11 ms·

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

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.

mccr8 10y ago
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 state got lost when you switched back. I've heard that some people set Firefox to not autorestore tabs on load, and then periodically close and reopen Firefox, so their background tabs aren't loaded. Pretty clumsy, but I guess it gets the job done. I don't know if there's any addons that do something similar.
- alyandon 10y ago
  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
- sp332 10y ago
  This is the default. If you set it to restore from your previous session on startup (or if it restores your session after a crash, or you choose History->Restore Previous Session), then it will only load tabs when you switch to them.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  FF mobile does this and it drives me nuts. I'll be on 4chan, watch a YT clip, then tab back and FF reloads the original HTML. Apart from being slow (takes a few seconds to rerender it all), it also loses AJAX-loaded data. My phone reports it has 600MB of RAM free, so I dunno what's causing FF's behaviour here nor how to disable it. I can't always reproduce it, but it happens enough that every browsing session has some sort of frustration.
  - dTal 10y ago
    All the mobile browsers I've tried do this - Firefox, Dolphin, and stock Android. I distinctly remember browsing the web quite happily with Firefox desktop on a machine with 512 MB of RAM as recently as 2008, so I can't help but feel we've gone backwards.
    - derefr 10y ago
      Am I the only one who loves this behavior? I'd be perfectly happy forcing Chrome/Firefox/etc. into a 1GB sandbox and then telling it to "unload tabs on memory pressure." I only use a few tabs at a time; a simple LRU OOM-eviction algorithm should work wonders.
      - brokenmachine 10y ago
        Maybe you're the only one. I hate waiting for a tab to reload from the network unnecessarily, especially on mobile!
        derefr 10y ago
        "From the network" isn't actually a part of the semantics of this behavior, though. If the page's browser-side cache is still valid according to its original response headers, the browser will just reload the page from cache rather than hitting the network.
  - amenod 10y ago
    Android or iOS? I have no such complaint on Android - I usually load the pages that interest me in separate tabs and then read them offline.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Android. I can do that, but when I return to those tabs, they will reload from a cached version.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  >> by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" > 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 state got lost when you switched back. GP is talking about actively marking tabs as "no background activity allowed". I have been searching in vain for something like that: stop scripts in background tabs except for specifically whitelisted pages. There is absolutely no reason that I can see why every website and their ads should be allowed to roam around freely in the background. There is however a number of reason why they should not be allowed. Battery life and phishing attempts readily comes to mind. I guess whoever comes up with a well-working extension for that can easily ask me for USD 30 or even 40 and expect me to be a walking billboard for it ;-)
  - mccr8 10y ago
    Background tabs already have their timers run less frequently. In Firefox, that was added in 2011 [1]. Certainly further improvements to reduce background tab activity would be nice. One way you can sort of get that effect is to use Reader Mode, on pages where that works. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633421 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633421
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    > I have been searching in vain for something like that: stop scripts in background tabs except for specifically whitelisted pages. Have you tried UnloadTab? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      Ok. Will try. I think I see an issue here where I want to go back to a tab I have open on the train home. If it is unloaded that means I have to connect to the Internet again to get hold of my page again? (I'd think what I want is just to pause any javascript or other processing from any webpage that us not focused in the browser and not specifically whitelisted.)
- derefr 10y ago
  How about detecting the pages that don't have stateful elements, and then only serializing those?
  - srean 10y ago
    With applications written in javascript ? Stateful on the client side alone or stateful on both sides ? It wont be safe to assume that state is persisted transparently on the server side. May be they just cache it for a while. To make this work reliably would be quite difficult.
    - derefr 10y ago
      You could be really conservative: only assume statelessness if the page has no <form> elements and has no calls to the XMLHTTPRequest API (or window.eval). Or you could be really conservative: only assume statelessness for pages without forms and without any Javascript. (These do exist!)
      - srean 10y ago
        > These do exist We have seen things people wouldn't believe. Webpages without any Javascript. Webpages using correct http responses. Watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, here come the transpilers
themartorana 10y ago
Even in an iOS fashion, in the way backgrounded apps work. I don't need tabs consuming memory in the background, and if I did I could white list it as able to run in the background.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sp332 10y ago
There are several addons that do this. I think Suspend Tab is the most popular. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/
- alyandon 10y ago
  Thanks! I'll check that out.
- smsm42 10y ago
  I use the same on Chrome, nice memory saver.
- zaynetro 10y ago
  There is also Auto Unload Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-unload-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-unload-t...
mrec 10y ago
I'm curious - what's the benefit of doing this sort of thing at the application level, rather than letting the OS's virtual memory system handle it as usual?
nbadg 10y ago
For a reference point on scaling, on a Windows 7 machine that hasn't been shutdown in a week or two, I have a long-running Firefox session with 5 windows and 80-something tabs, and I'm at 1.7 GB. Half a GB of that is being consumed by the Google Music player.
- wldcordeiro 10y ago
  I've noticed Google Play Music is heavy. It can easily consume half a GB or more on my machine. I think at this point the browsers are doing the best job they can but it's pretty telling that it's the web apps/sites we use that cost us memory.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Google Play Music uses Flash in Firefox (but not in Chrome), so part of the memory usage is out of Mozilla's control.
luckydude 10y ago
I'm at 2.9G virtual 1.277g resident with about 130 tabs open (yeah, I'm a goofball but I like my tabs). It's pretty responsive on a thinkpad x220 i5-2540M @ 2.6ghz, 8G of ram and an SSD.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  Not even criticizing, but how do you manage 130 tabs? How do you find tabs you're looking for? You must have some kind of system!
  - krzyk 10y ago
    Not sure how he does it, but I don't manage those. I just don't close tabs (I usually forget to do it :), so after week or two I end up with 200-300 tabs (my record is 900). I tried to use chrome once and it ate all my ram, and they were saying it uses less ram then firefox back then.
  - espadrine 10y ago
    A few people use Tree-Style Tabs, which organize them as a tree structure, similar to directories. It encourages using tabs instead of bookmarks, which have a terrible UX (in all browsers, not picking on Firefox here). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
    - andrepd 10y ago
      I do that and I hit 1000 tabs. Once a week I close and reopen or it gets too slow.
    - andrepd 10y ago
      I do that and I regularly hit 1000 tabs. Once a week I close and reopen or it gets too slow.
    - Alexqw85 10y ago
      Tree Style Tabs is the primary reason why I stick with Firefox. Without it, I wouldn't even know where to begin managing the relevant sites/info I encounter when reading up on diverging lines-of-thought. For me, it is /the/ absolute killer feature for browsers. ---Alex
spyder 10y ago
That's interesting because for me the Windows task manger reports 377MB with 10 tabs open, some of them are news sites that tends to be "heavy". edit: oh, I'm using ad blocking add-on and maybe you don't, that could be one reason, besides different websites another reason could be that you have the browser open longer than me.
signal11 10y ago
I've 25 tabs open and Firefox is reporting 250MB of Private Use memory use in Task Manager. I do have an adblocker though. > so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus Isn't there an extension (Suspend Tab?) which does this?

