updates Meet the browser: Firefox Next

[ViperAFK]

Does anybody know a way to show the bookmarks sidebar by default when I press the bookmarks toolbar button instead of displaying the drop down menu and having to click 'view bookmarks sidebar' everytime?  Thanks.

You just need to add the correct button to the toolbar. The default button is for the menu. there is another 'bookmarks' button in the customize toolbar dialogue that brings up the sidebar when clicked rather then the menu. just drag the bookmarks 'menu' button off the toolbar and drag the bookmarks sidebar button onto the toolbar.

[Dot Matrix]

Windows 8 Australis mockup. If Firefox's new look looks anything different, I will be quite disappointed. Australis would also be the perfect time for the Firefox team to cut out the legacy XP and Vista baggage from the code base. As a modern web user, I feel persecuted for having updated My OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8, while Firefox still clings and begs for Windows XP. It's time to cut XP loose, Mozilla. Microsoft did it, and it's made them better off.

 

 

Source: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/mockups-interactive/australis-interactive-mockups/windows8.html

[Boo Berry]

Return of square tabs would be nice... but I'm also content with the rounded sides.

[Luc2k]

Windows 8 Australis mockup. If Firefox's new look looks anything different, I will be quite disappointed. Australis would also be the perfect time for the Firefox team to cut out the legacy XP and Vista baggage from the code base. As a modern web user, I feel persecuted for having updated My OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8, while Firefox still clings and begs for Windows XP. It's time to cut XP loose, Mozilla. Microsoft did it, and it's made them better off.

 

Source: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/mockups-interactive/australis-interactive-mockups/windows8.html

Haha, "persecuted".. let me catch my breath. I hope they somehow add a start menu in there just to ###### you off. At any rate, don't you use IE? Why does it matter what Firefox looks like?

[.stan]

Windows 8 Australis mockup. If Firefox's new look looks anything different, I will be quite disappointed. Australis would also be the perfect time for the Firefox team to cut out the legacy XP and Vista baggage from the code base. As a modern web user, I feel persecuted for having updated My OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8, while Firefox still clings and begs for Windows XP. It's time to cut XP loose, Mozilla. Microsoft did it, and it's made them better off.

 

Australis Windows 8.png

 

Source: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/mockups-interactive/australis-interactive-mockups/windows8.html

 

The official mockup does not look the way your screenshot looks like, and square tabs is the biggest difference. The official tabs are still curved on Win8.

[Dot Matrix]

The official mockup does not look the way your screenshot looks like, and square tabs is the biggest difference. The official tabs are still curved on Win8.

The mockup is my own. The curved tabs are going to be an eyesore on Win8

[V23]

You just need to add the correct button to the toolbar. The default button is for the menu. there is another 'bookmarks' button in the customize toolbar dialogue that brings up the sidebar when clicked rather then the menu. just drag the bookmarks 'menu' button off the toolbar and drag the bookmarks sidebar button onto the toolbar.

 

That's what I used to do but there isn't a separate bookmarks sidebar button for me anymore.  I just found out about the 'sidebars' button but that still requires two clicks to open the bookmarks sidebar (a small inconvenience but having to do it every time is annoying).

[Syanide]

Windows 8 Australis mockup. If Firefox's new look looks anything different, I will be quite disappointed. Australis would also be the perfect time for the Firefox team to cut out the legacy XP and Vista baggage from the code base. As a modern web user, I feel persecuted for having updated My OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8, while Firefox still clings and begs for Windows XP. It's time to cut XP loose, Mozilla. Microsoft did it, and it's made them better off.

 

Australis Windows 8.png

 

Source: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/mockups-interactive/australis-interactive-mockups/windows8.html

 

You feel persecuted in what way exactly? Why even care what other people use? Does the legacy code affect the performance of your Firefox install on Win 7/8 in any way? If so, that could be a legitimate concern, but I've failed to see it brought up by anyone before. Also, I kind of suspect you don't use Firefox anyway, so what difference does any of this make to you?

[Dot Matrix]

You feel persecuted in what way exactly? Why even care what other people use? Does the legacy code affect the performance of your Firefox install on Win 7/8 in any way? If so, that could be a legitimate concern, but I've failed to see it brought up by anyone before. Also, I kind of suspect you don't use Firefox anyway, so what difference does any of this make to you?

When Microsoft ditched the legacy code in IE, it became on hell of a slim and fast browser. And, yes, I do use Firefox.

[grayscale]

Windows 8 Australis mockup. If Firefox's new look looks anything different, I will be quite disappointed. Australis would also be the perfect time for the Firefox team to cut out the legacy XP and Vista baggage from the code base. As a modern web user, I feel persecuted for having updated My OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8, while Firefox still clings and begs for Windows XP. It's time to cut XP loose, Mozilla. Microsoft did it, and it's made them better off.

