Testing a Pre-Release, Parallel Firefox 278
Firefox, in its official version, still lacks support for multi-threading (running on different processors), though Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 both have this feature. A Firefox project called Electrolysis is underway to close this gap. A blog author tested a pre-release version of Firefox that loads different tabs in parallel, and he chronicles his findings, including a huge speedup in Javascript vs. Firefox version 3.5 (though the pre-release still lags Chrome in many of the tests).
Good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Tabbed processes would be better (Score:5, Insightful)
Multithreading still relies on a single point of failure - the shared memory space.
By doing what Chrome did, and breaking each tab instance into its own process, any single tab can crash/hang without affecting any other page.
I know when I load an MPG video that it sometimes hangs the browser, and I can't do anything (close/minimize/switch away) while the media player is being loaded. This sometimes causes me stress.
Summary is wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox does support multithreading, what it doesn't support is multiprocessing. Firefox runs as a single process, whereas Chrome has a separate process for every site, plugin and extension.
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Other browsers have already caught up to Firefox in speed, features, and standards support.
Many mainstream browsers are speedy, or at least speedy enough, but Firefox does offer a unique mix of features:
Ogg Theora/Vorbis: Currently supported by Firefox, Chrome, Opera
FOSS: Firefox, Chrome (just Chromium?)
Cross-Platform on Win, Mac, GNU/Linux: Firefox, Chrome (maybe just beta?), Opera
For me, both Firefox and Chrom{e|ium} look like good contenders. I've had good experiences with Mozilla products for quite some time, so I'll probably continue with Firefox.
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Firefox and Chrome may be the only two competitors with some features, but compared to others, Firefox just can't compete. Things like supporting multi-threading, tab isolation, plugin isolation, JavaScript execution speed, and general UI responsiveness are all things that Firefox really lacks. Right now, the ability to customize and the fact that its available in Ubuntu without needing extra repos, are about the only things that are keeping me from using Chrome full time.
ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Process-per-tab shouldn't speed up Javascript unless you're doing something else in a second tab that's hogging CPU. Most likely the Javascript performance gains came simply from the fact that he was using a 3.7 branch of the code. Which is kind of sad, considering bleeding-edge Firefox still lags behind Chrome by a considerable margin.
Re:Thread != Process (Score:5, Insightful)
The writer's mistake is more basic than just conflating threads and processes. You left out the parenthesis:
still lacks support for multi-threading (running on different processors)
Which not only conflates cores and processors, but also suggests that multithreading isn't useful if you don't have multiple cores/processors.
When I was writing the concurrency chapter [sun.com] in the Java Tutorial, the experts would give me a very hard time if I allowed even a vague suggestion that this was true. The fact is, threads are extremely useful even if you only have one core to work with. For example, any well-written GUI program will not handle user interaction in the same thread with other functions; if it did, the GUI would freeze every time the program were waiting on something.
Multithreading is a big topic these days because everybody wants to maximize their utilization of all these n-core processors. But it's not a new topic.
This mistake seems to be very common [google.com]. Which leaves me confused as to what's new here. It's not parallel downloading of files — Mozilla/Firefox has always done that. A more robust parallelism mechanism? Or maybe they're copying Chrome and giving each tab its own process (not thread!).
Re:FireFox is great, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need to be a pro you just need to own a camera(s) and have a couple kids. Heck there's a jillion contributors to YouTube who would benefit from 64-bit and more ram. Most of them probably don't even know it.
The right question to me is "Why are we still using 32-bit?"
Re:Multi-threading != running on different process (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entertainment (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a fairly complicated comment there. Let's dig a little.
This has so many red herrings I will skip it entirely. The second part gets more interesting.
"...productively engage in a constructive discussion with me with respect to the most efficient way to use the resources at our disposal and how to get to the point where that is the focus of our society rather than consume, consume, consume..."
