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Firefox To Let Users Control Memory Usage (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Mozilla engineers are working on a new section in the browser's preferences that will let users control the browser's performance. Work on this new section started last Friday when an issue was opened in the Firefox bug tracker. Right now, the Firefox UI team has proposed a basic sketch of the settings section and its controls. Firefox developers are now working to isolate or implement the code needed to control those settings [1, 2, 3]. According to the current version of the planned Performance settings section UI, users will be able to control if they use UI animations (to be added in a future Firefox version), if they use page prefetching (feature to preload links listed on a page), and how many "content" processes Firefox uses (Firefox currently supports two processes [one for the Firefox core and one for content], but this will expand to more starting v54).
This is a very good step in the right direction. There are non-majority but very valid use cases where one might need to limit memory and especially CPU usage and threading when wanted. For example, on hosted or application servers that serve thin clients. Please give as much control to users and system administrators as possible.
This also holds just as important for single-user systems. One thing I hope they especially pay attention to is some way to quell the rampant misuse of local resources by websites that throw more and more meaningless "fancy" effects at us. Barely a site remains that doesn't fade in and out every single element, loads endlessly, creates tight busy loops, presents continuous animation for no real reason, etc. It just chews through CPU and on battery powered devices, it unnecessarily decimates stored power, it presents never ending barriers and distractions to getting to useful information on sites. Give us tools and settings to slow and limit such nonsense. Return control of our resources to us.
In the past, Firefox was all about CHOICE and CONFIGURABILITY. For years as Firefox has become "Chrome-ified" in look and mission, user choice has wrongfully and systematically removed in favor of "simplicity". Stop trying to be Chrome, it is not helping anyone!
Firefox stands as the only remaining main-stream, completely open source, multiplatform browser developed by a community model. Here is a last chance to prevent it from become totally obscure.... EMBRACE USER CONTROL. Differentiate yourself based on that. It is something Chrome sorely lacks. We need real choices and real competition, not a world left with one browser controlled by a single information overlord who lives based on tracking, capturing, and sharing information about us. Been there, done that.... Mozilla set us free once. Please be there to prevent us from sliding back into it again :)
It's not a perceived problem. My workstation has 32 GB of RAM yet Firefox will still use many GBs if I leave it open for a few days. This happens with addons enabled, and even with a new profile. Chrome doesn't do that. Edge doesn't do that. It's a problem that effects Firefox and not the other browsers. Maybe it's due to memory leaks in Firefox?
Unfortunately, back around the time of Firefox 4.0, the people in charge at Mozilla became infected with some sort of toxic brain worms. Since then, they have been on an all-out campaign to completely destroy Firefox, and if you look at the market share numbers, they're doing a wonderful job. The best, most popular browser is now battling Opera for the title of most irrelevant browser.
And since there seems to be no end of companies who will give Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars, for nothing, no matter how badly Firefox sucks, it seems unlikely that anything will change.
Fortunately, thanks to Firefox being open source, there are forks, such as Palemoon, that retain the good features that Mozilla eliminated and avoid the useless crap and pointless changes that Mozilla seems to love so much.