Browser intensive websites sluggish on Firefox 28

[shenfrey]

Hey guys, I have a late 2009 iMac with 12GBs of ram, running OSX Mavericks and I am having a problem with firefox. HTML5 (I assume its HTML5) based websites are running quite sluggish, for example www.gamespot.com is every so choppy when I scroll, compared to Safari where its buttery smooth. I have disabled hardware acceleration and smooth mouse scrolling to see if this fixes the problem and it has had no effect what so ever.

I am a new firefox adopter, I find it to be the browser that works best for my needs but unfortunately this problem is really making it quite irritating to use. Does anyone have any idea on what the problem could be?

Thanks guys.

 

[OLDCODGER]

Your linked site is choppy on Omniweb, also - if that's any help.

Although I cannot recall the sites, I am finding that more sites are getting quite unviewable - unless cookies and javascript are enabled.

Needless to say, I don't revisit.

 

[MLinneer]

Of the 3, FF ranks last

In my comparisons on various benchmarks, Firefox has always ranked behind Safari and Chrome. The HTML5 Aquarium test is the most brutal. Safari runs it best at 60fps, Chrome at 60fps but the fans switch to high (205f!), and FF at a piddly 13fps. This is on a 2012 MBA, 4Gb, and Mavericks. You might try FF Beta 29... it runs faster (30fps), scores higher on HTML5Test (475 vs 442), and for me anyway, is less RAM hungry.

 

[shenfrey]

In my comparisons on various benchmarks, Firefox has always ranked behind Safari and Chrome. The HTML5 Aquarium test is the most brutal. Safari runs it best at 60fps, Chrome at 60fps but the fans switch to high (205f!), and FF at a piddly 13fps. This is on a 2012 MBA, 4Gb, and Mavericks. You might try FF Beta 29... it runs faster (30fps), scores higher on HTML5Test (475 vs 442), and for me anyway, is less RAM hungry.

I have switched back to Safari now. It is a shame because I really enjoy the personalisation of Firefox, I feel like it's much more extensive then both Safari and Chrome. I just hope that one day Firefox can match their performance, because right now it is shocking how far behind Firefox is.

 

[MLinneer]

I agree shenfrey. Firefox is more expandable than Chrome and definitely Safari. I like the new Australis UI but I've always had a problem with Firefox not being a true Mac app. It's a Windows port and doesn't support OS X Services. I can understand Mozilla's aim to make the browser unified across platforms but I think it leaves too many killer Mac features out by not being more system integrated. Same thing with Chrome... it becoming more ChromeOS with each update.

Safari is much more integrated into OS X and therefore takes advantage of available resources like App Nap and Memory Manager. My MBA runs 20-25 degrees cooler on CPU intensive sites under Safari. Some pages initially load slower than Chrome but Safari consistently matches Chrome in performance once the page is loaded, and even surpasses Chrome with video streaming throughput.

Each browser has its pros and cons. I still use Safari as my default because of it's system integration and iCloud sync between my iMac, MBA, iPad, and iPhone 4.