Firefox 3 Performance Gets a Boost

jason writes "Mozilla has been working hard at making Firefox 3 faster than its predecessor, and it looks like they might be succeeding. They've recently added some significant JavaScript performance improvements that beat out all of the competition, including Opera 9.5 Beta. And it comes out to be about ten times faster than Internet Explorer 7! Things are really starting to fall into place for Firefox 3 Beta 4 which should be available in the next week or two."

Comments

Safari

[adam1234]

Hopefully it can best Safari's Javascript performance. Firefox is pitifully slow compared to WebCore's javascript core.

Re:Safari

[prestomation]

According to TFA, Safari is beat out by Firefox 3 beta 3 and 4, and Opera.

Re:Safari

[A beautiful mind]

RTFA (or just glance below):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7263.8ms
2. Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8219.4ms
3. Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10824.0ms
4. Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16080.6ms
5. Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18012.6ms
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29376.4ms
7. Internet Explorer 7: 72375.0ms

The results are generated by using the Sunspider JS benchmark suite.

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the check against the WebKit SVN HEAD, though? There have been significant improvements which aren't in Safari yet.

Re:Safari

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

They should have run it against the latest webkit.. it's supposed to be pretty fast..

Okay, I ran it on OS X anyway. I'm too lazy to run it on Windows too :) Here are the results. The new version of Webkit/Safari does beat the nightly of Firefox, but it is close and they're both a lot better than any regular release.

Re:Safari

[Mr. Spontaneous]

They've been throwing around the idea of multithreading for Firefox 4, but right now its still in contention, I think, because it has to be done right. I recall reading some dev blogs that said they'd jump ship if the team decided to expose the threads to extension developers.

Re:Safari

[0xygen]

If you try the beta, you will actually notice a significant reduction in the memory used over previous versions.

However, as one of the other replies mentions, it is partly down to the caching, which has now been adjusted.
If you are in the "I would rather have a slow browser with no cache" crowd, you can actually tune the cache down in the prefs.

Re:Safari

[billcopc]

Are you sure it's actually swapping to disk, or is it merely reserving swap space in the map ?

Example: I have 8 gb in this system. Right now I only have FF and Thunderbird running (+ a few background processes). Current "commit charge" is 475mb, of which Firefox is using 150mb. The system says I'm using 280mb of swap, but it's not actually thrashing the swap disk at all. That swap space is reserved, presumably because it represents 280mb of idle memory that is eligible to swap out, should another process need it.

Windows allocates virtual memory quite aggressively (when properly coded). If a process requests 500mb, but only really uses 100mb of it, the remaining 400mb will be "allocated" to swap while the real memory remains available to other processes. The moment a memory page is accessed, it is marked "dirty" and moved to real memory.

It's very much like sparse files, where unused or 0-filled pages don't take up any physical space (except for the map entry). That's how virtual memory is supposed to work, and it lets developers simplify their code by not having to worry too much about the physical arrangement of memory. It's also partly why you should never run a system without a swap file, even if it has tons of memory. I've probably never used all 8 gb in my system, but I still keep a (small) swap file. If I didn't, and that process allocates 500mb, Windows needs to dedicate 500mb whether or not it is actually in use. It reminds me of real-estate players, who can "buy" million-dollar buildings with a relatively small amount of capital, the rest on credit. Swap is like a line of credit for the OS.

Linux probably does the same thing, but I'm not as knowledgeable about its inner workings.

Re:Safari

[myrmidon666]

Noscript slows down your browser a bit. This is especially true if you have "trusted" sites with a lot of scripts.I have definitely noticed a decrease in performance since I added Noscript.

Re:Safari

[squidinkcalligraphy]

As has been often discussed, Linux's reporting of memory usage is inaccurate. Firefox uses threads; in Linux each thread is treated as a process, and appears as such to programs like top, appearing to use it's own memory allocation plus the shared memory common to all firefox threads. So it _looks_ (approximately) like the memory being used all up is (thread's mem + shared mem) * Number of threads, where in fact it is thread's mem * number of threads + shared mem.

Re:Safari

[Sam Douglas]

That is not correct, maybe you are thinking of Thread Local Storage. All threads share the same address space and memory allocations (memory management techniques used inside the application aside). Perhaps this page (found with a quick Google search) should clear up the confusion: http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html

It is more a matter that tools such as ps report the VSZ (Virtual Set size) and RSS (Resident Set Size) -- basically this is the amount of memory mapped in the virtual address space, and the size of the physical memory pages currently assigned to the process (this can grow or shrink with the operating system's page replacement -- moving pages into swap).

