Warp Settings

[rsssxd]

New warp speed setting coming to Fenix. Fenix is really good with this setting. I expect Icerevan to get the new fenix tuning.

[rsssxd]

https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.platform/c/1PHhxBxSehQ?pli=1

[abhijitvalluri]

What does it do?

[rsssxd]

Fenix loads much faster like chromium

You can download and test the latest firefox developer version

[rsssxd]

Is there an update?😃

[rsssxd]

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/itib6s/dogfooding_warp_on_nightly_new_js_jit_engine/

[ghost]

I actually was not a fan of Fennec. If the ability to view link text in long press menu gets implemented #152 and if this gets enabled I will not think twice about switching to IceRaven on android.

[rsssxd]

@interfect Is it possible to update today for warp feature? Please 😥

[abhijitvalluri]

Please have some patience @reyis4402, we are doing this as a side project after our day job. So we may not be able to update the fork with the latest commits from Mozilla regularly or quickly. I will try now.

[rsssxd]

@abhijitvalluri thank 😇😃😀

[interfect]

I suspect there isn't a good way to get this until it moves out of Nightly and into release Firefox.

We've been shipping the release version of the actual browser engine (Gecko, the C++ part shared with desktop), while it looks like this is part of the Nightly version of Gecko. To get this now, I think we'd have to swap over to the Nightly version of the engine.

It's not hard, but it would probably make things less stable, so I'd prefer not to do it unless we really have to. @reyis4402 is Iceraven too slow for you for some particular application or task? Or do you just want it to be faster because faster is better?

I suppose we could ship the Nightly engine, but not tracking the release builds of the app wrapper has been causing us trouble with Mozilla introducing bugs that we then pick up, so we're wanting to stick more closely to their releases on the app side. I suppose we could flip completely around to shipping the Nightly engine in a stable, release-flavored app wrapper, if we wanted to, but I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Or maybe @abhijitvalluri will come up with something.

[rsssxd]

@interfect Icerevan is really fast but plugins slow down firefox. I thought this feature would work for me.

In addition, in new versions, the plug-in tray has become smaller and more stylish, it will be nice to use it.

[rsssxd]

The browser should be on f-droid to support users.

[rsssxd]

https://cloud.bubu1.eu/s/btFt2a8XRn38YnE F-Droid released test apk for new fennec.

[abhijitvalluri]

@interfect oh, I did not realize that this will require nightly gecko engine. I assumed it will work with latest master of mozilla. I am not sure if we want to use nightlies. But I thought they simply "enabled it by default" in nightly. That is, users can still enable it in our version by doing some about:config editting I guess? @reyis4402 can you use this in current version via about:config edits?

[Namit-Nayan]

can you use this in current version via about:config edits?

It needs GecoView v82 atleast. (Like it's present in GV: 82.0a1-20200919212721) The beta version of fenix should have it now I think.

[interfect]

The browser should be on f-droid to support users.

Yep. That's in #26 already.

@abhijitvalluri I'm really just guessing it's only in Nightly GechoView. Maybe it is available in other versions behind an about:config flag. If so, we would maybe just need to update android-components and cut a release and then people could use it via flag.

[rsssxd]

@interfect @abhijitvalluri ıcerevan old version

[rsssxd]

Unfortunately

[rsssxd]

Firefox Nightly Old Version

[rsssxd]

Removed but no updates to browser?

[rsssxd]

😥

[rsssxd]

@interfect Update ? Maybe Today? 🙃😜

[abhijitvalluri]

I am creating a release today. @interfect I am going to enable release automation today and test it out with the next release of iceraven. So, give me a few hours. @reyis4402 this will definitely not enable warp settings as we are still not using nightly Gecko engine. Sorry!

[rsssxd]

Won't Icerevan be updated to the latest build of Fenix? @abhijitvalluri

[rsssxd]

Last update does not install @interfect @abhijitvalluri

[rsssxd]

Arm64 corrupt

[abhijitvalluri]

Thanks for pointing out the issue. I will try to investigate and fix it. Deleted the bad release in the meantime.

