[GTALUG] Firefox memory usage (was GTALUG Meeting on Tuesday 10 October at 7:30pm)

[Myles Braithwaite 👾]

o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> Am a serious browser user - - - in the past have had up to 18 windows
> open and from 3 to 50+ tabs on any one window. There isn't a browser out
> there that can handle that kind of usage especially NOT FF! ( I have
> north of 20 GB of RAM plus a system to match so its really not a
> resources issue). The issue is that browsers are quite memory wasteful
> and somehow can't use ram neatly. When can we expect the present malaise
> to change - - - - 2030?
> 
> Maybe his response to my comment/question could be transmitted back - -
> - please?
> 
> Yes I've tried using the 'help' section but dev types don't seem to ever
> read anything there.

Resource usage in web browsers depend on a given web site. The greatest
example is The Verge[0] a technology blog that requires 274 HTTP
requests and 3.0 MB of data[1]. According to the Firefox extension Tab
Data[2] on first load that take ~30MB of RAM and comes down to ~17MB
after all the requests get processed. Interesting side note this
article[3] can use anywhere from 40MB to 100MB of RAM.

Browser developers build better optimized browsers while web developers
make heavy web pages which use up all the resources (usually with ads).

Extensions also take out a lot of memory as while, checkout about:memory.

Though your question is warranted, it's not really appropriate as it
will result a bunch of questions from the speaker (i.e. what web sites
are you visiting, how many extensions are you using, what's your
internet connection, etc).

[0]: <https://www.theverge.com/>
[1]: <https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/dbE4hE/https://www.theverge.com/>
[2]: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-data/>
[3]:
<https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16387706/wonder-woman-batman-dc-expanded-cinematic-universe-warner-bros-standalone>