nnethercote

44 ms·

511.
by nnethercote 15y ago
I'm a Mozilla employee and started MemShrink. I also write about it regularly: http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ . MemShrink has been running since June 2011 and there have been many improvements in Firefox's memory
512.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Memory consumption is important because it has a significant effect on performance and crash rate. The effects vary greatly depending on your hardware. You're right that people focus too much on raw memory measurements themselves. There
513.
by nnethercote 15y ago
about:memory is intended to be a tool for developers and highly technical users. But we're getting close to the point where per-tab memory reporting will be feasible, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687724 , which is curr
514.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Even if a per-extension memory limit was possible, good luck choosing the actual limit and then surviving the storm of "WTF did Firefox kill my extension?" complaints.
515.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Trade-offs exist! How astonishing. From https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink : "MemShrink is a project that aims to reduce Firefox's memory consumption. There are three potential benefits. 1. Speed. Firefox will be faster due to
516.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Evidence, please.
517.
by nnethercote 15y ago
From https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink : "Changes that reduce memory consumption but make Firefox slower are not desirable."
518.
by nnethercote 15y ago
I read TechCrunch for a while. I stopped when I realized that I always felt dirty afterwards, much like I do if I look at a celebrity gossip magazine.
519.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Firebug also causes a large performance hit, even for sites you haven't enabled it on. And it leaks memory, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=669730 . I shudder to think how many people have concluded that Firefox is slow a
520.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Every discussion about web browsers degenerates into a "which browser is better" flamewar.
521.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Reminds me of the moving photos from the Harry Potter movies.
522.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Three years ago people didn't know that much about compiling JS really well. They know a lot more now. The lessons learned from each JIT helps make the next one better.
523.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Tracing can be good as icing on the cake, but it alone won't get you good performance. With just the interpreter (super slow) and TraceMonkey (super fast, when it worked) the end result is still pretty slow, and perf can be really uneven.
524.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Yeah, FF4 had its problems. FF5 and FF6 fixed some of them, but I think you'll really like FF7. Try it out!
525.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Firefox 7 and 8 (both in development) are much better behaved over long sessions. You should give one of them a try.
526.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Yes, although it might not happen immediately. That's exactly what this fix helps with. And see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668809 for more about this.
527.
by nnethercote 15y ago
Try an FF7 Nightly build (nightly.mozilla.org) at this time tomorrow. Some great improvements have been made recently, including the one discussed in this thread. If you still see problems, please file bugs and CC me, I'm ":njn" on bugzil
528.
by nnethercote 15y ago
A colleague of mine said "eternal vigilance is the price of low memory usage". Firefox's memory behaviour has varied over the years. FF3.6 was fairly good. FF4 wasn't good. FF5 is a bit better. FF7 is looking like it will be much bet
529.
by nnethercote 15y ago
The key word here is "workload". A web browser is a programming environment. It would be silly to say "no single native program should use 500MB of RAM", and it's equally silly to say that no website (and by extension, the browser) should
530.
by nnethercote 15y ago
In FF6 (available right now on the Aurora channel and in the next few days on the Beta channel) and later versions you can go to about:memory and click on the "minimize memory usage" button at the bottom. Maybe do it a couple of times for