Firefox 58 has arrived with WebAssembly updates
While Mozilla yet to announce the release of Firefox 58 in the form of a blog post, the official installation files are available for download (Spotted by Softpedia) from company’s download servers. You can visit this link and choose the appropriate version and platform if you can’t wait to check out the new Firefox 58 features.
A big change in this open source web browser comes in the form of streaming compilation. It allows the browser to compile the code while it’s still being downloaded. The other change is a new 2-tiered compiler that compiles code 10-15 times faster.
As per Mozilla’s tests, on the desktop, the browser can compile 30-60 MB of WebAssembly code/second. It’s worth noting that this speed is faster than packet delivery speed. It ensures that the code is executed by the web browser as soon as it gets downloaded.
Earlier, the main constraint in web performance was the network; today, this bottleneck is the CPU and main thread. In Firefox 58, the burden is taken off the main thread and CPU’s time gets used in the best possible manner.
“With WebAssembly, there’s less work to start with. Decoding WebAssembly is much simpler and faster than parsing JavaScript. And this decoding and the compilation can be split across multiple threads,” Mozilla explains.
Which is your favorite web browser and what are the reasons behind this choice? Let us know in the comments below. Also, don’t forget to check out our latest list of best web browsers for 2018.
