Love Firefox but sorry it's slower!

By KeeperOfThePizza
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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Community Regular

dancedar

Posted
Posted

3.0.11 was absolutely fine for me. RC2 was slower on startup.

RC3/ 3.5 takes 20-30 seconds to startup now, sometimes it'll take over a minute.

Clearly something is wrong as even the World's Slowest Startup App (Adobe Lightroom) takes less than 15 seconds on my 3ghz pc.

I've tried un/reinstalling but same issue.

Not gonna waste my time trying to sort it out until I get Windows 7 (RC atm) but it's annoying as hell.

Grand Master

dead.cell

Posted
Posted

For those with speed issues possibly on Vista/7:

What finally produced a dramatic increase in speed of loading was erasing (just about) everything from my Users\AppData\Local\Temp folder that Richard suggested. Then Firefox loaded in about two seconds. I had something like 15,000 files in that Temp folder.

Also seems suggested to go to your IE options and clear your cache/temp files there too. Hope that helps.

Repeating this since a few have said it has really helped them.

Grand Master

ToneKnee

Posted
Posted

I don't have history enabled, I find Firefox to start within a few seconds on a cold boot (Windows 7). I've had problems which you have stated in the past, especially from 1.5 to 2. Erasing the profile and making a new one fixed this issue for me. Maybe you have an extension or your profile is corrupt or something?

Mentor

Alex_is_Axel

Posted
Posted

Does anyones Flash vidoes such as on youtube take a while to load up now on 3.5 and the begining 3/4seconds you just hear sound and then the video catches up. I would just say it was the video but it happens on pretty much all videos

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted

Everything is fine for me. Memory usage is pretty good, better than IE8 that's for sure. IE8 is what I find to be a DOG of a browser. I swear it only takes a few days for IE8 to suddenly decide "hey, im gonna be slow from now on". It appears to load quick, but then it freezes for about 20 seconds or so before it will let me use it. This behavior is sporadic, though. IE8 also freezes when another tab is loading or when I right click. Firefox NEVER does this. I hope they focus on fixing such performance issues for IE9.

Enthusiast

Tiby312

Posted
Posted
If you cut all the nice features Firefox has and other browsers don't, it would be very fast. Sorry, but absolutely nothing is perfect for everyone. Get used to it and stop bashing this wonderful piece of software with silly milliseconds comparisons. This is purely childish behavior.

I disagree. If they added the multi-process support like the rest it would improve performance.

The startup of a vanilla Firefox with history/session-restore/cache emptied can be counted in seconds while the startup of Google Chrome with history/session-restore/cache full and crx extensions can be counted in milliseconds (on vista).

I also wish that Mozilla would improve the performance of what they have instead of adding more functionality. They will probably have to practically build it from the ground up though.

Community Regular

code.kliu.org

Posted
Posted (edited)
I disagree. If they added the multi-process support like the rest it would improve performance.

You mean multi-threading, right? Multi-process is one form of multi-threading. And a very expensive and inefficient form, at that, because you've got the extra memory overhead, the extra IPC costs (which are very expensive), etc. The only benefit that multi-process gives you over same-process multi-threading is that it limits the extent of damage if something goes wrong: if there's a crash, only a part of your browser would die instead of the entire browser. If you get a memory leak or fragmentation issues, only a part of your browser is affected. And from my personal experience of using Google Chrome, if it wasn't for multi-process to limit the extent of damage, Chrome would be in far worse shape than Firefox in both of those departments.

And Firefox does multiple threads for doing certain things, though not for everything (most notably, all the tabs are run on the same thread). Yea, this sucks, but it's on their to-do list.

And there is a huge tradeoff between feature set and performance here. For example, the Firefox Places database makes it possible for me to type in a fragment of a URL and a fragment of a page title into the location bar to find a URL in my history to go to; it's one of the things that I miss the most whenever I use Chrome. And guess what, keeping a history of all my browsing activity for the past several months (a places DB of ~100MB) is going to drag you down (which is evident if I delete the db). But I keep it because, in my opinion, the Smart Location Bar is one of the best features ever, and I personally couldn't live without it.

