Firefox Got Faster for Real Users in 2023

In order to measure the user experience, Firefox collects a wide range of anonymized timing metrics related to page load, responsiveness, startup and other aspects of browser performance. Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. For example, because we rely on aggregated metrics, we lack the ability to pinpoint data from any particular website. But perhaps even more challenging is analyzing the data once collected and drawing actionable conclusions. In the future we’ll talk more about these challenges and how we’re addressing them, but in this post we’d like to share how some of the metrics that are fundamental to how our users experience the browser have improved throughout the year.

dingleberry,

Firefox: uses telemetry to improve performance

Lemmybrains: https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/9d609f9e-3c13-41f0-ac06-f8cf4872a8b0.webm

morrowind,
@morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

there’s got to be some way to make embeds not oversized

satan,

Most loud mouth opensource/privacy enthusiasts:

  • Never contribute anything to any project
  • Gets triggered and repeats regurgitated stuff every time “tracking/ad” is mentioned even when they are anonymous and have valid use cases
  • Has no solutions to any problems, just buzzwords
  • Always complain on open source projects for being shit
  • Wants someone else to work for free to fix their annoyances
  • Wants feature parity and more with commercial alternatives
  • Rinse and repeat
Lexam,

But what about us posers?

Goun,

No brum brum for you

sadreality,

Telemetry is how we got here origanlly... These companies broke the trust, I don't share shit.

Nothing against FF has been using since before faceberg. But I use forks now since telemetry is a no no spot got me

shiveyarbles,

Mines faster because … noscript

Truck_kun,

I haven’t used noscript in a long time, but it is the only way I feel truly safe on the internet.

That said, I would never recommend it to the average non-technical user.

Average user, I would direct to uBlock Origin (make sure it is Origin, from gorhill or raymond hill, preferably from the extensions shop for your browser with lots of ratings).

For anyone inbetween uBlock Origin and noscript in techinical skill, I would recommend uBlock Origin + uMatrix (from the same developer). Has a small learning curve, but provides decent protection from 3rd party sites.

If you want protection from first party sites though… noscript all the way.

toastal,

uMatrix died years ago since you can do the same things in uBlock & the result is easier to share.

I use uBlock in allowlist mode for JavaScript. The number of SPAs that shouldn’t be as well as zero effort put into a basic, semantic noscript to at minimum say what the script will do & remind to allow JS is pretty gross tho. Web developers need to do better.

mnglw, (edited )

people keep saying you can do the same thing in ublock as in umatrix but the UI is completely different and not nearly as intuitive and I don’t nearly have as granular control as I had in umatrix

toastal,

I won’t disagree that uMatrix wasn’t a clearer UI for what it was doing but, a) it’s (IIRC) not as granular just blocking per domain & b) it’s mare difficult to share your settings with others. If you go thru the more obnoxious process of uBlock Origin of looking thru its request log window, you’ll have a plaintext file that easy to host for others to share or to contribute to a larger filter list project.

toastal,

Because of this, I now maintain a public filter list I know some folks subscribe to, github-less-social. Now others can use or pitch in to a project where others don’t want to see Microsoft GitHub’s social features or product upsells when interacting with code projects that don’t respect the freedom of their users/contributors by forcing them into a Microsoft ecosystem.

Bebo,

How about privacy badger for non technical users? Heard about it couple of times.

Truck_kun,

I know nothing about it. I know there are a group of extensions people generally use, and I feel like I’ve heard that name.

I stick with what I know and trust reputation wise. uBlock Origin is known and trusted far and wide, and any technical community should have at least heard of it.

NoScript back in the day was pretty well known, but I don’t think it is so well known now days; in large part because until you configure it for each site you visit, it makes every site unusable… the number of websites that don’t make use of javascript for some critical site functionality are almost 0 nowdays. It just cannot be recommended to any non-technical user; they might figure it out, but it is so frustrating for every site you visit to require configuration.

MayonnaiseArch,
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

It’s a shame the mobile firefox is such a flaming turd in comparison. Can’t imagine using anything else on desktop bit they made me switch to cromite. And the devs gaslight you if you complain about the degenerate ui issues on firefox mobile. I wish there was firefox sync for chromite

TalesFromTheKitchen,

If you dont mind updating manually Icraven is a pretty good port. It’s on GitHub but they are working on a Fdroid release

adam_b,

Iceraven is faster than vanilla FF, but updates are slow, this can hurt your security

TalesFromTheKitchen,

I’ve noticed updates getting a lot more frequent. I hope they can keep this upand grow their user base.

adam_b,

Yeah, I’m on their github page rn, and I see that, last time I used it, updates took months to arrive… Now it’s just a week or two 👍

spiderman,

never thought a firefox fork to be faster than chrome in android

MayonnaiseArch, (edited )
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

Thanks will try it. And I try to use obtanium, it’s really good for this kind of stuff, checks and downloads fr github

Edit: tried it, it’s faster it seems. But it has the same problem as the regular ff - if there is a firefox purple notification on the screen the rest of the ui is locked. You can swipe, sure, but for some reason this is infuriating

dadaredone,

It’s not good, developer has no guarantee for updates and the app is notably left outdated for months.

