9 ms·

AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

492 points by harshal 12y ago

kmfrk 12y ago
I use the program Ad Muncher for Windows, and I've found that it sometimes becomes a humongous bandwidth hog, when I'm watching video. So it's not just memory that can be at risk of hogging.
- octo_t 12y ago
  are you sure its Ad Muncher using bandwidth and not, you know, the video you're watching?
  - kmfrk 12y ago
    Sure. Windows's bandwidth monitor tells me as much - and closing Ad Muncher fixes the slog.
neals 12y ago
The first thing people complain about with browsers is probably memory usage. I doubt that many people actually understand what a browser actually does with that memory. I sure don't. 100mb sounds like a lot of memory for a webpage. Where does all this memory go to?
- insky 12y ago
  Great question. Does that encompass the assets on the page? The recent cache, lookahead? I'm always staggered on the flip side that serving a web page using something like XYZ CMS can use a staggering 50MB or more for one page load without caching. Bizarre when you consider that you could get a small encyclopedias worth of text on a floppy disk. Too many websites are drowning polar bears...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- VLM 12y ago
  "The first thing people complain about with browsers is ..." They changed the browser UI, either the browser devs or the site devs via stupid javascript tricks (messing with scrolling, etc). I got driveby download powned and my CC info stolen and five spam toolbars in the UI I can't get rid of. There are too many spammy ads. They make is as hard as humanly possible to use bookmarks to encourage the use of a search engine every single time you go to a site thus monetizing ad views. Typosquatters. "Journalism" sites with one line of the article per page of spam. Spam "answer" websites. Memory is way, way down the list.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    Definitely. In a browser-on-pc setting, who even cares about memory any more? We have loads of it.
    - nnethercote 12y ago
      And who would want to use a browser anywhere other than a PC, right?
      - Nursie 12y ago
        We appear to be talking about ABP on desktop firefox, no?
        nnethercote 12y ago
        It's true; my comment wasn't fair. Returning to your original point: I've been working on Firefox's memory consumption for about three years now. There are quite a few people who take your viewpoint. But there are also plenty of people who care very deeply about memory usage. Some of this makes sense, e.g. from people who are on low-end machines. But some of it is less rational... there is a subset of people for which memory consumption is almost a moral issue, and excessive usage indicates the general decay of western civilization, or something like that.
        gcp 12y ago
- nnethercote 12y ago
  Many people think of a browser as a tool for displaying text and pictures, with maybe a bit of JS code and some CSS effects on the side. That was true in the late 90s, but these days a browser is actually a fully-fledged programming environment that also happens to have some incredibly sophisticated multimedia capabilities: text, images, video, audio, animations, 3d graphics, etc. The most popular websites run quite amazing amounts of code, and JavaScript execution is usually the dominant consumer of memory. If you want a deeper understanding, visit about:memory in Firefox you'll get a detailed breakdown of how memory is used.
  - bru 12y ago
    >and JavaScript execution is usually the dominant consumer of memory. That's forgetting the DOM, which is often the actual cause for slowness & memory consumption, but gets far less spotlight than JavaScript. This is also a reason why a framework like react.js is so interesting: it circumvents the real DOM when computing (on a virtual DOM), and only applies the end result.
    - nnethercote 12y ago
      In my experience, JS memory usage is nearly always much higher than DOM. For example, my current Firefox session has 16 tabs open and ABP enabled. JS memory usage is over 600 MiB, whereas DOM memory usage is only 120 MiB.
  - nfoz 12y ago
    > That was true in the late 90s, but these days a browser is actually a fully-fledged programming environment that also happens to have some incredibly sophisticated multimedia capabilities: text, images, video, audio, animations, 3d graphics, etc. Maybe I just miss the 90s, but I would much rather have the simple content browser than a "full-fledged programming environment", especially since all of that content is coming from the random untrusted intarwebs. Anyone want to write a browser engine that skips all the modern BS and just does a good job delivering mostly-static webpages?
