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Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed (cnet.com) 297

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.
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Mozilla's 'Firefox Quantum' Browser Challenges Chrome In Speed

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:04AM (#55266289)

    ... but until observed it both wins and loses.

  • So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Curupira ( 1899458 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:06AM (#55266295)

    ...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.

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:42AM (#55266409) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:53AM (#55266451)
        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.
        • by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
          and yet the changing the "crappy architecture" (XUL -> WebExtensions) is what people bitch about.

          They just want a browser to do everything under the sun, including perfectly work with any and all extensions that can do whatever they want to the browser, yet without any performance or security issues....
      • that it's an insane security risk

        You’ve said this on multiple occasions without any real-world example of how any was actually affected by this supposed security risk.

        Anyway, users have quite a bit of security risk with Chrome extensions too.

        https://slashdot.org/story/17/... [slashdot.org]
        https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
        https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
        https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]

        And many more examples can be found with these supposedly “secure” WebExtensions.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Attacks on popular add-ons: https://arstechnica.co.uk/info... [arstechnica.co.uk]

          Paper discussing the problem: https://www.exploit-db.com/doc... [exploit-db.com]

          • So essentially plugins that also exist as WebExtensions and had the same issues. That was the best you had?

            • WebExtensions and had the same issues.

              No. The WebExtensions framework is built to avoid this problem. Read the article. To quote from it: "The new set of browser extension APIs that make up WebExtensions, which are available in Firefox today, are inherently more secure than traditional add-ons, and are not vulnerable to the particular attack outlined in the presentation at Black Hat Asia."

              • The new set of browser extension APIs that make up WebExtensions, which are available in Firefox today, are inherently more secure than traditional add-ons

                From the point of view of an end user, the transition just takes one problem (security) and replaces it with another (data loss). Ctrl+Q in Firefox 57 for Linux quits the whole browser without asking for confirmation, causing loss of data in unsubmitted forms. XUL extensions used to be able to prevent this, but WebExtensions cannot because bug 1325692 [mozilla.org] was marked as "wontfix" for Firefox 57.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        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"

      • Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @08:33AM (#55266979) Homepage

        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.

    • by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      Scripts/ads slow a browser down a lot more than extensions.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:12AM (#55266315)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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?

      • As when Ccleaner was sold I have disabled automatic updates until I see a product that I want to use. Goodbye Mozilla, at least for the moment. What I also need to do is find a copy of the current installable to archive so that I can try the new versions and check out their utility.

    • I just tried the beta installer here. It overrides the current installation (version 55) without giving apparent options for parallel installation. Removed ten minutes after I noticing the lack of the "NoScript" extension and having seen that the version of adBlock available to him is clearly inferior (you cannot use rules when blocking new Ads, the extension gives you just element-by-element blocking, really inefficient)
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

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

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      NO! This is change! Change is Bad!
      also
      This is Firefox! Firefox is Bad!
    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      When I tried Firefox 57 for Linux, an accidental press of Ctrl+Q suddenly closed all tabs in all windows without confirmation, causing loss of data in unsubmitted forms. Extensions to stop this behavior will not arrive by Firefox 57 [mozilla.org].

      To see this misbehavior for yourself, try these steps:

      1. Install Firefox 57 for Linux, currently in the beta channel.
      2. Type a reply to this comment into Slashdot's comment entry form.
      3. Before you submit the reply, press Ctrl+Tab to switch to another tab so that you can do rese

  • I do hope... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Knightman ( 142928 )

    ..it comes with quantum memory too since the current firefox gobbles memory like a bloated app from Microsoft...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:24AM (#55266347)

    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.

  • by ToTheStars ( 4807725 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:36AM (#55266383)

    Here's what I think when I hear "Firefox Quantum":

    • It is an incremental advancement by the smallest possible fundamental unit. (Surely that would be Firefox 56.0.1?)
    • If I run it on a headless box, it will remain in a superposition of states of "crashed" and "not crashed" until I connect the monitor, at which point its wavefunction will collapse into one state or the other (with ~20/80 odds).
    • I'll either like it but not be able to explain why it works, or I'll dislike it but be unable to disprove its merits.

