I love the Fennec browser though it could clearly use less memory, be more stable and launch more quickly. ;) It can actually render my Google Reader page which MicroB cannot ... I find it super responsive and hope we see it packaged in a future release. What I understood from the original Ars piece on the topic was that they are pretty close relatives, but that Fennec benefits from a later code base which seems to really make quite the difference. For every day use though I am running MicroB as it is far more reliable at the moment. JG On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 6:31 AM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > ext John Holmblad wrote: >> All, >> >> for those who have not already seen the article whose url is: >> >> >> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080409-first-look-mozilla-fennec-targets-handheld-browser-market.html >> >> It provides a comparison of the performance of Microb versus Fennec on >> the N810. Fennec shows a ~6x speed improvement for javascript. > > Yes, the numbers of these automated tests are right. However, users > having used both browsers will probably agree that in terms of real user > experience as for today both are pretty similar, and even the Nokia > version is performing better in real use conditions. I'm talking about > my own experience and comments I've heard. > > What is your opinion? I'm sure both Nokia and Mozilla developers are > interested to know. > > Is someone lying? Not at all. It's just a matter of looking at the > details. The current MicroB engine was developed one year ago by Nokia > starting with a pre-alpha of the latest Gecko engine, the freshest code > available by then. The release under development done last Summer put a > Mozilla based browser at a level where nobody could before (including > the own Mozilla guys, who were happily surprised btw). Now Fennec is > shipping a most recent Gecko and of course putting both one by side you > get nowadays much better performance at engine level. How much MicroB's > open source code helped on that, I don't know but I guess it saved them > some work. > > But users don't deal with engines alone, you have the UI in between and > this is where the Mozilla browser in Chinook and Fennec differ most: the > first uses an own UI providing -as for today- much better performance > that XUL, a component that seems like needing more work before being > really fit in mobile devices. Are we going to keep this difference in > the future? Time we tell. Both teams have a lot of work to do anyway. > > But in fact the best part of this Mozilla browsers comparison is not the > numbers competition part but the human collaboration part. The Mozilla > and Nokia developers are collaborating and both projects are in sync. > The current development of the Mozilla browser for Diablo+1 is based > directly on the Gecko trunk and we are discussing ways of deepening the > collaboration, also at a community level. Imagine the wide community of > Firefox add-on developers targeting the maemo platform - that would be fun. > > We are even having some common exercises of exploration, both sides > learning a lot i.e. Qt support - > http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/05/06/well-isnt-that-qt/ > > Conclusion: We are as happy as you seeing the performance progress done > by the Fennec project. We feel honored by them targeting our platform in > the first place. Nokia is doing the right thing with the Mozilla > development. Lots of potential for collaboration and cool stuff. > > -- > Quim Gil > marketing manager, open source > maemo software @ Nokia > _______________________________________________ > maemo-users mailing list > maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx > https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users > -- Jonathan Greene +1.914.750.8740 AIM / iChat - atmasphere gtalk / jabber - jonathangreene@xxxxxxxxx Skype / Gizmo - JonathanGreene blogs - http://www.atmasphere.net/wp / http://www.maemoapps.com _______________________________________________ maemo-users mailing list maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users
