mobile browser, hence sites that explicitly block
| mobile browsers will show the same "this page only viewable
| on desktop" message. Actual user agent switcher extensions
| don't have that problem.
| rickstanley wrote:
| It does change but it only removes the "mobile" part from
| user agent (through sniffing). But I think he's referring to
| a broader usage, for instance: MS Teams only works on
| Chromium-based browsers and Safari, so user agent change
| facade comes in handy for this.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| "Tab closed" popup?
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| Yes! When attempting to close the last two tabs in the
| vertical tab list, one after another, the "Tab Closed -"
| popup of whichever tab you close first will arise at the
| bottom of the list and obstruct the close button ('X') of the
| remaining tab, for it's full 3 second duration. Hence, to
| close the last _n_ tabs, you must close the second-to-last
| tab _n - 1_ times, and then wait those 3 seconds to close the
| last tab.
| deadbunny wrote:
| On Android.
| phreack wrote:
| More importantly, you can't read long text in small copy by
| zooming in without having to scroll sideways in FF mobile.
| That's just such an obvious UX problem it's unfathomable how it
| hasn't been addressed yet. There's been an issue open on this
| problem for about 10 years already.
| rickstanley wrote:
| You can swipe the "Tab closed" popup to dismiss it.
| causality0 wrote:
| Why should I have to? Why does it have to pop up in the exact
| damn place the user is most likely to tap?
| rickstanley wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. I also didn't know about this, the popup
| didn't convey the idea of "dismissible"... I learned about
| this reading a rant on Reddit about the UI.
| edoceo wrote:
| Thank you!
| [deleted]
| clcaev wrote:
| I wish they'd fix the new "search" feature they changed a few
| releases ago. When you attempt to type in a search text area,
| it jumps the focus to the URL bar.
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1707701
| deadbunny wrote:
| My biggest bugbear on Android is the 1 min+ to load the first
| page if FF has been closed for a while.
| neogodless wrote:
| How long does Firefox have to be closed to reproduce this
| issue?
| robertoandred wrote:
| Based on their cartoon, looks like the problem is Windows' weird
| way of conflating applications and application windows.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Could you talk more about that way?
| robertoandred wrote:
| If you open an application when it's already open, Windows
| creates a whole new instance of the application instead of
| just switching to the already-open application.
| wnevets wrote:
| I'm the opposite of someone who keeps tons of tabs open, I'm
| constantly closing and reopening the browser through out the day.
| One of main reasons why I started using Chrome in the first place
| all of those years ago was the start up speed. I know Firefox is
| much better today at this in the past but any improvement would
| help me switch full time to FireFox.
| godelski wrote:
| I turn my computer off frequently and FF launches instantly
| when I open it. Just as fast as any other program (and I'm a
| tab hoarder).
|
| Though the number one reason I have FF instead of Chrome is
| that FF Mobile allows ad blocking. So I can have ad blocking
| across my browsers, send tabs, and keep consistent plugins. The
| anti-tracking and privacy features are also a great plus.
| SimeVidas wrote:
| On my MacBook Pro, from the moment I launch Edge, it takes 10
| seconds for the window to appear. Sounds like Microsoft could
| use this optimization.
| edoceo wrote:
| I super excited for any new FF stuff but this one mentions a lot
| of Windows focused (and some Mobile) - I'm over here on Linux
| where I've still got loads of pages that just lag. Hoping for
| some multi-platform JS updated soon-ish.
|
| Side note: anyone know of any meaningful updates to Servo? Is
| dead? It had so much promise (IMO)
| happy-dude wrote:
| Servo was never meant to be a full engine replacement for
| mainline Firefox; whatever Rust code could be
| implemented/useful for Firefox was ported already.
|
| However, regarding Servo specifically, there are contributions
| on their GitHub[1] and the stewardship of the project is now
| under the Linux Foundation[2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/servo/servo/commits/master [2]
| https://blog.servo.org/2020/11/17/servo-home/
| lu4p wrote:
| Servo is mostly dead the team got laid off
| rickstanley wrote:
| Really? Bummer. I hope the community keep a steady pace at
| development and don't let it die. Having another engine
| competing with the "titans" of the current web would bring so
| much benefit (I think and hope so).
|
| The "recent" event[0] with Chrome dev team scared me; they
| have so much power to change things "at will".
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28055160
| roca wrote:
| Servo is not and never will be a competitive browser
| engine.
|
| Gecko is that engine competing with the titans.
| the_duke wrote:
| I switched back to Firefox from Chrome a few years ago after
| their Quantum efforts landed. Both to get out of the Google trap,
| and because it was clearly the fastest browser for common use,
| except on certain Javascript heavy pages.
|
| But over the last year or so, performance has continually
| degraded to the point were I'm upset and resort to Chrome more
| often (Ungoogled Chromium [1], to be precise).
|
| I guess Specter mitigations and site process isolation might be
| related, but this does not make me happy...
|
| (this is on Linux/Wayland)
|
| [1] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
| roca wrote:
| Maybe there's something wrong with the Firefox install on your
| system. On my Linux laptop it keeps getting faster.
| lucgommans wrote:
| Speaking of Firefox performance, does anyone know what introduces
| pauses in page loading? A page of 900 bytes HTML, with 2 KB of
| CSS and a 33 KB background image, takes 918 ms to load. Only a
| third of that is network stuff (DNS resolving, TLS setup, etc.;
| adding up the 'duration' values). Screenshot of page with loading
| graph: https://i.snipboard.io/AcqWb4.jpg Notice the huge gap
| between HTML loaded and starting to load CSS, for example, where
| it does not appear to be doing or waiting for anything.
