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Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

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Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#81

Post by stcredzero »

wjoe wrote: post #16
nl wrote: post #7

I switched to Firefox from Chrome about 12 months ago. It isn't as good as Chrome, but I was trying to reduce my Google dependencies. It has been mostly fine (except for an annoying OS-X multi-screen bug where it screws up the sizing). I was really looking forward to this feature to help close the gap on Chrome performance. Until August (I think Firefox 48.x), when it became unusable on any site with... something. I'…

I've found Firefox performance to be absolutely awful at work on OS X. I have no issues at all with it at home on Linux, and didn't have any issues in my previous job on OS X either. I'm not sure if it's OS X specific, a change in recent versions, this laptop being underpowered, or the nature of the work I do (a lot of video stuff), but anything JS heavy severely slows down or locks up the browser. And if anything, i…

Firebug?

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#82

Post by mintplant »

wjoe wrote: post #16
nl wrote: post #7

I switched to Firefox from Chrome about 12 months ago. It isn't as good as Chrome, but I was trying to reduce my Google dependencies. It has been mostly fine (except for an annoying OS-X multi-screen bug where it screws up the sizing). I was really looking forward to this feature to help close the gap on Chrome performance. Until August (I think Firefox 48.x), when it became unusable on any site with... something. I'…

I've found Firefox performance to be absolutely awful at work on OS X. I have no issues at all with it at home on Linux, and didn't have any issues in my previous job on OS X either. I'm not sure if it's OS X specific, a change in recent versions, this laptop being underpowered, or the nature of the work I do (a lot of video stuff), but anything JS heavy severely slows down or locks up the browser. And if anything, i…

Do you get the same problem if you temporarily disable your addons? It could be a bug in one of them rather than Firefox.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#83

Post by mintplant »

mnarayan01 wrote: post #18
nl wrote: post #7

I switched to Firefox from Chrome about 12 months ago. It isn't as good as Chrome, but I was trying to reduce my Google dependencies. It has been mostly fine (except for an annoying OS-X multi-screen bug where it screws up the sizing). I was really looking forward to this feature to help close the gap on Chrome performance. Until August (I think Firefox 48.x), when it became unusable on any site with... something. I'…

Firebug is quite often the culprit in these kinds of things in my experience. I can't live without it so I put up with it; if you're switching from Chrome however, it seems that you'd be better off just using the built-in inspection.

Have you given the built-in Firefox dev tools a try? If so, what did you feel was missing?

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#84

Post by scrollaway »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #63
scrollaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is frustratingly slow for me. I can't use it, have to stick to Chrome. Chrome which, by the way, crashes after 5 minutes of using video Hangouts and brings my 16 gigabytes ram PC to a halt when I open too many youtube tabs. But firefox scrolling is especially slow. irccloud.com is the main culprit (and I use irccloud a lot). It's pretty bad in gmail as well. The react app my team is working on is also far slo…

This is super surprising to me, because irccloud is exactly what we use at Mozilla. Everyone seems happy with it's performance, and obviously most people are using FF.

If it helps, I'm running irccloud's "Ash" theme, with the sidebar on the left, monospace font, "nicknames on a separate line", "user icons" and colored nicknames all enabled.

It's pretty bad on both Windows 10 and Arch Linux (different computers). Worse on Windows, actually, but only after some time -- I'm in ~30 channels, fwiw.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#85

Post by alyandon »

mccr8 wrote: post #78
alyandon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently at a little over 1 GB with 8 tabs open. I really wish I had the option to trade off responsiveness for memory usage by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus.

The main reason tabs aren't saved to disk isn't a concern about responsiveness, it is a concern about data loss. You have to be very sure that you restore the state exactly. What if you spent a few hours filling out some government form online, then you went and took a break by watching a few YouTube videos? Memory usage might spike up, and the browser decides to unload the tab with the form. You'd be mad if form sta…

If the feature existed and it didn't properly restore form content when I switched back to the tab then I'd call that a bug. :-D

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#86

Post by stcredzero »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #10

Its incredible multi-process took this long. Just goes to show you that your architecture decisions last a long time and are often difficult to change. Chrome had this from day one and never had a big and old codebase to worry about. Yet it took Firefox many years to get multi-process going and my understanding is that its much more limited and simpler than what Chrome or Edge do. I'm also a little surprised there ha…

> Its incredible multi-process took this long. Just goes to show you that your architecture decisions last a long time and are often difficult to change

The same happened with the original Mac OS!

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#88

Post by AstralStorm »

wongarsu wrote: post #76
azinman2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misreading things but it looks like it's been constantly getting worse since 2012?

They're getting worse at a linear pace, while hardware improves exponentially. Effectively that's a pretty good improvement each year.

Except mobile hardware which does not. Power usage is always a concern.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#89

Post by mintplant »

gnicholas wrote: post #2

Instructions for enabling this feature (via about:config) are provided in the author's prior article on the topic: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/10/mozillas-multi-process-arc...

Please be aware that if you force-enable e10s while using incompatible addons, you'll end up with a very slow browsing experience. http://arewee10syet.com/ has a compatibility list for some of the most popular addons.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#90

Post by the8472 »

wongarsu wrote: post #76
azinman2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misreading things but it looks like it's been constantly getting worse since 2012?

They're getting worse at a linear pace, while hardware improves exponentially. Effectively that's a pretty good improvement each year.

memory bandwidth matters too, not just size
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