Wow, on my MacBook Pro Retina, Firefox is now faster than Chrome. It's noticeable during any graphics update, scrolling pages in particular.
I wonder if this is because Firefox has been optimized, or whether Chrome has simply stagnated. I suspect it's the latter; when I got the Retina MBP I immediately noticed that graphics performance was laggy compared to what I was used to on my previous (slower but non-Retina) MBP.
Firefox 25 has some big changes in the graphics area on OS X. It removed a layer of abstraction used for drawing content and switched to off-main-thread compositing. Either of these changes could have caused the speed up you're seeing.
I am also pretty disappointed with Chrome these days. I switched to Safari because it's just way smoother/faster for me.
It's annoying because the sluggishness is still evident on Android.
Unfortunately, even after any graphics (WebGL) related improvements, on my Windows machine Firefox still lacks in graphics performance when compared to Chrome. If I open the new Google maps, it is very slow when compared to Google Chrome. Wonder what is the reason for such huge difference in panning/zooming performance. What is Firefox lacking here? Anyone knows more about it?
The other day I noticed that Google Hangouts just doesn't work in my Firefox anymore, helpfully suggesting I switch to Chrome. The cynical person would suspect that Google's dedication to a level playing field is starting to weaken, and that they're just not going to worry about making popular Google tools work well except for Chrome.
Using Firefox 24, I just went to hangouts.google.com and clicked the "Available for your computer" button. "Hangouts won't work in your current browser. You'll need to download Chrome before installing Hangouts."
And a week or so ago somebody invited to a call was told he couldn't join in the version of Firefox he was using, which I'm pretty sure was up to date.
I avoid using it in Firefox; on Linux, it was performing terribly in FF but fine in Chrome.
I've noticed this too on my first gen retina macbook pro. I switched back to firefox from chrome this summer and it's been a notably better experience.
I wonder if this is because Firefox has been optimized, or whether Chrome has simply stagnated. I suspect it's the latter; when I got the Retina MBP I immediately noticed that graphics performance was laggy compared to what I was used to on my previous (slower but non-Retina) MBP.