AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage • Hacker News Board

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#151

Post by GregBuchholz » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:30 PM UTC

astrobe_ wrote: post #139

nfoz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That was true in the late 90s, but these days a browser is actually a fully-fledged programming environment that also happens to have some incredibly sophisticated multimedia capabilities: text, images, video, audio, animations, 3d graphics, etc. Maybe I just miss the 90s, but I would much rather have the simple content browser than a "full-fledged programming environment", especially since all of that content is c…

Your best bet is text-based browsers: Lynx, Elinks, or mayve Emacs/W3M. On simple sites like HN, they are more or less usable. I also sometimes wish the Web were just serving data in an easily processable format, and let the user decide what and how they are presented. Of course this would definitely and completely defeat the ads-supported scheme on which sits Internet. An ads-free Web would probably require the reso…

Don't forget the Links browser, which started out text-only, and then added graphics:

http://links.twibright.com/

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#152

Post by the8472 » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:32 PM UTC

alyandon wrote: post #121

sspiff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, HTTPSB is not available for Firefox, please fix! I would love to use something better than ABP (in terms of performance, it does content filtering just fine), but I'm not so desperate to abandon the (warning: subjective content ahead) greatest browser of all times to lower the memory footprint of an ad blocker.

Take a look at the RequestPolicy add-on for FF. It allows fine grained control over resource requests pages are allowed to make.

The beta version also supports blacklists, which brings it a bit closer to HTTPSB.

https://www.requestpolicy.com/1.0.html

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#153

Post by SudoNick » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:32 PM UTC

I think this is the fourth or fifth time, in recent memory, that I've seen someone from Mozilla criticize Adblock Plus and call on its developers to make changes. ABP startup time and memory consumption were subjects I recall, and its general impact on page load times may have been as well.

I can understand Mozilla taking some interest in how addons behave, and constructive feedback on extensions is a good thing. However, ABP is the type of extension that is likely to have issues in those areas because of what it does. Which is very important to users, especially those who rely upon it for its privacy and security enhancing capabilities. It is those users who should decide whether the performance and resource usage trade-offs are acceptable. Mozilla shouldn't make, or try to make, such decisions.

The situation with ABP 2.6 (https://adblockplus.org/development-builds/faster-firefox-st..., https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22906) might not be a case of this, but that along with the wider pattern of platform developers being more controlling, does make me somewhat concerned about Mozilla taking too much interest in extensions. I hope my worries are for naught.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#154

Post by gorhill » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

NDizzle wrote: post #145

gorhill wrote: post #20

It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it…

I wanted to try your plugin, but by default I can't load: gmail, aws cloud services panel, and another cloud provider's configuration panel. Maybe I don't know how to use it, but what are you trying to accomplish by preventing me from loading mail.google.com by default?!

You can set it up anywhere between blocking everything to blocking nothing. I do have a couple of set up files to help people get started, here:

https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/tree/master/stuff

By default though it comes in block-all/allow-exceptionally mode, just like NoScript and RequestPolicy.

Eventually, as usual, as time permit, I would like to have a wizard for first install which will let the user choose which setup (from the ones above) is preferred to get started.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#155

Post by gorhill » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:40 PM UTC

vfclists wrote: post #142

gorhill wrote: post #20

It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it…

Having all my keystrokes sent to Google is the main reason why I don't use Chrome. Can this app guard against it, ie only send my keystrokes to Google only when I enter a Google URL?

Well, there is a browser setting to disable that feature. But in any case, the extension can block "behind-the-scene" requests if a user choose to:

https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Behind-the-s...

By default all behind the scene requests are allowed (or else that would break auto-update and other extensions), but you can make it block everything (except of course for those net requests which are not routed through the chrome.webRequest API).

It is quite useful to also see (and control) net requests made by other extensions.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#156

Post by Justsignedup » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:41 PM UTC

idlewan wrote: post #87

sspiff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, HTTPSB is not available for Firefox, please fix! I would love to use something better than ABP (in terms of performance, it does content filtering just fine), but I'm not so desperate to abandon the (warning: subjective content ahead) greatest browser of all times to lower the memory footprint of an ad blocker.

I'm betting this is not an easy task. It however would be really awesome for HTTPSB (which I just installed on chromium and fallen in love instantly with) to be ported to firefox. Seeing all the privacy-related features treated, by domain/site/everywhere rules, being able to block separately js/plugins/cookies (and by the way, the matrix is a great idea, a lot more useable than anything else out there)... in one exte…

Eh it has some default behavior quirks. Like being unable to log into arstechnica.com because it won't let that cookie get stored.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#157

Post by artursapek » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:43 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #57

artursapek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, not sure slowing down your own site for a reason unknown to most visitors is going to help your bottom line.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if your site is ad-funded then annoying users who don't see your ads so they go away and don't come back is a win. If they bitch about it to their friends who also wouldn't see your ads and those friends don't visit in the first place, it is an even bigger win.

This assumes you gain zero benefit from a network effect, which is rarely the case.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#158

Post by gorhill » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:43 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #138

gorhill wrote: post #20

It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it…

at one time I could not use this add on and visit cycle trader or auto trader without losing all the memory on my system. For some odd reason it never did that on my Mac, is there a real difference between firefox osx and Windows?

I am not aware of any problem which resemble this. You are talking about HTTP Switchboard here?

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#159

Post by test1235 » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:44 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #144

astrobe_ wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your best bet is text-based browsers: Lynx, Elinks, or mayve Emacs/W3M. On simple sites like HN, they are more or less usable. I also sometimes wish the Web were just serving data in an easily processable format, and let the user decide what and how they are presented. Of course this would definitely and completely defeat the ads-supported scheme on which sits Internet. An ads-free Web would probably require the reso…

> I also sometimes wish the Web were just serving data in an easily processable format, and let the user decide what and how they are presented. It's really sad that many people feel this is the state of the modern www. The original intention - you serve me stuff with suggestions about presentation, but my client software and OS and hardware can do what it likes with that stuff - appears to be long dead. > Of course…

>Advertisers seem reluctant to realise that irritating people like me ( ad tolerant) is a rwally bad move and is the reason so many peopke use ad blockers.

You're a tiny, tiny percent of users who actively chooses to view ads. Not to be insulting, but advertisers don't care what you think - the money they lose from your custom isn't worth the effort to make the change.

I don't bother blocking ads and I've never felt the need to install anything.

But the day I come across a site which I deem annoying enough, you can bet I won't hesitate for a second, and that'll just blanket block everything. As long as the advertisers play nice, I don't particularly mind. I don't care to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' advertisers - just like how I'm not worth their time, neither are they worth mine.

Re: AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

#160

Post by Silhouette » Wed, May 14, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #157

Silhouette wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if your site is ad-funded then annoying users who don't see your ads so they go away and don't come back is a win. If they bitch about it to their friends who also wouldn't see your ads and those friends don't visit in the first place, it is an even bigger win.

This assumes you gain zero benefit from a network effect, which is rarely the case.

No, it only assumes that you don't gain a positive net benefit from a networking effect in a network where people use ad blockers and then get upset and storm off your site if you do something about it. In the absence of data to the contrary, that doesn't seem like an unreasonable assumption.