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Multi-Process Comes To Firefox Nightly, 64-bit Firefox For Windows 'Soon'

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-go-straight-to-640-bit dept.

An anonymous reader writes with word that the Mozilla project has made two announcements that should make hardcore Firefox users very happy. The first is that multi-process support is landing in Firefox Nightly, and the second is that 64-bit Firefox is finally coming to Windows. The features are a big deal on their own, but together they show Mozilla's commitment to the desktop version of Firefox as they both improve performance and security. The news is part of a slew of unveilings from the company on the browser's 10th anniversary — including new Firefox features and the debut of Firefox Developer Edition.

181 comments

  1. Woot Now I can play landmark in firefox! by Bonzoli · · Score: 1

    Oh wait.

    1. Re:Woot Now I can play landmark in firefox! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't wait. Don't think. Promote Landmark as if it isn't a spin-off from est which was a spin-off from Scientology.

  2. Tempting by riis138 · · Score: 1

    As a long time Firefox user who switched to Chromium, I am happy to see that Mozilla is taking these steps to ensure long term survival. Multi-process architecture is long overdue. I still maintain that Firefox has one of the most friendly developer communities out there.

    --
    Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
    1. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      I still maintain that Firefox has one of the most friendly developer communities out there.

      Unless you contribute to a political cause they don't like.

    2. Re:Tempting by luvirini · · Score: 2

      It is too bad that chrome is unusable due to the multi process architecture causing so much overhead.

      I tried opening all the windows and tabs I have open in waterfox at 4.5 gigs used memory for fun in chrome and had to stop when the total memory use went over 50 gigs as everything was kind of slow at that point...

      So I am hoping that same problem will not happen in firefox 64 bit when it comes out.

    3. Re:Tempting by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

      this is true. I can;t see how following the bandwagon of Chrome actually makes things better with Firefox. Multi-process architecture... I've not really noticed a problem with the threaded one, and Firefox already sticks flash objects in a separate process. So what's the real draw... except "well the guy down the road has one so we have to have one too".

      64bit... again, bragging points about how many bits you use, no functional difference to anyone. Its like when I gave the 32 bit version of Visual Studio to a colleague and he complained that he wanted the 64 bit version.... there is no 64 bit version because it isn't needed. Its just the typical knee-jerk reaction that 64 bits is somehow essential for everything, not just those programs that really do require it.

      Which of course applies doubly for a multi-process browser!

    4. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And this is why I still need to keep around 32 bit compatibility libraries just because a couple of applications refuse to fix their code so it compiles on different architectures. You don't have to install 64 bit firefox on your 32-bit shitbox from 1990.
      4 GB is enough for everyone, no application should ever need more memory than that.

    5. Re:Tempting by valinor89 · · Score: 1

      For me the real draw for me would be that a poorly written "falling snow" effect written in JS brings all my tabs to its knees. Oh, and sometimes it doesn't hang ang continues doing its thing slowing down everything. This way the usual alert of a hanged script does not appear...

    6. Re:Tempting by Wootery · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Damn right.

      Would a 'friendly community' welcome a new boss who supported banning inter-racial marriage? No, and the oh but it's just a personal view nonsense wouldn't fly there either.

    7. Re:Tempting by caseih · · Score: 1

      Except that on windows you get the 32 bit baggage whether you want or need it. It's not like Linux where you can install a 64 bit pure distro. So in the Windows world, moving to 64 bits just for the sake of 64 bits doesn't make as much sense. It doesn't save much.

    8. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So being intolerant of intolerance makes me a bad person? Fine, I'm a bad person, I can live with that.

    9. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, in your little world, supporters of equal rights are bigots.

      Wow, you right-wingers are delusional.

    10. Re: Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't make you a "bad" person. Being intolerant toward intolerance just makes you a filthy hypocrite. That in turn means your opinions are worthless, because they're inconsistent with themselves.

    11. Re:Tempting by BronsCon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, no. See, people have the right to be intolerant, and begrudging them that right is, plain and simple, as bigoted as denying any other right for any other reason. That, of course, is on top of being entirely hypocritical, being intolerant of intolerance, and such. You don't have to agree with someone else's opinion in order to allow them to have it.

      You're welcome to hang on to your logical fallacy, though. Have fun with it.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    12. Re: Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bzzzt!

      The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
      Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. â" In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
      Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4

      Thanks for playing, have a nice day.

    13. Re: Tempting by Freultwah · · Score: 1

      Tolerance is a constituent value of the Western society, and is therefore higher up in the value hierarchy than intolerance. So it's not a conundrum – being intolerant towards intolerance is absolutely consistent with the core values of the social system. Otherwise you could never put murderers behind bars.

    14. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please explain your need to keep "a poorly written falling snow effect" open in a tab for yourself. Not anyone else, since you said it's "the real draw for me".

    15. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Marriage isnt a right. Straight or gay. You do not have the right to get married. We aren't assigned partners at birth. Your entire juvenile argument is pathetic and wrong at its very foundation. You are the delusional ones.

    16. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is stupid.

      We should have had a 64-bit firefox, back when 64-bit Vista was released. That was version 1.5, it wouldn't have mattered then, but it would have kept all the "64bit bugs" from being perpetually left unsolved for 10 years.

      The first reason 64-bit builds were being held back was Adobe Flash, which went 64-bit in 2008, but all platforms weren't in sync till 2011. So between 2005 and 2008 we had a chicken and egg problem. The Java plugin was the other reason, but almost nobody uses Java, except some corporate bullshit, which could have been fine with the 64-bit MSIE that came with Vista.

      There is no excuse for Firefox and Chrome not being 64-bit post 2011, but god damn it so much, one of them had to blink first before the other was going to do it.

      There are features available in "64-bit" mode that mitigate malware, and it also prevents 32bit binary malware from executing in 64bit space. That's the best reason to use 64-bit.

      Now if MSIE would just use 64-bit by default. You could with version 10, but then 11 degraded back to 32-bit.

      As for "what sites really use it?"

      Well consider how bloated the average web page is. Sites that do "infinite scroll" or auto-updates need it, like gmail, twitter and tumblr, because they need to keep the entire page in memory as it renders to be able to scroll backwards. Have one of these tabs open for a week without closing the browser and the browser tab will crash, depending how much you use it. I follow less than 200 people, others follow hundreds, which means thousands of update per minute, so instead of taking a week to crash, it takes a day.

    17. Re:Tempting by JDG1980 · · Score: 1

      Would a 'friendly community' welcome a new boss who supported banning inter-racial marriage? No, and the oh but it's just a personal view nonsense wouldn't fly there either.

      What you're overlooking is that Proposition 8 passed. You're not talking about blacklisting people for views way outside the Overton Window. You're talking about blacklisting people for taking part in an active political controversy where you don't like their position.

    18. Re:Tempting by ultranova · · Score: 1

      64bit... again, bragging points about how many bits you use, no functional difference to anyone.

      Except me. Switching to 64bit would likely solve the problem Firefox becoming unstable and crashing after using 2GB of memory.

      Its just the typical knee-jerk reaction that 64 bits is somehow essential for everything, not just those programs that really do require it.

