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Comment by mplanchard | Hacker News Reader

“Web-based technologies” doesn’t necessarily mean something like electron. Firefox used the same language and has largely completed their migration away from XUL. You can see details in the roadmap here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ORqed8SW_7fPnPdjfz42RoGf...

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I definitely don't consider Firefox's resource use (battery, CPU, memory) something to aim for. Pre 2.0 Firefox? Hell yes, it was part of what got everyone on it in the first place. After 2.0, when it started to bloat rapidly for unclear reasons? Not so much.

Firefox 2 was released 14 years ago. It's perhaps time to upgrade your computer or to stick with old software.

I'm still unsure why certain websites result in browser processes using up substantial resources in terms of CPU time or system memory. I typically will search for "Web Content" processes in top and kill the ones that are taking more than a certain percent of resident memory or using more than 20% CPU time just to keep the computer usable.

That's not a problem I recall encountering in the days of Firefox 2.0.

Firefox 2 had other issues. You don't remember that a website could freeze the whole browser and that it didn't have any thread or process separation between tabs?

I do remember the days where there was no thread or process separation, but, at least for the set of websites I would frequent back in those days, it rarely happened. And, even then, it didn't render the computer unusable due to constant swapping due to insufficient memory.

I think you should really consider to upgrade your hardware if a website can make your computer unusable. I agree it shouldn't be the case but that's how it is.

It really only happens with certain websites, like Facebook. If I leave a browser tab open overnight, then it can get to that point where I see a browser tab taking 50% of the resident memory,

I guess it's too much to ask companies not to implement websites that leak memory.

1) Yes, I know, that's how long Firefox has been going down the wrong path, performance-wise. They've only recently seemed to kinda start addressing that ("now we're as good as Chrome, finally!" OK but Chrome is also bad, so....)

2) I'd prefer software just, you know, not be bad. Safari, for all its problems, demonstrates that there's nothing inherent in a modern desktop web browser that requires it to be grossly inconsiderate of your system resources.

I understand your points but please don't argue for good software and use Safari as a good example. Safari is the new internet explorer, it requires its own workarounds, it doesn't support some standards because Apple doesn't want it, and you must buy a Mac to debug it.

The context was how good Safari is for end users when it comes to resource use, not how good Safari is for developers when it comes to developing for it. These two aren't very related and developers tend to view things HEAVILY biased through their own experience as developers (which is why Electron is so popular).

The point is that Firefox 2 became too bloated for its time and it never felt like it got debloated after that even things progressed.

I remember these days clearly because Firefox 1 was very fast and it displaced Mozilla (what was later called "Mozilla Suite") as the main browser for the Mozilla Foundation exactly because of that performance benefit. However Firefox 2 not only ended up becoming much slower but Mozilla Suite actually became faster and ended up being faster than Firefox despite providing not only a browser, but also a mail client, news client, WYSIWYG editor, IRC client, etc - ie an integrated "internet client".

At the time i liked Mozilla more than Firefox so i was bitter about it and how it was eventually abandoned by Mozilla Foundation (it became Seamonkey, sure, but that is another story).

I remember trying out Firefox for the first time (it was v2.0) and it would take well over 5 minutes before it would even display a window on my computer (regularly, not just the first ever launch). I would have to check Task Manager to make sure that it did start.

IE6, on the other hand, would be usable in less than 10 seconds from launch. Granted, it probably got preloaded by Windows, but even Windows took less than 5 minutes.

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