My observations, using both Firefox (well, Iceweasel 20.0-1~bpo60+1), and Chrome (Chromium 26.0.1410.43-1). In many ways, I prefer Firefox as a browser (better plugins, controls, tabs, too much Google influence already).
My Firefox experience is getting to the point it's virtually unusable, with very, very slow response to any actions (especially new tab / new window functions). We're talking about many seconds, sometimes a minute or more.
While the overall footprint of Firefox is smaller than Chrome, Chrome's sandboxing of tabs gives vastly better user-based memory management: I've got the option of killing off tabs (without closing them) that are using excessive memory, restoring net system responsiveness.
Firefox uses a single process space, and slowness in one tab seems to extend elsewhere (my general observation, not based on analysis).
A larger part of the problem is a combination of how browsers facilitate (or don't) content management and browsing as a task and workflow, and the increasing emphasis on highly-interactive sites.
The lack of such tools, and especially the paucity of bookmarks as a management tool, means that my usual workflow management is:
- Open browser.
- Open lots of tabs. It's not uncommon for me to have 100s of tabs open across multiple browser windows.
For Firefox, Tree Style Tabs at least give some semblance of structure as to how I've traced down some link path. The flat horizontal tabs of Chrome absolutely suck in this regard. Having a better way to navigate the tabspace would help greatly.
It renders web pages viewable. Far, far, far too many websites have designs which are overtly hostile to actually reading content (even HN, to some degree). Even those which are readable are far too distracting in the present ad-driven eyeball economy.
It manages my reading list. Rather than opening content in tabs, I append it to my reading list. Readability also offers tags (though limited to 500 per user, a wall I hit 2 days in) to help organize content (Firefox offers these for bookmarks, Chrome does not).
And the reading list is available across different browsers and devices (I'm not usually a fan of sharing personal information, least of all my reading interests, through a service, but in this case the convenience factor wins out).
Both of these factors could be addressed, somewhat, in a browser. I've been agitating for a while for a bifurcation of the browser space. Give me:
1. A browser primarily oriented at CONTENT. Simple, minimal page presentation (along the lined of Readability), focusing principally on core page content. With wide margins, high contrast, and a readable font face, and the ability to manage, organize, prioritize, sort, search, and cross-reference content.
2. A browser that is a highly-interactive application engine. Essentially today's Chrome (this fits with Google's long-term interests at replacing desktop apps).
We've mashed both of these under a single roof, and the fit's getting increasingly awkward.
Some things that would greatly help Firefox (and Chrome for that matter):
You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time.
Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and restore them when they're navigated to. The tab-switching hit should be bought back by overall greater browser performance.
Completely redesign bookmarks with thought given to workflow. The absolutely WORST UI attribute in any environment I've encountered across platforms is windows which cannot be resized, and bookmark management windows are horrible in this respect. I need MUCH more space to work with.
Improve responsiveness. One of the most painful aspects is how I interact with bookmarks. I can't open my bookmarks list, left-click a folder, and select "add page here" from a menu. Why not? DO NOT REPLICATE CHROME'S PLACEMENT OF "DELETE FOLDER" IMMEDIATELY ABOVE "ADD PAGE AND FAIL TO PROVIDE A DELETION CONFIRMATION DIALOG FFS!!!!!*
The existing "add page modal dialog is fucking annoying as hell* Half the time I want to refer back to the browser page itself to add information but the modal dialog blocks all browser page input.
Provide a duplicate entry search and reconcilliation.
Emphasize tags. They're present but poorly presented.
Emphasize bookmarks for navigation.
Improve annotation capabilities, including cross-referencing.
Provide a decentralized sharing mechanism. I don't care for SAAS generally on privacy basis, think FreedomBox. A low-overhead means to reference a resource from which I can post/recover my bookmarks from multiple devices and browsers would be useful.
Include a few lines of context from the page. Readability's "expanded* article view is excellent in this regard. Page titles almost always pretty much exactly suck. Though if you do this, provide both expanded and collapsed views.
ALLOW THE BOOKMARKS LIST TO WORK AS WORKFLOWS. "Date added", "date modified", and "last viewed" would be great. An "archive" flag is also useful (promote unarchived bookmarks up, allow viewing archived bookmarks if desired).
Provide the ability to download the bookmarks source in offline-readable format. Readability has the capacity to create ePub and Kindle content. Though it doesn't have a bulk-export tool (this would fucking completely absolutely rock my world).
Look at eBook management tools -- Moon+Reader, Calibre, etc. These are designed with libraries of content in mind. As antipatterns, look at Adobe Reader and PDF management in general (there is none) and avoid their worse mistakes, specifically: no management of archives, no bookmarking, no annotations, fixed-form-factor rendering, craptastic search, no tagging, poor zoom, very awkward in-document navigation, no cross-referencing capabilities.
