Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#161

Post by danneu » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

Zarel wrote: post #54

revelation wrote: post #33

This is the equivalent of closing all tabs, with the added bonus of having a list of what you just closed. I refuse to compromise on functionality because Chrome can't get its memory deal together.

It should be noted that Chrome has a built-in "Bookmark All Tabs" button which will bookmark all tabs in the window into a folder... This extension doesn't seem to add any functionality on top of that.

This extension just adds a new workflow option.

For instance, your workflow doesn't work for me because "bookmark" in my life pretty much means "lose this page in my junk drawer of pages that I'll probably never read again, but I might if I'm ever stranded on an island with nothing but my cached bookmarks."

So I have a completely different workflow that you'd probably find equally extraneous, but it works for me.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#162

Post by kintamanimatt » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

hnriot wrote: post #155

kintamanimatt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, especially if you're doing a lot of research, or for whatever reason the page is particularly complex and it causes the process that tab is running under to consume a lot of memory.

tabs are not a replacement for bookmarks, the idea is not to open an ever increasing number of tabs, but rather bookmark and folder things if you need 100 concurrent research tabs. It's just the wrong way to use the browser. It would be like me arguing that driving my car with the parking brake on makes it get hot, of course it does, it's user error.

Well, no. If you've got all those tabs open and you're flitting between their contents, it's appropriate. It's not the wrong way to use the tool, it's a way to use it that's perfectly appropriate in some cases.

There's no reason I should be fighting against my browser because my optimal workflow causes it to chew through memory!

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#163

Post by emhart » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

srgseg wrote: post #10

OneTab developer here: thanks for all your suggestions, I'll be working on them :) A few FAQs: 1. The OneTab tab persists even if you close your web browser. 2. If you ever close your OneTab tab, this doesn't lose your tabs. You can always get it back by clicking the blue extension icon. 3. Your tabs are never sent to our servers unless you press the button to 'share as a web page'.

Love it. Just used it to conveniently share a web page of 76+ freely available newspaper archives with fellow researchers who are helping me with a project. This is solving an immediate problem for me. I love it. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#164

Post by IgorPartola » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #42

IgorPartola wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox seems to be no better: http://www.arewesmallyet.com/

Thats alright. A single chrome tab is regularly >150MiB, and thats for plain sites! (edit: this seems to measure the size of the installer binary. I think you wanted to link https://areweslimyet.com/ which shows Firefox using <512MiB with 30 tabs for popular websites open)

Yes, you are right. That's the one I was aiming for. Need more coffee...

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#165

Post by shardling » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #79

Memory use seems like a really pointless thing for users to care about. There's a widespread intuition that using RAM is inherently bad and low memory usage is a worthwhile goal, but it doesn't really make sense. The key performance goal is minimising latency, which is best served by using as much RAM as possible without having to swap out. RAM is now fantastically cheap. 16GB of DDR3 costs less than $120 in either D…

https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/02/08/the-benefits...

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#166

Post by T-hawk » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

exterm wrote: post #13

Edit: This is not meant to sound discouraging to the developer; I just suspect he solved the wrong problem. I find it very strange that a tool exists to reduce chrome's memory footprint by closing tabs. This does not seem to be the right solution to any problem I can think of. If memory consumption is what bugs you, maybe you should use a browser that consumes less memory per open tab. If the number of open tabs is w…

That's exactly what it is, a read-it-later list. Browsers don't have a good mechanism for that. Not open tabs, which continually consume memory and CPU resources until you get around to them. And not bookmarks either, which are meant for permanent storage, subject to the clunkiness of navigating a folder structure and explicitly performing every add and delete operation.

So in a sense, One-Tab is indeed a memory saver. Not by really reducing Chrome's memory usage, but by plugging the workflow gap that induces users to use Chrome in a way that consumes enormous amounts of memory. (And the selling tactic sure worked, seeing as there's 200 posts on it here in two hours.)

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#167

Post by bzxbot » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 5:00 PM UTC

roc wrote: post #102

srgseg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but this extension will help you distinguish between the tabs you want to close forever and the tabs you want to return to later.

So do bookmarks. And this overlap becomes obvious as people inevitably ask for Chrome or OneTab to allow them to cluster tabs by topic/project -- because a linear scan is never going to 'work' for people who leave enough tabs open that it becomes a 'problem'. The underlying problem here is workflow. People are leaving tabs open as a reminder of things to which they intend to return. (Regardless of whether they will o…

I was looking into this problem lately, the two solutions that come close to what you are describing, from what I found are:

https://kippt.com http://pinboard.in

Pinboard already has archiving, Kippt archiving is in beta.

Still, there's room for improvement.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#168

Post by acc00 » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #79

Memory use seems like a really pointless thing for users to care about. There's a widespread intuition that using RAM is inherently bad and low memory usage is a worthwhile goal, but it doesn't really make sense. The key performance goal is minimising latency, which is best served by using as much RAM as possible without having to swap out. RAM is now fantastically cheap. 16GB of DDR3 costs less than $120 in either D…

I think you might be missing the point here.

You are right that using RAM is preferable to using disk; however, nobody is talking about disks here.

Using a lot of RAM is bad because it makes you slow: pretty much everything, from paging to hash table lookups, works faster the lesser data there is to process.

Minimizing RAM usage is a very worthwhile goal if you want to be faster.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#169

Post by Schlaefer » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

srgseg wrote: post #60

Zarel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that Chrome has a built-in "Bookmark All Tabs" button which will bookmark all tabs in the window into a folder... This extension doesn't seem to add any functionality on top of that.

I used to do that sometimes, but it suffered from the "out of sight, out of mind" problem.

I sorely miss a "save all open tabs into one bookmark file".

End of the day: save it to your project folder where all other project files live. Later when you work on the project again: double click to reopen all your tabs.

"Bookmark All Tabs" is nearly there, but I also tend to forget about it if I don't see it.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#170

Post by ccameronmills » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

I was going to say this was pretty neat but within 30 seconds of actually using it, it managed to lose a window full of tabs which I'd had open for a couple days and I can't recall what was in it now so a bit frustrated. I collapsed up 3 windows into one tab, then did expand all on all 3 and one of the windows re-opened with only 1 tab.