Minefield Shows the (Really) Fast Future of Firefox

zootropole writes "If you are using Firefox 3 (or even Chrome) you should consider taking a look at Mozilla's Minefield. This browser (alpha version yet, but stable) would give a new meaning to 'fast browsing experience.' Some Firefox extensions aren't supported, but riding the fastest javascript engine on the planet definitely worth a try. Minefield's install won't affect your Firefox, so there's no risk trying it. It's fast. Really. And I'm loving it." Reviews popping up around the web are overwhelmingly positive, calling the upcoming browser crazy fast, blisteringly fast, etc.

This is a step up

[ganjadude]

From the first release of minefield I messed with a few months back. That thing was god awful on the speed side of things. however my speed tests show minimal improvements Is it ready?? No Will it be great??? Oh yeah

Competition and economics

[apathy maybe]

Competition is great isn't it?

I'm not a capitalist (or even a real supporter of "markets"), but actually when it comes down to it, in situations such as these, competition is good.

And what's amazing, and completely against capitalism, none of these web browser makers are charging any money for their products! All this great software is being developed and given away for free!

That's gotta be evidence that capitalism isn't the be all and end all...

------

On the topic of the actual browser under discussion, how many people are actually going to try it out? I guess because it won't fuck up your current FireFox install a few people will. And considering that I use Epiphany sometimes, maybe I could swap it out for this?

What features is it missing for those who have tried it? What can't you do? Is it better then Epiphany UI-wise?

Re:Suggesting nightlies to regular users?!

[richy freeway]

I dunno. I use the nightlies at work and the stable at home, it's very rare that anything is really broken in the nightlies and it crashes about as much as the stable version.

I don't use any extensions though.

Is it really fast enough to make a difference?

[LWATCDR]

I just wonder how often the speed of javascript matters vs the network connection.
I tried to Chrome but never really noticed much difference.

Re:Suggesting nightlies to regular users?!

[Potor]

i've been using minefield at home for a few days now - it does crash once and a while, enough to be noticeable. but it is fast. man is it fast.

Hyperbole

[Morris Thorpe]

Sorry to nitpick but is anyone else turned-off by the hyperbole in these write-ups?

ARS estimates the browser to be 10 percent faster. I mean, if it was three times faster than my current browser, then I'd say blistering is appropriate.
I mean, if you were driving on the freeway at 60 mph and someone passed you doing 66...would you say they were traveling "at breakneck" speed?

However.. it gobbles up more memory than Bon Echo

[Qwrk]

I've been running Bon Echo [Community Edition Release for Win64] for quite some time now, but some weeks ago it changed into the Minefield build. With 8GB RAM installed I did notice it's gobbling up more memory than Bon Echo did, but that's just a minor issue. It looks like the money spent on RAM hasn't paid off, as most applications I've got running on x64 are 32 bit, so no real gain to be expected. [It'll be my last WinOS, before I move to a Kubuntu/FreeBSD ONLY network.]

Re:Please! No more direct links to Mozilla FTP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that restriction got lifted about two years ago, after bugzilla survived being on the digg frontpage without breaking a sweat. Things at Mozilla have been beefed up quite heavily since the days when that ban was originally instituted.

Re:faster than Chrome

[BrokenHalo]

Well, it's certainly faster than Chrome for OS X or Linux, since neither of these are available yet at all. Chrome fades more into irrelevance the longer they delay releasing versions for non-Windows platforms. This is not because the browser particularly sucks, it is because unlike Firefox, it has missed the boat for endorsement by the geek community.

I've said this before, but it bears saying again: Google is not short of resources, so their ignoring other platforms only suggests deliberate policy. In other words, they might as well take their browser and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

Re:But Chrome wasn't the fastest!

[Cthefuture]

I'm interested in using Javascript as an embedded language, it's too bad most of the current JS engines assume they will be running in a browser. Yes, you can build standalone TraceMonkey and SquirrelFish shells but it isn't very easy on all platforms (no Visual Studio project, etc) and they aren't very easy to embed.

For general application development outside of a browser I have found V8 to be faster than the others. It's also a lot easier to build standalone or embedded in other applications. It's also very easy to add extensions to (written in C++), especially compared to the other choice.

I'm keeping my eye out but right now V8 fits my needs the best. If the other projects would do a little work towards focusing on general application development in their respective JS engine then I might switch. Switching will be a pain in the butt though because my C/C++ extensions will have to be ported to each engine. I kind of wish there was less diversity because right now it's hard to tell which engine is going to take off (eg. Google could abandon V8 for one of the other engines like SquirrelFish since they are using WebKit anyway).