2. This is being worked on. Gecko is a very old and complex codebase, and doing that without breaking every existing addon is hard.
> You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time.
> Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and restore them when they're navigated to. The tab-switching hit should be bought back by overall greater browser performance.
Appreciate the response and links. Nice to see there's some work on this.
Re: #675539 I'd make unload happen _far_ faster. Within a few minutes, most likely, subject to some user testing to see what impacts/effects are shown. Rather than time the unload, I'd suggest limiting use to some number of active tabs (plus "pinned" tabs). Once that limit is exceeded, start unloading.
Resizable windows: the "Bookmark this link" dialog.
The history information isn't associated with bookmarks, and isn't presented with them. And while we're talking about history: Vimperators 'u' "un-close tab" feature is absolutely golden.
The bookmarks download feature is more a "sync", but _not_ to some named web service. I've always distrusted features such as this, especially where the mechanism isn't documented. Could just be me not knowing now the feature works.
Firefox is not library management software Honestly: I'm starting to think it should be. Or that if I found something that was it would replace FF for me (Chrome + Readability largely is given lists, tags, and responsiveness).
It took me ... a long time to find that. And I am much more keyboard-driven than mouse. Just being able to hit 'u' is awesome.
Other control keybindings often interfere with windowmanger bindings I've been using for well over a decade. The number of competing sets of controls when you start embedding viewers in apps in webpages in browsers in window managers is pretty bad.
I've been championing the same issues, or rather bemoaning them on HN repeatedly.
I never see much innovation with the actual browser UIs. The rendering engines get plenty of love, while something like the UI for Firefox has barely changed at all.
I used to have an aging powerpc, and Firefox would bring it to it's knees. But I think I was abusing it. Firebug, Flash, JS and too many tabs were the main culprits. And I have sinced tried to change my habits.
I think tabs are heavily used and abused! I personally believe that they are so popular because the bookmark UIs are so sucky. Most tabs could be replaced by a bookmark.
Tabs bring other problems, resizing the browser window in one tab, effects all the others. Tabs have inconsistant behaviour between different applications. Windows should be left to a window manager IMHO.
Now I try and keep my tabs to a minimum. Two or three. Any page I think I might want to read later I once bookmarked (to one day sort through...), but now I send to readability to read later at my leisure.
My main browser I have configured to make reading on it more pleasurable. I've throw away the page author's styles, and instead opt to use my own font, font size and colour scheme. I block adverts. And block flash. Layouts can suffer, but if I have to, I resort to using another browser. I did have JS turned off completely, but I am finding that increasingly difficult.
In terms of design trends - responsive web pages are quite welcome in my world. I think people will soon hunger for simpler pages and simpler sites. Something that's far easier to use. And I welcome the day that I can actually surf web pages comfortably on my TV when sitting on my arse.
Some sites are still very difficult to use, and the browser UIs could really lend a hand here.
Regarding responsiveness in Firefox. Using Debian 7 Linux I've also experienced the browser getting sluggish on occasion, even recently. It is not as bad as it used to be, and generally the browser is still useable, but it is still annoying.
Responsiveness being : it takes too long to a) switch tabs b) open a new tab c) access a menu (e.g. File/Whatever). The UI might take a second or more to respond. I might have 50 tabs open spread over 5-6 windows.
Currently, the browser is running well and I suspect the most recent responsiveness trouble was caused by an add-on (Brief - feed reader) which I have disabled.
But I second the call for a better way to identify badly behaving tabs (CPU as well as RAM) more easily.
Firefox is a great browser and thanks to all who make it.
I've considered RSS readers. I'm a bit torn between those and other forms of accessing stories of interest. I've yet to find a reader (local client) which really fits my workflow. Though I haven't looked overly hard either.
I find it very odd that a lot of the options to do stuff- in Firefox settings OS X - like getting rid of browser history, runs synchronously on the main thread and thus blocking the UI.
Something as SIMPLE as that should not be there..
That being said, I am probably insulting someone by calling it simpel :(
Comments
My observations, using both Firefox (well, Iceweasel 20.0-1~bpo60+1), and Chrome (Chromium 26.0.1410.43-1). In many ways, I prefer Firefox as a browser (better plugins, controls, tabs, too much Google influence already).
My Firefox experience is getting to the point it's virtually unusable, with very, very slow response to any actions (especially new tab / new window functions). We're talking about many seconds, sometimes a minute or more.
While the overall footprint of Firefox is smaller than Chrome, Chrome's sandboxing of tabs gives vastly better user-based memory management: I've got the option of killing off tabs (without closing them) that are using excessive memory, restoring net system responsiveness.
Firefox uses a single process space, and slowness in one tab seems to extend elsewhere (my general observation, not based on analysis).
