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Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed (cnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the pound-for-pound dept.

The next version of Firefox, aptly named Firefox Quantum, is getting a big speed boost. "The idea, of course, is that the upcoming version 57 is a quantum leap over predecessors -- or, in the words of Mozilla CEO Chris Beard, a 'big bang,'" reports CNET. While Mozilla stopped short of declaring victory over Chrome, Nick Nguyen, vice president of Firefox product, said Firefox Quantum's page-load speed "is often perceivably faster" while using 30 percent less memory. From the report: The new Firefox revamp includes lots of under-the-covers improvements, like Quantum Flow, which stamps out dozens of performance bugs, and Quantum CSS, aka Stylo, which speeds up website formatting. More obvious from the outside is a new interface called Photon that wipes out Firefox's rounded tabs and adds a "page action" menu into the address bar. It also builds in the Pocket bookmarking service Mozilla acquired and uses it to recommend sites you might be interested in. A screenshot tool generates a website link so you can easily share what you see by email or Twitter. Mozilla even simplified the Firefox logo, a fox wrapping itself around the globe. More improvements are in the pipeline for later Firefox versions, too, including Quantum Render, which should speed up Firefox's ability to paint web pages onto your screen.

9 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Curupira · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...THAT'S why Mozilla decided to ditch XUL (and a lot of legacy add-ons that relied on it). And it is a very important goal -- a faster and more stable Firefox was needed for a long time.

    But I also hope that we soon get back most of the extensions that Firefox lost in this change. Without its previous top-notch configurability, I'm afraid it can't really compete with Google developers working on Chrome.

    1. Re:So... by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with allowing the kind of UI altering extensions that Firefox does is that it's an insane security risk and a massive performance issue.

      The only reason I still use Firefox is the UI altering extensions that make it look and work like Firefox did the better part of two decades ago. I despise the modern UI and have no use for a version of firefox that requires it.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    2. Re:So... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is that +5 funny?

      The entire design of Rust is bent towards the idea that the compiler helps you a great deal with writing concurrent datastructures, because you aren't smart enough to do it unaided. If you think writing fine-grained concurrency of complex structures is easy, then please step very far away from threads and never touch them.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. Try it before you knock it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know this is just going to be a Firefox hate fest, but give the browser a try.

    The important extensions will come along. Ublock origin is here and Noscript will be at the part shortly.

    1. Re:Try it before you knock it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Translation: "Wah, wah, wah, I hate change, wah, wah, wah, things were better in the olden days."

    2. Re:Try it before you knock it by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why bother? What life changing experience will I attain by switching? Even Mozilla is mealy-mouthed about this supposed speedup.

    3. Re:Try it before you knock it by Merk42 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      NO! This is change! Change is Bad!
      also
      This is Firefox! Firefox is Bad!

  3. Being extensible was Firefox's only benefit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, being highly extensible can come with some risk, but it's also the only thing that made Firefox still worth using. It could be made to do things that other browsers, including Chrome and Safari, couldn't be made to do, giving it a leg up over those browsers.

    But now Firefox has gotten rid of the only reason to use it, by castrating its extension system.

    In many respects Firefox had already mostly been a cheap, shitty imitation of Chrome for a while now. These extension changes now get rid of the "mostly".

    Let's recap the situation:

    - Firefox's UI imitates that of Chrome (or with Photon, now other Chromium-derived browsers like Vivaldi and Brave).
    - Firefox's extension system imitates that of Chrome.
    - Firefox's alleged "privacy" is anything but, with Firefox sending user information all over the place, including to Google in some cases!
    - Firefox's performance is worse than that of Chrome's. (Yes, I'm using the Firefox 57 beta right now and can confirm this is still the case!)
    - Firefox's memory usage is worse than that of Chrome's. (Again, I'm using the Firefox 57 beta right now to confirm this.)
    - Firefox is harder for developers to work with, because parts of it are written in the horrid Rust programming language that Moz://a came up with.
    - Firefox's market share is in the low single digits already, and will probably be even less after Firefox 57 breaks extensions for normal users, who will just move to some other browser instead of trying to fix up their extensions. Many web developers don't even bother to test with it any longer, so more and more sites don't work well with Firefox.

    So from what I can see, there are no benefits to using Firefox, and actually quite a few drawbacks. You're better off using Chrome or some other Chromium-derived browser. There's really no reason at all to use Firefox these days. Its extension system used to be the main reason to use it, but now that reason has been eliminated.

  4. Re:How about making it start up faster by GuB-42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except you don't really have a choice. Web developers put tons crap with their webpages that make it impossible to use them with a Netscape 3 era browser.
    Browsers used to be document viewers, but now, they are essentially OSes.