WebProNews

Tag: SPDY

  • Firefox 15 Brings Speed Improvements To Desktop And Mobile

    Firefox 15 may be the most important release of Mozilla’s browser to date. For what seems like forever now, Firefox has had issues with memory. Certain add-ons, when installed, would eat up massive chunks of memory and slow Firefox down to a crawl. There was no solution unless each app was fixed separately. The latest Firefox release includes a new universal solution.

    Firefox 15 has exited its beta phase and is ready for everybody to install right now. The big update in the latest version is that applies a universal solution that will fix all of the memory problems caused by add-ons. I’ve been using the beta for the past few weeks and I can confirm that memory usage is at its all time low for me.

    In other major updates, Firefox 15 finally features silent, background updates. From now on, Firefox will be more like Chrome by installing updates without asking you to close the browser. The browser also features support for the SPDY protocol v3 for even faster Web browsing.

    Firefox 15 is also fantastic for HTML5 gaming as it features a number of WebGL enhancements, including texture compression. We’ve already covered the gaming additions to Firefox earlier today, but just know that it’s quite impressive.

    Like with every new desktop release, Firefox on Android also received a major update today. The team at Mozilla will be focusing on making their Android app even better for the rest of this year so expect the latest version to be a preview of what’s to come.

    First up is a redesigned Firefox for tablets. It’s the same design that Firefox unleashed upon Android phones a few months ago. I’ve been using the redesign on my Android phone and it really does make a world of difference.

    Firefox 15 Brings Speed Improvements To Desktop, Mobile

    Beyond the tablet redesign, the new version of Firefox for Android features almost all the features that are in the desktop version. That includes an enhanced search in the Awesomebar, tabs that can be swiped to close and a host of HTML5 features that bring the mobile browser up to modern standards. In fact, Firefox 15 for Android is finally able to pass RIng 0 on Ringmark with flying colors. It also passes 136 tests in Ring 1 while only failing 26.

    Finally, Firefox for Android supports SPDY protocol v3 for fasting browsing. I haven’t been able to test Firefox on my 30 Mbps downstream Wi-Fi at home yet, but it does seem faster on my 3G connection at the moment. That could be due to reduced latency or interference on AT&T’s end, but I’m willing to bet that Firefox 15 for Android is faster than previous incarnations.

    As of now, Firefox 15 is looking to be the version that might get people back. Mozilla has fixed a lot of speed and memory problems that people were having with the browser a few years ago. The addition of WebGL and HTML5 APIs that are still missing from Chrome’s stable channel is a definite plus as well. If you’re feeling up to it, you can try out Firefox 15 for yourself right here.

  • Google Analyzes SPDY Speeds On Mobile Networks

    If you’ve been following Internet trends lately, then you should be aware of Google’s SPDY protocol. It’s a replacement for HTTP that can speed up the load times for Web pages. It’s been used extensively in browsers with Chrome first adopting it and Firefox turning it on by default with the release of Firefox 13. If you have used SPDY, you know it to be great, but can it help improve mobile browsing speeds?

    Google has set out to find out the answer to this very question. Through the use of Chrome for Android, they used a Samsung Galaxy Nexus to test the speeds that the mobile Chrome browser returned with SPDY compared to traditional HTTP on the same device. The test was applied to 3G and 4G connections since Wi-Fi, depending on its origin, can return faster speeds than mobile connections.

    You would expect SPDY to perform marginally better, but the results were actually pretty surprising and terrific. SPDY load times saw a mean improvement of 23 percent across the 77 Web sites they used in the test. Google did the math and found that this was a 1.3x improvement over HTTP.

    For the visually minded among us, Google released a graph that charts the speed of SPDY and HTTP across the Web sites they tested on. You can see quite the improvement which Google says was sometimes 50 percent faster than HTTP.

