Notes from #WebSummit: Reinventing the web browser for modern computers
The new Firefox Quantum is blazing fast and poised to lure you away from Chrome.
Details
Date: November 9, 2017
Time: 15:30
Conference stream: FullSTK
Speakers
Mark Mayo, SVP Firefox, Mozilla
Web Summit Summary
Mozilla’s brand new release, Firefox Quantum, is powered by a completely modernised, revitalised engine and showcases the future of browsing technology. In an exclusive look under the hood, Mark Mayo explores with us the right balance between performance and memory use for multi-tab browsing, and an API that democratises the add-ons ecosystem.
The Key Quote
“Think of yourself as building a suit the user puts on to go do amazing, wonderful things out in the wide world of the internet.”
- Mark Mayo, SVP Firefox, Mozilla
Key Points
- “Google built a better browser than us and kicked our ass with it. So it’s our turn to build a better browser.” In other words—when you lose, it’s not forever. Learn from your competitors, find out what people want out of your product, and come out swinging.
- Browsers have to have a bunch of cool, flashy features and keep up with the latest in web trends, but they also need to keep you safe. It’s important to balance the cutting-edge features with the cutting-edge security so that you’re a viable product.
- “Holy shit, it’s fast.” Firefox Quantum achieves the perfect balance between memory usage and speed. Regular people don’t all use very expensive, very fast laptops, and it’s important to remember that they are the core users of the product, so the new Firefox ensures that they’re seeing the speed benefits just as much as a developer would.
- Instead of replacing the entire jet engine while the plane is at altitude—replace a part of it to make the whole engine better. Firefox Quantum incorporates a brand new CSS rendering engine, Stylo, built in Rust. Quantum parallelizes work across CPU cores and with Stylo can now parallelize CSS layout.
- Firefox Quantum is in beta now!
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