Mozilla's New JavaScript Engine Coming September 1

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has reached an important milestone as its new JavaScript engine, 'JaegerMonkey,' is now faster than the current 'TraceMonkey' in a key benchmark. Mozilla wants JaegerMonkey to be faster than the competition and launch on September 1, which means that JaegerMonkey will make it into Firefox 4.0."

Comments

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you expect too much from CmdrTaco. Hell, this website still isn't compatible with UTF-8.

Competition

[Dan East]

I know Firefox is open source, but is it wise to broadcast their intentions so publicly months in advance? Especially when it has to do with competing against other browsers.

Re:Competition

[Monkeedude1212]

Please elaborate Why not?

Re:Competition

[Mad Merlin]

Everybody is trying to improve their Javascript execution speed, so it's really not a big slip. Really, you can't blame them, after all, it lets you play Javascript games like Game! that much faster!

Re:Competition

[bsDaemon]

Because the Taliban might start training their monkeys to interpret Javascript, too.

Re:Competition

[Keyslapper]

Agreed. The JS engine is probably the only area FF is trailing the rest of the market by a wide margin. It's not like they're announcing they're getting further out in front of the pack. Announcing they're finally coming up to par in this area is the best thing I've heard about FF since ... well ever.

This might give me reason to hold out for FF4 rather than switching to Safari or Opera.

Re:Competition

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Everybody knows that everybody is trying to buff their JS scores; both because the Web2.0 gods demand it, and because not having the best sunspider scores causes your e-penis to shrivel. It isn't exactly a skunkworks secret weapon kind of feature.

The only way that they could really hide from a remotely sophisticated adversary(ie. a group that includes anybody remotely capable of making a competing browser), would be to sacrifice openness in a pretty huge way and make it so that only internal devs could see commits and things being made. If they aren't doing that, they aren't actually hiding much of anything.

Plus, since JS performance is such a point of competition, pre-announcing your coming-real-soon-now feature is a way of encouraging people not to defect to competing products before the feature is actually released.

Re:Competition

[BZ]

Mozilla is not just open source, it's also open. Open in the sense that all project management (and indeed everything else) is done in the open as much as possible. There are no secret project crash landings of the sort that Chrome was or the current iteration of the Safari JS engine, unless there are external requirements for such (as there were with WebM).

This has the benefit that project contributors who are not Mozilla employees can fully participate in goal-setting and development. It does have the drawback that competitors can borrow the ideas, and possibly even ship them first; this happens all the time. This is viewed as an acceptable cost of doing business in an open way.

Re:Competition

[ultranova]

Nah. The best thing would be if they finally separated everything into their own threads so that the entire UI would not lock just because Javascript in some tab is busy, or some download stalled, or a big table is being rendered, or whatever.

Re:Competition

[Big Boss]

The new and improved TalibanMonkey Javascript engine! It flies code into large webpages and DDOSes any script that mentions Muhamad. :)

Re:Competition

[Arancaytar]

It's not exactly a huge leap of innovation, since monkeys already writing Javascript.

I can't explain some of the code I've seen, otherwise.

Re:Competition

[maxume]

The foundations finances aren't open.

Re:Competition

[Keyslapper]

I was under the impression that's what 4.0 is doing. On MacOS, I get an extra FF icon in the Dock when I run into sites with Flash ...

Did I miss something?

And yeah, 3.6.x was so bad I upgraded my primary browser to the beta. Since then, no CPU drain at random, no out of control heat issue until I force kill it, and no framework lockup when I'm editing a long response on FB. It still freezes the edit box momentarily, but only rarely, and never crashes out or kills performance on the whole machine. To be honest, if the handful of extensions I use in FF had been ported to Safari, I'd already have jumped ship.

Re:Competition

[jgagnon]

Don't forget the IBSOD (Improvised Blue Screens Of Death).

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash et al are in their own processes. But despite it's multi-threading claims, FF still uses one big thread for UI and javaScript. So when loading /. the entire UI freezes until the js is done. This is quite obvious if you have a /. live book mark. Try to open 5 stories quickly using middle-click (open in new background tab for me).

Re:Competition

[BZ]

Which part? Exact sources of revenue? Those are as open as the various revenue sources will allow, last I checked. Exact spending? The general categories are published; the exact salaries of particular people are not. Something else?

Re:Competition

[H0p313ss]

Because the Taliban might start training their monkeys to interpret Javascript, too.

Silence, I kill you!

Re:Competition

[marsu_k]

While this is true, partially it's not FFs fault. However /. managed to get from a convoulted mess of nested tables and font tags to a convoulted mess of some of the worst performing javacript I've ever seen is beyond me.

Re:Competition

[bonch]

You just said in the beginning of your statement that it's open source. Everybody can already see what they're doing, just like with WebKit.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's coming eventually as electrolysis

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could mod you up, you made me spit my coffee all over the screen!

Re:Competition

[drachenstern]

Nice reference, altho I think rather niche. Ah well.

Re:Competition

[maxume]

Where is such information? The information here is getting stale:

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/

Re:Competition

[BZ]

> Where is such information?

On the page you linked to.

> The information here is getting stale:

The 2008 information is there. The 2009 information can't be put up until the 2009 tax returns are filed, at the very least, which may well not have happened yet (depending on the exact fiscal year and extension situation; I'm not privy to the details).

Re:Competition

[drachenstern]

And yet here you are posting!

At least the trains ran on time in Italy eh?

Re:Competition

[BZ]

Sort of. There have been several projects developed behind closed doors and then crash-landed in Webkit when done. In fact, that's happened with Safari's JS engine.

Re:Competition

[maxume]

The 2008 auditing report and form 990 both use the calendar year, so there is a fair chance that they are using the calendar year for taxes.

It also mentions that the IRS is investigating their classification of certain income. It is sort of entertaining, their status as a public foundation is in question, so they have to ask people for donations (to try to be publicly supported), but they get far more money from their deal with Google than they are currently able to intelligently spend.

Re:Competition

[ultranova]

While this is true, partially it's not FFs fault. However /. managed to get from a convoulted mess of nested tables and font tags to a convoulted mess of some of the worst performing javacript I've ever seen is beyond me.

If a Net facing application, which is meant to process data acquired from untrusted sources freezes because it's fed bad data, it's entirely that application's fault. I don't care if Slashdot was coded by the Devil himself, if Firefox freezes on Slashdot then Firefox has a bug.

Not that I would know about Slashdot's Javascript, I'm using the "classic" interface since the "new" one is unsusable.

Re:Competition

[yoyhed]

Because for years, they've been beaten ten-fold by Chrome, Opera, and Safari. Can they really pull a JavaScript engine out of their ass in a few months to beat the best? If not, they have failed to meet their publicly stated goals.

Re:Competition

[bodino]

LOL ... here's a link so everyone can get the reference...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1aSMhAAWg8

Re:Competition

[Monkeedude1212]

The engine has already been created - and tested, it is faster than their current engine.

Yes, they hope to beat the best, and of course thats just marketting speak like all browsers do, but it's not like Firefox has set any goals and felt any backlash when they didn't meet them before.

Re:Competition

[Al_Lapalme]

Are you my virgins?!

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

They've pulled a lot of the IO out of the GUI thread, which makes it way less frustrating. See here.

Re:Competition

[Nursie]

Slashdot is about the only site that I can watch max-out the processor for up minutes at a time on my N900.

For a geek website this is REALLY bad. IMHO.

Re:Competition

[Hurricane78]

I’m sorry, but that’s your own damn fault.
The thing is, that modern JS has stopped assuming that its users are complete retards, because as you may know, this did not work out so well.
So it leaves you the choice how the threading works, by just offering worker threads as a tool, and not enforcing them.
(Even before that, there were always setTimeout and setInterval, which I used to simulate asynchronous network sockets over object tags in what, 2002?)

But if you don’t use them, of course the code will stall everything. Just like with a normal desktop application. Who would have thought... :)

Re:Competition

[StikyPad]

You're thinking of AlQuedaMonkey. TalibanMonkey tally me bananas.

Re:Competition

[bazfum]

If a Net facing application, which is meant to process data acquired from untrusted sources freezes because it's fed bad data, it's entirely that application's fault. I don't care if Slashdot was coded by the Devil himself, if Firefox freezes on Slashdot then Firefox has a bug.

If that "bad data" is actually code, you may not be able to do anything about it locking up. See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Halting_problem

Re:Competition

[diegocg]

Firefox 4 also puts the JS engine in its own thread.

Re:Competition

[Yvan256]

Actually, monkeys writing Javascript can lead to huge leaps of innovation.

Re:Competition

[Yvan256]

Wow, first time I ever see that:

---

Google Error

Server Error

The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.

---

You've actually managed to slashdot YouTube with your link!

Re:Competition

[Vectormatic]

You sir, made my day, and in lieu of a mod point, have this coupon, good for one free internets!

damn, if only i hadnt pissed away my mod points earlier today..

Re:Competition

[StikyPad]

The JS engine is probably the only area FF is trailing the rest of the market by a wide margin.

HTML5 as well, FF4 beta notwithstanding. About the only test I've seen FF win lately is memory usage, although I haven't been able to reproduce those results at all in personal use.

FF was good in its time, but hasn't been my browser of choice since Chrome started formally supporting plugins. I do miss multi-row tabbing, but it's easy enough to live without given the performance of Chrome overall.

Re:Competition

[Teckla]

he best thing would be if they finally separated everything into their own threads...

No, the best thing would be if they finally separated everything into their own processes.

Re:Competition

[Keyslapper]

Oh, yes. HTML5 is the "next big thing" and I've been mostly ignoring it (I'm a back-end C/C++/Perl dev, not a web dev).

I saw that memory test result. I think the big problem there was that it was a stripped down FF install - no extensions. I don't use that many - maybe 6 or 8, but in my experience FF would tend to suck epic quantities of memory into oblivion along with the CPU any time it went pear shaped. I never was able to isolate that problem to a single plugin, page, or combination thereof. Now that FF4 is isolating plugins and tabs better, maybe I'll be able to.

Re:Competition

[rattaroaz]

Using monkeys is a classic tail of innovation.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean into their own processes.

"Separating" (hah) everything into threads does not help a thing, even async io is better than that.
But starting a new process to do something that is, well, a new process with an independent result every time, that sounds good.

Re:Competition

[H0p313ss]

This skit is as quotable as Monty Python... "What happened?", "New guy"

On a slight tangent, the west as a whole seems to find the entire concept of suicide bombers bemusing and slightly amusing. Exactly how do you advance your aims by killing off your most motivated followers? Is this some twisted attempt to raise the average IQ by killing off the stupidest? Is bin Ladin a closet sci-fi fan and is enjoying this macabre reference to "The Marching Morons" ?

But I digress...

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly a huge leap of innovation, since monkeys already writing Javascript.

I can't explain some of the code I've seen, otherwise.

Apparently, "monkeys already writing" on Slashdot too!

Re:Competition

[quickOnTheUptake]

I think you are missing the point. Sure the JS may run forever, but firefox should be structured so the ui is able to continue running (by which I mean, "remain responsive") while the js is looping. In other words the halting problem isn't the issue.

Re:Competition

[bazfum]

I wasn't making any point about Firefox's inability to multi-thread. I was pointing out that he seems to think that the Firefox devs should be able to somehow magically make JavaScript code not freeze up when run.

Re:Competition

[quickOnTheUptake]

I was pointing out that he seems to think that the Firefox devs should be able to somehow magically make JavaScript code not freeze up when run.

Well, you are of course right about the js, but you misunderstood post. He is clearly talking about FF itself freezing, not about FF not somehow magically correcting crap js.
In fact that is what he has been talking about for this entire thread.

Re:Competition

[moonbender]

Halting problem: "Given a description of a program, decide whether the program finishes running or will run forever."

This has nothing at all to do with being able to execute a script in a runtime environment without freezing the environment itself. The script should be executed in a way that does not affect the rest of the process. Any given script could still run forever. One relatively easy way to do that is to use the operating systems native way of scheduling code... Whether or not you are able to tell whether any given piece of code will ever finish is quite irrelevant to all of this.

Re:Competition

[caerwyn]

No. You may not be able to determine ahead of time that it's not going to halt, but that doesn't mean you can't sandbox it in such a way as to prevent it from blocking other things until you determine, from an external source, that it is likely to not be going anywhere and likely should be killed. Especially in a modern OS and with modern multiprocessor machines, where threading isn't merely convenient but essential for getting good use of the hardware.

Re:Competition

[Mad Merlin]

You must be doing something wrong... Even on a huge story (like this one, 801 comments when I loaded it), Konqueror loaded and rendered all of the comments in a second or two at most. Admittedly, this machine has an i7 in it, but I can't believe that the chip in the N900 is two orders of magnitude slower.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's the exact same sort of thing Microsoft often does, actually. Tell everybody what your future plans are, and act like it's fait accompli, in order to stop hemorrhaging users to competitors who have a better product on the market now.

They are now a completely reactive organization, trying to play catch-up to Chrome.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you name some examples of non-employees who have actually managed to affect goal-setting and development? Feel free to use IRC nicks or other aliases, I am familiar with them. So far the closest I can see is jjb with Firebug, but not really because he is actively being sidelines with the HUD/Console work that's ridiculously incomplete right now.

Posting as AC for rather obvious reasons, but I'll be keeping an eye on your /. user page.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

They moved the plugins to a separate process, a good idea as well. However, not exactly what GP was referring to.

Re:Competition

[Nursie]

The N900 has a 600MHz ARM chip - I can imagine it being at least one order lower than an i7. And it doesn't really seem to matter how many comments there are, for some reason. I can try to find another browser. The built-in one uses gecko.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since then, no CPU drain at random, no out of control heat issue until I force kill it, and no framework lockup when I'm editing a long response on FB."

FB?

Re:Competition

[ultranova]

I'm sorry, but that's your own damn fault.

It's my fault that Firefox freezes, despite me having coded neither Firefox nor the Javascript that interacted in this way?

The thing is, that modern JS has stopped assuming that its users are complete retards, because as you may know, this did not work out so well.

A bad assumption, IMHO. Most programmers are retards and write sloppy code. This whole problem is evidence of that.

So it leaves you the choice how the threading works, by just offering worker threads as a tool, and not enforcing them.

What are you talking about? I was referring to the browser; I couldn't care less if a particular page's scripts are multithreaded or not, just as long as the UI doesn't have to wait for them to finish whatever it is they're doing.

But if you don't use them, of course the code will stall everything. Just like with a normal desktop application. Who would have thought... :)

Guess what? A normal desktop application doesn't stall everything; even if it hangs, the rest of the mahcine will keep on chugging along just fine. That is what I want for Firefox: if your POS script freezes, fine; but the Firefox UI should still keep responding, allowing me to switch to other tabs and use them normally, and close the offending tab forcibly once I grow tired of its scripts getting their act together.

Re:Competition

[ultranova]

I see your Halting Problem and rise with Pre-Emptive Multitasking :).

September 1

[aBaldrich]

They are trying to conquer the browser market.

Re:September 1

[liahim]

There is a browser "market" !?

JägerMonkey Promo Video

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JMOh-cul6M

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct transliteration of German umlauts ä, ö and ü is "ae", "oe" and "ue". JaegerMonkey is correct.

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in German.

Free as in Beer

[DIplomatic]

It really blows my mind that there is such fierce competition between internet browsers. It's rare to see this level of intense drive and innovation for a free product.

Re:Free as in Beer

[kestasjk]

As long as they keep racing towards a standard it is a great thing, there was definitely equally fierce competition a decade ago but it was far less productive

Re:Free as in Beer

[path411]

They are fighting over how people view the internet, it's a pretty important battle. Whoever wins gets to set the pace of the internet for several years.

Re:Free as in Beer

[MozeeToby]

To be fair, the same argument that is used against Google could be leveled against Firefox. The browser/search is not the product, it is merely the means to generate the real product: users. The users are the product and they and their habits are sold to the advertisers. Obviously Firefox is still largely community driven, but when you get down to brass tacks it takes money to run a project as large and complex as Firefox has become, that money comes from selling user behavior.

Re:Free as in Beer

[east coast]

But there will be no winner. The people producing the software already know that. At least I would like to think that they do. I hope they're not as hung up as most Slashdot users who continue to insist that their OS/Phone/Browser/IDE is the best and is the leader in the market.

The market is fluid and we should all be thankful for that even if it bursts our fanboy bubbles.

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> it is merely the means to generate the real product: users.

No, the real product is an open web not tied to a particular technology. Users are just a means to that end.

> and their habits are sold to the advertisers.