      Nothing really requires 64 bits, but more and more programs would benefit from it.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    19. Re:Tempting by KingMotley · · Score: 1

      Well, it is mostly needed for three things:
      1) Addressable memory in 32-bit browsers. The threading approach means all tabs must not take more than a total of 4GB of memory, and this is quickly becoming a problem.
      2) One tab crashing them all. Yes, firefox crashes on me often enough that it is annoying. Yes, the tabs come back when you relaunch, but then I get bombarded with login requests to all the sites I have open that require logins to view.
      3) There is something shared between the threads that the firefox team can't seem to rid themselves of. One tab can, and often does considerably slow down, or make other tabs stutter. So bad that watching HTML5 video in firefox is nearly useless except if you only have 1 tab open, and even then it is a worse experience than in IE or Chrome.

    20. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It does allow one to use the same 64-bit plugins as Chrome does, saving one the headache of installing two different Java runtimes for users who like using different browsers, if nothing else. Ditto for Flash, IIRC.

    21. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Other operating systems got 64-bit long ago. This was more due to quirks with Windows than 64-bit itself.

    22. Re:Tempting by almitydave · · Score: 1

      Marriage isnt a right. Straight or gay. You do not have the right to get married. We aren't assigned partners at birth. Your entire juvenile argument is pathetic and wrong at its very foundation. You are the delusional ones.

      Now, I'm no fan of gay marriage, but marriage is a social institution, i.e. something practiced by a society according to its cultural values; and the American civil philosophy of individual rights and personal liberty is generally understood to mean the government shouldn't prohibit something unless there's some overriding state or societal interest in doing so. At least I think that's how it used to be.

      What I believe this means is that although you do not have a right to be guaranteed a marriage, nor to have your marriage formally recognized by the state, a society does in general have the right to practice whatever forms of marriage it sees fit, absent a compelling interest otherwise.

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
    23. Re:Tempting by Fweeky · · Score: 1

      Multi-process architecture... I've not really noticed a problem with the threaded one, and Firefox already sticks flash objects in a separate process. So what's the real draw

      Isolation. The same reason you want different apps to have their own processes instead of having the whole of userspace in one big blob. You can give processes reduced privileges to reduce the scope of exploits, hangs and crashes don't take down more than they have to, and leaks don't force you to restart the entire system to recover resources.

      Plus it makes for simpler concurrency. Kind of handy when you've got a stop-the-world garbage collector if you can just split the world into many smaller independent units, each able to run at the same time and each with an order of magnitude less work to do and no synchronisation to worry about.

      64bit... again, bragging points about how many bits you use, no functional difference to anyone

      ASLR is a fuckload more effective when it has a reasonably sized address space to work with, and 2^32 is miles away from being reasonable. It's the difference between an attacker having to guess one of 8 locations and one of 8 billion. Plus, memory mapping things is awesome, and also a fuckload easier with a reasonably sized address space.

      And hey, some of us actually use our browsers quite a lot. Mine's eating 5.5G right now. So many windows and tabs, and absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever why that should be considered even slightly unreasonable.

    24. Re: Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone who can tolerate the overabundance of 'tolerance', and all derivatives thereof, in the above nigh-incomprehensible screed are too tolerant to tolerate. So, tolerate that, you intolerable bitch.

    25. Re:Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it means a website with a js memory leak only (imgur.com is a recent example) affects it's own tab, even better.

    26. Re:Tempting by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      What you're overlooking is that Proposition 8 passed.

      Because that's irrelevant? Eich is a homophobe who gave money to support discrimination - Prop 8's passage or failure is a non sequitur in that context.

    27. Re:Tempting by gmack · · Score: 1

      64bit... again, bragging points about how many bits you use, no functional difference to anyone. Its like when I gave the 32 bit version of Visual Studio to a colleague and he complained that he wanted the 64 bit version.... there is no 64 bit version because it isn't needed. Its just the typical knee-jerk reaction that 64 bits is somehow essential for everything, not just those programs that really do require it.

      Not entirely true, x86 was famously register starved meaning you had to spend a lot of time swapping things into and out of the general purpose registers. When AMD designed the 64 bit extensions, they doubled the number of registers to 16 total, meaning software could spend less time moving things around and more time actually doing something useful.

    28. Re:Tempting by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      saving one the headache of installing two different Java runtimes

      there is an optimal solution to this...... sucks if you *have* to run a java program though.

    29. Re:Tempting by ultranova · · Score: 1

      See, people have the right to be intolerant, and begrudging them that right is, plain and simple, as bigoted as denying any other right for any other reason.

      Victims should just stand there quietly and let the bully beat them up, otherwise they're just as bad, dammit!

      That, of course, is on top of being entirely hypocritical, being intolerant of intolerance, and such.

      There is nothing hypocritical of being intolerant of intolerance. Rejecting someone else's claim to authority over how you live is not the same as claiming authority over them.

      You see, "tolerance" is simply a shorthand for a vision of the world where people are free to live as they will, while intolerance is ultimately about excersizing power over them. In other words, tolerance is about liberty and intolerance is about authoritarianism. And no amount of rhetoric bullshit is going to put those fighting for tyranny and those fighting against it on even moral footing.

      You don't have to agree with someone else's opinion in order to allow them to have it.

      So basically, it's okay for a homophobe to use whatever power is in his disposal to harm other people based on his beliefs, but it's not okay for his victims or their allies to fight back?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    30. Re:Tempting by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, as threads context switch the CPU has to copy the register data to memory and back again for the new thread. This means architectures with more registers switch slower. Some RISC CPUs with lots of registers switch even slower.

      So more registers give with one hand, and take away with the other. I guess javascript doesn't get optimised as much as it could to take advantage of those extra registers like a C program will, and the benefit of properly filled caches will have an even bigger impact to performance than registers.

      Still, 32-bit programs run fine.. I have nothing against a 64-bit firefox, its just that I think they could spend their limited time elsewhere for better impact instead of simply playing chase Chrome.

    31. Re: Tempting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have a right to be intolerant; such as refusing people you don't like to enter your home, or refusing to interact with them. It does not mean people have to put up with advocacy of a group being seen as inferior by the law because you don't like them.
      And before anyone replies: if you think marriage is a religious institution or an invention of Christianity, don't bother.

    32. Re:Tempting by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Thank you. My thoughts exactly. (Except for the minor point that "non sequitur" does not mean "irrelevant").

    33. Re:Tempting by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Apples and oranges and the fact you can't see the difference is what makes you the new bigot. Congrats

      No, I don't see a difference. Opposing gay marriage is bigotry. Opposing inter-racial marriage is bigotry.

      If there's a fundamental difference that I'm missing, I honestly welcome an explanation.

    34. Re:Tempting by Vidar+Leathershod · · Score: 1

      Non-sequitur? He gave money to support a proposition that upheld society's longest existing institution against an onslaught of hyper-liberal hand-wringing. Your ad hominem of homophobe is applied to anyone who happens to agree with the current gay agenda of establishing a protected class with special rights and accommodations.

