Multi-process Firefox is a go

[tezza]

Firefox has been a single-process web browser for all of its life. This was not much of an issue until Microsoft and Google introduced a multi-process architecture to their browsers.

The idea was to improved the stability and security of the web browser by moving all websites that you open in tabs in the browser into their own process.

As far as stability is concerned, a single tab crash does not necessarily take the whole browser down with it in multi-process browsers. And for security, it ensures that exploits do not get the same level of access as the main browser thread, effectively sandboxing each opened site.

Firefox's E10 project (Electrolysis) was started back in 2009, but was put on hold in 2011 as Mozilla wanted to concentrate resources on projects that yielded a faster return. Projects like Snappy, which aimed to make Firefox more responsive, were a huge success and improved the responsiveness of the browser significantly.

Since the beginning of 2013, a small but dedicated team has been working on bringing a multi-process architecture to the Firefox web browser.

Today, part of it launched in Firefox Nightly. You can enable multi-processes in Firefox right now if you are running the latest Nightly version of the browser.

Note: It is highly recommended to use a new or test profile for that as you cannot take over your open tabs with you. While they are not lost, it makes things more usable if you do. (To regain tabs, simply switch the preference mentioned below to false again).
To enable multi-processes in Firefox do the following

Type about:config into the web browser's address bar and hit enter.
Confirm that you will be careful if this is your first time here.
Search for browser.tabs.remote
Double-click the preference to set it to true.
Restart Firefox.

If things turned out well, Firefox should restart and display a single tab in its interface. You will notice that the tab is underlined, which indicates that it is running in its own process.

It needs to be noted that E10 is a work in progress, and that the project has a long way before it is ready to be shipped in Firefox Stable.

If a tab crashes, you get the following error message:

Tab crashed

Well, this is embarrassing. We tried to display this Web page, but it is not responding.

Try Again.

For now, basic functionality has been integrated which means that you can use things like navigating, using the url and search bar, context menus, bookmarks and tabs for example. Others may not work yet, like developer tools or saving pages to disks.

As far as addons are concerned, you will notice that some will work without issues, while many won't just yet.

For now, Firefox will continue to use a single content process and not multiple content processes. If you open the Task Manager, you do not see individual firefox.exe processes for each website that is open in the browser like you see when using Chrome. This is a work in progress, and the feature will be implemented eventually.

Memory usage on the other hand is similar to single-process Firefox. The overhead is just 10 Megabytes in comparison, and the developers have stated that they may be able to reduce it further.

That's definitely good news considering that Firefox's excellent memory usage won't inflate because of this feature.

Full Blog
http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/#when

[DKT27]

What I want to see is different processes using different CPU core. If that's done, people can enjoy multitasking without slowing down Firefox.

[insanedown58]

I wonder how it will affect the performance of the browser on weak PCs. I use and love Firefox on my 1 GB single-core (heck even on my 512) and the reason why they never ran Chrome is because Chrome eats them RAM up faster than a hungry fat guy in an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Edited December 5, 2013 by insanedown58

[visualbuffs]

I wonder how it will affect the performance of the browser on weak PCs. I use and love Firefox on my 1 GB single-core (heck even on my 512) and the reason why they never ran Chrome is because Chrome eats them RAM up faster than a hungry fat guy in an all-you-can-eat buffet.

mate ..this plan is good .. ram is not the right word for it

look how a single firefox process take the ram

so the issue with this was not perfectly the ram bite

look at the 2nd pic below and add all chrome process

conclusion :

firefox single process takes more ram bite than chrome with many process

i test it on my single core net-box with 2gb of ram

chrome is much faster than firefox using onto slow pc

but here at my 3mb cache intel and 4gb of ram i still use firefox and internet explorer

so firefox planning to split their process into multiple is better than a single process with huge ram bite

firefox is fast on old version .. version 3.xx and below.. starting v4 i notice decrease of performance maybe because of their single process

Edited December 5, 2013 by visualbuffs

[dre009]

I think its a good move for Firefox, having smaller jobs to the CPU does clear the cycle faster than to have one big job to constantly deal with

[cyberber]

Its great news for those who have old cpu just don't upgrade.

[SPECTRUM]

I wonder how it will affect the performance of the browser on weak PCs. I use and love Firefox on my 1 GB single-core (heck even on my 512) and the reason why they never ran Chrome is because Chrome eats them RAM up faster than a hungry fat guy in an all-you-can-eat buffet.

mate ..this plan is good .. ram is not the right word for it

look how a single firefox process take the ram

so the issue with this was not perfectly the ram bite

look at the 2nd pic below and add all chrome process

conclusion :

firefox single process takes more ram bite than chrome with many process

i test it on my single core net-box with 2gb of ram

chrome is much faster than firefox using onto slow pc

but here at my 3mb cache intel and 4gb of ram i still use firefox and internet explorer

so firefox planning to split their process into multiple is better than a single process with huge ram bite

firefox is fast on old version .. version 3.xx and below.. starting v4 i notice decrease of performance maybe because of their single process

Chrome use more ram overall and that's the big trouble.

[pr1xsel]

Chrome use more ram overall and that's the big trouble.

Firefox wisely puts unused tabs and website content to pause, compresses and caches to disk and mostly keeps memory usage below 512mb unless you manually go to about:config to tweak settings. Also if you clear your browsing history then Firefox will use much less memory for a short while. Also when you close Firefox and open again then it loads only visible tab while Chrome loads all of them + Chrome consumes much more ram than Firefox because of not having memory limit or rule to cache unused content to disk when tab hasn't been viewed for long time. Have had computer's with 2gb memory and Chrome quickly raised to 2gb+ usage and slowed down entire system. So I personally wouldn't use or recommend Chrome to be used on any computer before the caching behavior has been changed.

[LORD MADA]

it negated all my addons effects!

[demoneye]

its about timeeeeeeee mozilla do that , they are long time left behaind regarding browser perfomance :D