3 ms·

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

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/
dblohm7 10y ago
Both of those topics are discussed in the blog post, btw.
rockdoe 10y ago
Isn't this exactly what the article explains and clarifies?
- nindalf 10y ago
  Yes but why bother actually reading the article when you can shoot off in the comments with minimal effort? If you're wrong, someone will correct you. Amirite?
  - randomguy23 10y ago
    or just post a snarky reply that adds completely NULL to the discussion...

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/

dblohm7 10y ago

Both of those topics are discussed in the blog post, btw.

rockdoe 10y ago

Isn't this exactly what the article explains and clarifies?

nindalf 10y ago
Yes but why bother actually reading the article when you can shoot off in the comments with minimal effort? If you're wrong, someone will correct you. Amirite?
- randomguy23 10y ago
  or just post a snarky reply that adds completely NULL to the discussion...