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Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#51

Post by driverdan »

mnarayan01 wrote: post #19

Like many of the other Firefox memory changes, this one leaves me feeling a little ambiguous. On the one hand, obviously keeping memory usage down is good. On the other hand, waiting to decompress/decode images until they are visible to the user means that there are obviously going to be performance trade-offs (and also, obviously, design/engineering trade-offs). Speaking just from my personal usage: I don't think th…

The article states that it reduces initial page load time by about 4 seconds. Load time is far more important than a few ms here and there to load images on the fly when they are needed.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#52

Post by driverdan »

reidmain wrote: post #25

Is it time to switch back to Firefox from Chrome? I remember when I originally switched around Firefox 3.5.x Chrome was much leaner and faster. Has the pendulum finally swung back the other way?

I've been using FF lately for cross browser testing. Until tabs run in their own process / thread I won't be switching back. Also, while the dev tools have come a long way and are pretty good now they're still not quite as good as Chrome.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#53

Post by warcode »

I returned to Firefox (Aurora) a couple of months ago, but i am currently starting to inch towards chrome again.

While reduced memory usage is good, it doesn't help when has major problems handling multiple open tabs with flash player, has problems with javascript-heavy pages, and the firefox profiles STILL degrade in performance over time.

I really don't want to remake my FF profiles every 2 weeks just to avoid performance issues.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#54

Post by scholia »

mnarayan01 wrote: post #48
AshleysBrain wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If image decoding is asynchronous (don't know - guessing it is already?) and you decode them when they get near to the viewport and not just when they become visible, then it should always be decoded by the time you scroll to it and yet never jank the page. Scrolling a long way really fast probably means there's a small delay while it decodes images, but surely that's worth it to save gigabytes of memory?

> but surely that's worth it to save gigabytes of memory I'm not sure _save_ is the right word here...using available memory has no particular cost to me over not using it. Of course, the _available_ modifier is relevant, so I take your point.

It's a huge advance for those of us who usually have 50-60 tabs open for weeks at a time, where hitting a really heavy image page would tip Firefox over the top and crash it.

I switched from Chrome to Firefox a couple of months ago for its ability to handle more tabs without slowing/crashing, and for its better performance with image-heavy pages. So, for me, it's not just "who cares?" it's a killer feature.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#55

Post by joosters »

mnarayan01 wrote: post #19

Like many of the other Firefox memory changes, this one leaves me feeling a little ambiguous. On the one hand, obviously keeping memory usage down is good. On the other hand, waiting to decompress/decode images until they are visible to the user means that there are obviously going to be performance trade-offs (and also, obviously, design/engineering trade-offs). Speaking just from my personal usage: I don't think th…

Image decompression is pretty easy, CPU-wise. Well over a decade ago, computers were happily rendering JPEGs on-the-fly without storing a decompressed version (RISC OS apps did this). Your desktop/laptop/phone has plenty of ability to do this.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#57

Post by mikebonnell »

dbaupp wrote: post #21
mnarayan01 wrote: post #19

Like many of the other Firefox memory changes, this one leaves me feeling a little ambiguous. On the one hand, obviously keeping memory usage down is good. On the other hand, waiting to decompress/decode images until they are visible to the user means that there are obviously going to be performance trade-offs (and also, obviously, design/engineering trade-offs). Speaking just from my personal usage: I don't think th…

I imagine it's good for image heavy sites like Pinterest or Tumblr.

Agreed, it's a huge win there.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Wilya wrote: post #42
culshaw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really? I have about 20 tabs open on Chrome now with no lag, with one tab open in Firefox my whole system grinds to a halt.

The "many tabs" situation where Firefox performs better than Chrome is more like 50+ or 100+ tabs than 20. People have widely different use cases with tabs. My experience is that performance on Chrome degrades beyond 30 or 40 tabs, though the exact value depends on your system. You can have Firefox open with 400 tabs without too much performance degradation. Many tabs will be swapped to disk or not even loaded, but t…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#59

Post by shmerl »

reidmain wrote: post #25

Is it time to switch back to Firefox from Chrome? I remember when I originally switched around Firefox 3.5.x Chrome was much leaner and faster. Has the pendulum finally swung back the other way?

I never saw a reason to switch to Chrome to begin with. Performance was acceptable for me, while other benefits always made Firefox more useful (privacy with encrypted Sync, better add-ons and etc.). And some time ago, Firefox clearly became a leader in performance as well.

All this "jumping to Chrome" was simply a hype thing IMHO, and I generally don't care about hype.

Re: Firefox fixes save gigabytes of memory on image-heavy pages

#60

Post by kevingadd »

kamjam wrote: post #47
bru wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As spyder says in another thread of this post, on the given page ( http://congressoamericano.blogspot.fr/p/fotos-do-congresso-a... ) Chrome decodes and decodes... the memory usage goes up and up. I was using 1.5GO of memory before closing it (and still far from having loaded everything).

Do you know if the tabs run in separate processes yet (like Chrome) or will a crash/memory leak/long running script cause the whole browser session to close?

They don't in Desktop firefox, they do in Android firefox
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