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Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

blog.mozilla.com

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Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#2

Post by reemrevnivek »

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top.

I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list.

More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#3

Post by melling »

reemrevnivek wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top. I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list. More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

I knew it! :-). Run it with ExtJS and you'll start to go crazy.

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#4

Post by barrkel »

Hopefully they'll start with FF4 itself - IME it's a lot slower at eg switching heavy-content tabs. I conjecture it's trading CPU for memory usage, I'd prefer the reverse.

It's also very slow at shutdown and startup. With my profile (including cache) encrypted, restarting the browser takes over 10 minutes. I see the CPU pegged and the Firefox process reading through the entire cache as it shuts down, and again on startup - CPU limited by lsass, the process in Windows that runs EFS operations in user mode, but single threaded.

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#5

Post by pbz »

reemrevnivek wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top. I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list. More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

Firebug is well worth it, in my opinion. I installed FF4 recently and was happy to notice that Firebug was a lot faster. Unfortunately, either FF4 or Firebug is leaking memory like crazy. I'm talking 800MB in 20 minutes with only two tabs open debugging a simple local application. I had to go back to FF3.6. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#6

Post by viraptor »

reemrevnivek wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top. I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list. More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

I like the irony of this being #7: FastestFox - Browse Faster: 31% slower...

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#7

Post by viraptor »

barrkel wrote: post #4

Hopefully they'll start with FF4 itself - IME it's a lot slower at eg switching heavy-content tabs. I conjecture it's trading CPU for memory usage, I'd prefer the reverse. It's also very slow at shutdown and startup. With my profile (including cache) encrypted, restarting the browser takes over 10 minutes. I see the CPU pegged and the Firefox process reading through the entire cache as it shuts down, and again on sta…

> the Firefox process reading through the entire cache as it shuts down

Seems like a bug really, unless they throw out outdated pages this way. Have you tried reporting it, if it's actually reading the entire cache?

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#9

Post by ronnoch »

pbz wrote: post #5
reemrevnivek wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top. I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list. More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

Firebug is well worth it, in my opinion. I installed FF4 recently and was happy to notice that Firebug was a lot faster. Unfortunately, either FF4 or Firebug is leaking memory like crazy. I'm talking 800MB in 20 minutes with only two tabs open debugging a simple local application. I had to go back to FF3.6. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

The memory problem is pretty serious. I've been using the Memory Restart addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/memory-restar...), which shows memory use in the bottom corner and lets you click to restart when it goes over a certain amount.

Re: Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox

#10

Post by pcwalton »

pbz wrote: post #5
reemrevnivek wrote: post #2

Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see some low-quality add-on at the top. I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug at the top of the list. More listed here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/

Firebug is well worth it, in my opinion. I installed FF4 recently and was happy to notice that Firebug was a lot faster. Unfortunately, either FF4 or Firebug is leaking memory like crazy. I'm talking 800MB in 20 minutes with only two tabs open debugging a simple local application. I had to go back to FF3.6. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

Mozilla developer here - If you have steps to reproduce, I'd love to hear them and I'll get them forwarded to the proper people.
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