Everybody Hates Firefox Updates • Hacker News Board

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#191

Post by tedunangst » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 6:14 PM UTC

dbaupp wrote: post #187

tedunangst wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sequence is growing, albeit at a decreasing rate, so I'm not sure it's a good fit for memory usage. Unless you meant to say the rate at which Firefox is bloating is slowing. I could believe that. But Firefox is claiming memory usage is following a sequence more like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, ... Which should approach zero. If you meant your sequence to represent performance, maybe that's what's happening, but then I think…

That sequence was merely an example of something that is monotonic and bounded, it wasn't chosen to be a model for memory usage or performance or anything like that. Also, I don't see Mozilla claiming memory usage follows a curve like 1/x. In fact, I don't seem them claiming anything about long term memory usage other than "it's decreasing", which is true, and can be true without implying that the memory usage will e…

What I meant by 1/1024 is either the changes are noticeable or not. If they aren't, don't talk about them.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#192

Post by vogonj » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 10:29 PM UTC

jpxxx wrote: post #11

This is easy to say as someone who has never managed a product, but I feel silent self-update is table stakes for consumer-facing products at this point. Requesting permission to update throws a significant amount of users. They're typically not capable of determining if the request is legitimate or not, they're fearful of updating things they rely on, and god help them if it's not a one-click update.

"This is easy to say as someone who has never managed a product, but I feel silent self-update is table stakes for consumer-facing products at this point."

yes, but no. saying that silent self-update is table stakes is missing the point: table stakes from your users' perspective is "shipping software that doesn't need to be consciously maintained."

whether you ship rarely and get the bugs out before you do, or ship frequently but have automatic upgrades that don't break things, doesn't matter.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#193

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 10:32 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #188

dredmorbius wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh: profiles. I can't be the only person who 1) totally doesn't understand why these exist (I strongly suspect they're a hangover from DOS-based MS Windows without proper user accounts), and 2) how to manage them (there are no profile management tools within Firefox that I'm aware). Totally random and broken vestigial misfeature.

I use Kubuntu with a single user shared with my wife. Profiles mean we can easily have different FF set ups. I could do this through separate users but dont want extra administrative overhead. I've heard of others using this as a way to keep a slim browser but still have a swiss-army webdev browser for working with. It's not the profile system that was broken it was some user settings that were dragged in through the…

Separate users and user switching is pretty minimal overhead.

Other than admin accounts at work, it's been a few decades since I've shared an account with someone.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#194

Post by vogonj » Mon, Jul 09, 2012, 10:34 PM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #25

samspot wrote: post #8

I hate firefox updates because I use it infrequently enough that I have to update just about every time I open it. Also on this list is my Playstation3, which wants me to do system update and a software title update on the rare occasion I try to use it. Makes me not even want to turn the thing on. So, note to developers: Frequent updates drive your infrequent users crazy.

> Also on this list is my Playstation3, which wants me to do system update and a software title update on the rare occasion I try to use it. The Xbox 360 also does constant updates that need a reboot. Since most people leave it connected to the power socket, I wonder why they don't wake it sometime and do all the updates and go back to being powered off.

> The Xbox 360 also does constant updates that need a reboot.

however, unlike the PS3, 360 updates tend to take 30 seconds to a minute, except for big things like the NXE and the whatever-the-newest-Dashboard-thing-is-called; PS3 updates can take anywhere from 30 seconds to an hour and a half (literally, that's how long it took my PS3 to patch out-of-box the first time I started it.)

again, even if you're doing the same thing as your competitors, there is a lot of space to do it poorly. :)

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#195

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 2:03 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #193

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Kubuntu with a single user shared with my wife. Profiles mean we can easily have different FF set ups. I could do this through separate users but dont want extra administrative overhead. I've heard of others using this as a way to keep a slim browser but still have a swiss-army webdev browser for working with. It's not the profile system that was broken it was some user settings that were dragged in through the…

Separate users and user switching is pretty minimal overhead. Other than admin accounts at work, it's been a few decades since I've shared an account with someone.

>user switching is pretty minimal overhead //

Even less to just click an alternate icon in the app menu.

