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A comment on Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory . Parent comment

Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by jmillikin on Thursday August 11, 2011 @11:16AM (#2873215) 

  > I like FF. I use it. But every time there's some comment
  > about FF memory, we usually see a bunch of people coming
  > out saying they never see FF memory issues, the OP must be
  > doing something wrong or have a bad system, they use their
  > computer non-stop for 4 years without ever even seeing FF
  > slow down, etc.
That's because complaints about large memory use in Firefox fall into two camps, generally:

1. "I left Firefox on overnight with three tabs open, and now it's using 3.1 GiB of memory. This browser is terrible! Yes, I do have dozens of low-quality extensions installed, so?"

2. "I started Firefox, and already it's using over 300 MiB! That's insane! Why would a web browser ever use that much? I'm switching to Chrome, it only uses 100 MiB. What do you mean, 'multiple processes'?"

There may in fact be genuine issues buried somewhere in the discussion, but they're hard to discern against the general background noise.

  > Then endless discussion about "how can you even function
  > having more than 2 tabs open? I always close all mine
  > because of some cognition study from 1974 which I read in
  > my one open tab, then closed it".
You're getting confused between Firefox and Chrome. Firefox has always been the browser of choice for the "tons of tabs" crowd, because Chrome's process-per-tab model breaks down when there's more than a few dozen open.

For example, I have just over 70 tabs open right now, Firefox has been running for about a month, and it's at 1.1 GiB resident memory. Chrome becomes very unhappy under such circumstances (since it uses about ~100 MiB per tab), so I'm careful to only open a few tabs at a time.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by crikli on Thursday August 11, 2011 @11:49AM (#2873358)
> I have just over 70 tabs open...

I'm really curious about this as once I get to about 10 tabs my brain starts wanting to close them to get back to something it can manage. This is either because I'm dumb (highly likely) or because you have a different usage style than I (also likely).

So if you don't mind elaborating, how do you get to where you have that many tabs open?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by kodablah on Thursday August 11, 2011 @12:56PM (#2873709)
Tree style tabs[1] have changed my life. There are plenty of times I get near 100 tabs. It automatically opens them as subtabs when ctrl or middle clicked. This is great when browsing source trees online via github, google code, etc.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by erikcw on Thursday August 11, 2011 @05:36PM (#2874928)
I combine "Tree Style Tabs" with the Tab Group[1] feature (added in FF4 I believe) instead of using a separate window for each class of tabs that I'm viewing. Those 2 combined with the "Pin as App Tab" option for Gmail and a couple of my control panels makes for a pretty efficient setup usability wise.

I really would love to see memory efficiency improve. I restarted FF yesterday and I'm already at 2.22 GB. It would be great to be able to set a ceiling on the amount of RAM FF is able to get its greedy little hands on. My iMac has 16GB, and I've seen FF reach half of that before when running a big Flash based web app with a hundred or so other tabs open. My little MacBook Air only has 4GB, so being able to tell FF to grab no more than 1GB or so would be fantastic!

[1] http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-are-tab-groups

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by Klinky on Thursday August 11, 2011 @03:11PM (#2874295)
Vertical tab management is far superior when managing a bunch of tabs. I am not sure how anyone who has more than a handful of tabs can get by horizontally, not sure how people can tell tabs apart when only seeing the favicon & a few characters of the title. What with widescreen displays being the norm now it just makes sense to do vertical tabs.
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by sbierwagen on Thursday August 11, 2011 @06:34PM (#2875112)
I use a 1920x1200 monitor rotated 90 degrees. So, while it is technically a widescreen display, it doesn't quite work like one.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by lukeschlather on Thursday August 11, 2011 @11:58AM (#2873405)
I've got six virtual desktops with two monitors. When I'm doing web development, I have one window per screen, which usually means one window of tabs connected to my dev server, and one window of tabs for each framework/language I'm working with. For example, I was working on a WordPress plugin with JQuery, so I had a dozen tabs open on the WordPress function reference, and another dozen tabs open with JQuery stuff. Then I've got a virtual desktop with my email on one screen and Hacker News, etc. on the other one.

Finally I have two blank desktops that tend to get eaten up by tabs that I use when people come into my office asking questions that I don't know the precise answer to off the top of my head.