What does Firefox sell, exactly? I'd really like to know.

> that money comes from selling user behavior.

Not quite. That money comes from partnerships with search engines. The only thing "sold" is whatever you decide to submit to a search engine, and only if you use the little search bar at the top right of the browser, iirc, and is only "sold" to the search engine provider (who is obviously getting that data anyway; you want them to have it so as to actually do the search).

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> But there will be no winner.

No winner in terms of market share, right?

If that happens, it's a win for Mozilla, at least, since their goal here is a free and open web, not controlling how users get information. Firefox having 100% market share would be a loss for Mozilla....

Re:Free as in Beer

[bsDaemon]

It might be because they're free that there is competition to innovate. It doesn't take anything for someone to switch to a different browser, so getting them to stick with one is a bit trickier. No one is going to go into purchase rationalization mode over a free download like they might over a car that turns out not to be as cool as they hoped. From the perspective of a Microsoft or a Google, once you can lock in the loyalty of the end users, then its easier to steer them towards your other products, including for-pay products. Hell, even Netscape was giving away Navigator hoping people would pick up their server offerings to go along with it. Mozilla, on the other hand, needs to keep people in the open, standards-based ecosystem because that forces all the vendors towards the center and creates are more cross-compatible environment.

Re:Free as in Beer

[Haffner]

I would imagine they also get some chunk of any of those bloatware toolbars idiots install...

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

Nope.

Re:Free as in Beer

[masmullin]

But there would a winner be if people gave up. Thus since everyone is trying so hard, there is an equilibrium stalemate which is good for everyone.

Re:Free as in Beer

[masmullin]

Actually, I thought FF sold competition vs IE to Google. With Chrome the future of FF looks bleak when contract renewal comes up. http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> Actually, I thought FF sold competition vs IE to Google.

FF doesn't "sell" anything to Google. Google pays for any searches that are done on Google via the FF search bar. So do other search providers.

> With Chrome the future of FF looks bleak when contract renewal comes up.

Does it? Google has search deals with FF and Opera. Why does Chrome change that calculation?

Google is not in the business of building a browser to build a browser. They're in the business of selling advertising; everything else is just a means to have more opportunities to sell said advertising.

Re:Free as in Beer

[icebraining]

Google won't do that unless Firefox disappears from the charts. Google isn't interested in promoting Chrome, it's interested in promoting their search engine that shows their ads. Cutting Mozilla's money would probably give some competitor (Yahoo?) the opportunity of serving web searches for all the Firefox users, which are still buttloads more than Chrome.

Re:Free as in Beer

[VGPowerlord]

Google has Mozilla Corp. between a rock and a hard place.

Google could say "Hey, we're not going to pay you for referrals any more."

What do you think is going to happen? That Mozilla will remove Google from the search engine dropdown? That Mozilla Corp will promote the #2 search engine instead, which just so happens to be owned by their largest competitor, Microsoft?

More importantly, if they do either of those things, how do you think the users will react?

Re:Free as in Beer

[spinkham]

Exactly. Google wins if there's multiple high quality browsers.

Mozilla wins if there's multiple high quality browsers and Google keeps paying them.

Opera wins if companies continue to buy their browser engine for embedding, and Google keeps paying them.

That's 3 of the 5 major(if you can call Opera a major browser) projects that are almost entirely dependent on Google. Google ads fund the web.

Apple wins if the browsers on their platforms are good enough to allow you to leave Microsoft, and the web ecosystem allows you to not feel much pain. So they also win if there's multiple high quality browsers.

IE already won the last round. Now they have to keep from losing relevancy in the next. If people start seeing "the internets" as firefox or chrome vs IE, then people can much more easily leave Windows for Linux or Mac. The delay after IE 6 was an attempt to stall the web. They somewhat succeeded in delaying progress on the web, but lost the war, and now are scrambling to build a browser that doesn't suck.

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> That Mozilla will remove Google from the search engine dropdown?

Presumably not, since it's there because it's the search engine users want, not because of the money.

Note that in some locales, where Google gives worse results than other search engines, it's not the default search engine.

Now your point seems to be that if Google were to do this then Mozilla would lose revenue. This is probably true.

Re:Free as in Beer

[tibman]

the users will change the search engine to their fav again? That's not so different than IE 7.

Re:Free as in Beer

[Angst Badger]

I think that in this case, it's free as in Jägermeister.

There are a number of reasons why that's a terrible idea. Remind me to tell you some time about that night in Augsburg back in 1986. I hear they still won't let Americans stay in that hotel.

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> Google wins if there's multiple high quality browsers.

Do they? They win if people visit Google properties. Whether that needs multiple high quality browsers is debatable. It probably does need _a_ high quality browser.

> Mozilla wins if there's multiple high quality browsers and Google keeps paying them.

Why is the Google part there a necessity? Mozilla wins (per their mission) if they can prevent a single entity from restricting what people can do on the web or how they use the web, whether that entity is Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, or someone else. Right now things are going ok on the Microsoft front there; not necessarily as well for the other three I listed.

> Opera wins if companies continue to buy their browser engine for embedding, and Google
> keeps paying them.

Wouldn't that be an "or" instead of an "and"? In any case, you seem to be assuming they can't find other revenue sources before the money in the bank runs out if Google stops paying them, just as you do for Mozilla. That's a hefty assumption.

> Apple wins if the browsers on their platforms are good enough to allow you to leave
> Microsoft

Apple wins if they can sell you hardware. They win extra if they can control information flow on said hardware. They're doing a pretty good job of the latter on their mobile platforms, including use of all the tactics we saw coming from Microsoft in the late 1990s (coopting standards bodies by implementing stuff unilaterally and then proposing it for standardization, promoting their non-standard features for use on mobile-targeted sites so as to lock out other UAs from those sites, locking out competing rendering engines from their platform, etc). On the desktop, the situation is somewhat different, but the desktop market is a bit of a sideshow for Apple at this point, from what I can see.

Agreed on your characterization of IE on the strategic level; on the tactical level they're actually doing a really good job of implementing current standards. Other UAs have more breadth than IE8 (in the sense of implementing more features), but IE8 has quite good depth (in the sense of not creating buggy implementations); much better than some of the other rendering engines. In fact, they have a bit of a tendency to implement the letter of the spec even when the spec makes no sense as written.... That is to say, their nefarious strategic plan is actually advancing. ;)

Re:Free as in Beer

[AvitarX]

A free and very profitable product.

Firefox makes Mozilla millions, and I imagine Opera does well enough with their share too (I am thinking their paid mobile browser base has shrunk a lot with Android and iPhone). Google is *VERY* good at placing adds people want in front of them, and therefore the millions of users various users have is worth a lot to them. The kick-backs for using google.com as a default front page are huge in that scale. And can support a quite large (well large medium sized anyway) organization ($61.5 million, just from search).

This places the market itself (web browsers) at about $250 Million, the fact that a few players fight over a few percent is not shocking at all.

Opera presumably gets about 6 million a year, not a ton, but I can totally see that supporting a single application shop (thirty developers and overhead).

35% of users are up for grabs (non IE, non Safari, already having jumped to non-default), meaning the market for third party browsers is about 87 Million, this a plenty for three to compete in (Chrome, Firefox, Opera), and everyone to be winning.

If half of Chromes users came from Firefox, i imagine they consider the project a win, saving them 6 million/year, aside from making the web a better place (in their mind), and presumable bringing in revenue if they grabbed people from IE.

sources, poorly researched:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/firefox-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&sample=28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation -- firefox revenue

Also worth noting, every browser default searches with google.com (aside from IE), google wins for every defection from IE, and presumable pays about $80 million/year to non-IE browsers. It's probably safe to assume they are making some money too, or they wouldn't be paying as much. Even Opera Mini likely generates close to 1 million/year.

 

Re:Free as in Beer

[Hurricane78]

There isn’t. It’s just that some idiots would not have all those extreme stories without making it into “TeH FIGHTZ0RZ oF TeH CeNtUrIeZ!!!11!1one(lim (x->0) ((sin x)/x))”

Re:Free as in Beer

[TheLink]

> What do you think is going to happen?

If I were IBM, I'd donate some money to keep Mozilla going. The more choices there are the more likely some CxO is going to just pay IBM to not have to think about them :).

Re:Free as in Beer

[Stan Vassilev]

It really blows my mind that there is such fierce competition between internet browsers. It's rare to see this level of intense drive and innovation for a free product.

