Scalability • Hacker News Board

Re: Scalability

#121

Post by d0m » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:37 PM UTC

d0m wrote: post #60

rmccue wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question is whether you would ever have that many tabs open, and how much memory do you have on your desktop? I have 60 tabs open now (in FF), and this is after closing most of them, on a 32-bit system with 4GB of RAM. I regularly hit over 200 tabs when browsing.

200 tabs.. how is that possible? Do you ctrl+click on every possible links on every page?! I'm actually really surprised. I, too, can't stand more than 5-6..

In fact, with chrome, it's so easy to load a new page that even if I might browse 100+ pages, I just reload them everytime. I.e. g go on gmail. f facebook, etc. :p

Re: Scalability

#122

Post by starwed » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

ootachi wrote: post #38

mootothemax wrote: post #4

It makes me a bit suspicious that a Canary build of Chrome is used. I understand that when a new feature is highlighted in a nightly build of Firefox, it's right to show it off - but why not do so against the latest version of Chrome - or even a Dev build? At least those two have been tested first ;)

Would you honestly prefer it if browser manufacturers compared pre-release versions to shipping versions? Seems to me that would be far worse.

Well, in this case it should be compared to whichever version of chrome performed best. That way you include any improvements they've made, but not any regressions.

Re: Scalability

#123

Post by polyfractal » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #116

polyfractal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in to say that ~60 tabs is not uncommon for me either. The Tree Style tab extension for Firefox is amazing and allows me to organize tabs into groups. Some groups are on the "to read" list that I don't get to for a couple days. It is also the main reason why I can't/won't switch to Chrome - no Tree Style tabs.

There's TabSense, which can give you a tree visualization, but the main tablist is still horizontal across the top of the screen. Weak.

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed with that extension too. The built-in vertical tabs in Chrome are irritating too - new tabs open above your current tab, instead of below. Perhaps it is just me, but this feels very unintuitive. And more importantly, there is no way to change the behavior. :(

Re: Scalability

#124

Post by starwed » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #96

zobzu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need Firefox 8 to feel the improvements

Perhaps, but if this test is accurate, Chrome has also gotten far, far worse in recent versions. I find that surprising.

This test isn't about having lots of tabs open, but having lots of tabs opening, all loading at the same time.

Re: Scalability

#125

Post by rajpaul » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

Interesting test, but the real world usability significance of this are minimal.

Now, if Firefox auto updates in the background like Chrome, I might consider giving it another chance. When I want to go on the net, I don't want to wait for my browser to update.

Re: Scalability

#126

Post by d0m » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

Perceval wrote: post #62

d0m wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 tabs.. how is that possible? Do you ctrl+click on every possible links on every page?! I'm actually really surprised. I, too, can't stand more than 5-6..

Let's say you're on 4chan and there's a creative thread with a bunch of images. Threads can reach 150 images before they max out. You could use the Linky extension to "Open All Image Links in Tabs" and you would instantly be up over 100 tabs. That's just one use case, but there are certainly many others.

Instead of 200 pages of images, get on a real site and open only one tab with a video ;-)

Re: Scalability

#127

Post by ori_b » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

starwed wrote: post #124

ori_b wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but if this test is accurate, Chrome has also gotten far, far worse in recent versions. I find that surprising.

This test isn't about having lots of tabs open, but having lots of tabs opening , all loading at the same time.

Ok. So, apparently, it's testing a usecase that doesn't happen in normal use. So why should I care?

Re: Scalability

#128

Post by donuttrunk » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #84

zobzu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major issue with opera is that you can't easily automate the tests, that's why it's often missing when people test IE and Chrome and FF. So it's hard to benchmark stuff and most don't take the time to do it. That said opera is known to be rather fast.

It might be more difficult, but you can certainly automate opening a bunch of tabs using a script to send keypresses, no?

sort of, a lot of the actions by this script rely on the browser giving feedback (e.g. finished loading the page). You could write a script to gather feedback from the display (i.e. by taking screenshots) but it's too much effort to maintain with new releases.

Re: Scalability

#129

Post by bzbarsky » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

rajpaul wrote: post #125

Interesting test, but the real world usability significance of this are minimal. Now, if Firefox auto updates in the background like Chrome, I might consider giving it another chance. When I want to go on the net, I don't want to wait for my browser to update.

Chrome doesn't update in the background. It downloads the update in the background, then applies it at startup the next time it starts. It just doesn't tell you it's doing that, so you get a slow startup with no explanation of why.

The "tell you" part is the only difference between the workflow for current Firefox updates and Chrome updates, in fact... And yes, Firefox might start doing them silently precisely because of the purely psychological issue you describe.

Re: Scalability

#130

Post by bzbarsky » Wed, Aug 03, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

narkee wrote: post #24

Anyone care to share how their usage patterns lead to having hundreds of tabs open at a single time? How is it even feasible to find a specific tab without doing a time consuming linear search? I rarely have more than 4-5 tabs open at a time, so I'm honestly curious.

I have my todo list in the form of tabs. I typically go through them fairly linearly as I work on things on the list.

That said, if I start typing in the url bar, already-open tabs whose title or url or tags match what I type show up in the dropdown search results and can be switched to by selecting that option from the dropdown (that includes tabs in other browser windows, etc, so I can just grab any window, type a few words in the url bar, and then be in the tab I want to be in).

This is in Firefox; finding a tab you want in Chrome is indeed a huge pain.