13 ms·

Update on Multi-Process Firefox

498 points by AndrewDucker 10y ago

mmastrac 10y ago
I force-enabled multi-process FF a while ago and haven't had any issues. In the 49.x series there were one or two tab crashes, but I can't think of any recently. All of my extensions have worked just fine too.
- binaryanomaly 10y ago
  1Password unfortunately is still incompatible so force needs to be applied. But in general I share your observation - runs very smooth.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Why use 1Password, rather than Firefox Sync/Accounts?
    - binaryanomaly 10y ago
      Because it supports multi-browser, cross-platform and has way more features than FF sync.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        Firefox Sync is cross-platform (it runs everywhere Firefox does), and it has every feature I want. What additional features do you want that it doesn't have?
        janfoeh 10y ago
        Disclaimer: I'm writing this on Firefox. I was one of a couple of ten thousand people who donated money ten or so years ago for their famous NY Times ad when they were still going head-on against IE. I like them. This being said: if their Sync platform works for you, great. Here are my reasons why I choose 1Password as my password manager: 1. It's made by a company that focuses exclusively on this one product. It's their raison d'être, not a side project. 2. They're old-fashioned in a way: they provide me with something, and I give them money for it. 1Password is not cheap, but very good value for money - for me. 3. I've been using it for over half a decade now. 1. and 2. together give me a good reason to believe I can continue to do so for a long time to come. This is in stark contrast to Mozilla, who have been throwing stuff against the wall for quite a while now and abandoning it whenever things do not pan out 4. Various sync options. I'm not required to trust any one "cloud" provider when it comes to privacy, security or continued availability 5. The 1Password vault format can actually be opened in a browser. Even if by some strange fluke I find myself without a client, I can simply download the file on pretty much every machine and still access my passwords 6. UI. 1Password is very well thought out, and that's an important thing for me for something I use about a couple dozen times every day. While I cannot swear to it, I think I only paid twice over the last six years - the initial purchase plus one paid upgrade some time in the middle. I actually hope to pay for the next one; not only because of what I consider to be fair, but because I want them to do well and be around a long, long time. And when it comes to security, I've seen HN's resident crypto luminary tptacek give it his thumbs-up. This is something I am not able to properly assess on my own, so his word is good enough for me.
        bad_user 10y ago
        Speaking as a 1Password customer and Firefox user ... Just because you pay for something, it doesn't make the business model sustainable. 1Password may be a solid product, but it's in essence a key-value store, which means that there isn't much AgileBits can do to improve it in order to get people to upgrade to a version 7. Heck mobile users would get that for free anyway. And btw, you're probably on macOS, because there is no Linux version, the stable Windows client sucks (version 4) and their new beta client (version 6) is read-only for usage without an account. In other words they have a potential problem: their market is not that big and the standalone version requires convincing people to upgrade for sustainability. And this puts their new subscription model in a new perspective. Which is cool and all, except that would you really pay $3 / month on a yearly contract ($3.6 actually with VAT included) for a password manager? I wouldn't. You can bring up the coffee comparisons of course, but I have other more important subscriptions to pay for that have priority (e.g. phone, email, storage, hosting, domains, etc). As for the endorsement of tptacek, if you care about the words of an HN user, he has endorsed only the standalone product, not the online enabled version to which they are now transitioning. Which no sane expert would endorse actually, given the problem of needing to enter your password in a web interface for account management. Now don't get me wrong, I think 1Password is a good product, but then you compared it with Firefox and Firefox is open source with its development being done in the open, with contributions by third parties as well, which means that no matter what, it will stick around for as long as people want it. Firefox is also one of our champions for open standards, being essentially an open platform for app development. Now this puts it in another league entirely.
        tptacek 10y ago
        1. I'm not HN's resident crypto luminary. I'm HN's resident crypto loudmouth. 2. I endorse 1Password without reservation, but only the standalone version.
        NamTaf 10y ago
        Integration outside of the browser is why I use keepass. I can press ctrl-alt-w and it will enter my passwords for things such as Steam, Skype, etc. in the applications themselves. I use passwords outside Firefox. Ergo, a password manager tied to Firefox is inherently too limited.
    - mcpherrinm 10y ago
      I have a few reasons to prefer 1P over a browser based option: 1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm less worried about data breaches as a result. 1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile where I have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a desktop website. Also, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P, and browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful for that. It also doesn't lock me into a browser.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        I'd just like to point out that while it does use the cloud to sync, all data is encrypted on the devices before syncing. I do wish it could save other passwords, though.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        > 1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm less worried about data breaches as a result. Firefox Sync encrypts all of its data; a data breach on the server would only result in a pile of email addresses and encrypted blobs. > 1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile where I have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a desktop website. Fair enough. All the mobile apps I use just stay logged in once you log in once. > Also, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P, and browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful for that. Hadn't occurred to me to store non-passwords in a password manager. That seems like something a Firefox extension could provide on top of the Firefox password manager, which would make a nice substitute for a locally encrypted file. I wouldn't mind using that to store things like security questions/answers.
        mook 10y ago
        The old Firefox sync used a local-only passphrase to encrypt things. The new one, as far as I can tell, just tires everything to your Firefox Account (i.e. nothing local is required). That's not really better than what 1Password does, I think.
  - corv 10y ago
