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

Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

areweslimyet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#41

Post by RyanMcGreal »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #40
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #29

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…

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

My understanding of the Hawthorne effect is that it is a temporary increase in performance due to the subject's awareness of being studied. I stopped using RunKeeper over a year ago but my default walking speed has remained much higher than it was when I started measuring it.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#42

Post by RyanMcGreal »

adrianhoward wrote: post #33
exDM69 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just in case you haven't already read the lesswrong essay on optimization by proxy:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_...

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#43

Post by bmuon »

mmahemoff wrote: post #27
enneff wrote: 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.

http://arewemobileyet.com/

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#44

Post by freehunter »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #12

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.

I do wish there was a good browser I could keep open for weeks and not have to worry about how much memory its using at the end of it. Even on Chrome, using it without closing it for a few days runs me into a lot of memory used. I know a bit of this is used for keeping the history so you can go back or undo closed tabs, but I wish there was a way to make it forget that without closing it (maybe there is?)

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#45

Post by rpearl »

hackermom wrote: post #21
Tichy wrote: post #18

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

By now I think it's well-known to every Firefox user that in the case of Firefox, the memory used is mostly leakage.

Yes, absolutely. These measurements in the linked article are just a complete and utter lie.

Edit: The sentence above is sarcastic. Firefox has had better memory usage than its competitors for a while now, despite the belief that it is leaky.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#46

Post by morsch »

oddthink wrote: post #37
mmahemoff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many articles about Safari's font rendering, here is one: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html I think it's more accurate to say that it's different, whether or not it is better seems to be a matter of preference and priorities.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#47

Post by varikin »

Kesty wrote: post #35
pbiggar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I think the point of about:memory in Firefox is not to a task manager, but to allow the developers to know what is going on. If I report a high memory issue, I can copy/paste about:memory into the bug.

Now, on the other hand, I have been wanting a real task manager in browsers for years. It was one of the first things that got me excited about Chrome.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#48

Post by obtu »

Mavrik wrote: post #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.

On Linux at least, the rest of your RAM will be used by the page cache which does a lot to make disk access efficient, and as much as possible bypassed entirely.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#49

Post by presto8 »

freehunter wrote: post #44
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #12

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.

I do wish there was a good browser I could keep open for weeks and not have to worry about how much memory its using at the end of it. Even on Chrome, using it without closing it for a few days runs me into a lot of memory used. I know a bit of this is used for keeping the history so you can go back or undo closed tabs, but I wish there was a way to make it forget that without closing it (maybe there is?)

Trying blocking Flash by default. I leave my Chrome windows open for long periods of time. After a while, the memory consumption would get out of control. I finally realized that it was Flash that was causing the problem. There are many Flash blockers out there (you can right-click to enable it on-demand as you need it or use a whitelist) and newer builds of Chrome have built-in support for blocking.
Post reply on HN