[rsssxd]

Please update to the latest fenix

[interfect]

@reyis4402 It's not a matter of updating to the "latest" code from Fenix, or even the latest browser engine. There are multiple "latest" browser engines simultaneously. Specifically, there are three flavors: "nightly", "beta", and "release". Each has a current, most recent, latest version. Which flavor any build of the browser actually uses is controlled here:

https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser/blob/648aaa00a243b4364510bc1e097156562703d4ba/app/build.gradle#L360-L366

We're already using the latest "release" version in our "forkRelease" builds (the ones we publish), with all the latest patches and security updates (as of whenever we last pulled in changes from Mozilla). But new testing features like "warp" are only put into the "nightly" and "beta" flavors first, until they've been tested enough that one can be sure they don't cause new problems.

We could change the flavor we use to "nightly" or "beta", but that might break some web sites.

We could also run you off a "forkDebug" build just for you, which should have our Iceraven features but use the "nightly" flavor of the browser engine, if you really want to test the two together. You could do it too. All you have to do is follow the instructions here, but say ./gradlew assembleForkDebug instead of ./gradlew assembleForkRelease, and look in app/build/outputs/apk/forkDebug/ for the resulting APKs.

[interfect]

@reyis4402 Here's an arm64 APK debug build for you. It ought to have the "warp" feature for testing, but it doesn't have all the release icons and stuff, and it may have other bugs.

[rsssxd]

It crashes, also I have a lot of settings in the inside, I can't leave them

[rsssxd]

Please provide a second version with warp setting for icerevann browser

[rsssxd]

@interfect @abhijitvalluri Warp setting is already false and it is activated if the user wishes.

It's a pity that you don't put icerevaann in the browser

[interfect]

OK @reyis4402, here's a release-mode build of 1.1.0 with the nightly version of the engine swapped in, for arm64, under the io.github.forrkmaintainers.iceraven app ID, with the right signing key. I've installed it and verified that it has the "warp" setting, and it doesn't immediately crash for me. I can't guarantee that it's stable, because it isn't (it's using the nightly version of the browser engine), but you should be able to use it.

Please report back on whether it's any more broken than the real 1.1.0 release; if not I suppose we could consider changing to the nightly version of the engine for everyone, or making multiple flavors of builds for the releases. Ideally it would be a runtime setting, but I think the hacking required to swap out the whole browser engine at runtime might be too much.

[CharmCityCrab]

For what it's worth, I strongly favor sticking with the stable version of the rendering engine. I use Iceraven as my default Android browser, and stability is much more important to me than a mild speed increase.

Warp will reach Iceraven shortly after Firefox stable gets it. It's not like we'll never see it. Let them test it and shake out a few of the bugs first. We'll get it when it's ready.

The Iceraven developers were very kind in creating reyis his own personal build so he could use this feature. However, what he quickly seemed to find out is that it crashed a lot because it isn't ready, which to me confirms the decision making process in not widely implementing it yet.

If it were just a matter of a simple about:config switch, I'd say sure, put it in defaulted to off, and the very few people who are interested in using something that might give them a 5% speed boost at the price of constant browser crashes could go ahead and enable it on their personal builds. However, it doesn't sound like that's something that can be done- we'd have to go to a less stable build of the rendering engine to get that in there, and it is very much not worth it, and would put the entire browser on a very different track that would have lasting effects in terms of how the browser would work long-term just to shoehorn this one thing in a little bit sooner than it otherwise would naturally reach us through stable.

Iceraven is not Firefox's unbranded testing branch. It's it's own browser, and the releases are the stable releases for Iceraven. To really gain marketshare, Iceraven needs to be reliable.

In the long-run, I would actually even favor using upstream stable as the base for everything except for key features we need from beta and nightly (If they work correctly most of the time), and of course Iceraven specific code and features. I am not sure that's the right move to make right now, because upstream hasn't gotten enough features down to the non-rendering related elements of their stable branch to really make it anything close to a feature complete browser to the standards of a lot of Iceraven's user base. But, eventually, it'd make sense to transition to stable as the core for everything, as long as we don't drop user options and features in the process- when "eventually" is time wise would be something I would trust the developers to figure out. In the meantime, though, I wouldn't destablize the main thing that is already ported from stable.

I don't see stability in the rendering engine as going against the core "options" oriented mission of Iceraven either. Invisible small performance boosts like Warp provides when it doesn't crash the browser are not really UI options or privacy protecting options, which tends to be what the average end user thinks of as options.