    It shows up as incompatible but works fine.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  No issue for me except for some occasional UI event sync loss (menu opened 3s later for another element). Also multiprocess Firefox seems to struggle in GUI perf, it's jerky. Old firefox may be slow but it was a bit predictable. Here less.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  I'm missing just two. "cli-get" and "Live HTTP Headers". It's the former I really miss. The latter was occasionally useful for debugging stuff.
  - charonn0 10y ago
    I read the description of cli-get, and it appears to be similar to a feature built-in to the network tab of the standard developer tools. If you right-click a request in the list of requests you can select "copy as cURL" from the popup menu to get the equivalent curl command line.
DanBlake 10y ago
Does firefox run each tab in its own process yet? Or live inside a sandbox? I switched from firefox + noscript to chrome after accepting that firefox's security (even with noscript enabled) was just so far behind that of chrome.
- kuschku 10y ago
  You could enable it for quite a while already, but currently the content processes are still using a process pool of 1.
  - ronjouch 10y ago
    And if you want so, the about:config key to fiddle with is called "dom.ipc.processCount" and currently defaults to 1, with plans to raise this soon, as described by the article. EDIT also, to come back to DanBlake's question about whether Firefox now "run[s] each tab in its own process yet": no it doesn't; the architecture that was chosen is a process pool, available to all tabs. I won't elaborate much as you can find blogposts where Mozilla engineers detail why this design; IIRC it boils down to: it fulfills the security/performance objectives, and avoids a bit of overhead caused by the one-process-per-tab approach.
    - paddy_m 10y ago
      Would you mind linking to some of those blogposts. I used to read the weekly mozilla meeting notes but they seemed to have stopped including content about 2 years ago. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates I just looked and now it seems that notes link out to separate pages. What's the best way for a non-contributor to follow firefox development?
      - ronjouch 10y ago
        > "Would you mind linking to some of those blogposts." A quick parsing of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis yields "Memory Usage of Firefox with e10s Enabled" [1] and its followup "Are they slim yet?" [2], with [1] closing with these words: "Simply put: the more content processes we use, the more memory we use. On the plus side it’s not a 1:1 factor, with 8 content processes we see roughly a doubling of memory usage on the TabsOpenSettled measurement. It’s a bit worse on Windows, a bit better on OSX, but it’s not 8 times worse. Overall we see a 10-20% increase in memory usage for the 1 content process case (which is what we plan on shipping initially). This seems like a fair tradeoff for potential security and performance benefits, but as we try to grow the number of content processes we’ll need to take another look at where that memory is being used." Some comments at https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/ https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-... also hint at pre-existing discussion on the one-process-per-tab subject, but sadly without linking to it. You'd probably followup with a mailing lists search. [1] http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/11/memory-usage-of-firefox-with-e10s-enabled/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/11/memory-usage-of-firefox-with... [2] http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ -- As for "What's the best way for a non-contributor to follow Firefox development?", I follow https://planet.mozilla.org/ https://planet.mozilla.org/ , and if that's too much of a firehose to your taste, maybe try https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/
saberworks 10y ago
It would be really nice if the addons/extensions page showed which addons were listed as compatible and which weren't. I might thus make a decision to disable/delete an addon or two that were blocking me from using multiprocess firefox. As it is, I have no idea if my firefox is using multiprocess at all. All I know is that I use a lot of addons and I'm probably not, then, using multiprocess.
- binaryanomaly 10y ago
  You can see on the Add-ons Manager page if a particular add-on is compatible. about:support shows you if multi-process is enabled " Multiprocess Windows".
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    > You can see on the Add-ons Manager page if a particular add-on is compatible. You can? Where? (Of course, it may be a version thing.)
    - pdw 10y ago
      You need an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat... That's not enough though. In about:addons all my add-ons are listed as compatible, but about:support still says that multiprocess is "disabled by add-ons". So YMMV. EDIT: The gotcha is that the current release uses a whitelist of only about 20 extensions. If you have anything else, you need to force-enable the feature, even if your extensions are supposed to be compatible. https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/file/FIREFOX_50_1_0_RELEASE/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/internal/E10SAddonsRollout.jsm#l16 https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/file/FIREFOX...
      - binaryanomaly 10y ago
        Ah ok thanks, didn't realize that this info was only available because I have the add-on installed.
neves 10y ago
How do I know if my extensions are multiprocess compatible?
- Animats 10y ago
  Anything built with the high-level Jetpack API or the new Google Chrome compatible API should be. XUL, not so much.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat... and go to your add-on page and it'll tell you.
  - JamesSwift 10y ago
    It should be noted that 'compatible' is not actually the tested compatibility, it's whether or not the add-on author has declared that it is compatible within their manifest.
nxc18 10y ago
Does anyone have insight on why we're getting this for Firefox in (very late) 2016 while Chrome has had this since 2008 and IE since 2009? Seriously, I understand the need for competition in the browser, and wish there was a viable alternative to chrome on things that aren't Windows, but the failure of Firefox to keep pace is really disappointing. Slow and lacking basic features for years almost makes Firefox feel like the new IE, but at least we can be thankful that not many people are stuck with it. To put this in perspective, Firefox has lagged on multi-process for 8 years. Everyone's beloved IE6 only had 5 years of ruining the internet before it was replaced.
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  I do recall IE6. It had many, many other issues besides "it's a resource hog". As for "lacks basic features," I do not recall anything that I would call "a basic feature" coming out in the browser landscape for the few recent years. A lot of new, cool stuff, yes; but nothing that would make me go "ooh, that's what I was missing all this time!" (Disclaimer: user of Chromium,Chrome,FF,Midori,K-Meleon,various Operae,IE and "not-IE-whatever-it's-called",elinks and other stuff)
- sfrailsdev 10y ago