    - 12y ago
- nextw33k 12y ago
  I once read an explanation of memory usage. It boils down to images, if you think about it a PNG file is small but when you decompress that to a native bitmap for rendering to a screen, you've suddenly consumed a lot of space. A lot of applications render using the CPU and pass the data to the GPU to display. Now look at a typical page with images, flash (with images inside) all of the scroll and developers that don't optimise their images and then 100MB of data for a single page isn't really a lot. Plus memory usage is the wrong metric, I don't really care how much RAM my applications use, I care about how responsive they are. Firefox can use all my RAM if I get great page load times and my other applications don't suffer.
  - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    It's pretty rare that I want an application to use less ram these days, if anything I wish more programs would take full advantage of it.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      Firefox can use all my RAM if I get great page load times and my other applications don't suffer. if anything I wish more programs would take full advantage of it. If every single application behaved like it owned all the memory on your machine, you would have a pretty horrible experience as they'll be basically fighting over what's available and likely hitting the swapfile. On the contrary, I do wish developers would care more about the memory footprint of their applications since they are sharing with all the others. Looking at it this way, optimising performance by using more memory aggressively (and thus reducing the amount of memory other applications can use) seems like a horribly greedy and antisocial way to behave, and thus it makes sense to use as little as feasible to give good performance. (I'm assuming that the use case here is a browser that you have open along with other applications; if you only have a browser running, then it doesn't matter as much.)
      - iopq 12y ago
        I have 16 gigs of RAM. I'd love to see every program use as much RAM usefully as possible. I don't want programs to write temp files to the drive. I want things to be done in RAM as much as possible to avoid wearing out the SSD. In fact, every application DOES behave like it owns all of the RAM on the machine. This is what virtual address space does, it's pretending that each program has access to any place in the memory.
- twistedpair 12y ago
  This the is most cogent breakdown of what really happens in a browser. http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
nhebb 12y ago
I'm surprised AdBlock is so popular. I tried it a few years ago and noticed the sluggishness immediately. I know it's not a feasible alternative in everyone's opinion, but if you're running a low end machine and want to block the most pernicious ads (flash, multiple external javascript, etc.) then Firefox + NoScript is the way to go.
- svantana 12y ago
  The killer feature of ABP is: no Youtube ads. Is there any other way to achieve that?
  - bru 12y ago
    `/etc/hosts`-blocking the ads works fine for youtube. See the list at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/
    - allyant 12y ago
      Doesn't block them here.
  - Sevores 12y ago
    ClickToFlash: http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/ http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/
- mhaymo 12y ago
  Presumably if you have a slower internet connection the performance cost of injecting stylesheets is offset by the reduction in how many images/flash banners/etc. you have to download.
- insky 12y ago
  I used to run a 700MHZ powerbook, and the fan used to whir away. One day I realised that having Firebug running wasn't helping! But I foolishly hadn't even considered it, as I was so used to running the extension. Adblock Plus I pretty much always install too, so would just think it was normal. It still feels much better than running the adverts! I did try noscript for a while, but I got fed up having to turn it on for sites that just failed to work without JS, and got bored moaning about it.
alipang 12y ago
Anyone knows if this also affects Chrome? I have Chrome saying Adblock is using 126MB of memory, but if there are giant stylesheets injected elsewhere that might no be reported fully in the Chrome task manager.
- hypron 12y ago
  Check out chrome://memory-redirect/
- gerbal 12y ago
  As a chromebook user (with 2gb of ram) Adblock plus is routinely the chief culprit for slow downs. I've found it using 400mb of ram with sites like youtube and facebook open.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
graylights 12y ago
Some sites have tried gimmicks to block adblock users. I wonder now if they'll make thousands of empty iframes.
- artursapek 12y ago
  Heh, not sure slowing down your own site for a reason unknown to most visitors is going to help your bottom line.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    At the risk of stating the obvious, if your site is ad-funded then annoying users who don't see your ads so they go away and don't come back is a win. If they bitch about it to their friends who also wouldn't see your ads and those friends don't visit in the first place, it is an even bigger win.
    - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
      I'm not so sure this is "obvious". It presumes that those people will never refer anyone who would watch your ads, and also that search engines won't down rank you in results based on the number of people bailing from your site instantly/avoiding clicking on it.
      - aranjedeath 12y ago
        If you've bought into the lexicon of marketing it is. They're stealing revenue from you. If you haven't, you're an asshole and you're fucking your users for no reason at all (ads are no reason).
      - Silhouette 12y ago
        I agree the position I suggested is only a plausible assumption rather than a self-evident truth. Even so, I think it's a reasonable premise. Most people aren't going to use an ad blocker and then immediately leave your site just because of some related message, so I don't see the search engine issue as much of a danger. You might lose a few people who might have clicked on your ads if someone hostile spreads the word around, but firstly I doubt many people are really going to do that either (do you leave a web site and then immediately post on your blog/Facebook page/Twitter feed that "Site X Sucks!!!11!", really?) and secondly even if they do then I suspect the odds of converting anyone they tell who acts on that information are very low.
dcc1 12y ago
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/
- ElongatedTowel 12y ago
  That doesn't hide the blocked elements though.
- bru 12y ago
  I switched from ABP to this hosts file a few months ago and I have zero regret. My browser's faster, lighter and ads are blocked just as well as with ABP. I actually even started splitting my hosts file: the layout is /etc/hosts ('compiled' version) /etc/hosts.d/ /etc/hosts.d/aaa-warning (warning reminding me to run `update-hosts` instead of modifying /etc/hosts. Appears atop the compiled file) /etc/hosts.d/adblock (that website's hosts file) /etc/hosts.d/base (original system hosts file) /etc/hosts.d/dolead (work-related file for development) And I have the following functions in my .bashrc file: function update-hosts() { cat /etc/hosts.d/* > /etc/hosts; } function update-adblock() { curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts -o /etc/hosts.d/adblock 2> /dev/null update-hosts } So if I want to update "adblock" (it is obviously an improper name) I simply do `sudo update-adblock` and if I change another file (mostly `/etc/hosts.d/dolead`) I'll just run `sudo update-hosts`. Works wonders.
  - TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
    Have you been able to block stuff like Tynt, and other copy/paste triggered JS stuff?
    - bru 12y ago
      I was not aware of Tynt, but I believe it's well blocked. I just looked at the adblock-hosts file, and 'tynt' appears several times. One of those lines is commented with a link to an article about tynt[0]. I tried copy-pasting from The New Yorker and TechCrunch (who, as claimed by the author of the article, use tynt), and both times there was no crap appended. 0: http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks
bithush 12y ago
My primary computer is a laptop from 2008 with a 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo and other than a 1 second delay in startup I don't notice any performance degradation in general use compared to running without ABP. Currently this machine has been up for 3 days and 17 hours and Firefox has been running the whole time and it is using 303MB with 4 tabs open one of which is the Daily Mail (don't judge!) which is an extremely busy page. This is perfectly acceptable in my opinion. I only have 4GB RAM which by todays standards in not much either. Obviously reducing the memory footprint is great but I can't say it has ever been a problem I have ever noticed. On a side note the past few updates to Firefox have improved performance a lot. I am really impressed by how much quicker the browser is, especially with Chrome seeming to just get slower and slower with each update.
- probably_wrong 12y ago
  > I only have 4GB RAM I've also seen this in some other comment, so I think it's worth pointing out: if you have a desktop computer then yes, it's ok. However, there are also netbooks and notebooks around with a lot less memory than that. Tablets, while not currently one of Firefox markets, are also commonly seen with less than that. Lots of parents with second-hand computers, too, which haven't been touched in a while because it "just works". The overall attitude towards hardware is apparently "use it for two years, then throw away and get a new one", and yet underpowered computers surround me in a 5:1 ratio. I sometimes have to install plain old versions of software (Office '97 comes to mind) because the new ones provide 5% new features at the cost of half your memory. Maybe everyone else has techie friends that only care about the latest and shiniest, or maybe the rest of the world is rich enough to throw away perfectly good hardware just because they feel like it. But from my experience (as biased as it is), 4Gb is not an "only" situation.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    In my experience, Firefox uses less memory on systems with less RAM. My laptop only has 2Gb, and Firefox runs fine, even if on my work laptop it can reach 2.5Gb. And I'm not shy about using tabs either, I often have many dozens open.
