a Firefox performance mystery
Firefox performance problems are usually opaque to me. I always have too many tabs open. I don't like any alternatives that I've found. Bookmarks have only gotten worse. I can tell that Firefox is eating too much CPU when my computer's fan comes on (all performance problems on my desktop seem to be Firefox related). Finding the bad tab(s) isn't always easy. You can try to analyze what's going on with the URL <about:performance> It tells you the memory and CPU resource usage for each tab, except some things don't get assigned to tabs. That display seems to have gotten less useful over time. What prompted this message is yet another time this happened. I found that the bad tab was: <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/finally-upgrading-from-isc-dhcp-server-to-isc-kea-for-my-homelab/> This is a topic that I want to study. Later. I had had it open for more than a week. This tab was burning more than one core's worth of CPU. I deleted the tab. The fan became silent. Then I re-opened it and the load was much smaller. That's today's ad hoc solution. Quite unsatisfactory. Does anyone else have a recommendation for investigating and fixing some Firefox performance problems?
On Sun, Oct 27, 2024, at 02:33, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
This tab was burning more than one core's worth of CPU. I deleted the tab. The fan became silent. Then I re-opened it and the load was much smaller.
That's today's ad hoc solution. Quite unsatisfactory.
Does anyone else have a recommendation for investigating and fixing some Firefox performance problems?
I find this setting in Firefox's "about:config" to be useful for performance... When opening the browser, only load the contents of a pinned tab when I take a look at it; by default its set to "false" and I set it to "true": browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand
From: Daniel Wayne Armstrong via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
I find this setting in Firefox's "about:config" to be useful for performance... When opening the browser, only load the contents of a pinned tab when I take a look at it; by default its set to "false" and I set it to "true":
browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand
Interesting. I didn't even know about pinned tabs. So this setting won't affect me. Now that I know about pinned tabs, I have to think about how I'd use them. So far, I'm coming up empty (after 1 minute of thought). Can anyone pipe up about how and why they use pinned tabs? I already have browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand false
On Sun, Oct 27, 2024 at 10:27:55AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Interesting.
I didn't even know about pinned tabs. So this setting won't affect me.
Now that I know about pinned tabs, I have to think about how I'd use them. So far, I'm coming up empty (after 1 minute of thought).
Can anyone pipe up about how and why they use pinned tabs?
I already have browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand false
I have gmail, facebook messanger and facebook pinned at the start of my tabs. Of course the setting to only load tabs when I actually view them is on, so having 300 tabs in my session doesn't do much unless I actually go to a given tab at which point it loads again. I am down to about 300 open tabs at the moment. It's not as bad as the 600 I was at a few weeks ago. At least firefox handles such "abuse" fairly well unlike chrome that is a total disaster with a lot less tabs open. And yeah bookmarks never seemed useful to me. -- Len Sorensen
How can you have 300 tabs? There isn't enough horizontal space for them. How do you go to any one of tabs? Do you go sequentially? Or, search? On 2024-10-27 10:52, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
I am down to about 300 open tabs at the moment. It's not as bad as the 600 I was at a few weeks ago.
From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> To: talk@gtalug.org
How can you have 300 tabs? There isn't enough horizontal space for them. How do you go to any one of tabs? Do you go sequentially? Or, search?
You can have multiple browser windows, each with a imaginably number of tabs. That's what I do. I normally have a separate window for each initiative. You can search for tabs. When you type in a search, FF shows possible completions. At the bottom of that pop-down you can specify the kind of search. Empty rectangle means "search tabs". If you think that your current tab might duplicate a previous one, and you only want one of them, you can right-click on the tab and select "close duplicate tabs". If it is greyed out, it isn't a duplicate.
On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 12:47:49PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
How can you have 300 tabs? There isn't enough horizontal space for them. How do you go to any one of tabs? Do you go sequentially? Or, search?
Sequentially for the most part. They are mostly things I opened because I wanted to look at it, and haven't got to it yet. :) Once in a while I do a go through things and clean up day. -- Len Sorensen
On Sun, Oct 27, 2024 at 10:53 AM Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
And yeah bookmarks never seemed useful to me.
Browser bookmarks have been to me essentially notes-to-myself about sites that I think I might find useful in the future. Now that I'm trying to figure out Obsidian I'll be turning my bookmarks into markdown-formatted notes that will be easier to find and maybe even use. - Evan PS: Anyone here using Obsidian? If so please reveal your favourite tutorials (either offlist or in a separate thread...) Thanks!
On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 at 10:28, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
From: Daniel Wayne Armstrong via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
I find this setting in Firefox's "about:config" to be useful for performance... When opening the browser, only load the contents of a pinned tab when I take a look at it; by default its set to "false" and I set it to "true":
browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand
Interesting.
I didn't even know about pinned tabs. So this setting won't affect me.
Now that I know about pinned tabs, I have to think about how I'd use them. So far, I'm coming up empty (after 1 minute of thought).
Can anyone pipe up about how and why they use pinned tabs?