  Firefox supported way more in the way of extensions and alterations then chrome, things like the zotero citation manager, grease monkey for user scripts, tree tyle tab for modifying the tab and bookmark menus, downthemall download manager, and importantly, TOR. Some of these could be ported to chrome, but they were easier to implement on firefox. It's always been incredibly hackable, in the classic sense. That ability and the legacy of tools built on top of firefox was an important feature that they have largely maintained. Chrome not only didn't have a legacy but still may break things for developers and sometimes just shrug off their complaints. It's a powerful browser, but it's focused on the needs of the parent company.
- sp332 10y ago
  Firefox has cooler extensions than Chrome. It took ages to create shims for all the troublesome internal APIs that popular extensions use, to make them keep working with multi-process.
davidgerard 10y ago
FWIW, I've been running FF multiprocess with a pile of extensions since it was first introduced (there's a preference you can set to say "yes really I want to do this and I realise I get to keep both pieces"). A few extensions failed, but mostly it's been wonderful and I would recommend it to any techie user. How to force it on: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable
mwcampbell 10y ago
Looks like accessibility tools (e.g. screen readers) also disable multi-process support as of Firefox 50. I know enough about accessibility APIs and their implementations to guess that it's going to be difficult to modify that code to work efficiently in a multi-process configuration.` Edit: I'm talking about Windows. Don't know about other platforms.
- dblohm7 10y ago
  I'm the dev who is responsible for the Windows implementation. It has been quite the... gnarly experience to say the least. We were shooting for 52 for enabling a11y+e10s, but it is increasingly looking like we're going to need to slip to 53.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dannyobrien 10y ago
    Thank you for your work!
  - hashhar 10y ago
    I would like to help out in any way I can. Where should I look to get an idea of the project and what do I need to know to be able to work on it?
    - dblohm7 10y ago
      Here are a couple of links that outline the design and contain some notes: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-project/ http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-project/ Note that the approach we are taking on Windows is different from the way that Chrome works. They cache the entire a11y tree in the parent process so that the DLLs injected by assistive technologies may quickly enumerate the a11y tree via virtual function calls. In 2017 we want to start moving away from injected DLLs in Firefox. As part of that initiative I decided not to take the caching route in a11y as that would require continuing to allow injected DLLs for a11y purposes. Instead I am implementing a COM handler that should allow us to significantly reduce the number of round trips required to enumerate the tree. I am hoping that this will offer AT vendors a migration path that eventually moves them out of our process. Feel free to join us in the #accessibility channel on Mozilla's IRC server to chat further. I am aklotz on that server.
chrisper 10y ago
Does anyone know what the incentive behind the development of Firefox is at this point? Like, Chrome has such a huge browser market share, so why do they still develop Firefox? I assume it is not that feasible to invest time and money if the share is only 4%. I am just curious, and not trying to hate on Firefox. But I think most (?) non-tech people use Chrome. So maybe I am asking, what is the point of Firefox if the shares are so low? Again, not trying to hate on it, but I am just curious for the reasons, which I am sure are valid.
- RussianCow 10y ago
  Because competition is a good thing. I personally wouldn't want the fate of web standards solely dictated by Google. Also, I'm not sure where you got that number, but Firefox's market share is well above 4% for most websites.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    I looked here: https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr... It seemed valid, but maybe not. Do you know a better source? EDIT: Others have provided better sources!
    - RussianCow 10y ago
      Each individual version is broken down separately in that chart, so you're looking at the market share for Firefox 49 specifically. The broader number seems to be closer to 11%. Anecdotally, people and organizations that aren't tech-savvy are more likely to use Firefox as well, so it just depends on the target audience.
    - azakai 10y ago
      You're not reading that link properly, but it's understandable since the link isn't the clearest. A specific version of Firefox has the 4% you mentioned, Firefox 49. Look a little lower down and you'll see Firefox 50 has another 3% on top of that, and so forth.
Phlarp 10y ago
This narrative white-washes over the part where he was witch-hunted out of a well deserved leadership position because he exercised his first amendment rights in a way that was unpopular with the greater tech community.
- wcummings 10y ago
  Your narrative white washes that he's a bigot who couldn't even admit he was wrong after the fact. I think a lot of people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but he didn't do himself any favors.
- programaround 10y ago
  Here's links about the incident. His statement: https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ Mozilla FAQ regarding this: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... [edit: Clarity]
- dang 10y ago
  "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233433 and marked it off-topic.
shmerl 10y ago
> Our measurements and user feedback were all positive and so with Firefox 50 we deployed multi-process Firefox to users with a broader set of extensions, those whose authors have marked them as multi-process compatible. How can one check if some extension is marked as such? I'm using Firefox beta (which is now 51.0b9) and I noticed that Firefox now splits a separate "Web" process. Is that the indication that multiprocess is enabled? I also set in the past in about:config browser.tabs.remote.autostart = true
- hashhar 10y ago
  Yes. I do think you it enabled. To confirm, go to about:support, and look for the field that says, "Multiprocess Windows". If it is a value > 0, you do have multiprocess. If you are on an old version, check for the string "Multiprocess staged rollout". If it is true, you do have e10s enabled. And for checking extension compatibility install this extension, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat...
satysin 10y ago
Even on a clean Firefox 50.1.0 x64 install with just uBlock Origin and multi-process enabled Firefox feels quite a bit slower than Chrome. This really shouldn't still be a thing especially with Chrome also having to deal with a bunch of Flash based content on some sites (looking at you BBC News).
- cdevs 10y ago
  I've noticed most people at my office seem to use chrome because of that seems faster feeling and it's always chromes obsessive page caching which a lot of the time is a pain to deal with. Our site added some cache busting params in the Javascript request based around our git pulls but there's so many times I have to figure a situation because a chrome user is seeing something to old.
