Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#51

Post by phaylon » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #28

gjm11 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays Firefox typically uses less memory than Chrome (though of course this depends on exactly what you measure and how). It's highly debatable which is faster -- this depends even more on how you measure -- but Chrome certainly isn't miles ahead. Chrome may have all the extensions you currently use, but Firefox still has a lot more; perhaps the next one you'd find useful will be Firefox-only. None of which means…

If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. Even if you don't use any add-ons at all. I've always taken issue with Firefox, it has the broadest support and community centered around add-ons - but if you actually use any add-on the browser becomes completely useless. I've been bitten s…

I have 396 tabs in FF right now. That would be impossible to handle for Chromium on my laptop. It starts heavily sweating at 25. Does Chrom(e|ium) do lazy loading of tabs these days? That'd be the main point that makes Firefox much more usable for many tabs to me.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#52

Post by fpgeek » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 2:35 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #26

twodayslate wrote: post #9

I used to be an avid Firefox user. I switched to Chrome because it was faster and had all the same extensions I used on Firefox. Why should I switch back? Chrome is still faster no?

I am also a happy FireFox user, but recently I have found a growing number of websites that won't even let you use their functionality unless you are using Chrome or Safari (Fluid for one: https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/ ). It must have something to do with FF's support of certain capabilities, although specifically what I'm not sure. This is pushing me to use Chrome for those reasons - so I hope that FF fills w…

I find (especially on my phone) that sites often have no idea what does and doesn't work in recent versions of Firefox. Sadly, it is worth spoofing your user agent to check whether or not they are right.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#53

Post by crestfallen » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 2:40 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #25

The about:memory feature is useful to get a glimpse into what extensions and tabs are chewing up the most memory, although I haven't had much luck in FF 14 using the GC/CC to correct that. I hope that FF 15 gives the user a bit more intuitive view and control over the memory consumption on tabs and addons/extensions.

Sure, for technical users that might be a nice value add. In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#54

Post by vadman » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #36

rat87 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. But not in terms of ui, tabs shrink till they hold no text in chrome instead of scrolling like in firefox.

I love the way chrome handles tabs, especially the way they shrink. The icon is enough to distinguish it and even if there is no icon for that page you already know its appromixmate position and can quickly find it (which you just can't when everything scrolls and you have no idea where you are). The firefox tab scroll feature is probably the feature I hate the most, in any browser (yes, you can disable it - but bad…

I hated it too and then I installed the "Tree style tabs" add-on. It's great, they should add that functionality in the vanilla Firefox IMO.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#55

Post by option_greek » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

pmarsh wrote: post #39

One of the issues I've seen people complain about is having to close Firefox after a few days. I understand you shouldn't HAVE to close a program, but how are people using their browsers that this becomes such an huge problem?

I hibernate my windows PC indefinitely (about 2 months so far). Till firefox 11 or so I had to close it every 3 days or so with 4-5 hours of heavy browsing each day. With latest versions I go for about 8 days without close. More importantly, firefox used to slow down noticeably in between browsing before but now it remains snappy till it starts hitting the disk for paged memory. With this memory leak fixing, I hope to go longer without closing firefox.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#56

Post by Evbn » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:12 PM UTC

alainbryden wrote: post #41

> Leaky add-ons usually cause zombie compartments by holding references to DOM structures within a web page even after the page has been closed or navigated away from. This prevents Firefox from garbage-collecting the page’s compartment. If an add-on relies on persistent references to closed pages by design (such as a form data history plugin), is there a way to adapt it to this new feature to not let Firefox sever i…

It should make a private copy of the data it needs.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#57

Post by Evbn » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

rat87 wrote: post #35

rexreed wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a happy FireFox user, but recently I have found a growing number of websites that won't even let you use their functionality unless you are using Chrome or Safari (Fluid for one: https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/ ). It must have something to do with FF's support of certain capabilities, although specifically what I'm not sure. This is pushing me to use Chrome for those reasons - so I hope that FF fills w…

> I am also a happy FireFox user, but recently I have found a growing number of websites that won't even let you use their functionality unless you are using Chrome or Safari This seems unlikely as FireFox user share was bigger then Chrome until recently and is much bigger then Safari. Except for Mobile, where I think the dominance of Android/ios has led to a lot of use of webkit specific features.

It's because Safari and Chrome both use WebKit and webdevs are addicted to animated gimmicks and all only use Macs.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#58

Post by adambenayoun » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:19 PM UTC

Finally!

I've been using firebug for quite a long time and I can't even remember at what version things went off the rail. But ever since Firefox would consume 70% of my CPU and 2GB RAM which is complete nonsense.

Because of these memory leaks, I migrated to Chrome for browsing the web and constantly having an open tab for Gmail (because that was the only browser that wouldn't go banana on RAM), but still use FF for doing front-end development

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#59

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:27 PM UTC

This is awesome news. The single biggest reason that I initially moved to Chrome, from Firefox, was the memory consumption situation. But lately, Firefox has gotten a lot better, and I've basically switched back to FF now as my primary browser. Hopefully this will make the situation even better.

And that's good for everybody. Competition is a Good Thing and it would be a shame if Chrome become so dominant as to completely displace Firefox. A healthy ecosystem with a great Firefox and a great Chrome, along with IE, Opera, Safari, etc., should benefit everyone in the long run.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#60

Post by kevinSuttle » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 3:37 PM UTC

I think the fault is not just the add-on devs. If anything, the add-on SDK should prevent this by default. I'm not sure when Firefox got so memory-hungry and leaky, but it's the single reason I keep jumping around to Chromium and Opera. Really, really hoping that this time is for real. It's not the first time a blog post like this has been posted by Mozilla.