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Multiprocess Firefox

developer.mozilla.org

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Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#21

Post by sp332 »

Caelish wrote: post #17

In between e10s, Servo, and the new developer theme in the current Nightly, I feel like Firefox is finally starting to become more competitive to other browsers again. I switched to Chrome because it seemed like Firefox was becoming more and more dated in comparison, both in terms of technology and UI. I still have some gripes with Firefox at the moment, but I'm beginning to seriously consider switching back. This is…

The nightly builds have to pass a suite of automated tests before they are published. They're not 100% stable but they're not crashy very often.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#23

Post by Excavator »

nly wrote: post #14
zapt02 wrote: post #2

Finally some movement on this! It really feels like an inferior experience in 2015 when your browser freezes from an unresponsive javascript in another tab.

Chromium circa 2008?

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‽

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#25

Post by trwired »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

The problem with e10s (Electrolysis, codename for multiprocess Firefox) is it's actually less concurrent and runs far worse than normal Firefox, at least currently. It's downright unusable.

This is the exact opposite of my experience with current nightly. The browser feels very snappy and I have yet to see memory usage climb above ~350 MB with a multitude of JavaScript heavy tabs open. (Although I don't know if e10s is directly responsible for the latter.)

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#27

Post by suprgeek »

Please please test battery life impact while implementing the Multi-process stuff.

I had to move away from Chrome just on the battery life issue. I suspect (but cannot conclusively prove) that the multi-process crap that Chrome has just drains your battery much faster. And yes I am perfectly aware of the supposed fix in Chrome for the battery killing bug.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#28

Post by sp332 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

The problem with e10s (Electrolysis, codename for multiprocess Firefox) is it's actually less concurrent and runs far worse than normal Firefox, at least currently. It's downright unusable.

Switching tabs is just awful. If one page is busy loading something, I want to switch to another tab and see what's there, but instead I get to stare at the word "Connecting..." for several seconds. I just feel like I'm waiting for the browser to catch up all the time.

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#29

Post by sp332 »

Rusky wrote: post #20
nemo1618 wrote: post #11

Interesting -- I figured a multiprocess Firefox would only arrive once Servo was finished. Or are these two projects complementary?

They're completely separate projects- Servo is run by different people and is intended more as a research project. They do overlap in that Firefox is starting to include little bits of Rust for things the the URL parser or image decoders.

Servo isn't aiming at replacing Gecko in Firefox, but it is aiming to be production-ready code. The plan is to make it embeddable like webkit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541138

Re: Multiprocess Firefox

#30

Post by yoasif_ »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #13

The multiprocess feature was one of the main reasons, I switched to Chrome in the first place. I think, it is just a good idea to keep the things separated, so one tab can not stop the whole browser. Today, the browser more and more becomes that, which was called "operating system" some years ago. Many applications today run just from the browser and instead of switching apps, you switch the tabs.... So, it is just a…

> I am not sure about the memory consumption, but since Chrome seems to have solved this topic, also Firefox should be able to, and maybe it's also time for me to switch back?

The reason I never promoted Chrome/ium to my "main" browser, instead using it sporadically whenever I decided I wanted to look at a page that use Flash is basically because Chrome is extremely RAM and CPU hungry in use cases where the number of user tabs are high (not sure what the tipping point is, but I regularly have more than 100 tabs present in my browser -- granted, not necessarily loaded).

Restoring a session with that many tabs basically disables the computer if using Chrome, necessitating a coffee break while pages load. Electrolysis in Firefox retains the lower RAM and CPU usage of the single process model, and also happens to feel much snappier day to day - I would absolutely recommend that you give the latest nightlies a shot -- or Firefox Aurora, which prompts users to turn it on: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule

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