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Why are browsers so slow?

ilyabirman.net

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Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#131

Post by olejorgenb »

21echoes wrote: post #19

> But I remember the times when we had the amazing Opera browser. In Opera, I could have a hundred open tabs, and it didn’t care, it worked incredibly fast on the hardware of its era, useless today. You may ask: why would a sane person want a hundred open tabs, how would you even manage that? Well, Opera has had a great UI for that, which nobody has ever matched. Working with a hundred tabs in Opera was much easier b…

The http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_suspendtab.html.en extension also help keeping cpu and memory down when using lots of tabs. (of course when a tab become suspended the state is at least partially lost)

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#132

Post by olejorgenb »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #41

Something I've found very useful for Chrome is "The Great Suspender" extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende... It frees up lots of memory but still lets me keep lots of tabs around without having to be militant and killing them off as I stop using them.

Firefox also have extensions like that. I'm using http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_suspendtab.html.en / https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/

It's marked as experimental, but I haven't had any trouble so far.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#133

Post by olejorgenb »

kilroy123 wrote: post #87
21echoes wrote: post #19

> But I remember the times when we had the amazing Opera browser. In Opera, I could have a hundred open tabs, and it didn’t care, it worked incredibly fast on the hardware of its era, useless today. You may ask: why would a sane person want a hundred open tabs, how would you even manage that? Well, Opera has had a great UI for that, which nobody has ever matched. Working with a hundred tabs in Opera was much easier b…

While I don't have _that_ many tabs open. I do usually keep 20 - 50 open in chrome. Same experience, with low / no memory foot-print; using The Great Suspender. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende... I'm on a 2015 MBP with 16 GB of ram and like 20 extensions installed.

Similar firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#134

Post by olejorgenb »

21echoes wrote: post #51
chongli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how tabs have supplanted bookmarks for a lot of people. Neither one is a particularly good UI, mind you, but tabs are a little bit better than bookmarks. I wish something even better would come along but I don't really know what that would look like.

Firefox with Tab Groups and AwesomeBar fits very nicely with my workflow-- 1. I dont have to think. I Cmd+Click links as I find them interesting, switch tabs as my attention changes, etc. and the tabs just stay there, waiting. 2. AwesomeBar searches over open tabs by default, and selecting a suggestion switches to that open tab rather than opening a new one. 3. When I have time, I can sort my tabs into labelled group…

For the lazy: Awesomebar is just firefox's the built-in address bar. It can be configured to search simultaneous through history, tab (titles of open tabs), etc.

Or one can specify what to search with this micro language:

    Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history.
    Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks.
    Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged.
    Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs.
    Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed.
    Add # to search for matches in page titles.
    Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).
    Add $ to search for matches in suggestions.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#135

Post by reitanqild »

Senji wrote: post #124
syrrim wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that webpages are allowed to do what ever the hell they want, and so each is probably running a script or two in the background. We put up with a lot in webapps that would never stand in a desktop app.

Maybe tabs not currently being viewed should have their JS throttled? Is this an option in FF yet?

I use Suspend Tab.

Earlier this year I realized a major offender was Google search and search results pages which would spin up a core more than once a minute.

This explained to me at least why it was still hogging cpu even with ad blocker.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#136

Post by reitanqild »

olejorgenb wrote: post #133
kilroy123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't have _that_ many tabs open. I do usually keep 20 - 50 open in chrome. Same experience, with low / no memory foot-print; using The Great Suspender. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende... I'm on a 2015 MBP with 16 GB of ram and like 20 extensions installed.

Similar firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/

I also use it, thanks to a tip from HN :-)

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#137

Post by reitanqild »

syrrim wrote: post #93
chongli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how tabs have supplanted bookmarks for a lot of people. Neither one is a particularly good UI, mind you, but tabs are a little bit better than bookmarks. I wish something even better would come along but I don't really know what that would look like.

I use tabs, but have them organized into a vertical tree. This allows many more to be visible at a time. Since they are in a sidebar, you interface with them like bookmarks, but they don't spawn a new tab when clicked. Because they are organized into a tree structure, its easy to recall the purpose of each. For example, a search engine tab might lead to a stackoverflow tab which might lead to a few documentation tabs…

Same here. Recently changed from TreeStyleTabs to Tab Tree. The latter has fewer options but seems to work better and be more stable on my setup. (Firefox/Firefox Developer Edition, settings synced between all of them.)

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#138

Post by artificial »

minitech wrote: post #103
PeCaN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You're the first person I've heard that doesn't have that problem. My Firefox gets quite slow on both my home and work computers¹ at ~40+ tabs. The tab groups extension (which they removed from core, I guess to make room for Pocket and Hello²) does make managing lots of tabs much easier however. I regularly have to clean out my tabs or switching takes several seconds. I currently have 37 tabs open and Firefox…

> - Decentraleyes (locally emulates CDNs) has to intercept every request > - HTTPS Everywhere (why is this not the default behavior?) has to intercept every request > - OverbiteFF (support for the gopher protocol) might have to intercept every request, and why do you need this > - Random Agent Spoofer (change user agent at random) has to intercept every request > - uBlock Origin has to intercept every request > - uMa…

It's hardly stupidity. You're discovering different people have different priorities and that privacy is valued by some more than others.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#139

Post by reitanqild »

owaislone wrote: post #26
21echoes wrote: post #19

> But I remember the times when we had the amazing Opera browser. In Opera, I could have a hundred open tabs, and it didn’t care, it worked incredibly fast on the hardware of its era, useless today. You may ask: why would a sane person want a hundred open tabs, how would you even manage that? Well, Opera has had a great UI for that, which nobody has ever matched. Working with a hundred tabs in Opera was much easier b…

> This is exactly how I'm using Firefox, right now -- 273 tabs open. It's sitting at ~5% of CPU and 450MB of RAM. And switching tabs is instantaneous. Which platform are you on? Which Firefox version? Stock or tweaked? Any special add-ons? I use Firefox on OS X and it crawls after 10-15 tabs. Consumes many gigs of memory. Chrome isn't any better. It just splits the memory consumption among multiple processes. I don't…

Firefox Developer on KDE Neon (stock KDE 5 on Ubuntu LTS).

Tab Tree (instead of TreeStyleTabs) and Suspend Tab (instead of UnloadTab.)

Edit: and yes, Linux often feels like magic land. I happen to like Windows 10 better than most earlier Windowses but a good Linux is better for me as a developer on every point except support for MS Office and (niche) tools.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#140

Post by flukus »

Klathmon wrote: post #38
RandyRanderson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only add-ons I use are ones to remove ads. If I didn't have them those ads would easily make the my overall performance much, much worse. I have a custom blank page loaded from SSD that has only a small amount of html5/pure js and it takes maybe 1000ms on an intel i5/3xxx. If I open a new tab without any other windows/tabs open it's very fast, maybe 100ms. A new private tab (doesn't load add-ons or my custom new…

Actually some adblockers were found to increase CPU and memory usage significantly.

And some scripts eat cpu with adblock, I never looked into it but it's like they are trying over and over again to reach a host. Try opening 50 tumblr tabs with ad block on.
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