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AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

blog.mozilla.org

31–40 of 270 posts

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

#31
> Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads.

Well, for me the whole point of blocking ads is because they are often big flash things that hog cpu and memory. If ABP is no better, then most of the reason is gone. I'd actually like to view ads to support more sites.

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

#32
post #4

I'm surprised AdBlock is so popular. I tried it a few years ago and noticed the sluggishness immediately. I know it's not a feasible alternative in everyone's opinion, but if you're running a low end machine and want to block the most pernicious ads (flash, multiple external javascript, etc.) then Firefox + NoScript is the way to go.

The killer feature of ABP is: no Youtube ads. Is there any other way to achieve that?

`/etc/hosts`-blocking the ads works fine for youtube. See the list at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/

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

#33
post #4

I'm surprised AdBlock is so popular. I tried it a few years ago and noticed the sluggishness immediately. I know it's not a feasible alternative in everyone's opinion, but if you're running a low end machine and want to block the most pernicious ads (flash, multiple external javascript, etc.) then Firefox + NoScript is the way to go.

The killer feature of ABP is: no Youtube ads. Is there any other way to achieve that?

ClickToFlash: http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/

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

#34
post #3

The first thing people complain about with browsers is probably memory usage. I doubt that many people actually understand what a browser actually does with that memory. I sure don't. 100mb sounds like a lot of memory for a webpage. Where does all this memory go to?

This the is most cogent breakdown of what really happens in a browser. http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers...

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

#35

I would recommend Privoxy rather than adblock. I chose it because it can be used with any browser rather than needing to be a plugin and have had great results with it. As a bonus I have it running on a virtual server and use an ssh tunnel on any system I end up using. This gets me round filters and installing things other than ssh. So if I am using my Android phone on free wifi, I know I'm not being dns hijacked or…

I tried switching to Privoxy the other day. You have to manually convert AdBlock lists to their configuration format, so it's less convenient. On top of that, some sites no longer worked and browsing generally felt slower. I think in the end doing the filtering in a native (C) program is the way to go, but right now it's not comparable to how hassle-free ABP is.

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

#36
post #31

> Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads. Well, for me the whole point of blocking ads is because they are often big flash things that hog cpu and memory. If ABP is no better, then most of the reason is gone. I'd actually like to view ads to support more sites.

You do save some memory and CPU usage, but it appears that the cost is usually higher.

You can disable ABP on particular sites. I was going to suggest doing that for sites you frequently visit that don't have ads... but I just did some quick testing and it doesn't seem to change the memory usage at all.

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

#37
post #26
post #3

The first thing people complain about with browsers is probably memory usage. I doubt that many people actually understand what a browser actually does with that memory. I sure don't. 100mb sounds like a lot of memory for a webpage. Where does all this memory go to?

"The first thing people complain about with browsers is ..." They changed the browser UI, either the browser devs or the site devs via stupid javascript tricks (messing with scrolling, etc). I got driveby download powned and my CC info stolen and five spam toolbars in the UI I can't get rid of. There are too many spammy ads. They make is as hard as humanly possible to use bookmarks to encourage the use of a search en…

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

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

#38
post #20

It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it…

httpswitchboard looks like a very interesting extension. I haven't payed attention to what's happening with Chrome the last couple of years, but does this mean that you can finally genuinely block requests with Chrome extensions (something that has long been a problem with Chrome's Adblock extensions)?

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

#39
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The first thing people complain about with browsers is ..." They changed the browser UI, either the browser devs or the site devs via stupid javascript tricks (messing with scrolling, etc). I got driveby download powned and my CC info stolen and five spam toolbars in the UI I can't get rid of. There are too many spammy ads. They make is as hard as humanly possible to use bookmarks to encourage the use of a search en…

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

And who would want to use a browser anywhere other than a PC, right?

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

#40
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.

And who would want to use a browser anywhere other than a PC, right?

We appear to be talking about ABP on desktop firefox, no?
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