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AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

blog.mozilla.org

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

#161

Post by gorhill »

Osiris wrote: post #148
NDizzle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

If you read here: https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-to-use-H... There's a way to set it up to allow by default. The plugin looks really interesting, but I wish it would give more detail about the requests that were blocked/allowed and a better explanation if I blacklist something, is that permanent or do I have to save it each time?

All changes to the matrix are temporary by default. Click the padlock to make them permanent. At first, this might be annoying (though it is just one-click to make it permanent), but once you have all your rules for your usual sites, it's nice that all is temporary by defaults.

There is a request log in the dashboard/Statistics tab where you can see in details (full URL) what was blocked or not.

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

#162

Post by gorhill »

Justsignedup wrote: post #156
idlewan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whitelist the "cookie" cell in the matrix, save with one click on the padlock. Now cookies will be allowed everywhere by default (except for those ubiquitously blacklisted hostnames).

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

#163

Post by apenney »

gorhill wrote: post #154
NDizzle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I doing something exceptionally wrong? I click Restore from file in scoped rules, and then decode recipe. That gets me more json on the left (in a red box, so I assume parsing failed). I then try "Import Rules" and nothing seems to happen. The commit button at the top never allows me to click, and nothing changes.

This is using the abp setup (and a few of the others in stuff/), none of which worked.

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

#164

Post by Silhouette »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #75
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.

I'm not so sure this is "obvious". It presumes that those people will never refer anyone who would watch your ads, and also that search engines won't down rank you in results based on the number of people bailing from your site instantly/avoiding clicking on it.

I agree the position I suggested is only a plausible assumption rather than a self-evident truth. Even so, I think it's a reasonable premise. Most people aren't going to use an ad blocker and then immediately leave your site just because of some related message, so I don't see the search engine issue as much of a danger. You might lose a few people who might have clicked on your ads if someone hostile spreads the word around, but firstly I doubt many people are really going to do that either (do you leave a web site and then immediately post on your blog/Facebook page/Twitter feed that "Site X Sucks!!!11!", really?) and secondly even if they do then I suspect the odds of converting anyone they tell who acts on that information are very low.

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

#165

Post by Nursie »

clarry wrote: post #111
Nursie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. In a browser-on-pc setting, who even cares about memory any more? We have loads of it.

If you think everyone or even most people out there want to upgrade their computers every couple years, and go for models with lots of RAM in them.. I'm sorry, you're wrong. Some geeks might have 16G or 32G but that's it. Besides, whatever happened to Web browsing being a lightweight activity accessible for everyone even on his grandma's old PC?

Even a chromebook has multiple GB of RAM now. Yes, a lightweight browser on old machines is desirable, but everything has had more than enough RAM for an extra 100MB for ABP for multiple years.

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

#166

Post by Crito »

clarry wrote: post #107
nnethercote wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people think of a browser as a tool for displaying text and pictures, with maybe a bit of JS code and some CSS effects on the side. 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. The most popular websites run quite…

> Many people think of a browser as a tool for displaying text and pictures, with maybe a bit of JS code and some CSS effects on the side. That was true in the late 90s [..] It still is for many of us who complain about browser (and web content) bloat. We are on the web for text and pictures, primarily. The things we do online hasn't changed much since the 90s. Having sophisticated multimedia capabilities is irreleva…

Exactly. What makes up the bulk of our internet browsing?

Pages like this: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ ?

Or pages like HN or wikipedia articles?

We seem to be trading resources for capabilities that we rarely leverage for any tangible benefit.

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

#167

Post by Crito »

Nursie wrote: post #165
clarry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think everyone or even most people out there want to upgrade their computers every couple years, and go for models with lots of RAM in them.. I'm sorry, you're wrong. Some geeks might have 16G or 32G but that's it. Besides, whatever happened to Web browsing being a lightweight activity accessible for everyone even on his grandma's old PC?

Even a chromebook has multiple GB of RAM now. Yes, a lightweight browser on old machines is desirable, but everything has had more than enough RAM for an extra 100MB for ABP for multiple years.

The Chromebook Pixel I'm sitting behind right now has 4GB. I find it frequently insufficient for Chromes needs. I bought it a year ago; the websites that I use give me the same sort of content that they did a year ago.

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

#168

Post by mwexler »

Ah, 3 words that always seem to show up together: firefox and memory and usage. I look forward to when I see that 4th word, "minimal", in there as well. Yes, I know original post is about an addin increasing memory usage, but I guess that doesn't surprise me anymore either, sadly, when thinking of firefox.

Even with the memory pain, I still (mostly) love FF.

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

#169

Post by peterwwillis »

riquito wrote: post #129
peterwwillis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone want to write a browser engine that skips all the modern BS and just does a good job delivering mostly-static webpages? Over 10 years ago, someone did this with Mozilla Suite. They called it "Phoenix". Some trademarking issues prompted them to rename it to "Firebird", but that name was also used by a popular database, so they finally renamed it again to "Firefox". Those who cannot remember the past are conde…

Firefox was never meant to deliver "mostly-static webpages" and "skip all the modern BS".

Okay. If you want to get technical, they ("Phoenix developers") stripped out all the unnecessary Mozilla Suite components, stripped out a ton of browser code, then added their own code. They wanted to be feature-compatible while removing bloat.

Technically it's harder to remain feature compatible if somebody ripped out the "modern BS" from the browser, because anything put into Firefox automatically becomes a de facto web standard. But they're by and large multimedia extensions which shouldn't be considered a necessary part of displaying hypertext.

I think if people want a programmable multimedia platform, that's fine, but they should build it separate from the world wide web so the rest of us can browse the New York Times without a 500MB web browser in resident memory, nor wait for the browser to stop the millions of operations it needs to reload the page due to all the ridiculous and unnecessary crap in the background.

Instead of forking the browser to strip out or redesign the unnecessary crap, i'm suggesting we take pruning shears to Firefox itself, lest we get yet another new tool that tries to replace yet another bloated, antiquated piece of crap.

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

#170

Post by gorhill »

apenney wrote: post #163
gorhill wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I doing something exceptionally wrong? I click Restore from file in scoped rules, and then decode recipe. That gets me more json on the left (in a red box, so I assume parsing failed). I then try "Import Rules" and nothing seems to happen. The commit button at the top never allows me to click, and nothing changes. This is using the abp setup (and a few of the others in stuff/), none of which worked.

"Restore" from About tab. The "Restore" in the Scoped rules tab is to import/export rules only. In the About tab, it is to restore all settings.
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