updates Meet the browser: Firefox Next

[Excelsis]

Alright, I've been holding off posting this, but I just can't ignore it anymore. For the past week I've been trying to fix this.

I previously talked about Google Maps being stuttery and actually running better in the in-game Steam browser.

Well I recently realized that ALL Youtube videos stutter as well, dropping around 5 to 10 frames every 10 to 20 seconds. Always.

Now, back then I was still running a 4890, so I thought maybe the issue with Google Maps was due to AMD's Legacy drivers.

But no, I've since upgraded to a GTX 660 Twin Frozr III and the issue is still there, plus, the flash video issue.

The kicker? If I use IETab in Firefox on Youtube, there's zero frames dropped. Both Chrome and IE run flash (and maps) flawlessly, so the only conclusion I can come up with is that the issue is Firefox, not my computer.

I tried both the stable (17.0.1) and latest Nightly and the issue was there. I tried to do alot of things short of reinstalling Windows. Safe mode, new profile, disabling protected mode, HW acceleration off in Fx, off in Flash, off in both, on in both. Nothing could fix it.

I knew Firefox had performance issues but I didn't realize it was this bad. Makes me sad considering I've been using it since the Firebird days...

Now, a few questions, has anyone noticed this issue? Or was able to fix it? And when is Youtube gonna implement HTML5 on all videos!?

[bawz]

Servo is actually going to do that :)

what i dont get, if they are gonna ditch Gecko at some stage, why not just Ditch the whole Browser ( firefox ) an make a New Browser with the New rendering engine in it. , surely that would be easier

full HTML5 implementation wont come for years.IMO. so i wouldnt get ya hopes up to high

[bawz]

anyone know if there are any New builds with inContent ?

[+Zlip792 MVC]

anyone know if there are any New builds with inContent ?

Not yet but might be soon since Download Panel is on its polishing phase so it requires Library window for Downloads handling (in future) that's why.

Servo is actually going to do that :)

So it is where they are doing Rust based future Firefox bug thanks for sharing it but I still consider as a business student, time to market is too late. Ehsan and Areyh did some excellent work to make Gecko little C++11 compliant and still working on it. It will help somewhat but not much. The reason why we see too much progress and intention on JS side is the good example that it code changed quite a lot and well documented except GC case where BillM and Terrence are doing heroic work.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

what i dont get, if they are gonna ditch Gecko at some stage, why not just Ditch the whole Browser ( firefox ) an make a New Browser with the New rendering engine in it. , surely that would be easier

I'm not sure you understand quite how complicated a web browser is. There's a reason there are only, what, 4 codebases out there. Gecko, Trident, Presto and WebKit.

[bawz]

Not yet but might be soon since Download Panel is on its polishing phase so it requires Library window for Downloads handling (in future) that's why.

ohh ok thanks dude

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I'm not sure you understand quite how complicated a web browser is. There's a reason there are only, what, 4 codebases out there. Gecko, Trident, Presto and WebKit.

And WebKit started as a fork of KHTML, Apple thought it was easier than writing their own engine (And Google decided the same)

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Ion Monkey now do compilation off the main thread, enabling bug landed on Inbound. Several amazing bugs related to JS engine landing which will probably improve performance quite a lot. Few Snappy P1 bugs are near to land out of which one even landed it was related to Download API async.

Download attribute bug fixes and some other performance improvement coming. I am loving FF20 without Australis. Amazing performance.

Interesting bugs:

Cache font mechanism and sharing between pages (something like this) - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816483

Ion Monkey - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727857

Constant Invalidation fix on Tomshardware - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=805343

Mac only I think DLBI issue fix - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=819837

Regression regarding background - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=818643

Regression of CSS3D Transforms - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815666

[bawz]

DLBI will always have issues in Firefox

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Why would it? Even with the current issues it's better than their previous method for invalidating content.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

I agree with The_Decryptor that current DLBI implementation is better than previous since new implementation improved rendering, scrolling and painting a lot, site with DHTML improved a great deal.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

And WebKit started as a fork of KHTML, Apple thought it was easier than writing their own engine (And Google decided the same)

Indeed. Although I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that now KHTML and WebKit share patches and remain broadly compatible in terms of source code, so they are, for all intents and purposes, one codebase.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, main development has shifted over to WebKit, but KHTML is still kicking around for a few reasons (Although it's not as refined as WebKit or up to date, but some of the Linux guys don't like Apple and Google controlling their web browsers, quite rightly)

[+Zlip792 MVC]

New builds to use system wide codecs to play media on web world on Vista+ OS: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799315#c6

Try it...

[ViperAFK]

New builds to use system wide codecs to play media on web world on Vista+ OS: https://bugzilla.moz...gi?id=799315#c6

Try it...

About time!

[Kyang]

New builds to use system wide codecs to play media on web world on Vista+ OS: https://bugzilla.moz...gi?id=799315#c6

Try it...

Is this why the video on this page doesn't play in Nightly, but does in IE?

