
Firefox 55: WebVR and more - jhatax
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/firefox-55-supports-webvr/
======
dmix
> Dietrich Ayala has a Firefox profile with 1,691 open tabs. With Firefox 54,
> starting up his instance of Firefox took 300 seconds and 2 GB of memory.
> Today, with Firefox 55, it takes just 15 seconds and 0.5 GB of memory. This
> improvement is primarily thanks to the tireless work of an external
> contributor, Kevin Jones, who virtually eliminated the fixed costs
> associated with restoring tabs.

This sounds more exciting to me than WebVR. Great work FF team.

~~~
rasz
Its not exciting at all, those are not "1,691 open tabs", those are 1,690
bookmarks/at very best suspended tabs.

Opera 12.xx could hold ~200 open/rendered/active/fully responsive tabs at
~2-3GB ram.

~~~
oblio
While Opera might have had some very impressive tricks (I should know, I used
it for years), the reason it could do that at the time is because those tabs
were not webapps or much fewer were webapps.

The browsers are a lot less bloated than people think they are. Sites on the
other hand... we've moved from 800x600 images to 1920x1080 images and
animations, tens of assets to hundreds, megabytes of Javascript, etc.

------
clumsysmurf
I'm using 55 and am really impressed. Startup times have improved.

A nice UI feature is in Settings -> General -> Performance.

I still notice, compared to Chrome, that if I use 1 content process, no matter
how many tabs I have open, or how many I have closed, the process just grows
and grows over time. In contrast, Chrome may use more memory but its size
dependably follows the number of tabs open / closed.

Even though FF is recommending 1 Content Process now as default on my low spec
machine, I have set it to 2 to increase the likelihood that one of those
processes has no tabs, and gets destroyed, along with whatever garbage
accumulates.

I think Mozilla could do more research on migrating tabs to processes to
minimize memory usage, and accumulated garbage from the runtime that doesn't
seem to be collected. Perhaps after a certain threshold (time, size) content
processes should be destroyed and tabs migrated to a new one.

~~~
ronjouch
The default number of content processes is already 4 in Nightly (57), they're
just rolling it progressively in case things break :)

~~~
482794793792894
No, the number of processes is already at its intended value for the near
future, as of Firefox 54. The default just varies for different hardware. If
you look in the Firefox settings under General -> Performance, then it says
there that it's optimized for your hardware, so I'm pretty sure that's the
case and not just marketing fluff.

What I'm not entirely sure of, is how it's decided how many processes it uses.
I think it's either largely dependent on the number of CPU cores or just
straight-up that value. And then the vast majority of people has a quad-core,
which is why it might seem like 4 is the default for everyone.

~~~
ronjouch
Thanks, you must be right about the _" optimized for your hardware"_, didn't
know about that feature.

That being said, it's not just about CPU cores, there _is_ some fixed number
of content processes, and it was increased during the last recent months; when
e10s was in infancy it was set to 1, then bumped a few times. Source:
developers blogposts, and
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Multiple_content_proce...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Multiple_content_processes#Release_Plan)
mentions Fx 55 is at 4 and expirements at
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Experiments#List_of_e1...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Experiments#List_of_e10s-multi_experiments)
mention 8

------
JosephLark
Great to see FF continue to progress. I moved back to FF from Chrome when I
ditched a Win7 install for Ubuntu after building a new computer. It hasn't
been without issue, but I'm enjoying FF and very happy to see it evolve.

If it continues through beta just fine, looks like media.block-autoplay-until-
in-foreground will finally ship [0]. This is something I've been tracking
through [1] since it was called out in the 54 release notes although it was
not actually released. I was always a bit surprised that this wasn't the
default behavior as it was in Chrome. Major use case for me: queuing up
several YouTube videos from either search results or directly through the list
of a users videos.

[2] "Firefox Fights Back: Inside Mozilla, CEO Chris Beard and his team are
preparing to outmaneuver Google’s Chrome browser" is linked from the submitted
article and looks like an interesting read. Only got a few comments on HN when
it was submitted 5 days ago.

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1387917](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1387917)

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308154](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308154)

[2] [https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/mozilla-firefox-
fights-...](https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/mozilla-firefox-fights-back-
against-google-chrome/)

------
ChrisSD
I'm very glad they've drastically reduced the resources taken up by restored
(but not activated) tabs. I tend to hoard tabs which I swear I'll organise
into bookmarks "soon" but never quite get round to it.

There's more info on this here: [https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-
hoarder/](https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/)

