Performance Articles
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Mozilla developer preview (Gecko 1.9.3a2) now available
We’ve posted a new release of our Mozilla developer preview series as a way to test new features that we’re putting into the Mozilla platform. These features may or may not make it into a future Firefox release, either for desktops or for mobile phones. But that’s why we do these releases – to get […]
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Firefox OS, Animations & the Dark Cubic-Bezier of the Soul
I’ve been using Firefox OS daily for a couple of years now (wow, time flies!). While performance has steadily improved with efforts like Project Silk, I’ve often noticed delays in the user interface. I assumed the delays were because the hardware was well below the “flagship” hardware I’ve become accustomed to with Android and iOS devices. Last […]
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Optimizing your JavaScript game for Firefox OS
When developing on a quad core processor with 16 gigabytes of RAM you can easily forget to consider how it will perform on a mobile device. This article will detail some best practices and things to consider for moving a game to Firefox OS or any similar hardware target. Making the best of 256 Mb […]
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An easier way of using polyfills
Polyfills are a fantastic way to enable the use of modern code even while supporting legacy browsers, but currently using polyfills is too hard, so at the FT we’ve built a new service to make it easier. We’d like to invite you to use it, and help us improve it. More pictures, they said. So […]
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No Single Benchmark for the Web
Google released a new JavaScript benchmark a few days ago called Octane. New benchmarks are always welcome, as they push browsers to new levels of performance in new areas. I was particularly pleased to see the inclusion of pdf.js, which unlike most benchmarks is real-world code, as well as the GB Emulator which is a […]
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Animating like you just don’t care with Element.animate
In Firefox 48 we’re shipping the <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Element/animate" target="_blank"><b>Element.animate()</b></a> API — a new way to programmatically animate DOM elements using JavaScript. Let’s pause for a second — “big deal”, you might say, or “what’s all the fuss about?” After all, there are already plenty of animation libraries to choose from. In this post I want […]
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How fast are web workers?
The next version of Firefox OS, the mobile operating system, will unleash the power of devices by taking full advantage of their multi-core processors. Classically, JavaScript has been executed on a single thread, but web workers offer a way to execute code in parallel. Doing so frees the browser of anything that may get in […]
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Mozilla developer preview (Gecko 1.9.3a1) available for download
Editor’s note: Today, Mozilla released a preview of the Gecko 1.9.3 platform for developers and testers. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement reposted below. A Mozilla Developer Preview of improvements in the Gecko layout engine is now available for download. This is a pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.3 platform, which forms the core […]
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Warp: Improved JS performance in Firefox 83
With Warp (also called WarpBuilder) we’re making big changes to our JIT (just-in-time) compilers, resulting in improved responsiveness, faster page loads and better memory usage. The new architecture is also more maintainable and unlocks additional SpiderMonkey improvements. This post explains how Warp works and how it made SpiderMonkey faster.
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Intersection Observer comes to Firefox
What do infinite scrolling, lazy loading, and online advertisements all have in common? They need to know about—and react to—the visibility of elements on a page! Unfortunately, knowing whether or not an element is visible has traditionally been difficult on the Web. Most solutions listen for scroll and resize events, then use DOM APIs like […]