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Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

extremetech.com

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Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#251

Post by krylon »

MicroBerto wrote: post #20

People aren't using Adblock to conserve resources. They're using it to block ads and most are willing to take a performance hit to do so.

I so agree! I have been annoyed at Firefox's resource hunger for a couple of years, now, and I have been aware of ABP being a major factor in that, too, but all in all, I think it is still worth it.

It is a sad reflection on the state of advertisement, but lacking any viable alternatives, using an adblocker (and NoScript) is pretty much non-negotiable to me. I am always apalled when I have to use a browser without an ad blocker installed.

It is not that I mind the ads in general, but too often, they are seriously distracting, and advertisers seem happy to go totally overboard. Imagine walking down the street and looking at blinking, flashing billboards. Imagine turning on your car and being greeted by an ad before the engine actually gets going. If ads outside the Internet were as annoying as they are online, we probably would have riots. (And that is ignoring the malware.)

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#252

Post by otis_inf »

njloof wrote: post #119
MicroBerto wrote: post #20

People aren't using Adblock to conserve resources. They're using it to block ads and most are willing to take a performance hit to do so.

That's not why I started using Adblock. I started because the web became unusable on an older machine (5 years). The content wasn't any more sophisticated but it soaked up all the resources (CPU, RAM etc.) available. Imagine if you had a PDF reader that ran at 100% CPU and swapped all the time!

I have an atom dual core small PC connected to my TV (it runs windows 7, yeah I know) and it's 'ok-ish' with performance, but starting a browser is a tad slow (chrome) and adblock makes it even slower as it's a plugin which is particularly slow to start. So I don't think blocking ads for performance reasons on slow machines is still cutting it if you take into account the performance penalty of abp.

All things considered however, it's IMHO a small price to pay for having the freedom to decide which content is fetched during page rendering and thus which services won't know whether you're visiting a certain webpage.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#253

Post by zem »

vacri wrote: post #22
neals wrote: post #14

I used to not do Adblock, because you know, ads make the internet go round and all that. But with the "download here"-button ads, there is no way to know what button to press anymore. Now installing Adblock is a requirement.

Flashblock is my middleground. The advertisers can have images, but the worst offenders are the Flash ads, and they get blocked.

fixes facebook's attempts to autoplay videos too

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#254

Post by pjlegato »

gorhill wrote: post #67
ddorian43 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it probably needs a better way to whitelist sites/pages

I frankly don't know how to improve on clicking the big fat green button in the popup to whitelist a site (Ctrl-click for a specific page).

It's not at all obvious what that button does. The icon is typically associated with "power on/off." While I can see how this is supposed to suggest whitelisting in an abstract and metaphoric sense, making that connection is a bit of a stretch, particularly for casual users.

I suggest removing the icon and just putting a plain old checkbox with a label that says "Whitelist Site".

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#255

Post by tim333 »

logn wrote: post #167
shpx wrote: post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

In some tests, uBlock results in the browser using less memory than with no plugins: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc... n.b. Firefox results from experimental patch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509

That was my experience. My usage for four pages was about 80M with uBlock, 120M with AdBlock Pro and 200M with nothing. Pages also took like 1s to load with the blockers and 12s without because of all the ad junk loading. (with Chrome)

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#256

Post by r0s »

neals wrote: post #14

I used to not do Adblock, because you know, ads make the internet go round and all that. But with the "download here"-button ads, there is no way to know what button to press anymore. Now installing Adblock is a requirement.

I barely use it myself, but for friends and family who need tech support I always install it. It reduces so much risk.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#257

Post by tokenizerrr »

seoguru wrote: post #240

handy trick: install "incognito this tab" https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/incognito-this-tab... if adblocker is interfering with page, right mouse click and bring up tab in incognito mode (which doesn't load extensions unless specified).

Or you just whitelist the site through the adblock menu and enable adblock for incognito as well. Most sites I tend to visit through incognito are somewhat ad-heavy, and I'd rather still block them there.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#258

Post by codexon »

shpx wrote: post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

I find ublock breaks many more websites than ABP.

I usually wouldn't notice a broken website with ABP, but with ublock I see something wrong at least once a week.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#259

Post by joeyyang »

I was recently having a ton of memory issues with Chrome without Adblock installed -- turns out a lot of Chrome extensions are memory hogs.

A quick `ps aux` will let you see what extensions are the worst offenders; clearing out a bunch of unused extensions helped restore my computer back to normal.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#260

Post by hayksaakian »

krylon wrote: post #251
MicroBerto wrote: post #20

People aren't using Adblock to conserve resources. They're using it to block ads and most are willing to take a performance hit to do so.

I so agree! I have been annoyed at Firefox's resource hunger for a couple of years, now, and I have been aware of ABP being a major factor in that, too, but all in all, I think it is still worth it. It is a sad reflection on the state of advertisement, but lacking any viable alternatives, using an adblocker (and NoScript) is pretty much non-negotiable to me. I am always apalled when I have to use a browser without an…

i've found just ghostery with the ad blocking lists is just as good at blocking ads, while being faster.
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