From the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, Mozilla Firefox experienced its golden age. However, with the unstoppable rise of Google Chrome and the introduction of Edge, Firefox dropped to the position of the fourth or even fifth most-used browser. Now, Firefox is planning a major comeback. The browser claims it is now 75 times faster with its recent updates.

How Did Mozilla Firefox Become Faster?

Mozilla continues to improve the performance of the Firefox browser, this time focusing on WebAssembly runtime. According to recent updates, some processing tasks in Firefox have become more than 75% faster. WebAssembly code, which is commonly used in advanced web applications and games, is now compiled more quickly in the browser.

WebAssembly is a technology used for more complex video, audio, and 3D graphics processing instead of JavaScript. It’s frequently chosen for the web versions of tools like Adobe Photoshop, SketchUp, Google Earth, and games developed with Unity. However, Firefox used to face performance issues when compiling WebAssembly code, negatively impacting application response and initial load times.

Thanks to these improvements, applications using WebAssembly, such as Adobe Photoshop and Google Earth, now load faster in Firefox. For example, a large WebAssembly module in Photoshop’s online version, which previously took four minutes to compile, now takes just 14 seconds. Additionally, the JetStream 2 web test now completes in 0.2 seconds.

Of course, claiming to be “75 times” faster is a bold statement… To see whether Mozilla’s claims hold up, you can try out the latest version of the browser yourself.