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).
Re:Thread != Process (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no reason FF couldn't use separate threads to handle the threading of separate tabs. As it is, if any tab locks up, then the whole set of tabs gets stuck. Whether you use a process to separate each tab or you simulate it with threads, the difference is merely architectural.
The shared memory and object resources is the bottleneck with threads, but there is no reason why a single process couldn't render separate tabs completely separately.
FireFox is great, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I love FireFox and it's my preferred browser but I do feel like it's falling behind in a lack of ability to take advantage of certain hardware and software advances.
First as noted, FireFox does not really take advantage of multiple Cpu core's and there's no official 64 bit version. I've read that the developers opinion is that why have a 64 bit version if the most necessary plugin, flash is not available in a 64 bit version so why bother. But Sun does make a 64 bit JRE and that's half the battle and I honestly believe that if a 64 bit official version of FireFox were released that would spur Adobe to jump on the band wagon and produce a 64 bit Flash plugin.
The first sentence is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thread != Process (Score:5, Interesting)
Read bug 40848 for the list of technical issues. Amongst other things, document windows may display and communicate with each other, or refer to each other, which leads to race conditions, etc.
(The process documented in 40848 also explains why this idea has taken 9.5 years and some skunkworks outside/despite the open development process to get this feature to this point.)
Re:Thread != Process (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's hard to write renderers that catch all edge cases and harder still to sandbox a single thread of execution within a process. Just as the OS, to a degree, "owns" the process and can thus manipulate its environment, the process is the "owner" of its threads and is largely responsible for making sure they don't do anything improper.
Since on every OS platform a lot of work has gone into security in the past ten years, why reinvent the wheel? (Although, apparently, Google has already done this with Google Native Client, go figure.)
Processors do not matter... (Score:1, Interesting)
You are observing a competition between the browsers and the CPU manufacturers. And the thing that you fail to understand is that "it does not matter". I am NEVER going to buy another machine with an Intel processor (because they burnt me a decade ago) and I view payback as sweet. Current CPU's are more than fast enough for most applications, i.e. a Pentium IV Prescott (single CPU) (which I inherited, so didn't have to purchase) works fine. N years ago (perhaps 8-10) I was able to work and be productive using a Pentium Pro @ 200 MHz (circa Y2000). Anyone who needs/wants more processing power is dumping the electricity down the non-productive heat drain (e.g. gamers) or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
Yes, I am taking direct aim at people who really don't know what they are doing. So sue me. Or perhaps more 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 (electricity or otherwise). You decide.
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. Sad IMO. "Yes, I completely support driving society into a non-productive cloned mentality" (i.e. one manufacturer rules all). "I support current business models because that will contribute to driving us into submission". One has to ask oneself, "When will Intel say "stop"? When will they say we dedicate ourselves to a more efficient, less Earth-damaging) processor, like ARM?" or "We embrace competition because it will further motivate our developers to be creative?"
The processors have been more than sufficient for a decade or more. What you are currently witnessing is whether or not one should view the competition as being valuable. I would currently argue not, and therefore Intel is proceeding towards a monopoly, in which it cares little about the customer. Which is the same place I found myself in the mid-1990's when the chose to desupport the Intel camera that I was using. Does the concept of "sorry, we are going to force you to upgrade" (because it increases our profit margins) ring any bells?" (I don't care that your current computer is completely sufficient for your needs -- you need to do more, need more, that requires an upgrade, etc. Watch my commercials to prove that that is the case.)
If the old software/hardware works fine then be comfortable with it. Do not easily accept that upgrading is a requirement.
Regards
Robert Bradbury
No multithreading in FF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good thing (Score:1, Interesting)
Opera has "NoScript" built right into the browser. Tools->Preferences->Advanced->Content->uncheck "enable javascript"/"enable java"/"enable plug-ins" (For whatever you wish to block)
To add a site to the whitelist, right click on the page->Edit Site Preferences->Scripting->check "enable javascript", Content->check "enable java"/"enable plug-ins" (For whatever you wish to unblock)
Frankly, I still think it's silly that functionality that's only present in a plugin is considered a feature of the browser itself -- there's plenty of extending plugins for Opera, but the IMPORTANT functionality (Ad Blocking, Script Blocking, etc.) is all included without the need to search it out.
Re:Good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
If it had a more stable Linux version
What? The beta is pretty rock solid for me. There's one annoying, persistent bug in HTML5, which I haven't bothered to get annoyed about since I don't really see enough HTML5 video to care.
But until fairly recently, Flash was crashing a lot for me. That meant I ran Konqueror a lot, because crashing an entire window full of tabs is still better than crashing all windows full of tabs.
I ran the Chrome nightly builds until there was a stable beta. There were occasional and annoying bugs, but I would often go for weeks without problems. Worst case, a tab crashes, you hit refresh -- but days and weeks pass between those. Honestly, the released version of Firefox was less stable overall, at the time.
had all the addons/themes
I'm not sure how good it's going to be, or how likely it is to work at all, but I did hear people proposing ways for Chrome to run Firefox extensions. However, it does have plenty of its own.
along with the ability to customize absolutely everything
I'll definitely give you that. There are things I've seen Firefox extensions do that Chrome extensions can't touch, yet. But that's actually a nice tradeoff -- Chrome extensions are somewhat limited, but it means that if you try to install, say, the YouTube downloader, it'll only touch your data on Youtube.com, it'll say so, and Chrome will enforce it.
Still, I think it's possible to have our cake and eat it, too.
the fact that its available in Ubuntu without needing extra repos
Why is this a blocker?
I guess, from a privacy/security standpoint, I could see an argument, but from sheer usability, you can actually point and click on a deb to both download Chrome and automagically enable the extra repos.
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
I've found chrome to be a decent brower, and the tab-process thing is very cool, but it doesn't quite live up to the hype I think. It isn't significantly faster than FF on my system (mostly FF falls down in specific, but fairly rare, situations), the UI isn't notably better, and in many ways it's a lot less polished than FF. E.g., if you enable emacs-style editor commands in GTK (which applies to text-entry boxes), they "kinda" work in chrome, but it also steals some keystrokes it shouldn't, which can be infuriating (hit C-n 5 times to move down 5 lines, and .. oh shit it created 5 new browser windows instead!); this works much better in FF.
Still, they clearly have some nice ideas, and I'd like to at least try out chrome more (I guess the bugs will get fixed eventually), but currently chrome also has some nasty interactions with X that periodically result in my window manager crashing...
Re:Summary is wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't relate at all. Javascript is single threaded. If the same thread that runs the js is supposed to process user input, it would never notice the attempt to kill the tab.
The real issue is that threads can't be safely terminated, but processes can be. This is why people want each tab to be a process.
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is admittedly not an issue for a ton of people, but Chrome/Chromium is less architecture-portable as well, since instead of being all C/C++ or some other portable language like most browsers, its JavaScript engine [google.com] directly emits native code.
It can currently do x86 and ARM, which covers almost everyone, but does mean that it can't run it on, for example, PPC macs, so I can't use it on my PowerBook, which is actually the machine that I'd most appreciate a faster browser on.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)