I already have browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand false
I've found "about:performance" to be reasonably effective at finding the hog tabs. But then, I generally only have about 25-30 tabs open. Sorry it hasn't worked for you. I use pinned tabs heavily: I have about 15 sites I reference so commonly there seems no point in closing them, and they're easy to identify by the site icon so pinning them and reducing the tab size is a good idea. For example: three mail accounts, two calendars, a remote file browser/site, GitHub, etc. Something else I've noticed related to performance: on this machine, Gmail has never been a serious problem, but on another host (with similar memory and CPU) my Gmail tab would occasionally wind up the CPU like mad. My guess at the time (in no way proved) was that Gmail didn't like to be ignored for days or weeks, and wanted to fry your computer like a child throwing a tantrum to get attention. :-) Alvin was inclined to blame badly written JS hogging resources, and I'm in agreement. As the authors of that JS code are likely working on massive workstations where the browser is restarted frequently (because they're developers), they're unlikely to ever encounter the problems us plebs run into. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
On 10/27/24 07:51, Daniel Wayne Armstrong via talk wrote:
I find this setting in Firefox's"about:config" to be useful for performance... When opening the browser, only load the contents of a pinned tab when I take a look at it; by default its set to "false" and I set it to "true":
browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand
I've just set that. tnx
wow, thank you Hugh, I learned my tidbit today, I can go back to bed. OTOH, how do I get the equivalent for chrome? a search led me to this: How do I open the Performance tab in Chrome? If you don't already see the Performance Insights tab, you can enable it by going to More options icon -> More tools -> Performance Insights. Alternatively, you can also enable Performance Insights through the the DevTools Command Menu.Mar 1, 2023 but I can't find a more options icon or devtools command menu. (note this is the chrome derivative brave, but I would think those things would be the same) <pre>--Carey</pre>
On 10/27/2024 1:33 AM CDT D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Firefox
You can try to analyze what's going on with the URL <about:performance>
On 10/27/24 2:33 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Firefox performance problems are usually opaque to me. I always have too many tabs open. I don't like any alternatives that I've found. Bookmarks have only gotten worse.
I can tell that Firefox is eating too much CPU when my computer's fan comes on (all performance problems on my desktop seem to be Firefox related). Finding the bad tab(s) isn't always easy.
I have noticed a similar situation with my browser of choice which is brave. There are some sites that if the tab is left open will slowly ramp up in load on my system until I close them. My feeling without any backing proof is that JS or other active site code is buggy and starts to burn up resources. I have a client with a web application that some times generates high hundreds of requests a second to the server and since the JS is hard to debug the fix has been to reset the web server which causes the self inflicted DOS attack to stop.
I found that the bad tab was: <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/finally-upgrading-from-isc-dhcp-server-to-isc-kea-for-my-homelab/> This is a topic that I want to study. Later. I had had it open for more than a week.
I noticed that article also and emailed it to myself. -- Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||
its very interesting. for the past week or so, there has been an extensive and detailed discussion on the Debian list about Firefox and its problems. Rather a shame really. Kare On Sun, 27 Oct 2024, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
On 10/27/24 2:33 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Firefox performance problems are usually opaque to me. I always have too many tabs open. I don't like any alternatives that I've found. Bookmarks have only gotten worse.
I can tell that Firefox is eating too much CPU when my computer's fan comes on (all performance problems on my desktop seem to be Firefox related). Finding the bad tab(s) isn't always easy.
I have noticed a similar situation with my browser of choice which is brave.
There are some sites that if the tab is left open will slowly ramp up in load on my system until I close them.
My feeling without any backing proof is that JS or other active site code is buggy and starts to burn up resources.
I have a client with a web application that some times generates high hundreds of requests a second to the server and since the JS is hard to debug the fix has been to reset the web server which causes the self inflicted DOS attack to stop.
I found that the bad tab was: <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/finally-upgrading-from-isc-dhcp-server-to-isc-kea-for-my-homelab/> This is a topic that I want to study. Later. I had had it open for more than a week.
I noticed that article also and emailed it to myself.
-- Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||
On Sun, Oct 27, 2024 at 2:15 PM Karen Lewellen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: for the past week or so, there has been an extensive and detailed discussion
on the Debian list about Firefox and its problems.
Total tangent: Firefox isn't alone. Numerous projects are running into sustainability and scaling issues as their founders leave or burn out, and the original energy needs to be replaced by other incentives such as income. The karmic decline of both Red Hat and Canonical have been on full display. (When Oracle tries to come across as one of the good guys something is really going weird.) At the last GTALUG meeting we touched on the Godot engine getting needlessly political leading to an (IMO equally needless) fork. Next month will address the tribulations between Wordpress founders and "exploiters" and more needless forking. These days it seems that political and financial issues about open source projects are overwhelming the technical ones. - Evan
participants (10)
-
Alvin Starr -
CAREY SCHUG -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Daniel Wayne Armstrong -
Evan Leibovitch -
Giles Orr -
James Knott -
Karen Lewellen -
Lennart Sorensen -
William Park