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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

#31

Post by anasol »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #26
philh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a quasi-average person regarding computer usage, I can tell you about the way that less tech-savvy people around me deal with their laptops, as I deal less and less with people with PCs: If it is an older model, it tends to be a matter of "hibernate until it runs so slowly that I have to restart." Other than that, there is always some hard-core believers that you really need to shut off completely every time you use it.

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

#34

Post by coolgeek »

planckscnst wrote: post #27
ronnoch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

hmmm... I have to reboot daily - sometimes more than once a day - on an ASUS Eee 1GB running XP

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

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

jarin wrote: post #18

Curation is the new Open.

Are you just being snarky, or do you actually have a problem with it?

Besides, it doesn't seem like they are even curating; rather, they are attempting to prod their sheep in a direction they believe will benefit the whole project.

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

#36

Post by hollerith »

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.

It never needs to be restarted? What OS is it on?

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

#37

Post by gojomo »

eferraiuolo wrote: post #30

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)

Totally agree, and even before Firefox gets any sort of strong tab isolation, I would love a readout that provides any sort of vague 'blame' for CPU/memory usage to individual tabs.

As FF runs for a long time with many tabs, I get longer and longer pauses doing simple tasks -- scrolling, switching tabs, popping the right-context menu, setting focus into a field, etc. Sometimes, this sluggishness seems linked to (and fixable by closing) a few tabs of the most Javascript-heavy sites (those with many ad inserts, background status polling, etc.). I'd hoped FF4 would help but it's just about as bad as 3.X. Generally restarting, even with the exact same tab set, helps (for a while).

Separate but similar, sometimes I'm doing nothing and no tab is visibly busy but Firefox is reported as using 50-100% (out of 200%) CPU time. Give me any proxy for tab activity (object allocations, timer callbacks, method-dispatching, whatever) and I can probably kill the miscreants.

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

#40

Post by scorpioxy »

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 have firebug and other development related addons in their own profile because of this.

My regular browsing is done in the default profile and the development work is done with the development profile.

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