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Multiprocess Firefox

developer.mozilla.org

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Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#111

Post by xzlzx »

scottjad wrote: post #89
sebcat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I use Firefox is that having 50 or more tabs open is normal for me I've never understood this. Isn't that what bookmarks are for?

I currently have 2014 tabs in my session (almost all unloaded, using around 2GB of ram that I wouldn't use otherwise). I had 1600 tabs a few days ago. They are links I clicked on in other apps or browsed to over the past few months. When I get a chance to plow through a few dozen/hundred of these tabs I can read/view them and close them very quickly. Notice all the UI stuff I don't have to do: I never had to perform…

Why don't you use something like Pocket? It seems like you are the ideal use case for their software. I use it religiously.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#112

Post by monk_e_boy »

tete wrote: post #109
monk_e_boy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chrome dev tools are way better than in Firefox. It was a reluctant change for me, but my productivity in chrome is way higher.

I had the same experience though I have to admit that some things in Firefox are better these days, like checking where an event comes from, going really deep into objects, referencing other objects, comparing rather big objects. The only thing I really miss is a view WebSocket frames. In many other cases I ended up preferring Firefox Dev Tools which I think while a bit harder to get into are more powerful. But that…

The only thing I'm missing in either browser is the ability to ignore jQuery as I'm debugging. Stepping in and out of jQuery (and other libraries like underscore) is a pain.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#113

Post by k_bx »

suprgeek wrote: post #27

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.

Battery life on FireFox is good if you use "lazy tabs" feature. If you need more battery, you just restart the browser and it only loads the tabs you open, so the old ones won't have JS working.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#114

Post by zo1 »

barnacs wrote: post #100
rexf wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of UI stuff, how do you find a tab among a thousand? When the tab page title shrinks and all I see is favicon, I feel lost.

I don't quite have that many tabs open but I find that grouping tabs into separate browser windows and taking advantage of your window manager goes a long way.

If you are interested in grouping the tabs, have a look at this addon:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

It allows you to use your tab-list in a hierarchical way, sort of like a filesystem. I group things under obvious roots, and then collapse it till needed.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#115

Post by frik »

jc123 wrote: post #102
frik wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are multiple competing factors when it comes to choosing the right number of processes. - For security, more processes is better; one per tab is probably ideal. - For crash protection, ditto. - For responsiveness, one process per CPU core is probably best. - For memory usage, one process is probably best." as a dev wrote in the mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform... For v…

With crashes, though rare in Chrome, when one does happen it usually kills all my Chrome windows instead of a single tab as is touted :/

It depends which process crashes. Usually and rare a sub-process crash which means a few tabs need a page reload. If your main process crash (which should be very very rare) then I would suspect you have a faulty memory module in your device or you have little free memory or your operating system has not optimal scheduler (e.g. server OS on a desktop).

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#116

Post by zo1 »

scottjad wrote: post #89
sebcat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I use Firefox is that having 50 or more tabs open is normal for me I've never understood this. Isn't that what bookmarks are for?

I currently have 2014 tabs in my session (almost all unloaded, using around 2GB of ram that I wouldn't use otherwise). I had 1600 tabs a few days ago. They are links I clicked on in other apps or browsed to over the past few months. When I get a chance to plow through a few dozen/hundred of these tabs I can read/view them and close them very quickly. Notice all the UI stuff I don't have to do: I never had to perform…

What extension do you use to unload your tabs? Or keep them unloaded, not sure of your workflow in that regard.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#117

Post by frik »

wanderr wrote: post #62
Excavator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser being built from the ground up around one process per tab has an easier time implementing said feature than one with years of history? Who would've thought‽

The fact that they spent years arguing against its necessity rather than working on it certainly didn't help.

There is a lot of old cruft in its web engine "gecko" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPCOM). Many addons are XUL based and have had problems with the multi process mode. In 1-2 years hopefully Servo is ready combined with a simple HTML based UI to do what Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix did with Mozilla Suite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Naming

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#118

Post by runarberg »

pllbnk wrote: post #71

From the experience I've had with Chrome, I would say that process per tab is overhead. Sure, there are some benefits from having a few processes that are managing different parts of the system, but not hundreds of processes just for browsing. The way I use Firefox is that having 50 or more tabs open is normal for me, sometimes there are even hundreds of them. Currently Firefox works great and although there are some…

All changes will disrupt someones workflow[1]. I suppose browsers are no exception.

1: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#119

Post by frik »

ethana wrote: post #31
nly wrote: 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.

IE7 or IE8 introduced multi-process sandbox in Vista (not on XP). Afterwards, Google did the same with their first Chrome release.

In both IE 8-11 and Chrome 1+ there are several tabs per sub-process. Chrome comes even with its own "Taskmanager" where you can see which tab sits in which process and how many resources it takes. You can find the Taskmanager in the Chrome's "Tools" sub-menu.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#120

Post by higherpurpose »

jc123 wrote: post #102
frik wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are multiple competing factors when it comes to choosing the right number of processes. - For security, more processes is better; one per tab is probably ideal. - For crash protection, ditto. - For responsiveness, one process per CPU core is probably best. - For memory usage, one process is probably best." as a dev wrote in the mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform... For v…

With crashes, though rare in Chrome, when one does happen it usually kills all my Chrome windows instead of a single tab as is touted :/

Let me guess, it's a process like Flash that kills all of your tabs?

That's why having proprietary technology in browsers sucks because you can't really implement it the way you want to (as a browser vendor).

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