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Multiprocess Firefox

developer.mozilla.org

31–40 of 171 posts

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#31
post #14
post #2

Finally some movement on this! It really feels like an inferior experience in 2015 when your browser freezes from an unresponsive javascript in another tab.

Chromium circa 2008?

Or IE7 circa 2006. IE7 separated its UI and browser content in different processes. IE8+ group several tabs into one process when passing a threshold. This is much better for battery life compare to Chrome process-per-tab.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#32
post #28

The problem with e10s (Electrolysis, codename for multiprocess Firefox) is it's actually less concurrent and runs far worse than normal Firefox, at least currently. It's downright unusable.

Switching tabs is just awful. If one page is busy loading something, I want to switch to another tab and see what's there, but instead I get to stare at the word "Connecting..." for several seconds. I just feel like I'm waiting for the browser to catch up all the time.

FYI, you can help submit a performance profile to Mozilla so they can work to resolve this: http://mikeconley.ca/blog/2015/05/04/electrolysis-and-the-bi...

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#33
post #7

Goodbye RAM :) Or better for RAM, since I can now selectively kill and resume processes? Oh, I see it's not one process per tab. So does anyone know how I can more easily survive on 2GB with many tabs, other than by constantly killing processes?

I think I'd rather have multiprocess Firefox, even if I have to be a bit more judicious with my tab usage. I don't really know if having 40 tabs open is useful for me, or if it just makes me scatterbrained.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#34
For the first time in years, the other day, I left Firefox open overnight. I use a proxy at work for Firefox due to strict filtering on our primary connection. I was monitoring the amtrack debacle in Philadelphia. I came in the next day to an entirely unresponsive Firefox. I had purposely gone to the home page before leaving to avoid bashing the processing with the live stream. Still, after ~12 hours of being on the cnn.com home page - with NO other usage - Firefox had become unusable. Chrome - with its ~20 normal and ~13 incognito tabs were as stable as they were 3 days ago.

I want (and do to an extent) to love Firefox. It was what at one time what expressed to me that there was an alternative to ie. But, I now, in the real world (at least the world I inhabit) can not find it to be better than chrome in any instance. From dev tools to performance. I had no intention of trying to test the differences; I happened to be using ffx for the proxy reason and was saddened to see it had crashed the following day.

Here's to hoping this speaks to progress in this regard.

(Speaking from OS X)

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#35

For the first time in years, the other day, I left Firefox open overnight. I use a proxy at work for Firefox due to strict filtering on our primary connection. I was monitoring the amtrack debacle in Philadelphia. I came in the next day to an entirely unresponsive Firefox. I had purposely gone to the home page before leaving to avoid bashing the processing with the live stream. Still, after ~12 hours of being on the…

Just remember that anecdote != data and all that. My ff gets restarted in two cases - ff or kernel gets security patch. That sometimes means a month of no restarts. (With maybe 30+ tabs in different groups open)

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#36
post #31
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium circa 2008?

Or IE7 circa 2006. IE7 separated its UI and browser content in different processes. IE8+ group several tabs into one process when passing a threshold. This is much better for battery life compare to Chrome process-per-tab.

Chrome also groups multiple tabs on single process, based on a number of factors: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/process...

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#37
post #31
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium circa 2008?

Or IE7 circa 2006. IE7 separated its UI and browser content in different processes. IE8+ group several tabs into one process when passing a threshold. This is much better for battery life compare to Chrome process-per-tab.

[deleted]

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#38
post #7

Goodbye RAM :) Or better for RAM, since I can now selectively kill and resume processes? Oh, I see it's not one process per tab. So does anyone know how I can more easily survive on 2GB with many tabs, other than by constantly killing processes?

My strategy is to periodically close Firefox and reopen it, to "hibernate" the tabs I'm not currently using.

Between lazy tab restore and Chrome's process per tab memory overhead, Firefox is currently waaay better than Chrome for those of us coping with RAM Deficit Disorder and O(e^x) tab syndrome; I hope when the Fox gets process-per-tab they don't close that gap.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#39
post #33
post #7

Goodbye RAM :) Or better for RAM, since I can now selectively kill and resume processes? Oh, I see it's not one process per tab. So does anyone know how I can more easily survive on 2GB with many tabs, other than by constantly killing processes?

I think I'd rather have multiprocess Firefox, even if I have to be a bit more judicious with my tab usage. I don't really know if having 40 tabs open is useful for me, or if it just makes me scatterbrained.

Doing any kind of web research for work is effectively a breadth-first tree traversal. Remembering all the higher level nodes, when you're ready to go the next level deep, would be a nightmare. My brain couldn't handle that, but tabs solve it effortlessly.

So I'd say that I keep many tabs open for the exact opposite reason. It enhances what I can do, due to the limitations of my brain.

Within a few decades, I expect for the concept of open tabs and bookmarks to merge. We'll be keeping far more tabs open, and flipping between them effortlessly, or scrolling back to that snapshot in time effortlessly.

I imagine closing tabs will be being like closing Emacs buffers. In practice, you practically never have the need to close an Emacs buffer, for anything you might have a small chance of wanting to work on again soon.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#40

Please please test battery life impact while implementing the Multi-process stuff. I had to move away from Chrome just on the battery life issue. I suspect (but cannot conclusively prove) that the multi-process crap that Chrome has just drains your battery much faster. And yes I am perfectly aware of the supposed fix in Chrome for the battery killing bug.

Yea I am with you, I love Chrome and I love that its basically my little mini xplat OS. That of course comes with a price of being a battery hog, if you don't want to use all the benefits Google is cramming into their browser, then I can see the allure of FF. I imagine that represents a fair number of FireFox's users as well. I imagine they won't abandon you friend. :)
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