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Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

areweslimyet.com

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Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#81

Post by jaylevitt »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #40
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that it's almost true by default . The mere fact of measuring something is often enough to drive improvements. A couple of years ago, I installed the RunKeeper app on my phone and started tracking how long it took me to walk places. Over the course of a few months, my walking speed increased from a pokey 5 km/h (3mph) to 8 km/h (5 mph). I didn't install the app with the goal of walking faster; it j…

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

Except the Hawthorne effect is poorly studied, probably doesn't exist as its own effect, and is useful only as a metaphor for this very "What we measure we can fix" effect.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#82

Post by cpeterso »

ticks wrote: post #11

I used to have loads of problems with Firefox, it was so slow... took several minutes to close, it would freeze regularly etc. I got so sick of having to clear the cache every few weeks. Then one day I noticed their hidden profile manager, created a new profile and used it instead. A few months on and everything is still working like it should. No need to clear caches, it quits within seconds, no crashes and so on. I…

Vacuuming your Firefox profile's SQLite databases can significantly improve startup time:

http://mozillalinks.org/2009/07/vacuum-your-firefox-database...

There was a bug request to auto-vacuum profiles after an upgrade, but the bug was closed as WONTFIX:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395020

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#83

Post by dthunt »

hackermom wrote: post #20
FooBarWidget wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? People are complaining all the time that programmers become lazier and lazier and make programs more and more bloated as time goes on. Writing efficient programs requires complex tricks. I can't believe someone's complaining about that now.

"Writing efficient programs requires complex tricks." Says who?

I think it's more accurate to say that writing efficient program requires some modicum of thought, foresight, or planning.

In a rush to put in new features for the past few years they've become the new Winamp of web browsers, stealing the crown from IE. In fact, I think from now on I'm going to refer to mozilla as winamp - until they fix their problems.

I'm sensitive to the challenges facing modern browsers. But this bloat isn't (in my opinion) caused by new requirements and features; it's caused by the same type of thinking that allows a dev team to think that it's OK to write programs that require multiple gigabytes of RAM to link. It should come as no surprise that the result is a program that steals half a gig of private space to display a couple static pages.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#84

Post by dclowd9901 »

dchest wrote: post #78
dclowd9901 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Windows Safari, text still sees the anti-aliased rendering that its Mac brethren enjoy in all browsers. That's what the parent is referring to.

No, the issue has nothing to do with differences between Windows and OS X rendering. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798667

I'm a bit confused; on what basis can you possibly make this assumption?

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#85

Post by joblessjunkie »

mburns wrote: post #80
joblessjunkie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do our computers have to come with 4GB+ of RAM, when 1GB might suffice? It's an circular argument to claim that it's OK to use lots of RAM simply because the computer comes with lots of RAM. After a manufacturer begrudgingly provides the RAM that developers refuse to conserve, we shouldn't then use the presence of this additional RAM to use even more. Your friend's anger at application waste is justified. Wit…

We use that memory because we do more things faster. Of course we could page to disk whenever we want to use more than 1GB of memory, or render from CPU instead of keeping uncompressed versions in memory to lower footprint... Or we could have faster computers. Consumers prefer the faster computer option.

Sure, using more RAM to make things faster is a fine thing. But I think you give developers too much credit: many apps use lots of RAM for no other reason than lack of care.

Which of course can also be to the benefit of consumers: better a RAM-hogging release today than a memory-efficient release next month (if ever).

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#86

Post by starwed »

cpeterso wrote: post #82
ticks wrote: post #11

I used to have loads of problems with Firefox, it was so slow... took several minutes to close, it would freeze regularly etc. I got so sick of having to clear the cache every few weeks. Then one day I noticed their hidden profile manager, created a new profile and used it instead. A few months on and everything is still working like it should. No need to clear caches, it quits within seconds, no crashes and so on. I…

Vacuuming your Firefox profile's SQLite databases can significantly improve startup time: http://mozillalinks.org/2009/07/vacuum-your-firefox-database... There was a bug request to auto-vacuum profiles after an upgrade, but the bug was closed as WONTFIX: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395020

If you read that bug, it was WONTFIX'd because they chose a different way of scheduling vacuums.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#87

Post by wanderr »

zxoq wrote: post #9
wanderr wrote: post #7

I'm glad they are doing this because they need to do something about memory usage, but there are some problems with this approach. -websites change over time. If a site gets redesigned, it'll throw off test results unless they're rerunning the tests on old builds too -this still doesn't capture how users actually use browsers so could miss some serious leaks. What about clicking around on the same site, opening links…

Their FAQ [1] states that they were fetched last year and stored locally for testing. So changing sites shouldn't affect the result. I presume they will switch the set of sites in a few years, statistics don't need to be over 10 years to be useful. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Buildbot/Talos#tp5

Hm, they stated that the gaps in the graphs were due to failures collecting the data for that release. To me that implied that they weren't rerunning the test on each version every time.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#88

Post by oddthink »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #84
dchest wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the issue has nothing to do with differences between Windows and OS X rendering. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798667

I'm a bit confused; on what basis can you possibly make this assumption?

I said (or tried to say) above that I was strictly talking about Firefox and Safari on OS X, not on Windows. Upon re-reading, it came out a little funny.

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#89

Post by JBiserkov »

fl3tch wrote: post #57
Mavrik wrote: post #36

I'm just hoping slimming down memory usage won't go at the expense of speed... my systems have 16GB of RAM - I want Firefox to use as much memory as possible to speed up my experience. So if slimming down FF will make my disk trash more, that's the wrong direction to take.

In an age when most computers come with 4+ GB of RAM, I think people focus too much on memory. Of course there are older computers, but their OS should be using comparably less RAM. WinXP takes up 100 MB at login, so if you only have 1 GB on an older computer, you should still have no problem running modern Firefox. And if you only have 512 MB, it's probably time to upgrade since the web experience that a modern brow…

I don't think Win7 alone can account for 2 GB at login, even with SuperFetch.

There were probably a few programs that run on startup (antivirus, IM, OEM-specific crapware if it's a laptop, "speed launchers" like adobe reader, updaters)

Re: Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

#90

Post by benatkin »

oddthink wrote: post #37
mmahemoff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: http://areweprettyyet.com/ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/AreWeFunYet http://areweplayingyet.org/ (from SoundCloud) The irony (or maybe that's the point) of using this meme is that you'll never get to the end of the rainbow. A browser's work is never done.

They still have a way to go to hit "pretty." Sadly, it's a lot harder to measure than "fast" or "slim". I wish I had the language to describe why Safari's font rendering is so much better than Firefox's; it's "visually obvious", but I just don't have the vocabulary or expertise to analyze.

They've also been going backwards, with their missing favicon icon.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/890741 http://techlogon.com/2011/11/16/website-icons-missing-after-... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702730

If they don't get this fixed I don't have much hope for them making it pretty.

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