Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome? (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader quotes TechNewsWorld: Firefox is not only fast on startup -- it remains zippy even when taxed by multitudes of tabs. "We have a better balance of memory to performance than all the other browsers," said Firefox Vice President for Product Nick Nguyen. "We use 30 percent less memory, and the reason for that is we can allocate the number of processes Firefox uses on your computer based on the hardware that you have," he told TechNewsWorld. The performance improvements in Quantum could be a drink from the fountain of youth for many Firefox users' systems. "A significant number of our users are on machines that are two cores or less, and less than 4 gigabytes of RAM," Nguyen explained.
Mashable ran JetStream 1.1 tests on the ability to run advanced web applications, and concluded that "Firefox comes out on top, but not by much. This means it's, according to JetStream, slightly better suited for 'advanced workloads and programming techniques.'" Firefox also performed better on "real-world speed tests" on Amazon.com and the New York Times' site, while Chrome performed better on National Geographic, CNN, and Mashable. Unfortunately for Mozilla, Chrome looks like it's keeping the top spot, at least for now. The only test that favors Quantum is JetStream, and that's by a hair. And in Ares-6 [which measures how quickly a browser can run new Javascript functions, including mathematical functions], Quantum gets eviscerated... Speedometer simulates user actions on web applications (specifically, adding items to a to-do list) and measures the time they take... When it comes to user interactions in web applications, Chrome takes the day...

In reality, however, Quantum is no slug. It's a capable, fast, and gorgeous browser with innovative bookmark functionality and a library full of creative add-ons. As Mozilla's developers fine-tune Quantum in the coming months, it's possible it could catch up to Chrome. In the meantime, the differences in page-load time are slight at best; you probably won't notice the difference.

Comments

Browser speed is not the issue

[argontechnologies]

It doesn't matter how fast either browser is, if they don't fix the memory leaks that they BOTH have. They both just slow to a crawl as they consume all the system memory. I switched from Firefox to Chrome because of this, then Chrome slowly got just as bad. Memory leaks are so 1975.

Pointless question

[Anonymous Coward]

Without ad/tracking/script blockers installed by default the question is almost pointless.
NO browser is fast on the modern internet when you're not decrapifying everything first.

(Also, FF and Chromium don't send all your data and browsing history directly to google. Just throwing that out there).

Re:Longtime FF user here

[jfdavis668]

Well, that is what FF 57 fixes.

Firefox Won Me Back

[caffeinejolt]

I was a long time FF user years ago, but ended up switching to Chrome due to its speed relative to FF. I tried 57 when it came out, and love it - I am back to FF now and happy to say that it at least seems as fast as Chrome, but I prefer the FF experience overall. Hopefully they can port over these improvements to FF on Android since Chrome still seems to have a noticeable edge there. Plus... you have to admit that it is kind of bad ass that a lot of these improvements are resulting from Rust - a language Mozilla developed in part to bring better resource utilization and security to FF. It appears this v57 improvement was largely resulting from the Stylo component (written in Rust) - but their roadmap calls for more components to be swapped out - so the good times may keep getting better for FF - I hope they do because competition is good for us all.

Has chrome fixed its sandbox-running-as-root yet?

[Viol8]

Last time I checked they hadn't, and while I'm sure googles coders think they're infallable and there won't be any exploitable bugs in their sandbox, I for one am not prepared to take that risk. There is ZERO reason for ANY part of a browser to strart up or run with root privs.

Re:Read Firefox's privacy policy. It mentions Goog

[Teun]

There's that little difference between can send and will send...

They still don't get it

[hyades1]

I'm so tempted to use profanity to describe the jackasses at Mozilla for what they've done to Firefox. Very few of the millions of people who now call themselves "former Firefox users" will come back. That includes me. I'm certainly not a spokesman for this group, but I bet my situation is very much like theirs.

'Way back at the beginning, I did not choose Firefox because it was the fastest browser out there. I chose it because it gave reasonable performance, used tabs, and offered all kinds of interesting add-ons that put me unambiguously in charge of my on-line experience. Before long, I had my browser configured exactly the way I wanted it. Life was good.

So did I stop visiting the Firefox add-ons site? Hell no! It was both fun and interesting to see what some clever person had come up with that I might want to try...often things I'd never have thought of on my own. Test driving was incredibly fast and easy, and if I didn't like an app or got tired of it, I could get rid of it in seconds.

This was what I loved: I had a core browser that was reliable and fast enough for my purposes, and that I used when I actually needed to be productive. And I had an endlessly-fascinating toy that let me try out interesting, fun things whenever I wanted. When Chrome came out, I gave it a try...why wouldn't I? It was fast, alright. And utterly soulless. I uninstalled it after only a week.

So then the a-holes at Firefox decided they wanted to be Chrome. Even worse, they started screwing around with my GUI, apparently for sport. Classic Theme Restorer could only do so much. But that was only the symptom, not the disease. The disease was the Chrome obsession. And look at them now. "Add-ons" is now a dirty word. But oh my, they're the fastest (maybe).

So here we are today. The people who ruined Firefox are proudly trumpeting that they've turned it into an even faster Chrome. Good luck with that. I didn't want Chrome in the first place. I don't want it now. And I especially don't want a Chrome wannabe that reminds me every time I launch it what I have lost.