 

Australis Windows 8.png

 

Source: http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/mockups-interactive/australis-interactive-mockups/windows8.html

and I thought they're bringing back the square tabs. Oh well, there's Stylish and the amazing Heartripper.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

When Microsoft ditched the legacy code in IE, it became on hell of a slim and fast browser. And, yes, I do use Firefox.

"Legacy code" is meaningless, what exactly are you referring to?

[Dot Matrix]

"Legacy code" is meaningless, what exactly are you referring to?

The code remaining in Firefox for it to run on legacy systems such as XP and Vista.

[ViperAFK]

The code remaining in Firefox for it to run on legacy systems such as XP and Vista.

under the hood vista is very similar to windows 7, I doubt there's much 'legacy code' for firefox to run on vista.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

under the hood vista is very similar to windows 7, I doubt there's much 'legacy code' for firefox to run on vista.

There isn't even legacy code required to run on XP, programs don't work that way.

You can require newer APIs, sure (Firefox already does this), but it's not like there's code in place to specifically support XP, it just works.

Edit: If XP used an entirely different binary format then sure, but the way it is a program will run on any system that provides the right APIs, and updated XP provides all the APIs Firefox needs to run.

[cetla]

I think what most people, when complaining about Firefox's legacy code, is really refering to the dated Gecko engine--which has become much of a ginormous bottleneck for Firefox. Modern browsers are now not only multi-threaded, but processes and full H.A.

 

Firefox is still chugging along with a renderer that hasn't been majorly overhauled since Firefox 4. That was 3 years ago? Hopefully it'll get replaced by Servo sooner than later.

[BannanaNinja]

The_Decryptor, on 02 Mar 2014 - 20:25, said:

There isn't even legacy code required to run on XP, programs don't work that way.

You can require newer APIs, sure (Firefox already does this), but it's not like there's code in place to specifically support XP, it just works.

Edit: If XP used an entirely different binary format then sure, but the way it is a program will run on any system that provides the right APIs, and updated XP provides all the APIs Firefox needs to run.

 

One thing, for example, is the newer graphics technologies in Windows 8/8.1. DirectComposition is the magic that powers the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer (and the XAML framework for Windows Store apps) which is unavailable on XP. Sure you could implement it by hand but your implementation would be slower and have to be maintained (legacy code). These new APIs save you work and enable you to have less code, which means less legacy code as well. This is the reason IE's hardware acceleration is still a step up on the competition.

[Dot Matrix]

I think what most people, when complaining about Firefox's legacy code, is really refering to the dated Gecko engine--which has become much of a ginormous bottleneck for Firefox. Modern browsers are now not only multi-threaded, but processes and full H.A.

 

Firefox is still chugging along with a renderer that hasn't been majorly overhauled since Firefox 4. That was 3 years ago? Hopefully it'll get replace by Servo sooner than later.

 

 

One thing, for example, is the newer graphics technologies in Windows 8/8.1. DirectComposition is the magic that powers the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer (and the XAML framework for Windows Store apps) which is unavailable on XP. Sure you could implement it by hand but your implementation would be slower and have to be maintained (legacy code). These new APIs save you work and enable you to have less code, which means less legacy code as well. This is the reason IE's hardware acceleration is still a step up on the competition.

 

^

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Firefox already uses Direct3D on Windows for page composition (It actually was doing it before IE was).

Edit: Firefox is already multi threaded and hardware accelerated too soo...

[Luc2k]

I think what most people, when complaining about Firefox's legacy code, is really refering to the dated Gecko engine--which has become much of a ginormous bottleneck for Firefox. Modern browsers are now not only multi-threaded, but processes and full H.A.

 

Firefox is still chugging along with a renderer that hasn't been majorly overhauled since Firefox 4. That was 3 years ago? Hopefully it'll get replaced by Servo sooner than later.

Didn't stop them from winning the last Tom's Hardware Grand Prix. The next one is supposedly this month so I can hardly wait to see what IE11 is capable of.

[cetla]

Didn't stop them from winning the last Tom's Hardware Grand Prix. The next one is supposedly this month so I can hardly wait to see what IE11 is capable of.

Most of these benchmarks are theatrical and specific and not real-world scenarios. When users click on a link, open a new tab, switching tabs, etc and they see the rendering is not up to speed, they're going to get frustrated.

 

Most people leave their tabs open and that really drain down Firefox's performance rather quickly after a couple of hours.

[BannanaNinja]

The_Decryptor, on 02 Mar 2014 - 21:17, said:

Firefox already uses Direct3D on Windows for page composition (It actually was doing it before IE was).

Edit: Firefox is already multi threaded and hardware accelerated too soo...

Firefox started using Direct3D hardware acceleration (turned on by default) in the Firefox 4 beta released in September 2010. IE 9 had a beta out in March 2010 with hardware acceleration. IE 9 also released a couple weeks before Firefox 4 so I do believe IE had it first. Either way, Firefox requires separate implementations on XP vs later editions because it uses Direct2D on Vista+ which isn't available on XP. This is legacy code!