      It is only through the flooding of the airwaves with propaganda and brainwashing of ignorant youth that same sex marriage has gotten the marginal support that it has. Surely it will grow, since the formative years of children are now filled with misinformation campaigns regarding homosexuality and its classification as an inherent trait similar to color or ethnicity that should be celebrated and honored.

      In the meantime, there are still many people left who were not recipients of such "special education" and who have respect for the idea of marriage. Everyone has the same inherent right to marry. A male who has reached the age of consent may marry a female who has reached the age of consent, as long as they are not related too closely and meet the other requirement of not having a living spouse (and vice versa). These are not harsh restrictions, and they apply equally to all people. Note that there are no requirements to love one another, though presumably this should be the primary reason why the two would want to be wed.

      Eich supporting these normal restrictions, as loose as they are, on marriage is not an act of discrimination.

      --
      The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
    35. Re:Tempting by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Victims should just stand there quietly and let the bully beat them up, otherwise they're just as bad, dammit!

      Really? That's what you got out of my post? You just go looking for fights, don't you? There's a far cry from intolerance, which is an opinion, and beating someone up, which is an action. Getting up and leaving the room, and peacefully protesting are also actions which arise from intolerance. I have the right to do both of those and I'd love to see you stop me from doing either.

      There is nothing hypocritical of being intolerant of intolerance. Rejecting someone else's claim to authority over how you live is not the same as claiming authority over them.

      It's amusing that you conflate authority with intolerance while, at the same time, implying that those are the only two things one should not simply tolerate. Someone smoking a cigarette in the same room as me isn't being intolerant of me, nor are they enforcing any authority over me; are you saying that makes it wrong for me to be intolerant of their actions? I should just sit there and deal with it? Nope, I'm intolerant of smokers (in general, though I have a few friends who smoke around me, but only after asking it it's okay, and only outside) and I'll ask them to snuff it or I'll leave the room.

      You see, "tolerance" is simply a shorthand for a vision of the world where people are free to live as they will, while intolerance is ultimately about excersizing power over them.

      No. I'm not going to argue your incorrect definition of tolerance as it's suitable in this context; however, intolerance is just what the word says, the inability to tolerate something. For example, I'm intolerant of ignorant posts like the one I'm currently replying to; as a result, I attempt to correct the ignorance. I'm not telling you you have to believe what I believe, but I would like to point out that what you say in the first line of your post applies here; twisting the words I wrote in an attempt to make them into something more sinister yo either force me to reply to defend myself or accept looking like an asshole is a bully tactic. It's also a dick move and I'm intolerant of actions that fall under either of those classifications, regardless of the opinions those actions stem from.

      In other words, tolerance is about liberty and intolerance is about authoritarianism.

      No, intolerance is about acceptance and intolerance is, well, the opposite. There are intolerant opinions and intolerant speech, which everyone should have the right to (in the US, that's the First Amendment to the Constitution); after all, the only other way to find out your coworker is violently intolerant of people who wear red shirts is when he's bashing your skull in for wearing one. Which, of course, would be an intolerant action; and a violent one, at that. I wouldn't step in to stop it because it's intolerant, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't step in to stop it; a violent act is still a violent act.

      And no amount of rhetoric bullshit is going to put those fighting for tyranny and those fighting against it on even moral footing.

      Finally, something we agree on!

      So basically, it's okay for a homophobe to use whatever power is in his disposal to harm other people based on his beliefs

      No. It's okay for them to hold their own opinion, though. Hell, it's okay for them to voice their opinion. Imagine a world where it wasn't okay to hold or voice unpopular opinions; are you sure you wouldn't run afoul of those in power? I'd imagine you'd be put to death in short order in such a society.

      but it's not okay for his victims or their allies to fight back?

      Got-damn you're dense. Since when is holding an opinion an attack on someone? And where did I say violence and authoritarianism were tolerable? Go right ahead and be intolerant of whatever you

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    36. Re:Tempting by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      1) Addressable memory in 32-bit browsers. The threading approach means all tabs must not take more than a total of 4GB of memory, and this is quickly becoming a problem.

      Let me guess, adblock plus user?

      2) One tab crashing them all. Yes, firefox crashes on me often enough that it is annoying. Yes, the tabs come back when you relaunch, but then I get bombarded with login requests to all the sites I have open that require logins to view.

      Let me guess, adblock plus user?

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    37. Re:Tempting by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Really? That's what you got out of my post? You just go looking for fights, don't you?

      Ah, the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, aka playing a victim. That works a lot better when every message isn't on public record, you know. Inlcuding the one which began this thread by writing "Unless you contribute to a political cause they don't like", emphasis mine.

      You do know that "contribute" means "to help bring about a result" - in other words, to actively further some goal - and is very different from merely holding an opinion, right?

      There's a far cry from intolerance, which is an opinion, and beating someone up, which is an action.

      No one cares about your opinions, only actions you take. In fact no one can even know your opinions unless you take some action about them. The only difference between controlling someone by beating them up and getting your opinions about their allowed behaviour enshrined in law is that the latter is more efficient. And while that can be justifiable in some cases, public opinion is thankfully beginning to find using the law as your personal gay-basher, overtly or subtly, as not being one of them.

      Got-damn you're dense. Since when is holding an opinion an attack on someone?

      Seriously, put that gazelle out of its misery. I doubt you're really fooling even yourself.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    38. Re:Tempting by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Ah, the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, aka playing a victim.

      Wherein did I claim to be victimized by anything? And that's where I stopped reading your post.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    39. Re:Tempting by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      Follow your statements through to their logical conclusion.

      If marriage isn't a right, straight or gay, then a government which grants privileges only to straight marriage and not to gay marriage is unfair discrimination.

    40. Re:Tempting by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      It's not an intolerance of all forms of intolerance everywhere. That's a ridiculous strawman.

      Your argument is like saying it's hypocritical not to eat people just because you eat potatoes.

    41. Re:Tempting by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      No. Just no. You see, I don't care if someone else has intolerant thoughts or opinions, and neither should you; after all, who the hell am I (and who the hell are you) to judge what's in someone's head, when only they know how it got there? So let them vocalize, let them write, let them scream. You don't have to listen to it and you don't have to read it. We have laws for a reason and, if someone's intolerance reaches a level that causes them to violate one or more of those laws, well, that's what the laws are there for. Likewise, there is a reason we don't have laws against holding certain thoughts and opinions, and why free speech is not only not deemed illegal, but an integral part of the US Constitution. If you live elsewhere, of course, that does not apply, but you should still be able to see my point.

      And no, you've got that logically backwards: saying it's hypocritical not to eat people just because you eat potatoes is like saying it's hypocritical not to tolerate murder just because you tolerate speeding. Intolerance is a negative, tolerance is a positive; take (and pass) a logic 101 course and you'll learn why that matters.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  3. Re:only thing I care about by riis138 · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Nothing else comes close imo.

    --
    Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
  4. Now Firefox can eat more than one CPU! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YAY!

  5. Finally 64-bit at last by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It only took them three years exactly.

  6. now if Firefox would support Chrome extensions by postmortem · · Score: 1

    it would be exactly like Chrome :)

    1. Re:now if Firefox would support Chrome extensions by t0y · · Score: 1

      That wouldn't be a bad idea, actually.