Unfortunately all of them, including V8, are pretty large compared to cleaner scripting languages like Lua which makes embedding them in mobile applications kind of annoying (although we're getting more and more space on these things).

SVG too

[Cthefuture]

One thing I'm most impressed with is the SVG performance. It's starting to almost become an alternative to Flash for interactive applications. I like it and I hope it gets even faster.

Re:Suggesting nightlies to regular users?!

[ljgshkg]

Friend, nightlies is working build. It's sometmies very very stable. But sometimes, especially during some massive checkin period, it can be extremely unstable and may even be dangerous.

I definitely won't recommand it to you. I remember there was an incidence in Firefox(bird?)'s history when some guy's C:\Progra~1 is deleted while installing an early testing build (can't remember if it's mindfield, but it's early testing build for sure).

Personally, I usually start using new version of Firefox during Beta 1 for small version jumps like 0.1; and for those 1.0 version jump, I usually start using it after at least beta 3 (which, in my experience, is not stable enough for my taste neither). But then, it's just personal preference.

Re:This is a step up

[nickheart]

Going back to chrome. Minefield is not faster than chrome. Oh, and yeah it does interfere with Firefox. It gets completely confused if you try to launch it while a firefox.exe process is running. Also, since when should an Alpha version have the default setting of "set minefield to the default browser"???

Re:Competition and economics

[Bloodoflethe]

To build on that point, in case not everyone understands the implications of this post, those that promote equal market access tend to be either a) the one with an idealist in charge or b) the one that believes that they really are the best on the market.

The fun starts when you actually have both of the above, because they don't shut down the market access for others once they get a majority of the market share. That generally means greater openness and creativity which creates new jobs and more focused disciplines.

This holds true in every market, by the way. Market regulation tries to do this artificially, but rarely works as well as it should. The alternative can be much worse or much better, though usually the former is the case.

Re:No thanks

[onefriedrice]

Yeah, I used to like and use NoScript. Then I realized that in order to make many websites usable at all, you have to enable Javascript anyway. I think NoScript is still fine for people who don't care how broken the web is (if a site doesn't work, just find another one right?), but I've found that for me, the potential of NoScript to increase security is limited, and it's just not worth the hastle.

Plus, it was really annoying when they recently started releasing a new minor version every other day or so. Amongst all the computers I use at work, school, home, whatever, it seemed like I was upgrading NoScript constantly. AdBlock Plus is all I really need nowadays, and BugMeNot is useful sometimes.

and yet it still has the same bug...

[pjr.cc]

ok, this is going to be a rant, so hold on to your seats. But having dealt with this bug for so long has gotten me near the edge when it comes to mozilla

---rant begin---

It still has the same linux bug people have been complaining about for I have no idea how long and effects quite a number of users...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/125970 [launchpad.net] - and this wasnt the first time it was logged either. Check out the last link in that bug report and feel the pain if the bug affects you...

Then again, I keep making the assumption mozilla give a flying .... about linux, which means im the one in the wrong, right? Its really the only piece of the linux puzzle i've yet to be able to find an adequate answer to and I've tried them all. The sad part is that mozilla is the best answer in most situations (though between IEs4linux and opera theres a possible answer there).

yes i've tried ever fix ever mentioned for it... So far the only real method that "works" is to use something like the adblock plugin to kill off the performance destroying aspects of a website.

----rant end----

ok, im done... apologies in advance and so forth.

Re:Suggesting nightlies to regular users?!

[freddy_dreddy]

You should take into account that this is standard software development. Pareto analysis reflects this: after a package has matured you're spending more time on less results - most notably bugs. As feature-richness increases new bugs get in and become difficult to get rid of as the implementation becomes complexer - the software starts to accumulate problems and maintenance becomes a hurdle. Every few years you simply start again, normally with a new approach to implement the functionality. This normally happens after your software distribution got a beating when feature X revealed to open a backdoor or started annoying happy users.

These software cycles are common practise. They also keep the marketing folks happy as it allows them to come up with new buzzwords for "cutting edge" or "radically new" ways of developing.

Stick to what WorksForMe.

Re:SVG too

[BZ]

You do realize that Google maps uses SVG for some of its stuff, right? In IE they just use VRML or something like that that IE has support for instead...

Other webapps use SVG in UAs that support it and just deliver a degraded user experience in IE.

Re:SVG too

[oever]

Here are two pages with some fancy animated SVG.

page transitions [kdedevelopers.org]

spiral clock [kde.org]

and a very heavy javascript test [kde.org] (try it in IE hehehe)