A larger part of the problem is a combination of how browsers facilitate (or don't) content management and browsing as a task and workflow, and the increasing emphasis on highly-interactive sites.
The lack of such tools, and especially the paucity of bookmarks as a management tool, means that my usual workflow management is:
- Open browser.
- Open lots of tabs. It's not uncommon for me to have 100s of tabs open across multiple browser windows.
For Firefox, Tree Style Tabs at least give some semblance of structure as to how I've traced down some link path. The flat horizontal tabs of Chrome absolutely suck in this regard. Having a better way to navigate the tabspace would help greatly.
What I've recently discovered, and what's radically changing my use of the Web, is Readability (Instapaper and Pocket are similar services). It's amazing. I've written a bit about this at Google+: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/PhQR421e... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/fVK7aJuB...
Readability solves three problems:
It renders web pages viewable. Far, far, far too many websites have designs which are overtly hostile to actually reading content (even HN, to some degree). Even those which are readable are far too distracting in the present ad-driven eyeball economy.
It manages my reading list. Rather than opening content in tabs, I append it to my reading list. Readability also offers tags (though limited to 500 per user, a wall I hit 2 days in) to help organize content (Firefox offers these for bookmarks, Chrome does not).
And the reading list is available across different browsers and devices (I'm not usually a fan of sharing personal information, least of all my reading interests, through a service, but in this case the convenience factor wins out).
Both of these factors could be addressed, somewhat, in a browser. I've been agitating for a while for a bifurcation of the browser space. Give me:
1. A browser primarily oriented at CONTENT. Simple, minimal page presentation (along the lined of Readability), focusing principally on core page content. With wide margins, high contrast, and a readable font face, and the ability to manage, organize, prioritize, sort, search, and cross-reference content.
2. A browser that is a highly-interactive application engine. Essentially today's Chrome (this fits with Google's long-term interests at replacing desktop apps).
We've mashed both of these under a single roof, and the fit's getting increasingly awkward.
Some things that would greatly help Firefox (and Chrome for that matter):
You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time.
Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and restore them when they're navigated to. The tab-switching hit should be bought back by overall greater browser performance.
Completely redesign bookmarks with thought given to workflow. The absolutely WORST UI attribute in any environment I've encountered across platforms is windows which cannot be resized, and bookmark management windows are horrible in this respect. I need MUCH more space to work with.
Improve responsiveness. One of the most painful aspects is how I interact with bookmarks. I can't open my bookmarks list, left-click a folder, and select "add page here" from a menu. Why not? DO NOT REPLICATE CHROME'S PLACEMENT OF "DELETE FOLDER" IMMEDIATELY ABOVE "ADD PAGE AND FAIL TO PROVIDE A DELETION CONFIRMATION DIALOG FFS!!!!!*
The existing "add page modal dialog is fucking annoying as hell* Half the time I want to refer back to the browser page itself to add information but the modal dialog blocks all browser page input.
Provide a duplicate entry search and reconcilliation.
Emphasize tags. They're present but poorly presented.
Emphasize bookmarks for navigation.
Improve annotation capabilities, including cross-referencing.
Provide a decentralized sharing mechanism. I don't care for SAAS generally on privacy basis, think FreedomBox. A low-overhead means to reference a resource from which I can post/recover my bookmarks from multiple devices and browsers would be useful.
Include a few lines of context from the page. Readability's "expanded* article view is excellent in this regard. Page titles almost always pretty much exactly suck. Though if you do this, provide both expanded and collapsed views.
ALLOW THE BOOKMARKS LIST TO WORK AS WORKFLOWS. "Date added", "date modified", and "last viewed" would be great. An "archive" flag is also useful (promote unarchived bookmarks up, allow viewing archived bookmarks if desired).
Provide the ability to download the bookmarks source in offline-readable format. Readability has the capacity to create ePub and Kindle content. Though it doesn't have a bulk-export tool (this would fucking completely absolutely rock my world).
Look at eBook management tools -- Moon+Reader, Calibre, etc. These are designed with libraries of content in mind. As antipatterns, look at Adobe Reader and PDF management in general (there is none) and avoid their worse mistakes, specifically: no management of archives, no bookmarking, no annotations, fixed-form-factor rendering, craptastic search, no tagging, poor zoom, very awkward in-document navigation, no cross-referencing capabilities.
Re. Firefox:
1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558882
2. This is being worked on. Gecko is a very old and complex codebase, and doing that without breaking every existing addon is hard.
> You do not need to have every tab loaded, rendered, in active memory and sucking CPU at the same time. > Give priority to the foreground tab. Close out background tabs (on a least-used / highest-footprint basis) and restore them when they're navigated to. The tab-switching hit should be bought back by overall greater browser performance.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675539
> windows which cannot be resized, and bookmark management windows are horrible in this respect
Maybe you're talking about Chrome here? I don't know, Firefox's History window is resizeable.