hbbio 12y ago
Very interesting. There might be an architecture problem here. Another solution is to use a proxy to block ads, like GlimmerBlocker for OSX. But I didn't investigate memory usage, though I tend to think it will be lower (plus have the added benefit of working simultaneously for all browsers).
- andreasvc 12y ago
  A proxy cannot dynamically interact with the DOM, so it cannot do everything a plugin can. I think the solution is to use better datastructures in the plugin and improve the integratation of the plugin with the browser.
  - psykovsky 12y ago
    Cloudflare can, somehow...
    - andreasvc 12y ago
      Probably using Javascript, i.e., same mechanism as AdBlock Plus.
Donzo 12y ago
You guys: you've got to stop using this. You're missing important messages from sponsors.
bambax 12y ago
Wouldn't the solution involve allowing plugins to manipulate the content of a page before it is parsed by the browser? There used to be a proxy adblocker that did that, but I don't think it works anymore. The Kindle browser uses a proxy to pre-render pages on the server in order to lighten the load of the device. Could AaaS (Adblock as a service) be a viable business? I think I'd pay for it.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > Could AaaS (Adblock as a service) be a viable business? I think I'd pay for it. It probably could, however I'm sure it would be shut down quickly by advertisers and parties showing ads - after all, you're offering a service to remove their source of income. Unless you'd funnel part of your subscriber's income back to the advertisers, based on whose ads you block. But I'm sure it'd end up being too expensive for the consumer and too much of a hassle for the one offering the service. Not to mention you'd force your users to funnel all of their internet traffic through your servers, and it wouldn't work with encrypted pages (which large parts of the internet is moving towards)
  - __david__ 12y ago
    > It probably could, however I'm sure it would be shut down quickly by advertisers and parties showing ads What legal leg would they have to stand on? There's no law that prevents me ripping out the ads of magazines that get delivered to me…
    - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
      The same one that allows them to sue people for scraping their website. Tech laws are absurd.
- Eiwatah4 12y ago
  You do have some information in the browser you can't get to from the outside. For example, the filter with the most hits for me is "@@||192.168.$xmlhttprequest", which whitelists XMLHttpRequests to 192.168.*. A proxy can't really tell the source of a HTTP request. But that kind of thing is sometimes the only indicator telling the difference between an ad and useful content.
gorhill 12y ago
It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it against ABP to find out how it compared: https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Net-request-filtering:-overview#abp-filtering https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Net-request-... And for HTTPSB's numbers, keep in mind there were an extra over 50,000 rules in the matrix filtering engine (something not found in ABP). So I think this shows clearly ABP's code can be improved.
- sspiff 12y ago
  As far as I can tell, HTTPSB is not available for Firefox, please fix! I would love to use something better than ABP (in terms of performance, it does content filtering just fine), but I'm not so desperate to abandon the (warning: subjective content ahead) greatest browser of all times to lower the memory footprint of an ad blocker.
  - idlewan 12y ago
    I'm betting this is not an easy task. It however would be really awesome for HTTPSB (which I just installed on chromium and fallen in love instantly with) to be ported to firefox. Seeing all the privacy-related features treated, by domain/site/everywhere rules, being able to block separately js/plugins/cookies (and by the way, the matrix is a great idea, a lot more useable than anything else out there)... in one extension only. Great work already, gorhill!
    - Justsignedup 12y ago
      Eh it has some default behavior quirks. Like being unable to log into arstechnica.com because it won't let that cookie get stored.
