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Firefox IT

Firefox 96 Yields Less Load On The Main Thread, WebP Encoder For Canvas (phoronix.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Firefox 96.0 is officially shipping today as the first update of 2022 for this open-source web browser. From a report: Firefox 96.0 has "significantly" reduced the amount of load placed on the browser's main thread and there is also "significant" improvements in noise suppression and auto-gain-control and improvements in echo cancellation. In addition to that performance work, there are also WebRTC improvements, an improved cookie policy to reduce the likelihood of Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, video quality degradation fixes, and other fixes. Over on developer.mozilla.org are some of the web developer changes with Firefox 96 including CSS color value function hwb() support for specifying the hue/whiteness/blackness, support for the CSS color-scheme property, the Web Locks API is enabled by default, image encoder support for WebP for exporting HTML5 canvas elements, and other additions.
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Firefox 96 Yields Less Load On The Main Thread, WebP Encoder For Canvas More

Firefox 96 Yields Less Load On The Main Thread, WebP Encoder For Canvas

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  • Comes with an editor. (Score:3)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @11:53AM (#62164203) Journal

    Sounds like it's going to make a good OS.

    • Fire Fox needs to get it's priorities straight
      • Why TF is my web browser bragging about "improvements in noise suppression and auto-gain-control and improvements in echo cancellation"? It's a web browser, why does it need to have gain control and echo cancellation built into it? Next thing they'll be announcing is better performance in the flight simulator.

    • Re:Comes with an editor. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @12:19PM (#62164275)

      Netscape, added a lot of features where it became a full function internet browsers.
      IE Came along as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better than Netscape.
      IE Added features and integrated it with the OS, then became more than just a browser.
      Firefox came along, as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better than IE.
      Firefox added features and functionality that made it become clunky to use.
      Google Chrome came along as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better then Firefox...

      Focus on following the modern standards, and fast rendering speeds, and low system resources. Not making your web browser the ultimate software.

      • Netscape, added a lot of features where it became a full function internet browsers.
        IE Came along as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better than Netscape.
        IE Added features and integrated it with the OS, then became more than just a browser.
        Firefox came along, as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better than IE.
        Firefox added features and functionality that made it become clunky to use.
        Google Chrome came along as a fast browser, that supports the standards a bit better then Firefox...

        Focus on following the modern standards, and fast rendering speeds, and low system resources. Not making your web browser the ultimate software.

        *Installs 25 extensions to make the browser the ultimate software*

      • Opera seems to be the exception to the rule- followed the standards better than the other browsers, very fast, very low resources. But low market share made them sell out and now it's just Chromium.

        • Opera didn't have a Free version until much later in the browser wars. They had one with Ad's built in for Free to use, but that was also a lot of screen real estate used on displays expected to be 640x480.

          When Opera finally got their business model set, IE was in full swing, and those standards were a hard sell when people wanted to use Active-X,Java Applets and Flash plugins.

          What helped Firefox was a rash of Windows IE based attacks in 2003, and Firefox had a popup blocker option, which was the killer f

    • Sounds like it's going to make a good OS.

      I think Emacs has a Firefox mode ... :-)

      (And, yes, Emacs has a Web Browser [wikipedia.org] -- "M-x eww")

  • That's like 1 more than Windows 95! That's how you can tell it's better.

  • Firefox still can't synchronise search plugins, though. The bug is 14 years old! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]

    I think most people would agree it's an important feature. It's odd that it still hasn't been done.

  • and have to spend the rest of the day enjoying the Firefox experience instead of doing what I want.

  • I thought the Mozilla Foundation had something, way back when.

    Since then, I've seen that they didn't have a clue. BS in-fighting amongst the team, blowing-off bugs, and ignoring feedback left me wondering why the hell I gave them any money.

    Is there a Mozilla link to request refunds?

  • Any Reduction In Crashes ? (Score:3)

    by Tetch ( 534754 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @12:49PM (#62164371) Journal

    Never mind all that fancy stuff ... have they actually fixed any causes of crashing ?

    FF crashes for me several times a month, and I always take the trouble to fill in the "What were you doing immediately before the crash ?" section of the crash submission dialog ... and never hear another thing.

    I realise maybe these moments are subsumed within "Several causes of memory corruption were fixed", but I am always left wondering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )
      That sounds more like you have a plugin that is causing your problems, or your video driver may be problematic. A long time ago, all web browsers moved to using GPU acceleration, and when that first showed up, crashing would often be caused by old or buggy video card drivers. You may also be encountering some other problem with your computer such as a memory/CPU overclock that isn't QUITE stable, or even a problem with your RAM that you haven't realized was there(I've encountered RAM modules that actual

    • Never mind all that fancy stuff ... have they actually fixed any causes of crashing ?

      FF crashes for me several times a month

      Interesting. Sounds like the cause may be the user, their hardware, their profile, or an extension they installed. I can't recall the last time Firefox crashed. Not even sure if I've had it crash since Quantum came out in 3BC (before covid).

