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from the just-release-nightly-builds-oh-wait dept.
Mozilla is planning to speed up Firefox's current 18-week release cycle, code in multiprocess support, and phase out the XUL and XBL languages currently used to build the Firefox UI (a change that may eventually break extensions):
Mozilla is planning big changes in how it builds its Firefox web browser, including speeding up its release schedule and – in the long term – getting rid of some of the Mozilla-specific technologies that have traditionally been used to build the browser's UI and add-ons. The decisions were discussed at Moz's "Coincidental Work Week" meetup in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada during the last week of June and were made public in a pair of forum posts by Mozilla engineering director Dave Camp on Monday. For starters, Mozilla plans to ditch its current 18-week release cycle in favor of something more agile. "We think there are big wins to be had in shortening the time that new features reaches users," Camp wrote. "Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days. Individual features rolling out to small audiences for focused and multi-variate testing."
Firefox 39 was released on Monday. Changes include vsync (smooth scrolling) on Mac OS X, the addition of Unicode 8.0 skin tone emoji, removal of SSLv3, improving IPv6 fallback to IPv4, and support for the ECMAScript 2015 Proxy object. Mozilla has also unveiled a "Games Technology Roadmap," which sets out goals of further improving HTML5 + JavaScript performance relative to native applications, shipping the unfinished WebGL 2.0, and minimizing common issues like audio/graphics latency and "jitter".
Google says TurboFan, a new optimizing JavaScript compiler that will replace Crankshaft, will speed up various aspects of JavaScript performance (it currently shows a "29% increase on the zlib score of the Octane benchmark"). It has been shipping since Chrome 41, but will be improved and switched on in more code scenarios over time until it completely replaces the Crankshaft compiler.
Microsoft's new Edge browser will not include ActiveX and Silverlight support, and will instead use HTML5's Media Source and Encrypted Media Extensions for "premium media", as well as MPEG-DASH and Common Encryption (CENC). Internet Explorer 11 will retain Silverlight support.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2015, @07:56PM
"why USE all of those resources"
Why not? Isn't that the entire point of getting a faster computer, to use the resources provided so that you can have a faster smoother experience?
Perhaps firefox can give various options, do you want your browser to run fast (ie: use more resources) or do you want it to run slower and use less resources.
I'm not saying that the browser shouldn't use those resources efficiently. For instance, in Windows I disable windows animate because it makes things faster. I also make the background black to use less electricity and video memory & processing. I similarly tweak my phone to remove various animations. I don't need all the eyecandy and bloat and would much rather have something simple. but, given the choice of using more available resources for a faster experience vs using fewer and leaving valuable resources idle for a slower one I would choose using more. Otherwise what's the point of getting a faster computer with more memory? When the browser is active, when I'm using it, it should use resources. If I'm doing something else then resources should be directed at whatever it is I'm doing (and perhaps spare resources, like an extra core, could be directed at background process and the browser if the browser is loading something in the background while I'm using another app).
and, I agree, that over the years programs have become more and more inefficient and unnecessarily bloated in their use of resources. I agree that's something that should be addressed. But that's a separate issue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 08 2015, @09:35PM
Because it's a browser. It's a program that is not run as main application (at least not by everyone) but as application besides the main one, in order to look up things. The resources should be available for the actual work, not be eaten by the browser running on the side. When the browser consumes more resources than the stuff the computer is actually used for, there's something wrong.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.