    Google SPDY Speeds Mobile

    If you want to see more details of the test Google conducted alongside the methodology they used to reach their results, check out the team’s research page. As you will see, the faster speeds applied to Web sites everywhere from BBC.co.uk to Reddit to quickmeme. Google certainly picked out some sites that would normally load slowly for any connection.

  • Firefox 13 Beta Adds Some Long-Awaited Updates

    We covered the recently released beta for Opera 12 last week and it was awesome. So many new upgrades and updates made it feel like an entirely new beast. Mozilla thought it time to give us a taste of Firefox 13 as well with the recently released beta adding some exciting new features for the Firefox faithful.

    The first big change is what Mozilla has done to tabs. The new tab page has slots available for nine pages that will list your nine most frequently visited sites. It’s a nice feature that’s been a long time coming considering Chrome and Opera have had the same feature for a long time now. The new tab page isn’t the only new feature for tabs though as Mozilla is introducing “tabs on demand.” It’s a feature that brings up all of your previously opened tabs in the same slotted tab page if Firefox ever crashes. That way you don’t have to deal with Firefox trying to open all of your tabs at once. You can now pick and choose which tabs you want to open.

    The other new addition is the new and improved home page. It’s not really new in terms of anything major, but it does add quick links to all the important Firefox features on the default home page. So now you can access your downloads, bookmarks, history, add-ons, sync and settings all from the default home page. While I don’t mind going up into the menus, I’m sure some people will find this to be convenient.

    As pointed out by Wired, Firefox has integrated SPDY into Firefox for the past few versions now. It’s not been set to be on by default though until this version. SPDY is a protocol that should make your Web browsing faster. There are already other advanced tweaks available to make browsing super fast in Firefox, but turning on SPDY by default should improve loading times for the average user.

    The biggest batch of updates for Firefox 13 are in the developer tools though. For those that love playing around with Firefox, you’re going to love these updates. The first update sees 72 changes coming to Page Inspector, HTML panel, Style Inspector, Scratchpad and Style Editor. Another big feature is the addition of ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects support. It’s currently experimental so be careful.

    For the full list of updates and descriptions, check out the release notes for the beta. I highly recommend trying it out. I’ve been using it for a while and it seems pretty stable. It may not be the big reason to come back to Firefox, but it’s the kind of thing you’ll want if you’ve never left.

  • Microsoft Proposes A Better Web With HTTP 2.0

    If you ask people who have broadband Internet right now, they will probably say it’s pretty fast. The Web could be faster though and the answer lies in HTTP 2.0. The Internet Engineering Task Force is holding meetings on HTTP 2.0 this week and Microsoft has offered a proposal to help move things along.

    In a post on the interoperability @ Microsoft blog, Jean Paoli lays out the company’s proposal to the IETF and their reasoning behind pushing the Web to HTTP 2.0. The proposal is called “HTTP Speed+Mobility” and it covers how moving to HTTP 2.0 is a good move for users on traditional browsers and mobile apps.

    Before you go running for the hills over changes to HTTP, worry not. The IETF and Microsoft are both working towards a solution that would keep all current Web content compatible with any new version while preserving the “existing semantics of HTTP.”

    How is Microsoft going to go about improving HTTP? They’re going to start with speed and why not, speed is one of the most important things when it comes to the Web. Improvements wouldn’t just make web browsing faster though as it would also make apps faster.

    On that point, improving HTTP would be much better for apps as they are the primary driver of Internet content on mobile devices. It would make this better as HTTP 2.0 would decrease the amount of power consumption used in network access. This would increase the battery life of mobile devices. It’s a win-win scenario.

    Updates to HTTP would also keep the user in control of what information they receive from the Web. It would better allow browsers and apps to see what the user is currently doing and the data it can collect locally. This would allow browsers and apps to deliver only the most relevant content to the user cutting down on needless information being funneled through.

    Backwards compatibility with current HTTP compliant services is the key to adopting HTTP 2.0 as quickly as possible according to Microsoft. The new HTTP needs to be built upon previous versions to ensure quick adoption across the Web.

