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Why are browsers so slow?

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Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#261

Post by philbo »

com2kid wrote: post #188
jholman wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400 tabs. Including several active fancy SPAs, like gMail and two copies of Slack, a gDocs or two, sometimes the godawful work LMS. Stock Firefox 50 (32bit), untweaked with no relevant add-ons (well, except AdBlock Plus), Windows 10, just over 400 tabs open, under 10% CPU, under 2GB of RAM (on a 16GB machine). If I freak it out by doing a bunch of flipping through dormant tabs, I can spike CPU pretty good as it does…

> Stock Firefox 50 (32bit), untweaked with no relevant add-ons (well, except AdBlock Plus), Same setup, but my Firefox leaks memory like a sieve. It will crash 2x a day easily. That said, I also have LastPass installed, I am using uBlock instead of ABP (though uBlock uses less memory anyway), and I also have RES installed. I have seen websites leak incredible amounts of memory. To some extent I don't even know how mu…

> That said, I also have LastPass installed...

That's your problem, right there.

I've been told that the main version of LastPass currently available from addons.mozilla.org has known problems that cause the browser to lock up and hang indefinitely.

Instead, if you click through to list all releases and select the latest 4.x version, those problems should all be fixed:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-pass...

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#262

Post by rangibaby »

jholman wrote: post #161
owaislone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

400 tabs. Including several active fancy SPAs, like gMail and two copies of Slack, a gDocs or two, sometimes the godawful work LMS. Stock Firefox 50 (32bit), untweaked with no relevant add-ons (well, except AdBlock Plus), Windows 10, just over 400 tabs open, under 10% CPU, under 2GB of RAM (on a 16GB machine). If I freak it out by doing a bunch of flipping through dormant tabs, I can spike CPU pretty good as it does…

People use Chrome because Google (Alphabet?) advertises it heavily including a nag screen on google.com. Also Firefox goes through noticeable cycles of being awesome and being a buggy slow mess.

Chrome came out when Firefox was in a noticeable slump. Remember that in ?2008 being better than IE was the yardstick browsers were measured by and Firefox had passed that many years earlier, so I think they had lost their way a little bit. I remember Firefox 4 was noticeably bad on OSX and it took a long time to fix.

PS I use a browser salad daily (Safari and two channels of Firefox so I can have two instances open at once, and Chrome for Facebook / flash / testing).

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#263

Post by j_s »

rorygreen wrote: post #259

I'm very surprised to see that nobody has mentioned OneTab.[1] With my use of Chrome, it performs fine with hundreds of tabs open until I attempt to reopen them after a restart, at which point I'll be waiting for about 5 minutes until I can do anything. Firefox seems better for this as it only loads tabs when I actively select them IIRC. Regardless of performance, with that many tabs open I just find browsers unpleas…

Somewhat similarly, "The Great Suspender" for Chrome and similar extensions unload unused tabs after a configurable timeout, requiring a click to reload them.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#264

Post by TeMPOraL »

reitanqild wrote: post #139
owaislone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> and yes, Linux often feels like magic land.

Yes, the browsers (Chrome, Firefox) work noticeably worse than on Windows for me. Also they tend to freeze the computer completely at some point (after taking all the available RAM for themselves).

Browser performance seems to be pretty much as random as printers these days.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#265

Post by Tomis02 »

Browsers are slow because objective metrics of quality (e.g. performance, usability) are irrelevant to the common user, despite what individuals may claim. People are very susceptible to branding and growing trends, and it's a hard pill to swallow.

Back in the day when I was writing on the forums "guys, forget Firefox and use Opera, it's fast it's usable you have everything you might want in a browser with undeniable proof", the reply would eventually be "yes but Firefox has _this_ webdev extension and I can't do without it". So Firefox would get installed in their families' and friends' PCs, because that's what the web developer used. Also, the "safer faster better" marketing campaign, although that slogan would have been much more appropriate to Opera than Firefox. Fast forward a few years. Google Chrome comes out and everyone stops caring about those damn extensions; suddenly performance becomes a huge decision factor (nevermind Chrome was a resource hog compared to Opera, nevermind the horrible lack of features, nevermind the bad usability). I could go on, but you get the drift.