The memory in the virtual address space is not necessarily 'memory' that was allocated by the program for storage: memory-mapped file access, shared libraries and shared memory all counts into this address space, and this memory is managed by the operating system kernel or application. For mmap files, you can access a file like an array in memory and the operating system will deal with loading and saving the appropriate pages of data.

Re:Safari

[TheNetAvenger]

(or just glance below):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7263.8ms
2. Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8219.4ms
3. Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10824.0ms
4. Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16080.6ms
5. Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18012.6ms
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29376.4ms
7. Internet Explorer 7: 72375.0ms
The results are generated by using the Sunspider JS benchmark suite.


This looks great, but everyone should notice a couple of things that may not be obvious.

1) Sunspider JS benchmark is designed by Apple developers and they use it to show the world how much faster Safari is, however Opera seems to outpace the Safari developers even with their own tests. However, yes some of the benchmarks used are 'picked' to favor Safari, and some are 'extended' to hurt IE.

2) Sunspider over does the tests of the Append String performance problem to make IE look worse than it really is. IE's JScript is coded as JScript was designed, and because of this, it doesn't optimize string append operations by using newer code. So by using this text extra, it artificially make IE look horribly slow. IE8 and possible additional IE7 releases are spending time optimizing the base JSCript code from the original implementations/specifications.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2007/10/17/performance-issues-with-string-concatenation-in-jscript.aspx

3) If you remove the 'string' routine from the test, IE7, consistently outperforms Firefox 2.0, and is very close to even Safari for with the results were cherry picked.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

4) Some of the numbers are quite questionable as to the validity. For example IE7 is given 72375 in this article, and yet the slowest machine our tech lab has ever benchmarked is 2x the speed, and this is on a very old AMD 1ghz machine that barely runs Vista in which the test yeilded the horrible results. So where did they get the 72375 number from? A Pentium 200?

Again reference this link so see that even this person's results are no where near the 75K ms time reported for IE.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

So it is quite questionable and inaccurate to try to portray IE7 as 10x slower, when without the 'emphasized' string append slowdown in IE7, it is faster than FireFox 2.0 and within a few 'ms' of even Safari and the new FireFox 3.0 results.

Good job to the FireFox team, btw.. Also does anyone have benchmarks of the new FireFox using a non-Apple test suite?

Re:Safari

[BZ]

A large part of this is that MSVC++ generates better assembly than g++ in a lot of cases.

IE7 is just slow anyway

[jtroutman]

One of the ways I usually demonstrate to people the advantage of Firefox 2 over IE7 is to show them the difference in time it takes to open multiple tabs. With Firefox, they open as fast as I can hit CTRL-T, but with IE it takes about a second for each one.

I tried Firefox 3 today

[celardore]

To be honest, I hate it. WTF have they done with my handy URL bar? It used to be a place where I could type "slas" and get the slashdot URL come up. Even worse for "news", as it "handily suggests" all the pages in my history that have "slas" or "news" in my history.

Heads up for all those trying Firefox 3 is Oldbar. I suggest you get it if you don't like the new 'innovations' by Mozilla Corp.

Re:I tried Firefox 3 today

[christopherfinke]

It learns as you use it. Type 'slas' and choose Slashdot from the list. After doing that once or twice, Slashdot should automatically float to the top each time after that.

Re:I tried Firefox 3 today

[caspy7]

You've only tried it for one day and you hate it?
I think I understand.
You see, the new location bar learns. Though this silly new 'innovation' does indeed search through the URLs *and* titles of bookmarks and history, it also learns what you select the most. Give it a few more days and slashdot should come to the top of the list.
I experienced the same thing in the beginning.

When I bookmark page now I try to throw on a couple common sense tags that way when I type the tag in the location bar in the future, those bookmarks come out on top.

If you're *really* dead set on the shortest route:
1) Click Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks
2) Find the slashdot bookmark and select it
4) Click "More" under properties
5) Make the keyword /.
6) Close the window

Now type /. in the location bar and vwala!

Re:I tried Firefox 3 today

[xouumalperxe]

vwala! LMAO. You are a worthless, pathetic piece of shit.

Next time, try it like this: "LMAO. You are a worthless, pathetic piece of shit. The word you're looking for is voilà, literally 'see there' in French, an idiom used to mean 'there you go'". (though the OP's spelling is pretty damn close to the correct phonetical spelling \vwä-'lä\)

Safari is getting up there

[The Ancients]

The Safari team recently introduced some native javascript functions, which showed very impressive speed. It looks like the next release Safari will be up there as well (if not even faster still).