So thanks, Firefox, but I think I'll stay with Pale Moon as my regular browser, and Epic as my main backup. If you ever manage to buy back your soul, give me a call.

a user report: Firefox on Linux

[morethanapapercert]

I've had Firefox 57 for two days now and can share my experiences thus far:

I use Firefox and Chrome regularly, leaning heavily towards Firefox because I was quite satisfied with the add-ons I had for it. Pretty much 100% of my recreational browsing is on Firefox.

1) Yes, Firefox IS much faster to load and navigate to my usual websites. However, sites heavy with the usual endless third party scripts, ads and so on remain occasionally frustratingly slow. However; I have always attributed that to poor design choices and lack of network optimization on the part of those third party content delivery networks. (I'm using Ghostery, but no other ad-blocking software on purpose.)

2) Page rendering is MUCH faster. I think this is the biggest factor in perceived browser speed. Easily matching Chrome and actually surpassing it on image heavy sites like imgur.

3) The add on ecosystem has a long way to go to catch up to what previous versions of Firefox had available. To preserve speed, function and reliability, Firefox 57 has a much more modular arrangement. That means ALL previous add-ons will not work in Firefox 57. In addition; what add-ons that do exist do not seem to be nearly as powerful as the add-ons I used previously. That may be due to the modular design not allowing as much control of Firefox by add-ons, it may be because there simply hasn't been time for third party developers to come up with equally powerful replacements.

4) Firefox has a pretty slick system for handling the deprecation of old add-ons. After updating, when you go to the about:addons page, you'll notice that none of your old addons are visible, but there is a link at the top you can click to view them. Clicking one of your greyed out addons takes you to the get more addons page and usually shows you a pretty good replacement. (9 of the 12 addons I love most had acceptable replacements, learning curve aside) The diversity of addons, as I said, just isn't there yet. So if you have one of the lessor known, less popular addons, you probably won't be able to replace it.

5) There are many very popular addons where the original developer is unavailable or as announced that their addon will not be, or cannot be, rewritten for the new Firefox.

6) The themes situation frankly sucks. Simple themes, ones that basically change the colour of the address and menu bar space are still there and old ones you have will still work. But "complex themes" (what I call REAL themes, ones that change the icons used for buttons, bookmark folders, shape and dimensionality of tabs and so on flat out do not exist. From checking out Mozillas pages on 57, it seems that, as it stands now, Firefox 57 is simply not capable of supporting them. Mozilla does say that complex themes are something they are working on and plan on making available later. Personally, I don't want to make the address/menu bar space simply some colour, or use some wide, narrow image as a simple background. I want themes that help visually distinguish tabs, themes that accentuate the skeuomorph effect. I find this makes it easier to see and mentally manipulate. For me a browser is a tool and a tool doesn't need to look pretty and should never never never try to look pretty at the cost of ergonomics. For now, this is a total loss in my book.

Overall, I do like Firefox 57 and have no plans on reverting to an older one. I am however, going to keep spending a lot of time working on it until I can regain the look and above all function I prefer.

Re:a user report: Firefox on Linux

[Lord Crc]

In addition; what add-ons that do exist do not seem to be nearly as powerful as the add-ons I used previously. That may be due to the modular design not allowing as much control of Firefox by add-ons, it may be because there simply hasn't been time for third party developers to come up with equally powerful replacements.

The WebExtension API is significantly more limited than the old API. A lot of it is reasonable, but some of it is for no good reason.

For example, one of the extensions I use allows me to save images directly to one of several pre-configured directories. This is no longer possible, as all downloads have to in the main download directory or a sub-directory of it. Because Google says that's a good idea, and thus so it must be.

So, this extension cannot be ported in any reasonable way.

Yes yes, I could use symlinks or junction points, but that's a major PITA for no good reason except ineptitude and/or laziness.

Re:Has chrome fixed its sandbox-running-as-root ye

[Anonymous Coward]

No package should autoupdate its systemwide binaries. Especially if You have five user accounts on a machine, or on a production or development machine. Besides, why would anybody want applications to autoupdate in the first place?
The obvious answer to Your dilemma is this: application should run with user privileges, and only an admin can install an update to a binary provided with the system.

 

Don't have to worry about the answer...

[jbn-o]

...if you get people asking the wrong questions.

"Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome?" doesn't matter. Firefox is free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) and the basis for more free software browsers that do a better job respecting one's privacy than Firefox does by default. Google's Chrome, on the other hand, is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software published by a known spy agency and partner of the NSA (three cheers for Snowden for freeing the documents about what the American government and corporations are doing!). Using that program means literally handing Google as much control over your computer (including your browsing) as your computer account allows.

I don't care which browser is faster. It so happens that any recent revision of Firefox is fast enough to do the jobs I do. What's more important to me is software freedom; I care about retaining control over the computers I own and I think all other computer users deserve full control over their computers. So I recommend software freedom for its own sake even if that means an inconvenience on something as relatively unimportant as browser speed. Leave it to the corporate tech media, the corporate sycophants (readily found on /.), and people too naive about social issues to cultivate bad priorities like browser speed over software freedom.