Have you used a search engine or watched over-the-air TV lately? They compete quite fiercely, so how much did you pay for the privilege?

Money is just an expression of a resource or service you have to offer, which is valuable for the opposing side. The average person tends to see additional "phantom" value in giving actual money for something, versus giving his time, or willing to be persuaded to buy a product he doesn't need, for example. However it's really an economic exchange in the end. The money Firefox makes out of people "googling" on it is very real as well.

If it was really free and they had no revenues, then, no, you wouldn't see such a fierce competition, in fact, you'd barely see any semblance of structured effort, strategy or looking at the big picture. For a reference, check any of the millions languishing or dead OSS projects, which were not fortunate enough to have corporate funding or a revenue model.

Re:Free as in Beer

[KillShill]

OffTopic.

And the human race wins when people leave Vendor-Lock-In-Tosh.

I like how you associate Mac with Linux... as if an expensive proprietary hardware-encumbered OS is somehow anti-MS.

Out of the pan and into the volcano.

Re:Free as in Beer

[jsebrech]

Do they? They win if people visit Google properties. Whether that needs multiple high quality browsers is debatable. It probably does need _a_ high quality browser

Competing browsers advance the state of the web art faster than a single dominant player. Google entered the browser market not to win, but to increase competition. Mozilla has much the same goal (firefox is the reason microsoft restarted IE development). There's no denying that the competition in the browser space is fierce and that this is leading to rapid iterations of these browsers.

Re:Free as in Beer

[jsebrech]

You act like google and mozilla are competitors. They're not. There's nothing mozilla does that competes with google. Both are working towards a larger and more capable web, and google has bet the farm on that web becoming the de-facto application platform. Mozilla's activities are a benefit to google, not a risk.

In essence, google is getting a very cheap deal with mozilla, and they know it (which is why the contract has been extended twice so far, and will likely be so again in the second half of 2011).

Re:Free as in Beer

[VGPowerlord]

You act like google and mozilla are competitors. They're not. There's nothing mozilla does that competes with google.

Except web browsers.

Google likes having its own web browser, because they use it to steer people towards other Google products. Which in turn not only increases Google's ad revenue, but what they know about you (and will monetize).

Re:Free as in Beer

[BZ]

> Competing browsers advance the state of the web art faster than a single dominant player.

OK, fair. Google's main concern is that the state of the web advance fast enough to stay ahead of Silverlight and company, as well as catch up as much as possible to actual desktop apps. Having multiple browsers may be beneficial here, indeed.

Re:Free as in Beer

[msclrhd]

This is what you get when you have competition and not a monopoly. Competition is a good thing and ultimately the users benefit.

It is interesting to see the resurgence of the "browser wars" with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari all racing each other -- each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Competition has had an effect on IE -- making it support tabbed browsing, CSS 2.1 and a host of HTML5 / CSS3 functionality as well as improving JavaScript performance. Even Firefox has taken many steps forward in light of the competition, where it is likely that it would have stagnated (it would have still improved over time, but I suspect not as quickly as with the competition).

The result is more choice, and better quality in those choices (JavaScript performance, web standard support, etc.), for the user -- i.e. the user wins :).

Re:Free as in Beer

[msclrhd]

Not to mention the baseline (slowest browser) JavaScript performance. This allows Google to use more complex JavaScript. It also allows other sites to do the same.

Great... JUST GREAT

[revlayle]

Drunk monkeys are going to be running the new JS engine.... still better than IE

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[paradxum]

The Internet ... built by and ran by Drunk monkeys....

Ok, some of us are not drunk.... all the time.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[Anonymous Coward]

> Drunk monkeys

"Jaeger" is German for hunter. Yes, there's also a drink that has this name.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[revlayle]

Professional hunting monkeys sounded scarier then drunk monkeys - also, drunk monkeys are funnier. Also, EITHER is better than IE.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[H0p313ss]

Professional hunting monkeys sounded scarier then drunk monkeys - also, drunk monkeys are funnier. Also, EITHER is better than IE.

Indeed. I'd rather browse the web with a pack of drunken armed monkeys in the room than have to use IE.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[jshark]

Considering my one and only encounter with Jägermeister, it's not just "drunk" monkeys, but "holy crap hammered out of their everlovin godddamned mind and whythefuck are they puking all over my desktop" monkeys.

ymmv.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experience shows that you're a lightweight. That is some of the lamest alcoholic shit I've ever had.

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet ... built by and ran OVER by Drunk monkeys....

Missed a word there

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[Pollardito]

I think you misspelled Trunk Monkey

Re:Great... JUST GREAT

[kangsterizer]

nazi drunk monkeys (sorry lol)

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

German orthography has long allowed -Ve alongside V+umlaut. That's why we write Goethe as it is, and not with o+umlaut.

Nightly benchmarking

[Mr. Spontaneous]

For those of you who want to track the progress of Mozilla's JS efforts, visit the self-descriptive ARE WE FAST YET?

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish they'd look at the browser by itself and not focus so much on benchmark comparisons with other browsers. Yes benchmark comparisons can point to areas that could use improvement and are interesting in that respect. However there are lots of areas for which there is no benchmark comparison to demonstrate the need for improvement. Some parts of Firefox are just awful slow in ways that don't show up on a typical browser vs browser benchmark. They'd do well to profile it and see what code paths are frequented and do some real optimization.

Very often, when people say Firefox (or some other product for that matter) is slow they aren't talking about A vs B benchmark scores.

Also sometimes all these benchmarks optimizations negatively effect the users experience. There are tweaks that one can enable that lower some benchmark scores but, at the same time, make the browser feel more responsive to the user. The strong focus on benchmarks actually hurts the user experience.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[masmullin]

For the colourblinds amongst us... can you describe the graph please.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[iammani]

The page is hosted by Mozilla JS team, all they care about is JS performance and JS features.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[Mr. Spontaneous]

Hovering over a datapoint should show which engine is being tested.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[Mr. Spontaneous]

In addition to what the above poster said, they aren't putting all of their eggs in one basket. They've been heavily focused on making sure the entire UX is fast/responsive, not just benchmarks.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[bunratty]

How are you supposed to compare the performance of different browsers without using benchmarks? Anecdotes? Impressions? Guesses?

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[akanouras]

Last day's ranking (Fastest to Slowest)

x86 Sunspider:

1. google v8
2. apple nitro
3. moz tracing JIT
4. moz fv method JIT (no tracer integration yet)
5. nitro w/o JIT
6. moz fv w/o JIT
7. moz w/o JIT

x86 v8bench:

1. google v8
2. apple nitro
3. moz fv method JIT
4. moz tracing JIT
5. nitro w/o JIT
6. moz w/o JIT
7. moz fv w/o JIT

and so on...

You can also mouseover the dots on the graphs to get detailed information in tooltips ;-)

PS: That was supposed to be an ordered list, at least before Slashdot's CSS fucked it up.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[masmullin]

thank you.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[jsebrech]

Stopwatch measurements of page loads? Back in the day, that's how we did it (uphill in the snow).

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[Reapman]

Let me add.. for those of us stuck using IE8 at work and all I get is a white screen, a few dots, and "NO".. can you describe the graph please. :)

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[msclrhd]

Benchmarks give repeatable tests that can be used to see how well something is performing and how that is changing over time -- see the arewefastyet.com site for graphs of this type of data. The benchmarks should give examples of specific workflows and use cases (string concatenation, for example).

Benchmarks do not necessarily equate to responsiveness in the browser, but that is not what these are testing. That's not to say that responsiveness is not important -- other people are looking into that and have expertise in those areas of the code and what needs to be done to improve things.

TFA also notes that JaegerMonkey wins in one benchmark over TraceMonkey, and TraceMonkey wins in the other. The ultimate aim is to use both, giving a fast (JaegerMonkey) baseline.

There are also other factors -- like when garbage collection gets invoked, and reducing the amount of disk I/O -- that are being (and have been) looked into.

It isn't a matter of "just do X and things will be super fast and responsive". There are a lot of complicated things involved, and complex interactions.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[bunratty]

The pages you use for that test would be a benchmark.

