Comments on: Future Firefox will be multiprocess

By: Jared Haer

Jared Haer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:44:19 +0000

Firefox could stand to improve it’s use of multiple processors. I have often noticed when Firefox is sluggish one core is maxed out at 100% utilization, while the other one is at almost 0%. I will follow this project closely as I am very excited about what it may offer!

By: Mike Hall

Mike Hall — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:17:21 +0000

Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Continue single-process Firefox tabs, plus an option to create a new tab as a new process: basically as a new window, which looks like a tab, but perhaps in a different colour?

By: First results of Electrolysis, multi-process Firefox - Mozilla Links

First results of Electrolysis, multi-process Firefox - Mozilla Links — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:58:16 +0000

[...] A few weeks ago, Mozilla announced Electrolysis, a new project that aims to make Firefox a multi-process application, with separate processes for the user interface (chrome), each tab, and plugins, in order to provide higher stability as a a problem with a plugin or a certain web page wouldn’t bring down the whole session; higher performace, as today’s multi-core processors can handle multiple tasks at a time; and stronger security, as each could run on different security contexts. [...]

By: venkat

venkat — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:04:04 +0000

single tab process always useful as Firefox is getting crashed common now a days ,if firefox crashed with this feature wonly one tab will be lost.

By: Amar

Amar — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:51:59 +0000

If the goals of this project is to provide better responsiveness and improve robustness as a result – I think there can be another way than to use multiple processes. There is a screen cast on how we ensure responsiveness in Firefox by separating each JS application with an isolation called Script Space.

http://people.cs.vt.edu/~adeka/jstests/anim/mutidiv.htm

This is the example code that was run.
http://people.cs.vt.edu/~adeka/jstests/test_set/multidiv.html

A click on the button would cause the browser to run a busy JavaScript loop .Firefox will not be able to process any more event unless the loop completes.

We believe that JavaScript executions can be isolated if they belong to different events & different Script Space( this is a grouping of events based on DOM hierarchy) each event running in a separate thread. Threads then can be scheduled to ensure fairness in execution. By separating the execution of the onclick handlers , we can click on the second button while the other one is running its onclick handler – Thus ensuring responsiveness.

By: JP

JP — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:17:33 +0000

Finally!
Better late then never, this is one of the things that have been long overdue.

By: Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:55:00 +0000

I’d be happy if it just ran in Linux as fast as it does in Windows.

By: Percy Cabello

Percy Cabello — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:47:26 +0000

Thanks Alex. That was a mistake I’ve just been able to correct. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

By: True Falcon

True Falcon — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:48:07 +0000

Re the pdf files – go to options/applications. enter pdf in the search box. change the action to ‘use Foxit Reader’. Now the pdfs will automatically download in the browser downloader and open outside in the reader. Problem solved.

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:45:39 +0000

Speed and security is the real advantage of having a multi-process web browser.

By: Chuck in Dallas

Chuck in Dallas — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:21:29 +0000

Firefox is starting to fall behind. I’ll stick to it because of the great plugins but my original interest in FF was because it was cutting edge and fast.

Now it seems like a technology laggard and bloated. I hope they get their act together before Chrome or Safari comes from behind in innovation. Never mid IE, I won;t go back to MS.

By: leandro

leandro — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:20:59 +0000

and about the new:tab ?? sorry if you blogged earlier, i cant remember…

By: Multi-Process Support Coming to Firefox « The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:57:30 +0000

[...] in the early phases and likely won’t be part of Firefox 3.5, but rather Firefox 3.6. From Mozilla Links: Mozilla has started a new project to make Firefox split in several processes at a time: one [...]

By: Multi-Process Coming to Firefox « The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

Multi-Process Coming to Firefox « The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:38:51 +0000

By: NuShrike

NuShrike — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:49:44 +0000

This is all about moving the responsibility for managing disparate sessions to the layer/experts whom know it best, the OS. It does reduce the ability to share memory and makes IPC more difficult, but that’s great security-wise.