      - 12y ago
SixSigma 12y ago
I would recommend Privoxy rather than adblock. I chose it because it can be used with any browser rather than needing to be a plugin and have had great results with it. As a bonus I have it running on a virtual server and use an ssh tunnel on any system I end up using. This gets me round filters and installing things other than ssh. So if I am using my Android phone on free wifi, I know I'm not being dns hijacked or under HTTP MITM attack. http://www.privoxy.org/ http://www.privoxy.org/
- mixedbit 12y ago
  A drawback is that a proxy won't be able to filter HTTPS traffic.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    That depends on the proxy. Systems that effectively MITM your own network's traffic have been around for some years now. All you need for outbound connections is to install an additional certificate in your browser so the proxy can act a trusted partner for HTTPS. I don't know whether anyone has made such a proxy for use in the kind of situation we're talking about here, however.
    - ethana 12y ago
      Adguard does that. Been beta testing it. One adblock to rule them all kinda thing.
  - rjaco31 12y ago
    uh? you can totally filter HTTPS with a proxy, especially with a local one. Either use the option to activate the dump of you keys on disk (a one-liner on every browser) and point the proxy to that file, or just break the SSL in 2 and rely on the proxy for the actual cert check.
    - SixSigma 12y ago
      "privoxy" not "a proxy"
nly 12y ago
So is there any insight as to why? My guess, without looking at the code would be the regex engine allocating millions of NFA graphs.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  Nope. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c20 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c20 has a detailed breakdown of the style-sets memory usage.
maaaats 12y ago
> Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads. Well, for me the whole point of blocking ads is because they are often big flash things that hog cpu and memory. If ABP is no better, then most of the reason is gone. I'd actually like to view ads to support more sites.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  You do save some memory and CPU usage, but it appears that the cost is usually higher. You can disable ABP on particular sites. I was going to suggest doing that for sites you frequently visit that don't have ads... but I just did some quick testing and it doesn't seem to change the memory usage at all.
- m_eiman 12y ago
  Same here; I stopped using ad blockers a long time ago since click-to-plugin performs the essential function they were providing for me. Perhaps I'll reconsider when "HTML5" ads get more annoying/use more resources.
- baby 12y ago
  the point for me is the visual noise, not the memory that ads consume. Actually, normal users are used to the lag, they don't see it as much as we do. You can take a look at consoles that have run games at 30fps for decades and nobody complained.
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    I don't care about the "visual noise" of normal/banner-type ads - the real problem are those fucking layer ads with confusing icons (the X is the left one, the maximize button the right one), so if you want to read the content, first find out which type of layer ad it is, try to spot the 2x2px hotzone for the close button and THEN read the content. People install adblockers because too many idiots became too fucking greedy and ruined ads for everyone else!
    - 12y ago
chrismorgan 12y ago
I would like to see a lighter blocking list—one that doesn’t try to be absolutely comprehensive, but just focuses on the 95% of ads that can be fixed at 10% of the cost (actually I think it’d be more like 99% at 0.1% of the cost).
- Groxx 12y ago
  I've been using this on my Android phone (but have not audited it, I should really do that some time): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firew... ABP has a huge page-load slowdown on my phone, this is essentially unnoticeable, and still removes the vast majority that I encounter.
spain 12y ago
Another (related) popular extension that I've noticed negatively affecting Firefox's performance is HTTPS Everywhere.
- gcp 12y ago
  HTTPS Everywhere is mostly annoying because it stops random sites from working, and people generally forget to check that it's HTTPS Everywhere that's causing it.
Vanayad 12y ago
Same issue appears in chrome as well. Got the site they linked to ~ 2.4GB before the browser stopped responding.
ColbieBryan 12y ago
Editing hosts files, installing Privoxy or Glimmerblocker, using Ghostery, Bluhell Firewall - I've tried all of these suggestions and unfortunately ABP is the only way to go if blocking all unwanted pop-up's is a priority.
hokkos 12y ago
LastPass is victim of the same fate.
