Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.mozilla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 42 posts

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

#21

Post by maxxxxx »

ronnoch wrote: post #9
pbz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I leave Firefox open during the day the memory goes up to 1.2 GB. The performance slows down at about 800BM memory. I have 8 GB so it's not a big deal but it still seems an awful lot of memory.

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

#22

Post by pcwalton »

maxxxxx wrote: post #20

I don't understand why they can't give us a profiler that shows memory consumed by add-on and start up time by add-on . This shouldn't be difficult. Then everybody can see where the problems are.

Breaking down memory usage by add-on is very difficult. Objects in Firefox's heap don't track the ownership of the module that created them.

This should be fixed to some extent by out-of-process Jetpacks.

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

#24

Post by Qz »

hammock wrote: post #17
sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is a Firefox plugin made by Adobe, not Mozilla. It's not installed by default, it's added when you install Flash on your computer. If you want it off, just uninstall Flash from your computer or type "about:addons" into your address bar and disable the Flash plugin yourself. This article is about extensions, not plugins. The names are confusing, but they're not the same thing. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Pl…

Actually the article is about add-ons, which according to FF terminology include extensions, themes, and plugins. Of course there's not a chance that Mozilla will stop supporting Flash in its browsers, but I thought it was a funny comment on the performance of HTML5 video/interactive content vs Flash.

Mozilla doesn't support Flash in its browser -- Adobe does. Anyone can write a plug-in for Firefox.

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

#25

Post by philh »

hammock wrote: post #16

People in the comments need to realize the article, the shit list, etc all of that is about effects on START-UP time only. Who cares about start-up time? My FF browser is ALWAYS open, it never closes.

I don't see many people failing to realise this.

Also I think most people close their browsers from time to time, even if most people on HN don't. (I've heard rumours that some people even turn their computers off at night.) These people care about start-up time.

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

#26

Post by prodigal_erik »

philh wrote: post #25
hammock wrote: post #16

People in the comments need to realize the article, the shit list, etc all of that is about effects on START-UP time only. Who cares about start-up time? My FF browser is ALWAYS open, it never closes.

I don't see many people failing to realise this. Also I think most people close their browsers from time to time, even if most people on HN don't. (I've heard rumours that some people even turn their computers off at night.) These people care about start-up time.

Does the average person actually shut down to the point of doing a cold boot the next day? I have the impression most just tap the power button (which hibernates to disk by default), or else simply walk away and let this happen automatically.

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

#27

Post by planckscnst »

ronnoch wrote: post #9
pbz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow. I leave FF open for weeks with many tabs on a netbook with 1GB of memory.

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

#28

Post by mattmanser »

viraptor wrote: post #6
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...

Stumbleupon's 11th, wtf is that doing at startup?

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

#30

Post by eferraiuolo »

Chrome has the Task Manager tool which helps you track down tabs which are being resource hogs (CPU and RAM). I was curious if something like this existed in Firefox 4 or there was an extension for a feature like this? (I looked but couldn't find anything promising)
Post reply on HN