    (To be clear, I do like the interface better than Chrome's, although I'll reserve judgement until I see how it handles large numbers of tabs -- my key criterion: don't shrink them to slits. I hear that there's an ad blocker around, but I hope that something like RequestPolicy will also exist in the new addon system.)

  • If so, I can't afford to care about modestly faster page rendering.

  • And yet the only supported audio backend on Linux continues to be PulseAudio. Hard pass.
  • by cjonslashdot ( 904508 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @07:22AM (#55266565)
    If one were to run Netscape 3 on today's laptop, it would load in a fraction of a second - and it did essentially the same thing. I would gladly give back whatever extra functionality we are getting for a sub-second application load - and that applies to every application, not just a browser.
    • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @07:48AM (#55266679)

      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.

      • OMG I feel the same way. Javascript has destroyed the Web. If one wants to run an app in a page, it should run in a sandbox using a separate protocol - not be mashed together in the HTML. Single page web apps are not what I want - but there is no going back ;-/
    • If one were to run Netscape 3 on today's laptop,

      If you want fast startup just start notepad.exe. It starts up blazingly fast and will load modern web pages just as well as Netscape 3 would.

      I would gladly give back whatever extra functionality we are getting

      No you wouldn't. Boiling frog principle, you don't actually know what functionality you have because the transition and adoption of a dynamic and interactive version of the web that does more than just follow a few links via clicking and blink some text has been so slow that you barely noticed what has changed.

      By the way for shits and giggles I did it. I loaded Netsca

  • Sadly, most web browser sophistication is not for the user. It's for the advertiser. And it's consuming network, CPU, and screen space resources better devoted to the web site's actual message and the consumer's interest.

    Slashdot itself is a good example of how to _avoid_ this unnecessary, undesirablem, and destabilizing complexity.

    • It's for the advertiser. And it's consuming network, CPU, and screen space resources

      So use an ad blocker. That's what I do. uBlock Origin is a good one.

  • I think I'm still using Firefox only because I found the optimal cocktail of extensions to make it work right. Just now I looked at my extension manager and guess what: apart from uBlock Origin, every single one has a "LEGACY" warning next to it, which means that it won't work after the regime change. I've used Firefox as my primary browser since version 0.3, and I've put up with some nasty stuff over the years, but I've always had a strong enough computer to make it all bearable. But you know, Chrome is ac
    • Crucially, its extension catalogue will be much more mature

      But less capable. Firefox's implementation of WebExtensions is a superset of Chrome's, and over time Mozilla will add more APIs to enable more add-ons. Moving to Chrome is a retrograde step.

    • Firefox has implemented WebExtensions which is the same API as Chrome, so many Chrome extensions should work on firefox. I'd give those a chance too.

      Chances are though there'll be a knock to firefox 57 for a bit (stay on LTS for a while) and it'll then pick up to be similar to Chrome. Firefox are already extending the WebExtensions API beyond what chrome offer in order to keep some of the major plugins working. I suspect they're taking the sensible attitude of "make it run at all" (while the LTS one still e

  • by wjcofkc ( 964165 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @08:07AM (#55266773)
    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.
  • Does it stop the popups Chrome seems incomoetent to stamp out? *

    * I assume it is a loophole in a Java spec or similar that cannot be ended without violating the spec. Here's a hint: VIOLATE IT!!!

  • Sinclair QL computer? As fat I could remember there was a TCP/IP stack using the serial prort for SLIP or PPP and a couple of email/newsgroup clients.
  • Not liking that at all. Suggesting sites can be used as agenda based advertising. I don't want to see any of it. Ever.

  • It fucking breaks EVERYTHING!!!

