286795 - Tabbed browsing should be slimmed down resource-wise

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Lloyd Wood]

I use tabbed browsing really really heavily - multiple windows each with twenty
or more tabs going off beyond the right of the screen. I have 'load links in
background' on.

I've noticed, with heavy tab use like this, that Mozilla and Firefox become
large, bloated, sluggish... I think this is because the browsers are loading in
the pages entirely, objects and all, and rendering the pages in the background,
and those rendered pages eat memory.

What I would like 'load links in background' to do is just to complete the
initial http transfers associated with each page, i.e. just load the webpage,
and then do nothing until that tab is clicked to foremost, at which point all
graphics etc. can be loaded in and rendered. This retains the tabs' use as
placeholders, while cutting down on application memory use.

This could be a choice of three options:
  Load and render page contents in background
  Load all page contents in background
  Load links in background

Alternatively, there could be a 'turn off image downloading for background
links' so you thump refresh (or a refresh and load of images is forced) after
switching to a tab.

Comment 1

[Ben Fowler]

I believe iCab does something like that. I would suggest queueing downloads and
starting them when the lizard is idle, or on switching to a tab.

Comment 2

[Lloyd Wood]

This was covered in Slashdot:

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/14/2154224

I see three levels of caching page in memory for tabs:

1. cache the rendered page, which is what Firefox is doing.
2. cache only the downloaded page, so no network access is needed.
3. cache only the url of the page, requiring network access (difficult if stateful).

For my use of tabs (lots of ctrl-clicking to open links, lots of dormant tabs that have not been used) I'd want 2. -- I have a fast machine but slow network connections, the machine can rerender if needed. But Firefox defaults to 1. always.

If a tab hasn't yet been viewed or hasn't been viewed in a while, the rendering should not be stored in memory.

Comment 3

[Lloyd Wood]

See:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177439&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14721830#14722617
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

for a workaround.

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

There have been many memory and performance improvements that make tabbed browsing use less resources.

Comment 5

[Lloyd Wood]

http://www.one-tab.com/

now does, in Google Chrome, pretty much what I described here in this Mozilla bug in 2005. It switches to just the URL, saves memory, and lets you find and manage tabs from a webpage rather than a crowded tar bar.

Tabbed browsing is still too resource-hungry, and this fixes it. In Google Chrome.

If you use tabs, use Google Chrome with One Tab.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/onetab-on-google-chrome-2014-1