Or what about extensibility? What extensibility does Chrome offer? If you ever looked at Chrome's extension dev docs, you'd see that Chrome extensions are nothing more than glorified Greasemonkey scripts. They can never, ever approach the degree of extensibility that Firefox extensions can offer because Gecko is a true platform: there's the rendering engine, there's the JavaScript engine, and the Firefox browser itself is actually written in XML (XUL), driven by JavaScript, and styled using CSS, and all running on top of the Gecko engine. Is this the fastest way of doing things? Hell no. In fact, if you had to pick one thing about Firefox to blame for performance, it's that Gecko is a full-blown platform running XUL--not the weak multithreading. But it makes Firefox easier to develop (because, well, they don't have the kind of limitless resources that Google or MSFT have), it makes it easier to make Firefox cross-platform (available for Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2, mobile phones, etc., while Google is still hammering away on their Linux and Mac versions). And most importantly for a lot of people, it makes it possible to write Firefox extensions that can do anything that the browser can do and that can alter any aspect of the browser. Chrome's extensions can't do that, and unless Google throws everything out the window and fundamentally reengineers everything, Chrome extensions will never be anything more than glorified Greasemonkey scripts.

Of course, different people value things differently, but for me personally, the price for Chrome's performance is way too high.

Edited by code.kliu.org
Enthusiast

Tiby312

Posted
Posted (edited)
You mean multi-threading, right? Multi-process is one form of multi-threading. And a very expensive and inefficient form, at that, because you've got the extra memory overhead, the extra IPC costs (which are very expensive), etc. The only benefit that multi-process gives you over same-process multi-threading is that it limits the extent of damage if something goes wrong: if there's a crash, only a part of your browser would die instead of the entire browser. If you get a memory leak or fragmentation issues, only a part of your browser is affected. And from my personal experience of using Google Chrome, if it wasn't for multi-process to limit the extent of damage, Chrome would be in far worse shape than Firefox in both of those departments.

It is due to chromes multi-process structure that if you open a JavaScript intensive tab, the browser itself does not stutter. Therefore it does have an impact on performance. This is particularly noticeable for me if I open, for example gmail, while I am doing other things or if I have a game in another tab. It may use more memory but it also increases security from using that extra memory too. Therefore, using a multi-process structure has both performance and security benefits whereas a multi-threaded structure only has performance benefits. A combination of both is ideal of-course.

And Firefox does multiple threads for doing certain things, though not for everything (most notably, all the tabs are run on the same thread). Yea, this sucks, but it's on their to-do list.

We agree here.

And there is a huge tradeoff between feature set and performance here. For example, the Firefox Places database makes it possible for me to type in a fragment of a URL and a fragment of a page title into the location bar to find a URL in my history to go to; it's one of the things that I miss the most whenever I use Chrome. And guess what, keeping a history of all my browsing activity for the past several months (a places DB of ~100MB) is going to drag you down (which is evident if I delete the db). But I keep it because, in my opinion, the Smart Location Bar is one of the best features ever, and I personally couldn't live without it.

Chrome already has the potential to do this. It would just require merging two search bars. Therefore that means it can be done without the trade off in performance that you imply is unavoidable.

Or what about extensibility? What extensibility does Chrome offer? If you ever looked at Chrome's extension dev docs, you'd see that Chrome extensions are nothing more than glorified Greasemonkey scripts. They can never, ever approach the degree of extensibility that Firefox extensions can offer because Gecko is a true platform: there's the rendering engine, there's the JavaScript engine, and the Firefox browser itself is actually written in XML (XUL), driven by JavaScript, and styled using CSS, and all running on top of the Gecko engine. Is this the fastest way of doing things? Hell no. In fact, if you had to pick one thing about Firefox to blame for performance, it's that Gecko is a full-blown platform running XUL--not the weak multithreading. But it makes Firefox easier to develop (because, well, they don't have the kind of limitless resources that Google or MSFT have), it makes it easier to make Firefox cross-platform (available for Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2, mobile phones, etc., while Google is still hammering away on their Linux and Mac versions). And most importantly for a lot of people, it makes it possible to write Firefox extensions that can do anything that the browser can do and that can alter any aspect of the browser. Chrome's extensions can't do that, and unless Google throws everything out the window and fundamentally reengineers everything, Chrome extensions will never be anything more than glorified Greasemonkey scripts.

Well apparently Greasemonkey can do a lot. They plan to support extensions like delicious toolbar, StumbleUpon, ad block, flashblock, download helpers/accelerators, flashgot, foxytunes, web of trust, forefastfox, etc. Sauce. Looking at the most downloaded Firefox extensions, I think that will satisfy the majority of users.

