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Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

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Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#231

Post by eloisius »

yunohn wrote: post #199
eloisius wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s usually crappy though, like the URL and the history don’t accurate recreate the state of the app on refresh at all, or the history gets so clogged with every mutation of app state that the back button is effectively useless.

Again, that’s a development shortcoming, not a technical limitation. All of your concerns can show up in non-SPAs too.

Yes, I know in some theoretical scenario where the developers do everything exactly right none of these problems would exist. My argument is not that it's intrinsic to the technology, my argument is that my _experience_ is that the vast majority of (needless) SPAs are like this. Whether it's because frontend developers get all hot to re-implement standard browser features themself using redux, because the tooling is bad, or what, I can't tell you.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#232

Post by [deleted] »

favorited wrote: post #17

Something surprising I learned recently is that this is an anti-pattern when building an iOS app. iOS has a memory compressor, so if you try to purge resources in a low-memory situation, it can cause memory use to spike as the things you're trying to free get decompressed. The SDK provides a notification when memory pressure is high, so people try to get aggressive and purge their caches and unused assets when that n…

[deleted]

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#233

Post by ajot »

nieve wrote: post #178
ajot wrote: post #175

So, if I want to disable this, I should set a big number to the browser.low_commit_space_threshold_mb pref in about:config, right? I just don't get why this would be useful. When I start Firefox, inactive tabs aren't loaded until I click on them. If something is eating RAM, I can close that tab or close Firefox, and very rarely Firefox would crash. Why would someone like me, that doesn't suspend/hybernate their compu…

This is intended for when the alternative is the browser crashing or worse the OS locking up. Your browser exiting unloads _every_ tab.

I get this, but I prefer this tradeoff instead of the browser unloading something I wanted to keep loaded.

When I start Firefox, most tabs (4 or 5 nowadays) won't load, but be there as placeholders for things I need/want to solve through the week (e.g., Amazon search for a gift for my nephew, Youtube list of tutorials). They won't load until I'm ready to use those tabs.

On the other hand, I've had tabs loaded from the start of one session and used sparsely through the day. I would not want those tabs to be unloaded without my consent, even if they are memory hogs, as it would interrupt my workflow. Crashing is fine (and accepted as a last moment failsafe move) by me.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#234

Post by kasabali »

favorited wrote: post #45
bombcar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they need a "free without uncompressing" feature.

I think the issue would be that the compressor works on whole memory pages (I assume), so you'd need to know that the whole page could be freed. There might be kernel VM functions to handle that functionality manually, like if you were building a zone allocator or something?

Doesn't good old uncompressed swap partition also have the same problem? Page is swapped out but it has to be paged in before the process owning it can evaluate what's where and release the junk?

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#235

Post by Luc »

MrDresden wrote: post #230
Luc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1404 tabs open here. Tab bar is indeed messy, I use Tree Style Tab in the side bar. And dozens of categorized windows, each with a name. I don't need an alternative or better way. It works great and I hope this use case remains supported.

I'd be fascinated to hear how it works in practice to have that many tabs active? Are you able to digest them in any reasonable fashion or even find content later on when you need it? I can't relate to that amount of tabs, but do have an upper limit of around 100 at which time I start actively trimming them down (either dismiss as having lost importance, digest or bookmark for later digestion). My bookmarks steadily…

I find it much easier to use than bookmarks. It's a great for research, when you have disparate bits of information spread out over dozens of sources. I close tabs as they become irrelevant. A window may have a lifetime of a few days to about a year. When I'm done I save its state using Tab Session Manager. By that time it's a 'best of' on that subject.

I also used 'New Tab Suspender' and 'Total Suspender' add-ons for a while in an attempt to reduce memory usage, but stopped due to Firefox crashes I assumed were caused by them.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#236

Post by exikyut »

MrDresden wrote: post #230
Luc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1404 tabs open here. Tab bar is indeed messy, I use Tree Style Tab in the side bar. And dozens of categorized windows, each with a name. I don't need an alternative or better way. It works great and I hope this use case remains supported.

I'd be fascinated to hear how it works in practice to have that many tabs active? Are you able to digest them in any reasonable fashion or even find content later on when you need it? I can't relate to that amount of tabs, but do have an upper limit of around 100 at which time I start actively trimming them down (either dismiss as having lost importance, digest or bookmark for later digestion). My bookmarks steadily…

You had me at "My bookmarks are ... tabbed".

Please tell me I'm missing something and that there's a way to do this in Chrome so I can access the tags on my phone????

I have about 30,000 unsorted bookmarks.

Yes.

Because I need tagging.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#237

Post by kilroy123 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #171

1. Just. Fucking. Unload. The. Tab. Already. I keep tabs around for context and reference. Lots of them. [1] 2. Preserve. User. State. I don't want the page to reload. I want what had been there to be restored. Page position, content, any inputs or adjustments I'd made. Not updated data, but previous state. 3. Do. Not. Lose. My. Shit. I can accomplish this far better myself than you will ever have need to do. 4. Any…

Holy hell, I thought I was bad for hitting 200-300.

I didn't even know this was possible.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#238

Post by KarlKemp »

eloisius wrote: post #188
yunohn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SPAs can easily handle routing via the history API, the problem is that companies haven’t migrated correctly.

It’s usually crappy though, like the URL and the history don’t accurate recreate the state of the app on refresh at all, or the history gets so clogged with every mutation of app state that the back button is effectively useless.

Twitter does it rather well, and that’s a site where it’s difficult and matters.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#239

Post by skinkestek »

agent327 wrote: post #209
masklinn wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly lots of modern sites break it completely. I regularly have issues getting back to HN threads from websites, usually I end up at the HN home instead. Quite frustrating.

This should help, if it ever gets implemented: https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/728459

Nice idea.

Again something that used to work in Firefox.

FWIW: I use Tree Style Tabs (or Sideberry) to see why I arrived at a page. Not exactly the thing specified here but it works today.

Re: Tab Unloading in Firefox 93

#240

Post by dbbk »

nunodonato wrote: post #216
dredmorbius wrote: post #171

1. Just. Fucking. Unload. The. Tab. Already. I keep tabs around for context and reference. Lots of them. [1] 2. Preserve. User. State. I don't want the page to reload. I want what had been there to be restored. Page position, content, any inputs or adjustments I'd made. Not updated data, but previous state. 3. Do. Not. Lose. My. Shit. I can accomplish this far better myself than you will ever have need to do. 4. Any…

I can never understand people that have more than 10 tabs open :P When I reach that number I start closing. Seems to me just a waste of space and the whole tab bar is useless and messy (yes, I know about tab extensions). People should really get back to bookmarks, thats what they are for. Besides my usual bookmark folders, I have folders to hold temporary bookmarks (ToRead, ResearchSupport, etc...). These I know I wi…

I'm constantly hovering around 100. If you're a developer this is very easy to achieve, as you quickly have to go down rabbit holes of documentation and exploration. Then you have tabs of your app itself, and potentially other things like Figma designs, JIRA ticket, etc.
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