Slashdot Mirror
Minefield Shows the (Really) Fast Future of Firefox
zootropole writes "If you are using Firefox 3 (or even Chrome) you should consider taking a look at Mozilla's Minefield. This browser (alpha version yet, but stable) would give a new meaning to 'fast browsing experience.' Some Firefox extensions aren't supported, but riding the fastest javascript engine on the planet definitely worth a try. Minefield's install won't affect your Firefox, so there's no risk trying it. It's fast. Really. And I'm loving it."
Reviews popping up around the web are overwhelmingly positive, calling the upcoming browser crazy fast, blisteringly fast, etc.
From the first release of minefield I messed with a few months back. That thing was god awful on the speed side of things. however my speed tests show minimal improvements Is it ready?? No Will it be great??? Oh yeah
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
thanks to minefield :)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Are you crazy? If you want to be a little risky, try the 3.1 beta. Nightlies shouldn't be used by those that want to use extensions or avoid crashes.
These are the nightly builds, once they like how the nightly builds work, they will release them as a "Firefox" update.
Competition is great isn't it?
I'm not a capitalist (or even a real supporter of "markets"), but actually when it comes down to it, in situations such as these, competition is good.
And what's amazing, and completely against capitalism, none of these web browser makers are charging any money for their products! All this great software is being developed and given away for free!
That's gotta be evidence that capitalism isn't the be all and end all...
------
On the topic of the actual browser under discussion, how many people are actually going to try it out? I guess because it won't fuck up your current FireFox install a few people will. And considering that I use Epiphany sometimes, maybe I could swap it out for this?
What features is it missing for those who have tried it? What can't you do? Is it better then Epiphany UI-wise?
I wank in the shower.
Is it faster than Chrome? Seriously, this isn't a troll. I'll try it out and see.
"Minefield" is just the development codename for the 3.1 series.
They will, it's an early beta and is therefore considered unstable...
Today's nightly for mac crashes on http://www.pentestmonkey.net/jsbm/index.html which is a javascript benchmark, i was trying to see if it really is as fast as the article claims... Currently the webkit nightlies seem to be the fastest on this benchmark, by quite some considerable margin.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
If it is that much better, why arent they just replacing Firefox with it??
They will, though it will be called Firefox when that happens. "Minefield" is just the code name for Firefox 3 nightlies, and it's called that for a reason: as a developer-intended build, it's prone to blowing up.
It will be released when it is ready. That time isn't yet.
Minefield isn't very different from FF at all.... because Minefield *is* Firefox. The main development code is called Minefield. At different points they branch the code off to become the versions of Firefox that we all know.
So they branched Minefield several months ago to become Firefox 3.0 but continued work on Minefield and now a new branch from Minefield will become Firefox 3.1.
OK, it's time for us to start educating users and the media of when to properly use the monikers Java and JavaScript.
The article linked to from the summary says "Handles Java Well" in the subtitle, but then never mentions it again - only JavaScript.
These are NOT THE SAME.
This is, of course, CBSNews.. but I have seen the same mistake in so-called "tech" media lately, too.
... was it to code name a perfectly fine browser that's both fast and stable "Minefield"?????
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
What the hell kind of codename is that? Maybe an attempt at 'truth in advertising'?
Another browser to test on!!!
"Hey Rockie, watch me put a gun in my mouth!"
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Just gave it a shot running Minefield on a G5 iMac and it did it with no problems (1.41, 0.87, 1.312 vs 2.999, 1.955, 3.023 for Camino on the same machine). Maybe it's just a problem when running on x86 hardware at the moment?
This guy's the limit!
I just wonder how often the speed of javascript matters vs the network connection.
I tried to Chrome but never really noticed much difference.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Which is faster, crazy or blistering??
I dont think crazy sounds all that fast - I mean most crazies I've met have had trouble moving around much without taking timeouts to wipe drool and yell at the birds.
I have spoken'eth.
its fast, its stable, my extensions work ;)
Especially Zotero (SVN) rocks !!!
People are talking as if Chrome's V8 was the fastest JavaScript engine around, but it wasn't - WebKit's SquirrelFish Extreme was faster. Is Minefield's engine even faster? Ars Technica's tests show that TraceMonkey runs the SunSpider benchmark in between 78% and 84% of V8's time. However, according to earlier tests, SquirelFish Extreme completes the benchmark in 74% of V8's time, making it even faster than the newest TraceMonkey. So it looks like Minefield, though fast, is not the fastest browser in JavaScript.
But has the JIT code been implemented for PPC?
It works for me if i turn the JIT off, but the results are nothing special.
I let the crash reporter do it's work and report the bug, it crashes every time without fail if jit is activated so hopefully they will be able to debug the issue fairly quickly.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Sorry to nitpick but is anyone else turned-off by the hyperbole in these write-ups?
ARS estimates the browser to be 10 percent faster. I mean, if it was three times faster than my current browser, then I'd say blistering is appropriate.
I mean, if you were driving on the freeway at 60 mph and someone passed you doing 66...would you say they were traveling "at breakneck" speed?
That was their intention.
It keeps idiots like you who look at the name only away from the nightly builds, and anyone with enough of a clue to not judge it by its name is also by extension usually intelligent enough to read the fucking warnings not to use it in the first place.
No it is the name for the unstable trunk, Shiretoko is the code name for Firefox 3.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
I've been running Bon Echo [Community Edition Release for Win64] for quite some time now, but some weeks ago it changed into the Minefield build. With 8GB RAM installed I did notice it's gobbling up more memory than Bon Echo did, but that's just a minor issue. It looks like the money spent on RAM hasn't paid off, as most applications I've got running on x64 are 32 bit, so no real gain to be expected. [It'll be my last WinOS, before I move to a Kubuntu/FreeBSD ONLY network.]
err 3.1
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
Just asking.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
People. There is A REASON why Mozilla calls these builds "Minefield" rather than "Firefox".