There's no incentive for large market share browsers to significantly improve because the (mediocrity+marketing=success) recipe is proven to work, over and over. What would it take for Chrome to lose market share? A new hot hip popular company with lots of money thrown in advertising, like (extremely unlikely example) Tesla, with a new cute interface. Because people like new and shiny trinkets.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#266

Post by dom0 »

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.

Marvellous. By the time I get to maybe 70-90 open tabs Firefox will consume 4-6 GB RAM and constantly hog a CPU core.

Some pages with JS cause the usual instant entire-browser lock-up.

And I admit I miss the days when Opera 10 was still an up to date browser. I don't think I ever had a (subjectively) faster browser.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#267

Post by badminton1 »

laumars wrote: post #257
badminton1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Leave it there and come back when i got more time" = Bookmarks :) If it is a dynamic website, most of them have sessions that expire.

> "Leave it there and come back when i got more time" = Bookmarks :) Let me reiterate the first part of that sentence you've quoted: "I doubt many people set out to work that way, it's more a symptom of the "I'll leave that there and come back to it when I get more time" mindset." > If it is a dynamic website, most of them have sessions that expire. That depends entirely on how long the session cookies are set for, w…

Some of the websites you mentioned keep you logged in. So bookmarks work fine.

I don't understand what is so upsetting about mentioning a feature designed for that use case.

Then, not all HN readers are tech-savvy, being enthusiastic about technology is not the same as being tech-savvy.

Then, if you don't like having your point refuted, don't engage into a conversation by refuting others' point of view in the first place.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#268

Post by dimaka »

timonovici wrote: post #197
com2kid wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stock Firefox 50 (32bit), untweaked with no relevant add-ons (well, except AdBlock Plus), Same setup, but my Firefox leaks memory like a sieve. It will crash 2x a day easily. That said, I also have LastPass installed, I am using uBlock instead of ABP (though uBlock uses less memory anyway), and I also have RES installed. I have seen websites leak incredible amounts of memory. To some extent I don't even know how mu…

My worst problems were with Toptal's website. I even tweeted them about it, but it still leaked memory like crazy. Maybe they fixed it already, but I wouldn't know - they didn't have articles that interest me in a while. Anyway. I have Firefox with uBlock, on Archlinux. With JS disabled. 400MB, about a hundred tabs. I do recommend using it that way. I also have Chromium, for things that require JS - youtube, facebook…

Thanks for reporting! We'll check it.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#269

Post by kahnpro »

jholman wrote: post #161
owaislone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

400 tabs. Including several active fancy SPAs, like gMail and two copies of Slack, a gDocs or two, sometimes the godawful work LMS. Stock Firefox 50 (32bit), untweaked with no relevant add-ons (well, except AdBlock Plus), Windows 10, just over 400 tabs open, under 10% CPU, under 2GB of RAM (on a 16GB machine). If I freak it out by doing a bunch of flipping through dormant tabs, I can spike CPU pretty good as it does…

I don't know what Firefox you're using but I always find it very slow and sluggish compared to Chrome.

Especially Google maps and YouTube. I always have to switch over to Chrome to use these sites because they always bring FF to its knees. I wonder if this is deliberate on the part of Google.

Re: Why are browsers so slow?

#270

Post by dom0 »

dirkg wrote: post #111

Chrome is the culprit. For as much as they helped with V8 innovations, they've also done harm - ignores usability basics: horrible UI with > 10 tabs, reloads all tabs, many other issues - all of these are things people have complained about forever, they refuse to fix - memory hog: Chrome uses more memory than almost any other browser - Google forces Chrome upon you since Hangouts etc will not work with other browser…

> Firefox is better at every single thing and has a far better extension model, which sadly they will deprecate again to copy Chrome.

What's great about an extension model where every single extension is root in your browser?

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