Re:Nightly benchmarking

[akanouras]

Anytime. :)

What Windows is to PC, Browser is to Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsers are the gate ways for the global online market and are a very important role in the growth in every direction. Next and soon mobile browsers will take their share too

Keyword: fast*ER* ... sometimes

[thijsh]

This is a welcome improvement, sadly it's still miles behind competing browsers... They still have to slash their benchmark stats in half to beat existing performance of Chrome, Safara and even IE9! Highly interactive webapps still won't run as smoothly in Firefox as in other browsers, which is a shame. I really love FireFox as a developer, but I have to say the slow speed is the biggest drawback. This is something that deserves proper attention from experts who really care about it, but now they have given themselves an impossible deadline to create these massive improvements... September is close by, and while these guys are miracle workers in my book they should not ask too much and create big expectations they (probably) can't meet.

Re:Keyword: fast*ER* ... sometimes

[sd.fhasldff]

I think you're missing the point of what is being benchmarked. Mozilla hasn't released benchmarks of their new JS engine with both "method" and "tracer" JIT combined. They are being evolved separately, but are (according to Moz) complementary. Thus, we don't know how far they actually are from their goal yet.

Check out http://www.arewefastyet.com/ for benchmarks and description.

From what I can gather from the associated bug report, the "fatval" optimizations are also not applied to the portions of JS code that is traced... which would imply that the better job the tracer engine does, the less the "fatval" optimizations are applied.

The result is that an unknown "free" speed increase is waiting in the wings. What the magnitude of this increase is... well, that's the question, isn't it?

Does 1 September seem like a really tight deadline? Yes, sure does, but more in terms of stability and robustness than actually getting to a specific speed milestone.

Re:Keyword: fast*ER* ... sometimes

[bunratty]

The tracer JIT is able to compile most methods into very tight assembly code because it is able to determine the types of each variable at compile time. For the methods that can't be compiled with the tracer JIT, they have been run by the interpreter, which is very slow compared to JIT compilers. With the new method JIT, methods that can't be compiled with the tracer JIT will be run by the method JIT instead of the interpreter. This is the meaning of the statement the tracer JIT (orange) and method JIT (black) are not yet integrated. once integrated, the merged branch will be faster than either branch individually. they are complementary.

Re:Keyword: fast*ER* ... sometimes

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla hasn't released benchmarks of their new JS engine with both "method" and "tracer" JIT combined. They are being evolved separately, but are (according to Moz) complementary. Thus, we don't know how far they actually are from their goal yet.

They are complementary only in a way icecream and fish are complementary. They don't seem to have overlap, but you don't want fish with your icecream.

Re:Keyword: fast*ER* ... sometimes

[sd.fhasldff]

They are complementary only in a way icecream and fish are complementary. They don't seem to have overlap, but you don't want fish with your icecream.

Since bunratty's reply provides a technical description of why they are truly complementary (possibly even orthogonal), I'm going to believe that argument over your rather weak ice cream simile.

Yes

[VortexCortex]

I know Firefox is open source, but is it wise to broadcast their intentions so publicly months in advance? Especially when it has to do with competing against other browsers.

Answer is simple: Yes, because it's open source.
If they want my help as a developer, then I need all the info about the product I can get.

It's not as if their new JS engine has been developed behind closed doors...
This announcement just informs us open source developers that we should focus our efforts
on improving JaegerMonkey instead of TraceMonkey because its scheduled to be included in FF4.

Reference?

[Irontail]

Is the name a sideways reference to Chuck Yeager (first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound), or is that just an amusing coincidence?

Re:Reference?

[Tim C]

I imagine it's a reference to this alcoholic drink.

Re:Reference?

[bsDaemon]

There is evidence to suggest that George Welch, a Norther American Aviation test pilot, broke the sound barrier testing the F-86 about 2 weeks before Yaeger in the X-1.

Re:Reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jaeger is german for hunter. In military terms it is also related to speed, for example "Jagdflugzeug" (fighter plane) comparable to the use hunter/killer submarine in english.

Too bad FF may not last

[denis-The-menace]

Don't get me wrong, I love FF but I am worried about what happens after the deal with google expires.

FF doesn't put out an MSI version of their windows package and doesn't do GPO policies *natively*. This stuff is all 3rd party after the fact and FF updates.

Meanwhile I read on /. that Chrome can use the same GPO as IE natively. (I can't find it, though)

Once Google pumps out MSIs for Chrome and its GPO support is common knowledge, FF will have lost the corps for market share.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[vbraga]

I never understood why Mozilla Foundation refuses to release proper GPO support in Firefox. Why neglect the corporate market?

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[RebelWebmaster]

For what it's worth, there was a session on enterprise deployment at the 2010 Mozilla Summit last week. Official MSI support is coming (there are patches posted to the relevant bug), hopefully for Firefox 4. GPO support is more difficult due to the wide number of settings supported by Firefox and complications with their version numbering and update settings. That said, there are extensions for it at least. Basically, that segment is getting more attention, even if it isn't moving at lightning speed.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[Anonymous Coward]

Google would not let that deal expire for long since Bing would love to be the default search provider in Firefox.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[kripkenstein]

Don't get me wrong, I love FF but I am worried about what happens after the deal with google expires.

Realistically, it won't expire anytime in the foreseeable future. Google is very happy about the deal with Firefox - they get put as the default search engine for 25% of web users. If that translates into any positive amount of search share - and it does - then Google won't stop the deal with Mozilla.

The Google-Mozilla deal isn't charity from Google. It helps them to compete with their actual competitors - Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, etc.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[kangsterizer]

Don't get me wrong, I love FF but I am worried about what happens after the deal with google expires.

FF doesn't put out an MSI version of their windows package and doesn't do GPO policies *natively*. This stuff is all 3rd party after the fact and FF updates.

Meanwhile I read on /. that Chrome can use the same GPO as IE natively. (I can't find it, though)

Once Google pumps out MSIs for Chrome and its GPO support is common knowledge, FF will have lost the corps for market share.

I doubt that ever happen. Google gains money from this deal and Firefox market share is still huge and way above Chrome

Not only that, but even if Firefox had a smaller market share, Google would still keep the contract like they do with Opera

Finally, Google has been pretty much "non-evil" lately, I wouldn't see them do that, they've good relations to Mozilla, and they don't gain much by having Chrome "beat" Firefox. But the future will eventually tell.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[Blakey Rat]

FF doesn't put out an MSI version of their windows package and doesn't do GPO policies *natively*. This stuff is all 3rd party after the fact and FF updates.

Meanwhile I read on /. that Chrome can use the same GPO as IE natively. (I can't find it, though)

Wow, it's almost as if when they ported it to Windows, they *actually* ported it to Windows instead of completely half-assing it!

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[jafac]

bah. GPO/MSI support is overrated.
All that configuration stuff *can* be scripted and automated, just not the "Microsoft" way. So a competent network administrator's going to set it up and deploy FireFox in that manner, and the IN-competent, will use IEAK. I don't see what Chrome puts on the table that's going to be worth the effort, even if they "support" GPO/MSI.

There's a zillion productivity apps out there that don't support GPO/MSI; and have to be "hacked" for automated deployment and management on Microsoft networks. Firefox is significant enough, and worthwhile for that effort.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[jsebrech]

Wow, it's almost as if when they ported it to Windows, they *actually* ported it to Windows instead of completely half-assing it!

Chrome was developed on windows first, and then ported to mac and linux.

Re:Too bad FF may not last

[denis-The-menace]

Those apps are probably niche apps where packaging in MSI is an after though.

Developers tend to think:
Why should I change things?
That InstallShield installer made by Sterling in 1998 still works great for me!

If you have 100-500 users and 10 oddball apps, hack away.
When you have 10000 users and 100+ oddball apps, repackage in MSI or upgrade.

Re:JägerMonkey

[shellster_dude]

Actually Mozilla uses the same terminology. See any of the data points on the graphs located at the Mozilla run: http://www.arewefastyet.com/

'Only Area'??? LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us your were joking...

The stinking pile of fail that is Firefox isn't ever going to compete with modern browsers like Chrome until the festering garbage of a source code base is thrown away and the browser is started over from scratch.

Re:'Only Area'??? LOL!

[Millennium]

There are indeed some severe flaws in the current Firefox, but what makes you think that the entire codebase needs to be discarded? There are still some issues with the current development process -for example, standards don't seem to have been Job One for some time- but in general they seem to have good plans for fixing most of the issues, and IE9 looks like it may be able to shame the dev team into doing the rest if it can follow through with its Acid3 support and leave Firefox as the last browser not at 100/100.

Is there really a need, given all of this, to abandon the entire code base? Or are you just looking for bites?

