FireFox 57 is now FireFox Quantum. Mozilla boasts massive performance and GUI improvements

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, PocketNerd said:

I'm most impressed by the fact that Mozilla actually showed cases where Chrome was faster than FF Quantum.

I wish more companies would do that.

That's because Mozilla are (usually) awesome and very open about things. They have been tracking JS performance for several years now. AreWeFastYet.

They started it back when they were working on Minefield (aka Firefox 4.0). Chrome got like 3 times the benchmark results and Mozilla was publicly displaying it on that site. But they did it to easily show people what progress they were making, and oh boy did they catch up.

 

51 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

According to developers, they only got a few months with full information.

Ehm, what developers? It's been known for a year or more.

Here is a blog post from 2016 where the developer of DownThemAll is furious that Mozilla will completely switch to WebExtensions.

[Emberstone]

Trying FF 57 right now on my laptop, and it feels pretty snappy. The interface update looks great, too, and has a proper dark mode built in without needing a third party skin.

[Dylanc1500]

4 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

Trying FF 57 right now on my laptop, and it feels pretty snappy. The interface update looks great, too, and has a proper dark mode built in without needing a third party skin.

I recommend trying 58. I noticed further enhancements with resource usage and responsiveness (requires Nightly though).

[JoostinOnline]

52 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Ehm, what developers? It's been known for a year or more.

Here is a blog post from 2016 where the developer of DownThemAll is furious that Mozilla will completely switch to WebExtensions.

I emailed a bunch of them awhile back asking if they were planning to switch.  They all said yes, but a few of them also complained about how Mozilla didn't give them the proper tools (or something) to start porting for a few months after the announcement.  I don't remember all the details, and it's possible that they were just complaining.

 

Either way, I'm not super excited about this.  Chrome's extensions always seem to be lacking compared to Firefox's, and I'm pretty sure that's why.