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Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

extremetech.com

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Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#41
post #18
post #14

I used to not do Adblock, because you know, ads make the internet go round and all that. But with the "download here"-button ads, there is no way to know what button to press anymore. Now installing Adblock is a requirement.

I got tricked once by one of those while on Sourceforge. Words can not describe how annoyed I was that day.

Thankfully, we shouldn't see GitHub pulling any shit like that anytime soon (or if they do, I won't be able to see it, as I use Adblock Plus...).

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#42

I wish the internet was usable without it.

This. The ongoing arms race between advertisers and adblockers damage content delivery, which is why I'm hoping for a solution which can replace ads in the near future. Maybe Google Contributor is onto something.

I would recommend trying the Reader view in Safari (I'm sure there's similar functionality in other browsers) to read articles without clutter. Works like a charm.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#44
post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Together with umatrix ( https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/ ) are the best chrome extensions Since I went back to firefox those are the only extensions I really miss, there is policeman ( https://github.com/futpib/policeman/ ) but it's not as good as them yet To whoever develop extensions, please don't focus only on chrome, firefox during the last months has become must better that it was before, if developers only c…

As my paranoia ramps up year on year, I now use Opera with µBlock. For me, it has the polish of Chrome with some nice extras, but without the increasingly creepy Googality. It works fine, although I've not tried µMatrix. (I have my defaults changed to DuckDuckGo. Usually connecting via a VPN.)

I've whitelisted a few sites I like to support (a couple of webcomics, HaD etc).

I have a lot of filters: "62,501 network filters + 40,728 cosmetic filters".

Opera's task manager says the extension is taking up a mere 32MB. Probably not accurate, but a lot better AdBlock (my previous favourite).

Off-topic but I wish people would stop using Mu for project names. Where is the Mu key on the keyboard? I have to copy and paste or alt-code it. Call the project microBlock or something! They use "u" instead of "µ" on Github, so why not just use something else entirely?

µTorrent was the one that really irritated me because I couldn't type "utorr" to search for it on my start menu.

I'd say something to gorhill (albeit far more politely), but it seems childish and ungrateful. He's clearly poured so much time and effort into making such useful software. "Great software but the name is fucking annoying, mate!"

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#46
post #14

I used to not do Adblock, because you know, ads make the internet go round and all that. But with the "download here"-button ads, there is no way to know what button to press anymore. Now installing Adblock is a requirement.

What pushed me into using it was when comics.com (now gocomics.com; the official online source of a number of syndicated newspaper comics) had ads that would -minimize my browser-, display a pop up designed to look like a Windows system warning, that advised me to download some malware masquerading as a virus scanner.

Gocomics.com is a particularly good example - I find it surprising that they appear to accept such low quality (one weird old tip) and shady (download now/you have 1 new messages/etc) ads.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should migrate to umatrix ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5matrix/ogfcm... ), http switchboard is not maintained anymore

uMatrix is new and improved, and I use it sometimes, but it is still rough around the edges. Some websites don't work and there's no work-around. Edit: To clarify, the above is in comparison to HTTPSB.

From the doc: "µMatrix does not guarantee that sites will work fine: it is for advanced users who can figure how to un-break sites, because essentially µMatrix is a firewall which works in block-all/allow-exceptionally mode out of the box: it is not unexpected that sites will break"

Workaround is to un-block whatever net requests which are causing a site to break. I can't make sense of "no work-around": unblock everything?

Edit: There is a scope-based switch to completely turn off matrix filtering.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#48
post #45

Use AdBlock. Not AdBlock Plus. Remember: ABP = Shit. AB = Good.

Or, if you're using Chrome/Chromium/Opera, try uBlock:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

I use AdBlock on one machine and uBlock on the other, both in Opera. I've not noticed any real difference in unattended use, except uBlock seems to use less resources.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#50

He's definitely on to something here, FF with a hundred or so tabs open: With ABP: 12961 XXXXXX 20 0 2615960 1.483g 58692 S 45.2 9.5 2:13.00 firefox Without: 13098 XXXXXX 20 0 2157212 1.109g 57476 R 142.6 7.1 1:26.25 firefox Both after a complete stop and start of the browser, restoring every tab by activating it.

This provides an engineering anecdote that adblocking is worth more than half a gig to a large fraction of the population. Looking at prices on tigerdirect you're dropping about $10 per gig (I'm sure apple charges $200 per gig for laptops, but they're price insensitive so don't matter). Anyway that provides a data point that ad blocking is worth at least $5 to the average user.

Also from a scaling perspective I wonder if its linear with tabs. There are various tribes of tab users and if its linear, a "normal user" who uses about 3 or so would scale down to approximately nil.

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