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Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

blog.strml.net

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361–370 of 403 posts

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#361

Post by soheil »

Each tab should get a certain number of credits to use CPU cycles, like a ticking time bomb when it runs out it should detonate and self-close (or just stops updating.) Perhaps then the browser in the next request to the same URL sends a header notifying the server that its page ran out of credit in x amount of time so the author can optimize it.

Another idea is to look at other Chrome users activity pattern in regards to how often a given URL is kept hidden and revisited to determine how much throttling should be done to it, something like an AdBlock list.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#362

Post by callalex »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #340
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this seems to only be a thing in Firefox - it's awesome.

I remember looking for a similar Chrome extension, but I think Chrome doesn't provide the appropriate hooks, or something.

Interestingly, Mozilla is trying to move in the same direction by supporting the same extension APIs as Chrome because they are more maintainable/secure/universal/performant but continue to struggle with adoption because things like the Tree Style Tabs extension are not possible with that api https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#363

Post by cookiecaper »

overcast wrote: post #301
cookiecaper wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the quantity isn't just less than 100%, it's a small minority. Chrome and Firefox are among the most widely-used pieces of software in the world. I'm not saying they don't have weird bugs, but they don't crash daily for most users. While the OP may not be doing anything "wrong", he is almost definitely doing something unusual, or has deeper issues like malware or malfunctioning hardware. If the ratio were inv…

I would suspect a majority of the world does not keep dozens of tabs open, on an computer that never shuts down. You have to remember which forum you're on here. Any software issue, usually rears its head relatively quickly from one of our machines around here.

That's the use case I'm most familiar with. I've done this on many different machines for many years and not had anything like a crash once a day. I stand by my belief that your negative experiences are likely caused by a rare collision of variables and not representative of the typical experience among similar use cases. As I said in my post, it's totally legitimate that such an atypical experience may be caused by real bugs, but it's still an unfair generalization to say that Chrome and Firefox crash daily.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#364

Post by cookiecaper »

mikeash wrote: post #297
cookiecaper wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the quantity isn't just less than 100%, it's a small minority. Chrome and Firefox are among the most widely-used pieces of software in the world. I'm not saying they don't have weird bugs, but they don't crash daily for most users. While the OP may not be doing anything "wrong", he is almost definitely doing something unusual, or has deeper issues like malware or malfunctioning hardware. If the ratio were inv…

Bugs which only affect a small minority of users don't exist, nor do unusual but perfectly legitimate usage patterns?

You probably want to re-read my post, as I said neither of these things.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#365

Post by dredmorbius »

nialv7 wrote: post #218

This is of course a really good thing, but I feel this is not enough. The browser has increasingly become universal platform. On the one hand, this means applications written for browsers are automatically cross platform. But this also makes the browsers more and more complicated. Even the simplest webpage takes a significant hit in resource usage. Maybe we need some sort of "reduced web". A browser that only support…

FYWD: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/ubkidr7yuc7azg9hdnl7lq

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#367

Post by ErikBjare »

minitech wrote: post #322
artursapek wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look out for this not being supported and make sure your stuff still works. Eg, document.hidden might be undefined so don't initialize like this: doVisualUpdates = (document.hidden === true);

Well, you’d typically want to do visual updates when document.hidden wasn’t true, which would work fine.

He probably meant `(browser.hidden === false)` which wouldn't work if browser.hidden is undefined. Use == instead of === and it will work fine.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#368

Post by wapz »

chrissnell wrote: post #343
sirclueless wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audio thing works because there is an obvious icon in the tab bar that shows the source of audio, so if developers use it in an annoying way the user can easily respond appropriately.

Just wait until background junk audio is included in a framework. We'll never be rid of it.

I already stopped visiting sites that had background audio autoplay. I don't think sites will get more traffic if they pick that up.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#369

Post by ErikBjare »

chrissnell wrote: post #343
sirclueless wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audio thing works because there is an obvious icon in the tab bar that shows the source of audio, so if developers use it in an annoying way the user can easily respond appropriately.

Just wait until background junk audio is included in a framework. We'll never be rid of it.

I think you'll have to wait a long time. I doubt it'll ever happen.

Re: Chrome will aggressively throttle background tabs

#370

Post by ErikBjare »

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #295
__jal wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. The user ultimately needs to retain control. And I'm especially interested in the exception for audio - that really should be user-controllable, otherwise it just encourages annoying page authors to be even more annoying.

Note that you can always mute a tab in Chrome, which I suspect would remove the exemption as well.

I wouldn't be so sure. I'd be interested in a definitive answer.
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