~~~
kakarot
It's a problem... I just ended up accepting who I am and gave up on bookmarks.
I have a single bookmarks bar for frequently-visited websites like email,
webcomics, aggregators, blogs, etc.

It's populated with just favicons, no labels. And then, spread between 4
virtual machines, I have Firefox instances that each contain on average 20-200
tabs at a time.

It takes me weeks to whittle these down only to have them drastically inflate
again. On the rare occasion a bug / data corruption leads to losing my tabs on
one of my machines, it's more relieving than anything else.

------
batmansmk
I'm really happy with Firefox these days. It is faster for my usage, except on
Facebook and Google products, which I barely use these days.

~~~
christophilus
I've been using it for the past 3 months as my primary browser. The mobile
experience is superior to Chrome, in my opinion. (Particularly, the reader
mode on mobile makes certain sites usable due to lack of JS, and proper font
sizes.)

~~~
hobarrera
The mobile version is generally okay, but it takes way way much more than
safari to start up, which absolutely sucks when you just when to quickly look
something up.

~~~
mintplant
You might be interested in Firefox Focus, which is purpose-built for the "I
just want to quickly look something up" usecase.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/focus/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/focus/)

~~~
hobarrera
I do, actually. But I really like to keep a history so I can later recall what
I looked up (or sometimes, the other way around: I need to look at my
history).

------
undoware
Still no Linux love for WebVR :(

Since I have no intention of switching to Windows after 20+ years on Linux,
I'm going to have to wait, as usual.

~~~
undoware
This wouldn't even be worth commenting on it's so normal, except that Mozilla
has a strong history of getting all their stuff working on all platforms
before letting a release drop, so as much as I love VR, Mozilla, and Linux,
I'm going to sit here and pout until I can do my thing on my tower. <3

~~~
mncharity
> Mozilla has a strong history of getting all their stuff working on all
> platforms

That mindset has been _starkly_ absent with WebVR. As in...

* "Mozilla Brings Virtual Reality to all Firefox Users" means "WebVR will ship on by default for all Windows users" [1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/01/mozilla-brings-virt...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/01/mozilla-brings-virtual-reality-to-all-firefox-users/)

* "Announcing WebVR on Mac via Firefox Nightly"[2] says "web developers can build and test content on their preferred platform, whether it’s Windows, MacOS, or Linux (also available!)", where "available" means "crashes within seconds"[3] for almost a year, with no fix in sight. [2] [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/announcing-webvr-on-mac/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/06/announcing-webvr-on-mac/) [3] [https://github.com/OSVR/OSVR-Docs/issues/83](https://github.com/OSVR/OSVR-Docs/issues/83)

* The alleged blocker, "direct mode", is needed to get acceptable performance on Windows... but not on linux. [4] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/6lepou/linux_gamers_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/6lepou/linux_gamers_anyone_with_steam_running_fine_with/djugskl/)

Once upon a time, Microsoft would create Windows-only web extensions, to the
detriment of the web. Nowadays, Mozilla does it for them.

A good rule of thumb for WebVR has been that there's always an unstated "on
Windows", and anything said about non-Windows platforms working, is at best
misleading. _Especially_ anything said by Mozilla - it's been very bizarre.

