Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

This particular solution seems wrong for all the obvious reasons listed in other comments...

But on the other hand, I love the idea of resource-limiting tabs by default, along all of:

- CPU usage (allow an initial burst, but after a few seconds dial down to max ~0.5% of CPU, with additional bursts allowed after any user interaction like click or keyboard)

- Number of HTTP requests (again, initial bursts allowed and in response to user interaction, but radically delay/queue requests for the sites that try to load a new ad every second even after the page has been loaded for 10 minutes)

- Memory usage (probably the hardest one to get right though)

I mean, every so often I've caught things like a Gmail tab in Chrome stuck at using 100% CPU indefinitely because it must be stuck in some infinite JavaScript loop due to a bug, as well as the occasional other random blog that uses constant 50% CPU for no discernable reason... and it would be nicer if this didn't suck up two hours of my laptop's remaining battery time before I discovered it.

If the browser had soft resource limits that just gradually slowed down code execution and HTTP requests to extreme levels, with a discreet pop-up warning in the corner "this site is attempting to use higher than normal resources, click here to allow temporarily/permanently" for the times you're opening a WebGL demo...

...it seems like it would be a big win for users.

Right, you definitely want something that is somewhat more adaptive if you want to solve this problem. Something to the effect of "as you use more resources you slow down those resources."

What's more interesting to me is the broader economic question. Do users end up flocking to those browsers because it makes the browser more snappy for the other web sites and contexts? Or do they ditch them because they are necessarily slower than browsers that don't? Is this sort of decision, in other words, a sort of suicidal option for browsers?

The need for the user-friendly resource limitations in browsers is real.

E.g.

https://www.coindesk.com/firefox-announces-move-to-block-cry...

I know that solution presented in the article didn't work (neither in Firefox nor in Opera), and I know that from a person close to me who is not "technical" but wants to access some sites which slowed down the person's computer (the sites indeed managed to use exactly 100% of the CPU, that means, to use all cores at once, and to contact regularly some other sites with the "coin" in the name). Then, I've shown the person that the JavaScript can be blocked and that the computer is that way completely responsive... and you know the result: even the non-technical persons do what's rational, once they know that they have a choice.

Well, the browser publisher can simply make a setting or a fork (because that change looks large), and see what wins.

As a power user I’d appreciate having those individual granular controls. Maybe for non power users, have a reasonable default threshold determined by the browser for each of those parameters, and give them a single off control to let a particular tab “run wild”.

Unlike most of the commenters here, I agree this is a problem that needs to be solved by browsers. JavaScript blockers work but are unnecessarily big hammers.

You could democratise the config -- allow users to choose the median setting made by those who manually intervene? Power Users get granular control, other users get sane (?) defaults?

Note that we already have examples of a certain resource limit. WebSQL and IndexedDB databases are capped to a maximum size per domain, and different browsers have different caps and different UX for configuring/bypassing them.

Granted, those technologies are not as widely used and that limit, if absent, would not inconvenience the user as quickly and easily as CPU/memory hogging does.

As a person getting dozens of tabs open to do cross comparisons all the time I would gladly opt in at settings to enable and tweak such limit values. Exceeding those would then alert if I truly am interested in allowing the exception to rule.

Another thing could be to allow the site to read those limits and consider what to load. Kinda like mediaquery.

> CPU usage (allow an initial burst, but after a few seconds dial down to max ~0.5% of CPU, with additional bursts allowed after any user interaction like click or keyboard)

Funny how Mozilla spent so long trying to make firefox multi process and right after they got there it was decided that we had to throttle these process anyway.

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