MoshBit,

That’s literally not true in the slightest. I’ve had at least two updates in the past month.

dadaredone,

friend i’ve been tracking that browser from 2 years now and it really has a bad update cycle, i gave up on that browser due to same reason.

el_abuelo,

“Gave up on” and “tracking for 2 years now” in the same sentence…you’re sending mixed messages.

dadaredone,

English is not my primary language, it’s still raw pardon it convyed certain message that i basically don’t use that browser anymore due to updates even the developer agrees on this.

density,
@density@kbin.social avatar

You can use ffupdater to get updates of various FF forks, including Iceraven, and other browsers.

TalesFromTheKitchen,

Thanks, that’s neat!

Fisch,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

There’s also Obtainium, which might be better to use if you need to update other stuff aside from browsers, that’s not on F-Droid. Better to have just one of them running in the background instead of both if them.

omnissiah,
@omnissiah@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Mull browser for android is really good especially with uBlock origin

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

It’s really not that bad. I’ve been using it for years, it’s fine… Plus you can use an adblocker and dark reader.

MayonnaiseArch,
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

Been using firefox for at least 3 years (forever on desktop). Try cromite and see, you get all of the same stuff except it’s really fast. No idea why, loading times and all are pretty much the same, but the UI is responsive and doesn’t get in the way. I want to use ff but it makes me want to break my phone

contao,

On Android Firefox is great.

  • Performance is good
  • you can choose between bottom or top navigation
  • pull to refresh (needs to be enabled in the settings)
  • swipe to change tabs
  • extensions

Can handle my more than 100 open tabs quite well.

ReversalHatchery,

No, sadly performance is not good. With less installed addons and no opened tabs it takes more time to start up than the old version, which had a few dozen opened tabs opened and more addons.
It also lags quite a lot while in use after startup.

Fisch,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

Performance is not good at all. I have a 120hz phone now and scrolling feels like Firefox is still on 60hz. Settings and the like are perfectly smooth tho, so it’s not actually only rendering at 60hz, it’s just rendering webpages so slowly that it can’t keep up with my screens refresh rate.

Feature-wise Firefox is way better than Chrome on mobile but performance is just horrible. Firefox also looks a little dated on mobile by now, especially compared to Chrome but that’s not a deal breaker. Would be nice if they adopted Material Design 3 tho.

DigitalPaperTrail,

Web developers, after hearing there's more performance to utilize

QuazarOmega,

More performance = more RAM to download

KnightontheSun,

I should’ve done that instead of trying to download that car on olde DSL.

possiblylinux127,

This is why I use librewolf

damnthefilibuster,

Care to explain?

Limitless_screaming,
@Limitless_screaming@kbin.social avatar

Because Firefox collects diagnostic data by default; which they used to achieve this improvement, but @possiblylinux127 doesn't like that.

damnthefilibuster,

Ah, got it. Interesting that they clearly state it’s anonymized and aggregated but to each their own, I suppose.

OpenStars,
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how "friendly" such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as "bad".

If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers... but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.

Fisch,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

Firefox also needs to connect to their servers for stuff like Extension updates. It’s not necessarily to send them your data.

OpenStars,
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

That's a good point but I thought it was different servers, like one had "telemetry" directly in the name? Unfortunately I really don't recall bc it's been too long and I didn't have time to finish delving in the first place, nor since. I don't want to spread misinformation so let me know if you think I might be doing that. Mostly I'm saying that if Blockada chose to mark their checks home as "bad", enough to block them upon a default installation of that app, then they surely had some reason to do so, even if ultimately it turns out to be harmless.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for severity, this might be just like a 1, but that's still not 0, and some people just prefer to stay away from an app that has demonstrably chosen to ignore user consent. Even if they clearly state that they felt they had good reasons for doing so.

KnightontheSun,

Mine are all toggled off. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

I’ve been a FF user for a very long time. I just never understood why folks don’t like it.

Limitless_screaming,
@Limitless_screaming@kbin.social avatar

I used to use Librewolf too, but I opted to just customize FFs settings and keep diagnostic data collection and "installing and running studies" on.

When I first discovered that Google gives FF a large sum of money to keep their search engine the default one, I immediately got paranoid and started researching Mozilla. I ended up using Librewolf for about a month and then decided to switch back because collecting anonymous diagnostic data wasn't such a big deal, and Google doesn't seem to influence Mozilla as much as I expected.

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

The installing and running studies was off for me since that time they decided to use that feature to inject ads into web pages.

KnightontheSun,

The studies one is always an instant no from me. My CPU cycles are my own to allocate as I see fit. I love FF, but you don’t get that access here.

That aside, FF seems like the only browser left that is interested in having me actually browse the web.

AMDIsOurLord,

Lmfao what are you running? A PC/Jr?

possiblylinux127,

No

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