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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
Electrolysis [(a.k.a. e10s a.k.a. multi-process Firefox)] has been in development for a long time but has been prioritized only recently by Mozilla (again) after not being in focus for some time.
[...]The core idea behind the new architecture is to separate web content from the core Firefox process. The two main advantages of doing so are security and performance.
Security benefits from potential sandboxing of web contents and separation of processes, and performance mainly from the browser UI not being affected by web contents.
[...]The Are We e10s yet website lists popular browser add-ons and whether or not they are compatible with e10s yet. If you browse the list of add-ons on that page you will notice that many add-ons are not yet compatible.
Mozilla made the decision to enable e10s for Firefox Nightly versions by default with [the November 7] update. This does not mean that the last phase of development has begun and that stable users will get the feature in three release cycles, however.
[...]users can disable e10s
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:24PM
I don't see why firefox doesn't simply detect your system resources and automatically configure itself accordingly. There should be a stable 64 bit version of firefox by now. The user should be able to select a 32 bit or a 64 bit stable version (in case the reason is that they want to still support legacy users). The maximum ram usage should be based on how much ram the computer has. The number of cores used should also be based on the number of cores the computer has. If it's an eight core processor then firefox should dedicate one core for the UI, one core for the active tab, and one core for inactive tabs and windows if there are inactive cores available. Software and operating systems should do everything they can to avoid leaving too many inactive cores lying around.
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday November 14 2014, @05:24PM
"There should be a stable 64 bit version of firefox by now."
I've been using 64-bit Firefox since around 2008.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @06:09PM
He wote "stable 64 bit". See the "stable" part? That implies it performs predictably. Unpredictably consuming large amount of memory and unpredictable excessive CPU usage like Firefox does inherently means it is not stable.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Friday November 14 2014, @06:49PM
And all the inactive tabs should be consuming ZERO GODDAM CPU! There is no excuse whatsoever for CPU usage to skyrocket as the number of tabs increases. Only one of those tabs has the focus. You can only see the display for one of those tabs. Once the other tabs have loaded they should be FROZEN until one of them gets the focus again.
Sheesh, are these developers absolute clueless morons?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @11:17PM
I agree once the tab has loaded there should be no CPU usage but I am obviously referring to tabs that haven't completely loaded. If there is idle CPU usage to spare why not use it to load unused tabs so that when I switch to them they are already loaded instead of having to make me way for them to start loading.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @11:20PM
typos
unloaded tabs *
wait *
(Score: 3, Informative) by MrNemesis on Saturday November 15 2014, @11:47AM
Tools > options > tabs > untick "don't load tabs until selected" and any tabs that previously loaded in the background will now start to load immediately. Bear in mind this option was added to prevent the CPU being hammered at startup and also to prevent pages that were never loaded taking up space in RAM.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 15 2014, @05:16PM
I already have it set up to load inactive tabs (makes it a much better experience) but I don't believe it loads those tabs on a separate core, which was my point. If you have spare unused cores why not?