Web browsers. They're doing something so very simple: viewing remote content. Yet they consume as much memory as a high resolution video game, a code compiler, a video renderer...it's absurd!
Most of that waste of resources doesn't even come from doing anything useful. Much of modern software gratuitously abuses dynamic allocation where more careful allocation strategies (either static or dynamic) are called for. Browsers just seem to be one of the biggest offenders.
If you stripped out many older/deprecated requirements, i.e, pre-HTML5 doctypes, could a browser be a lot faster? For example, React Native’s layout engine was 100% Flexbox last time I looked. Or is it the massive JavaScript engine that’s causing all the bloat?
How much is the browser itself and how much just huge websites/apps? I was about to post bloated JS.
I've tried lightweight browsers but most sites don't work properly on them.
I noted that after I put a Pi-hole pi-hole.net in my network memory got considerably lower, that's just removing useless JS: spyware, ads, etc.
I understand the need of revenue (I really do 8'| ) but when a website is trying to steal private data, that's where I put the line.
And if you have a 20MB website that only works with JS enabled and eat 20% of my CPU that's is just bad design. And showing off your visual prowess, you just show your lack of engineering and common sense.
You're probably right; Javascript no doubt contributes. It's probably a little of both.
So, let's test!
Firefox, with all add-ons disabled, and with ten tabs open to the oldest website on earth is reporting a memory usage of 318 MiB...which is actually pretty high, all things considered!
Chromium, identical scenario, consumes a whopping 1205 MiB (1.18 GiB!) of memory, across 14 processes. And that's a fresh-installation of the browser, no extensions. In my book, that's inexcusable.
OMG, really, Chromium eats that much!, wow, that's one of the reasons I don't use it for other than testing. 318MB is no small footprint either. That's why I really appreciate websites that can be viewed without JS. I used Dillo as long as I could but nowadays almost all sites are unusable with it.
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Chrome just uses so much RAM, I refrain from using it for anything other than the dev tools. If Firefox improves their dev tools to that level, or even better, I'd immediately remove Chrome from my system.
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Web browsers. They're doing something so very simple: viewing remote content. Yet they consume as much memory as a high resolution video game, a code compiler, a video renderer...it's absurd!
Most of that waste of resources doesn't even come from doing anything useful. Much of modern software gratuitously abuses dynamic allocation where more careful allocation strategies (either static or dynamic) are called for. Browsers just seem to be one of the biggest offenders.
If you stripped out many older/deprecated requirements, i.e, pre-HTML5 doctypes, could a browser be a lot faster? For example, React Native’s layout engine was 100% Flexbox last time I looked. Or is it the massive JavaScript engine that’s causing all the bloat?
the firefox executable itself has about 200mb of executable files, it would be impossible to run it with less than that.
what should be taken into account is the individual memory consumption of the page and not the page and browser as a whole.
try to run a single page application on lynx and you will notice that the right word is not wasteful question but a benefit costs analysis question.
How much is the browser itself and how much just huge websites/apps? I was about to post bloated JS.
I've tried lightweight browsers but most sites don't work properly on them.
I noted that after I put a Pi-hole pi-hole.net in my network memory got considerably lower, that's just removing useless JS: spyware, ads, etc.
I understand the need of revenue (I really do 8'| ) but when a website is trying to steal private data, that's where I put the line.
And if you have a 20MB website that only works with JS enabled and eat 20% of my CPU that's is just bad design. And showing off your visual prowess, you just show your lack of engineering and common sense.
You're probably right; Javascript no doubt contributes. It's probably a little of both.
So, let's test!
Firefox, with all add-ons disabled, and with ten tabs open to the oldest website on earth is reporting a memory usage of 318 MiB...which is actually pretty high, all things considered!
Chromium, identical scenario, consumes a whopping 1205 MiB (1.18 GiB!) of memory, across 14 processes. And that's a fresh-installation of the browser, no extensions. In my book, that's inexcusable.
OMG, really, Chromium eats that much!, wow, that's one of the reasons I don't use it for other than testing. 318MB is no small footprint either. That's why I really appreciate websites that can be viewed without JS. I used Dillo as long as I could but nowadays almost all sites are unusable with it.
See details at The memory usage of the oldest site in Chromium and Firefox
There is Falkon nowdays you can try it especially if you use linux.
Thanks, I'll check it out and of course I use Linux, I'm cool like that :D (not Arch tho)
Chrome just uses so much RAM, I refrain from using it for anything other than the dev tools. If Firefox improves their dev tools to that level, or even better, I'd immediately remove Chrome from my system.