[Digitalfox]

Zlip792, once more thank you for your Interesting/Important bugs list, always appreciated, I always come to this topic to find your posts :)

But let's be honest Firefox performance sucks... And yes, I am a Firefox user, been using it for the last 8 years.

I don't care about browser benchmarks, most of them are pointless. """" woohoo I'm 1ms faster than you!!!! """"

What I care is that I have PC's where I install Firefox and not only have I to turn off HWA but sometimes uninstall it completely.

It's GUI get's stuck on "Not responding" loops many times. It can't even use more than a core. And most netbooks I came across just run it horribly.

My Asus 1201N, with a dual core Atom, overclocked to 2.0GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ION GPU with 512 Ram, runs it like crap, HWA is off always.It's new tab, close tab animation is like watching a turtle go from left to right on my 24" screen!

Seriously ever since Electrolysis was canceled (Snappy and Super Snappy don't have the same goals, or have any ambition like it had), I lost hope that Firefox will be a better product from a performance standpoint in the near (or even longer) future.

Quite honestly, In the beginning of 2013 I'm going to give Chrome a shot. If the extensions do work like the ones I use in Firefox I'll probably just jump ship.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Chrome would probably be just as slow on that hardware (And it'll use more memory)

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Zlip792, once more thank you for your Interesting/Important bugs list, always appreciated, I always come to this topic to find your posts :)

But let's be honest Firefox performance sucks... And yes, I am a Firefox user, been using it for the last 8 years.

I don't care about browser benchmarks, most of them are pointless. """" woohoo I'm 1ms faster than you!!!! """"

What I care is that I have PC's where I install Firefox and not only have I to turn off HWA but sometimes uninstall it completely.

It's GUI get's stuck on "Not responding" loops many times. It can't even use more than a core. And most netbooks I came across just run it horribly.

My Asus 1201N, with a dual core Atom, overclocked to 2.0GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ION GPU with 512 Ram, runs it like crap, HWA is off always.It's new tab, close tab animation is like watching a turtle go from left to right on my 24" screen!

Seriously ever since Electrolysis was canceled (Snappy and Super Snappy don't have the same goals, or have any ambition like it had), I lost hope that Firefox will be a better product from a performance standpoint in the near (or even longer) future.

Quite honestly, In the beginning of 2013 I'm going to give Chrome a shot. If the extensions do work like the ones I use in Firefox I'll probably just jump ship.

Really appreciated that bro.

Also I think Patrick changes regarding async proxy checking etc caused this Not Responding loop regressions and Honza is behind fixing it. Lets hope I am not confusing two issues although they might fix bugs. Firefox sucks when Windows Power Plan is not High Performance, there was a bug about it as well.

For all others, latest hourly support "per window" private browsing... Yuppeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

Is this why the video on this page doesn't play in Nightly, but does in IE?

It might be. This will add Firefox support for H.264 codec as well and MP3 and other audio support. So overall win win situation for us and kind of Flash Plugin more quickly hurry to death.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

In Inbound:

Ion Monkey Performance Improvement: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=820676

Telemetry enhancement regarding shutdown times: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=815709

Private Browsing Window focus bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=819202

Ion Monkey crash fix: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=820873

XUL related old bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=263433

Regression fix: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=820799

Mixed Content Blocking UI: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=782654

Backout excessive invalidation on tomshardware: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=805343

Click to Play improvement: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767638 , https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767633

Download Panel fix: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=820533

Per Window Private Browsing: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=818732

Security related bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769288

GC:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816776

DASH WebM Stream support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816726

Plugin version in Crash reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=818664

Ion Monkey: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=813671 , https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=814396

[bogas04]

Nightly since last week feels a lot faster to me , the context menus open up faster , scrolling is quick. Feels great!

[dnast]

I might try Nightly again soon. I haven't really used it much for the last few months after experiencing a period of instability.

I've been getting a lot of bug spam about the private browsing window feature since then and i am hearing good things about performance improvents so I might as well give it a look.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Nightly since last week feels a lot faster to me , the context menus open up faster , scrolling is quick. Feels great!

It is reverse for me, few days back Nightly was smacking fast but now it regressed little bit.

Off the Main Decoding is soon to come in Nightly so watch out for another performance improvement. Some session restore cleanup work in also work in progress which will make it faster. So overall going in good direction except Australis work.

[ArialBlue]

*snip*

I have to agree here. It is like Mozilla is lying about doing anything to address performance issues.

DLBI? No performance benefit - scrolling and UI is laggy.

Some JS fix here or there? No performance benefit - scrolling and UI is laggy.

Azure something or other? No performance benefit - scrolling and UI is laggy.

Invalidation something or other? No performance benefit - scrolling and UI is laggy

And threading / multi-process simple moves bad computation to another core (if you have one).

What you will see is simple more of cores maxed out and same performance.

I think the low-end systems they test FF on can run Skyrim on high settings.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Azure and DLBI both sped up rendering, you can see as much from tests.