I'm off to download the latest Firefox to see how the two compare (on both Windows and OS X platforms).

Firefox 3 also supports new Java plug-in

[kaos07]

From the Mozilla blog:

Firefox 3 is going to include support for the new Java SE 6 runtime environment.

This is a new implementation of the Java Plug-In that features increased reliability, ability to specify large heap sizes, ability to select a specific JRE version to execute a particular applet, and support for signed applets on Windows Vista.

The New Plug-in is designed to work with: - Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on Windows XP and Windows Vista - Firefox 3 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Solaris and Linux

Personally, I've been wanting to use the Firefox 3 beta for some time, primarily because of the performance and speed boosts over Firefox 2, but my favourite add-ons still aren't compatible.

Note: The new Plug-in does not work with Firefox 2, and no support is planned for this browser with the New Plug-in.

http://gemal.dk/blog/2008/02/24/firefox_3_gets_a_new_java_plugin/?from=rss-category/

Re:It still doesn't run on my computer

[ajayrockrock]

It still doesn't run on my computer and Firefox 2.latest_stable_release works fine. What's up with that? It just crashes immedietly upon opening.

Back up your Firefox Profile and start clean.

Builds for Windows and Linux available

[The Ancients]

in this thread

Re:Memory leak?

[bunratty]

No, recently the developers have found that few leaks are left, so that to reduce memory usage further they had to change their focus to reducing fragmentation. Originally, the problem was leaks, it's just that once the worst ones were fixed fragmentation became responsible for a larger fraction of the memory usage. This a continuation of people trying to find one single cause of high memory use. As I and others have been saying for years, there is no one cause. There is no "the memory leak" or "the memory issue", just as there is no "the crash problem" or "the security problem".

Re:Firefox Performance

[Vombatus]

but PDF is the Page Description Format.

I could have sworn that PDF was Portable Document Format. All your other points about it are correct though.

Re:CPU optimized?

[Pearlswine]

Short answer, maybe Long answer: If FF3 isn't using a processor specific optimization, you can always Download your own build, I like pigfoot's (scroll down) build for windows.

OS X Results - Spoiler Safari Wins

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well someone had to, so I ran the numbers for OS X. All of the below were on OS X 10.5.2 running on a MacBook:

• Safari 3.0.4 - 11112.0ms
• Safari with Nightly Webkit r30628 - 3525.8ms
• Firefox Nightly3.0beta4pre - 4330.2ms
• Opera 9.26.3727 - failed (but all those that ran were slower than Safari 3.0.4 so it is the slowest overall for what worked.)

I guess if you're a Safari or Firefox person you can look forward to some really fast Javascript performance either way.

Re:OS X Results - Spoiler Safari Wins

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Replying to my own post, I probably should have included Firefox 2.0.0.12 as well. Here are the numbers for that and Firefox 1.5.0.8 which is still on my machine for testing purposes.

• Firefox 2.0.0.12 - 13840.0ms
• Firefox 1.5.0.8 - 16849.6ms

Why is this marked as troll?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Why is the parent comment marked as troll? It was reported a few weeks ago that the next version of Safari, 3.1, would see major JavaScript performance gains due to the latest WebKit builds. This article uses the beta Windows 3.0 version to compare to.

Firefox 3 beta 3 on Linux is great

[LingNoi]

I had these problems with Firefox 2 exactly running the default Ubuntu version. I downloaded the firefox 3 beta 3 from the website and it is so much better it is unbelievable.

- Where as before FF2 would use around 500 meg it now only uses around 50 meg
- Flash no longer crashes the browser
- Javascript no longer crashes the browser
- Those long pauses as it is doing something that stalls the browsers operation are gone.

I couldn't believe the difference.

Re:Firefox 3 beta 3 on Linux is great

[Curtman]

I would add to that list:

- Ctrl-MouseWheel zooming scales the images as well so the pages look normal without text overlapping the graphics

That feature alone is worth upgrading for.

Re:Firefox Performance

[jalefkowit]

Flash has more and more accessibility support, but PDF is the Page Description Format. It's meant for print output and says nothing about the meaning of the contents of the document, just how they are supposed to look on the screen and on the page.

Um, PDFs can be made just as accessible as HTML documents, and Adobe's PDF tools have good integrated support for assistive technologies built in.

PDF accessibility is a lot like HTML accessibility; you have to know what you're doing to make it happen, but you can make it happen.