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Firefox, Heal Thyself

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#71

Post by bzbarsky »

mikecane wrote: post #58
mccr8 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

about:memory has been gradually improved over the last two years.

Whoa. I just peeked at that and was astonished to see: ├───68.22 MB (28.62%) -- window-objects │ ├──41.12 MB (17.25%) -- top( https://twitter.com/ , id=55)/active │ │ ├──39.86 MB (16.72%) -- window( https://twitter.com/ ) │ │ │ ├──18.17 MB (07.62%) -- js │ │ │ │ ├──18.13 MB (07.61%) -- compartment( https://twitter.com/ ) Just to run Twitter uses a ton of memory?

Twitter loads a huge (several megabytes of source code, last I checked) blob of JS into every single twitter.com page. Then it loads a bunch of data, including what is basically a custom layout engine for some of their UI widgetry.

So yeah, running twitter uses a ton of memory....

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#72

Post by cpeterso »

hollerith wrote: post #48
scott_s wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather like this fact. It allows things like GMail, YouTube and the fantastic work I see on the NY Times.

I wish you could have your GMail, YouTube, etc, and I could have a way to use the internet to access a wide variety of writings without my having to deal with a system so complicated or unreliable that users are being invited to learn a new health-monitoring subsystem for it. ADDED. An argument can be made that my operating system is already a system so complicated or unreliable that it requires its own specialized h…

Is there an alternative to viewing websites in a complex, general-purpose browser other than downloading "website" apps to run locally?

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#73

Post by drill_sarge »

I recently switched from Opera to FF (beta channel) because Opera now working on webkit based browser and the current Presto-browser doesn't get any dev love beside security updates. One thing I noticed is the really slow start up time of FF and high memory consumption. Also I have the feeling it gets worse over time because when I start a new profile (even with the same addons) FF feels suddenly much more responsive, starts faster and so on. I hope this stuff can help them improve those issues.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#74

Post by anonyfuss »

thefreeman wrote: post #64
com2kid wrote: post #60

My single largest issue with Firefox stability is constantly running into the 32bit memory barrier. Either split tabs out into multiple processes, or enable 64bit support already. My browser crashes on average twice a day due to running out of memory and FF just giving up. It doesn't even crash gracefully, it just up and quits. (I frequently have ~100 tabs open, and I am quite thankful that Firefox lets me search acr…

I really can't understand how many people consistently talk about having hundreds of tabs open. What are you so afraid of closing a website for? If it's that important, you will remember to go back to it later. Usually, it's not. Once I get to 10 or 15 tabs I usually end up closing all but one or two just to stay focused.

I organize projects on multiple virtual desktops -- I usually have 3-5 personal software/electronic projects going at a time, and I switch between them throughout the week depending on what I feel like focusing on. Add to that 1-2 work work projects, and I'll have between 4-7 activate project desktops at any time.

I do most of my project research and documentation lookup in the browser, which means I might have anywhere from 10-30 tabs of pertinent information corresponding to each project on each virtual desktop, across multiple browser windows.

This is just convenient for me; I never have to swap in application/desktop state, because all my information, files, IDEs, etc are right there, exactly the way that I left them.

That comes out to 210 tabs at the absolute maximum; right now I seem to have around 100 Chrome tab process running. Fortunately, RAM is cheap these days.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#75

Post by com2kid »

cpeterso wrote: post #70
com2kid wrote: post #60

My single largest issue with Firefox stability is constantly running into the 32bit memory barrier. Either split tabs out into multiple processes, or enable 64bit support already. My browser crashes on average twice a day due to running out of memory and FF just giving up. It doesn't even crash gracefully, it just up and quits. (I frequently have ~100 tabs open, and I am quite thankful that Firefox lets me search acr…

I work at Mozilla and many developers here are 100+ tab users, too. So the use case you describe is not a low priority. Do you have any Firefox add-ons installed? If you have the patience to identify a misbehaving add-on (by bisecting the add-ons you are running), Mozilla might be able to address the problem in the browser or reach out to the add-on developer.

My issue is, FF climbs up to 2.5GB of memory usage, then it dies. 100% repro.

My only add-ons are AB+, Reddit Enhancement Suite, and No Redirect. I am 99% sure this was happening before Noredirect, but I'll try disabling that as well. (Super useful though, wow!)

(GreaseMonkey is also installed, but I don't have any scripts loaded in it, disabling it anyway)

Of course if you run into the 32bit memory limit, I don't know if there is much FF can do about it! Right now I am at ~1,5800MB.

Actually this is sort of amusing, the memory usage counts up to 1590, then drops down to 1570, then counts up to 1591, drops to 1571, counts to 1592, drops to 1572, I am watching some stupid web app leak memory in real time.

(Maxed out at 1588 when I started typing, now maxing out at 1606, heh)

All of this is as reported in Windows Task Manager so numbers are wildly inaccurate I assume, still funny. (About:memory is showing the same thing happening!)

Ah the wonders of crappy JS programmers.

Edit: Haven't changed any websites or loaded any new tabs, now it is cycling up to 1630MB. :P

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#76

Post by dredmorbius »

reubenmorais wrote: post #62
dredmorbius wrote: post #61

My observations, using both Firefox (well, Iceweasel 20.0-1~bpo60+1), and Chrome (Chromium 26.0.1410.43-1). In many ways, I prefer Firefox as a browser (better plugins, controls, tabs, too much Google influence already). My Firefox experience is getting to the point it's virtually unusable, with very, very slow response to any actions (especially new tab / new window functions). We're talking about many seconds, some…

Re. Firefox: 1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558882 2. This is being worked on. Gecko is a very old and complex codebase, and doing that without breaking every existing addon is hard . > You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time. > Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and r…

Appreciate the response and links. Nice to see there's some work on this.

