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Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved
MrSeb writes "Firefox 9 is now available — but unlike its previous rapid release forebears where not a lot changed, a huge feature has landed with the new version: the JavaScript engine now has type inference enabled. This simple switch has resulted in a 20-30% JS execution speed increase (PDF), putting JaegerMonkey back in line with Chrome's V8 engine, and even pulling ahead in some cases. If you switched away from Firefox to IE or Chrome for improved JS performance, now is probably the time to give Firefox another shot."
Firefox - Too little, too late?
Too little: Doesn't sound like it, given the writeup of this release.
Too late: An install of pretty much any software is one click away. No software is too late - a later version can fix the problems of earlier versions. Most users don't have any problems with memory usage, don't care about how the footprint compares with this or that version of chrome etc.
Speed was only half the issue that drove people away, the actual rapid releases and incompatibilities with add-ons with these releases among other things.
it completely abandons geeky stuff like NoScript or Adblock
Oh boy, now I can enjoy adverts featuring rotten teeth and modal popups that insist I "like" them on Facebook again!
Seriously, if I wanted to put up with this crap I'd go back to using IE.
Summation 2
Who are these "most people"? I heard about RockMelt a year or two ago. I think it was Windows only which wasn't a good start, especially given that I think it was based on Firefox. It's "interesting", but I thought it was long dead. Most sites where you'd want to share something already have share buttons for social networking sites.
Adblock isn't geeky. Nobody likes ads. Apart from you perhaps, since you work in marketing.
which is totally what she said
.... you don't even have a rough idea of how big the changes are , whether there will be compatability issues and so forth. I'm sure the coders have done a good job but whatever marketdroid imbecile thought that every new release must have a major version number markup should frankly be shot. And then forced to use IE 6 for the rest of his days.
Is JS really that bad?
No JS is not that bad, it's just that sites are making more and more demands from it. Where once upon a time a site might have some simple functions and a few onclick handlers, now it's executing humoungous blocks of JS often tied to DOM calls. Look at apps like Emscripten for example or GWT which spew out a mass of JS code. The JS engine suddenly finds that the time it takes to parse, compile, garbage collect, execute and interact with the DOM suddenly makes a big deal of difference in performance when previously it might not have mattered so much.
The situation is bound to get even worse when tools appear which convert flash into HTML and HTML based animations with bloated JS runtimes of their own become increasingly common features on websites.
Too late: An install of pretty much any software is one click away. No software is too late - a later version can fix the problems of earlier versions
That's only true if some other software didn't already fix their problems first. A significant number of users have already switched from Firefox, only being as good as Chrome isn't enough to get anyone to switch back.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
All the people I know installed Chrome for one entirely different reason: Speed.
Chrome is so much faster than Firefox and doesn't use nearly as many resources.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
If he is in marketing don't discount the "just an idiot" angle.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
This is why I love Tree Style Tabs. You get the tab bar on the left (or wherever else you like it), tabs structured hierarchically, collapsible trees and all that fancy stuff, including vertical screen estate.
Ignore this signature. By order.