      • >"Interesting. Sounds like the cause may be the user, their hardware, their profile, or an extension they installed. I can't recall the last time Firefox crashed. Not even sure if I've had it crash since Quantum came out in 3BC (before covid)."

        Agreed. I leave it up and running for weeks or months, having 3+ windows and 30+ tabs open and visiting many hundreds of URLs that include text, video, sound, etc, under Linux. I can count on less than one hand the number of "crashes" I have had in years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by short ( 66530 )
      Is it really crashing inside Firefox? It can be any of libraries it is using. In my case the crashes were due to intel-media-driver [rpmfusion.org].

    • Doubtful. Firefox is such a bloated mess I have Windows limit how much memory the process group can allocate so it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the system from excessive disk trashing. The tradeoff is that Windows will eventually stop more memory from being allocated, but Firefox doesn't ever check anywhere if a memory allocation fails so it crashes in any number of places.

      Firefox launches many processes (even more than before, and now ignores configuration changes to limit how many processes are used) s

      • >"Doubtful. Firefox is such a bloated mess I have Windows limit how much memory the process group can allocate so it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the system from excessive disk trashing.'

        So install Chrom* and watch it eat up even MORE RAM and even faster. Firefox is not "bloated" compared to the other choices. All modern browsers eat up a lot of RAM. But I have 3 Firefox windows or more and 20-30 tabs open most of the time, running for weeks or months at a time and never crash or run out of memory or

  • It keeps forcing dark mode on different web pages, without any consistency. I personally don't like dark mode (I know I'm not alone), and I've seen some complaints about it.

  • So did the wankers at Mozilla restore all the Android extensions they disabled ?

    Thought not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )
      Are you talking about those old Netscape plugins that were disabled years ago due to security issues with the old plugin design being insecure?
      • No.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/s01j92/we_cant_install_custom_extensions_in_firefox_for/
      • Nah, Mozilla really killed the Android browser. Among the lack of features is just a list of "Mozilla Approved" addons that work with FF for Android. It will not install anything else.

  • Looks like the extra whitespace padding issue is back with FF 96 -- ignoring userChrome.css settings that worked in FF 95. WTF Mozilla? While I'm sure the extra padding is nice on a frelling phone, it's stupid on a desktop.

    Back to the drawing board to undo something they've "fixed" -- again. (sigh)

    • Fixed it. My userChrome.css had the settings wrapped in a block (below). Removed block and works as before. (Yay!)

      @media (-moz-proton) {
      ...
      }

  • Does it mean it no longer takes half an hour to start Firefox? It amazes me how much more snappy Chrome and Safari feel by virtue of starting up quickly.
    Also, the UI of Firefox is somehow "off". It's hard to explain. Maybe it's similar to using a contemporary OS X window vs. using some 90's InstallShield UI. OK I'm exaggerating but everything feels off enough to feel idiosyncratic and poorly designed.

    I don't use Firefox for its slow startup time and it's un-design

    • Does it mean it no longer takes half an hour to start Firefox? It amazes me how much more snappy Chrome and Safari feel by virtue of starting up quickly.

      It's amazing what you can do when you cache the start of your program with a running system service at boot. It's even more amazing that that people try and run a modern web browser on a potato. I mean Firefox takes literally half a second to start here, so what are you doing wrong, and did you know computers are not wine and don't get better if you only use 20 year old ones?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robi5 ( 1261542 )

        Apparently it's better now as I mention in a peer thread. However if you're unfamiliar with how Firefox used to start up much more slowly than Chrome until recently, you've been living under a rock. I use relatively powerful, recent laptops

    • >"Does it mean it no longer takes half an hour to start Firefox? It amazes me how much more snappy Chrome and Safari feel by virtue of starting up quickly."

      ???

      On my 3-year-old Ryzen 7 desktop running Linux, Firefox launches faster than I can time it.

      On my 10-year-old 2 core Lenovo laptop running Linux, it takes about 2 seconds.

      On my 16-year-old ancient Sony laptop with a Core Solo processor, 4300 RPM hard drive, and 1GB of RAM, running Linux, it takes 30 seconds (about the same amount of time it takes to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robi5 ( 1261542 )

        Just re-checked, indeed it's no longer an outlier. Down to 1-2 seconds on a modern, powerful laptop

  • A reason to switch back.

    • >"Re:Not listed: A reason to switch back."

      That assumes one left and compared to what. But I will assume you did and it was Chrom*:

      Here are four: better privacy, control, memory usage, and configuration

      And a bonus- not enabling the Google overlord master of forcing their "standards"

  • Firefox 96.0 has "significantly" reduced the amount of load placed on the browser's main thread and there is also "significant" improvements in noise suppression

    Can we get an editor in here, stat? It's "there ARE also", not IS also.

    FFS, I've come not to expect a lot from the slashdot editors, but this kind of shit just makes me grit my teeth while I weep tears for the baby jeebus.

    Okay, now back to talking about how that festering pile of shit known as Firefox is "going to be better this time, for sure no

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