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Multiprocess Firefox

developer.mozilla.org

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Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#151

Post by gpvos »

PetitPrince wrote: post #88
gpvos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to use an add-on (anymore?) for keeping them unloaded, although you do need one to get a more manageable user interface. When you have more than about 1000 tabs, startup end closedown get rather slow though.

> although you do need one to get a more manageable user interface I know this get mentioned every time there's a discussion on Firefox UI and extension, but Tree Style Tabs [ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... ] is one excellent example of such extension.

I'm trying the builtin Tab Groups feature now.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#152

Post by cpeterso »

StavrosK wrote: post #148
cpeterso wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the freezing YouTube videos using Flash or HTML5 video? What OS are you on?

I'm on Linux. I have HTML5 videos enabled, so I think it's mostly that, but I can check later if you want.

(I'm a program manager on Mozilla's video team, so I'm definitely interested in your YouTube problems. :) YouTube playback is common user complaint, but it can be very configuration dependent.)

When you say the browser freezes, is it permanently deadlocked or does the video eventually start playing? Firefox 38 on Linux does not support MSE (Media Source Extensions), so YouTube's HTML5 video player can't use adaptive streaming. YouTube is blocked on Firefox's download and rate estimation of the video. It sounds like the YouTube player or Firefox might be stuck in a busy loop downloading the video.

To test whether the video download is causing the problem, you could try flipping the "media.mediasource.enabled" to about:config pref to true and "media.mediasource.whitelist" about:config pref to false (and restarting Firefox) to see if MSE helps. Alternately, MSE is enabled on Linux in Firefox Nightly (41) and Dev Edition (40) so you could just try them.

Does Flash play without freezing, if you have Flash installed? Flash on Linux supports H.264, but Firefox only supports VP8, VP9, and WebM unless you have gstreamer's H.264 decoder installed (but it has its own problems).

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#153

Post by StavrosK »

cpeterso wrote: post #152
StavrosK wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on Linux. I have HTML5 videos enabled, so I think it's mostly that, but I can check later if you want.

(I'm a program manager on Mozilla's video team, so I'm definitely interested in your YouTube problems. :) YouTube playback is common user complaint, but it can be very configuration dependent.) When you say the browser freezes, is it permanently deadlocked or does the video eventually start playing? Firefox 38 on Linux does not support MSE (Media Source Extensions), so YouTube's HTML5 video player can't use adaptive…

Nope, it starts playing after a bit. I'm afraid I won't be at my desktop, where this is more egregious, for about a week, but I'll investigate and reply again when I'm back. It does sound like the problem is what you describe, although I think I'm running Aurora on the desktop.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#155

Post by mmebane »

xixixao wrote: post #98
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.

You can of course search open tabs from the address bar. But at least my workflow is to browse through the old tabs and read / close one by one. Also in Firefox the tabs never shrink to just favicon, the tab heads become a scrollable list. Much better than Chrome imo.

I use Tree Style Tab for this, although I hate the actual tree functionality - it just happens to be the only reasonable vertical tab solution I've found. Unfortunately, it seems to get a little bit laggy with more than a couple hundred tabs.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#156

Post by mmebane »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #143
Alphasite_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty chrome is by far and away the worst at handeling large numbers of tabs of all the browsers (bar perhaps version of IE).

Chrome is pretty special. "Oh, you have too many tabs to fit, time to hide the favicons."

Ironically, Chrome on Android handles this better than Chrome on the desktop. I have 15 tabs open on desktop Chrome right now, and it's getting a bit cramped. My Note 4? 33.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#157

Post by mmebane »

zo1 wrote: post #116
scottjad wrote: post #89

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…

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

I use Session Manager [1] for this. It has a "restore tabs on demand" option. I usually end up restarting the browser every week or two, either due to Windows updates, Firefox updates, or getting enough active tabs that the browser crashes. When it reloads, I only have one loaded tab, and start the cycle over again.

I think the lazy loading on session restore has been built in to Firefox for a while now, but I still use Session Manager. It shows me the number of tabs in the session before I choose to restore it, and if I hit a problematic page that is making the browser immediately crash, I can remove that page from the session before restoring, as well.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/session-manag...

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#158

Post by mmebane »

justsid wrote: post #137
superdude wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is multi-process and it has the best battery life.

Safari makes use of a kernel feature that allows giving some leeway for when the process should be woken up again (eg. from a timer source). That way the kernel can put the CPU to sleep until it can schedule as many processes as possible at once to wake up and perform their work. That way the CPU doesn’t have to wake up all the time to wake up a single process and let it do its work.

Windows and Linux should be able to do that, too [1] - any idea if Chrome or Firefox make use of it?

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timer_coalescing

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#159

Post by mozumder »

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…

So what you want is for bookmarks to be automatically created and accessible from the top menubar.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#160

Post by Sharlin »

mozumder wrote: post #159
scottjad wrote: post #89

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…

So what you want is for bookmarks to be automatically created and accessible from the top menubar.

Yes, that's called "tabs". Especially now that tab content is not autoloaded and autorendered. The bookmark metaphor simply doesn't fit everyone's mental model; tabs work much better.
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