On: uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions

[fauigerzigerk]

I would love to use Firefox for it's privacy credibility, the Awesome Bar and to prevent monopolization of the Web.

Unfortunately 2017 is the year of the CPU usage apocalypse on the Web. Go to this insane Guardian page, scroll down a page, and observe what happens for a minute or two perhaps scrolling down some more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/10/adele-vocal-cor...

The numbers keep jumping around a lot, but very roughly what I'm seeing is this:

  Safari: 2% - 8%
  Chrome 50% - 150%
  Firefox 150% - 250%

(100% is one CPU core. I'm not using any ad-blockers)

Obviously, these numbers are non-deterministic and depend on the individual ads that are being displayed. But the numbers are roughly representative of what I've been seeing over the last couple of months.

[ycombinete → fauigerzigerk]

I tried this:

  1. With uBlock Origin running, I don't go above 11% CPU 

  2. I turned uBlock Origin off: reloading immediately sent my CPU to 80%, and it *stabilised* at a constant 30%.

[fauigerzigerk → ycombinete]

As I said, it's non-deterministic, so I'm not surprised if you're seeing something different.

I have made it a habit to try resource hungry pages in all my browsers. The variance is huge but the pattern is pretty clear when it comes to CPU usage, especially between Safari and everyone else (excluding Edge and IE as I don't use Windows).

[ycombinete → fauigerzigerk]

Incidentally, I changed from Firefox 32bit to 62bit today, and the page loads like a dream.

[Vinnl → fauigerzigerk]

Which version of Firefox is that? It recently became much faster, and is set to see yet another improvement with version 57 (due in three months, I believe).

[fauigerzigerk → Vinnl]

Firefox 54.0.1 on macOS 10.12.6. Firefox says it's up-to-date.

[robin_reala → fauigerzigerk]

57 is Firefox Nightly. They’ve done a lot of performance work in between 54 and 57.

[dralley → fauigerzigerk]

Try nightly. Or even FF 55. There's a huge chasm of difference - they put a huge focus on performance improvement the past couple of development cycles.

[Vinnl → fauigerzigerk]

Alright, that's supposed to already be a lot better (although, as said, it will get even better). You might want to check about:support, and see what it says next to "Multiprocess Windows". If that's disabled, then you won't see the speedups from 54 (and it will usually give a hint about why it's disabled).