- febed 10y ago
  Vanilla Firefox with multiprocess was sluggish for me as well. I had no such issues with the latest Firefox Developer edition - give it a shot.
baby 10y ago
Anyone knows if Tree Style Tab is supported?
- diggan 10y ago
  Using Tree Style Tab myself and forced multiprocess. Sometimes when I close a tab, it folds some other tabs into it, but they are still active and you can alt + tab to them, but not visible in the UI. Not that it bothers me too much, since activating multiprocess gave me a huge performance increase
- wickawic 10y ago
  it is! https://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://www.arewee10syet.com/ (you have to search the extension you want)
- swenn 10y ago
  An alternative vertical tab bar I discovered some time ago is Tab Center (https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center). Although still a little buggy, I switched over from Tree Style Tab. It feels better IMO and I really didn't care about the "tree style" of TST, I just felt the need for a vertical tab bar.
  - KingMob 10y ago
    Wow, I just tried it, and it's the tab interface I always wanted. More vertical space for reading web pages, and wider tabs to read the tab titles more easily. Why isn't this the default yet?
    - baby 10y ago
      A lot of people are wondering why this is not the default. If you like this you should try Tree Style Tab ;)
  - baby 10y ago
    I tried it and unfortunately no nested tabs :/
mandelbulb 10y ago
Make Vimperator great again - still no support. :'( Two year old github issue but yet any development to be seen or reported :/
- regecks 10y ago
  Try Vimfx, I switched to take advantage of e10s, and it's been worthwhile.
- lorenzfx 10y ago
  You know what they say, pull requests are the new feature requests... But yeah, I'd love to see vimperator or pentadactyl supporting this, and no, I neither have the time nor the skillset to fix it myself.
- fra 10y ago
  At this point I think it's either fix it yourself or look elsewhere :(. I don't think the current maintainers have the bandwidth to port it to WebExtensions.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  VimFX has been a more than capable substitute.
  - proaralyst 10y ago
    I just took a gander: no tab-search, the keybindings are closer to Vimium than plain vim and no external editor. Also the hinting is _slow_ - it takes a second to render the link hints on the hacker news home page. How are you dealing with all of that?
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      To be honest the only thing I miss is tab search; you can modify the keybindings as you wish. I don't use hints as much as I used to. Maybe my browsing style has changed; more reading and less clicking.
pwg 10y ago
Has anyone noticed bookmarklets not working when multi-process is turned on? I installed a V 51 developer edition to test out multi-process, and when multi-process was on, my bookmarks that modify the dom did not work. Any one else noticed anything similar?
- cpeterso 10y ago
  That's sounds like a bug, as if the bookmarklet is executed in the main browser process and can't see the page's DOM. What DOM bookmarklet water you using? The Pinboard bookmarklet works for me but it is not agreeing the DOM.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    I tried the "WhatFont" bookmarklet, which inspect DOM elements and reports the fonts used. It works for me in Firefox Nightly 53 with e10s enabled. http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html
    - pwg 10y ago
      Just tested Firefox Nightly 53 with the three bookmarklets I use most often, they all work in 53. Therefore it must have been a bug with the 51 version.
      - cpeterso 10y ago
        What are some of the bookmarklets and sites you are testing? I'm not able to reproduce the failure with the "WhatFont" bookmarklet in Firefox 50-53.
dilly_li 10y ago
Is this done in Chrome as early as 8 years ago? https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture.html https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture...
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Chrome was built from scratch around this concept. Firefox wasn't, and there's a whole wealth of infrastructure around the non-multiprocess approach, from the way plugins work, all the way on up. Migrating towards multi-process has been a decidedly non-trivial task for Mozilla, involving a lot of effort from a lot of people.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  You mean what was done in IE8 six months before Chrome? https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loosely-coupled-ie-lcie/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loose... More seriously—it's somewhat sad to see Chrome get all the credit for this, when it's undoubtedly the case that both IE and Chrome were working on this at the same time.
  - flukus 10y ago
    If anything we should give the IE guys extra credit, I doubt the code base was pleasant to work with.
rocky1138 10y ago
Thank you to the Mozilla team who have given my old laptop life again.
dirkg 10y ago
So now Firefox will become much slower due to per tab process overhead, just like Chrome, will pollute the task list with processes, and lose the enormous benefits of it's fantastic extension model, all for some intangible security benefits? I've almost never had a security issue or crash on Firefox with a hundred tabs and maybe fifty extensions, it's still faster than chrome with 10 tabs.
- runeks 10y ago
  I hope they chose a model of mapping a lot of virtual tab threads to a single OS thread, rather than one OS thread per tab, but I don't know.
jayweb1 10y ago
Cool stuff
nikolay 10y ago
I've been gradually disappointed by Firefox - more and more websites no longer work. Okay, I'm using Firefox Developer Edition, but nonetheless, it's been disappointing compared to, let's say, Google Chrom Canary. Memory and CPU footprint is worse than latest Canary, too!
- ngokevin 10y ago
  The compatibility issue isn't to blame on web developers increasingly testing only on or making their apps exclusive Chrome?
  - nikolay 10y ago
    I think it's the privacy and other "features" that make Facebook and Google login not work, for example.
    - oblio 10y ago
      What "privacy"?
newscracker 10y ago
I like how Firefox multiprocess has evolved and continues to evolve taking measurements into account. When multiprocess was announced several years ago, my main worry was that it would be a Chrome clone with one process per tab and become sluggish like Chrome (my general use of browsers is a minimum of 10 tabs and on certain machines a lot, lot more). Finding a balance between responsiveness, security and stability is what I'd prefer. I personally don't see many stability issues in Firefox even without multiprocess. So I'm happy with this progress even though it may seem slow to dime people or that Firefox isn't keeping up with Chrome (the latter is meaningless for my use since Firefox and it's extensions provide a lot more).
- newscracker 10y ago
  I hate typos, and can't edit the comment anymore. The last sentence should read: So I'm happy with this progress even though it may seem slow to some people or that Firefox isn't keeping up with Chrome (the latter is meaningless for my use since Firefox and its extensions provide a lot more).