[https://webvr.rocks/](https://webvr.rocks/) doesn't even bother to have a
linux column.

~~~
TD-Linux
The issue without "Direct Mode" is latency, as your link says. You need to
bypass both the browser compositor and the system compositor. On Linux, most
compositors will implement something like Direct Mode (compositor bypass) when
you go fullscreen, but it's a bit hit and miss with multimonitor setups. It
might fly as a stopgap, though. Here's the tracking bug for WebVR on Linux, if
you want to follow progress:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1310655](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1310655)

Something more directly analogous to "Direct Mode" on Windows are DRM leases,
which give direct control over the scanout, rather than simply bypassing the
compositor. This isn't possible on Linux at all yet, but Valve is working on
it: [https://keithp.com/blogs/DRM-lease/](https://keithp.com/blogs/DRM-lease/)

~~~
mncharity
Here is the DocOk/Vrui post on latency, _A Trip Down the Graphics Pipeline_
(2014) [http://doc-ok.org/?p=1057](http://doc-ok.org/?p=1057) (from which the
reddit-linked graphs came).

Highlights include:

> Under a non-compositing window manager, regular double-buffering under
> OpenGL does not incur undue latency (and there is a window manager hint to
> tell a compositing manager to grant pass-through to a window).

> At least using the Nvidia graphics driver [...] OpenGL can vsync to any
> connected display, primary or secondary.

> OpenGL and X Windows allow applications to draw directly into a video
> controller’s frame buffer, allowing single-buffered rendering and racing the
> video controller’s scanout. [...] With front buffer rendering, display
> latency on the Rift DK2 dropped to about 4.3ms

And from _Zero-latency Rendering_ (2015) [http://doc-
ok.org/?p=1313](http://doc-ok.org/?p=1313)

> with some new rendering configuration options in Vrui 4.0 I can disable
> vsync, and render directly into the display window’s front buffer. In other
> words, I can let these applications “race the beam.”

------
adamnemecek
I've posted this some three years ago and it still blows my gourd
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag)

~~~
spartanatreyu
If only resolution wasn't an issue

~~~
andybak
Whilst more resolution would of course be nice, it's fairly low on my list of
important advances I desire in VR. I use VR almost daily and my top 3 list is
probably: 1. A wider FOV, 2. a lighter headset and 3. Wireless

In terms of encouraging broader adoption - cost and lower required specs for
the GPU is probably top.

------
cdevs
Grabbed Firefox 55 just for the grid tool in the inspector as I just got into
CSS grids and their awesomeness.

~~~
callahad
The out Firefox Nightly!
[https://nightly.mozilla.org/](https://nightly.mozilla.org/) \-- we've made
huge improvements to the Grid tool.

Details in Jen's video at [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/07/tour-the-latest-
features-o...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/07/tour-the-latest-features-of-
the-css-grid-inspector-july-2017/)

~~~
callahad
That was supposed to be "Try out." :( I blame Android.

------
m_st
It hurts to lose 'Self-Destructing Cookies'. What a great piece of software!

It was marked as being incompatible with FF 55+ and e10s. See
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-
destruct...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-
cookies/)

Does anyone know an alternative?

~~~
ronjouch
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-
autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)
, feature-equivalent except for localstorage cleaning, pending an addition to
a WebExtensions API: [https://github.com/mrdokenny/Cookie-
AutoDelete/issues/44](https://github.com/mrdokenny/Cookie-
AutoDelete/issues/44) /
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1388428](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1388428)

------
supernintendo
IntersectionObserver looks like a nice alternative to the janky event handlers
that many sites employ for style changes on scroll. Now we just have to wait
10 years for it to be implemented in Safari.

~~~
givehimagun
Use the polyfill from WICG -
[https://github.com/WICG/IntersectionObserver/tree/gh-
pages/p...](https://github.com/WICG/IntersectionObserver/tree/gh-
pages/polyfill#browser-support)

------
madmax108
Anecdote time: I've been a lifelong supporter on Firefox (and Mozilla at a
higher level), both as an end consumer, and philosophically: This is how to
build a company around human beings and respecting their rights and privacy.
Even had a Firefox download link on my blog footer for over half a decade
(back in the days of footer images)!