It's because they're not ready for daily use.
They may be faster than the released version of Firefox, but they also may contain major, showstopping bugs, up to and including bugs that can cause data loss.
The only people who should be using them are people who understand this risk and are willing to accept it -- i.e. testers.
Anyone promoting these builds for use by the general public is being irresponsible and exposing anyone who takes their advice to risk.
TFA is bad enough, but it's worse to see major sites like Slashdot parroting this bad advice. You should be telling your friends to avoid Minefield, not to seek it out.
Read my blog.
All these years people in the Unixy world gave Microsoft a ton of crap for VB, and now, after all this time, they've come up with something arguably worse... javascript, and now, a javascript compiler.
This is my sig.
Anyone else?
I wonder what the problem could be, LD_PRELOAD also doesn't help ...
Does anyone have it working on a 64bit hardy?
Borrowing from my post above:
Don't use it unless you know what you're doing. Suggesting end-users use this, without briefing them on why it will crash [frequently], is irresponsible at best and does a disservice to the alternate browser movement.
Will this help me finally get a random bag of crap?
But has the JIT code been implemented for PPC?
No. They seem to be planning to have PPC support eventually, but work is in very early stages.
It's a codename for the Firefox development branch. Nothing will ever be released with that name, it's a moving target that gets branched out to Firefox for release.
Reading FTW!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The biggest advantage of firefox is the ability to block out javascript via NoScript. Why would I want to give that up?
Its either via donations made by companies who earn their money via the capitalist system you so dislike or its students writing code for free while they earn money through other jobs or , more likely, are supported by their parents.
You need to get real - nothing in life is free apart from the air (and not even that if you work under the sea!)
It uses a JIT compiler so it will be harder to port to another ISA.
Unless the JIT compiles to a virtual machine then it isn't so bad.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Remember how they used to say that if IBM marketed Kentucky Fried Chicken, they would have called it "Warm Dead Birds".
I am surprised to say that Minefield seems faster than any other browser I've used - Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. I've been using Chrome lately, and I like the fact that it takes up minimal screen space. I would say that's one problem with Minefield: I have noticeably less screen space using it than I do with Chrome.
If the bar at the bottom of Minefield right above the Windows taskbar (where it tells you what the browser is doing) was removed, along with the File, Edit, and other menu bars at the top (they could condense these and move them to the side of the URL bar, like Chrome does), then Minefield would be really awesome. As it is, I think I prefer Chrome to minefield despite the slightly slower speed because I get more screen space.
Minefield reminds me why I downloaded Mozilla Phoenix back in 2002.
Someone cheched the startup time of FF3.1 ? Compared to Chrome FF 3.0 takes ages.
Idiot.
In a commercial software environment, nobody would see this. It's a nightly developer build of the development trunk, so nobody outside the company would see this thing, and anyone testing it would have special instructions to the effect that it's a work-in-progress, will have problems, and instructions on how to report them.
Mozilla obviously doesn't have the luxury of doing all the development in secret, so of course nightly builds are publicly available. You can't really distribute that same information, since many people won't pay attention to the warnings, they'll try the nightly builds anyway, and then they'll get all angry when it doesn't work properly, and start bitching about it. Can't have that.
The idea behind calling it "Minefield" and stripping off all the Firefox branding is to prevent confusion with release versions of Firefox, to communicate something about the expected quality of the nightly builds, and to scare off anyone but testers.
To that end, it works very well. Look at the icon, for example - a Firefox globe icon (used when the official Firefox branding is disabled), modified to look like a cartoon bomb. The whole thing is trying to get across the message that this software contains all kinds of unseen problems, and will blow up in your face. Possibly taking a limb off with it.
For reference, the beta versions are known as "Shiretoko". They'll be released under that name, not Minefield, using the unofficial branding. Again, that's to prevent confusion with a release version of Firefox. Only the release candidates, and final releases are called "Firefox" and carry the Firefox logo.
One thing I'm most impressed with is the SVG performance. It's starting to almost become an alternative to Flash for interactive applications. I like it and I hope it gets even faster.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Actually, that's a Jerry Pournelle quote about AT&T, and it was "Hot Dead Chicken".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
ffs. This story has been making the rounds about "Firefox Minefield" being an awesome browser. Well the next release of Firefox may be awesome, but this is a nightly build that was given the name Minefield so people might get the idea that, as the parent pointed out, it's unstable.
more of the same on Twitter.
What about people using Safari or Internet Explorer? I guess they're not used to their browser crashing randomly <ducks/>
Follow me
i know its just a pre-beta preview, but still, its a marketing. hard. fail.
But if the entire point of the codename is to dissuade end users from trying pre-beta software, it's a marketing. hard. succeed.
Seems fitting for me, since I spent most of my time on 3.1 playing minefield...
Blame Netscape. Some moron in the marketing department renamed it from Livescript. It was originally supposed to work closely with Java and that apparently confused some marketing drone at Netscape.
This would seem to be a textbook example of how infringing somebody's trademark could cause confusion between vaguely similar products, except of course that Sun helped develop it with Netscape, so I assume they had no problem with it.
They will replace the current FFox with what is in Minefield - when it is ready.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseRoadmap
Minefield is just the code-name for the trunk. You see, during development new stuff is submitted to the main branch - the trunk. This is where big changes like a new javascript engine or big changes to the html rendering engine happens.