    2. Re:now if Firefox would support Chrome extensions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most chrome extensions are very similar to greasemonkey scripts... I write my own to interchange between the browsers.

  7. Waterfox by luvirini · · Score: 1

    Waterfox 64 bit seems to work fine, have been using it for a while now as Firefox memory limits were just too annoying.

    1. Re:Waterfox by devent · · Score: 1

      What did you do to exceed 4 GB of memory with Firefox?

      --
      http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
    2. Re:Waterfox by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Probably loaded G+. That's the only explanation I can think of (high memory use) why it should be one of the slowest sites on the internet.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Waterfox by luvirini · · Score: 1

      Well, I currently have 11 windows open with a total of about 230 tabs, Firefox was fine until it went over 3 gigs and then it just stopped, with every action taking 30+ seconds to do.

      Waterfox runs fine now at about 4.5 gigs total memory use.

    4. Re:Waterfox by luvirini · · Score: 2

      I use all the google services on chrome and everything else in waterfox as google is just so bad at programming that their products are just too annoying to use on other things.

    5. Re:Waterfox by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I use all the google services on chrome and everything else in waterfox as google is just so bad at programming that their products are just too annoying to use on other things.

      I'm not sure it's all their fault. G+ exposes a bug in FF where it craps itself on form input, even after closing the G+ tab the problem persists while I'm typing into other forms until I close the browser completely and reopen it. Typing just goes straight to hell, it substitutes some buffer for the keystrokes. It only happens if I start typing too soon, while G+ is still loading. Why does G+ have such a stupidly-long page load time? Ugh.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Waterfox by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Well, I currently have 11 windows open with a total of about 230 tabs

      Surely you can't be serious. You've heard about bookmarks, right?

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    7. Re:Waterfox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What did you do to exceed 4 GB of memory with Firefox?

      Accidentally loaded Slashdot Beta.

    8. Re:Waterfox by luvirini · · Score: 1

      Bookmarks are just such a clumsy interface overall and in many cases cause multiple extra actions to get to the thing you need like logins or such. A lot of websites are programmed by idiots.

    9. Re:Waterfox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      64 bit Firefox has actually been the default if you apt-get install it from a 64 bit OS, and has been since mid 2008 at least.

    10. Re:Waterfox by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      I use all the google services on chrome ... their products are just too annoying to use on other things,/i>

      Google... the new Microsoft :-)

    11. Re:Waterfox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely you can't be serious. You've heard about bookmarks, right?

      He is serious, and don't call him Shirley :-)

    12. Re:Waterfox by luvirini · · Score: 1

      if you had read the original text including "and the second is that 64-bit Firefox is finally coming to Windows" you might have gotten the context.

      Firefox is not available on Windows as 64 bit except as nighty build of questionable stability. Waterfox is a stable 64bit Firefox based browser for Windows.

    13. Re:Waterfox by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      Indeed, the GUIs for bookmarks always has been crap, it's a dump of links, you end up scrolling a drop down menu without a scroll bar, and it's not clear why would I want to bookmark everything I read then spend time cleaning it up.

      Having 220 tabs is not really special. It's like asking "who ever reads a book or magazine with 220 pages? no one ever reads that much".

    14. Re:Waterfox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's asking who ever puts 220 bookmarks in a single book...

    15. Re:Waterfox by NotBorg · · Score: 1

      Firefox Nightly has also removed the close tab and close window buttons that no one ever bothers with.

      --
      I want this account deleted.
  8. Re:only thing I care about by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm hoping for a return to the Netscape Navigator v3 interface, myself.

  9. Re:only thing I care about by luvirini · · Score: 2

    Yes, it is too bad that developers often want to do new shiny things instead of usable things.

  10. Might just get me back by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

    Multi-process is the major reason I use Chrome. One tab freezing up the entire app, or even just making other tabs slower, is unacceptable.

    Then this hits general availability I'll definitely be re-evaluating Firefox.

    1. Re:Might just get me back by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      There's one catch though. According to the Mozilla e10s page, for now multi-process only means separating web content from the GUI. Having separate processes for each tab is coming later down the road.

    2. Re:Might just get me back by valinor89 · · Score: 1

      At least this way you will be able to close the offending page, I hope.

    3. Re:Might just get me back by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Great. One reason I don't use Chrome/ium is there are two many processes, eventually consuming all available RAM + swap (even on a 32bit OS). I once counted 39 processes and every one of them allocate tens of megabytes, eventually hundreds for managing resources such as graphics, running bad javascript code etc.

      When even swap is exhausted, every action such as moving the mouse cursor takes 5-10 seconds or more . I have to ctrl-alt-f1 to a text console (if the computer still responds to that and the screen is not totally black when showing a tty because of driver/configuration problem), then login, then killall -9 the processes. Login must be done carefully, because there is extreme lag even for typing a few characters. If you can use another computer to ssh in (or serial console in) perhaps do that.

      If indeed there's only one thread for the tabs, and in the future you have an option to keep it that way (preferably as a check box in the regular options GUI) then Firefox will still be good for older and modest computers. That's three processes by the way : GUI, tabs and flash.

  11. Multiprocess was introduced a while ago by blankinthefill · · Score: 1, Informative

    The multiprocess option was introduced a while ago. I tried it for about an hour, but any time I had more than about 5 threads open, it would hang the computer, and I couldn't do anything. This could be because I was on a relatively underpowered laptop, but... I am just going to stay away from it till it's more mature. It's honestly the only thing in Nightly that has made me look for a way to turn it off.

    1. Re:Multiprocess was introduced a while ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When did you try it? The multiprocessing code has change a lot since it was introduced. In Nightly it's a single checkbox to enable / disable (general -> "Enable E10S")

  12. Awesome by pavon · · Score: 2

    We prefer Firefox, but I was about to switch my wife over to using Chrome as it has become impossible to figure out which of the dozens of tabs she has open was slowing everything down, even with ad-blocking enabled. It will be interesting to see how the multi-process support impacts memory overhead, though, as Firefox has had the lead on Chrome in that area.

    1. Re:Awesome by Qzukk · · Score: 1

      impacts memory overhead, though, as Firefox has had the lead on Chrome in that area.

      Never thought I'd see that sentence. Man, how far Firefox has come! (or how far Chrome has fallen?)

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Awesome by luvirini · · Score: 1

      It depends a lot on how you use things. If you just open one tab and browse in it, then Firefox is likely to use more memory.

      But as you open more and more tabs the overhead of the extra processes in chrome make it use way more memory fast.

    3. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's quite possible that 'even with ad-blocking enabled' should actually be BECAUSE of ad blocking enabled

      https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/

      adguard claims to do it significantly better, maybe try that.

      Seems it's a choice from bloat from invasive ads or bloat from adblockers otherwise :/

    4. Re:Awesome by mister_playboy · · Score: 1

      Just look for the tab which is running the Flash plugin and close it.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    5. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AdBlockPlus itself is a memory hog. Use Privoxy or similar to block connections to advertising domains instead.

