806330 - Firefox uses way too much ram when loading lots of text/has issues rendering it.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[133794m3r]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1
Build ID: 20120905151427

Steps to reproduce:

Go to any sufficiently large page that is _only_ text, no images/javascript/css etc. Just plain text. Or something like a wikipedia article. 


Actual results:

When switching from portrait to landscape adn back, the screen freezes adn becomes blurry for ~5 seconds and thenn still doesn't show the content for a few seconds longer. Also scrolling causes the screen to randomly go gray/blank out.


Expected results:

I should be able to scroll through the text. The same test done in chrom for android 18, it works just fine. Firefox's memory usage is ~230MB chrome's is ~100MB.

Comment 1

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

What device are you testing on? And please provide a specific URL on which you are seeing this issue.

Comment 2

[133794m3r]

Gnex, 4.1jb, and _any_ page that has a lot of text. Here's a simple one, a game faq. http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197341-final-fantasy-vii/faqs/33519

It happens on any page with a lot of text, you can chose any page you wish, so longn as it has a lot of text firefox scrolls to a halt. Even on wikipedia it does it(this is the mobile version of wikipedia).

Comment 3

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

I'm not able to reproduce the issues you're seeing using the same device and page. If I load just that page then FF's memory usage sits at about ~150MB RSS. Chrome was at ~120 MB initially and then jumped up to ~165 MB after I scrolled around some more (and that's not counting the ~5 MB in the sandboxed_process1).

Do you have any add-ons installed that might be causing this?

Comment 4

[133794m3r]

You don't see the "graybar" on the side for many many seconds? I guess it must be multiple tabs then. As I had three tabs open the other night. I'll go through my history and try to figure out about when it was I was seeing it. I have no addons for firefox mobile, as I use my hosts file to block trackers/noscript for firefox still isn't "fast enough" for me to use on my device so I uninstalled it.

Comment 5

[133794m3r]

(In reply to 133794m3r from comment #4)
> You don't see the "graybar" on the side for many many seconds? I guess it
> must be multiple tabs then. As I had three tabs open the other night. I'll
> go through my history and try to figure out about when it was I was seeing
> it. I have no addons for firefox mobile, as I use my hosts file to block
> trackers/noscript for firefox still isn't "fast enough" for me to use on my
> device so I uninstalled it.

To add to this one. If I open one or two other tabs. Doing another tab takes ~6s, and switching time goes up exponentially. Note, this _does not_ happen when I'm viewing multiple pages with heavy images/a page with flash, and two other tabs. I went into about:memory andn I can't seem to find ~70MB of memory usage that seems to be "just not there"

Comment 6

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

(In reply to 133794m3r from comment #4)
> You don't see the "graybar" on the side for many many seconds?

I see a gray bar on the right side of the screen when rotating for portrait to landscape - this is the "background" behind the page that becomes visible temporarily while we repaint the page after rotation. I do also see blurry text while rotating and scrolling. In all cases, however, the anomalies are only visible for about half a second, never more than a second or so. I tried with opening a couple of other tabs on a few pages (bugzilla, wiki.mozilla.org) but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

(In reply to 133794m3r from comment #5)
> I went into about:memory andn I can't seem to find ~70MB of
> memory usage that seems to be "just not there"

Not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that the system (e.g. via "top") is reporting 70 MB of usage more than what is reported in about:memory?

Comment 7

[133794m3r]

From the "apps" memory inside of android. I didn't check the terminal to see it. And yes 70mb more than what is reported in about:memory.

Comment 8

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Do you still see this on newer builds? Is this bug actionable? If so, Kats, can you mark this as new.

Comment 9

[133794m3r]

Yes this still happens, and it also happens with "bigger" sites. For example didyouknowgaming.net it is a site with a fair amount images this time, and a nice amount of javascript(apparently). Also you've removed an option in firefox which is forcing me to go back to an older version. There is no "disable javascript" option in firefox. I don't know who's idea it was to remove this but if this doesn't get fixed/the lots of text issue I'll just use the built in android browser, because at least there, I can actually disable javascript and sure it has some other issues, but when I'm browsing sites, being able to disable javascript _really_ helps for those that want to be crazy with their js.

It's still there btw, it's just gotten, let's say much much much worse. For example firefox will lock up the _entire_ system, my phone'll freeze up, I press a button to go back to home and nothing, firefox is eating 100% cpu/who knows how much memory. It's just going bezerker mode. This issue gets _worse_ with each new version. I was hoping v18 would fix it but apparently it's not yet. I've not yet tried the alphas/betas but I'll check those out later to see if it's fixed in those later versions.

Also, the javascript/full lockups on the system when running firefox has gotten much much worse as time has gone on. The graybar is still there too. My phone hasn't changed at all, and well firefox has gone newer and newer(now at v18).

Comment 10

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

(In reply to 133794m3r from comment #9)
> For example
> didyouknowgaming.net it is a site with a fair amount images this time, and a
> nice amount of javascript(apparently).

Assuming you meant .com and not .net. When I load this page I do get an unresponsive script dialog and it takes a long time to load. I was unable to successfully the profile the page either; the profiler is unable to get a dump from the device. However the device as a whole is still ok and I can easily kill firefox from the android app switcher.

> Also you've removed an option in
> firefox which is forcing me to go back to an older version. There is no
> "disable javascript" option in firefox.

You should be able to disable javascript by going to about:config and setting the "javascript.enabled" pref to false. I think the reason it was removed is that 99% of people don't use this option. You happen to fall in the 1% that does :)


There is still nothing actionable for me here, since I can't reproduce the issues you describe. The only issue I can reproduce just seems like a really poorly designed website that we could maybe handle better in core Gecko.

Comment 11

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Please don't flip flags unless you understand what they mean.