- kijin 12y ago
  LastPass is bearable if you disable all the DOM-modifying options, such as highlighting and adding pretty icons to input fields. Instead I use keyboard shortcuts to select the login info to use.
nclark 12y ago
i would rather have my browser crash and never open again for the rest of my life than not use adblock. take all the memory, CPU, fuck it GPU that you want, you fantastic addon.
axx 12y ago
It's 2014. My computer has 12 Gigabytes of RAM. I don't give a shit, as long as i don't have to view those terrible stupid Ads. Advertisers, fix your practises and i will view your Ads again.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  Firefox with ABP is why my laptop now has 8GB instead of 4GB.
- frozenport 12y ago
  Its about the latency silly! The vim example allocates 2 GB which takes a few seconds, which we know makes users leave our sites. Going through those GBs slows everything down!
- raverbashing 12y ago
  One of the best ad-blockers is actually called FlashBlock (not sure this is the name today) It will remove around 90% of obnoxiousness...
  - VoxPelli 12y ago
    Or you just go to Tools > Addons > Plugins and chose to have Firefox ask you before it activates the Flash plugin for a page – same functionality I think?
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Good, looks like it's a new feature. Yeah, this would be more or less the same functionality (FlashBlock makes it per item, so you can, for example see a video but not activate the other elements)
      - wutbrodo 12y ago
        I think the Firefox plugin option does this too (at least, it works that way in Chrome). You can activate a plugin (and only that plugin) by clicking on it.
sdfjkl 12y ago
On the other hand AdBlock (edge of course, not the co-opted plus), saves quite a bit of network traffic. Nice if you're on metered (or slow) internet.
ladzoppelin 12y ago
Use Bluhell Firewall and NoScript for Firefox instead of ABP. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firew...
- column 12y ago
  also don't forget to set noscript.firstRunRedirection to false after installing NoScript to prevent it from opening its homepage after every update.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
caiob 12y ago
I'd love to hear the side-effects of using Disconnect.
SudoNick 12y ago
I think this is the fourth or fifth time, in recent memory, that I've seen someone from Mozilla criticize Adblock Plus and call on its developers to make changes. ABP startup time and memory consumption were subjects I recall, and its general impact on page load times may have been as well. I can understand Mozilla taking some interest in how addons behave, and constructive feedback on extensions is a good thing. However, ABP is the type of extension that is likely to have issues in those areas because of what it does. Which is very important to users, especially those who rely upon it for its privacy and security enhancing capabilities. It is those users who should decide whether the performance and resource usage trade-offs are acceptable. Mozilla shouldn't make, or try to make, such decisions. The situation with ABP 2.6 (https://adblockplus.org/development-builds/faster-firefox-startup https://adblockplus.org/development-builds/faster-firefox-st..., https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22906 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22906) might not be a case of this, but that along with the wider pattern of platform developers being more controlling, does make me somewhat concerned about Mozilla taking too much interest in extensions. I hope my worries are for naught.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  I'm the author of the post. I was extremely careful to keep the tone of the post neutral. This paragraph sums it up: > So, it’s clear that ABP greatly increases Firefox’s memory usage. Now, this isn’t all bad. Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads. But if you’re using a low-end machine without much memory, you might have different priorities. If you think this post is unreasonable, I think your skin is too thin.
  - SudoNick 12y ago
    I noticed that you said that, and expected others to notice as well. I don't really think your post unreasonable. I'm just a little concerned that, even in a case of pure intentions and desire for balance, extension developers may feel pressured to make changes and end up sacrificing features or effectiveness. Did you notice how some people here, and at your blog, proposed modifications what would trade coverage for memory consumption? Even if that would result in known filter hits being eliminated, and also without qualifying that if such an approach were adopted it should be preference based?
mwexler 12y ago
Ah, 3 words that always seem to show up together: firefox and memory and usage. I look forward to when I see that 4th word, "minimal", in there as well. Yes, I know original post is about an addin increasing memory usage, but I guess that doesn't surprise me anymore either, sadly, when thinking of firefox. Even with the memory pain, I still (mostly) love FF.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  It's much better than it used to be. For example, Firefox 15 made a class of very common leaks caused by add-ons impossible. Firefox 26 massively reduced the amount of memory used on image-heavy pages. And there have been many smaller improvements over the past three years, under the aegis of the MemShrink project (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink).
linux_devil 12y ago
I switched from Firefox to Safari , when I found out 900 Mb used by firefox on my machine , now I know the real reason behind that .