Basically, exactly what Apache and PostgreSQL has ben doing for years.

By: Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:35:23 +0000

In my opinion this is where Mozilla need to be looking to improve the browser. All the new evolutionary features they’re looking into are fine, but ultimately a browser needs to be an almost-invisible, efficient way of getting to web content and applications. I’ve found myself moving to Chrome for day-to-day tasks, and it’s going to take massively-improved performance from a multi-process Firefox to get me to move back.

By: Lennie

Lennie — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:40:35 +0000

@Nils You most be using the windows default taskmanager which doesn’t list parent/child relationships for processes. I think the problem here is the taskmanager.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:41:56 +0000

Alex is right here. Multiprocessing isn’t going to be directly improved by splitting into more prosesses, but it could lead to those processes being more “threaded” than Firefox is now.
I’m too a sloppy user with sessions of 50 tabs or so. They arent all flash and pdf, more like wikipedia and API-references. So is Firefox gonna start up 50 processes when I fire up one of those saved sessions?

By: Neona

Neona — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:30:46 +0000

I would think so, but I don’t think i’ve /ever/ actually seen firefox tap more than one core, even when lagging under heavy load (loading 20+ tabs, for example). I always thought that was weird, so for some reason it must be confined to one core even though it is multithreaded. I hope this fixes that some, whatever the issue is.

The sandboxing is nice too, i dont like firefox freaking out because one page is somehow messing it up.

By: Alex Bishop

Alex Bishop — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:39:25 +0000

Careful with the terminology here: Firefox already has multiprocessor support because it uses multiple threads; this project is about moving from a single processes to multiple processes.

By: Firefox seguirÃ¡ los pasos de Chrome y serÃ¡ multiproceso - Zona Firefox

Firefox seguirÃ¡ los pasos de Chrome y serÃ¡ multiproceso - Zona Firefox — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:17:07 +0000

[...] y para ello ha comenzado con un nuevo proyecto por ahora llamado Content Processes con la idea de que cada pestaÃ±a sea un proceso aparte y todos ellos sean controlados por un proceso central que controlarÃa la interfaz del [...]

By: daylight burns the eyes

daylight burns the eyes — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:36:23 +0000

@Nils
I was the same way until a few weeks ago, I also had the same mindset about this idea but instead I started using the bookmarking system in Firefox more effectively and have now trimmed my normal 107-140 tabs down to about five or six. If you organize it right it can work out very well. Folders are your parents, and separators are your friends.

@Theory
You’re right, but I think he’s talking about the processes you see in your task manager, which for every tab you have open in the browser would show a new Firefox process.

Although that may bulk up your listing some you can still type out the first few letters of what you’re looking for (just click anywhere on an active process then type eg: word) and it should take you to that process in a jump. It makes finding a specific process much faster when you’re in a hurry.

By: Manish Sinha

Manish Sinha — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:07:46 +0000

Flash also makes life a mess and in browsers like Firefox, one freeze takes down the browser.
I wish Firefox has this feature, since memory is quite cheap these days. Secondly, browser is an integral part of our Internet life.

By: NickF

NickF — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:10:16 +0000

It’s called multi-process not multiprocessor… ;-)

By: WaruiKoohii

WaruiKoohii — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:47:12 +0000

The sandboxing in Chrome, IE7, and IE8 is unrelated to running each tab in separate processes. This specific project is unrelated to sandboxing.

Chrome, IE7, and IE8 all run their processes below the user privilege, so if malware compromises the browser, it can’t actually do anything.

Firefox currently, and even after this, will run at user privileged level, so if the browser is compromised, so is the user account.

That said, Mozilla is supposed to be implementing sandboxing in 4.0. We’ll see if that goes anywhere or not. I hope it does, it’s a basic security measure that Mozilla has ignored for far too long.