>On 11/21/12 8:19 AM, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
>> On 11/16/2012 1:11 PM, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
>>>
>>> For these reasons, I would like to propose that we disable the 64-bit
>>> Windows nightly builds. We should publish a custom update to move
>>> current win64 nightly users back onto win32.
>> Thank you to everyone who participated in this thread. Given the
>> existing information, I have decided to proceed with disabling windows
>> 64-bit nightly and hourly builds. Please let us consider this discussion
>> closed unless there is critical new information which needs to be
>> presented.
>
>For those running into the 32 bit memory ceiling, you have a legitimate
>complaint: your usage pattern of Firefox may no longer be supported by 32
>bit builds. I don't like it when someone forces me to change either, so I
>sympathize with you.
>
>Many of the people hitting this memory ceiling are hitting it because they
>have many tabs open - possibly hundreds of tabs. There are a number of
>things that can be done to abate this.
>The obvious solution: don't have so many tabs open! May I suggest using
>some form of bookmarking or read it later instead. There are numerous
>add-ons available if the features in Firefox itself aren't
>satisfactory.
I'm a tab hoarder, and I'm afraid I have no intention in joining a 12-step
program to reduce tab usage... :-) For years, my tab numbers have been
limited by memory/performance. In the old pre-BarTab days of 3.5ish, I
was limited on XP to around 100-125 tabs, and beyond that both reloads
were too painful and time between running out of memory was too low.
I typically have 400+ tabs on Windows, and 900-1000 tabs on linux64.
The Awesome Bar is actually encouraging this - it makes it trivial to
use tabs as a fast-access mechanism (and not have to wait for something
to load); and tabs also act as a way to group related bits of research,
and as a "reading queue" - open things I want to read, but don't have
time to read now - if I don't, I may not find the link again. I don't
want to bookmark them, just keep them until I read them. I might start
reading, then be pulled off for other things, etc.
>Another solution is to restart your browser periodically. Firefox 13
>introduced on-demand tab loading. So, when you restart your browser, tabs
>aren't loaded until you actually use them. The relevant preference in
>about:config is browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand. It's "true" by
>default. Be sure you haven't accidentally changed it to false.
Without that (and BarTab before it), I'd still be limited to a 100 or
200 tabs - and even then restarts would be Pain. I average 100-200
loaded tabs after a week or so.
>In bug 675539 (
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675539), we are
>tracking a feature to automatically unload unused tabs, freeing memory in
>the process. Once this lands, this should (finally) keep the memory
>footprint of Firefox in check for tab-heavy users.
I doubt that will ever be viable (and yes I follow that bug). Too many
tabs are ones you don't want to auto-unload (and yes, I know if I
restart it causes the same problem). Most of the time it'd be fine, but
the occasional pain would be large. Or you have to set such a large
timeout that it doesn't really help you much. Maybe I'm wrong, but
we'll see. It's a great idea, if it weren't for the downsides. And if
I have to manicure a whitelist/blacklist, it won't happen.
We may eventually have to evolve another paradigm for browsing; we've
hit the limits of the tab paradigm. As to what - well, if I knew
that... :-)
Eventually, we'll move to a 64 bit exe. The question is when.
--
Randell Jesup, Mozilla Corp
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