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Firefox vs Chrome: Speed and Memory (laptopmag.com)
Mashable aleady reported Firefox Quantum performs better than Chrome on web applications (based on BrowserBench's JetStream tests), but that Chrome performed better on other benchmarks. Now Laptop Mag has run more tests, agreeing that Firefox performs beter on JetStream tests -- and on WebXPRT's six HTML5- and JavaScript-based workload tests.
Firefox Quantum was the winner here, with a score of 491 (from an average of five runs, with the highest and lowest results tossed out) to Chrome's 460 -- but that wasn't quite the whole story. Whereas Firefox performed noticeably better on the Organize Album and Explore DNA Sequencing workloads, Chrome proved more adept at Photo Enhancement and Local Notes, demonstrating that the two browsers have different strengths...
You might think that Octane 2.0, which started out as a Google Developers project, would favor Chrome -- and you'd be (slightly) right. This JavaScript benchmark runs 21 individual tests (over such functions as core language features, bit and math operations, strings and arrays, and more) and combines the results into a single score. Chrome's was 35,622 to Firefox's 35,148 -- a win, if only a minuscule one.
In a series RAM-usage tests, Chrome's average score showed it used "marginally" less memory, though the average can be misleading. "In two of our three tests, Firefox did finish leaner, but in no case did it live up to Mozilla's claim that Quantum consumes 'roughly 30 percent less RAM than Chrome,'" reports Laptop Mag.
Both browsers launched within 0.302 seconds, and the article concludes that "no matter which browser you choose, you're getting one that's decently fast and capable when both handle all of the content you're likely to encounter during your regular surfing sessions."
You might think that Octane 2.0, which started out as a Google Developers project, would favor Chrome -- and you'd be (slightly) right. This JavaScript benchmark runs 21 individual tests (over such functions as core language features, bit and math operations, strings and arrays, and more) and combines the results into a single score. Chrome's was 35,622 to Firefox's 35,148 -- a win, if only a minuscule one.
In a series RAM-usage tests, Chrome's average score showed it used "marginally" less memory, though the average can be misleading. "In two of our three tests, Firefox did finish leaner, but in no case did it live up to Mozilla's claim that Quantum consumes 'roughly 30 percent less RAM than Chrome,'" reports Laptop Mag.
Both browsers launched within 0.302 seconds, and the article concludes that "no matter which browser you choose, you're getting one that's decently fast and capable when both handle all of the content you're likely to encounter during your regular surfing sessions."
WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT SPEED?! It's not been about SPEED since... 2001? It's about all the KEYLOGGERS and SPYWARE and fucking BLOAT BULLSHIT that these assholes fill their shitty browsers with these days. They have ALL become useless. The latest Firefox is so bad that I finally went to try out Palemoon, but was so turned off by its bizarre, sketchy installer that I forgot about that again.
Sigh. There is not one browser that is usable these days.
When will Noscript 10 be available for Firefox? Until that's released, Firefox is garbage. If developer builds allow legacy extensions to run , the Firefox developers were more than capable of doing so in official releases. Quite simply, the goal is to prevent users from running legacy extensions. In the process, security and functionality have been reduced for everyone.
XUL wasn't multi-process compatible.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Exactly.
Brave, on the other hand, has NoScript-like functionality built into the core software and works out of the box, along with ad/tracker blocking and fingerprint protection.
It makes sense, as Brave is led by Eich, who was helping lead Mozilla when it was actually good.
I think you better read the Firefox EULA...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The Firefox privacy policy suggests that they do, indeed, spy on you. Your browsing activity is potentially sent to Google and a number of other companies.
I wonder how these two compare with MS edge browser.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
download statusbar, classic theme restorer, noscript. Without all the addons that made Firefox 3.0 great, speed is useless. Like a car without seats, or a bar without beer.
Found the terrorist!
If they're enabled by default, and they unexpectedly (for most users, at least) send data to Google, then we should consider Firefox to be a form of malware. Being able to disable this spyware aspect of it doesn't excuse this negative behavior in any way.
