Mozilla announces Firefox Quantum browser with 2x faster speeds
Without any doubt, Google Chrome has been the market leader in browser arena for quite some time now. Considered as the preferred browser by many users, Google’s Chrome has managed to capture a major share in the market in spite of its obvious battery drainage and memory leak problems.
According to the latest data released by StatCounter, Chrome clinches the top position with a mighty 54.89% of the worldwide browser market share, followed by Apple’s Safari with 14.88%, UC Browser with 7.43%, Mozilla’s Firefox with 5.9%, Microsoft Edge with 3.69%, and the remaining belonging to others.
However, Mozilla has decided to dethrone Google’s Chrome by giving it a competition with its next major release. The company will call the latest version of its web browsing software as “Firefox Quantum” instead of “Firefox 57”, which will be available to all Firefox users beginning November 14.
The Firefox Quantum browser will be twice as fast as Mozilla Firefox based on the benchmarks like Speedometer 2.0, which measures browser’s performance across popular web pages. It will also consume 30% less RAM than Chrome, claims Mozilla.
“Our engineering team has been relentless in their focus on making Firefox incredibly fast,” Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen explains. “Firefox Quantum is such a big leap forward that you’ll feel it instantly, just browsing your favorite websites.”
Mozilla said that Quantum takes advantage of multiple CPU cores offered by today’s desktop and mobile devices. “Firefox has historically run mostly on just one CPU core, but Firefox Quantum takes advantage of multiple CPU cores in today’s desktop and mobile devices much more effectively,” added Nguyen. “This improved utilization of your computer’s hardware makes Firefox Quantum dramatically faster.”
Some examples of that improved utilization include a new “super fast” CSS engine written in Mozilla’s Rust programming language that gives priority to the currently-displayed tab and the fixing of 468 bugs by the Firefox team over the past several months. In addition, the browser features a completely overhauled Photon design through the company’s Photon project, which makes it looks measurably different.
“With the new design, Firefox leaps ahead with a new interface that reflects today’s reality of High DPI displays and users who are more task focused than they’ve ever been,” Nguyen writes. “Users will be impressed by the modern new design that puts their needs first. Photon doesn’t just look good, it’s also smarter. If you’re using Photon on a Windows PC with a touch display, the menus change size based on whether you click with a mouse or touch with a finger.”
Quantum also comes with more direct integration with read-it-later app Pocket, which Mozilla acquired last year.
“The new, minimalist design introduces square tabs, smooth animations, and a Library, which provides quick access to your saved stuff: bookmarks, Pocket, history, downloads, tabs, and screenshots. Firefox Quantum feels right at home with today’s mouse and touch-driven operating systems: Windows 10, macOS High Sierra, Android Oreo, and iOS 11.”
Mozilla encourages anyone to test the browser for themselves in order to make his or her own comparisons. However, the company has shot a short video that captures their observations when comparing Firefox Quantum and Chrome on various websites in terms of speed. It can be clearly seen (see video below) that Firefox Quantum is often perceivably faster.
For those who cannot wait for the official launch of the free version of Firefox Quantum on November 14 can download the beta of Firefox Quantum for Windows, or try it out on Android or iOS.
Source: Firefox
