Live data from Hacker News

Multiprocess Firefox

developer.mozilla.org

121–130 of 171 posts

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#121
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…

Sounds like you'd need something like this:

https://www.one-tab.com/

I use it all the time whenever I get to 10-15 "idle" tabs I don't need that day anymore.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is this: Chrome. Which, last time I checked, often ends up with >100MB private working set per tab. And given the amount of dev time that's gone into Chrome / Chromium, it doesn't exactly set a good precedent. Also, you're missing that there are a number of things that have to be duplicated in a multiprocess model that you only need one of in a multithreaded model. For instance: the JS heap, which has a r…

As far as I understand it, Firefox already have separate JS heaps since a few years back via the compartments model¹. 1: https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/compartments/ Edit: A quick, 100% scientific™ test: Content processes: 50 Sum: 1858.6 Max: 42.72 Average: 37.172 Content processes: 10 Sum: 791.96 Max: 88.96 Average: 79.196 Content processes: 5 Sum: 624.1100000000001 Max: 137.68 Average: 124.8220000000…

Compartments are not quite what I'm talking about.

I'm more talking about metadata / caches. There's a fair bit of stuff that can be global with a single process that cannot be with multiple processes. Sometimes you can use shared memory tricks, but not always.

Also: I wasn't aware there was that much of a memory penalty. Yow.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#123
post #78

Guys please don't do this, I hate chrome,not because it is almost perfect internet browser, just because it is almost an entire OS runs on top of my own OS(I just want a browser not os).I am afraid Firefox will end up where chrome going right now.

At this point pretty much all (modern) browsers except Firefox have this.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#124
post #62

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.

And yet if you read the comments in this thread there are still people arguing against its necessity.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#125
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do use pocket. Some of these links will end up in pocket, when I get around to looking at them closer if I decide they are long and I want to read them on my mobile devices.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#126
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 said tab but I don't actually use the UI concept of a "tab", though I could by M-x tab-bar-mode, because you're right it doesn't scale very well to large numbers, in my experience

I use buffers (in Conkeror). Buffers are just tabs without the actual tab UI. So unless I'm switching buffers, the only visible UI difference between having one buffer and 2000 buffers is the string "[2011/2011]" in my status-line showing my current buffer number and total number of buffers.

I can press C-x b (switch-to-buffer, I bind to M-a) to show a filterable list of my current buffers (favicon, url, title). I can type part of the url or page title (even when tab is unloaded) to filter my buffer list before switching to one. I can also navigate tabs "spatially" (from tab #2 to either tab #1 or #3) or by recently used (bury/unbury-buffer or switch-to-recent-buffer which shows buffer list in most recently used order) or by domain (next-buffer-same-host) or by whether the buffer is playing audio (switch-to-audio-buffer).

Also, in the vast majority of cases I only access recent tabs near the end of the list. I can press 9 or 0 to go to my second-to-last or last buffer.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like you'd need something like this: https://www.one-tab.com/ I use it all the time whenever I get to 10-15 "idle" tabs I don't need that day anymore.

There's tabvention, automatic 'tab list' backup as bookmark folders if you reach a certain (configurable) number.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabvention/kcjmdpj...

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#128
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do that in Chrome at least with blackboxing:

https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/blackboxing

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like you'd need something like this: https://www.one-tab.com/ I use it all the time whenever I get to 10-15 "idle" tabs I don't need that day anymore.

I like being able to switch to any of my tabs using the exact same UI technique as I would for any other tab, and press qqqqqqqqqq to view and kill many of tabs in succession.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#130
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

The favicon is ok. I close them when there is no space to display the favicon.
Post reply on HN