    Microsoft and Google have both submitted their own proposals to the IETF over HTTP changes. Google’s proposal, called the SPDY protocol, is very similar in that it aims to make the Web faster. Microsoft says the key difference between their own proposal and Google’s is that their proposal takes mobile devices and applications into consideration.

    Discussions with the IETF are just beginning. There has not been a major update to HTTP since 1999 with the release of HTTP 1.1. It’s long overdue for a new version, but it’s going to take time to hammer out all the details as we move the Web towards these new standards.

    Microsoft will provide previews of what HTTP 2.0 can do at their HTML5 Labs Web site. Check it out for other experimental prototypes that are making the future of the Web possible.

  • Firefox 11 Gets SPDY

    Firefox 11 Gets SPDY

    It was just last week that Google was talking about SPDY gaining adoption.

    Google announced SPDY in 2009 as a protocol for transporting content over the web. SPDY, Google explained, was designed for minimizing latency through features like multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.

    This week, Mozilla launched Firefox 10, but it is Firefox 11 that will be the first version of the popular browser to implement SPDY.

    Google’s Matt Cutts is pleased.

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Really nice to see Firefox adding SPDY support: http://t.co/JM0L0TQi More about SPDY: http://t.co/BnPUtVaJ 11 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    “The most important goal of SPDY is to transport web content using fewer TCP connections,” explains Patrick McManus on the hacks.mozilla.org blog. “It does this by multiplexing large numbers of transactions onto one TLS connection. This has much better latency properties than native HTTP/1. When using SPDY a web request practically never has to wait in the browser due to connection limits being exhausted (e.g. the limit of 6 parallel HTTP/1 connections to the same host name). The request is simply multiplexed onto an existing connection.”

    “Generally speaking, web pages on high latency connections with high numbers of embedded objects will see the biggest benefit from SPDY,” he says. “That’s great because its where the web should be going. High latency mobile is a bigger part of the Internet every day, and as the Internet spreads to parts of the world where it isn’t yet common you can count on the fact that the growth will be mobile driven. Designs with large numbers of objects are also proving to be a very popular paradigm. Facebook, G+, Twitter and any avatar driven forum are clear examples of this. Rather than relying on optimization hacks such as sprites and data urls that are hard to develop and harder to maintain we can let the transport protocol do its job better.”

    Mozilla has been a contributor to SPDY. Google said last week that they’re all working hard at finalizing and implementing draft-3 of SPDY early this year. Google also provided the following video:

    Best practices for SPDY can be found here.

    It actually looks like Firefox may be soon getting more Chrome-like in other ways as well – particularly with the home page and new tab page.

  • Google: SPDY Gaining Adoption

    In 2009, Google announced the SPDY application-layer protocol. You know, “Speedy”.

    As Google explained at the time, it’s for transporting content over the web, and is designed for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.”

    Today, Google is talking about how it’s making the web even speedier and safer. In a post on the Chromium Blog, Google software engineers Will Chan and Roberto Peon write:

    Chrome, Android Honeycomb devices, and Google’s servers have been speaking SPDY for some time, bringing important benefits to users. For example, thanks to SPDY, a significant percentage of Chrome users saw a decrease in search latency when we launched SSL-search. Given that Google search results are some of the most highly optimized pages on the internet, this was a surprising and welcome result.

    We’ve also seen widespread community uptake and participation. Recently, Firefox has added SPDY support, which means that soon half of the browsers in use will support SPDY. On the server front, nginx has announced plans to implement SPDY, and we’re actively working on a full featuredmod-spdy for Apache. In addition, Strangeloop, Amazon, and Cotendo have all announced that they’ve been using SPDY.

    Mozilla (which Google considers a partner, not a competitor, remember) is a contributor to SPDY, and Google says they’re all working hard at finalizing and implementing draft-3 of SPDY early this year.

    Best practices for SPDY can be found here.