You wouldn't need to do user switching per se anyway. You could just "su" with the other users ID. It's the things like fixing a printer adjustment twice. Getting a password so I can fix something or share a file. Fine in a supported env. but for home I'm happy sharing the same user (but not with the kids!).

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#196

Post by shasty » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 11:15 AM UTC

Why not make the fuckin thing better? The updates are only frustrating because they represent an outward representation of how lost mozilla is internally.

It sucks. Its slow. Its ugly. It crashes often. It breaks plugins every fucking 5 seconds.

Id rather use firefox 3 than the shit mozilla is pushing right now. Total junk. Make the next update a browser worth using.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#197

Post by shasty » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 11:17 AM UTC

nnethercote wrote: post #104

smsm42 wrote: post #77

Never had any problems with Firefox updates. Switched to Chrome because Firefox leaked memory like crazy and because unusable after less than a week of work. I use browser quite intensively and keep tens of tabs open at all time. Firefox seems to be unable to deal with it. I suffered for years but once Chrome got decent extensions that was it.

How long has it been since you tried Firefox? Its memory consumption has improved a lot recently. And FF15 will prevent the vast majority of add-on leaks (which was the biggest remaining problem).

Why even say shit like that? FF is dead in the water and it has been for years. Try it lately? yeah about as much as Im willing to "try" Internet Explorer.

It doesnt work like that you fuck your customers and they bolt...forever.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#198

Post by nexxer » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:37 PM UTC

devicenull wrote: post #172

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit firefox purely over its tendency to leak my entire RAM and force restarts. I was told at the time, and do believe, that the memory leaking was an addon problem. However... firefox was sold on the idea of addons. When your two main messages are "we're the most convenient browser; just look at all our awesome addons!" and "you can't use the addons, or your computer will implode", you've got a serious problem.

I had to stop using it at work.. I'd have to restart every 2-3 hours or performance became unbearably slow. The only other "solution" was to remove all my addons, and without the addons there was really no reason to continue using firefox (Firebug was supposedly the main issue, but without firebug I can't do any work)

I never got used to Chrome's Developer Tools. Firebug and a properly working Scrollbar Anywhere / Grab-n-drag (lets you right click anywhere and drag up and down to scroll anywhere in the page) are the only extensions keeping me on Firefox.

The equivalents on Chrome are simply not good enough. I don't know if this is an issue with all Chrome extensions, but Wet Banana / Scrollbar Anywhere on it seem to be running in a low priority and thus have sub-par performance. Scrolling is choppy and doesn't always even initiate, depending on where on the page I right-clicked.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#199

Post by luser001 » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 8:47 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #189

jtheory wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are large differences based on usage patterns. I just finished entering a comment above suggesting people should give it another try; I have 100 or so tabs open and 500MB footprint after using it all day, with version 13 (I just stick with the release update channel) in win7. In my experience they've very clearly fixed whatever the main memory issue was that affected my experience -- but not yours.…

How are you measuring usage? On what platform? I'm running Firefox 15 / Iceweasel 10 on Ubuntu and Debian respectively, watching VIRT (total virtual memory size). Currently sitting at 2.3 GB, FML.

Hmm, I'm no expert. But AFAIK open memory mapped files are counted towards a process's virtual memory (as displayed by utils like 'top' and 'ps). Dunno if FF uses memory mapped files extensively.

There's a utility called 'pmap' that you can use to display the memory mapped files and subtract it from the total etc.

Finding out how much memory a program is using is surprisingly tricky to compute. Good luck.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#200

Post by oneandoneis2 » Wed, Jul 11, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #6

"There's no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now haver to relearn." This just isn't true. In a web browser, sure, the UI barely matters. Going through the menus in Firefox or Chrome is rare, enough so that Chrome tends to look different every time I do it. But for real programs, the UI defines the workflow, and that should be optimized, even at the expense of fami…

Eh? The UI isn't just the menus! It's the shortcut keys and the ways in which functionality is exposed and a whole lot else.

"In a web browser, sure, the UI barely matters."??? In a web browser, the UI is the ONLY thing that matters. Every browser out there can render a web page. It's how it responds to the user and what it enables you to do that makes all the difference.

The biggest reason I stick with FF is the pentadactyl extension - A browser without decent vi-like controls is intolerable to me, and chrome's equivalent isn't up to par. So I stick with FF, for the UI.