Security → Re: Firefox 'New Tab' Feature Exposes Users' Secured Info

+1 (see my FF 13.0.1 above)

I arrange, add, remove and change as I please.

 
Now THAT's efficient use of space !

A while ago I did similar on IE6, but with the buttons to the LEFT of the menues.

Unfortunately, AFAIK all newer IE does not let anything else share the menu bar, though I would be pleased to hear of a registry edit, if anybody has one.

I once saw a version of McAfee Security which managed to do that for its own bar components, but of course I could not reverse engineer their app to see how they did it.

The same idea as yours also pretty much worked for me in FF12 on a recent Linux install.

Another idea I discovered was to use the Link/Bookmark bar with a series of FOLDERS on it, and each one acts as a drop-down menu for its category of bookmark. - This procedure seems to works in IE, FireFox, and Opera, so far tested.

Is FF still as much of a memory hog as in the past ?

That has been my main reason for using it less and less.

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Is FF still as much of a memory hog as in the past ?

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Is it, was it?
Open the same sites in various browsers & compare.

Thanks. I want the page displayed as large as possible while maintaining FF funtional access.Glad you asked...

Full info & test results for the following @ Lifehacker: Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 19, Firefox 13, Internet Explorer 9, and Opera 12 - 12 Jun 2012:

This new feature of tricking the user into thinking their tabs are fully loaded is just that... a trick. I want all tabs fully loaded before I use the browser. I don't mind waiting for them to load. I am referring to cold restore. I don't use cold boot so could care less which browser is fastest then. I usually tell Session Manager to restore the last session (occasionally some other session) but I never tell it to start a new session. That's on Fx and SM. Opera 12 is awful now for cold restore. It used to be fast. I hate being tricked into thinking all tabs are fully loaded when they are not at all on Opera 12. I still can't use Opera until all tabs fully load because so much CPU is used to restore the tabs. Maybe when I get a new computer that will not be a problem. But then I don't want anything loading in the background (this is one reason I turn off crap like defrag in the background and indexing in the background). Opera tries to second guess me as to which tabs to load first. It is not possible to always correctly second guess humans and what they want (when that becomes possible then machines will have won and humans will cease to exist) so I don't see the point as Opera chooses the wrong tabs to load first and the feature is useless anyway because I still have to wait for all tabs to fully load to use Opera! I watch Task Manager, which I always have running in the systray, and wait until CPU usage is normal again before trying to use Opera.

I wonder on Fx 13 what happens when you use some tab extension (s) or some session manager extension? (I have Fx 10 ESR). I assume it/they take/s over and then it doesn't matter what Fx 13 has done as far as just loading one or two tabs fully. TBE loads the tabs one after another, I have to wait through 30-50 tabs loading before I can use Fx. But that is ok because I have a desktop that is rarely rebooted/booted and I seldom close Fx or my other browsers. It looks to me like this feature is designed for laptop users.

I was puzzled by Life Hacker's results for Chrome for cold restore. I stopped using Iron awhile back as it was causing my computer to crash but when I was using Iron, I was impressed with Iron being fast for cold restore. Maybe that has changed in later versions or maybe Life Hacker's tests would be different if run on XP.

On a lighter note, are there no superstitious users? Why use Fx 13 at all? Why didn't Mozilla just skip "13"?

 
& Trix R 4 Kids ! [Silly Wabbit]

While I appreciate the link to those tests, can anyone show us tests comparing all of the newcomers to IE8 (as IE9 is a bad joke, IMNSHO), and with using XP with SP3 for all tests ?

Also, show us tests with mem-hog pages like those at at »www.pcmag.com

Show us tests of pages with lotsa FLASH.

Show us tests of 50+ pages at a time - simultaneously, even. [Snagglepuss]

THEN we'll see who's who !

[sarcasm]
As for skipping 13 - don't worry, they WILL - or it will SEEM like it - just like they skipped 5 thru 12 instead of calling each of them 4-point-something-or-other !
[/sarcasm]

EDIT : to add sarcasm tags

Really? Version 13.0 was released on June 5, 2012. The current version is 13.0.1.

A lot of work has gone into improving Firefox's memory usage in the past few versions. Check out the MemShrink project. Firefox is on par with or better than other current browsers in most cases. Since they're all different programs written differently, exact memory usage will depend on exactly how you're using the browser. With X number of tabs open, Chrome may be better than Firefox. With Y number of tabs open, Firefox may be better than Chrome. When this plugin or that plugin is in use, this browser or that browser may be better. The best test is really to try them yourself with the stuff you're doing and see which works best for you.

If you've been using Firefox for a while and had massive memory leaks there's a good chance you were simply told, "It's probably an addon's fault." The improvements made to Firefox's diagnostic information reports have been able to prove this.

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Some of the zombie compartments were due to defects in Firefox itself, and these were generally fixed fairly quickly. However, it soon became clear that the majority of them are due to add-ons. It's quite easy to unintentionally create zombie compartments in add-ons. In the worst case, add-ons could leak the compartment of every single site visited.

This led to some lively discussion about how best to handle these leaks, because they are defects in third-party code that is largely out of Mozilla's control, and yet they make Firefox look bad.

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Earlier versions of McAfee's addon actually leaked so bad that they've been blacklisted - it's not just random bad coders that had some really bad memory leaks in their addons.

On top of that you have the problem that many people confuse memory usage with memory leaks. There are many values that can be tweaked to change how much memory Firefox uses for certain features. Some may default to high values that use a lot of RAM to give the best performance. While you don't want your browser sucking all your memory away from system stuff, unused RAM is wasted RAM. Trying to make Firefox (or any other program) needlessly frugal with RAM could result in slowing it down unnecessarily. As always, it's a tradeoff, and changing some settings could certainly result in improvements on individual systems.

And with Firefox being open source, you're always free to change it to your own liking if they seriously muck it up. That's assuming it's not a configurable option and there's no addon to handle it.

Are you referring to the New Tab feature in Firefox? How would this trick anyone in to thinking their tabs are fully loaded. It does not do that, it is not reported to do that.

New Tab Page – show, hide and customize top sites | How to | Firefox Help

I am talking about cold restore. I hate that in any browser. I want all tabs fully loaded before I start to use the browser.

Oh OK. Tracing your post back did not clear that up. Thanks.

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This new feature of tricking the user into thinking their tabs are fully loaded is just that... a trick. I want all tabs fully loaded before I use the browser. I don't mind waiting for them to load.

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It is no trick.
Getting snappy – performance optimizations in Firefox 13

If you don't like how it works now, change it so it works how it used to. (It looks like browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs in SeaMonkey & browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand[?] in FF.)

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Show us tests of 50+ pages at a time - simultaneously, even.

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Right.
And if I had an efficient way to port my current 522 tabs in 47 windows to Chrome/IE, I'd give you those numbers!

Good points, all.

I just closed and re-started Opera (automatically restores previous session) while reading this thread. Browser was usable within two seconds under Opera 12.

But then I don't have a hundred tabs like you do. I get annoyed when I have more than a dozen or so open and start wanting to use em or lose em.

 
I was being polite when I said 50.

Sometimes I have over 100 tabs open.

So you are doing that 522/47 in FireFox 13 ?

TAB-O-HOLICS R US !

I can't imagine 100 tabs at once - I think I would find it impossible to know which one I need to go to.

It would be, at least for me, without some help. At a minimum: Tab Mix Plus »tmp.garyr.net/ - Tab browsing with an added boost. and Tree Style Tab »piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_t ··· .html.en .

It is a trick because the tabs APPEAR to be loaded but they are not. That is called a "trick". There is zero point in having tabs restored on starting Fx or SM unless they are actually all restored when you start the browser. Otherwise, you should just go back to IE 6 type browsing. No point in tabs and certainly no point in restoring tabs. You might as well tell the browsers to not manage your sessions.

I have used Session Manager ever since development on it started ...many years ago. I use it on both Fx and SM. I don't see this crazy behavior in either browser. I have Fx 10 ESR and Fx 4.01 on my host machine. I still think it is far superior to Fx 10 and Fx 1.5 is the finest of Fx. After that it has been all downhill. I have SM 2.10.1 and I don't see this on it. I see the behavior on Opera 12 though.

It's not usually "100". Currently, I have 35 on Opera. I am not concerned about the speed of browser starting. I don't often shut a browser down so speed of starting doesn't matter for me. Same with Windows. Buying a computer with a small SSD for fast booting is not something I care that much about because I rarely boot/reboot. I have a desktop that runs 24/7 where the hard disks are never turned off and the browsers are not closed, my virtual machines run 24/7 on the host and I don't shut them down either. In fact, why would I be shutting down my host or even rebooting when that means I have to first shut down the virtual machine(s)? UGH. It seems to me that this concern among browser makers about this fast start for browsers may be a legitimate concern for laptop users but not most desktop users.

Besides, on Fx, I have used TBE since Mozilla Suite days (where I first used the extension on Mozilla Suite) and it is on the list of Fx extensions that are known to slow Fx down...whatever that means. I use Fx because of it so I guess I really could care less about how fast a browser starts. I want my TBE! I am not a typical user that is for sure...but Fx was originally designed for folks like me and it has sure gotten away from its roots in its obsessive fear of Chrome.

I will be happy to have a new computer with 16GB RAM (or more if I can wait a few more months) so I don't have to shut anything down due to RAM limitations. Currently, because I cannot add more RAM to this computer, I have to shut down Fx and SM when they start using too much RAM (Opera is ok though).

Define "fully loaded" and this "trick" you speak of because, for my part, the loading behavior appears the same between 11.x and 12, aside from being faster in 12.

MoFo does seem to have become obsessed with this. The driving importance of giving Buffy and "instant on" (FaceBook) fix is even mentioned in one of the Blog posts about silent updates,. maybe in one of these below...

»www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/133/
»lawrencemandel.com/2012/ ··· erience/

There is zero point in having tabs restored on starting Fx or SM unless they are actually all restored when you start the browser - for you.

But not for me.

And there is a choice in the matter.

Now FF went with one default.
And SeaMonkey went with the other default.

But either can change to the other.

That's called choice & that is fine by me.