498 points by AndrewDucker 10y ago

I force-enabled multi-process FF a while ago and haven't had any issues. In the 49.x series there were one or two tab crashes, but I can't think of any recently. All of my extensions have worked just fine too.

binaryanomaly 10y ago
1Password unfortunately is still incompatible so force needs to be applied. But in general I share your observation - runs very smooth.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Why use 1Password, rather than Firefox Sync/Accounts?
  - binaryanomaly 10y ago
    Because it supports multi-browser, cross-platform and has way more features than FF sync.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      Firefox Sync is cross-platform (it runs everywhere Firefox does), and it has every feature I want. What additional features do you want that it doesn't have?
      - janfoeh 10y ago
        Disclaimer: I'm writing this on Firefox. I was one of a couple of ten thousand people who donated money ten or so years ago for their famous NY Times ad when they were still going head-on against IE. I like them. This being said: if their Sync platform works for you, great. Here are my reasons why I choose 1Password as my password manager: 1. It's made by a company that focuses exclusively on this one product. It's their raison d'être, not a side project. 2. They're old-fashioned in a way: they provide me with something, and I give them money for it. 1Password is not cheap, but very good value for money - for me. 3. I've been using it for over half a decade now. 1. and 2. together give me a good reason to believe I can continue to do so for a long time to come. This is in stark contrast to Mozilla, who have been throwing stuff against the wall for quite a while now and abandoning it whenever things do not pan out 4. Various sync options. I'm not required to trust any one "cloud" provider when it comes to privacy, security or continued availability 5. The 1Password vault format can actually be opened in a browser. Even if by some strange fluke I find myself without a client, I can simply download the file on pretty much every machine and still access my passwords 6. UI. 1Password is very well thought out, and that's an important thing for me for something I use about a couple dozen times every day. While I cannot swear to it, I think I only paid twice over the last six years - the initial purchase plus one paid upgrade some time in the middle. I actually hope to pay for the next one; not only because of what I consider to be fair, but because I want them to do well and be around a long, long time. And when it comes to security, I've seen HN's resident crypto luminary tptacek give it his thumbs-up. This is something I am not able to properly assess on my own, so his word is good enough for me.
        bad_user 10y ago
        Speaking as a 1Password customer and Firefox user ... Just because you pay for something, it doesn't make the business model sustainable. 1Password may be a solid product, but it's in essence a key-value store, which means that there isn't much AgileBits can do to improve it in order to get people to upgrade to a version 7. Heck mobile users would get that for free anyway. And btw, you're probably on macOS, because there is no Linux version, the stable Windows client sucks (version 4) and their new beta client (version 6) is read-only for usage without an account. In other words they have a potential problem: their market is not that big and the standalone version requires convincing people to upgrade for sustainability. And this puts their new subscription model in a new perspective. Which is cool and all, except that would you really pay $3 / month on a yearly contract ($3.6 actually with VAT included) for a password manager? I wouldn't. You can bring up the coffee comparisons of course, but I have other more important subscriptions to pay for that have priority (e.g. phone, email, storage, hosting, domains, etc). As for the endorsement of tptacek, if you care about the words of an HN user, he has endorsed only the standalone product, not the online enabled version to which they are now transitioning. Which no sane expert would endorse actually, given the problem of needing to enter your password in a web interface for account management. Now don't get me wrong, I think 1Password is a good product, but then you compared it with Firefox and Firefox is open source with its development being done in the open, with contributions by third parties as well, which means that no matter what, it will stick around for as long as people want it. Firefox is also one of our champions for open standards, being essentially an open platform for app development. Now this puts it in another league entirely.
        tptacek 10y ago
        1. I'm not HN's resident crypto luminary. I'm HN's resident crypto loudmouth. 2. I endorse 1Password without reservation, but only the standalone version.
      - NamTaf 10y ago
        Integration outside of the browser is why I use keepass. I can press ctrl-alt-w and it will enter my passwords for things such as Steam, Skype, etc. in the applications themselves. I use passwords outside Firefox. Ergo, a password manager tied to Firefox is inherently too limited.
  - mcpherrinm 10y ago
    I have a few reasons to prefer 1P over a browser based option: 1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm less worried about data breaches as a result. 1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile where I have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a desktop website. Also, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P, and browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful for that. It also doesn't lock me into a browser.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      I'd just like to point out that while it does use the cloud to sync, all data is encrypted on the devices before syncing. I do wish it could save other passwords, though.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > 1Password doesn't require a cloud sync. I just use the local wifi sync. I'm less worried about data breaches as a result. Firefox Sync encrypts all of its data; a data breach on the server would only result in a pile of email addresses and encrypted blobs. > 1Password lets me save more than browser passwords: especially on mobile where I have lots of apps to log into, which shares a password with a desktop website. Fair enough. All the mobile apps I use just stay logged in once you log in once. > Also, I store additional data (like bank info, account numbers, etc) in 1P, and browsers don't have UX for that, even if the back end could be useful for that. Hadn't occurred to me to store non-passwords in a password manager. That seems like something a Firefox extension could provide on top of the Firefox password manager, which would make a nice substitute for a locally encrypted file. I wouldn't mind using that to store things like security questions/answers.
      - mook 10y ago
        The old Firefox sync used a local-only passphrase to encrypt things. The new one, as far as I can tell, just tires everything to your Firefox Account (i.e. nothing local is required). That's not really better than what 1Password does, I think.
- corv 10y ago
  It shows up as incompatible but works fine.
agumonkey 10y ago
No issue for me except for some occasional UI event sync loss (menu opened 3s later for another element). Also multiprocess Firefox seems to struggle in GUI perf, it's jerky. Old firefox may be slow but it was a bit predictable. Here less.
Twirrim 10y ago
I'm missing just two. "cli-get" and "Live HTTP Headers". It's the former I really miss. The latter was occasionally useful for debugging stuff.
- charonn0 10y ago
  I read the description of cli-get, and it appears to be similar to a feature built-in to the network tab of the standard developer tools. If you right-click a request in the list of requests you can select "copy as cURL" from the popup menu to get the equivalent curl command line.

