

Should *Mozilla* Fork Firefox? - bensummers
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=2967

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grayrest
Of the people I know who have switched from Firefox to Chrome, the reason is
always speed. Chrome is undeniably faster than Firefox. Unfortunately for the
author of this article piece, the problem isn't putting a new frontend on
Gecko, the problem is that Gecko isn't fast enough.

I haven't been involved with the project in years other than following the
blogs of key developers, but I've always been under the impression that the
platform guys had the latitude to do whatever they wanted but making big
changes for unknown gains is undesirable. This is very different from the
Netscape controlled bureaucracy that led to the m/b fork.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
When people actually test these things I think they generally show that Chrome
isn't undeniably faster than Firefox.

Chrome wins on Javascript execution and Firefox currently has major startup
problems because of a large codebase and poor UI that continually interrupts
you and asks for restarts.

But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed
(more so with ad blockers installed).

They've clearly lost the faith of many vocal geeks, but I'm really not sure
how much of that is based on fact rather than some kind of herd instinct.

~~~
grayrest
> But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed
> (more so with ad blockers installed).

I'll agree on memory, and that's one of the reasons I continue to use Firefox
but memory is not speed. It's my impression that Chrome wins on JS execution
and DOM manipulation/reflow, which is really what I are about as a developer
and (generally) as a user. When you're on a low end machine, these make a big
difference. When you're on a machine like most developers have, it really
doesn't except in technology demos.

The Jaegermonkey and Layers work should help out, but I'm not sure that
Firefox will ever catch Chrome. It's a difference in development philosophy.
Webkit reverts ANY performance degradation while Mozilla reverts all
performance regressions except for new features. I prefer Mozilla's philosophy
since the places where this matters is generally a performance vs edge case
correctness tradeoff.

------
acg
This could be seen as a success of chrome, given Google's stated reasons for
releasing the code:

 _Primarily it's because one of the fundamental goals of the Chromium project
is to help drive the web forward. Open source projects like Firefox and WebKit
have led the way in defining the next generation of web technologies and
standards, and we felt the best way we could help was to follow suit, and be
as open as we could._

A bit of competition has prevented the market from stagnating again.