Re:'Only Area'??? LOL!

[BZ]

> for example, standards don't seem to have been Job One for some time

Standards have in fact been Job One, but the nice thing with standards is that there are so many to choose from. If you don't have the resources to implement them all, or think some of them are actively bad for the web (P3P comes to mind), you don't implement them. See also http://dbaron.org/log/2006-08#e20060818a

For the specific thing keeping Mozilla from a 100/100 score on Acid3, see http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/06/not_implementin.html

What has _not_ been Job One, unlike Apple, is making up new functionality and proposing it for standardization. Maybe it should have been; it's certainly an effective marketing technique for making it seem like you're ahead on standards.

Re:'Only Area'??? LOL!

[kangsterizer]

the reason ff is not at 100/100 is purely ideological, they don't want to implement features they consider are wrong (2 of them if i recall correctly, svg font rendering and some other crap.. maybe 3!)

Um, is it on?

[gmiernicki]

Hopefully they haven't enabled it by default in nightly builds because Chrome is still 2X faster in SunSpider by my latest count.

Re:Um, is it on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they haven't enabled it by default in nightly builds because Chrome is still 2X faster in SunSpider by my latest count.

7:00am: Wake up.
7:01am: Download and run latest Firefox nightly.
7:10am: Run latest Chrome nightly.
7:19am: Compare results. Must maintain validation of my browser choice at all costs.
7:20am: Job well done. Day is complete.

Seriously, your "latest count"? What does that even MEAN in this case? Are you just redeclaring your live for your favorite browser? Or do you seriously keep testing browsers every nightly release for your own smug assertion of the browser you picked?

Re:Um, is it on?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

No, they haven't. It's not fully optimized and tested yet.

Wha?

[ITBurnout]

Sometimes when reading Slashdot I find myself taking a step back and marveling at how a sentence like "Mozilla's new Jaegermonkey Javascript engine for Firefox, which will launch on September 1, is faster than Tracemonkey in key benchmarks" actually makes sense to me. It is the 21st Century, and we talk funny.

Re:Wha?

[smooth wombat]

It is the 21st Century, and we talk funny.

Quite obviously you don't work in a Unix/Linux environment. Grok, grep, apt-get, rpm -ihv name.rpm, su, man (which has nothing to do with a man), cat (which has nothing to do with cats), tar (which has nothing to do with tar and feathering someone or the LaBrea Tar Pits), or chmod.

I think you'll find people have been talking funny for centuries, depending on what your definition of funny is.

Re:Wha?

[ITBurnout]

Why would that be "quite obvious"? I don't currently work in such an environment, but I'm well aware of a lot of the commands, which are perfect examples of what I was talking (funnily) about. :)

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye. Thou dost speak indeed with an uncouth tongue.

Re:Wha?

[StripedCow]

But of course we talk funny! All the good product/project names (i.e., which actually make sense) have already been taken, by copyrighting, trademarking, or otherwise.

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Mozilla foolish?
  Can't they be sued by anyone with this last name?
  Jaeger is also the trademark of many rich people and companies
I'd say there going to take exception with that name and or especially the Monkey part

IMNAL but can they use peoples last or corporate names and hope not to be sued ?

Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

I dumped FF for Chrome a few months ago and I am not looking back... To be honest, the JS performance wasn't the main problem. It had stability and resource issues. We owe a lot to FF for freeing us from the tyranny of IE but the future is with Chrome or Safari (and to a lesser degree Opera).

Re:Too little, too late...

[bunratty]

It's interesting that no one seems to be able to provide specific information on these supposed stability and resource issues. It's classic FUD.

Re:Too little, too late...

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Stability problems are getting better every day. http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/08/dramatic-stability-improvements-in-firefox/

Re:Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

It's interesting that no one seems to be able to provide specific information on these supposed stability and resource issues. It's classic FUD.

I am sorry. I wish it were but the only FUD around here is your reply to my post. FF's problems are what are known as facts. I'd post screenshots of resource utilization, etc, but rebutting your comment is not worth the effort because it is patently false. FF's continual decline in market share speak for itself.

Re:Too little, too late...

[RebelWebmaster]

Continual decline? Their market share seems to have leveled off, but it hasn't really been dropping appreciably.

Re:Too little, too late...

[kangsterizer]

Err, that's just more FUD ...

You want non-factual stuff ? (Actually that's true at least for me)

Chrome itself doesn't crash, but the tabs crash all the fucking time that's so damn annoying. Firefox doesn't do that. It rarely ever crash (unless you're using Minefield?). Doesn't even use as much memory as Chrome also.

Windows 7 64.

For me the choice is easy.

Re:Too little, too late...

[Fnkmaster]

Agreed. Chrome and Safari are both much more likely to have stability issues on both Mac and Windows, as far as I have seen. Safari 5 is a nice browser, but should be labeled beta. Chrome has an amazing Javascript engine, but the rest of the browser is mediocre (rendering of complicated HTML is significantly slower than Firefox, for example - just try scrolling to see it, or look at some non-Javascript benchmarks).

Resource utilization hasn't been an issue with Firefox in *years*. This was a problem with Mozilla in the pre-Firefox days, and even with early releases of Firefox, but 1) computers improved, got more memory and faster CPUs, and 2) they fixed the big issues.

The remaining complaints about supposed "memory leaks" are almost always related to misunderstandings about memory allocation and usage models than they are about actual system performance.

Everybody obsesses about Javascript benchmarks, but that's really a tiny fraction of the actual usage your browser gets on the web. I am convinced that Mozilla is throwing effort into Jaegermonkey as a marketing initiative because of the strange focus on Javascript benchmarks by the technology press in the last year and because of Google's very successful use of Chrome's Javascript speed in their marketing than because Firefox actually needs it on 95% of web sites.

Re:Too little, too late...

[bunratty]

Sorry, it's clear you're making it all up. Many tests show Firefox uses less memory than other browsers, and Firefox's usage has never significantly declined. Your post is purely fabrications.

Re:Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

Sorry, it's clear you're making it all up. Many tests show Firefox uses less memory than other browsers, and Firefox's usage has never significantly declined. Your post is purely fabrications.

Ok, have fun in fairy tale land... I'll stick with Chrome.

Re:Too little, too late...

[kangsterizer]

When (if, but it seems likely lately) mozilla will beat everyone at the javascript game i bet they'll say javascript performance isnt all that important (its true it's not all that important) ;p

Re:Too little, too late...

[bunratty]

Exactly! Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More. Thank you for demonstrating the effect so clearly. And remember to play next time on What's Your FUD!

Re:Too little, too late...

[SuseLover]

People keep posting that FF is unstable, but I don't get it? FF itself has almost NEVER crashed on me and I let it run 24x7x365. All of my instability problems have been due to plugins.

And I don't understand the performance complaints either, FF is maybe .5 - 1 second behind other browsers loading pages/apps. Is our society really that impatient that we can't be bothered to wait 500ms longer for something to happen?

I dumped all other browsers since Mozilla came out and I haven't looked back and I absolutely HATE Chrome (and Google - I think they strayed too far from their roots and are too powerful), so whats so damn great about Chrome other than being a little faster?

Re:Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

Exactly! Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More. Thank you for demonstrating the effect so clearly. And remember to play next time on What's Your FUD!

Whatever. Yes, because we all know synthetic benchmarks accurately represent all use-cases, right? And, of course, the resource utilization I was seeing in task manager, etc, was completely delusional, right? I mean I must have been delusional because we all know that synthetic benchmarks are exhaustive and comprehensive. Sigh.

I'm not sure what your vested interest is in defending FF against reality but good luck with that... If you were serious about trying to defend FF you'd at least ask what version/os I was using but you didn't which leads me to believe you have an unreasoning belief in FF. I am happy to admit my experience is merely anecdotal and other people's experience may be different but I certainly know what my experience was with FF and it is much better with Chrome.

Re:Too little, too late...

[bunratty]

If there's a memory problem with Firefox, it should be trivial to trigger it with a synthetic benchmark, right?

I have no doubt that you saw resource utilization on your computer. That doesn't mean that's what others and seeing on their computers. I mean you must think when you have a problem starting your car in the morning that everyone else with the same make and model has exactly the same problem. Sigh.

I'm not "defending" Firefox. I'm just saying that you're making up lies. Well, maybe not completely fabricating stories, but wildly extrapolating your experience to the experience of all 350 million other users. Of course, you finally admit this in your last sentence. Welcome back to reality!