DanBlake 10y ago

Does firefox run each tab in its own process yet? Or live inside a sandbox? I switched from firefox + noscript to chrome after accepting that firefox's security (even with noscript enabled) was just so far behind that of chrome.

kuschku 10y ago
You could enable it for quite a while already, but currently the content processes are still using a process pool of 1.
- ronjouch 10y ago
  And if you want so, the about:config key to fiddle with is called "dom.ipc.processCount" and currently defaults to 1, with plans to raise this soon, as described by the article. EDIT also, to come back to DanBlake's question about whether Firefox now "run[s] each tab in its own process yet": no it doesn't; the architecture that was chosen is a process pool, available to all tabs. I won't elaborate much as you can find blogposts where Mozilla engineers detail why this design; IIRC it boils down to: it fulfills the security/performance objectives, and avoids a bit of overhead caused by the one-process-per-tab approach.
  - paddy_m 10y ago
    Would you mind linking to some of those blogposts. I used to read the weekly mozilla meeting notes but they seemed to have stopped including content about 2 years ago. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates I just looked and now it seems that notes link out to separate pages. What's the best way for a non-contributor to follow firefox development?
    - ronjouch 10y ago
      > "Would you mind linking to some of those blogposts." A quick parsing of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis yields "Memory Usage of Firefox with e10s Enabled" [1] and its followup "Are they slim yet?" [2], with [1] closing with these words: "Simply put: the more content processes we use, the more memory we use. On the plus side it’s not a 1:1 factor, with 8 content processes we see roughly a doubling of memory usage on the TabsOpenSettled measurement. It’s a bit worse on Windows, a bit better on OSX, but it’s not 8 times worse. Overall we see a 10-20% increase in memory usage for the 1 content process case (which is what we plan on shipping initially). This seems like a fair tradeoff for potential security and performance benefits, but as we try to grow the number of content processes we’ll need to take another look at where that memory is being used." Some comments at https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/ https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-... also hint at pre-existing discussion on the one-process-per-tab subject, but sadly without linking to it. You'd probably followup with a mailing lists search. [1] http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/11/memory-usage-of-firefox-with-e10s-enabled/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/11/memory-usage-of-firefox-with... [2] http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/12/are-they-slim-yet/ -- As for "What's the best way for a non-contributor to follow Firefox development?", I follow https://planet.mozilla.org/ https://planet.mozilla.org/ , and if that's too much of a firehose to your taste, maybe try https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/

saberworks 10y ago

It would be really nice if the addons/extensions page showed which addons were listed as compatible and which weren't. I might thus make a decision to disable/delete an addon or two that were blocking me from using multiprocess firefox. As it is, I have no idea if my firefox is using multiprocess at all. All I know is that I use a lot of addons and I'm probably not, then, using multiprocess.

binaryanomaly 10y ago
You can see on the Add-ons Manager page if a particular add-on is compatible. about:support shows you if multi-process is enabled " Multiprocess Windows".
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  > You can see on the Add-ons Manager page if a particular add-on is compatible. You can? Where? (Of course, it may be a version thing.)
  - pdw 10y ago
    You need an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat... That's not enough though. In about:addons all my add-ons are listed as compatible, but about:support still says that multiprocess is "disabled by add-ons". So YMMV. EDIT: The gotcha is that the current release uses a whitelist of only about 20 extensions. If you have anything else, you need to force-enable the feature, even if your extensions are supposed to be compatible. https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/file/FIREFOX_50_1_0_RELEASE/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/internal/E10SAddonsRollout.jsm#l16 https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/file/FIREFOX...
    - binaryanomaly 10y ago
      Ah ok thanks, didn't realize that this info was only available because I have the add-on installed.

neves 10y ago

How do I know if my extensions are multiprocess compatible?

Animats 10y ago
Anything built with the high-level Jetpack API or the new Google Chrome compatible API should be. XUL, not so much.
Twirrim 10y ago
Install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat... and go to your add-on page and it'll tell you.
- JamesSwift 10y ago
  It should be noted that 'compatible' is not actually the tested compatibility, it's whether or not the add-on author has declared that it is compatible within their manifest.

nxc18 10y ago

Does anyone have insight on why we're getting this for Firefox in (very late) 2016 while Chrome has had this since 2008 and IE since 2009? Seriously, I understand the need for competition in the browser, and wish there was a viable alternative to chrome on things that aren't Windows, but the failure of Firefox to keep pace is really disappointing. Slow and lacking basic features for years almost makes Firefox feel like the new IE, but at least we can be thankful that not many people are stuck with it. To put this in perspective, Firefox has lagged on multi-process for 8 years. Everyone's beloved IE6 only had 5 years of ruining the internet before it was replaced.

Piskvorrr 10y ago
I do recall IE6. It had many, many other issues besides "it's a resource hog". As for "lacks basic features," I do not recall anything that I would call "a basic feature" coming out in the browser landscape for the few recent years. A lot of new, cool stuff, yes; but nothing that would make me go "ooh, that's what I was missing all this time!" (Disclaimer: user of Chromium,Chrome,FF,Midori,K-Meleon,various Operae,IE and "not-IE-whatever-it's-called",elinks and other stuff)
sfrailsdev 10y ago
Firefox supported way more in the way of extensions and alterations then chrome, things like the zotero citation manager, grease monkey for user scripts, tree tyle tab for modifying the tab and bookmark menus, downthemall download manager, and importantly, TOR. Some of these could be ported to chrome, but they were easier to implement on firefox. It's always been incredibly hackable, in the classic sense. That ability and the legacy of tools built on top of firefox was an important feature that they have largely maintained. Chrome not only didn't have a legacy but still may break things for developers and sometimes just shrug off their complaints. It's a powerful browser, but it's focused on the needs of the parent company.
sp332 10y ago
Firefox has cooler extensions than Chrome. It took ages to create shims for all the troublesome internal APIs that popular extensions use, to make them keep working with multi-process.

