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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

#281

Post by hurin »

mrinterweb wrote: post #248
hurin wrote: post #221

Firefox gets slower with every update - and it's certainly not Addblock plus that's at fault (although yes, addblock plus has a very inefficient implementation.) If you use Chromium I recommend HTTPSwitchboard.

"Firefox gets slower with every update", I don't believe this is still the case. There have been significant performance improvements in recent versions of Firefox. If you haven't tried Firefox in a while, I'd recommend giving it another shot. By what I've seen lately, Firefox might be edging Chrome out in performance.

I still use Firefox for anything where I need to be logged in since I'm rather uncomfortable about using Google services combined with a Google browser - but it's definitely a significant performance downgrade.

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

#282

Post by SwellJoe »

dbbolton wrote: post #272
SwellJoe wrote: post #266

I use AdBlock Plus not because I don't want to see ads...I actually don't mind ads. I use it because I don't want auto-starting audio, ever . I have 30-60 tabs up at any given time. When an ad starts playing audio, it disrupts my entire workflow, possibly disturbs my partner sleeping next to me, etc. In short, auto-start audio in ads is quite simply so far outside of what I consider acceptable behavior, that I'm will…

Couldn't you bind most of the offending domains to 0.0.0.0 in your hosts files and skip the browser extension?

Maybe. But, then I'd have to maintain the list. I used to do that, many years ago, for problem domains using a local Squid installation (my first company was based around Squid, so I already ran the local Squid 24/7), but, maintenance of the list was time-consuming. AdBlock Plus is set it and go (I occasionally have to disable it for videos of something, but it's so rare that I sometimes forget I even have it running).

I don't notice the performance or memory problems being discussed, so it's not a big deal for me. My lappy has 8GB of RAM and I've never run into memory problems. But, I guess my tablet (with only 2GB of RAM) or phone probably shouldn't run AdBlock Plus, even if it becomes available for Android. Somehow I never see auto-start audio ads on those devices. Maybe I should just figure out how to make Flash and audio behave the same on my lappy.

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

#283

Post by benbristow »

garethsaxby wrote: post #280
dbbolton wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you bind most of the offending domains to 0.0.0.0 in your hosts files and skip the browser extension?

The issue with that, in Windows at least, is that host lookups become a lot slower with a larger hosts file; a local caching DNS server with a block list is possibly a better solution, and one I think is already adopted by some.

Another issue with this design is that Adblock extensions hide the blocked elements, using the hosts file leaves loads of 404's all over websites and it looks rather ugly.

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

#284

Post by _asummers »

pjlegato wrote: post #254
gorhill wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly don't know how to improve on clicking the big fat green button in the popup to whitelist a site (Ctrl-click for a specific page).

It's not at all obvious what that button does. The icon is typically associated with "power on/off." While I can see how this is supposed to suggest whitelisting in an abstract and metaphoric sense, making that connection is a bit of a stretch, particularly for casual users. I suggest removing the icon and just putting a plain old checkbox with a label that says "Whitelist Site".

If you hover over it, it tells you exactly what it does.

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

#285

Post by gorhill »

curiously wrote: post #241
gorhill wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I would like to point out, is that there is a bug currently in Chromium 39 which causes a new memory leak each time the popup UI of an extension is opened: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 This affects all extensions. Just so people are informed memory figures won't be too reliable as soon as you opened even only once the popup UI of an extension. (In all my benchmarks I of course…

does this happen only when you click the ublock and it opens a popup window or with any extension popup UI?

Any extension popup UI, which appears when you click an extension icon. The more complicated the HTML document in the popup, the larger the leak.

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

#286

Post by bashinator »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #44
elvis635 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fil…

> Where is the Mu key on the keyboard?

At least for me, option-m is the µ key.

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

#287

Post by hagbardgroup »

SwellJoe wrote: post #266

I use AdBlock Plus not because I don't want to see ads...I actually don't mind ads. I use it because I don't want auto-starting audio, ever . I have 30-60 tabs up at any given time. When an ad starts playing audio, it disrupts my entire workflow, possibly disturbs my partner sleeping next to me, etc. In short, auto-start audio in ads is quite simply so far outside of what I consider acceptable behavior, that I'm will…

The better ad networks ban auto play audio. Unfortunately, what ad networks are being used on a given page can change frequently, as publishers shift between what ads they show based on who is bidding highest.

There are advertising standards boards that recommend against these kinds of ads, but unfortunately, not enough publishers take them seriously.

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

#288

Post by fwn »

wutbrodo wrote: post #265
JeremyBanks wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sites are you encountering those ads on? You could blacklist them, rather than universally denying revenue.

This is what I've never understood about the people claiming that "they have no choice" or that they feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators. I don't use ABP, but it's really not that much effort to have to see bad ads on each "bad" domain _once_, and then blacklist and not have to deal with that entire domain and their bad ads ever again. I do something quite similar with a JS…

> "feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators"

I do think that only a very small portion of adblocking users wants to "justify" anything in this regard. Most just don't want to see ads and skip the faulty and economically biased moral debate around it.

edit: While I agree that the blacklisting solution shouldn't be too much work, the charming "setup and forget" experience most adblockers provide will probably win through.

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

#289

Post by 43081j »

SwellJoe wrote: post #266

I use AdBlock Plus not because I don't want to see ads...I actually don't mind ads. I use it because I don't want auto-starting audio, ever . I have 30-60 tabs up at any given time. When an ad starts playing audio, it disrupts my entire workflow, possibly disturbs my partner sleeping next to me, etc. In short, auto-start audio in ads is quite simply so far outside of what I consider acceptable behavior, that I'm will…

Just enable click-to-play in chrome, on media plugins. Sound only ever really auto-plays from flash ads and such (though these days its possible with HTML5 and this likely won't stop such audio/video). Its an extra click and can make some sites a bit more difficult (e.g. beatport, tries to hide its flash so you cant click it to enable it), but it works for me.

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

#290

Post by hoers »

shpx wrote: 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

Thank you so much for these!
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