Firefox perf is decreasing with every update

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:07

There is something deeply wrong with Firefox at the moment.

As of Version 34, both my home PC ([email protected]) and my work PC (Q8200), after a period of time and with multiple tabs open, the browser will just freeze.

Could it be underpowered hardware? Surely you shouldn’t need a super powerful PC to make up for a poor performing program.

Not the screen goes white type and the message Firefox is not responding, no rather nothing. The browser is just a static picture, no buttons no nothing to move, just static.

I have a feeling it's related to my previous thread on Firefox where I was complaining about how Firefox is no good with flash heavy websites.

Anyone else seeing these issues?

Multiprocess support for Firefox as far as I can tell from Google searches has been pushed back to the end of 2015.

ChrisD. · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:10

I moved to Chrome about 3 years ago, no regrets so far.

this_is_gav · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:23

Try backing up your Firefox profile and starting one from fresh, even if its just to test.

moogle · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:30

I've found firefox to be like that as well. It just eats memory with multiple tabs. It could be addons too but Chrome seems to work much better.

I also installed OneTab on Chrome so I could sleep some tabs for use later. I haven't found a Firefox extension that has similar properties yet.

Orcvader · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:32

Noticed it too, tried Waterfox to see if that helps but it seems to use a lot more RAM with hardly any performance increase.

Quite a shame electrolysis has been pushed back.

randal · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:32

Yep, I'm inclined to agree. I'm a FF user on Windows and OSX, both at home and work and I find it to get getting more and more bloated and slower with every iteration. There doesn't even seem to be any features worth mentioning to offset the performance hit either.

Looks like I might be giving Opera a go in the not too distant...

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:37

Just to add, this was a fresh install of version 35 and I dont have any addons or extras other than flash.

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 12:46

Orcvader said:
Noticed it too, tried Waterfox to see if that helps but it seems to use a lot more RAM with hardly any performance increase.

Quite a shame electrolysis has been pushed back.

This is the most important feature. Should be prioritised, but I can imagine it is a MASSIVE undertaking hence why it is taking so long.

Orcvader · 20 Jan 2015 at 13:07

Looking on the roadmap it seems they're aiming for Aurora release by Q1: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Roadmap

From these meeting notes it looks like version 42 (03/11/15) is the current expected release, although it wouldn't suprise me if that gets pushed back once Aurora/Beta users starts testing it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Meetings/2015-01-08

randal · 20 Jan 2015 at 13:11

Just tried Opera.

Dear Lord that's slower than FF.

weyland yutani · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:02

I just tried FF again for the first time in years and it feels suprisingly snappy, my only issue is the horrible, choppy video playback on youtube with Flash.

Chrome's emdedded flash plays youtube videos perfectly smooth but the browser's has been bugging me lately, namley the google account sign in and the infuriating white flash between loading websites :mad:

Orcvader · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:05

weyland yutani said:
I just tried FF again for the first time in years and it feels suprisingly snappy, my only issue is the horrible flash video playback on youtube.

Chrome's emdedded flash plays youtube videos perfectly smooth but the browser's has been bugging me lately, namley the google account sign in and the infuriating white flash between loading websites

If anything I had more problems with Chrome's built in flash. Disabling it and using the external Flash seems to provide better performance and stability.

weyland yutani · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:09

html5 player works fine in FF but you're limited to 720p. No idea why flash plays like crap. For now I'm just using Chrome for youtube.

Rroff · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:14

34.0.5 onwards have been a mess - serious rendering bugs, memory leaks (after a few hours often FF will hog 50% CPU and start bouncing around 1.6GB of memory used - seems to be some kind of automated garbage collection/housekeeping that keeps it under 2GB limit but its just emptying memory as fast as its being filled up) the time taken to load complex pages has increased by around 3-4x and theres a good chance the whole browser will lock up on bigger/more complex pages.

Sucks coz upto 34 it just worked for me, no performance or stability issues, etc. gonna try and see if I can revert to an older version.

weyland yutani said:
I just tried FF again for the first time in years and it feels suprisingly snappy, my only issue is the horrible, choppy video playback on youtube with Flash.

Chrome's emdedded flash plays youtube videos perfectly smooth but the browser's has been bugging me lately, namley the google account sign in and the infuriating white flash between loading websites

Its probably due to one of the issues with 34+ releases (or your PC) before 34.0.5 as per above flash played fine for me.

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:45

Im a big Firefox fan by the way. But even I am getting tired of these performance issues.

It is only flash heavy websites really, the ones with multiple flash banners/video etc... if i have something like that inthe back ground and other tabs open sometimes it will just freeze. And i have to terminate the firefox process to get responsiveness back.

I'll have to try chrome again, but Firefox just feels like home.

Just as an example, if i have this site open in a tab for a while it tends to freeze the browser.

Orcvader · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:49

opethdisciple said:
Just as an example, if i have this site open in a tab for a while it tends to freeze the browser.

I was wondering where all the Flash content was until I disabled ABP

...

I get a bit of lag while it all loads up, but doesn't seem to freeze for me.

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 14:51

Orcvader said:
I was wondering where all the Flash content was until I disabled ABP ...

I get a bit of lag while it all loads up, but doesn't seem to freeze for me.

It doesn’t freeze immediately. Leave it in the back ground and have a few tabs open.

Elevon · 20 Jan 2015 at 15:14

opethdisciple said:
There is something deeply wrong with Firefox at the moment.

As of Version 34, both my home PC ([email protected]) and my work PC (Q8200), after a period of time and with multiple tabs open, the browser will just freeze.

Could it be underpowered hardware? Surely you shouldn’t need a super powerful PC to make up for a poor performing program.

Not the screen goes white type and the message Firefox is not responding, no rather nothing. The browser is just a static picture, no buttons no nothing to move, just static.

I have a feeling it's related to my previous thread on Firefox where I was complaining about how Firefox is no good with flash heavy websites.

Anyone else seeing these issues?

Multiprocess support for Firefox as far as I can tell from Google searches has been pushed back to the end of 2015.

I find FF performs better stability wise with hardware acceleration disabled so that is one of the first things I do,also probably worth using System Ninja to delete old FF profiles via its junk cleaner ,can get it here and it's free https://singularlabs.com/software/system-ninja/

FF35 has been stable for me with all my extensions.

mrk · 20 Jan 2015 at 15:38

^You can manually delete old FF profiles very quickly and easily without having to installed 3rd party apps

Installed on an SSD? Mine is on an old Samsung 830 series and runs just fine. Some websites with masses of youtube embedded videos such as forum threads will slow down initial load as it caches but after a few seconds it's back to normal.

I cannot use Chrome simply because most of the extensions I use are not available on Chrome and it's not as nice to use either.

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2015 at 15:59

mrk said:
^You can manually delete old FF profiles very quickly and easily without having to installed 3rd party apps

Installed on an SSD? Mine is on an old Samsung 830 series and runs just fine. Some websites with masses of youtube embedded videos such as forum threads will slow down initial load as it caches but after a few seconds it's back to normal.

I cannot use Chrome simply because most of the extensions I use are not available on Chrome and it's not as nice to use either.

Yep mine is running on an SSD (Crucial M4)

Maybe i should just uninstall flash!