I can't believe I just got called a "mom and pop beige-box surfer"...
768MB here, any help apps can give in keeping themselves lean is good.
Same here, 768Mb RAM on a 7-year-old Thinkpad X40 (only 3 pounds with a 12" screen).
Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#22PLEASE can we not start posting every vapourware announcement from Google and Mozilla now that they are doing browser releases every few weeks? This sort of change might be interesting if it was actually available in a production build today, as the title half-suggests it is unless you know that Firefox 7 is still months away. Do we really want the HN home page to become a stream of dev feature announcements, though?…
Totally agree with you but this particular one isn't vaporware https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666058#c31
IMHO, it's vapourware until it's shipped. The software world is full of projects, large and small, that were definitely going to be in the next release for sure, except when they weren't. If you've got release cycles that short, nothing is certain until real people can use it.
In any case, whatever we call as-yet-unreleased features, my views on turning HN into a running commentary on the dev process for submitters' pet projects stand.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#23They should have been working on these issues a long time ago. I think they are far more important than many of the new features that came with v5. The only thing holding many of us back from using FF is the memory issue. Good thing the FB debugger is so awesome, because that's the only thing that keeps bringing me back at this point.
So true. Getting the speed up again is a major feature, it can't be delayed so long. FF4 already disappointed a lot in actually working a lot slower (on my machines, at least). So slow that I had to switch to Chrome, actually.
I didn't know what went wrong in their meetings, but not focusing on speed definitely was one of the worst decisions, they could have made. I hope they don't continue making big mistakes like that.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree with you but this particular one isn't vaporware https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666058#c31
IMHO, it's vapourware until it's shipped. The software world is full of projects, large and small, that were definitely going to be in the next release for sure, except when they weren't. If you've got release cycles that short, nothing is certain until real people can use it. In any case, whatever we call as-yet-unreleased features, my views on turning HN into a running commentary on the dev process for submitters'…
It'll ship in the nightly tomorrow... I guess Real People will be able to use it then.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#25" As we all know, Chrome isn’t actually a whole lot faster than Firefox, it just feels snappier — something Mozilla no doubt wants to emulate." I'm glad they're focusing on memory. Better late than never but I see frequent claims similar to these that Chrome isn't that much better or might have a slight advantage which we will catch up soon, blah blah blah. C'mon guys. When's the last time Firefox put Chrome on the o…
"C'mon guys. When's the last time Firefox put Chrome on the offensive."
Panorama and GPU acceleration for Firefox 4 come to mind.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#26While the improvements they're promising are certainly a Good Thing, one bit jumps out at me:
"introduced a significantly improved about:memory page with buttons that can manually trigger garbage collection (GC) and cycle collection (CC)... hitting these buttons repeatedly — or by hitting “Minimize memory usage”, which triggers both processes three times in a row — you can reduce Firefox 6′s memory footprint significantly."
Really? Really, guys? That is a wincingly strong code smell. Why is it necessary to press the button more than once? Why is it necessary to press the button at all? I appreciate that it's hard to get all of this working correctly, but that's a clunker of a design - it tells me that this feature does not actually work, but instead kinda-sorta-maybe works. Something like that should, pardon the cliché, Just Work - it is way out of the scope of things you should have to care about while browsing.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#27While the improvements they're promising are certainly a Good Thing, one bit jumps out at me: "introduced a significantly improved about:memory page with buttons that can manually trigger garbage collection (GC) and cycle collection (CC)... hitting these buttons repeatedly — or by hitting “Minimize memory usage”, which triggers both processes three times in a row — you can reduce Firefox 6′s memory footprint signific…
I think these buttons are intended for debugging. Normal users don't hang around about:memory. (This area isn't exposed in the UI anywhere.)
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, it's vapourware until it's shipped. The software world is full of projects, large and small, that were definitely going to be in the next release for sure, except when they weren't. If you've got release cycles that short, nothing is certain until real people can use it. In any case, whatever we call as-yet-unreleased features, my views on turning HN into a running commentary on the dev process for submitters'…
It'll ship in the nightly tomorrow... I guess Real People will be able to use it then.
And how many real people are going to switch browsers from whatever they're using now to Firefox nightlies because of some fixes to stuff that isn't broken on most other browsers anyway? If the answer is not "lots", why is this on HN today?
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll ship in the nightly tomorrow... I guess Real People will be able to use it then.
And how many real people are going to switch browsers from whatever they're using now to Firefox nightlies because of some fixes to stuff that isn't broken on most other browsers anyway? If the answer is not "lots", why is this on HN today?
The point is that... the patch is already in the nightly builds, and thus will certainly make it into beta and release builds (even if it requires additional patches on top). So your objection to this being vaporware is simply ridiculous.
Re: Fixes to memory footprint and garbage collection arrive in Firefox 7
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how many real people are going to switch browsers from whatever they're using now to Firefox nightlies because of some fixes to stuff that isn't broken on most other browsers anyway? If the answer is not "lots", why is this on HN today?
The point is that... the patch is already in the nightly builds, and thus will certainly make it into beta and release builds (even if it requires additional patches on top). So your objection to this being vaporware is simply ridiculous.
Right there, in the very first sentence of the article we're discussing, there's a reference to the channel switcher, which was pulled at the last minute from Firefox 5 having been in the dev builds for a while.
Moreover, as I mentioned before, the software world is full of examples of this on all scales. Windows Vista lost most of its headline features before it finally shipped, after months of building up expectations by Microsoft. No project is magically immune to this possibility.
Your claim about the certainty of shipping something because a test version was integrated into a dev build is simply wrong, and that is why I use terms like "vapourware" and why I think this sort of discussion is premature for HN.
Anyway, enough of the meta.