
Mozilla to crack down on add-ons that slow down Firefox - there
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/01/improving-add-on-performance/
======
reemrevnivek
Interestingly, the slowest-performing add-on they show is the well-respected
and popular Firebug, which adds 75% to the start-up time. I expected to see
some low-quality add-on at the top.

I don't think they're going to drop a banhammer on slow add-ons with Firebug
at the top of the list.

More listed here: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/>

~~~
pbz
Firebug is well worth it, in my opinion. I installed FF4 recently and was
happy to notice that Firebug was a lot faster. Unfortunately, either FF4 or
Firebug is leaking memory like crazy. I'm talking 800MB in 20 minutes with
only two tabs open debugging a simple local application. I had to go back to
FF3.6. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

~~~
ronnoch
The memory problem is pretty serious. I've been using the Memory Restart addon
([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/memory-
restar...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/memory-restart/)),
which shows memory use in the bottom corner and lets you click to restart when
it goes over a certain amount.

~~~
planckscnst
Wow. I leave FF open for weeks with many tabs on a netbook with 1GB of memory.

~~~
coolgeek
hmmm... I have to reboot daily - sometimes more than once a day - on an ASUS
Eee 1GB running XP

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hammock
People in the comments need to realize the article, the shit list, etc all of
that is about effects on START-UP time only.

Who cares about start-up time? My FF browser is ALWAYS open, it never closes.

~~~
philh
I don't see many people failing to realise this.

Also I think most people close their browsers from time to time, even if most
people on HN don't. (I've heard rumours that some people even turn their
computers off at night.) These people care about start-up time.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Does the average person actually shut down to the point of doing a cold boot
the next day? I have the impression most just tap the power button (which
hibernates to disk by default), or else simply walk away and let this happen
automatically.

~~~
anasol
As a quasi-average person regarding computer usage, I can tell you about the
way that less tech-savvy people around me deal with their laptops, as I deal
less and less with people with PCs: If it is an older model, it tends to be a
matter of "hibernate until it runs so slowly that I have to restart." Other
than that, there is always some hard-core believers that you really need to
shut off completely every time you use it.

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eferraiuolo
Chrome has the Task Manager tool which helps you track down tabs which are
being resource hogs (CPU and RAM). I was curious if something like this
existed in Firefox 4 or there was an extension for a feature like this? (I
looked but couldn't find anything promising)

~~~
gojomo
Totally agree, and even before Firefox gets any sort of strong tab isolation,
I would love a readout that provides any sort of vague 'blame' for CPU/memory
usage to individual tabs.

As FF runs for a long time with many tabs, I get longer and longer pauses
doing simple tasks -- scrolling, switching tabs, popping the right-context
menu, setting focus into a field, etc. Sometimes, this sluggishness seems
linked to (and fixable by closing) a few tabs of the most Javascript-heavy
sites (those with many ad inserts, background status polling, etc.). I'd hoped
FF4 would help but it's just about as bad as 3.X. Generally restarting, even
with the exact same tab set, helps (for a while).

Separate but similar, sometimes I'm doing nothing and no tab is visibly busy
but Firefox is reported as using 50-100% (out of 200%) CPU time. Give me any
proxy for tab activity (object allocations, timer callbacks, method-
dispatching, whatever) and I can probably kill the miscreants.

------
barrkel
Hopefully they'll start with FF4 itself - IME it's a lot slower at eg
switching heavy-content tabs. I conjecture it's trading CPU for memory usage,
I'd prefer the reverse.

It's also very slow at shutdown and startup. With my profile (including cache)
encrypted, restarting the browser takes over 10 minutes. I see the CPU pegged
and the Firefox process reading through the entire cache as it shuts down, and
again on startup - CPU limited by lsass, the process in Windows that runs EFS
operations in user mode, but single threaded.

~~~
pcwalton
That would indeed be a bug. Filed:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647479>

~~~
barrkel
I voted for it.

I had reported feedback to "support" -
<http://support.mozilla.com/my/questions/802844> \- but it seems a bit of a
black hole. I've had occasion to measure it more precisely since, it really is
on the order of 10 rather than 5 minutes.

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maxxxxx
I don't understand why they can't give us a profiler that shows memory
consumed by add-on and start up time by add-on . This shouldn't be difficult.
Then everybody can see where the problems are.

~~~
pcwalton
Breaking down memory usage by add-on is very difficult. Objects in Firefox's
heap don't track the ownership of the module that created them.

This should be fixed to some extent by out-of-process Jetpacks.

------
jarin
Curation is the new Open.

~~~
technomancy
Did you read the article or just the linkbait HN submission headline?

------
known
With [https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/configuration-
ma...](https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/configuration-mania-4420/)
we can configure hidden features of Firefox

------
DarkShikari
How about addons that eat tons of memory? My Firefox still periodically OOMs
and crashes, despite the update to 4, but it's impossible to see which addons
are responsible.

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WildUtah
If they're finally throwing out Flash, that could really improve the internet.
We'll take our HTML5 video now, please.

~~~
sp332
Flash is a Firefox plugin made by Adobe, not Mozilla. It's not installed by
default, it's added when you install Flash on your computer. If you want it
off, just uninstall Flash from your computer or type "about:addons" into your
address bar and disable the Flash plugin yourself.

This article is about extensions, not plugins. The names are confusing, but
they're not the same thing. <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Plugins>

~~~
hammock
Actually the article is about add-ons, which according to FF terminology
include extensions, themes, and plugins.

Of course there's not a chance that Mozilla will stop supporting Flash in its
browsers, but I thought it was a funny comment on the performance of HTML5
video/interactive content vs Flash.

~~~
Qz
Mozilla _doesn't_ support Flash in its browser -- Adobe does. Anyone can write
a plug-in for Firefox.

------
tobylane
Work on Core now, Core later and Core last. That's all. Ps, if you find
firefly too big, try Dragonfly. It's here <http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/>