"Being productive" is more than creating text & spreadsheets. "Make the recreation more efficient". *TV* is one of the most inefficient recreations out there! Not the show - the timing schedule. A lot of "risky" shows are arriving with 16 episode contracts instead of 24, spread out over longer periods to eke out some more "remember me" mindshare. However, it was the internet entertainment multiverse that thrashed the TV mentality to smithereens. Instead of having to wrench our lives to see "our show" for seven months of the year, batch it on Hulu and churn through it on four Saturday Graveyard blocks from 2AM to 7AM. Remember the misery of "nothing good being on"? And even when you're watching it, you can do low level work during the boring scenes. I gained two virtual years of life back while still being satisfied with four show's worth of entertainment.
But if you're now looking askance at processing power, "the cool work" these days eats processor power like a hog. Multimedia editing audio commercials, online collaboration, enterprise accounting, onscreen CAD, information modeling rendering, etc. I bought a quad core machine precisely because the "document machines" couldn't cut it.
Sorry, bud... Processors still matter! (Score:3, Insightful)
The bottom line is that you have to run up against the fact that a decade ago CPU's could satisfy any reasonable need for processing power. Now all one is buying CPUs for is "fluff" -- watching TV on ones computer, playing games, etc. I.e. it produces nothing, it contributes nothing, it is simply a consumer computing mentality -- my computer exists to entertain me.
I have an Athlon XP 3200+. It's a nice chip, and all, a 32bit one. And for many tasks, it is more than adequate. But when watching flash video full screen on my 32" HiDef TV, it's very jerky. Yes, it's because of Flash being poorly optimized. But it's also what I want to do with my computer, because I DO watch TV. And rather than spend too much money to get Cable TV or Dish, I've switched to all 100% online TV. It saves me $75/month and is a better user experience! I no longer have to pre-plan my viewing, I just watch whatever's available when I want, on demand, right from the beginning of the show.
But while it works well on the Mac mini in my bedroom, and my Dell laptop, it doesn't work so well on the old Athlon. So, I go to Pricewatch.com and buy a new Athlon X/2 motherboard/video card combo upgrade board with 2.1 Ghz of RAM for $150, and now I have a 64-bit, dual-core MB, good RAM, fast processor. Flash plays nicely, and all for less than the cost of a decent DVD player.
Are you still telling me that the CPU doesn't matter? Maybe you are happy with the ancient processor from 10 years ago, and for many tasks, it's probably good enough, but not for everything...
Sorry about your camera, dude. I use a $59 generic digital camera I got in the shrink-wrap isle at the local Best Buy. It's 10 Mpixel with optical zoom, records decent quality video, and came with a free 2 GB memory card. It doesn't have every bell and whistle, but does a good job taking pictures and video. Armed with rechargeable batteries and a cheap external USB drive, my pictures cost almost nothing at all and I don't give a hoot about compatibility since it uses standard flash cards and image format. (JPG/WMV)
What else do YOU want?
Re:Thread != Process (Score:3, Insightful)
A good few years ago now I was working on an e-commerce website. The checkout/registration process included an address look-up feature; you entered your post code and hit a button, it popped up a window with a list of matching addresses. Click on an address, and the details were written into the form in the parent window, and the pop-up window was closed.
The private administration site did the same thing with product look-ups, etc.
Sure, you could do the same thing with iframes, divs, etc, and opening new windows is arguably bad practice, but that's certainly one possibility. (Another that springs to mind would be selecting from an address book in a webmail client)
Re:Good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true, but Firefox will at least still run on platforms it doesn't have a native JS compiler for, presumably by falling back to the interpreter. Chrome just doesn't exist for non-x86/arm platforms.
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
I recently bought a ~600USD device because most of the software it runs is FOSS.
FOSS is an enormously important feature outside the "PC" world, and pretty important in the PC world. Look up why RMS started GNU and the FSF. What are you going to do when your software supplier stops making new releases for the hardware you've got? Thrown it away?
(Details - I had a Nokia E90, a lovely machine, but, since Symbian S60 is closed source I have no way of replacing the increasingly outdated built in apps. Now I have a Nokia N900, and almost all of Maemo is FOSS and I can keep using it even when Nokia release the N999 and lose all interest in it.)