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i wish firefox had more granularity with its tab unloading feature. one method is restarting browser. but by default it’ll unload tabs if you’re low on memory.

i wish firefox had more granularity with its tab unloading feature. one method is restarting browser. but by default it’ll unload tabs if you’re low on memory. you can force em in about:unloads (hint- about:about if you ever forget) i wrote a simple firefox extension that unloads em all with a button click, but it’s no different than restarting ff or spamming clicks in :unloads

sitkack 3y ago
We already know the solution. We run the browser in Wasm inside the browser. That way it only has one tab open and that tab is doing 99% of its work inside of a wasm env. I thought firefox would ship new versions of firefox inside of firefox at some point. I guess that point is still in the future. This of course is how electron should work as well. A canvas only frame that loads whatever rendering system you want, which could be a browser, or it could be Unreal engine.
- ale42 3y ago
  Isn't this what SDL (https://www.libsdl.org/ https://www.libsdl.org/) is for? Some cross-platform (and pretty light) hardware abstraction where you can have a canvas, do 3D, audio, whatever...
- imiric 3y ago
  I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but assuming it's not... How many levels of abstraction do we need to run software reliably? The fact that browsers have effectively become operating systems should be worrying enough. No wonder we have all these fantasy projects that take us back to when our computing environments were actually pleasant to use. I would partly blame the invasive tracking and needless complexity of modern OSs for that, but the ever growing software layers around hardware makes no sense at all. We should question any such design decision, and strive to simplify this ball of complexity instead.
adhamsalama 3y ago
Try Sidebery extension.
beagle3 3y ago
There’s AutoTabDiscard which lets you set a timeout and other rules for when to discard.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Is AutoTabDiscard still helpful/necessary with whatever automatic stuff Chrome/Firefox does nowadays? I run a lot of tabs (100s-1000s) and this sounds potentially very helpful if it does something beyond what the browser automatically does.
  - beagle3 3y ago
    I think Firefox will delay loading on session resume (that is, if you restart Firefox, tabs will not load until you actually switch to them),but will not unload anything automatically - so if you open 200 tabs between restarts and keep them open (which I sometimes do, for a week or two until I close them) it makes a difference.
    - grimgrin 3y ago
      If you toggle this it will automatically unload, thought I'm not sure how low memory has to get before it triggers: browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory In my original comment above I wrongly assumed it _was_ on by default

sitkack 3y ago

We already know the solution. We run the browser in Wasm inside the browser. That way it only has one tab open and that tab is doing 99% of its work inside of a wasm env. I thought firefox would ship new versions of firefox inside of firefox at some point. I guess that point is still in the future. This of course is how electron should work as well. A canvas only frame that loads whatever rendering system you want, which could be a browser, or it could be Unreal engine.

ale42 3y ago
Isn't this what SDL (https://www.libsdl.org/ https://www.libsdl.org/) is for? Some cross-platform (and pretty light) hardware abstraction where you can have a canvas, do 3D, audio, whatever...
imiric 3y ago
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but assuming it's not... How many levels of abstraction do we need to run software reliably? The fact that browsers have effectively become operating systems should be worrying enough. No wonder we have all these fantasy projects that take us back to when our computing environments were actually pleasant to use. I would partly blame the invasive tracking and needless complexity of modern OSs for that, but the ever growing software layers around hardware makes no sense at all. We should question any such design decision, and strive to simplify this ball of complexity instead.

adhamsalama 3y ago

Try Sidebery extension.

beagle3 3y ago

There’s AutoTabDiscard which lets you set a timeout and other rules for when to discard.

user_7832 3y ago
Is AutoTabDiscard still helpful/necessary with whatever automatic stuff Chrome/Firefox does nowadays? I run a lot of tabs (100s-1000s) and this sounds potentially very helpful if it does something beyond what the browser automatically does.
- beagle3 3y ago
  I think Firefox will delay loading on session resume (that is, if you restart Firefox, tabs will not load until you actually switch to them),but will not unload anything automatically - so if you open 200 tabs between restarts and keep them open (which I sometimes do, for a week or two until I close them) it makes a difference.
  - grimgrin 3y ago
    If you toggle this it will automatically unload, thought I'm not sure how low memory has to get before it triggers: browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory In my original comment above I wrongly assumed it _was_ on by default