 

Firefox is hardly multithreaded in the same way IE or Chrome is. The have plugins running in a separate process and they are working on getting the UI separate from content but they still have a long way to go (for stability and responsiveness). IE has tabs, UI, content, and JavaScript all running separately with faster hardware acceleration to boot.

[Max Norris]

Most people leave their tabs open and that really drain down Firefox's performance rather quickly after a couple of hours.

That may have been true way back when with version 4 maybe when there were leak issues, but certainly not for anything even remotely current. Mine's open with a fair number of tabs and ~22 or so addons for days at a time without issue, only time it typically gets shut down is for the occasional update.

[Luc2k]

Most of these benchmarks are theatrical and specific and not real-world scenarios. When users click on a link, open a new tab, switching tabs, etc and they see the rendering is not up to speed, they're going to get frustrated.

 

Most people leave their tabs open and that really drain down Firefox's performance rather quickly after a couple of hours.

They're split into synthetic and real-world so take the ones that matter to you. I know I do.

 

As for your frustration scenarios, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm one of the people that leaves their tabs open. Unlike most people, after a couple of months I end up with thousands of tabs open of which 50-150 might be active per session. While it's not as responsive as a clean session, I seriously doubt the other browsers would fare better in this scenario. Biggest problem is if it reaches its memory limit.

 

Anyway, after a while I kill the process a couple of times so I get a restore session tab and start again. Right now I have Firefox open for more than 2 days, with 86 open tabs with about 50 active. I won't have any performance issues until I'll get to 400+.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Firefox started using Direct3D hardware acceleration (turned on by default) in the Firefox 4 beta released in September 2010. IE 9 had a beta out in March 2010 with hardware acceleration. IE 9 also released a couple weeks before Firefox 4 so I do believe IE had it first. Either way, Firefox requires separate implementations on XP vs later editions because it uses Direct2D on Vista+ which isn't available on XP. This is legacy code!

 

Firefox is hardly multithreaded in the same way IE or Chrome is. The have plugins running in a separate process and they are working on getting the UI separate from content but they still have a long way to go (for stability and responsiveness). IE has tabs, UI, content, and JavaScript all running separately with faster hardware acceleration to boot.

If we're going by betas then yes IE had a beta out first, but the nightly builds of Firefox had it beforehand. And yes, Firefox does use GDI on XP, but it also uses it on Vista/7/8/8.1 if the user's GPU has bugs, it's not legacy code, it's fallback code (It's also used for printing because Direct2D only gained support for it in 1.1, which Firefox currently doesn't use).

The threading model in browsers is slightly complicated, that's the whole reason Chrome and IE went multi-process (And why Firefox is, the mobile release is already multi-process), each "renderer" is mainly single threaded (JavaScript/layout/painting is all done on one thread), but things like networking/page composition/HTML parsing/JS compiling can be done in other threads (And already are in Firefox), the only difference comes down to where the single threaded "page" thread lives. In Firefox it lives in the main process (Managing every page), while in Chrome it lives in a separate process (Managing only pages belonging to the domain or such), but each renderer is still inherently following that single threaded model.

Also, explain how the hardware acceleration is "faster", because IE and Firefox use the GPU in the same way.

[BannanaNinja]

The_Decryptor, on 02 Mar 2014 - 22:30, said:

If we're going by betas then yes IE had a beta out first, but the nightly builds of Firefox had it beforehand. And yes, Firefox does use GDI on XP, but it also uses it on Vista/7/8/8.1 if the user's GPU has bugs, it's not legacy code, it's fallback code (It's also used for printing because Direct2D only gained support for it in 1.1, which Firefox currently doesn't use).

The threading model in browsers is slightly complicated, that's the whole reason Chrome and IE went multi-process (And why Firefox is, the mobile release is already multi-process), each "renderer" is mainly single threaded (JavaScript/layout/painting is all done on one thread), but things like networking/page composition/HTML parsing/JS compiling can be done in other threads (And already are in Firefox), the only difference comes down to where the single threaded "page" thread lives. In Firefox it lives in the main process (Managing every page), while in Chrome it lives in a separate process (Managing only pages belonging to the domain or such), but each renderer is still inherently following that single threaded model.

Also, explain how the hardware acceleration is "faster", because IE and Firefox use the GPU in the same way.

All fair points. A lot of the off main thread components are just recently coming out for Firefox (Desktop version) but they are still behind. They have been working on the Electrolysis project for some time now and its still a ways off (although I am pretty excited for it!).

 

As for why IE is faster, I guess DComp is that much faster that Firefox's homegrown solution (Azure). Or its the extra layers of abstraction that Firefox must employ for its cross-platform support. Either way, benchmarks (and real world use) still show IE as faster.