Re: #675539 I'd make unload happen _far_ faster. Within a few minutes, most likely, subject to some user testing to see what impacts/effects are shown. Rather than time the unload, I'd suggest limiting use to some number of active tabs (plus "pinned" tabs). Once that limit is exceeded, start unloading.

Resizable windows: the "Bookmark this link" dialog.

The history information isn't associated with bookmarks, and isn't presented with them. And while we're talking about history: Vimperators 'u' "un-close tab" feature is absolutely golden.

The bookmarks download feature is more a "sync", but _not_ to some named web service. I've always distrusted features such as this, especially where the mechanism isn't documented. Could just be me not knowing now the feature works.

Firefox is not library management software Honestly: I'm starting to think it should be. Or that if I found something that was it would replace FF for me (Chrome + Readability largely is given lists, tags, and responsiveness).

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#77

Post by rangibaby »

dredmorbius wrote: post #76
reubenmorais wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. Firefox: 1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558882 2. This is being worked on. Gecko is a very old and complex codebase, and doing that without breaking every existing addon is hard . > You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time. > Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and r…

Appreciate the response and links. Nice to see there's some work on this. Re: #675539 I'd make unload happen _far_ faster. Within a few minutes, most likely, subject to some user testing to see what impacts/effects are shown. Rather than time the unload, I'd suggest limiting use to some number of active tabs (plus "pinned" tabs). Once that limit is exceeded, start unloading. Resizable windows: the "Bookmark this link…

Re: un-closing tabs, right click on your tab bar choose it from there.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#78

Post by hollerith »

cpeterso wrote: post #72
hollerith wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you could have your GMail, YouTube, etc, and I could have a way to use the internet to access a wide variety of writings without my having to deal with a system so complicated or unreliable that users are being invited to learn a new health-monitoring subsystem for it. ADDED. An argument can be made that my operating system is already a system so complicated or unreliable that it requires its own specialized h…

Is there an alternative to viewing websites in a complex, general-purpose browser other than downloading "website" apps to run locally?

The original "value proposition" of the WWW -- the thing that made the first 100 million users install a web browser -- was the ability to publish and consume text, images and links. Since then of course the web has become an "application-delivery platform" while remaining the most important and popular way to publish text, images and links on internet.

Although I freely concede that making it into an application-delivery platform had large benefits, it also had the adverse effect of making its use for its original purpose more confusing, more frustrating, more tedious, less secure and less reliable, which is a thing to be regretted because there is much utility and promise in its original purpose of giving people a convenient and inexpensive way to publish and consume text, images and links on the internet.

I wish the people who wanted a platform on which to deliver applications over the internet -- a platform neither owned or controlled by any single corporation, which I freely admit was a worthy goal -- had found some other way to get their wish without making so many headaches for the people whose goal is to use the internet to publish or consume text, images and links.

Although it is nice that this second set of people have the opportunity to learn this new health-monitoring subsystem of Firefox, it would have been even better if the software for viewing text and images and for following links were uncomplicated and reliable enough to make a new health-monitoring subsystem unnecessary.

So, to answer your question directly, yes, there is an alternative to viewing websites in a complex, general-purpose browser other than downloading "website" apps to run locally. Namely, it is the alternative that existed in 1994 when web pages were not executable programs. Their being "just plain documents" rather than executable programs drastically limited the kinds of things that could go wrong. Another alternative would to persuade the online publishers of 2013 to move to a new system that does not double as an application-delivery platform and consequently does not suffer the reliability and other problems that the web has. (Yes, I know that is very unlikely to happen.)

May I suggest that if you want to continue this conversation, you switch it to email? My address is in my profile.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#79

Post by yogo »

mikecane wrote: post #58
mccr8 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

about:memory has been gradually improved over the last two years.

Whoa. I just peeked at that and was astonished to see: ├───68.22 MB (28.62%) -- window-objects │ ├──41.12 MB (17.25%) -- top( https://twitter.com/ , id=55)/active │ │ ├──39.86 MB (16.72%) -- window( https://twitter.com/ ) │ │ │ ├──18.17 MB (07.62%) -- js │ │ │ │ ├──18.13 MB (07.61%) -- compartment( https://twitter.com/ ) Just to run Twitter uses a ton of memory?

~100MB for gmail.

Re: Firefox, Heal Thyself

#80

Post by epsylon »

com2kid wrote: post #75
cpeterso wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Mozilla and many developers here are 100+ tab users, too. So the use case you describe is not a low priority. Do you have any Firefox add-ons installed? If you have the patience to identify a misbehaving add-on (by bisecting the add-ons you are running), Mozilla might be able to address the problem in the browser or reach out to the add-on developer.

My issue is, FF climbs up to 2.5GB of memory usage, then it dies. 100% repro. My only add-ons are AB+, Reddit Enhancement Suite, and No Redirect. I am 99% sure this was happening before Noredirect, but I'll try disabling that as well. (Super useful though, wow!) (GreaseMonkey is also installed, but I don't have any scripts loaded in it, disabling it anyway) Of course if you run into the 32bit memory limit, I don't kn…

The performance of Firefox on Reddit is absolutely terrible. It regularly freezes my machine, at which point I do a global FF exit and restart / restore session so that it puts some tabs on "lazy load" state.
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