  13. Sea Monkey by bussdriver · · Score: 4, Informative

    Use Sea Monkey - Netscape Communicator theme and related extras supported forever without change.

    http://www.seamonkey-project.o...

    --
    Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
    1. Re:Sea Monkey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironically I can't get the Netscape v1/v2/v3 buttons and throbber, just v4's - in a constantly regressing Seazilla addon I have to disable compatibility checking for. :(

    2. Re:Sea Monkey by njet · · Score: 1

      or use Palemoon www.palemoon.org

  14. Crashing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But is it still crash-happy, memory hogging, processor intensive, crap?

    1. Re:Crashing by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      If the web was still made for dial up users on Netscape it would never crash.
      It's possible Firefox 0.x were the worst versions and the less crashy ones.

  15. e10s printing is not implemented yet. Bug 927188. by smoothnorman · · Score: 1

    ...plus "e10" still doesn't play well with copy/paste nor gmail compose window editing. ah well, i admire their dogged efforts.

  16. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you can give palemoon a try

  17. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When Firefox 30 came out, I decided go with the flow (previously I tried keep interface same, with menubar and status bar). After a while I got used to the new interface. I don't miss my old interface.

  18. Threads are finally dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its a great feeling to see the programming conventional wisdom of the last 20 years get reversed!

    So many have been preaching of the blocking I/O + thread style I've always felt like a radical.

    Now, with the rise of non-blocking and child processes, the worm has turned !

    Get thee hither LWP's, mutecies, and deadly embraces.

  19. Too late. by snarfies · · Score: 2

    Pale Moon has been available in x64 for a long time now, and doesn't have advertisements bundled into it.

    I'll just stay put.

    1. Re:Too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, Firefox has been 64 bit since version 3.1, in 2008. That's a pretty long time too.

    2. Re:Too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You *do* realize that Pale Moon is basically a set of very minor tweaks to Firefox? If Firefox gets these features, so will Pale Moon. If Firefox dies because of your righteous indignation, so will Pale Moon. Why all this reality-bending hatred towards the people who basically make Pale Moon?

    3. Re:Too late. by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 1

      Palemoon crashes a lot on my machine, Firefox doesn't ... which is weird, given that Palemoon is essentially a rebranded Firefox.

    4. Re:Too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just recently switched to Pale Moon, but I had to stick with the 32-bit version because my [X]HTML Validator extension isn't available in 64-bit (because it incorporates native code), and I'm sure there are other extensions that have the same problem - hopefully, official 64-bit Windows builds of Firefox should solve that problem.

    5. Re:Too late. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      The advertising features will be stripped out, much like the Social plug crap was removed.
      If Firefox dies because of "righteous indignation" then why does that mean Pale Moon has to go? It's open source. Pale Moon will simply become a fork/continuation of Firefox, much like Firefox was originally a continuation of the end of Netscape Navigator.

  20. Good by Cinder6 · · Score: 2

    I've been using Firefox for the past six months or so because I don't like Chrome, but Chrome still has the technology edge in several cases. This looks to be bridging at least some of that gap. It would have been better if it happened three years ago, but late is better than never.

    --
    If you can't convince them, convict them.
    1. Re:Good by MSG · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Chrome still has the technology edge in several cases

      Some, maybe. It's getting harder to name them. Firefox is a smaller download, uses less RAM, starts faster, and (if arewefastyet is to be believed) has a faster JavaScript engine now. And the mobile version supports plugins. And I can run my own sync server if I want to.

    2. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but chrome is a google product, so you know how much it's lavished by the it community.

    3. Re:Good by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Firefox takes longer to start for me, especially when restoring a session with multiple tabs open. It doesn't enough enough memory without tweaks, resulting in choppy scrolling and lag switching tabs as it has to load and decode images from disk. I've got 16GB of RAM, I'd prefer to use it rather than wait around just for the sake of seeing a lower number in Task Manager.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  21. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is the tell-tale mark of a new (meaning inexperienced) programmer.

  22. Haven't Looked Forward to Anything in a While by Kunedog · · Score: 2

    I can't remember the last time FF gained a new feature I actually gave a fuck about. I've gotten completely accustomed to FF updates only removing/neutering useful features and covering the GUI in Play Dough. Multi-process support would be a genuinely meaningful upgrade for once, but I agree there's no way it would make up for Australis.

    1. Re:Haven't Looked Forward to Anything in a While by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      So it can busy loop on multiple cores at the same time? Yippee.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:Haven't Looked Forward to Anything in a While by amorsen · · Score: 1

      Firefox is already multithreaded. It can busy loop on as many cores as you want.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    3. Re:Haven't Looked Forward to Anything in a While by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Quite some time ago they added a nice feature, opening plain text links such as http://this.is.a.link.com without needing to mess with copy paste or add an extension to get the same feature.
      Before that there was the time when the search in the URL bar became "smart".. I hated the change at first but now I find it much better than the old way (simple left-to-right alphabetical completion)

      Or there are a lot of small things like scrolling with the middle mouse button, alt-d to reach the URL bar not only ctrl-L, which are not new but missing on most other browsers. I still think that GUI-wise Firefox is on the top, most browsers you can't fucking change anything (e.g. Chromium, Midori, Qupzilla : the GUI is frozen or almost).
      If Internet Explorer was available on Linux I'd like to give it a try there lol.

    4. Re: Haven't Looked Forward to Anything in a While by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      I would donate to MoFo much more frequently if I could direct those donations to specific projects. Electrolysis has been on the list for years, but things like FirefoxOS get the funding. And yes, I realize electrolysis got its legs on Fennec, but it could have been completed work a decade ago with the right funding allocation (bugs date from 2001 at least). There would have been less room for Chrome if it had been done, so it really does rise to the level of misallocation.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  23. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The new interface doesn't work for my work flow, but with that said OP is being overly dramatic. The classic theme restorer with a couple other extensions does restore the interface to how it was previously. Some ppl just have the need to complain even though there are solutions out there.

  24. About Bloody Time!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Multi-process is probably the most important feature of modern-day browsers, especially with modern html5 sites and web-apps.

    It's a pretty big disgrace that this wasn't implemented before, and that Mozilla instead concentrated on a mobile version and Firefox OS.
    And I think it's because of this single feature, that made firefox so sluggish and eventually crash and die after consuming over 2gigs of ram, and the reason why so many people moved away to a more responsive browser like Chrome (which was multi-process from day 1).

    1. Re:About Bloody Time!! by BitZtream · · Score: 2

      Yea, its sad that the development world has turned to multi-process instead of fixing their damn code

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:About Bloody Time!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, it's not about fixing code or making it more efficient and utilise less memory.
      There's a point at which an image-heavy, js-heavy, css-animation heavy website can no longer be optimised further (either by the developer, or the dev of the browser); unless you rebuild the browser from scratch using assembly, and even then, images and background-tabs will always utilise a lot of memory as websites evolve to become more like applications rather than text-only pages.

    3. Re:About Bloody Time!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realise that thanks to concentrating on Mobile Firefox, Mozilla was able to get multi-process working on it, leading to that very feature you wanting getting ported back to desktop Firefox?