You can download Minefield today to take a look at what is currently on the main trunk. But this code is often under heavy development and has not gone through all the testing/fixing that an official release gets. That's why they call it Minefield, it can and will blow up now and then.
When the current trunk has all the features one wants for the next version of FFox, they do a branch. They then do stability / security fixes etc on this branch (but no big new features). From his branch you then get the FFox betas/release-candidates and then eventually the shiny new FFox 4 (or 3.5 or whatever they'll call it).
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Cause we all like benchmarks.... Here is a breakdown of some browsers' times: (all were freshly installed and used http://celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed.php for tests) minefield 3.1b2: ~193ms chrome 0.2.149.30: ~234ms opera 9.61: ~203ms internet explorer 7: ~2328ms safari 3.1.2: ~203ms These were all done on the same computer.. this is why we have competition kids..
Based on the name and the fact it is a beta/nightly build, the real question is
When it blows up, do you lose a leg?
Installing this product may wipe out your saved passwords/fields
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
PowerPC is being added to the Nanojit (backend for Tracemonkey and Tamarin).
Help is welcomed. Hop onto #tamarin for pointers.
Whatever. Wake me up when it reaches OMGWTFBBQ that's quicker than me blowing my load over a Jenna Haze blowjob compilation video fast (which is where the latest Safari build is at, apparently).
ok, this is going to be a rant, so hold on to your seats. But having dealt with this bug for so long has gotten me near the edge when it comes to mozilla
---rant begin---
It still has the same linux bug people have been complaining about for I have no idea how long and effects quite a number of users...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/125970 - and this wasnt the first time it was logged either. Check out the last link in that bug report and feel the pain if the bug affects you...
Then again, I keep making the assumption mozilla give a flying .... about linux, which means im the one in the wrong, right? Its really the only piece of the linux puzzle i've yet to be able to find an adequate answer to and I've tried them all. The sad part is that mozilla is the best answer in most situations (though between IEs4linux and opera theres a possible answer there).
yes i've tried ever fix ever mentioned for it... So far the only real method that "works" is to use something like the adblock plugin to kill off the performance destroying aspects of a website.
----rant end----
ok, im done... apologies in advance and so forth.
minefield? really?
open source may rule over traditional development in many ways, but one way corporations beat open source is in the marketing department
if they open sourced cars, would we get the chevy deathtrap?
The Chevy Deathtrap is exactly what it is, and the name is correct.
Minefield is the pre-alpha trunk of what is to become the next version of Firefox. The car analogy would be Chevy allowing people to try early design prototypes of the Chevy Supercar, a design prototype where suspensions, airbags, seat belts and the transmission have not gone through the crash-test dummy stage yet.
Calling that pre-alpha car the Chevy Deathtrap would be the right thing to do. Same as calling pre-alpha Firefox Minefield is the right thing to do. It keeps numbskulls like you away from it before it is ready for general public use.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
it isn't THAT much faster. doesn't seem to be faster than chrome. it was faster, but nothing i'd run away from chrome for.
Running a Javascript speed test I found at: http://celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed.php, I get the following results:
Firefox 3.0
===========
Try/Catch with errors 19
Layer movement 94
Random number engine 21
Math engine 64
DOM speed 387
Array functions 6
String functions 9
Ajax declaration 33
Overall: 633
Minefield (Firefox 3.1)
=======================
Try/Catch with errors 15
Layer movement 57
Random number engine 16
Math engine 19
DOM speed 181
Array functions 7
String functions 7
Ajax declaration 31
Overall: 333
Which, by my simplistic reckonings, is about a 2 fold increase from FF3.0 to FF3.1
Impressive to say the least :-)
James
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
What about people using Safari or Internet Explorer? I guess they're not used to their browser crashing randomly
To really match the IE experience they need to have it randomly install a botnet node on your computer instead.
http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/ has also been using "Minefield" as the name for their x64 variant of Firefox since at least v2 (when I first started using it).
No, I'm not going to put down Minefield, which I haven't tried yet, but I have been worried for a long while what is happening in the world of browsers. Well, I say browsers, but I mean Firefox, the only one I have used regularly for many years. There was a point a couple of years ago when Firefox seemed to change from being the free browser for the people and began to become a way to introduce Google into everything we do on the Web. I really resent that, it takes away some of my freedom to choose, but even more, it pushes a product that I haven't asked for; if I want to use Google, I will go to their website.
What I'm talking about is the fact that if you type something in the address field, it gets sent off to Google as a search entry; that may be OK if that is what you expected and wanted - in my opinion it isn't OK if you simply mistyped an address. I'm not interested in "Buy the cheapest http//oracle.com at eBay", to be perfectly honest - I just want an error message.
And when start looking around in Firefox there are several of these tie-ins that they seem to try to sneak under your radar; like the exception lists that come as default: "Block popups (except from Google, etc ...)" and others like it. It it the kind of things that make me feel that they are being dishonest and that is not a nice feeling. They didn't have to sneak around like they were ashamed of themselves - a lot of people think it is a great thing that access to Google is built in from the start - they could have said up front that this is a vehicle to promote Google without losing anything, but they chose not to; and for that I don't trust them like I used to.
OK, it is a small complaint and hardly has any bearing on the subject; so to try to save that a little bit - does Minefield display the same tendencies? And can you use Firefox's extensions with it?
TraceMonkey (the new JS engine) was in earlier nightly builds, it was just off by default. A pref could have been used to switch it on at any time... they just changed the default setting to "on" in the latest builds. You should be able to turn it on in FF3.1b1 too. javascript.options.jit.content.