> Improve responsiveness.
See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/Snappy and point 2 above.
The points re. tags, bookmarks and annotations can and should be implemented as addons.
> Provide a decentralized sharing mechanism F1/Firefox Share was being worked on a while ago. I don't know what happened to the project.
> "Date added", "date modified", and "last viewed" would be great.
We have all of that, in the History window.
> Provide the ability to download the bookmarks source in offline-readable format.
Seems like a great idea for an addon.
Firefox is not library management software, but it's flexible enough that you can turn it into one.
Appreciate the response and links. Nice to see there's some work on this.
Re: #675539 I'd make unload happen _far_ faster. Within a few minutes, most likely, subject to some user testing to see what impacts/effects are shown. Rather than time the unload, I'd suggest limiting use to some number of active tabs (plus "pinned" tabs). Once that limit is exceeded, start unloading.
Resizable windows: the "Bookmark this link" dialog.
The history information isn't associated with bookmarks, and isn't presented with them. And while we're talking about history: Vimperators 'u' "un-close tab" feature is absolutely golden.
The bookmarks download feature is more a "sync", but _not_ to some named web service. I've always distrusted features such as this, especially where the mechanism isn't documented. Could just be me not knowing now the feature works.
Firefox is not library management software Honestly: I'm starting to think it should be. Or that if I found something that was it would replace FF for me (Chrome + Readability largely is given lists, tags, and responsiveness).
Re: un-closing tabs, right click on your tab bar choose it from there.
It took me ... a long time to find that. And I am much more keyboard-driven than mouse. Just being able to hit 'u' is awesome.
Other control keybindings often interfere with windowmanger bindings I've been using for well over a decade. The number of competing sets of controls when you start embedding viewers in apps in webpages in browsers in window managers is pretty bad.
What about ctrl+shift+T ?
Or I misunderstand what you're talking about.
I've got that hotkey mapped to another function in my window manager.
I've been championing the same issues, or rather bemoaning them on HN repeatedly.
I never see much innovation with the actual browser UIs. The rendering engines get plenty of love, while something like the UI for Firefox has barely changed at all.
I used to have an aging powerpc, and Firefox would bring it to it's knees. But I think I was abusing it. Firebug, Flash, JS and too many tabs were the main culprits. And I have sinced tried to change my habits.
I think tabs are heavily used and abused! I personally believe that they are so popular because the bookmark UIs are so sucky. Most tabs could be replaced by a bookmark.
Tabs bring other problems, resizing the browser window in one tab, effects all the others. Tabs have inconsistant behaviour between different applications. Windows should be left to a window manager IMHO.
Now I try and keep my tabs to a minimum. Two or three. Any page I think I might want to read later I once bookmarked (to one day sort through...), but now I send to readability to read later at my leisure.
My main browser I have configured to make reading on it more pleasurable. I've throw away the page author's styles, and instead opt to use my own font, font size and colour scheme. I block adverts. And block flash. Layouts can suffer, but if I have to, I resort to using another browser. I did have JS turned off completely, but I am finding that increasingly difficult.
In terms of design trends - responsive web pages are quite welcome in my world. I think people will soon hunger for simpler pages and simpler sites. Something that's far easier to use. And I welcome the day that I can actually surf web pages comfortably on my TV when sitting on my arse.
Some sites are still very difficult to use, and the browser UIs could really lend a hand here.
Regarding responsiveness in Firefox. Using Debian 7 Linux I've also experienced the browser getting sluggish on occasion, even recently. It is not as bad as it used to be, and generally the browser is still useable, but it is still annoying.
Responsiveness being : it takes too long to a) switch tabs b) open a new tab c) access a menu (e.g. File/Whatever). The UI might take a second or more to respond. I might have 50 tabs open spread over 5-6 windows.
Currently, the browser is running well and I suspect the most recent responsiveness trouble was caused by an add-on (Brief - feed reader) which I have disabled.
But I second the call for a better way to identify badly behaving tabs (CPU as well as RAM) more easily.
Firefox is a great browser and thanks to all who make it.
I use firefox with a lot of tabs too, a few things I do are
* if you haven't used it yet look at the barTab lite x addon,
* I also try to use RSS readers for sites I regularly visit
* I use Clearly (I don't know if it's as good as readability but it also allows me to clip to evernote)
I'll look at barTab lite.
I've considered RSS readers. I'm a bit torn between those and other forms of accessing stories of interest. I've yet to find a reader (local client) which really fits my workflow. Though I haven't looked overly hard either.
I find it very odd that a lot of the options to do stuff- in Firefox settings OS X - like getting rid of browser history, runs synchronously on the main thread and thus blocking the UI. Something as SIMPLE as that should not be there.. That being said, I am probably insulting someone by calling it simpel :(