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Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

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Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#181
Dossier[1] has been doing this for years now. It's not as pretty, but it can manage lists and has a bunch of neat features.

I'm no affiliated with whoever makes it (except as a user, I guess) -- but I did want to bring pre-existing alternatives into the discussion.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dossier/hohaaljbjh...

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#182
I've only just realised this is built into chrome natively:

Right click on any tab in a window and choose "Bookmark all tabs..." from the bottom of the menu. Or press CTRL+SHIFT+D.

This has the following advantages over OneTab:

1. You can add new bookmarks to the list at any time.

2. Bookmarks can be synced with google sync.

3. You can name the folder so you know what the list is.

4. Bookmarks are searchable in the omnibar.

5. You can open a single bookmark without it being removed from the list. If you don't want to keep it, just click the star in the address bar and then the remove link.

6. When right-clicking a folder there's an option to open all bookmarks in an incognito window.

I can't believe I've overlooked it for so long! I don't need any session management extensions now.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#183
post #99

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…

Memory is cheap in the the first world. I live in Argentina, which is not a particularly poor or undeveloped country, and my 8GB of RAM are almost impressive. I know of no one who has 16 GB, and a few of my friends have 8. Most people I know of have between 1GB and 4GB, with 2GB being by far the most common configuration.

I live in 'the first world' and I can't afford more RAM. $50 is far too much for me to spend at the moment. (A need for more RAM is trumped by my powerful urge to eat.) Not to mention working at a corporate job where the computers are older than my children and every ounce of saved RAM is a blessing.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#184
post #96

I really like the functionality of OneTab, as I'm someone who frequently has 3 concurrent Chrome windows, each with dozens of running tabs. The one thing that's going to prevent me from using this regularly, though, is that once you reopen a tab, there's no back state. I find that some of the most valuable information that I can get from a webpage isn't necessarily the page itself, it's the process leading up to the…

I recently found TabMemFree https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabmemfree/pdanboc... It is similar to OneTab but keeps the tab open (with Flavicon and Name) but just "parks" it after a time period. It saves back states. As a heavy open tab users (we have a support group I've heard) I like it. Working with 4 GB of Ram is made much easier! If you have a tab that you don't want "parked" after 15 minutes (configur…

I did try this one for some time before The great suspender (https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/).

IMO the great suspender is better at solving this problem for me because (recalling from memory my experience with tabmemfree couple of weeks back):

1. The great suspender retains a visual snapshot of the page (along with title, favicon etc) thus helping me jog my memory about what the tab is about.

2. It uses a internal chrome:// URL to park the suspended tabs instead of using an external URL (http://). I am not saying that the developer of tabmemfree could be spying on the URLs being parked. But I am just not comfortable with the idea of parking my tabs using an external http service.

3. An explicit text format white list rather than relying on pinned tabs (which makes me lose the tab position, title etc).

4. Explicit option to suspend a tab or group of tabs (and bring them out of suspension) - instead of just relying on time-outs to suspend a tab.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 8gb. There was a time when 1gb was more than enough. Now you're saying I should have 16gb -- and you're right! This is Not A Good Thing. This is people throwing every last feature -- even if it has a pile of 800kb of DLLs/SOs attached -- into every app, with no regard for memory. I find my system thrashing almost daily at this point. I need to upgrade. Two years ago, running predominantly the same software, 4G…

8GB of RAM is about $50 right now. If you have to replace that every $2 years, are you really complaining about the cost of $25 per year on your $1,000 computer system? It's a rounding error. Chrome, in particular, is generally be used for far more tabs (I have like 30 open right now on a MacBook Air) and increasingly complex web sites every year. It's easy to look at memory usage and complain, but the fact is that o…

>If you have to replace that every $2 years, are you really complaining about the cost of $25 per year on your $1,000 computer system?

That's assuming you're using a computer with user upgradeable RAM, and not a new macbook pro.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 8gb. There was a time when 1gb was more than enough. Now you're saying I should have 16gb -- and you're right! This is Not A Good Thing. This is people throwing every last feature -- even if it has a pile of 800kb of DLLs/SOs attached -- into every app, with no regard for memory. I find my system thrashing almost daily at this point. I need to upgrade. Two years ago, running predominantly the same software, 4G…

8GB of RAM is about $50 right now. If you have to replace that every $2 years, are you really complaining about the cost of $25 per year on your $1,000 computer system? It's a rounding error. Chrome, in particular, is generally be used for far more tabs (I have like 30 open right now on a MacBook Air) and increasingly complex web sites every year. It's easy to look at memory usage and complain, but the fact is that o…

It's not about the money, it's about the complete disregard of quality. The applications we create should only use the resources they need.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can I say? It worked for me. I was doing a lot of research and things I'd read would lead to more searches of tangential topics that I'd want to revisit in the coming hours. This method of working fit my mental model and I was flitting between tabs as necessary, not just opening them up with the hope that I'd read them sometime . Also, if I need to click on a whole bunch of links that I know I'm immediately goin…

You don't open 100 apps on your computer and then complain about memory usage. Running 100 tabs at the same time, all of which may be running live JS processes, is about the same. It's a perfectly valid usage pattern but it's also going to eat a lot of memory. It's not like driving with your parking brake on, but it's like loading your car up with its maximum passenger capacity and then complaining that it's accelera…

I've done it before with earlier versions of Firefox on a system with fewer resources that yielded a substantially lower memory footprint.

It is very possible to do a lot with less memory.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#188

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…

Using as much RAM is possible is right for a task which is a primary task. If all you're doing is browsing, give your browser all the RAM you have.

Sometimes people run other heavy programs alongside a browser: games, IDEs, etc. These tools also assume that RAM is cheap and use lots of it.

At that situation an extension like OneTab becomes very handy.

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#189

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…

Disagree. For most of us, memory is already full, so bloatware increases swapping, which makes your PC less responsive.

It's somewhat ironic than opening Gmail in Google Chrome seems to consume roughly the same resources as Microsoft Outlook....

Re: Show HN: Save Memory in Google Chrome

#190
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember not everyone can afford the latest beast of a machine that can accommodate 16GB RAM, some people still have laptops that can hold a maximum of 4GB by design limitation; it's more likely to be those people worrying about Chrome's RAM usage.

And RAM uses power, whether it's being used or not. Having more RAM means shorter battery life.

I have 16 GB in my ThinkPad (x230) and it still lasts 10 hours, so that's really negligible.
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