I've been using it since the first minutes I tried it, it's that good. In FF3.1b1 you have to turn on the javascript speed-up (what's it called? Tracemonkey?) manually, but the whole browser is amazing. The look of the thing is fantastic too. Hats off to the graphics and font designers.
I run Ubuntu, and on my system it's totally stable. Some Windows users were having issues with 3.0x, so that may be true here too.
To make sure you don't overwrite current FF settings, establish a new profile FIRST in your old Firefox. (command (I think!) firefox -profile-manager) Install the new one, but don't start it. When you do run it, point it at the new profile (command from the directory containing your new firefox: firefox -p newprofile. You may need "-no-remote" (without quotes) too, I'm not sure. So long as you point it to a specific profile, it won't blow up the default one you've been using.
Not entirely related but çY¥åS(shiretoko) means 'bed of wisdom' in japanese. I just thought it was a to say the least odd name for a browser build. I mean I'm sure a lot of people watch porn with their browser, maybe giving you vague anatomy lessons ... but wisdom?
How can a first post be redundant?
Personally, I tend to mod every 'Why was I modded ***!?! That wasn't ***!' post Redundant, even if it's the first time it shows up in a thread, because I find them pointless and tiresome. Regarding your FP, I'd imagine that somebody decided that some harsh moderator decided that the answer to your question "Why isn't this replacing Firefox?" was obvious and (fairly or not) modded you (-1 Redundant) because he lacked a (-1 Duh) option. Them's the breaks.
I now have stopped caring about these scores.
That's a very healthy attitude - Karma is overrated.
That said, I'm foregoing my karma bonus because this has very little to do with TFA.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I just now tested it on that site:
MD5 Benchmark took 1.188 seconds for 3000 hashes (2525 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.839 seconds for 2700 hashes (3218 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 1.201 seconds for 1900 hashes (1582 hashes/second)
I also tested SRware Iron (A variant of Chrome) on the site, and scored significantly higher:
MD5 Benchmark took 0.343 seconds for 3000 hashes (8746 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.232 seconds for 2700 hashes (11638 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 0.299 seconds for 1900 hashes (6355 hashes/second)
This space for rent, inquire within.
These benchmark results are a bit debatable - I've seen different suites electing different "winners" and, while SunSpider seems to be the best, it's a long way from a robust benchmark like SPEC* or DaCapo.
In any event, even if SFX is leading the pack right now, that's because it's the most mature competitor, and its advantage won't last too long. I predict (and I write this logged with my account, not AC, so I would be forever glorified when this becomes true in 12 months max) that both V8 and TraceMonkey will take the lead, leaving SFX in a safe third place permanently.
The reason is very simple. All these new JS VMs are JIT compilers, producing native code. But SFX is a context threaded JIT. Context threading is just a step beyond traditional direct-threaded interpreters: functions are 'compiled' into streams of CALLs into routines that implement each bytecode operation, but there is limited inlining (simple operations and branches), with a focus on reducing branch misprediction.
OTOH, both V8 and TraceMonkey are "real compilers" that emit real native code (not CALL streams) for entire functions (or even larger chunks of code, with inlining). This is necessary to enable traditional optimizations like register allocation, instruction scheduling, constant folding, loop unrolling etc. Some of these optimizations can be performed on a high-level intermediate code representation (HIR), but that's typically not worth the effort without real compilation. E.g., loop unrolling will just waste memory an i-cache efficiency if performed by a threaded interpreter/JIT... as the real benefit of unrolling is giving the compiler a much larger basic block to perform other opts like extra folding and bounds-check elimination, or real low-level tricks like exploring using SIMD registers and operations / Instruction-Level Parallelism / prefetching / branch predication etc.
The only reason why V8 and TraceMonkey don't completely 0wn the benchmarks today, is that these JITs are still in their infancy. They have implemented the foundations (like V8's hidden classes or TM's tracing), but they still miss to implement dozens of important optimizations (including very easy ones - they just didn't have the time yet). Check some comments about V8's limitations. TM's developers have also commented on many limitations, quote (Andreas Gal: "If it talks to the DOM during the benchmark, we currently donâ(TM)t compile across such calls (we plan to for Beta2 though)". This and several other improvements are planned for future builds of Firefox 3.1. Notice that items like special support for DOM interactions and event handlers should be critical to some benchmarks - and of course to real-world RIA apps. I'm sure the V8 hackers are also working around the clock to fill in their own gaps. When both VMs are reasonably mature, SFX will have a VERY hard time competing (unless of course, they abandon the context threading model and mutate into a real compiler). Other optimizations, like JITted regex, can be implemented in all VMs and will eventually be ubiquitous.
there is no spoon
Faster javascript is nice but what I really want it a multi-process sort of firefox like Chrome has. I want to see which tab is slowing me down and kill it. I want all of my tabs to run independently on multiple cpu's. I want the memory leakage of any one process to go away when I kill it instead of restarting the whole browser. I spend very little time waiting on the results of javascript execution.
You could run the WebKit nightly, which is almost as fast and slightly more standards compliant.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/25/experimental-minefield-browser-from-mozilla-is-crazy-fast/ and I quote:
"Let me tell you - it's crazy fast. In fact, Ars Technica is reporting that Minefield is 10% faster than Google Chrome" ... so what?