Re:Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

If there's a memory problem with Firefox, it should be trivial to trigger it with a synthetic benchmark, right?

I have no doubt that you saw resource utilization on your computer. That doesn't mean that's what others and seeing on their computers. I mean you must think when you have a problem starting your car in the morning that everyone else with the same make and model has exactly the same problem. Sigh.

I'm not "defending" Firefox. I'm just saying that you're making up lies. Well, maybe not completely fabricating stories, but wildly extrapolating your experience to the experience of all 350 million other users. Of course, you finally admit this in your last sentence. Welcome back to reality!

I'm not fabricating or lying or wildly extrapolating. If you go back to my original post you'll see that I said I was seeing problems and I switched. I then went on to say that Chrome and Safari were superior. If you made the inference that I was saying that my negative experience is a universal indictment of FF and that was the reason Chrome and Safari were superior, then that's really on you, not me. Perhaps this pointless little excursion could have been avoided with a carriage return.

Re:Too little, too late...

[jsebrech]

The memory use was either misinterpretation of statistics (happens often), or plugins. Firefox itself doesn't have a memory problem, but its plugins and add-ons do have major memory and stability issues. A clean firefox install with a clean profile and no addons or plugins is almost invulnerable. You might argue that it's also near useless, but the reality is that the other browsers are just as vulnerable to plugin and addon issues.

Now that flash is running in a separate process (as of FF 3.6.4) we can finally see that it's the flash plugin that's taking up the majority of RAM (at least, that's what I see on my system).

Re:Too little, too late...

[Anonymous Coward]

to a GREATER degree Opera, as it already makes those other two (chrome and Safari) look like chump browsers.

Re:Too little, too late...

[bunratty]

Oh, that's why you talked about the worldwide usage of Firefox declining. Because you personally were having a problem. You must be very important for so many millions of people to respect your personal opinion. Now you've got delusions of grandeur.

Re:Too little, too late...

[divisionbyzero]

Oh, that's why you talked about the worldwide usage of Firefox declining. Because you personally were having a problem. You must be very important for so many millions of people to respect your personal opinion. Now you've got delusions of grandeur.

Yes, it's true. The masses adore me. They follow my every movement when it comes to technology. They can't wait to find out what the newest hotness is going to be.

Anyhow, to assume that the problems that I was seeing were not more widespread than just my case takes a fair bit of arrogance, now doesn't it? You claim to know the experience of every FF user in the world? That's pretty bold (and indecent really; you shouldn't be spying on people like that).

Re:Too little, too late...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Chrome or Safari become the new tyrannosaurus?

Re:Too little, too late...

[dl748]

The only problem I"ve found with Firefox, is with sub standard extensions. For example, adding Fire Gestures, makes all flash video lock up every 20-25 seconds for a half second, at least on my machine. Adding FireBug, makes everything bloat more, because fb holds 2 copies of the web page in memory, plus all the injection codes. Hell with FB, i've seen one tab bloat to like 500+MB. Now turning off this extension, and i can have 20 tabs open for DAYS and memory stays around 60MB. And this is the problem with ANY web browser that supports user based extensions. The fact that FF has thousands of more extensions than Chrome, amplifies this. This viewpoint is like people moving to macs because they don't have viri.

Re:JägerMonkey

[Kenshin]

"Jäger" is German for "Hunter".

Once again we're treading into the territory: Can you be sued for using a word?

Faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll believe it when I see it letting me type on Twitter above 1 character per second on a Pentium-class machine, like I already do with today's "fastest" Javascript engines...

Re:JägerMonkey

[aliquis]

Especially now than Afghanistan has tried patenting it .. (Though it's been tried before (in USSR by Stalin, or who was it?))

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is it the correct transliteration, but it's the original form which was shortened over time.

AREWEFASTYET?

[kangsterizer]

http://arewefastyet.com/

NO.

(But it's getting good! - that Firefox javascript engine performance day-to-day or almost performance improvement graph)

Re:AREWEFASTYET?

[h7]

Where is the combined performance.. that site says the benchmarks are broken down and should be higher when integrated. SO where are those numbers?

Re:AREWEFASTYET?

[bunratty]

They will appear when the engines are integrated.

Will it support 64-bit?

[harmonise]

Will it be enabled on 64-bit systems? I've been missing out on all of these speed improvements over the last several years because I use 64-bit Linux with 64-bit Firefox and the new javascript engines have only been enabled for 32-bit Firefox.

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[kangsterizer]

yes it runs on 64 bit (RTFA ! ;D)
it's faster, too

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[harmonise]

yes it runs on 64 bit (RTFA ! ;D)

Can you provide a link to back that up? I did read the article. There's nothing in there about supporting 64-bit. The text "64" doesn't even appear in the page when I do a find in Firefox.

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[moonbender]

Wow, I didn't know that. I installed the 4.0b2pre in Ubuntu (via ppa). Firefox 3.6 x64 takes 3059.4ms in Sunspider, 4.0 x64 takes 1186.4ms -- yikes!

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[h7]

Does it resolve the slashdot "Preview" button lag? I assume this bug is slashdot's fault, not slow javascript.

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[moonbender]

You mean the approximately 1 second it says "Loading..." between pressing the preview button and seeing the actual preview? No, that's still there. Doesn't seem to go away faster, though I didn't measure it with a stopwatch. The same thing happens between pressing "Reply to This" and getting to the actual text box. FWIW Chromium isn't much better. Maybe there is some server communication involved?

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[h7]

Thought as much. I think it's bad slashcode. Oh and sometimes it goes to a lot more than 1 sec for me- Like 15-20secs frequently.

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[kangsterizer]

We’ve barely started and the results are already really promising. Running SunSpider on my machine, the whole-method JIT is 30% faster than the interpreter on x86, and 45% faster on x64.

It's in one of the source links of TFA ^^

source url http://www.bailopan.net/blog/?p=683

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[assassinator42]

Seeing as how it's not listed on the benchmark page, I doubt it.
And Apple Nitro without JIT is almost as good as Tracemonkey with JIT.

Re:Will it support 64-bit?

[harmonise]

Thanks. I can't wait until this is released.

the real question....

[Anonymous Coward]

So...when it crashes, it called a Jaeger Bomb?

But I do think that we can all agree that

[pizzach]

Firefox is falling behind on version numbers and it is 100% it's own fault. If this continues, it is not going to be able to compete with Chrome 5.0, Safari 5, Internet Explorer 9, or Opera 10.

Maybe Firefox should name their next version Firefox 1080?

Re:But I do think that we can all agree that

[kangsterizer]

nope they have to go through all iterations

should release b1, b2, etc as full blown versions like others!

Re:But I do think that we can all agree that

[Yvan256]

If they call it Firefox 1080 then I won't be able to use it. My monitor is only 1280x1024.

Re:JägerMonkey

[JohannesJ]

IMNAL; No it's not just a word it's the name of many Huge Billion $$ corporations and people
  It's a proper name!

  but Quite difference in a court.

Well, Google also wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Google also wins more if only 1 (their) browser is on the market.

Mozilla is dead as a user browser

[BitZtream]

Okay, obviously not, its got its fair share of the market.

My thought here is however, instead of working on things that aren't really that important, how about they step back and focus on making Firefox not suck.

You know, like back when it was simple and didn't try to be the worlds browser testbed?

I embed Gecko in a couple applications, using it because I get a 'web' rendering engine (lets face it, HTML isn't enough anymore) AND XUL which means I can create a common GUI using XUL and not maintain different bits of code between MacOS and Windows.

I think this statement about new the javascript engine is my final nail in the coffin for switching off Gecko to WebKit. (No, its not a new statement nor is my decision a new one)

Embedding Gecko is an absolute mess. You've got the nasty XUL runner distro you need to embed in your app, you've got path issues to worry about so your app can FIND all the mozilla DLLs and thats just Windows. Have fun embedding Gecko into a plugin bundle used by another app on Mac OSX. Yes, I've done it, but holy shit is it a complete mess.

I've got 5k lines of code or more just to make a wrapper around gecko that will let me load gecko on Windows in multiple apps without having to write the same thing over and over again to do nothing more than load gecko, get a XUL window and get a result from it.

I started transitioning my first app to webkit last night. In a few hours I had about 8 lines of code that got me a browser window to preview html in.

