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Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

areweslimyet.com

31–40 of 101 posts

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#31
post #18

Is it the same old fallacy that consumed memory is somehow bad? What if they use it for efficient caching?

I have already found one case in Firefox where this is true. FF will load the image data in background tabs, but it won't decode it (e.g. render a JPG) until you switch to that tab. I may be nitpicking but the extra half-second or so bothers me like texture pop-in in a game. So I go to about:config and set image.mem.decodeondraw and image.mem.discardable to false.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#33
post #13
post #3

A nice manifestation of the idea "What we can measure we can fix." See also: http://arewefastyet.com/

Our engineering team's motto is "if you measure it, it will improve".

Which is true.

You do, however, have to be very careful that the "it" that is being improved is really the same as the "it" that's being measured. I've lost count of the times that I've seen a well intended metric end up driving exactly the wrong sort of behaviour.

(For example: I recently sat through an excellent lunch time rant from somebody whose boss is prioritising shorter simple-to-implement stories over longer ones with a higher business value, because their team is having their efficiency judged by the cycle time (length of time between story-in and story-out)).

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#34

I'm glad they are working on that. Right now I'm not using Firefox because after a day or so typing into a text box starts to stall. I'm not sure it has to do with memory usage, but it has been that way for years on my Mac. Not on Windows or Linux interestingly.

If it happens after a day or so, memory is certainly a factor.

Also, https://bugzil.la/695693 might be relevant, one of the comments explains how to diagnose if this is a reflow bug.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#35
post #23
post #10

Not yet, but getting there. Also the bazillion extension that exist for Firefox are not really helping. A "task manager" to be able to keep on eye on all extensions memory consumption (and be able to kill the extension from the browser) should really be helpful.

Try about:memory, it's pretty good.

Yeah, it's not really great either. The about:memory page in Firefox is a little bit too technical compared with the about:memory in chrome that is, at least, simple and easy to understand what is going on.

In Firefox I still see a lot of memory commited to tabs that I've closed long ago, and can't really get a breakdown of my extensions memory usage.

Also what I was wishing is something more like a os task manager. Where I could kill or restart extensions that are using too much memory like I can do to normal applications.

Simply stating that this extensions is using too much memory so don't use it (a la IE) won't help. If that extension is the main reason I'm using your browser I'm not going to turn it off.

I'm not saying it would be easy or even doable right now, it's just what I wish to see in a future web browser to keep the memory down and prevent me from killing it and restarting it twice a day while working.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#36
I'm just hoping slimming down memory usage won't go at the expense of speed... my systems have 16GB of RAM - I want Firefox to use as much memory as possible to speed up my experience. So if slimming down FF will make my disk trash more, that's the wrong direction to take.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#37
post #3

A nice manifestation of the idea "What we can measure we can fix." See also: http://arewefastyet.com/

Also: http://areweprettyyet.com/ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/AreWeFunYet http://areweplayingyet.org/ (from SoundCloud) The irony (or maybe that's the point) of using this meme is that you'll never get to the end of the rainbow. A browser's work is never done.

They still have a way to go to hit "pretty." Sadly, it's a lot harder to measure than "fast" or "slim". I wish I had the language to describe why Safari's font rendering is so much better than Firefox's; it's "visually obvious", but I just don't have the vocabulary or expertise to analyze.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#38
post #11

I used to have loads of problems with Firefox, it was so slow... took several minutes to close, it would freeze regularly etc. I got so sick of having to clear the cache every few weeks. Then one day I noticed their hidden profile manager, created a new profile and used it instead. A few months on and everything is still working like it should. No need to clear caches, it quits within seconds, no crashes and so on. I…

Yep, I used to have a few problems with my addons. Various windows would stop appearing or only partially appear, tree-style-tabs would have funny behaviour. I would assume it was because I was running the latest FF and the add-on hadn't caught up yet...

However, simply creating a new profile solved all my problems. Now, any time I run into an issue, I just create a new profile.

I know some people will simply suggest switching browser, but nothing handles hundreds or thousands of tabs better than firefox, and I'm not looking to change how I browse the web just to go easy on my browser...!

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that it's almost true by default . The mere fact of measuring something is often enough to drive improvements. A couple of years ago, I installed the RunKeeper app on my phone and started tracking how long it took me to walk places. Over the course of a few months, my walking speed increased from a pokey 5 km/h (3mph) to 8 km/h (5 mph). I didn't install the app with the goal of walking faster; it j…

Same here, with eating. Simply writing down and calculating what I was eating ended up with me eating more (which I'm aiming for). Now measure all the things?

Seems to be the idea behind http://quantifiedself.com (in case you haven't heard of it before).

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#40
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our engineering team's motto is "if you measure it, it will improve".

The funny thing is that it's almost true by default . The mere fact of measuring something is often enough to drive improvements. A couple of years ago, I installed the RunKeeper app on my phone and started tracking how long it took me to walk places. Over the course of a few months, my walking speed increased from a pokey 5 km/h (3mph) to 8 km/h (5 mph). I didn't install the app with the goal of walking faster; it j…

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
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