Firefox’s recent update is the first phase of Project Quantum which brings various performance improvements to the browser. The new Quantum compositor is expected a speed up Firefox and also help prevent the graphics crashes on Windows. The Project Quantum is a next generation browser engine that is designed to take maximum advantage of the hardware and with today’s update Mozilla will be shipping the first part of this project called the “Quantum Compositor”
Firefox becomes faster; gets two new themes
In this update, Firefox has made the core part of the browser engine run in a parallel process, from that of the main Firefox process. The compositor further combines all the layers and determines what the users should see. The main difference here is that the Compositor runs on GPU instead of the CPU and as a result will end up handling the graphics parts quite flawlessly. Since the process is segregated from the main Firefox process even if the Compositor crashes it will not bring down the whole browser.
During testing, it was established that the Quantum Compositor reduced the browser crashes by nearly 10 percent and starting from now the Compositor will be enabled on about 70 percent of the Firefox browsers including the one on Windows 10,8 and 7. However, since the graphics composting is already stable on the MacOS, there is apparently no need for a separate process.
The update also brings two new themes for the Firefox Desktop. The Compact Light and the Compact Dark. While the Compact Light theme shrinks the browsers user interface without disturbing the browsers default light color scheme while the Compact Dark theme inverts the colors and brings it to a warmer side so that it will not strain your eyes just like the Night mode we see in new devices. Other improvements include the estimated reading times in Reader mode, the feature to send tabs between desktop and mobile Firefox.