But yes, on a single desktop about 12 tabs is my limit. And when I get over 4 full browser windows I start to get antsy and know that I can't possibly keep focused on everything I'm doing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by MatthewPhillips on Thursday August 11, 2011 @12:18PM (#2873499)
> Finally I have two blank desktops that tend to get eaten up by tabs that I use when people come into my office asking questions that I don't know the precise answer to off the top of my head.

Why do you keep the tabs open after you've answered their question?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by lukeschlather on Thursday August 11, 2011 @01:50PM (#2873950)
I'm in a remote area with limited Internet - 364 kbps down 128 kbps up shared among 20-30 office workers and over 100 residents. My computer can handle keeping tabs open in case I didn't properly solve the problem before, or if something similar crops up.

So, I have a lot of reference materials open on my desk, and I keep them open because finding the page I was on takes a long time, and loading that page takes even longer.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by jamesgeck0 on Thursday August 11, 2011 @03:42PM (#2874416)
I've used Firefox under similar conditions.

Some people might not know that it actually includes a feature specifically for this use case. If you start to type in a URL or page name similar to one already open in a tab, the awesomebar dropdown menu lets you jump to the already-opened tab.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by lukeschlather on Thursday August 11, 2011 @08:12PM (#2875392)
That feature is actually broken on Ubuntu 10.10 / standard Gnome with multiple desktops - it tries to switch you to the appropriate tab but can't switch you to the appropriate desktop.

And I'm not sure I really like it anyway - when I re-type a URL I'm usually looking to reload it to grab a fresh copy. I tab-complete the address of my development server and Hacker News very often; anything else I don't usually know the URL off the top of my head, I just remember that I have such and such doc on such and such desktop.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by nfm on Thursday August 11, 2011 @07:12PM (#2875243)
You can also prefix your URL/page title search string with '% ' to exclusively search open tabs :)

eg: % Firefox 7 memory

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by simcop2387 on Thursday August 11, 2011 @07:37PM (#2875318)
Happen to know where you can find out shortcuts like those? I had no idea it was there.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by dailycavalier on Friday August 12, 2011 @01:49AM (#2876146)
http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/firefox-keyboard-...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by coob on Thursday August 11, 2011 @08:49PM (#2875493)
HTTP Proxy?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by lukeschlather on Friday August 12, 2011 @12:49AM (#2876019)
It's on my to-do list. (After implementing a disaster recovery plan, cleaning up after an intrusion, and a half a dozen more important things.)

Meantime being careful about what I close does a decent job, and I don't have to maintain a proxy server.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by huhtenberg on Thursday August 11, 2011 @01:25PM (#2873832)
Hint: use multiple windows.

One window with few tabs is for programming to-reads, second windows - with sites from searching for some item to buy, third - with stock information, etc. This way accumulating 100+ tabs is really not a big deal and it still remains manageable. Until FF crashes or, worse yet, grinds to a halt that is. "We are sorry, it is so embarrasing" it would say on a restart and then get herniated again trying to open all these tabs AT ONCE. Poor thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by polshaw on Thursday August 11, 2011 @01:42PM (#2873910)
I am a tab hoarder also but personally i'm quite impressed at the speed and responsiveness of FF when restarting with 100-or-so tabs.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by hollerith on Thursday August 11, 2011 @02:03PM (#2873999)
Yeah, I know, I should take my question to Stack Overflow, but does anyone know how to configure FF to not try to reopen tabs after a crash? (Takes a long time on my old machine.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by derobert on Thursday August 11, 2011 @04:15PM (#2874560)
Well, Superuser, not Stack Overflow.

Go to about:config and set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.resume_from_c...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by hollerith on Friday August 12, 2011 @01:20AM (#2876098)
That does what I want. Thanks.
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by srl on Thursday August 11, 2011 @03:37PM (#2874395)
In about:config, change browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by mnutt on Friday August 12, 2011 @12:24AM (#2875970)
A while back I remember using an extension that would restore all of your previous tabs on start up, but not actually load them until you clicked on them. It fixed the situation you describe, but sadly it looks like it no longer works with the current version of Firefox.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by arantius on Friday August 12, 2011 @04:41PM (#2879161)
This is default behavior as of Firefox 4. When you launch a new browser, the (default) home page has a "restore last session" button.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by romey on Thursday August 11, 2011 @05:34PM (#2874920)
you could also try using the session manager add-on. I find it pretty handy for when FF crashes with 20+ tabs open in the HN tree, another 10 or so in whatever google search tree I have open, and some other miscellaneous tabs.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by benmccann on Thursday August 11, 2011 @12:46PM (#2873656)
I always have tons of tabs open. I have 25 open at the moment.

