First Look: Firefox Tablet UI

[Guest]

Mozilla is preparing yet another version of Firefox - a derivate of Firefox Mobile that will be offered for Android tablets.

First Look: Firefox Tablet UI : Read more

 

[JOSHSKORN]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Who cares....I stopped using FF after the 10th time it crashed in an hour due to flash. Slam IE all you want, at least it can browse the internet without crashing. There's no need to design a web browser specifically for tablets..lol[/citation]
Use Windows 7 64-bit with "Nightly". There's a prebuild version of Flash for it. Yes it'll update itself "nightly", hence the name. Problem solved. Quit your whining.

 

[darasen]

Flash crashed so you stopped using FF. Sure, that makes sense. Flash is crap and the sooner it dies the better.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

fanny-comb

 

[Guest]

I really don't understand the whole tablet craze. Why does the masses need a portable handheld computer that's in a 10inch form factor when we have them in 4inch form factors with our cell phones.

Where do the tablets fit in? When you can't use your 24inch+ monitor or 15inch+ laptop because you need superior portability, but you can't get by with the 4inch smartphone? When the hell is that.

 

[annymmo]

That's strange.

Why would mozilla pour a lot of time and resources into developing an gui that has the same properties as a normal desktop.
Someone is not getting what form factors are if you ask me.

 

[razor512]

why not bring the firefox 4 or the 3.7 UI to the tablet, the screens are big enough, and space is saved using a compact UI with less empty space, and item bars can be shared for example, allowing you to fit everything from the firefox 3.7 UI into just 2 rows at the top and 1 row at the bottom, all without hiding anything in a menu. With a theme such a s classic compact, you can reduce the size of the UI be around 40% more, allowing maximum space for web browsing.

 

[czarak]

Using F11 in the desktop FF v5 makes the top menu vanish. Moving the cursor to the top makes a reduced menu appear. ctrl+shift+B brings the bookmark. Why a new tablet version?

 

[razor512]

what mozilla should put more time into is making firefox multithreaded.

they always boast about things such as 20% performance boost in things like java script, why not make it multithreaded and brag about a 600-800% performance boost across the board. then after that, add CUDA acceleration for as many functions as possible, then further brag about a 40000 - 80000% performance boost

 

[eddieroolz]

They should take a cue or two from the several iPad browsers out on the market. Some, like Sleipnir or Terra, have really good interfaces that Mozilla can learn a thing or two from.

 

[Silmarunya]

[citation][nom]razor512[/nom]what mozilla should put more time into is making firefox multithreaded.they always boast about things such as 20% performance boost in things like java script, why not make it multithreaded and brag about a 600-800% performance boost across the board. then after that, add CUDA acceleration for as many functions as possible, then further brag about a 40000 - 80000% performance boost[/citation]

Sounds nice in theory. But please, get real.

Multithreading a single, small request (the one that browsers handle most of the time) usually slows the entire process down rather than speeding up for the same reason dividing a small job between a lot of people slows things down: so much time is wasted on communication, scheduling and so on that keeping it single threaded would have been faster.

CUDA acceleration (or other forms of GPU offloading) are a nice idea, but you won't see such dramatic improvements in anything other than a synthetic benchmark that is completely predictable. Still, a lot of GPU offloading is being done in the form of hardware acceleration. That's about as good as it gets.

Trust me, if multithreading was half as efficient as you make it sound, all browsers would have it by now.

 

[razor512]

while it may not be as clean cut as i made it out to be, it will help. for example, from my benchmarks, maya 3d literally gets a 100% if you set the CPU affinity to 1 core then change it to 2 cores.

Compared to older multicore systems, multithreading has become a lot more efficient where theres almost no overhead (at least in terms off what can be detected in most benchmarks)

with people, multithreading is bad for small tasks because the stereotypical view of human multithreading is government

where you send in a form, 1 peoson reviews part of it, then sends it off to another worker where it sits on their desk until they are finished eating lunch and socializing, then it is skimmed over, mistakes are made and it is passed on to a commitie where it is reviewed and denied because there were mistakes, then you are called in to correct the mistake that the worker made, then resubmit the form for the entire process to happen again in the hopes that the worker will not make a mistake this time, when in reality all that needs to be done is for a worker to give the ok to forward another document to another government office where in which the college you are attending has access to, so that you may get financial aid.

anyway, with a CPU, small tasks can be multithreaded with little to no overhead.

Keep in mind that a GPU is already massively multithreaded, and a simple task such as running a really old game and it gets like 10,000 FPS when vertical sync is disabled

 

[fir_ser]

I’m interested to see how this will work out with Mozilla.

 

[WyomingKnott]

[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]I really don't understand the whole tablet craze. Why does the masses need a portable handheld computer that's in a 10inch form factor when we have them in 4inch form factors with our cell phones. Where do the tablets fit in? When you can't use your 24inch+ monitor or 15inch+ laptop because you need superior portability, but you can't get by with the 4inch smartphone? When the hell is that.[/citation]
Well, I read a lot on-line at home. It would be nice to be able to sit with my wife and daughter, instead of retreating to my man-cave where the PC is. And my eyes aren't good enough to read off a 4-inch screen, and since I read in portrait mode I can't conveniently use a netbook. For me, a tablet is essentially a Nook with wi-fi that will untether me from my desk.