mccr8 10y ago

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 state got lost when you switched back. I've heard that some people set Firefox to not autorestore tabs on load, and then periodically close and reopen Firefox, so their background tabs aren't loaded. Pretty clumsy, but I guess it gets the job done. I don't know if there's any addons that do something similar.

alyandon 10y ago
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
sp332 10y ago
This is the default. If you set it to restore from your previous session on startup (or if it restores your session after a crash, or you choose History->Restore Previous Session), then it will only load tabs when you switch to them.
MichaelGG 10y ago
FF mobile does this and it drives me nuts. I'll be on 4chan, watch a YT clip, then tab back and FF reloads the original HTML. Apart from being slow (takes a few seconds to rerender it all), it also loses AJAX-loaded data. My phone reports it has 600MB of RAM free, so I dunno what's causing FF's behaviour here nor how to disable it. I can't always reproduce it, but it happens enough that every browsing session has some sort of frustration.
- dTal 10y ago
  All the mobile browsers I've tried do this - Firefox, Dolphin, and stock Android. I distinctly remember browsing the web quite happily with Firefox desktop on a machine with 512 MB of RAM as recently as 2008, so I can't help but feel we've gone backwards.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Am I the only one who loves this behavior? I'd be perfectly happy forcing Chrome/Firefox/etc. into a 1GB sandbox and then telling it to "unload tabs on memory pressure." I only use a few tabs at a time; a simple LRU OOM-eviction algorithm should work wonders.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Maybe you're the only one. I hate waiting for a tab to reload from the network unnecessarily, especially on mobile!
      - derefr 10y ago
        "From the network" isn't actually a part of the semantics of this behavior, though. If the page's browser-side cache is still valid according to its original response headers, the browser will just reload the page from cache rather than hitting the network.
- amenod 10y ago
  Android or iOS? I have no such complaint on Android - I usually load the pages that interest me in separate tabs and then read them offline.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Android. I can do that, but when I return to those tabs, they will reload from a cached version.
reitanqild 10y ago
>> by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" > 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 state got lost when you switched back. GP is talking about actively marking tabs as "no background activity allowed". I have been searching in vain for something like that: stop scripts in background tabs except for specifically whitelisted pages. There is absolutely no reason that I can see why every website and their ads should be allowed to roam around freely in the background. There is however a number of reason why they should not be allowed. Battery life and phishing attempts readily comes to mind. I guess whoever comes up with a well-working extension for that can easily ask me for USD 30 or even 40 and expect me to be a walking billboard for it ;-)
- mccr8 10y ago
  Background tabs already have their timers run less frequently. In Firefox, that was added in 2011 [1]. Certainly further improvements to reduce background tab activity would be nice. One way you can sort of get that effect is to use Reader Mode, on pages where that works. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633421 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633421
- yoasif_ 10y ago
  > I have been searching in vain for something like that: stop scripts in background tabs except for specifically whitelisted pages. Have you tried UnloadTab? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Ok. Will try. I think I see an issue here where I want to go back to a tab I have open on the train home. If it is unloaded that means I have to connect to the Internet again to get hold of my page again? (I'd think what I want is just to pause any javascript or other processing from any webpage that us not focused in the browser and not specifically whitelisted.)
derefr 10y ago
How about detecting the pages that don't have stateful elements, and then only serializing those?
- srean 10y ago
  With applications written in javascript ? Stateful on the client side alone or stateful on both sides ? It wont be safe to assume that state is persisted transparently on the server side. May be they just cache it for a while. To make this work reliably would be quite difficult.
  - derefr 10y ago
    You could be really conservative: only assume statelessness if the page has no <form> elements and has no calls to the XMLHTTPRequest API (or window.eval). Or you could be really conservative: only assume statelessness for pages without forms and without any Javascript. (These do exist!)
    - srean 10y ago
      > These do exist We have seen things people wouldn't believe. Webpages without any Javascript. Webpages using correct http responses. Watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, here come the transpilers