Mozilla spends all their time playing with new stuff, which is fine and good for the web, but I'm done tracking Mozilla sources and dealing with their bugs. Without a real commercial drive behind them, Mozilla is simply two unreliable for me as a developer to depend on them. If I had more resources on my end to work around issues in their code base it might work.

Mozilla spends time doing silly shit like new ways to make themes and other silly crap that generally isn't ever a good idea, regardless of how you implement it ('theming' and 'skinning' apps is retarded, sorry if you're one of those people but it should be such a low priority that it should never get time devoted to it). The result is that Mozilla's code base is a bloated, buggy, mess of code that no one can figure out.

Its filled with GREAT ideas, but no one stopped to ask if the ideas where GREAT in the context of 'a web browser'.

Mozilla is simply a sandbox a bunch of devs use to try out their latest code on the unsuspecting masses, this is just another example.

Great, your javascript engine is faster. How about you stop worrying about beating someone elses javascript engine and start fixing the bugs and bloat that cases it to crash before finishing the test 2 times in a row.

Your browser is fucking worthless if its too much of a mess to be usable, regardless of how fast one little bit runs.

Re:Mozilla is dead as a user browser

[bunratty]

start fixing the bugs and bloat that cases it to crash before finishing the test 2 times in a row.

Could you provide any specifics on the bugs or bloat? Where exactly could we find this test that cases Firefox to crash?

Re:Mozilla is dead as a user browser

[kangsterizer]

try running Firebird 1 or Phoenix and load today's slashdot and you'll figure out that browsers have evolved :P

now for embedding, webkit has way better support. been there, done that, using webkit here. but while embedding sucks, gecko is still very good. Proof could be the N900's gecko browser which has been called the best mobile browser by most. Hint: all other browsers run webkit.

Re:Mozilla is dead as a user browser

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a session at the Mozilla Summit last week about embedding. It hasn't been supported for some time and will probably not in the future unless someone steps up. Like it or not, improving embedding isn't as important to the goal of Mozilla as improving the speed of JavaScript and lots of other features that a good chunk of Firefox's userbase cares about.

Go to WebKit and you'll probably have great success, but don't expect it to be perfect either (I'm sure it will be better for what you're trying to do though).

Re:Mozilla is dead as a user browser

[xiong.chiamiov]

Your browser is fucking worthless if its too much of a mess to be usable, regardless of how fast one little bit runs.

Dunno, the slow-ass javascript rendering is the only thing that bothers me about Firefox. No, it doesn't ever crash, and it only freezes when I'm loading pages with a shitton of javascript.

Now, sure, I'm using webkit for embedding purposes, but that's something entirely different. Mozilla isn't aiming for an easily-embeddable rendering engine that we can make easy-peasy calls to in our apps.

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Monkey, Not A Lawyer?

Re:JägerMonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

No but the ASPCA will throw a dead monkeys at you every time their Firefox crashed.

Not to mention IBM just threw down

[rsilvergun]

it's weight. They're moving to FF all over.

Re:Not to mention IBM just threw down

[Anonymous Coward]

it's weight.

You mean "its".

wat

[Hell0W0rld]

JägerMonkey?

And I thought the Germans lost the war...

Using the wrong benchmark...

[bradbury]

The speed of Javascript is the *least* of my critera to use in judging a browser (seems like reviewers and developers are operating under some misguided credo where "foreign" software providers running unexamined software ON MY MACHINE is a *good* thing. While open source, an Internet site is free to change their Javascripts at the drop of a hat (unlike an open source browser where one at least some has some community review and reasonable confidence in security/reliability). So any web site which uses Javascript is open to compromise and therefore could become a mal-Javascript distributor.

If the purpose of HTML and Standards is to distribute *information* and not to use *my* CPU cycles or sell me things (aka distribute commercials) I'd be much more interested in browsers that use the fewest CPU cycles in an unused state (or a "used" state displaying static HTML) or reliably restore sessions when requested.

The overemphasis on how fast Javascript runs seems to be due to a lack of serious thought as to how to make browsers better at doing what they were designed to do -- which was *not* to run "web-apps". We used the Internet very successfully for over a decade to provide information -- not to run apps -- if it wasn't (isn't) broken why the emphasis on fixing(?) it?

I note this with an aside that the U.S. Government (NIH NCBI) no longer allows complete access to its *public* databases, e.g. PubMed, by browsers which do not have Javascript enabled. (One is compelled to ask *who* for the most part paid for that information but can no longer access it?).

A "good idea" is something which doesn't break something which used to work just fine when it is supposed to be improving on it.

Re:Using the wrong benchmark...

[jsebrech]

So any web site which uses Javascript is open to compromise and therefore could become a mal-Javascript distributor.

XSS leverages javascript, sure, but there are many ways of breaking a site's security without using javascript. Javascript itself is not a security problem, since it runs in a sandbox. Security problems, even those manifested through javascript, are always caused by bad design on the back-end (not filtering user input correctly).

The overemphasis on how fast Javascript runs seems to be due to a lack of serious thought as to how to make browsers better at doing what they were designed to do -- which was *not* to run "web-apps". We used the Internet very successfully for over a decade to provide information -- not to run apps -- if it wasn't (isn't) broken why the emphasis on fixing(?) it?

Just like the purpose of land-line communication has changed from voice calls to data, so is the purpose of browsers changing from document viewing to applications. The browser as a rich app platform is a good thing. It takes a lot of worry away from end users (upgrading, security, installation, ...). In the long run, we're all going to have better and easier to use apps because of it. We're finally going to be able to get rid of our personal computer as a physical piece of hardware. A PC should be a metaphorical construct that follows you around as needed, regardless of the hardware involved. The web is the only credible way of doing that.

I note this with an aside that the U.S. Government (NIH NCBI) no longer allows complete access to its *public* databases, e.g. PubMed, by browsers which do not have Javascript enabled. (One is compelled to ask *who* for the most part paid for that information but can no longer access it?).

Javascript is as essential to a modern browser as HTML and CSS. Disabling javascript has no point anymore (ever since accessibility products learned to cope with ajax). If you're talking about using tools like curl to extract content, then I agree that ways have to be provided to easily obtain all the content from a site. That doesn't mean that these sites should cater to the lowest common denominator and give everyone a shitty experience to allow a corner case. It just means they need to implement the corner case as a separate solution. Ever used a web app without any javascript? It's always a lousy experience. I don't see why that should be foisted on all users.

Re:Using the wrong benchmark...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you examine the source code when judging a browser/application x then?

Re:Using the wrong benchmark...

[bradbury]

I suspect you come from a different era than that which I am from (1974-1990's computing). I don't own a cell phone or a pad that runs "apps" nor do I have any interest in owning one -- as some reviewer pointed out a few months ago the "Network Computer" was an idea invented by Oracle 15+ years ago. It just took that long for the hardware prices to decline enough and "Javascript" to become popular enough that one could to begin to think about implementing it.

There are times when I like to experience "life" which includes things like reading a real book or smelling the roses and not wondering why I'm out of cell tower range. Nor do my father or aunt (individuals in their 70's and 80's) who like to use their 5-10 year old computers over dial-up lines to stay in touch with people using that primitive medium called email care for "apps". They tend to get frustrated when companies like JetBlue require you to take 20+ minutes to download sufficient Javascript and/or warn about requiring Flash Upgrades to print a simple boarding pass. And if Javascript is so "cool" why am I perfectly happy using Gmail without it? Sure Gmail with Javascript is a bit sexier, but Gmail is the only application I use regularly where Javascript might be desirable. NoScript is the first thing I download followed by Flashblock when I setup a new browser profile.

And when I haven't touched the computer for 12 hours (and it needs to be up because it runs a web server) I don't want my browser -- be it Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera or Chrome (I've used them all) consuming 30-50% of the CPU time preventing the CPU from dropping the clock speed from 2.8GHz back to 700MHz doing nothing but running garbage collections on a Javascript heap and polling file handles which *should* be inactive. The existing browsers are preventing me from running as "green" as possible and that to me is much much more important than freeing me from hardware I do own (sunk costs) and replacing it with a set of concerns as to why I should be spending more than the cost of a PC on an annual basis to maintain a 3G or 4G connection.

You may have heard of the statement "Information should be free". It isn't if I have to run Javascript on current browsers (or pay Verizon or AT&T significantly more than one would pay NetZero) to get to it.

Jaegermonkey

[danielt998]

Is there a way that I can try out jaegermonkey now?