My results confirm yours
Minefield
MD5 Benchmark took 0.71 seconds for 3000 hashes (4225 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.446 seconds for 2700 hashes (6054 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 0.721 seconds for 1900 hashes (2635 hashes/second)
Chrome
MD5 Benchmark took 0.411 seconds for 3000 hashes (7299 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.162 seconds for 2700 hashes (16667 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 0.18 seconds for 1900 hashes (10556 hashes/second)
and just to laugh IE 7
MD5 Benchmark took 3.885 seconds for 3000 hashes (772 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 12.473 seconds for 2700 hashes (216 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 3.838 seconds for 1900 hashes (495 hashes/second)
All running on Vista with a Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4 GHz
Yes I am, it sucks, but we use some tables. We made several tries to go completely tableless but between the various browser bugs (ie6, hint, hint) we couldn't get it stable enough for our clients (many of whom were requiring pixel perfect across all browsers).
What we ended up with is a foundation of tables (setting up main content from menu from surrounding area), with CSS defining the properties of the table, then using div's for the rest with CSS. We also setup CSS files for each browser/platform and javascript to load the right CSS file for that browser. So, between giving up and using one or two tables, and separate CSS files for each browser (and some versions, we had separate for ie6 and ie7) we managed to make websites that were stable and pixel perfect across the 6 browsers we tested for our clients: IE6, IE7, Firefox Win, Firefox Mac, Safari Win, Safari Mac (now that I think about it, we found a difference in the early Win version, but it got corrected fairly soon, however we still tested them separately just to be sure)
On a side note, I found out you can really screw up a computer if you have 3 different browsers open on a page that has some interesting Javascript+DHTML stuff going on (pre prototype.js usage days) and go home for the night... took almost an hour for the thing to shutdown... :)
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
My desktop machine
http://pentestmonkey.net/jsbm/index.html
Chrome
MD5 Benchmark took 0.38 seconds for 3000 hashes (7895 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.268 seconds for 2700 hashes (10075 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 0.347 seconds for 1900 hashes (5476 hashes/second)
FireFox 3.1b1
MD5 Benchmark took 1.238 seconds for 3000 hashes (2423 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.915 seconds for 2700 hashes (2951 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 1.324 seconds for 1900 hashes (1435 hashes/second)
3.1b2pre
MD5 Benchmark took 1.872 seconds for 3000 hashes (1603 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 1.337 seconds for 2700 hashes (2019 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 1.602 seconds for 1900 hashes (1186 hashes/second)
IE7
MD5 Benchmark took 6.86 seconds for 3000 hashes (437 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 8.75 seconds for 2700 hashes (309 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 7.14 seconds for 1900 hashes (266 hashes/second)
When it installs it must piggyback off the main firefox profile rather than create its own profile.
So when I came to uninstall it, selecting remove my profile was a BIG mistake! Be warned all!
balls...
I used it the other day and with TraceMonkey turned on, it's smoking fast. Love it!
I don't need a faster browser. I want a browser that runs good on low-end, little-memory machines.
There was a time when Linux was touted as great for keeping older hardware in use.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
just based on this: "alpha version yet, but stable".
'Cause basically Firefox 3 is an alpha and unstable, based on my bad experiences with it. First they release the POS with a MAJOR bug - the right click menu randomly runs one of the selections on its own. How the HELL do you claim to do ANY QA when you release a "final" with that kind of easily found, major bug? Then I try the next point release and find it seems that bug is gone - but the browser crashes several times on several of my usual sites.
If and when Mozilla ever gets a QA department, I'll consider moving to Firefox 3. Until then, I have to rely on the (unstable) Firefox 2.0.0.17 - which I had to reinstall again yesterday to make it reasonably stable again after it was crashing every half hour.
Firefox - the "FOSS Project That Must Not Be Criticized" - which is about as bad as Internet Explorer 5 for reliability.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I disagree. I'd say its more like self-interested donations made by companies who directly and indirectly benefit from the end result and students writing code to gain marketable experience.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
...many of whom were requiring pixel perfect across all browsers
I know this isn't your fault, but I just want to slap such people. The web is not intended to give content creators that level of control. And I for one sure as hell don't want it to, with all the idiots who think that 10pt light-grey-on-white fonts are really spiffy. If they want pixel-perfect, they can use PDFs.
I think this is great news, it will really help all those people folding protiens in their web browser, mind you, it wont really affect the rest of us.
In my experience, around 90% of the speed problems with Javascript apps are due to the interactions they have with (slow) web sites. This is an experience that I'm sure the users of this web site have experienced. Slashdot appears to lock up as an advertising banner is slow to load from its unresponsive web site. A faster Javascript engine isn't going to fix this. A more configurable one might, if users can block page loads from 3rd party domains, for example.
Have gnu, will travel.
Please add an installation-script that asks if one wants to install this to replace the current firefox or as a firefox-3.1b2pre that can be run in parallell with one's other firefox.
Now when I run firefox, it will not start the browser, but open a new window in my other version of firefox that I have running.
I would love to be able to run firefox-3.1b2pre that is also using ~/.firefox-3.1b2pre instead of ~/.firefox so that I can run two different versions of firefox at once.
I can't get why the developers don't demand this for themselves too as it makes testing so much easier.
It's still significantly slower than Opera.
moo
It really isn't that great yet. I know it's pre alpha, but i think it's being played up a little too much. maybe when its actually released itll be better, but as of right now its nothing special.
The poster of the article is a moron, an alpha version isn't stable. He may think it works ok and is stable enough for him, but it's still not stable.
I just tried it and it crashed within one minute of usage (went to prisjakt.nu, typed 360 in the search field, pressed left to add xbox at the beginning, crash.)
I hate people who say that something the developers themself don't trust it stable and works. Right ...