In the last few years, it was becoming harder and harder to support Firefox as
a browser simply because the cons had started to outweigh the pros: It became
slow, bulky, and hung multiple times, on a system with 16 Gig RAM nonetheless
. Even though I was the only Firefox guy in my team (So many teams I know
develop and test ONLY on chrome), I still stuck with it. But was beginning to
feel that I was supporting FFx, more out of philosophy than out of it being
good software (like RMS insisting on browsing the web by wget-ing pages).

I'm glad to note the last 2-3 releases for firefox have been EPIC! So many
improvements for power users (I have 120+ tabs open right now and it's all
buttery smooth), and focussing on what FIrefox does best: Be an awesome
browser! Next time someone tells me how Chrome is hogging their system memory,
I'll (once again) be proud to point them to the Firefox download page.

Ffx dev team, You guys are awesome! :D

------
psandersen
Good to see firefox progressing, I've started using it again ever since the
multi process work in 54 and been relatively happy with it.

Only thing really missing for someone that always has about 50 tabs open is
de-prioritising background tabs. I don't have music playing in the browser and
just want it to use no more than 10% CPU on tabs I'm not actively browsing.
There should be options to prioritize responsiveness over everything. Sick of
cpu fans spinning up and browser taking time to respond to tab switches.

------
mrspeaker
Has anyone got this working with the Oculus Rift DK2 on a Mac? When Mozilla
first released their WebVR offering (I thought it was WebVR.com, now it seems
to be gone) the WebVR build of Firefox supported it fine - but it doesn't
appear to detect it now.

~~~
dmarcos
Oculus dropped Mac support a long time ago to focus on Windows so Firefox
cannot interface with their hardware anymore. Besides, the DK2 is no longer
officially supported by Oculus so it won't probably work on Windows either (I
have not tried myself)

------
bigbugbag
So firefox is again using the marketing and PR machine to pretend it is
relevant and not heading towards its demise due to ignoring their users and
not delivering.

It's crazy to see them continue to believe that firefox is great and
continually improving and that losing users is due to something outside of
their reach when they're piling up decisions accelerating firefox towards
irrelevance.

We don't want WebVR on windows only, we want freedom of choice instead of
being forced to submit to whatever mozilla unilaterally decide, we want the
features that were provided by extensions that firefox decided to kill, we
want an adblocker (content-blocker), we want an option to protect our privacy
by killing trackers, we want a way for us users to reach developers and have
our voice heard, and so on. we don't want more marketing and bs.

~~~
ohthehugemanate
WebVR is on Windows only because the valve components it relies on are in Beta
on OSX and Linux. They (correctly) won't ship someone else's beta as their
"stable". So you'll have to use beta or nightly for it.

As for the other stuff... I've been using Firefox beta as my daily driver for
a year and a half, because it's WAY FASTER than chrome, has better bookmarks
handling, better built in tracker killing. The speed is only getting better as
more parts of Quantum make it to beta. It sucks that it has to be so slow, but
they are rebuilding an airplane while in the air with a few million
passengers.

Seems like the rest of your post is just upset about the move to
Webextensions. Massive API rewrites are awful. But they also bring big
benefits. It is better for them to make this shift while Firefox still has
some market share, so there is pressure on developers to rewrite.

All told, FF is pretty aggressively moving ahead of the pack in terms of speed
and standards compliance. They already are ahead of the pack on privacy. It's
not inappropriate to have marketing that pushes that excitement.

~~~
haagch
Pretty sure SteamVR has been available out of beta for a while but I can't
check because scrolling down on
[http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=250820](http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=250820)
doesn't actually load old news items...

Firefox's OpenVR support on Linux is enabled in nightly, but it doesn't
actually work.

