News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display. Parent comment

Re:Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display by tedunangst on Sunday September 30, 2012 @01:51AM (#4592136)
If each tab is a separate process, they could be upgraded one by one. You could even signal to each tab that it should open all links in a new process. Browsers are probably the app you could most easily transparently upgrade.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display by kevingadd on Sunday September 30, 2012 @02:29AM (#4592183)
Not correct. Multiprocess browsers like Chrome don't actually run an entire browser in each process (that isn't realistically possible) because the individual tabs need to collaborate for the proper functioning of things like caches, cookies, etc.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display by tedunangst on Sunday September 30, 2012 @02:50AM (#4592219)
If. If I can restart a web server without restarting memcache and have a new process handle new requests while the old process handles existing requests, it's clearly possible for a browser to change its rendering engine for new tabs.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display by ars on Sunday September 30, 2012 @04:33AM (#4592393)
The rendering engine, sure, but what about the rest of the browser? Cache, Cookie, Prefs, bookmarks, etc.

Browsers are not just rendering engines.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display by azakai on Sunday September 30, 2012 @10:23PM (#4595020)
It's possible in theory, but very hard. None do it to my knowledge.
[ Parent | on HN ]