  25. Re:only thing I care about by mlts · · Score: 1

    I'd add two things onto that:

    1: The ability to click-to-play for add-ons. Chrome has this, and it does a great job at dealing with the loud ads that autoplay. This also adds security so that malware from a compromised or dodgy ad server doesn't get free reign to execute.

    2: A VM-like structure similar to Chrome, so that a compromised window or tab is limited to just that context and can't take down the whole browser, or even worse, the user context it runs in. Chrome's VM is a big security plus. Not 100% security, but quite useful.

  26. Re:only thing I care about by tepples · · Score: 2

    The article is about the addition of 2 to Firefox Nightly. For 1, I have been using Flashblock for years. It's so effective at controlling bullcrap ads that I really haven't needed any other ad blocker, even on an old 10" laptop with an Atom CPU and 1 GB of RAM.

  27. Subject need not apply or exist... by LoRdTAW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I switched to Chrome a while back when it came out. It supported most of the then new HTML5 features, most importantly, playing youtube videos without flash. At first I used chrome sparingly, it took a bit to get used to. Then, after a few vulnerabilities were found in FF which could allow attackers to read the memory of other tabs, I switched. The internet is a dangerous place, multiprocess sandboxing of tabs made perfect sense. I also really liked its UI which was much more simple: tabs, URL bar and a few controls like forward, back and reload along with a settings button.

    But it came with a cost. I connected it to my google account and it also integrated with my phone and tablet bringing my bookmarks, passwords and other credentials across all of my devices. So I am hooked on the convenience of Google integration, for better or worse. Worse most likely. Plus logging into sites that use Google is very convenient. I'm addicted.

    So going back to FF for me will be difficult.

    My only concern with multi process is memory footprint. FF is great for low memory systems like virtual machines and older systems. Chrome is a memory hog and easily uses a gigabyte or more. Right now with 8 tabs open I have 12 chrome processes, two are close to consuming nearly 300 megs each, one nearly 200 and the remaining are anywhere from 12-87 megs. I assume the three large processes are the ones running the show (windows, IPC, etc). The largest being the parent process that spawns the others. The smaller 8 processes are the actual tabs. That is pretty much 1 gig of RAM for 8 tabs. I have computers and VM's with less running various test systems. FF on those machines clocks in at 250-300 megs under heavy use.

    1. Re:Subject need not apply or exist... by antdude · · Score: 1

      I am surprised Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox. I like the addons and customizations in Firefox and SeaMonkey. I still can't stand Chrome. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    2. Re:Subject need not apply or exist... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Single Process FF has 5x more code exploits than Chrome. In other words, you're 5x more likely to have your machine owned running FF

      http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224

      http://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?vendor_id=452

      Arguably the reason is because Chrome is running webpages in sandboxed processes so a bug in the browser is far less likely to lead to a code execution exploit.

      Hopefully this new multi-process FF will do the same and I can consider switching to FF.

    3. Re:Subject need not apply or exist... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google authentication is not Chrome-specific. It works flawlessly in Firefox. And syncing with Firefix works just as well. My history, bookmarks, plugins, and even sessions seamlessly follow me from device to device.
      I'm a heavy Google services user, but use Firefox as my default browser on all my machines (OSX, Windows, Linux, Android phone).

  28. Been using Nightly for a while. by TyIzaeL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My daily web browser is Nightly. A few days ago when they enabled e10s by default I found out about the change because my browser crashed on startup. The only way I could get it working again was to start Nightly in Safe Mode and disable e10s. Multiprocess in Nightly is varying states of very broken for most addons. For me the key ones are HTTPSEverywhere, Adblock Plus, and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these addons are functional with e10s enabled currently.

    1. Re:Been using Nightly for a while. by kmg90 · · Score: 1

      Well that's is expected for a feature that has made it to the Nightly/Aurura stage of development and release. Between now and when e10s finally hits the stable branch, add-on developers are going to have do some patching to account for the major change in resource allocation in the browser.

    2. Re:Been using Nightly for a while. by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

      e10s still interferes with pretty much any addon that needs to have some type of JS input to the page/window.

      RequestPolicy, likely all UserScripts (e.g. Greasemonkey and kin), LastPass (last I tested a week ago, was still non-functional).

      Although Nightly with e10s enabled does at least appear to be working (better) with addons that only need to have input/listeners/control of the GUI.

    3. Re:Been using Nightly for a while. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ABP works doesn't it? "Are we e10s yet?" has got a nice list of addons that do/don't work with electrolysis (and also a way to disable it)

    4. Re:Been using Nightly for a while. by balbus000 · · Score: 1

      My daily web browser is Nightly.

      [Emphasis mine]

      I see what you did there!

  29. Firefox 36? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

    Catching up to Chrome 1.0 ... eventually! :)

  30. Ooo! Here comes the carrot! by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Informative

    Notice they add the new advertising features yesterday and then make the things people want (official 64-bit support, better performance) a future version feature.
    Gotta take your medicine before you get candy.

    1. Re:Ooo! Here comes the carrot! by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      That's what happens when your browser is funded by an advertising company.

    2. Re:Ooo! Here comes the carrot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the ads happened because the advertising company is withdrawing support.

  31. Re:only thing I care about by reub2000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Firefox has had the ask-to-activate for flash for some time. Go to about:addons, select plugins from the menu on the left, and next to each plugins there is a menu where you can select ask to activate.

  32. 64-bit compiler by tepples · · Score: 1

    Its like when I gave the 32 bit version of Visual Studio to a colleague and he complained that he wanted the 64 bit version.... there is no 64 bit version because it isn't needed.

    A lot of developers want to make use of runtime speed benefits of whole-program optimization, which can perform inlining, nonstandard fast method call conventions, and other optimizations despite the caller and callee being in separate source code files. And with a program as big as Firefox, this has taken more than 4 GB for three years. Or is Visual Studio just a 32-bit GUI for a 64-bit compiler that does the actual compilation and linking of such large programs?

    1. Re:64-bit compiler by tibit · · Score: 1

      Or is Visual Studio just a 32-bit GUI for a 64-bit compiler that does the actual compilation and linking of such large programs?"

      Yes, it is. It would be unusable otherwise. Of course then the problem is with the introspection databases. There are C++ projects that have introspection databases larger than 2.5GB and they flat out kill the Visual Studio. VS IDE really needs to be a 64 bit application.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    2. Re:64-bit compiler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My understanding (from watching Mozilla) was that while moving to a 64 bit host helped, previous versions of MSVC were still dependent on a 32 bit (large address aware) linker, hence they could only get up to ~4GB address space in the link step, so LTO was still crippled. Word is that next next version of MSVC will have a 64 bit hosted cross-linker to 32 bit output binaries, which should work around the problem.

      (It's all about the linker since that's where the actual compilation happens in a LTO build.)

  33. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Tools -> Add-ons -> Plugins -> find plugin of choice, change it from "Always activate" to "Ask to activate"

    That's on Linux, anyway. Add-ons menu might be somewhere else on your platform, but you should otherwise be able to do what I do.