Tell us which one is faster to remove all the ads, shutting up all the audio and video, blocking facebook , pinterest and twitter buttons, preventing fingerprinting and trackers, blocking webRTC and all 30 external javascript links that each page seems to 'need' these days and ... then we can talk.
> So by your logic...
There is no logic. Just trolling. It's AC, and completely off-topic, even the title. Might have been dropped here by a bot, or at best a drive-by cut-n-paste. There's no conversation here, poster is likely long gone. Not worth your time.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I have been trying 57 for a day. To be fair, it seems pretty decent so let's give those poor Mozilla devs a break!
It only choked on the pdf from this article where cpu went nuts until I was done reading and closed the tab. Then, everything went back to normal. Still, it made it look bad.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
I had to learn to use uBlock and uMatrix to replace noscript and I am not sure I will go back to noscript now once they release a coming soon compatible version.
My other addons kept working or had a replacement version already available. ghostery, adblockplus, decentraleyes...
Overall, at first glance, I like it.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Firefox Quantum sucks at video playback, and eats battery like nobody's business.
It's also a memory hog, for me it uses over 1 GB for four tabs.
People keep quoting low memory numbers but seem to be missing the forked processes.
I use both Firefox and Chrome on an older Mac. I got the Mac in 2009. I use Firefox for the New York Times website and have been using it for years. Performance was never a problem until I upgraded to Firefox Quantum. The performance sucks and it takes around 2 minutes 30 seconds to load the NYT homepage. Other sites, such as Slashdot, load fine. Any ideas?
Are you seriously telling me that Mozilla, despite getting many millions of dollars a year from Yahoo (and now Google again, I believe), couldn't find some way to update XUL to better support multiple processes while still maintaining at least some semblance of compatibility with existing extensions? I find that very difficult to believe!
Everything about Mozilla seems to amateurish to me. Firefox 57 was supposed to be a great release, yet every aspect of it has been bungled. The extension breakage has been a true disaster. The supposed performance improvements haven't materialized, based on my usage of it so far. In a feat previously deemed impossible, Mozilla has managed to create a Firefox UI that's even worse than Australis was!
I feel ashamed to have recommended Firefox to some friends and relatives a number of years ago, and to have helped get it installed on their computers. I won't be surprised if my Thanksgiving is filled with them telling me about how Firefox no longer works well after updating to Firefox 57! If they haven't already upgraded to Chrome on their own, I'll be suggesting they do that. Hell, I'd even recommend Edge over Firefox at this point!
XUL was a bad design. It is that simple.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
So Firefox Quantum, what is next, Firefox Cherry? Firefox Dark? Firefox Quartz? Firefox Victory?
I will only upgrade if it gives my screen a cool blue glow... and I can mix in some Abraxo Cleaner and Turpentine for a big bang.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I've been testing it out too. It's good, I'm just not sure if there is any reason to switch from Chromium.
Chromium seems to have a better security model, at least based on how much it gets hacked at pwn2own or in terms of CVEs/year. Firefox is a bit more flexible with the UI and has some privacy features built in that Chromium needs add-ons for.
What other compelling features does Firefox have to make me switch back?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Which of those benchmarks measures browser performance after leaving a couple dozen tabs open for three weeks? Huh?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Again: Who cares.
Even if and when Firefox is slower, it still to be preferred. The obvious reason is that Chrome is the new Internet Explorer: Google's attempt at owning the internet.
That they learned from Microsoft's mistakes and as a result manage to play the abuse smoother does not make it less true.
People who use Chrome are either uninterested in matters of internet freedom, naive, or harmful.
Until an XUL compatibility layer is developed Firefox Quantum is useless, forcing some tiny minority of users to whine about it and use ESR or forks.
Fixed it for you.
You are irrelevant.
Your mommy is irrelevant.
I concur. Tried FF (vs Chrome) for a couple days and 1) indeed very fast 2) cuts lots of crap as is (ie without add ons) 3) efficient media / video.
Welcome back, FF!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The problem is WebExtensions is less powerful, and being multi-process capable doesn't make up for that. If it was actually impossible to upgrade XUL (which I'm not convinced of), they should have replaced it with something that was more capable, giving users more control, not less.