|
| Seeing the title and initially glancing at the drawing where it
| says "reading XUL.dll" I thought they addressed this, as I
| noticed this problem a while ago and I figured it was something
| about this multi-process browser experience having to load
| everything anew or constantly do inter-process communication, but
| the post is actually about various other performance issues. Does
| anyone know what's up with this one?
|
| Just to be clear, I'm not saying Firefox is slower than browser X
| or anything. I just happen to notice this in Firefox because I'm
| a Firefox user.
| roomey wrote:
| Try it in safe mode with your plugins disabled, it will at
| least show you if it is vanilla behaviour
| lucgommans wrote:
| Good point, should have thought of that. I have a bunch of
| things open where I don't want to reload the page so
| restarting in safe mode is a bit tricky now, but unless
| someone happens to know the exact answer I can try this on
| the weekend and perhaps narrow it down, thanks :)
| btdmaster wrote:
| about:processes is also a decent way to pinpoint the most
| impactful extension.
|
| Edit: my bad, I meant to say about:performance.
| koyote wrote:
| I am seeing similar bad performance on Chrome on my fully
| loaded enterprise laptop.
|
| I think it's that background pattern and Firefox might be lying
| to you, or at least in Chrome the pattern is what eats up all
| the rendering time.
| tech-no-logical wrote:
| I have no idea what causes it for you, but I see this :
| https://i.imgur.com/KEWYqIW.png
|
| (ff 91.0)
| lucgommans wrote:
| Which OS is that on? Mine was on Linux, perhaps that makes a
| difference. Also I have a rather crappy cpu (i5-8250U); for
| you I still see the gaps even if they're smaller (both in
| absolute terms but if I'm seeing it correctly also in
| proportion to network loading time), so perhaps a faster cpu
| helps as well.
| [deleted]
| tux3 wrote:
| I have FF 91 on Linux and mine takes ~200ms:
| https://i.imgur.com/EzdLYXb.jpg
|
| This is with uBlock, HTTPs Everywhere, "I don't care about
| Cookies", Greasemonkey, etc etc
|
| I have a 1700x, so a bit faster than your 8250U, but
| released the same year.
| [deleted]
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I remember years ago when Firefox Quantum boasted of lofty
| performance improvements only to get pummelled in just about
| every benchmark against Chrome. I still check out Phoronix's
| benchmarks now and again and Firefox is consistently behind. Make
| whatever excuses you will, but the numbers don't lie.
| maskros wrote:
| I'll gladly suffer a little bit worse rendering performance and
| have images resized with good rescaling filters than the blurry
| pixelated mess that Chrome renders whenever the zoom isn't
| exactly 100%. It's easy to do well on benchmarks when you
| sacrifice rendering quality.
|
| And of course there's no way to even ask Chrome to render
| images with a decent resampling filter...
| roca wrote:
| Quantum worked! Firefox did get a lot faster. It's just that
| Chrome and Safari are also getting faster. It's an endless
| race.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| You're putting way too much emphasis on benchmarks vs real-
| world usage, IMHO.
| hfjtbtbfjfj wrote:
| I use highly interactive websites, like bitcoin exchanges.
|
| They work terribly in Firefox. I don't know if it's because
| Firefox is slow, or if because devs don't test in Firefox.
| Either way, even if Firefox is my main browser, I learned
| that I need to use these sites only in Chrome.
|
| YouTube and most other video sites also are very slow in
| Firefox and many times the other sites don't work at all,
| video doesn't start, ...
| systems wrote:
| firefox needs a better support forum i like firefox a lot, more
| philosophically .. independent, open source, rust
|
| anyway, a while ago, firefox starting crashing on me like crazy
|
| and tried to get support from there
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/
|
| but after a while i just gave up, they need to setup a discourse
| forum or something, some place more interactive
| aspartate wrote:
| Meanwhile I feel like on my Linux laptop Firefox has only been
| getting slower and slower every year. Perhaps the fact that I'm
| using a GeForce as my primary GPU can have something to do with
| it? I read it causes some problems with WebRender. Anyway it's
| sad to see Chromium being way snappier on my machine, I have to
| use it for meetings because just after a couple minutes audio in
| FF starts to stutter intolerably.
| Saris wrote:
| Make sure HW acceleration is working, I've noticed firefox on
| linux seems to have it disabled more often than it should.
| ajnin wrote:
| These are some good changes. Perceived performance is very
| important for a program you use many times per day. One of my
| long time complaints is that with Chrome, when I want to search
| for something I'll often ctrl-N to open a new window and then
| type my query. Even if it takes a little bit of time to show the
| window my query will be right there in the search bar. With
| Firefox, those keystrokes are lost. I hope this fixes that.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The first one is embarrassingly stupid. The real solution is a
| splash screen, which was invented decades ago. Instead, they just
| lie to you with a non-functional window rather than lying to you
| by pretending that your system is doing nothing.
|
| Moved back to Chrome today btw. Couldn't handle YouTube full
| screen taking 10 seconds to expand and collapse on Firefox. Sure
| wish Mozilla would hire some competent devs.
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(page generated 2021-08-05 23:00 UTC)