themartorana 10y ago

Even in an iOS fashion, in the way backgrounded apps work. I don't need tabs consuming memory in the background, and if I did I could white list it as able to run in the background.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sp332 10y ago

There are several addons that do this. I think Suspend Tab is the most popular. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/

alyandon 10y ago
Thanks! I'll check that out.
smsm42 10y ago
I use the same on Chrome, nice memory saver.
zaynetro 10y ago
There is also Auto Unload Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-unload-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-unload-t...

mrec 10y ago

I'm curious - what's the benefit of doing this sort of thing at the application level, rather than letting the OS's virtual memory system handle it as usual?

nbadg 10y ago

For a reference point on scaling, on a Windows 7 machine that hasn't been shutdown in a week or two, I have a long-running Firefox session with 5 windows and 80-something tabs, and I'm at 1.7 GB. Half a GB of that is being consumed by the Google Music player.

wldcordeiro 10y ago
I've noticed Google Play Music is heavy. It can easily consume half a GB or more on my machine. I think at this point the browsers are doing the best job they can but it's pretty telling that it's the web apps/sites we use that cost us memory.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Google Play Music uses Flash in Firefox (but not in Chrome), so part of the memory usage is out of Mozilla's control.

luckydude 10y ago

I'm at 2.9G virtual 1.277g resident with about 130 tabs open (yeah, I'm a goofball but I like my tabs). It's pretty responsive on a thinkpad x220 i5-2540M @ 2.6ghz, 8G of ram and an SSD.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
Not even criticizing, but how do you manage 130 tabs? How do you find tabs you're looking for? You must have some kind of system!
- krzyk 10y ago
  Not sure how he does it, but I don't manage those. I just don't close tabs (I usually forget to do it :), so after week or two I end up with 200-300 tabs (my record is 900). I tried to use chrome once and it ate all my ram, and they were saying it uses less ram then firefox back then.
- espadrine 10y ago
  A few people use Tree-Style Tabs, which organize them as a tree structure, similar to directories. It encourages using tabs instead of bookmarks, which have a terrible UX (in all browsers, not picking on Firefox here). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
  - andrepd 10y ago
    I do that and I hit 1000 tabs. Once a week I close and reopen or it gets too slow.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    I do that and I regularly hit 1000 tabs. Once a week I close and reopen or it gets too slow.
  - Alexqw85 10y ago
    Tree Style Tabs is the primary reason why I stick with Firefox. Without it, I wouldn't even know where to begin managing the relevant sites/info I encounter when reading up on diverging lines-of-thought. For me, it is /the/ absolute killer feature for browsers. ---Alex

spyder 10y ago

That's interesting because for me the Windows task manger reports 377MB with 10 tabs open, some of them are news sites that tends to be "heavy". edit: oh, I'm using ad blocking add-on and maybe you don't, that could be one reason, besides different websites another reason could be that you have the browser open longer than me.

signal11 10y ago

I've 25 tabs open and Firefox is reporting 250MB of Private Use memory use in Task Manager. I do have an adblocker though. > so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus Isn't there an extension (Suspend Tab?) which does this?