You are just a troll. I guess you feel like you are doing something useful tolling as an Anonymous Coward, but really not. Perhaps if you grow up and post as a real person- or are you afraid that people will stalk you like seem you seem to be doing now?
But keep picking on point #3 of *6*. Had you been polite and a real person, then maybe I would have discussed it even further, but it is a waste of time.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
They are giving Firefox users more control...webextensions has the underpinned of a permissions system that will probably come out at some point similar to Android. You can see some of it already there when you install a web extension it tells you what APIs it uses.
XUL had full unfettered control of the browser... That's stupid.
Webextensions are less flexible but in the end will become more powerful just because they are more stable you can build more complex things with them With less work.. XUL was....they'll probably eventually even rewrite the browser itself in html...you'll also get native performance code via eebassembly.
XUL is a great design that has given us top quality browser addons.
It's not independent.
XUL had full unfettered control of the browser... That's stupid.
Not just browser, but the whole system. For example file system (adding, removing file, etc anywhere), etc.
It only choked on the pdf from this article where cpu went nuts
So the real problem is using a browser to render PDFs. We're using browsers to do half-assed duplicate work while proper tools for the job already exist.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
And not by a large margin: http://www.zdnet.com/article/j...
We'll make great pets
You are full of it.
Any one remotely interested in security and especially privacy can in Firefox switch off the various transmissions, try that in Edge or Chrome...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What is that LaptopMag.com source? Underneath the article I found scams in my language pointing to "interesting" articles "FROM THE WEB". It cointained even links to obvious cosmetics-selling scams posing as state-established Czech doctors' organization (Camera Medica Bohemica - "eská lékaská komora"). That is totally outlawed in my country!
Don't trust a source that takes money from scammers.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
How are Rust and Servo failures? From my perspective, they've been hugely successful.
Eat the rich.
Care to elaborate on what you think is so bad about it? I've used it the last week and have had no issues.
I know it's pedantic and nerd-rage-y but I won't use Chrome because the lack of a menu bar is too distracting for me.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This! If I had mod points, you'd get one. Thank you for pointing out that we should be using pdf readers for rendering pdfs, and that this does not need to be built into the browser. Every new feature added, especially to web browsers- which have become such complex pieces of software- needs to be carefully evaluated from a security and redundancy perspective.
My Mom has run stock Firefox for years, with auto-updates turned on. No add-ons or plugins. FF 57 auto-installed and was completely unusable, taking minutes to do anything. It is now shut down and Chrome installed in its place.
Its not against their policy - but they don't have to write and maintain it if they don't want to. Welcome to open source, if you don't like it feel free to maintain your own fork of Firefox.
Firefox 57 was supposed to be a revolutionary release, yet it's still slower than Chrome and the other major browsers
As Mozilla has been saying for a while now, the real speed increase will come once WebRender is enabled, most likely in FF58. You can already enable it now in about:config, and it does make a noticeable difference.
Eat the rich.
Still, Firefox needs to get it's base of valuable plug-ins ported to Quantum.
Hate to say it, yet I value "Tab Groups" more than what Quantum offers. So I am sticking w/ Firefox v56.
C'mon, you Firefox developers and contributors, PLEASE get those valuable plug-ins/extensions ported up!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
I'm afraid we're too late trying to turn back the clock. Videos on webpages are some of the worst kind of this problem, and they're been popular at least since Youtube started around 2005. At the time, I thought it was idiotic to watch videos on a tiny part of a webpage vs. full screen with a proper player, but I guess that's what people wanted. Or perhaps normal people are completely helpless with their own computers, so everything has to be ready-made for the browser. And the advertisers must love the fact of autoplaying video clips.
PDF readers have their own stigma, IMHO, with websites urging you to download the one official Acrobat Reader, as if no free/open readers existed. So I can understand how the in-browser reader may feel like a better choice -- it's often open source anyway. And there's some logic in having a document renderer in an application that already renders documents. Still, the near history of computing looks like one worse choice after another, with the better choices being phased away.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.