  34. Functional difference by sjbe · · Score: 1

    64bit... again, bragging points about how many bits you use, no functional difference to anyone.

    Unless of course you want to address more than 4GB of memory.

  35. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Flashblock doesn't help with the "update java" ads, which is a line of Javascript from a compromized ad network that brings you to a page that tries to auto-download something.

    You have to go one-step further with NoScript, and whitelist the sites you visit most frequently.

  36. Bizarre usage habits by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Well, I currently have 11 windows open with a total of about 230 tabs, Firefox was fine until it went over 3 gigs and then it just stopped, with every action taking 30+ seconds to do.

    Umm, why in $diety's name do you need 230 tabs open? You cannot possibly use that many efficiently. It's a scientific fact that you cannot multitask worth anything (no one can). Hell you cannot even find a particular tab efficiently with that many open. That's one of the most baffling work "flows" I've ever heard of. Just because a few tabs are good doesn't mean a huge number is better.

    1. Re:Bizarre usage habits by odie5533 · · Score: 1

      Hell you cannot even find a particular tab efficiently with that many open.

      Tree Style Tab addon. Life is better with it.

    2. Re:Bizarre usage habits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tree Style Tab addon. Life is better with it.

      Jolly good. Ive opened my 174th tab with that link.

    3. Re:Bizarre usage habits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell you cannot even find a particular tab efficiently with that many open.

      Tree Style Tab addon. Life is better with it.

      Also Ubiquity and Firefox's built-in tab grouping (panorama or whatever) help. All three work well together: I use the grouping mechanism to set up separate sets of tabs, with some organised for special tasks, such as programming references; within a group, I use Tree Style Tab to further organise the tabs and collapse/expand sub-groups as needed; and I use ubiquity or the URL bar's tab search feature to find tabs quickly if I don't already know where they are, such as in the big "general tabs" clump.

      It's far more useful (and usable) than bookmarks, and with some setting tweaks doesn't even use much extra memory or CPU. Just have to set tabs to not automatically load at startup and you're good to go; Firefox doesn't start to have problems until around 1,000 tabs if you do that.

      Only real problem is that Firefox doesn't always do a good job of preserving sessions, so you'll want to do regular backups of sessionstore.js in case it decides to eat all your tabs one day.

    4. Re:Bizarre usage habits by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Umm, why in $diety's name do you need 230 tabs open? You cannot possibly use that many efficiently. It's a scientific fact that you cannot multitask worth anything (no one can).

      Well, research would be an obvious candidate. You want to keep all related pages open until you're done, in case you need to reference them in light of new information.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  37. Some people use laptops offline by tepples · · Score: 1

    Reloading a bookmark requires that your laptop have a connection to the Internet. Loading pages in tabs allows reading them while offline. The city bus system in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for example, does not offer Wi-Fi to paying riders. Nor will airlines now that AT&T has given up on in-flight Internet. Tabs mean you don't have to spend $400 a year on cellular Internet for your laptop.

    1. Re:Some people use laptops offline by jonwil · · Score: 1

      Ummm, just because AT&T aren't doing inflight internet doesn't mean that the companies currently offering inflight internet like Gogo, OnAir and Panasonic are suddenly going to stop providing it.

  38. Re:only thing I care about by 0123456 · · Score: 1

    Or one who doesn't have to release saleable products to pay their wages.

  39. Opera Developer by cachimaster · · Score: 0

    Firefox is dog slow in Ubuntu box (Core I5!) always taking 20%-30% cpu.
    Chrome, not much better. Just tried Opera Developer (chromium based I believe) and the difference is abysmal. 0% cpu at idle, fast as lightning, I installed lots of plugins into Opera and it still it consumes no CPU. Why Firefox or chrome can't be like this?

  40. Bug fix announcement please by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    All very nice to hear about shiny new features, but I would be even happier to hear Mozilla foundatation announce that they plan to fix the longstanding bug where 200 open tabs causes firefox to crash every two days or so.

    Oh, also announce that the bug where keystrokes go to the wrong window will be fixed. Thxbai.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  41. All I want as a hardcore firefox user... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...is for them to stop fucking with the interface. If I wanted tabs, I'd use chrome; stop trying to shove them down our throats.

    1. Re:All I want as a hardcore firefox user... by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      But then what would they do? If they didn't rewrite the interface every week, they might have to fix bugs.

    2. Re:All I want as a hardcore firefox user... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't want to use tabs at all? I guess as a hardcore user you could travel back in time to last millenium

  42. Re: only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That would be a big step up from Australis. At least that UI followed proven UI conventions like menu bars, tool bars, and status bars. It was easy to usr, unlike Australis.

  43. Re:e10s printing is not implemented yet. Bug 92718 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Many file transfers don't start at all, and the Ctrl+s or save page doesn't work yet, to add some more.

  44. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Maintenance programming is boring, tedious and hard. Testing anything is mind-bogglingly ridiculously difficult because most places don't have good configuration management. Given the challenge and the risks involved most programmers prefer the shiny new thing which has no test requirements and no operational risk.

  45. Re:only thing I care about by NotInHere · · Score: 1

    I don't use the new interface either, but still I can arrange myself without addons. When I need to access one of the menus, I simply press alt, and get the old menu bar. I only hope that they won't remove this in future.

  46. Re:only thing I care about by 0123456 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, you're right. Why should users complain just because they've made the standard interface unusuable, so you have to install random extensions to use their product?

  47. Re:only thing I care about by doti · · Score: 1

    1: I use Flashblock for that. There's probably some equivalent for Java, but I don't even have the Java plugin installed.

    --
    factor 966971: 966971
  48. I just found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... second is that 64-bit Firefox is finally coming to Windows

    I just started using CyberFox browser. I suppose I 'll switch to FireFox again for consistency with Android and Windows XP systems.

  49. The Paradox of Tolerance by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
    Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

    Karl Popper, Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4

    Paradox is not necessarily a fallacy, and blind moral relativism is not a good thing. There is no need to be tolerant of the views of murderous dictators, rabid extremists, or any other group which opposes freedom and tolerance. Resisting bigots results in more tolerance, not less (although if you're a bigot you might think the distribution is unfair).

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 2

      Wow, I think less of RationalWiki after reading that.

      There's a big difference between tolerating intolerant actions and tolerating intolerant words and ideas. If you want to say, "All the Jews deserve to die," that's just your opinion. It's not a very nice opinion. Most people don't share it. But, in a free society, you should be free to express it, because that's what it means to have a free society.

      If you start killing or planning to kill specific people, Jews or otherwise, well, then, we have a problem. That's murder, or attempted murder, or conspiracy to commit murder, or whatever, and it's against the law, and we need to lock you up so that you don't kill people.

      But unless you're actually DOING anything illegal, in a free society, anyone should be free to hold and express any opinions whatsoever. Otherwise, those people are being repressed, because it's wrong to deny anyone the right to hold and express their own opinions.

