Firefox 58 Gets Graphics Speed Boost, Web App Abilities (cnet.com)

Mozilla released on Tuesday a new version of its Firefox Quantum browser, boosting its graphics speed and improving a couple of new technologies designed to make the web more powerful. From a report: The browser, version 58, is the first major update since Mozilla's recovery plan hit full stride in November with the debut of Firefox Quantum. Speed is of the essence in Mozilla's recovery plan, and Firefox 58 does better than its predecessor in some graphics tasks by splitting work better across the multiple processor cores that computer chips have these days. The result should be scrolling that's smooth, uninterrupted by the stuttering that in computing circles goes by the disparaging term "jank." [...] Firefox 58 helps with two new web technologies. One, called WebAssembly, provides for dramatically faster web apps. Firefox 58 can get WebAssembly software running faster so you don't have to twiddle your thumbs waiting as long after clicking a link. Another is progressive web apps (PWAs), an initiative that came out of Google to help make the web a better match for the apps we all drop on our phones.

Comments

Love for Firefox

[UPi]

I'm very grateful to the Firefox project and its contributors for their dedication to bringing us a fast and modern browser to act not only as a useful product, but as an essential counterweight to corporate hegemony over the www. Switching to 57 was a bit of pain as I had to find replacements to many of my beloved extensions, but it was worth it for the speed upgrade and smaller memory footprint. I'm glad they are keeping on the path of optimization and bringing more technologies that I can use both as an end user and as a web developer.

Re:Love for Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you don't care at all about efficiency or optimization. Some of us find that making things faster and more efficient has value.

You also act like you have no agency or choice in how you update. Firefox not only doesn't force updates (I assume you are smart enough to turn that off) but offers an ESR version, so instead of just "not updating" which is totally an option, you can even use the "old" firefox with the current security fixes (keeping all your precious extensions intact).

In fact, it's the path I took until no-script was updated to work with Quantum (which took it's quite fantastic developer something like two weeks to implement). I gave it a month, tried the new no-script on my secondary PC, and when I deemed things were working as intended, swapped my main PC over from the ESR to the latest Quantum release.

I feel like you want to be angry for the sake of being angry. Firefox is doing a pretty great job updating it's software while simultaneously providing support for depreciated versions specifically to placate people like you (and to an extent myself). What more do you want them to do?

Apparently you'd prefer they make no changes and never improve-- and no doubt if this were the case you'd lament how Firefox has never bothered implementing any new technologies or security or speed improvements.

People like you just like to whine. I won't stop you, but I will tell you that it's incredibly annoying.

Re:With that speed boost...

[arth1]

I think there's a good amount of "written before me" attitudes causing problems.
Maintaining the code of someone else is seldom attractive to developers, who would rather make their own mark, and refuse to entertain the idea that what they create might be worse than what was already there.
Re-inventing the wheel seldom leads to an improvement on the circular shape, centered hub and perpendicular axis.

100% agree - I'm a FF57 convert now

[bjdevil66]

In the run up to FF57's deadline came up last year, I bitterly posted on Slashdot about how I didn't want the speed upgrades as much as I wanted to keep the extensions that were not getting ported.

I was wrong - dead wrong. Why?

1) Speed: If you were an anti-Chrome guy like me but would be a little jealous of its speed when you had to use it, this has been resolved. FF57 has been much snappier to use than previous versions. It feels like Chrome or faster.

In the end, browser speed DOES matter.

2) Extensions: Not every extension I used before FF57 has been ported to Quantum, but the important extensions I used have been since the FF57 release that weren't ready initially. NoScript, FlagFox, etc. All working now. If the extensions weren't ready last November, look again. They may be ready now.

Just as importantly, I haven't missed the ones that haven't made it. You may not miss them either.

3) The native Web Development tools are better than Firebug was in the end, IMO. And it's been nice to not have Firebugginess to deal with anymore.

So - Take it from this OCD guy who's not a marketing shill for the Mozilla org: If you're still sitting at FF52 ESR or FF56.x over any form of FUD (especially the, "but extension X is indispensible", worry,) given FF57 another look now and test it out without those, "I've gotta have extension X," extensions and see. You may be surprised.

Re:Palemoon / Waterfox / etc

[ArhcAngel]

While people everywhere are telling us why we CAN'T do something we are out there proving them wrong. Alex isn't working alone he is simply taking the best parts of Firefox and stripping out the junk. Most of the improvements Quantum made are already incorporated into Waterfox. It just didn't implement the nanny state of removing things that many users find indispensable. Do you know how many Fortune 500 companies have JAVA front ends for their multi-million dollar enterprises? A LOT! You know what most of these companies are using for a browser? IE11!!! That is SCARY. At least with Waterfox you've got a modern browser that still allows legacy sites to work correctly.

Re:HTML 5 Support.

[AmiMoJo]

HTML5 is like C++. A massive, hard to implement standard that barely anyone fully understands, let alone uses. Supporting about 80% of it gives you 99% compatibility, so it's hard to justify the massive effort required to finish the last, really difficult 20% off.