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Firefox, Heal Thyself

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Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#101
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand how easy that is to do. But when do you have the time to read them? Part of the fun of the web, is getting a little lost in it. But I totally loose focus. Have you ever tried limiting yourself to one window and the judicious use of the back button?

> I understand how easy that is to do. But when do you have the time to read them? I am a very fast reader. :) > Have you ever tried limiting yourself to one window and the judicious use of the back button? Well yes, but then Tabs were invented! My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

> My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? Do you use a plugin? When you have opened a link in a new tab, how do you then find out where that tab originated from, or rather where you spawned it from? How do you organize them? A tab is just a cheap window isn't it?

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#102
post #26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're already fixing memory leaks. In fact, Firefox now uses less memory than Chrome. Let me guess, you're another person who hasn't used Firefox in a few years hasn't bothered to check out the latest versions at all? :)

For me, alas, with 5 windows open and many, many tabs per window, Firefox regularly climbs into the 1 Gig+ memory range. The solution: less windows and tabs, I guess. But I was hoping / expecting the memory profile to change significantly over the past few builds. And yes, I am using the latest build, I check about:memory regularly, stripped out the unneeded add-ons, but maybe I've just got too much stuff open and th…

Are other browsers any better in this regard? 1 GB seems reasonable to me for "many, many tabs", I'm currently using about 500MB with 16 tabs, as rally is pretty bloated. Solution: install more RAM?

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my computer it sometimes doesn't open a window unless I open a second instance of Firefox, and then both suddenly load. Try that maybe?

That second 'instance' (it actually keeps only one instance running) might not be helping in bringing up your windows. Try clearing your (startup/local) cache, it might have become really big. I do that whenever my Firefox takes long times to start - if you check in Process Monitor, at that time it is dealing with those cache folders.

I dunno, I just noticed it "pops" up as soon as I try to start it again. Note that this is the first start I'm talking about. I'll try that cache cleaning.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#104
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand how easy that is to do. But when do you have the time to read them? I am a very fast reader. :) > Have you ever tried limiting yourself to one window and the judicious use of the back button? Well yes, but then Tabs were invented! My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

> My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me! And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? Do you use a plugin? When you have opened a link in a new tab, how do you then find out where that tab originated from, or rather where you spawned it from? How do you org…

> And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths?

IE actually attempts to kinda sorta organize tabs properly. FF is odd because if you left click a tab and have Open In New Tab set, the tab is opened at the end of your tab bar. If you middle click, it is opened adjacent to your current tab.

I forget which browser attempted auto tab groups by color. Never worked out that well for me.

When I say the browser keeps the tree structure for me, I meant that I no longer have to remember how many pages back I need to go to click the next relevant link. If I am 10 pages deep into Wikipedia, remembering which originating article has another link on it I want to explore is difficult. If I just open each link I want to read in a new tab (instead of immediately following it) I can finish the current page I am on.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me! And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? Do you use a plugin? When you have opened a link in a new tab, how do you then find out where that tab originated from, or rather where you spawned it from? How do you org…

> And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? IE actually attempts to kinda sorta organize tabs properly. FF is odd because if you left click a tab and have Open In New Tab set, the tab is opened at the end of your tab bar. If you middle click, it is opened adjacent to your current tab. I forget which browser attempted auto tab groups by color. Never worked out that well for me.…

Really I was just suggesting trying the one tab approach as an experiment. You can't read in parallel, but I do understand the idea of backgrounding links to visit later - so you don't necessarily break the flow of the page you are currently on.

Back in the day of dial up, I'd use Opera and disable images - to make page loads quicker. I would connect the modem, go online, open as many links as possible in different tabs, and then disconnect. And read at my leisure.

It would force me to think upfront at what I wanted to look at, and in the main it was a pretty good system.

Pages back then would take a long time to load, especially with images - so background loading your next link, was a habit that you just got into.

I forget which browser has which behaviour with new tabs. Some place the tab on the end. Which makes sense in terms of using a stack. Your last link being opened being on the end. Firefox as it does tab scrolling, makes it hard to see what you have open. So I think now the default is to open the new tab next to the current tab. Which highlights another inconsistency in between application tab behaviour.

I used to have loads of tabs open of stuff, that I'd get around to reading at some point - but I'd basically never read, or it would become overwhelming - and I'd just periodically shut all the tabs and start again. Later I thought I'd bookmark anything that grabbed my attention, and go back to it later. Recent bookmarks can help there.

I don't see much difference between a bookmark and a tab, a tab though just feels a little more accessible but it's more expensive. Better bookmarking tools could make tabs easily redundant.

The 'group your tabs' feature of Firefox, just doesn't work for me, and other tab plugins haven't worked for me either. Opera has tab stacks, but I can't say I'm that fond of them either. I'd rather something a little more automated.

Anyway - way off the original topic...

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#106
post #96
post #60

My single largest issue with Firefox stability is constantly running into the 32bit memory barrier. Either split tabs out into multiple processes, or enable 64bit support already. My browser crashes on average twice a day due to running out of memory and FF just giving up. It doesn't even crash gracefully, it just up and quits. (I frequently have ~100 tabs open, and I am quite thankful that Firefox lets me search acr…

I have 200+ (sometimes 300+) tabs open, and I never ran in the 32 bits memory limit. It MUST be an add-on !

The contents of those tabs might make a difference!

All of my add-ons except for Ad Block Plus are disabled right now, 2.1GB of memory is being used.

I'm sure I could open up 200 tabs of Hacker News without problem. ;)

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#107

I'm not sure if this applies, but I really hope they provide better tools to identify badly behaving webpages. Sometimes when my CPU or memory are being cranked by Firefox, I really just want to kill the one tab out of 50 that's causing all the problems.

And in fact, after I updated my Firefox to 21.0, it seems that it took more memory than before. I run it on Mac OSX 10.8.3
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