It's like when Microsoft say their latest Windows version is stable before SP2.
uff. I hoped to read about windows 7 minefield awesomeness
Tried it, deleted it as it would not work with my web site. The real pisser is when I removed it from my system it TRASHED 100% of my settings of FF3. I am not a happy camper. DO NOT INSTALL THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO SCREW UP YOUR CURRENT FIRE FOX SETTINGS.
worlds worst speller
The reason that I like noscript is that, in the odd case when I need it (e.g. using some search features in NewEgg), I can turn on javascript for just one tab and not globally. And it will turn it off again for me without my having to remember.
But I have a hard time seeing how a faster javascript engine will help everyday web use. It's turned off 95% of the time.
Please file bugs if you find the JIT crashing or halting, it's very important to understand and correct these cases. Put "TM: " in the subject for faster triaging :)
Keep in mind, TraceMonkey fixes bake on a separate repository first. Syncs back to trunk are only happening once a week or so.
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
Firefox always did have fast javascript, compared to browsers like Konqueror at least. Still, I always found konqueror faster to actually work with. No news here at all really. Especially since Chrome and Konqueror are related.
Why is a link to the latest nightly Firefox build news? Huh?
Yes, it will be fast when it's out, but... What's this sudden story all about
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I played with it for a couple minutes and don't see any speed difference. Can someone point to a site where Minefield outperforms Firefox?
Currently hooked on AMP
Recent Firefox code names have been national parks
Firefox 3.1 Shiretoko NP
Firefox 3.0 Gran Paradiso NP
Firefox 2.0 Bon Echo NP
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
Well, as most of you, I tried the Minefield, which is a nightly build of current FF development. I was amazed at the speed of the browser. This was one thing I wanted FF to have compared to Chrome. I really didn't think all that Chrome stuff was of much use except for its speed. Absence of extension interface is not ok with me (been spoiled by FF). Now FF seems to run as fast or faster than Chrome. But back to my subject. After installing the Minefield (I know it's really FF, but for the sake of this discussion I want to have different names) I noticed that my FF 3.0.3 runs with the speed of Minefield. I have not uninstalled Minefield, just start it, go to the benchmark page mentioned in this thread and get 1.273 / 0.904 / 1.391. Then close Minefield, open FF (make sure it's FF 3.0.3 by displaying version info first) and get the following numbers from the same benchmarks: 1.217 / 0.962 / 1.278 Seems like the FF 3.0.3 is now using the same JavaScript engine. Am I crazy? Is this possible? I will try uninstalling Minefield and seeing if things change, but seems now my FF 3.0.3 much faster with gmail by just seat of pants. I mean it is noticeably faster! I am very happy about it since the only thing about FF that I think is sub-par is speed. Now it's blazing-fast compared to before trying Minefield. Comments, thoughts...
Here are the numbers for Webkit on a nearly 5 year old Powerbook (PowerPC 4, 1.33 GHz):
MD5 Benchmark took 4.132 seconds for 3000 hashes (726 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 2.834 seconds for 2700 hashes (953 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 4.276 seconds for 1900 hashes (444 hashes/second)
That's faster than IE 7 on new hardware.
Minefield renders https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=312760 in 2.9 seconds for me, Chrome takes 3.6 seconds, Safari 4 takes 4.6 seconds. Neither Opera nor IE8 can render it at all.
Hmm, according to wiki the word "Shiretoko" is an Ainu word meaning "end of the earth". And as a ff build name my also refer to Japan's Shiretoko National Park.
When are we going to see improvements in rendering speed and DOM manipulation?
"People. There is A REASON why Mozilla calls these builds "Minefield" rather than "Firefox"." - by jalefkowit (101585) on Tuesday October 28, @09:52AM (#25540545) Homepage
No: I'd have to say it's called "minefield", because they're just speeding up the part of it that turns the internet into a damned minefield - javascript!
It's amazing - the browser makers all work on speeding up javascript processing (which yes, they ought to, but... not FIRST/PRIMARILY - there's something that needs to be done prior to THAT... read on)... when the REAL PROBLEM is that the fact exists javascript's often (like 95%) @ the heart of MOST of the attacks online today!
(&, anyone can take a peek @ SECUNIA.COM &/or SECURITYFOCUS.COM + their vulnerability & malicious code pages they list, & see that javascript (& IFrames + vulnerable plugins) are @ the root of nearly EVERY exploit &/or vulnerability report they've issued for the past 3-5 yrs. now - heck, they're even found in adbanners!)
Why not fix up the faulty/broken/vulnerable/exploitable (whatever you want to call it) DOM (document object model) behind javascript instead, & help secure it, instead of just working on speed, & FIRST? Makes NO damned sense... @ least, not COMMON-SENSE!
(That extra speed, is just helping speed you to being infected or taken advantage of, that much faster...)
I mentioned this to javascript devs here, on a topic about JAVASCRIPT... guess what:
10 Forces Guiding the Future of Scripting:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=994291&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&no_d2=1&cid=25362703
There, lol... man, there I actually was "modded down" for being "off-topic" - you figure THAT one out, lol... the topic WAS javascript no less!
(Javascript devs don't like hearing the truth apparently (by the by, I use javascript myself in ASP.NET work))...
