It looks like a lot of the slowness from the slow extensions is from parsing and executing JavaScript. Are there opportunities from the browser side to make extensions faster? It seems like re-parsing the same JS on every pageload is an opportunity for gains from caching, but I'm also wondering about different delivery mechanisms like wasm. Are there security considerations here?
How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
71–80 of 136 posts
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#72Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up massively increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up massively reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. HOWEVER -- I feel like both these metrics are…
Good point about extension code running while rendering is still blocked by the network. That should prevent any user-facing delay.
I just ran a few quick tests with the Top 50 extensions and an NYT article. The charts are ordered by largest median metric value.
https://gist.github.com/mattzeunert/de3c8aedd2936a34eeb88b62...
The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) chart suggests an interesting phenomenon. Extensions like Dashlane and Evernote appear to slightly increase when that paint happens. These extensions load a large amount of code, but don't block the initial render.
Grammarly does not seem to push up LCP much. Its JS code runs before the page starts rendering, so maybe it is less likely to compete with other code later on.
Normally running code before the page renders would be bad, but if the page is network-constrained at that point it might soften the impact.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#73I like Grammarly, but the extension is really crappy.
Grammarly causes a surprising amount of frontend issues.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#74Cool, but it doesn't matter that no-extension is much faster because we can't browse without ad blocking. Even if it slows the page, it is still preferable. On the other hand ad blocking wastes less bandwidth and memory.
I don't think you read the graph right. Without ad-blocking extensions, the browser is of course much slower, about 15 times slower according to their tests.
The chosen site for that test is basically a worst-case. It uses a local TV news site. These are all cesspits. They have banners, auto-playing videos, popovers, clickjacking, the works.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So how why did it suddenly show up? If Avira has a pay-per-install program, I would say it's pretty likely that you're part of a botnet.
Interesting. I ran every kind of virus test I could find about a month ago since I was getting weird display/jank issues. Couldn't find anything, and in the end I tracked the issues down to a windows display scaling error. Any idea how I would go about testing for a botnet?
I've seen resetting Chrome fix all sorts of weirdness:
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#76It seems like the included pw managers like LastPass & Dashlane also impact page loading drastically. Is there even an alternative with less impact?
Browser extensions are usually the attack vector for password managers.
I use the native desktop apps for them, previously LastPass and currently Bitwarden. The UX suffers a bit but you at least you gain some security.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#77Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up massively increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up massively reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. HOWEVER -- I feel like both these metrics are…
Good point about extension code running while rendering is still blocked by the network. That should prevent any user-facing delay. I just ran a few quick tests with the Top 50 extensions and an NYT article. The charts are ordered by largest median metric value. https://gist.github.com/mattzeunert/de3c8aedd2936a34eeb88b62... The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) chart suggests an interesting phenomenon. Extensions like…
Thanks. Very impressed not only that you took the effort to run those, but also at how quickly you responded and were able to run, collect and publish results! Major kudos.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and that inserts its own spam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
Can you back that statement up. You're saying that Brave inserts spam content in to pages? Do you have examples? Never seen that myself in my time using Brave. FWIW I quite like the BAT and affiliate link model and was made aware of both prior to my install.
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you back that statement up. You're saying that Brave inserts spam content in to pages? Do you have examples? Never seen that myself in my time using Brave. FWIW I quite like the BAT and affiliate link model and was made aware of both prior to my install.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we...
Noted, and bad, but I don't consider altering links to be "inserting spam".
Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you installing Firefox extensions in mobile? Is it Android only?
Firefox for Android is (at least for my usage) pretty much desktop Firefox with a touch-friendly UI. Firefox for iOS is not really Firefox.
All webbrowsers on iOS are basically safari reskinned.