davidgerard 10y ago

FWIW, I've been running FF multiprocess with a pile of extensions since it was first introduced (there's a preference you can set to say "yes really I want to do this and I realise I get to keep both pieces"). A few extensions failed, but mostly it's been wonderful and I would recommend it to any techie user. How to force it on: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable

mwcampbell 10y ago

Looks like accessibility tools (e.g. screen readers) also disable multi-process support as of Firefox 50. I know enough about accessibility APIs and their implementations to guess that it's going to be difficult to modify that code to work efficiently in a multi-process configuration.` Edit: I'm talking about Windows. Don't know about other platforms.

dblohm7 10y ago
I'm the dev who is responsible for the Windows implementation. It has been quite the... gnarly experience to say the least. We were shooting for 52 for enabling a11y+e10s, but it is increasingly looking like we're going to need to slip to 53.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dannyobrien 10y ago
  Thank you for your work!
- hashhar 10y ago
  I would like to help out in any way I can. Where should I look to get an idea of the project and what do I need to know to be able to work on it?
  - dblohm7 10y ago
    Here are a couple of links that outline the design and contain some notes: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Accessibility#Windows http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-project/ http://dblohm7.ca/blog/2016/04/06/new-team-new-project/ Note that the approach we are taking on Windows is different from the way that Chrome works. They cache the entire a11y tree in the parent process so that the DLLs injected by assistive technologies may quickly enumerate the a11y tree via virtual function calls. In 2017 we want to start moving away from injected DLLs in Firefox. As part of that initiative I decided not to take the caching route in a11y as that would require continuing to allow injected DLLs for a11y purposes. Instead I am implementing a COM handler that should allow us to significantly reduce the number of round trips required to enumerate the tree. I am hoping that this will offer AT vendors a migration path that eventually moves them out of our process. Feel free to join us in the #accessibility channel on Mozilla's IRC server to chat further. I am aklotz on that server.

chrisper 10y ago

Does anyone know what the incentive behind the development of Firefox is at this point? Like, Chrome has such a huge browser market share, so why do they still develop Firefox? I assume it is not that feasible to invest time and money if the share is only 4%. I am just curious, and not trying to hate on Firefox. But I think most (?) non-tech people use Chrome. So maybe I am asking, what is the point of Firefox if the shares are so low? Again, not trying to hate on it, but I am just curious for the reasons, which I am sure are valid.

RussianCow 10y ago
Because competition is a good thing. I personally wouldn't want the fate of web standards solely dictated by Google. Also, I'm not sure where you got that number, but Firefox's market share is well above 4% for most websites.
- chrisper 10y ago
  I looked here: https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr... It seemed valid, but maybe not. Do you know a better source? EDIT: Others have provided better sources!
  - RussianCow 10y ago
    Each individual version is broken down separately in that chart, so you're looking at the market share for Firefox 49 specifically. The broader number seems to be closer to 11%. Anecdotally, people and organizations that aren't tech-savvy are more likely to use Firefox as well, so it just depends on the target audience.
  - azakai 10y ago
    You're not reading that link properly, but it's understandable since the link isn't the clearest. A specific version of Firefox has the 4% you mentioned, Firefox 49. Look a little lower down and you'll see Firefox 50 has another 3% on top of that, and so forth.

Phlarp 10y ago

This narrative white-washes over the part where he was witch-hunted out of a well deserved leadership position because he exercised his first amendment rights in a way that was unpopular with the greater tech community.

wcummings 10y ago
Your narrative white washes that he's a bigot who couldn't even admit he was wrong after the fact. I think a lot of people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but he didn't do himself any favors.
programaround 10y ago
Here's links about the incident. His statement: https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ Mozilla FAQ regarding this: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... [edit: Clarity]
dang 10y ago
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233433 and marked it off-topic.

shmerl 10y ago

> Our measurements and user feedback were all positive and so with Firefox 50 we deployed multi-process Firefox to users with a broader set of extensions, those whose authors have marked them as multi-process compatible. How can one check if some extension is marked as such? I'm using Firefox beta (which is now 51.0b9) and I noticed that Firefox now splits a separate "Web" process. Is that the indication that multiprocess is enabled? I also set in the past in about:config browser.tabs.remote.autostart = true

hashhar 10y ago
Yes. I do think you it enabled. To confirm, go to about:support, and look for the field that says, "Multiprocess Windows". If it is a value > 0, you do have multiprocess. If you are on an old version, check for the string "Multiprocess staged rollout". If it is true, you do have e10s enabled. And for checking extension compatibility install this extension, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat...

satysin 10y ago

Even on a clean Firefox 50.1.0 x64 install with just uBlock Origin and multi-process enabled Firefox feels quite a bit slower than Chrome. This really shouldn't still be a thing especially with Chrome also having to deal with a bunch of Flash based content on some sites (looking at you BBC News).

cdevs 10y ago
I've noticed most people at my office seem to use chrome because of that seems faster feeling and it's always chromes obsessive page caching which a lot of the time is a pain to deal with. Our site added some cache busting params in the Javascript request based around our git pulls but there's so many times I have to figure a situation because a chrome user is seeing something to old.
febed 10y ago
Vanilla Firefox with multiprocess was sluggish for me as well. I had no such issues with the latest Firefox Developer edition - give it a shot.

baby 10y ago

Anyone knows if Tree Style Tab is supported?