APK
P.S.=> It's amazing how STUPIDLY things progress in the art & science of computer sciences @ times... I mean, I say that, because the folks that control the development of things javascrpt-wise & in browsers, email programs, & even apps that use it (Adobe PDF reader was found with javascript exploits in its documents too, but this can be easily turned off in it though, thank goodness, as it can in webbrowsers, email programs, etc. et al) are NOT working on what is more/most important - security, over speed here, anytime... @ least in MY book! apk
thethibs said: "It's the socialist society that can't survive without eliminating choice." Tell that to the Swedish that have tax payer supported health care, University education, etc, and a thriving market that produces Volvo cars among other things. Socialism yes by most peoples definition, market yes, choice yes. Life without oversimplifications is sooooo complicated. But that's OK thethibs you can go back to the comforting simplifications fed to you by everyone from Rush on the simplistic end to Milton Friedman on the intellectual end, just don't expect anyone paying attention in the real world to believe that is the way the world actually works. Market crash due to deregulated ISVs and overturning Glass Stegall ring a bell?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Everything in its place. I typically allow sites permanently if I recognize them to be legitimate and likely to be free of malicious content. There are quite a few though that I allow temporarily because I expect them to be benign, but I don't know them well enough to know that they'll still be reliable the next time I visit. For the most part that allows me a rich browsing experience without any hassle and what hassle I do experience is minor and a small trade for the slight security increase. Where it really pays off is when I'm searching and following links for obscure, virus and hacking topics where I know there is a decent chance I will visit sites that are malicious. It is on the sites that I know I can't trust, and those I have no reason to trust, that I really appreciate NoScript.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I have not noticed any speed issues with Firefox. I have noticed it uses 100+ mb of ram. That seems to be the bigger issue. Maybe some control of the allowed size of memory cache would be nice.
Interesting cause I'm using a stable 3.0.1 build without the Firefox branding and it's called Minefield. The code name for Firefox 3.0 development was Gran Paradiso, and Firefox 3.1 will be Shiretoko.
Yeah, so its javascript engine is 10% faster than chromes. After a few minutes of using it I've still gone back to chrome as the browser in general is still teeth-grindingly sluggish! Maybe if your used to using ie or current firefox it feels like an improvement. To me however this blisteringly fast firefox 3.1 alpha is slower than the pope in a tar pit with asthma!
I disagree. I'd say its more like self-interested donations made by companies who directly and indirectly benefit from the end result and students writing code to gain marketable experience.
Uh, huh. So, in other words, they're both in it for how it can benefit them. Sounds like capitalism is alive and well in the browser biz, yes sirree.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Socialism = Preventing Race to the Bottom
Capitalism = Promoting Race to the Top
We need both (either implicitly or indirectly) for a nation to succeed.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
... because I imagine all this effort for JS to be for Python. Hell, JS is kind of cool, but only kind of. A the world there Python is tinkered on would be really better.
I installed this to have a look since the article said it was a completely separate install. However, it has placed itself as my default browser without asking and every time I open my original firefox after having minefield open it has settings changed.
> that emit real native code (not CALL streams) for entire functions (or even larger chunks
> of code, with inlining).
A small nit: Tracemonkey doesn't compile entire functions. It compiles instruction streams, which means that if your function has a branch that's never taken that part of the branch will never get compiled.
> This is necessary to enable traditional optimizations like register allocation,
> instruction scheduling, constant folding, loop unrolling etc
There's a tradeoff here, though, which is that you want the compilation to be fast (as in, avoiding the Java "let's be slow while we start up and jit all this code" syndrome). The faster your compiler needs to be, the less room you have to fancy optimizations. Register allocation, yes (helped in tracemonkey's case by the fact that it's all in SSA form already). Constant folding, yes (actually happens on the interpreter level too). Instruction scheduling, maybe not so much.
I agree with your main point that V8 and Tracemonkey can get faster on these benchmarks. I'm just not convinced they'll necessarily end up that much faster than SFX.
AFAIK, Minefield with AdblockPlus extension is reasonably stable.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Interesting...
On a Macbook pro 2.4ghz, i get:
Safari (3.1.2 - leopard default) 4.26 secs
WebKit Nightly - 3.635
Minefield - 3.793
In the pentestmonkey jsbm, minefield crashes...
Safari:
MD5 Benchmark took 1.397 seconds for 3000 hashes (2147 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.977 seconds for 2700 hashes (2764 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 1.386 seconds for 1900 hashes (1371 hashes/second)
Webkit:
MD5 Benchmark took 0.398 seconds for 3000 hashes (7538 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 0.169 seconds for 2700 hashes (15976 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 0.204 seconds for 1900 hashes (9314 hashes/second)
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've been using the nightly for a few months, with all my extensions (Through nightly tester tools, its amazing) and its incredibly fast. I've played with Konqueror, Safari, Chrome, all of them but I get the best speed out of Minefield. For the first month I was getting odd crashes, but I would submit bug reports and move on. Now, it hasnt crashed in weeks, and I use it for hours a day. The Javascript is incredibly fast, and I love the browser.
