538100 - firefox should be multithreaded or multiprocess

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 156493

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Jim Michaels]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

I am getting the impression (I could be wrong) that FF is using windows messages for all its processing. thus it is single-tasking only, and more subject to slow-downs (especially when Kaspersky Internet Security is running).

I frequently download multiple files at the same time from sf.net by right-clicking and opening the link in a new tab (one of those can-only-click-to-download sites), and FF's handling of this needs improvement. 

it would be nice if starting a new tab were done as a new thread or process.  I frequently have to wait for up to 10 seconds after a right-click (I intend to submit this as a separate bug as "right click" right after this one).

and then there is an additional 10-second wait between the time that the download dialog comes up and I can click the OK button.  that one is going to be filed under "10-second delay after download dialog comes up".


if one tab of the browser crashes, the whole browser goes down with it.

the download handling should also be done as a separate thread at least, and I would like to have multiple download dialogs on the screen instead of a single one. for some reason, the new code that is forcing a single dialog is breaking.  besides - I like to work in parallel. and I know I am not the only one.  I know at least one other person besides myself who is - the kind of person who like to have 10-20 windows open at once & stuffs their computer with memory and hard drive space and wants all the cores they can get in their processors - and uses it.

also, when crashes occur, they take down the whole browser instead of just that window.  I don't know if you can implement this feature or not because Google Chrome has it, where they use a separate process for each tab. in Chrome's case, a crash only takes out that tab.  I would like the same feature in FF.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
single-tasking. 
message-based? 
if one window causes firefox to crash, the whole thing crashes, and it doesn't usually use talkback to report it.

Expected Results:  
more parallel-computing-like results.
crash in browser should use talkback always, and only affect the tab it crashed in, not taking down the whole browser.

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan]

This is in process, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis