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Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

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Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#281

Post by martindale »

k3n wrote: post #150
kintamanimatt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. We've seen too much complacency in recent years when it comes to memory usage. Developers think it's ok for their applications to bloat out and have a huge memory footprint. I'd rather applications were developed in such a way that they were more memory efficient. I've had a recent incident in which Chrome was consuming about 7GB of memory, just because I had about a hundred tabs open! It was rea…

There's no way you could effectively work with 100 tabs open, and that is surely a smell for inefficiency. For any given task, 5 tabs is probably reaching the upper limit on what's actually _required_, with around 10 being the upper limit. Granted, you could have multiple tasks ongoing in parallel, but are you really working in parallel at that point? If not, save the tabs and return to them later. I really doubt you…

I regularly maintain over 250 tabs, and use multiple workspaces to manage a very specific and highly efficient workflow. It works incredibly well for me.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#282

Post by andybak »

roc wrote: post #160
andybak wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. 1. I bookmark lots of sites but rarely go back to them (mainly because it's hard to find what I'm looking for) 2. Sometimes I spend ages looking through my history to find something I remember seeing but didn't bookmark 3. I leave dozens of tabs open because I think I'm going to refer back to them but 50% of the time never do. The order and which window they were grouped with is info I need for context. So I wa…

Tracking history would bound right into the 'creepy' range of data collection IMO. But if you were fine with that, it's not hard to imagine such a solution tracking how much time you spent on a given page and using that to make an educated guess that you 'meant' to bookmark it. Or at least weight search results accordingly. Though the logistics of cloud-storing every single page every user visits would quickly become…

It's only creepy if it's retained or used against my wishes. In a fantasy world of free data storage, the ability to have a complete history of my life and an ability to search it instantly is incredibly useful. And yes - incredibly dangerous but I'd like the option.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#283

Post by DennisP »

joshmlewis wrote: post #139
DennisP wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very few cases where I actually want tabs running in the background, and I'd be happy to add those cases to a whitelist in exchange for Chrome not eating my computer. But as long as no browser does that, OP's option looks like a huge timesaver for me.

But you're a power user, most users wouldn't want the hassle of adding sites to a whitelist.

Depends on the interface. An item in the wrench menu saying "run page in background" would be easy enough for anyone.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#284

Post by unionpivo »

hnriot wrote: post #275
kintamanimatt wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't argue the position for this workflow better than I already have. I refute the idea that I'm "doing it all wrong". No, I'm not and this was the only efficient way to get what I needed to do done. My laptop's motherboard can't handle more than 8GB, so I don't even have the option of putting more RAM in it as it already has 8GB. Also, I shouldn't have to keep throwing in memory to handle applications whose coder…

It wasn't the only efficient way to get what you were doing done. It's ridiculous to say that a hundred tabs is a reasonable use case. The very fact that you ran out of memory tells you that. If you really need 100 concurrent tabs (which you don't) then you need a different computer for your research. However, you're using the browser incorrectly. Why not save the text you want to a document, or out it into a spreads…

I also regularly have over 100 tabs open and I find your suggestion that my workflow is wrong is insulting.

Maybe you don't need to have 100 tabs open. Maybe you lack imagination to see scenario where having that many tabs open.

It is also possible that you are aware of some great/better way to solve similar scenarios than me, but I guess you are keeping it a secret, since I regularly evaluate new plugins and extensions, and also search google for tips and tricks, how to do it better. (And to date haven't found a way)

Sure I could work with less tabs. Hell Everything could be done with only 1 tab in 1 window (and I used to in the 90s), but it's not as efficient as what I do now.

Edit: major spelling errors.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#287

Post by DharmaPolice »

jdietrich wrote: post #79

Memory use seems like a really pointless thing for users to care about. There's a widespread intuition that using RAM is inherently bad and low memory usage is a worthwhile goal, but it doesn't really make sense. The key performance goal is minimising latency, which is best served by using as much RAM as possible without having to swap out. RAM is now fantastically cheap. 16GB of DDR3 costs less than $120 in either D…

The price of RAM is not the only (or main) barrier to getting more memory. My previous work desktop had 2GB of RAM. Getting it upgraded (from 1GB) took three months (after the upgrade had been approved by the budget holder).

I was fortunate to get a new work PC recently which has 4GB of RAM. Getting it upgraded (even if I bought the memory myself) would likely take another three months of requests and I suspect would be limited to a maximum of 8GB anyway.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#288

Post by hnriot »

unionpivo wrote: post #284
hnriot wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the only efficient way to get what you were doing done. It's ridiculous to say that a hundred tabs is a reasonable use case. The very fact that you ran out of memory tells you that. If you really need 100 concurrent tabs (which you don't) then you need a different computer for your research. However, you're using the browser incorrectly. Why not save the text you want to a document, or out it into a spreads…

I also regularly have over 100 tabs open and I find your suggestion that my workflow is wrong is insulting. Maybe you don't need to have 100 tabs open. Maybe you lack imagination to see scenario where having that many tabs open. It is also possible that you are aware of some great/better way to solve similar scenarios than me, but I guess you are keeping it a secret, since I regularly evaluate new plugins and extensi…

"Maybe you lack imagination" - maybe you lack computer skills, it certainly seems so. There are plenty of ways you could avoid having 100 tabs open. However, if you feel like that's something you need then stop whining and buy a machine with enough RAM for your usual use case.

the ideal number of tabs roughly corresponds to the human stack size, plus a couple for on-going apps like gmail. If you need more than that, you should consider a better mechanism than the browser. Since you haven't found any, I posit that its you who lacks imagination. If you found my comment insulting then I am sorry.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#289

Post by theoutlander »

jdietrich wrote: post #79

Memory use seems like a really pointless thing for users to care about. There's a widespread intuition that using RAM is inherently bad and low memory usage is a worthwhile goal, but it doesn't really make sense. The key performance goal is minimising latency, which is best served by using as much RAM as possible without having to swap out. RAM is now fantastically cheap. 16GB of DDR3 costs less than $120 in either D…

I agree with you that everything should be in memory, but I wouldn't call saving memory pointless. The cost of RAM isn't the issue here... we all know RAM is cheap! However, the problem in my case is that my laptop caps at 16GB. I'm also using a RAM drive and no page file (for obvious reasons) and all temp/cache files are also in memory. I'm working on an app that does some heavy lifting on the browser. At times I have tons of reference material open, examples for third-partty controls, sites with flash or controls leaking memory, etc. Memory usage in Chrome was ~8GB.

I could certainly benefit from reduced memory usage while still being able to go back to all those tabs. My overall system usage was 15 GB and with any more stuff I risk losing everything (since I'm not using a page-file).

This might be a very specific use-case, but I do see a lot of value in the extension. (Now, only if I could further hack my machine to use 32 GB :>)

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#290

Post by theoutlander »

Interesting extension. I think you need to address a couple of things:

1. Try to maintain state for all the content in the controls. For instance, if I'm on JSONlint.com with some complex JSON in there, I'd like for that to be there when I re-open the tab. So, simply storing historic reference and reloading the pages doesn't add so much value for my use-case.

2. Can you do the same with other extensions? I have a ton of things running and it would be nice to disable all on-demand via one-click. My memory consumption was still over a GB with all the running extensions.

Thanks & Good luck!!

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