Usually, I'll have about half a dozen windows open with about half a dozen tabs each. I group the tabs together so that each window holds similar tabs, so it's not really 30 things I'm keeping track of but more like 5-6. E.g. right now I have one window where I was checking finance related news, stock quotes, etc. One window with a bug report and several tabs open looking at relevant source code and google searches related to investigating the problem. I've got one window that's my mail. I've got one window with a few HN stories open.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by webspiderus on Thursday August 11, 2011 @11:57AM (#2873396)
as a potentially different use case, I use my tabs as a stack for reading things (where I push a link when I see it), and will then read through them all in a serial fashion, closing things I'm 'done' with. this generally leads to me having reference and 'to read' tabs open, in addition to things I like to have on hand (i.e. emails, workflowy, HN). this generally adds up to 15-20 tabs in my main window on average, going up to as much as 30-40.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by qlkzy on Thursday August 11, 2011 @12:57PM (#2873716)
I use Pentadactyl (formerly Vimperator), and hide the tab bar entirely. 'Number of tabs' then becomes pretty meaningless, as all tab-switching is based on a history stack and regular expressions (a la Emacs buffers), so one just lets the buffer list grow. I only notice when there's a noticeable slowdown (which on this Core i7 with 3GiB RAM starts around 180 tabs).
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by steins on Thursday August 11, 2011 @04:31PM (#2874628)
I use a firefox treetabs plugin that makes trees of tabs vertically on the left side of the monitor. ive had about 50-60 tabs/window with 3 windows open before, while running firebug. With that many on firefox 3/4 it was crashing if I ran it overnight, but it does seem to be improving now. Hopefully 7 will be a dramatic improvement.
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by sorbus on Thursday August 11, 2011 @12:21PM (#2873517)
> Chrome becomes very unhappy under such circumstances (since it uses about ~100 MiB per tab)

You must be looking at very media heavy sites, then. Looking at Chrome's task manager (shift-escape opens it), my per-tab memory usage ranges between ~2.4MB (HN pages) to ~44MB (a youtube video). The root process is using 120MB, GPU process 50MB, and Flash 94MB. So, in total, for 20 tabs I'm using 545MB, or 27.25MB/tab. A far cry from "~100 MiB per tab".

Note that I'm on Windows 7 x64; while you may be entirely correct about Chrome on your platform of choice, it sounds like FUD to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by aphexairlines on Friday August 12, 2011 @02:00AM (#2876164)
Linux 2.6.38 x86_64, one window, 4 tabs:

    VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                              
    685m 110m  25m S    2  2.8   0:29.09 /opt/google/chrome/chrome                                                                                            
    905m  74m  14m S    0  1.9   3:55.19 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJ
    879m  63m  16m S    0  1.6   0:02.95 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJ
    889m  57m  15m S    0  1.5   0:08.17 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJ
    872m  46m  15m S    0  1.2   0:05.67 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackupJ
    866m  36m  12m S    0  0.9   0:10.46 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=extension --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackup
    850m  23m  11m S    2  0.6   0:19.67 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=extension --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBackup
    267m  13m 7100 S    0  0.4   0:00.05 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=zygote                                                                              
    222m 9000 2084 S    0  0.2   0:00.92 /opt/google/chrome/chrome
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by DannoHung on Thursday August 11, 2011 @02:28PM (#2874115)
Did they make Firefox re-entrant so that a f'd up page in one tab doesn't affect all the other ones and the browser chrome?
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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by yid on Thursday August 11, 2011 @03:41PM (#2874411)
Either you're incredibly involved in the Mozilla codebase, or you're misusing the word "re-entrant" [1]. Since you're asking about development status, I'm going to assume the latter.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentrant_(subroutine)

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Re:Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory by DannoHung on Friday August 12, 2011 @11:53AM (#2877759)
Forgive me if I've completely misunderstood how GUIs work, but isn't reentrancy a basic requirement for GUIs in multi-threaded applications to be responsive when one thread of execution is blocked?

I mean, I guess they could use a message queue between their thread for window chrome and page rendering, but I don't recall them ever mentioning anything about that in any dev journals that I used to read years ago.

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