Mozilla announces Firefox Quantum, a Firefox all new and faster than Chrome
Mozilla has announced the beta version of Firefox Quantum, a name used to refer to version 57 of the browser. The name change is due to the amount of news contained in the version, which will be different from previous ones on all fronts.
Firefox Quantum is the name chosen by Mozilla to indicate version 57 of the browser. The new name is used to indicate a crucial step in the evolution of Firefox, which will be completely renewed with version 57 and will adopt news that will allow it to achieve much higher performance than now.
At the base of Firefox Quantum, we find a rendering engine written in Rust, specifically designed to work on multiple cores and with more than one thread. The main advantage of this rewriting lies in speed: the new engine is much faster than the previous one, according to tests conducted by Mozilla and published in an article on his blog.
Firefox Quantum seems to be twice as fast than Firefox 52, the current long-running version, using the Speedometer 2.0 benchmark. The foundation has published a video showing Firefox Quantum compared to Chrome, with the Google browser coming out of it.
Mozilla says that Firefox Quantum manages to be faster than Chrome while consuming 30% less memory.
Firefox Quantum will also receive an update of the interface, called Photon and designed to be used on devices equipped with mouse and keyboard and touch-sensitive screens. Unlike previous versions, the interface should adapt dynamically to the screen on which it is used and to the type of input.
A beta of Firefox Quantum is already available and can be downloaded from the Mozilla site.
