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Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed (cnet.com)
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.
Come on, guys... give us the goods on why the upper crust of the tech world was out of service for so long. I'm sure it'll be a hoot.
Yeah, but the extension that gets rid of Australious isn't and won't. Nor will Location Bar 2 or a whole host of addons that made Firefox something other than a Chrome also-ran. So yeah, why use the copy when you can use the thing they are basically ripping off?
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.
Add-ons run in the global browser context, with access to everything. All tabs, the UI, all the internal browser data... And interact with every random web page you visit, and every random bit of Javascript and broken HTML on them. It should be obvious that letting Javascript interact with Javascript without a proper sandbox and with access to basically everything is a terrible idea, a security nightmare.
It also blocked them from stopping everything running globally and using threads for each tab and various background processes.
The problem they have now is that no enough add-on developers care about Firefox for them to get all the existing add-ons ported. Even if they add API extensions to support some of the lost functionality, they still need the developers to do the work. I can tell you that I'm not going to bother updating my decade old add-on.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't see how or why "UI altering extensions" have to "run in the global browser context, with access to everything". One is a feature, the other is a crappy architecture. But the feature hardly *needs* crappy architecture. We've had security kernels in high-level languages for quite some time now.
Ezekiel 23:20
I vaguely remember ditching Firefox a decade or more ago as it had become an unwieldy, slow, decrepit, etc... pile of bloatware garbage. I never expected I would be using it again. Over the last few years, for my own reasons, I have sought to de-google my life here and there within practical limits. On my Windows 10 machine, I have been using Edge for about a year and have found it to be surprisingly nice. I think it may have been over another Firefox related story here on Slashdot last week that prompted me to install the current Firefox on a whim. I have not looked back. I am not going to hammer out a review in this comment, but I haven't been so happy with the performance, functionality, and UI of a web browser since the last time Firefox was good. I was quite surprised. I am glad to hear they are continuing to make improvements. Here's to a Firefox renaissance.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Just for fun, I downloaded the beta and installed it on my Mac OS desktop (core i7-4770k, 32GB).
Two initial impressions:
1) SHIT it's fast.
2) The UI is neither ugly as sin nor weirdly laggy any longer.
Okay, I have been using Chrome for many years now, but this is tempting. I've always kept Firefox installed but rarely use it. But I have just added it to the dock. I can see myself starting it instead of Chrome just because it's so damned fast.
I don't track Firefox development at all, so I have/had no idea this was in the works. I'd never have believed it, I thought FF was effectively doomed. Call me at least initially convinced. Using it now to post this.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW