What's specifically happening when a browser starts slowing under tab load?

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Coldblackice

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 14, 2010
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Browsers start to get sluggish and unresponsive under increasing tab load. What/Where specifically is the source of this slowness, and could it possibly be "boosted" in some way (other than limiting tabs)?

Obviously, there's a heavy load on memory when you have 100+ tabs open. But if there's a copious amount of RAM + page file available, why does it still get slow? What function or mechanism is the source of the slowdown? Is it on the browser's side of responsibility, or the OS'?

Without the Firefox source code, I'm wondering if there's some measure I could tweak to circumvent the slowdown, like perhaps manually allocating metric-ton of disk cache, or something.

(For reference, speaking of 64-bit browsers)
 
Good question, haven't thought about it like that before. I'm sure virtual memory/system paging access is a big factor as well (no matter how much physical ram you have installed). Also have top consider plugins, things like shitty Flash, etc.
 
Probably because not enough testing was done during development. Each tab is really just a virtual container for another browser so the software gets more complicated the higher you scale it. I doubt much testing goes on beyond a dozen tabs or so with most browsers.

The thing I've always heard and experienced myself is like MysticRyuujin said, Flash. That thing is really a piece of shit. I found most browser crashes are strictly due to it. Slowdowns on the other hand are a mix between Flash and Extensions (Ad Block especially). One thing I never really knew is that apparently all Ad Blockers aren't really "blocking", they're just hiding all code that meets the criteria of "ads" using system memory. So the more tabs you have open and sites visited. All those Ads are being stored in system memory while on that site and that tab is open. Most browsers you'll usually have to just restart the entire browser to clean the memory. Then there's still that existing problem of a browser getting locked in memory and you have to use the task manager to close that. Reason why I recently switched from Opera to FireFox lately which has come a long way from the 3.5 days.

Other extensions are just not that well developed and also cause added issues the longer a browser is open or with multiple tabs open. These days it's not so cut and dry.
 
Liger88 said:
One thing I never really knew is that apparently all Ad Blockers aren't really "blocking", they're just hiding all code that meets the criteria of "ads" using system memory. So the more tabs you have open and sites visited. All those Ads are being stored in system memory while on that site and that tab is open.
Click to expand...
This is incorrect. The Firefox version of AdBlock+ prevents the offending resources from ever being downloaded, which means a reduction in memory usage.

Last time I looked, only the Chrome version of AdBlock+ worked the way you describe.
 
Unknown-One said:
This is incorrect. The Firefox version of AdBlock+ prevents the offending resources from ever being downloaded, which means a reduction in memory usage.

Last time I looked, only the Chrome version of AdBlock+ worked the way you describe.
Click to expand...


Interesting, didn't know that. I guess that's another bonus of switching from Opera to FireFox (week ago). Opera definitely did the same as I mentioned and simply "hid" the ads while still loading them in memory.
 
Found some helpful info on the matter:

It is because main thread is getting blocked by rendering or JS engine of the content/page you are browsing, and you can only wait until e10s and other thing like OMTC(which is landed on Nightly, and waiting more feature like APZ) coming to released version.

Until e10s+OMTC+other OMTx is coming, there is nothing much we can do.
tongue.gif

(of cause you can change your browser to IE11 or Google Chrome to get the similar snappy feature too)


https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositing
http://benoitgirard.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/off-main-thread-compositing-omtc-and-why-it-matters/
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/APZ
Click to expand...
This makes sense, and seems to be one of the big differences between Firefox and Chrome.

Question --

There are a few Firefox addons that supposedly "unload" idle tabs from active memory after a set period of idle time (UnloadTab, BarTab, Suspend Tab). In my experience, however, the performance results don't seem so guaranteed that this actually works.

Anyone know if this should theoretically work -- an addon that unloads idle tabs, reverting them to a blank page until they're switched to again, at which point, the then page reloads, done in order to keep the browser as snappy as if it only had a couple tabs open (even with 100 unloaded tabs)?

If this should theoretically work, I'm going to dig into it more, maybe taking it on as a personal project, since the various Firefox addons currently available are in stages of non-development.
 
I use noscript and adblock.
With well over 100 tabs running I dont get any system or firefox slowdown, not that I notice anyway.
My swapfile is on a Samsung 840 pro SSD btw.

Did you check CPU use on specific cores?
 
Coldblackice said:
There are a few Firefox addons that supposedly "unload" idle tabs from active memory after a set period of idle time (UnloadTab, BarTab, Suspend Tab). In my experience, however, the performance results don't seem so guaranteed that this actually works.
Click to expand...
Yeah, those add-ons seem to be more trouble than they're worth. Last time I gave a few of them a shot I ended up with all kinds of strange issues with scripts resetting / not resuming correctly. Flash player also didn't like to come back properly in resumed tabs. :(
 
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