Your completely unsourced quote was the following: "The Canadian health care system costs every Canadian family an average of C$12,000 per year--that's US$13,000, more or less. That's triple the cost of a deluxe health plan in the US." And the reality, 100% the opposite: "Price of health care Health care is one of the most expensive items of both nationsâ(TM) budgets. The U.S. government spends more per capita on health care than the government does in Canada. In 2004, the government of Canada spent $2,120 (in US dollars) per person on health care, while the United States government spent $2,724.[11] However, U.S. government spending covers less than half of all health care costs. Private spending for health care is also far greater in the U.S. than in Canada. In Canada, an average of $917 was spent annually by individuals or private insurance companies for health care, including dental, eye care, and drugs. In the U.S., this sum is $3,372.[11] In 2006, health care consumed 15.3% of U.S. annual GDP. In Canada, only 10% of GDP was spent on health care.[5] This difference is a relatively recent development. In 1971 the nations were much closer, with Canada spending 7.1% of GDP on health while the U.S. spent 7.6%." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared#Price_of_health_care See also: "Results In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada." http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768 You can pull the wool over some peoples eyes but not those will access to a search engine and 30 seconds of time, smirk.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
"Advantages and Drawbacks
The single-payer system seems to have many significant advantages: Per capita spending on health care, for example, is much lower than it is in the United States, and the coverage is universal, whereas in the US health care is not guaranteed, except to those under the federal poverty level or to those over 65. Life expectancy is also much higher in Canada than in the United States; the Canadian average of 79 years comes in just below 80 years in the top-rated nation, Japan (life expectancy in the US is among the lowest in industrialized nations, only 76.7 years). Disadvantages of the Canadian system include fewer physicians per 1,000 population than the G7 average (though not substantially fewer than in the US), fewer scanners and MRI machines, slightly longer wait times for some procedures, and a comparable infant mortality and cancer mortality rate to the low-rated United States (although Canadaâ(TM)s heart disease mortality rate is significantly better)."
http://healthfieldmedicare.suite101.com/article.cfm/american_canadian_british_health_care_systems
I'll trade a few MRI machines for cheaper health care that is available to ALL people with longer life expectancy.
The dirty secret of neo-cons is though you may call poor people that eat organic bran muffins "elitists" you are in fact the elitist as you expect to be waited on hand foot as a function of income and you don't care if people have to die in the gutters for that to happen. And yes the lying douchbaggery of those who are actual elitists labeling those of us on the left who want more equality for all "elitists" does disgust me, it ought to disgust any thinking person IMO.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
is quicker and prettier
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
With all the same core leaks? Same crap, different color :-/
There's no excuse for a frickin' web browser to have a 3GB process size. If it's the @#$# flash plugin, then for the love of dog someone please write a better one. Or do some garbage collection or something to sandbox it.
A small nit: Tracemonkey doesn't compile entire functions. It compiles instruction streams, which means that if your function has a branch that's never taken that part of the branch will never get compiled.
I know that (have read all papers about tracing JIT). But traces can also span multiple methods (it does the equivalent of inlining) - so in terms of size of compilation units, it's equivalent to traditional compilers.
There's a tradeoff here, though, which is that you want the compilation to be fast (as in, avoiding the Java "let's be slow while we start up and jit all this code" syndrome).
We'll digress here, but... the startup of Java, today, is not dominated by JIT; modern JVMs have very lazy and extremely fast "client-side" JITs (of course, not as strongly-optimizing as server-side ones). APIs like Swing deserve most of that blame, as well as the dynamic classloading model that forces too much initialization (for all static data) to happen at loading time... Finally, Java is difficult to compared to other systems because it's massively "meta-circular" (even before Java-in-Java VMs like JikesRVM and Maxine); the VM is native, but 99% of all Java APIs are written in Pure Java. So it's not fair comparing Java to JavaScript (or most dynamic languages), these only boot fast because their APIs are implemented in C.
The faster your compiler needs to be, the less room you have to fancy optimizations.
The compilation speed vs. optimizations tradeoff is indeed important, but it's a war compiler writers are winning every year. Sun's Java7 will have a hybrid JIT (client+server) to provide both fast JIT, and highly-optimizing JIT for the "really hot" spots. Tracing is the next revolution for systems that need VERY fast and lightweight JIT like JavaScript - because tracing basically takes some NP-hard compiler tasks, such as producing the SSA form, and converts them into polynomial tasks (simply because a Tree is a much nicer structure than a DAG). Both TraceMonkey and V8 benefit also from dynamic optimization (profile-driven and speculative), a la HotSpot. I don't see compilation time as a significant barrier for optimization in either VM - remember, they have only the app code to optimize; even high-end RIA apps are very "browser bound", most work is performed by the browser, that is a native and previously-booted component.
Constant folding, yes (actually happens on the interpreter level too).
Constant folding (and other opts) is more effective in the end of a full pipeline (or in several places)... at the interpreter level, you can just fold program-level constants, e.g. "var Pi=3.14; ...; return 2*Pi*radius". But in a (real compiler's) LIR optimization phase, you can fold loads of compiler-induced variables, e.g. the resolved address of an array's zero-index element.
Instruction scheduling, maybe not so much. I agree with your main point that V8 and Tracemonkey can get faster on these benchmarks. I'm just not convinced they'll necessarily end up that much faster than SFX.
Well, I think this potential (to wipe the floor with SFX) is clearly there... like I said, V8 and TM are still missing a boatload of important optimizations, including many low-hanging fruits. They don't need to approach anywhere near say to HotSpot Server or gcc -O3; it's not a problem if they won't, ever, implement the really aggressive optimizations... even with only mid-range opts, they will become several times faster than today in many benchmarks. But SFX can't run that race too; it's already close (IMHO) to the max potential of its architecture. They can just keep adding special-case opts, things like their regex JIT which is a nice idea because JavaScript apps can rely on a lot of regex's... but you can't special-case everything.
The crux of this BTW is your statement:
"So we can be fairly certain that the average real cost of delivery of excellent health care runs to less than $1,500 per man, woman and child"
Which is just some bullshit figure you MADE UP without any cites whatsoever based on one INDIVIDUAL case i.e. an anecdote. Hint the plural of anecdotes is not data., and the costs of health care varies VASTLY across different demographics, I have already given the DATA that the U.S. spends a greater percentage of it's GDP which is data, get i?. Not only do you lose but you are a stupid and cruelly self centered ASSHOLE who obviously doesn't give a rats ass if other people lay sick in the gutter as long as YOU are waited on hand and foot.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?