Edited by Tiby312
Mentor

Salty Wagyu

Posted
Posted

Also got the same on an XP SP3 system, FF 3.5 takes a tad longer to start up from cold, and clicking File > Exit isn't as instant as it used to be in previous versions, but web browsing speed is certainly more nippy in 3.5 however.

I haven't started a new profile and imported bookmarks, saved passwords, login auto-fill etc. that I find essential, whilst leaving the rest of the collected junk behind. I usually do that at every major release to keep the profile clean.

Community Regular

code.kliu.org

Posted
Posted
using a multi-process structure has both performance and security benefits whereas a multi-threaded structure only has performance benefits. A combination of both is ideal of-course.

That is incorrect. You will get the same Gmail-won't-make-my-UI-stutter benefit with single-process multithreading, as you would with multiprocessing. The multithreading spotlight is often on high-performance parallel computing, but that sort of stuff is relatively rare; most of the time, multithreading is used for stuff like improving responsiveness. Mozilla's multithreading is limited and the JS all run in the same thread, but if that were to change, you would get the exact same benefit. I'm not saying that multiprocessing is necessarily bad, but that people should recognize it for what it is: a trade-off of performance (vs. a fully-implemented single-process multithreading scheme) for a limit to the extent of the effect of Bad Stuff. It offers nothing else beyond single-process multithreading. Period.

Well apparently Greasemonkey can do a lot. They plan to support extensions like delicious toolbar, StumbleUpon, ad block, flashblock, download helpers/accelerators, flashgot, foxytunes, web of trust, forefastfox, etc. Sauce. Looking at the most downloaded Firefox extensions, I think that will satisfy the majority of users.

Well, yes, it is powerful. That's why content scripts are so popular. But there is more of a limit to what you can do.

Enthusiast

Tiby312

Posted
Posted (edited)
That is incorrect. You will get the same Gmail-won't-make-my-UI-stutter benefit with single-process multithreading, as you would with multiprocessing. The multithreading spotlight is often on high-performance parallel computing, but that sort of stuff is relatively rare; most of the time, multithreading is used for stuff like improving responsiveness. Mozilla's multithreading is limited and the JS all run in the same thread, but if that were to change, you would get the exact same benefit. I'm not saying that multiprocessing is necessarily bad, but that people should recognize it for what it is: a trade-off of performance (vs. a fully-implemented single-process multithreading scheme) for a limit to the extent of the effect of Bad Stuff. It offers nothing else beyond single-process multithreading. Period.

So isn't my statement correct? Both provide performance increase while one also provides security. I think a multi-process structure is also much easier to implement. Seems like the logical thing to do.

Well, yes, it is powerful. That's why content scripts are so popular. But there is more of a limit to what you can do.

Like what? I guess themes are the main problem.

Edited by Tiby312
Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
...

It may use more memory but it also increases security from using that extra memory too. Therefore, using a multi-process structure has both performance and security benefits whereas a multi-threaded structure only has performance benefits.

...

Where does this extra security come from?

Nothing has been said about running the child processes in low integrity mode or anything, it's just been said they'll be more secure because they use more memory.

Community Regular

code.kliu.org

Posted
Posted
So isn't my statement correct? Both provide performance increase while one also provides security. I think a multi-process structure is also much easier to implement. Seems like the logical thing to do.

Oops, my apologies. I misread your "both" as "only".

As for the limitations, stuff that modify the UI and the function of the browser itself. E.g., stuff that add to the "page info" dialog, the many extensions that extend on or even completely re-implement Fx's tabbed browsing. Stuff that work with low-level traffic between the browser and sites. Etc.

Enthusiast

Tiby312

Posted
Posted (edited)
Where does this extra security come from?

Nothing has been said about running the child processes in low integrity mode or anything, it's just been said they'll be more secure because they use more memory.

Well, I meant Google Chrome's Sandbox method.

Oops, my apologies. I misread your "both" as "only".

As for the limitations, stuff that modify the UI and the function of the browser itself. E.g., stuff that add to the "page info" dialog, the many extensions that extend on or even completely re-implement Fx's tabbed browsing. Stuff that work with low-level traffic between the browser and sites. Etc.

Seeing as the majority of people do not depend on such features, I think the trade off between speed and such features is acceptable. A Tab-Mix-Plus equivalent will be missed though I presume then. On the other hand, this is already being missed in firefox 3.5 lol. I do hope Google Chrome will add some more options on tab management built-in.

Edited by Tiby312
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