      This isn't definitional trickery. People have rights. Among those rights is freedom of thought and freedom of expression. The fact that some people do not believe in those rights, or seek to deny others those rights, doesn't mean those people LOSE THEIR RIGHTS. It just means they're wrong. Being wrong doesn't make you less human, and those preaching "tolerance" who would treat the intolerant as less worthy than themselves ARE BEING HYPOCRITES and ARE BEING INTOLERANT.

      And the argument you quote is a false dichotomy. We don't have to tolerate people bullying others. Our choice is not between tolerating murder, bullying, and other crimes, and being completely intolerant with those whose ideas we believe are wrong and locking people up in jail or concentration camps or mental institutions because they dare express their (admittedly wrong -- that's NOT the POINT!) views about how women or the Irish or whatever are inferior. It's their right to have those views, and to express them. Not to act on them in an illegal way. And we can certainly have a working and prosperous society while tolerating the SPEECH and IDEAS of intolerant people. The US is one.

      The single act which makes me admire the ACLU most is their 1978 defense of Nazis who wanted to march in Chicago. THAT is a commitment to an open society.

      Not shunning, or discriminating against, or firing, or locking people up because they dare disagree with you.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    2. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay. What about financially supporting a group that put contributions toward murdering Jews? Would that be acceptable or unacceptable intolerance? If you believe it's the latter, then I hope you can see why your post, while correct, isn't entirely relevant to the situation.

    3. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by Goaway · · Score: 1

      Remind me again who has lost their right to hold opinions here?

    4. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 1

      I didn't say he didn't have a right to hold his opinion. I didn't throw him in jail or get him fired for it. I just said he's wrong.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    5. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 1

      Well, it's illegal to hire a hit man, so, no, that would be unacceptable.

      Contributing to the American Nazi Party, though? That's none of anyone else's business, no more than who or what someone votes for.

      Also: do you honestly not see the difference between saying, "I don't think the state should recognize gay marriages" and "I hate and want to kill all gay people"? Sheesh. Godwin's Law indeed.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    6. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      There is no need to be tolerant of the views of murderous dictators, rabid extremists, or any other group which opposes freedom and tolerance.

      Their views, actually, yes; their actions, no. There's no need to adopt their views, yourself, but by what course of action do you make your intolerance known? Are you any better than them for taking that action? Their views are hurting nobody. But go ahead and stand up against their actions, I think we can both agree that is only right.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    7. Re:The Paradox of Tolerance by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Financing a group isn't intolerance, it's quite the opposite, you're showing tolerance and acceptance of that group. Financing a group that promotes intolerance may be an intolerant action toward who- or what- ever that group is intolerant of, and that may be rightly actionable. In general, I think I agree with the point you were attempting to make, but I can't be sure as you didn't really succeed in making that point.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  50. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's true, on Ubuntu Unity pressing Alt gets me the context menu in the dash, which is awesome!! oh... I'll get my coat.

  51. cool beans.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    now firefox can use more then 4 gigabytes of ram !!!

  52. Performance? More like "finally stability" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    - internal GC is a big issue
    - 32bit and 2-4 days of use: not good
    - finally not EVERYTHING is dying or blocking when some tab rendering runs amok

  53. Yay! Firesuck! by aliquis · · Score: 1

    It's like the best browser ever:
    http://i61.tinypic.com/2yvs96o...
    http://i61.tinypic.com/33c5g07... .. said no-one ... well, at some time after 1.0.7 and the present I guess.. considering that's 30+ versions I don't really know where.

    Untrustworthy piece of shit browser.

    Of course Chrome have crashed a few times too (ran out of filedescriptors in Linux?)

    Firefox just became slower and slower, I closed tabs and have open other ones and it have behaved badly and changed around windows very now and then (happened at lots of sessions too) but currently it seem stone dead.

  54. 64bit? by Cammi · · Score: 0

    64bit? Welcome to the 1970s.

  55. Re:only thing I care about by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Or you might right-click anywhere outside of the tabs and URL bar, and click on "Menu bar", then the menu is shown permanently. No add-on, no options editing and you get a Windows 2.0 compliant / Motif compliant application already.

  56. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just complaining a bit isn't a problem. It's when you don't stop, and instead just get louder. The best is when people complain for Firefox to hurry up and give them a modern browser capable of beating Chrome, yet they complain that Firefox has to break some things along the way to get there.

  57. Re: only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean this NetscapeNavigator? Looks like it also uses those big touchscreen tablet/phone buttons which take up 1/3 of the window that everyone hates so passionately. Maybe your memory's a little foggy.

  58. How is this browser still relevant? by Jazoray · · Score: 1

    every release broke it more and more. for several years.

  59. Maintenance programming: boring, tedious, difficul by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up! It's something many people would like to read.

  60. Mozilla needs better management. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Pale Moon x64 is Firefox with adult supervision.

    Firefox is becoming less and less stable. It's so unstable that it often doesn't report crashes, so the crash reports aren't reliable, they show far fewer crashes than actually occurred.

    The underlying problem is that Mozilla Foundation needs better management. At present, Mozilla Foundation management is sometimes excellent and sometimes very unreliable.

    1. Re:Mozilla needs better management. by whereiswaldo · · Score: 2

      I haven't had Firefox crash on MacOS or Linux in ages, and I use it all day every day. For me, it seems a lot more reliable than it used to be.

      I'm not going to say I agree with all of Mozilla's decisions, but implying they lack "adult supervision" shows you know nothing about how they work. They are a very dedicated - if sometimes misguided - group. As for Mozilla Foundation, I couldn't tell you.

  61. Java by Baby+Duck · · Score: 1

    But will it support a 64-bit JRE on Windows?

    --

    "Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins

  62. What other extensions? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    "... couple other extensions..."

    What other extensions restore Firefox to the previous usability? Most people don't have the time to search.

  63. Waterfox by bobjr94 · · Score: 1

    Ive been running Waterfox (64 bit firefox) for several years now. I'm not sure what difference it really makes but makes me feel better.

  64. Re:only thing I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because it's not actually "unusable" by any stretch of the imagination, and it is just ridiculous whining to claim it is?

  65. Big Deal by TrentTheThief · · Score: 1

    If 36.0a1 is any indication of what to expect in the future, we should all just switch to IE and burn in hell. It'll be a better experience and it won't hurt as much.

  66. Now with Multi-threaded memory leaks! by Zymergy · · Score: 1

    Have loved and used Firefox for years, but last several versions (past v28) have crashed frequently for me (Win7) with what appear to be memory leaks and then the ironic submitted crash report. I'll be looking forward to multi-threaded 64-bit crashes and memory leaks!

  67. Bad news on thin clients by markdavis · · Score: 1

    A move to multi-process in Firefox can be bad news for anyone using multiuser thin client environments (uncommon but still used). On a shared system, you generally want to have control over which applications can use multiple processes, lest they can go runaway and eat up all cores and resources on a system. Traditional tools such as "nice" don't scale well with single applications that can throw off dozens of threads. As an example- JAVA is *extremely* hostile in a a thin client environment (not just CPU, but RAM too). Just one person starting it can "pause" a 24 core Xeon server for dozens or hundreds of users due to improper assumptions about resource availability.

    So I really do hope that Mozilla makes the number of processes allowed ADJUSTABLE in the settings....