Hacker News Reader

Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

I have 12GB of RAM and probably ~120 tabs open at any given time. This used to be fine, but it seems Firefox is just getting worse over time, the main problem is the frequent 5 to 30 second pauses while it is doing....something.

View on HN

>the main problem is the frequent 5 to 30 second pauses while it is doing....something.

Oh god I thought I was alone on this. I've been talking to various Firefox users and nobody was able to relate with me. I usually keep Firefox open 24/7 with around 20-30 tabs open (~6 or so pinned). Every time I am typing (like in a hangout popup window or in a HN comment) Firefox is micro-stuttering and freezing and it eats away some of the words I am typing and it becomes very frustrating. I ended up typing comments in vim and then copypasting because it was faster. It feels like typing in an SSH connection with high-latency.

Also when scrolling long pages (like reddit threads) the "view" takes a while to update so I end up scrolling down to a totally grey page which then updates with content over and over again. And don't make me talk about twitter taking ages and setting my CPU to 100% (one core) with loud as hell fan every time I click on "show 50 new tweets"...

I have 16GB of RAM and a 2-years old top-of-the-line (back then) i7 CPU on a laptop, I shouldn't be having these issues...

Yes, I have the same problems. Last time I looked into these pauses, those were mostly GC pauses. At first you feel like moving on a bumpy road with micro-freezes and frame drops - that's incremental GC, and then you meet a concrete wall - that's non-incremental GC kicks-in, sometimes in multi-second territory. It got better in the last few releases, to be fair, but still far away from other browsers.

Man I dunno, that seems like something else entirely. Maybe try installing NoScript?

> 120 tabs open at any given time

Are you exaggerating ? If not, may I suggest an alternative way to browse the web ?

I use multiple virtual desktops. Each desktop logically caters to one task. Each browser window is logically grouped under one activity.

For example my desktop may look like this :

Virtual Desktop 1 ( Communications ):

* Outlook

* Lync

* Flowdock etc

Virtual Desktop 2 ( Development ):

* ConEmu/ Command prompt

* Intellij

* Browser Window with multiple tabs for referring stuff

Virtual Desktop 3 ( Procrastination ):

Browser Window 1:

* Various pages opened from HN

Browser Window 2:

* Various pages concerning World War 2

* Various pages investigating different investment strategies.

The advantage of this approach is that once you are done you can close browser windows and tabs. Done with researching World War 2 ? Close that window, all associated tabs close automatically. If you accidentally close a tab, you can always bring it back with Ctrl + Shift + T. If you want to refer to a previously opened window, you can always do a simple search in browser history.

Keeps your system responsive and makes it easy to find things.

He is not, it is not rare to have 120 tabs, in fact some extreme even have 400+ Tabs openned. Today is rather lightweight for me and has 70 Tabs. Of coz these wont be all loaded, Once you close and reopen those tabs will be unloaded. They are more like a list of things to read and do.

I currently have 753 tabs open on this computer alone :p But as you say, it's not a problem at all because there are not loaded until I go back to them.

The only issue I have with massive number of tabs, is the start-up time of the browser, which increase dramatically with the number of tabs (it's at least quadratic).

The only solution to this would be effective treatment for ADHD I think

Did you count them? How can you be so exact?

If you try and close the window, firefox will be default warn you and tell you how many tabs you have.

> Of coz these wont be all loaded, Once you close and reopen those tabs will be unloaded.

That's how it's supposed to work, but for me the tabs seem to consume memory even when they're not loaded (after a restart). I completely can't understand how this is a difficult thing to implement properly.

On a different system, I had pretty much that. I've moved to Chromium, which is also slow but at least doesn't hang as often or as badly. I would do this:

8 or 16 gigabytes of RAM (got an upgrade)

8 virtual desktops, about 5 occupied with browser windows

1 to 20 windows per desktop

1 to 20 tabs per window

That is likely 100 to 300 tabs total. No, I really don't want to close them. I want more open, but performance is a problem. I like to keep going back to tabs that have been open for months. It hurts to close tabs because then I lose track of what I am working on; the scroll bar position matters and the page might even be gone from the web. Sometimes I write a comment on a web site like this one, then let it sit for days if I am unsure I want to post it.

Have you ever heard of bookmarks?

With bookmarks, I lose my state. Scroll position matters. The highlighting of search terms (by Ctrl-F in the browser) matters. The content of an unsubmitted form matters. Web site log-in matters.

Even if I didn't lose my state, reloading a bookmark is slow.

With bookmarks, deletion is a pain.

How would I even know when to bookmark something? I might open 10 links from a news site or search engine, each in a different tab. Do you propose that I bookmark them immediately, even though they are probably tabs that I will soon close and never wish to see again? If I see the page and think I want to consider it for a few hours maybe (or longer; how should I know?) do I bookmark it? Perhaps I should wait the few hours or days...? Why should I even have to make this decision?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com