diggan 10y ago
Using Tree Style Tab myself and forced multiprocess. Sometimes when I close a tab, it folds some other tabs into it, but they are still active and you can alt + tab to them, but not visible in the UI. Not that it bothers me too much, since activating multiprocess gave me a huge performance increase
wickawic 10y ago
it is! https://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://www.arewee10syet.com/ (you have to search the extension you want)
swenn 10y ago
An alternative vertical tab bar I discovered some time ago is Tab Center (https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center). Although still a little buggy, I switched over from Tree Style Tab. It feels better IMO and I really didn't care about the "tree style" of TST, I just felt the need for a vertical tab bar.
- KingMob 10y ago
  Wow, I just tried it, and it's the tab interface I always wanted. More vertical space for reading web pages, and wider tabs to read the tab titles more easily. Why isn't this the default yet?
  - baby 10y ago
    A lot of people are wondering why this is not the default. If you like this you should try Tree Style Tab ;)
- baby 10y ago
  I tried it and unfortunately no nested tabs :/

mandelbulb 10y ago

Make Vimperator great again - still no support. :'( Two year old github issue but yet any development to be seen or reported :/

regecks 10y ago
Try Vimfx, I switched to take advantage of e10s, and it's been worthwhile.
lorenzfx 10y ago
You know what they say, pull requests are the new feature requests... But yeah, I'd love to see vimperator or pentadactyl supporting this, and no, I neither have the time nor the skillset to fix it myself.
fra 10y ago
At this point I think it's either fix it yourself or look elsewhere :(. I don't think the current maintainers have the bandwidth to port it to WebExtensions.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
VimFX has been a more than capable substitute.
- proaralyst 10y ago
  I just took a gander: no tab-search, the keybindings are closer to Vimium than plain vim and no external editor. Also the hinting is _slow_ - it takes a second to render the link hints on the hacker news home page. How are you dealing with all of that?
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    To be honest the only thing I miss is tab search; you can modify the keybindings as you wish. I don't use hints as much as I used to. Maybe my browsing style has changed; more reading and less clicking.

pwg 10y ago

Has anyone noticed bookmarklets not working when multi-process is turned on? I installed a V 51 developer edition to test out multi-process, and when multi-process was on, my bookmarks that modify the dom did not work. Any one else noticed anything similar?

cpeterso 10y ago
That's sounds like a bug, as if the bookmarklet is executed in the main browser process and can't see the page's DOM. What DOM bookmarklet water you using? The Pinboard bookmarklet works for me but it is not agreeing the DOM.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  I tried the "WhatFont" bookmarklet, which inspect DOM elements and reports the fonts used. It works for me in Firefox Nightly 53 with e10s enabled. http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html
  - pwg 10y ago
    Just tested Firefox Nightly 53 with the three bookmarklets I use most often, they all work in 53. Therefore it must have been a bug with the 51 version.
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      What are some of the bookmarklets and sites you are testing? I'm not able to reproduce the failure with the "WhatFont" bookmarklet in Firefox 50-53.

dilly_li 10y ago

Is this done in Chrome as early as 8 years ago? https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture.html https://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture...

Twirrim 10y ago
Chrome was built from scratch around this concept. Firefox wasn't, and there's a whole wealth of infrastructure around the non-multiprocess approach, from the way plugins work, all the way on up. Migrating towards multi-process has been a decidedly non-trivial task for Mozilla, involving a lot of effort from a lot of people.
gsnedders 10y ago
You mean what was done in IE8 six months before Chrome? https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loosely-coupled-ie-lcie/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2008/03/11/ie8-and-loose... More seriously—it's somewhat sad to see Chrome get all the credit for this, when it's undoubtedly the case that both IE and Chrome were working on this at the same time.
- flukus 10y ago
  If anything we should give the IE guys extra credit, I doubt the code base was pleasant to work with.

rocky1138 10y ago

Thank you to the Mozilla team who have given my old laptop life again.

dirkg 10y ago

So now Firefox will become much slower due to per tab process overhead, just like Chrome, will pollute the task list with processes, and lose the enormous benefits of it's fantastic extension model, all for some intangible security benefits? I've almost never had a security issue or crash on Firefox with a hundred tabs and maybe fifty extensions, it's still faster than chrome with 10 tabs.

runeks 10y ago
I hope they chose a model of mapping a lot of virtual tab threads to a single OS thread, rather than one OS thread per tab, but I don't know.

jayweb1 10y ago

Cool stuff

nikolay 10y ago

I've been gradually disappointed by Firefox - more and more websites no longer work. Okay, I'm using Firefox Developer Edition, but nonetheless, it's been disappointing compared to, let's say, Google Chrom Canary. Memory and CPU footprint is worse than latest Canary, too!

ngokevin 10y ago
The compatibility issue isn't to blame on web developers increasingly testing only on or making their apps exclusive Chrome?
- nikolay 10y ago
  I think it's the privacy and other "features" that make Facebook and Google login not work, for example.
  - oblio 10y ago
    What "privacy"?

newscracker 10y ago

I like how Firefox multiprocess has evolved and continues to evolve taking measurements into account. When multiprocess was announced several years ago, my main worry was that it would be a Chrome clone with one process per tab and become sluggish like Chrome (my general use of browsers is a minimum of 10 tabs and on certain machines a lot, lot more). Finding a balance between responsiveness, security and stability is what I'd prefer. I personally don't see many stability issues in Firefox even without multiprocess. So I'm happy with this progress even though it may seem slow to dime people or that Firefox isn't keeping up with Chrome (the latter is meaningless for my use since Firefox and it's extensions provide a lot more).

newscracker 10y ago
I hate typos, and can't edit the comment anymore. The last sentence should read: So I'm happy with this progress even though it may seem slow to some people or that Firefox isn't keeping up with Chrome (the latter is meaningless for my use since Firefox and its extensions provide a lot more).