Meet the browser: Firefox Next

By bogas04
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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BannanaNinja

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Posted
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.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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  • Veteran
Posted

While 2D drawing does have an abstraction layer, it's very thin. One of the design goals of Azure was that it provided a close mapping to Direct2D, unlike Cairo where there was a fair bit of translation going on (Cairo used a different type of or-ordinate system, different types, different drawing system, etc.) The layers system (i.e. page composition) doesn't even have an abstraction layer, the code responsible for compositing a page together talks directly to Direct3D (On Linux or OS X there's other code that talks to OpenGL, etc.)

Drawing needs that abstraction layer (Since it deals directly with path rendering, text drawing, etc. which differ across platforms) while page composition doesn't as it only deals with "textures" (Which could be a video buffer, a bitmap, a plugin surface, WebGL, etc. they're all treated the same regardless of the platform)

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

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.

Firefox still degrades for me after a few hours.

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

firefox is working on a new engine called Servo. It will be multiprocess, multithreaded and written using their Rust programming language which is much more secure than c++. It is in the early stages though, won't be ready within the next 1.5yrs.

Between Windows 8 support and this, I have to wonder just what they do day in and day out at Mozilla. Do they even show up for work half the time? Everything over there is either pushed back or delayed.

Mentor

+Heartripper Subscriber¹

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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.

 

attachicon.gifAustralis Windows 8.png

 

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

 

http://userstyles.org/styles/95258/firefox-metro-for-australis :)

Grand Master

torrentthief

Posted
Posted

Between Windows 8 support and this, I have to wonder just what they do day in and day out at Mozilla. Do they even show up for work half the time? Everything over there is either pushed back or delayed.

none of the other browsers are fully multithreaded, google has started their work on the competitor to servo a few months after mozilla announced it. Samsung is also helping develop servo btw: http://betanews.com/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-team-up-to-kill-chrome-mobile/

 

Being able to use all cpu cores instead of 100% of 1 core will reduce power consumption as well as speed up browsing, samsung would love a browsing power advantage over iphone's safari.

Grand Master

ViperAFK

Posted
Posted

Between Windows 8 support and this, I have to wonder just what they do day in and day out at Mozilla. Do they even show up for work half the time? Everything over there is either pushed back or delayed.

Its 2014 and chrome still doesn't have fully working smooth scrolling on windows, this type of thing doesn't only happen with firefox :p

Experienced

bawz

Posted
Posted

When is Australis landing the release channel? 2 months? Already tested on Aurora and its cool, but i dont wanna use Aurora as default browser

should findout next week when or if 29 Australis is landing in Beta when hey have there Merge etc meeting

Experienced

bawz

Posted
Posted

 

Jared Wein wrote:Hi firefox-dev,

I wanted to let you know that tomorrow's nightly build of Holly will be the last to receive updates. This also means that there will be no further security updates to the channel, and that staying on the channel past Friday, March 14 is not advised.

Soon after, the Holly builds will be removed from the FTP servers. Thank you to those who contributed many hours of testing on Holly.

Thanks,

Jared

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