    I'm not talking about the plugins and extensions breaking, although that is also a potential deal breaker for me, but my Autohotkey scripts will not fire when the latest Firefox Developer Edition has the focus (v.57).

    They won't fucking work, no matter what's ran. Trackpad gestures, nothing. Overlays and hotkeys, nada.

    Even opening WindowSpy shows noting when FF has the focus. What the fuck??? My scripts are not app-specific, and work in every browser, including older v
  • UI: Much improved. Or, put another way, they removed a ton of the Australis crap that people have been griping about for years. That says quite a bit about their UX team.

    - Caveat: They still manage to make a few small stupid errors, like removing the color from bookmark folders (change applied in FF58), and a 'default' theme that mixes light and dark in a way that's annoying no matter which you'd prefer. Just change to either light or dark and be done with it.

    Performance: *Vastly* improved, across the bo

    • This is the sort of work that Mozilla should have done ~5-7 years ago, back when Chrome was just starting to take off.

      Mozilla has always been a bit on the slow side in development. The original Firefox took ages before it was finally released. Meanwhile the Netscape4/MSIE6 browser hell was going strong. I think Mozilla tends to spend a lot of time trying to design a good architecture and implement it. Hence their adoption of Rust, and using it to completely rewrite the ECMAScript engine. I don't think it has so much to do with not being arsed. Quick hackish workarounds are just not something they have historically done wel

  • Okay, tempting. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @11:34PM (#55267653) Homepage

    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.

    • It's interesting that you say "shit it's fast". Looking at the video posted by Mozilla it would appear to actually be slower than Chrome in half the cases. HOWEVER.... it seems to load content more on a first come first shown basis. Chrome seems to wait till it has loaded nearly everything to display it on the screen. Firefox appears to put the content up as it gets it.

      Maybe that makes it perceptibly faster, but in terms of having a usable page it's nothing to write home about.... at least compared to other

      • HOWEVER.... it seems to load content more on a first come first shown basis. Chrome seems to wait till it has loaded nearly everything to display it on the screen.

        Arguably that's what you want, right? Why do I have to wait until all of the advertisements load before being able to scroll down to the content that I'm interested in? It might be one or two seconds slower in the final rendering on some pages, but that is probably irrelevant to most users.

        it's nothing to write home about.... at least compared to other browsers

        I think we will see as it gets more adoption. Being at least on par with Chrome (and in some cases better) is a pretty good achievement in my opinion. Safari and IE don't really compete in this space, so Chrome can use so

  • That brings us back to performance we had in the early Firefox days? I bet everyone could have saved a lot of time by just not adding bloat and focusing on FF's initial motivation (to split from Mozilla and be fast again) while adding value in other ways.

  • It also builds in the Pocket bookmarking service ... A screenshot tool ...

    Okay, as long as I can still disable them and any predictive DNS queries and page pre-loading/fetching and any other crap -- I mean *features* -- I'll never use or don't want leaking my browsing habits.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 28, 2017 @07:08AM (#55268511)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Tried the beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Thursday September 28, 2017 @10:30AM (#55269669)

    I tried the beta, and I have to say... it's not as terrible as I feared.

    Personally, I honestly couldn't care less about the performance increases (I'm sure they're there, but I didn't notice them). I was concerned about two things:

    1) That there wouldn't be NoScript. There currently isn't -- and that's why I'm not yet going to use the Beta as anything but a curiosity -- but apparently there will be. Assuming that no features will be lost in the port, that will be a showstopper removed.

    2) That the UI was going to be unfixably horrible. I absolutely detest the current UI of Firefox (and Chrome), but I could fix the problem with Firefox by using Classic Theme Restorer -- an extension that can't be ported to the new plugin scheme.

    My fear was that Firefox would keep a similar UI as it had been using, but without any way of fixing it. That would be a showstopper. But, as it turns out, the Beta UI is much improved, and I can fix the things that I still find irritating using the built-in options. So I'm happy.

    I may be able to stay with Firefox after all! And that makes me even happier.

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