- nnethercote 12y ago
  That's a surprising story from a user named "linux_devil"! Maybe it's time to try switching back?
dbbolton 12y ago
If you are on a low-end machine and can't afford a larger memory footprint, you should probably be using a lighter browser in the first place, but if you really want to use Firefox and block ads, one option is to just block them through your hosts file, then the addon becomes largely unnecessary. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
mullingitover 12y ago
This is like a commercial for forking Firefox to build highly efficient ad blocking into the browser. It's sad that the most-demanded feature on every browser, as evidenced by plugin downloads, is ad blocking. However, all the major browsers are produced by companies with their hands in advertising, and this conflict of interest has resulted in this feature request going unfulfilled for a over a decade. Fork 'em.
- DenisM 12y ago
  I don't think we can block ads in mainstream browsers because ad providers will just work around the blocks. Plugins provide defense in numbers against suck workarounds, making ad blocks actually effective.
  - __david__ 12y ago
    This doesn't make sense to me. Why can't ad providers work around the blocks in adblock? And why could they work around those same blocks if they happened to be integrated into the browser itself? Take popup blocking as an example. That's integrated into the browser and has almost completely eliminated the annoying popup ad.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      >Why can't ad providers work around the blocks in adblock? // It's not really a work around but some sites do block your [full] access and say to turn off your adblocker if you want access to the [additional] content. That said I don't think it makes much difference to the matter at hand.
    - DenisM 12y ago
      Defense in numbers - there can be more plugins than there can be browsers. Creating a new plugin is much easier than creating a new web browser. Besides, fewer people have installed the ad block than those who have browsers. This make for smaller incentive to develop workarounds, compared to situation where everyone has some sort of block.
- 12y ago
BorisMelnik 12y ago
I'm just gonna say this as a person who uses ABP and has not done any low level memory analysis: browsing using ABP saves me much more time and makes my browsing much quicker: -ads take so long to load and when ABP is not enabled bogs down my browser hard core -when watching videos I have to wait 3-20 seconds for them to load, with ABP enabled I do not have to wait at all It consistently saves me several minutes every day. If it adds a few extra milliseconds to load some style sheets I have never, ever noticed.
chrismcb 12y ago
Did I read that correctly? One website had 400 iframes? FOUR HUNDRED? Not 4, but 4 HUNDRED? Surely there is a better way.
demi_alucard 12y ago
For those who do not know, there is an EasyList without element hiding rules. https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist_noelemhide.txt https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist_noelemhi... With these rules firefox's memory usage only goes up from 290MB to 412MB, instead of 1.5GB for the website mentioned in the article for me. The downside is that this list has a more limited coverage than the full version of the list.
Shorel 12y ago
My browser is fast again! Thank you, really thank you.
deleted 12y ago
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vladtaltos 12y ago
if 19 million people use it, why hasn't it become a feature firefox offers itself ? doesn't this mean people want some option of blocking ads ? I'm guessing this a native-integrated version will require a lot less memory...

492 points by harshal 12y ago

kmfrk 12y ago

I use the program Ad Muncher for Windows, and I've found that it sometimes becomes a humongous bandwidth hog, when I'm watching video. So it's not just memory that can be at risk of hogging.

octo_t 12y ago
are you sure its Ad Muncher using bandwidth and not, you know, the video you're watching?
- kmfrk 12y ago
  Sure. Windows's bandwidth monitor tells me as much - and closing Ad Muncher fixes the slog.

neals 12y ago

The first thing people complain about with browsers is probably memory usage. I doubt that many people actually understand what a browser actually does with that memory. I sure don't. 100mb sounds like a lot of memory for a webpage. Where does all this memory go to?

insky 12y ago
Great question. Does that encompass the assets on the page? The recent cache, lookahead? I'm always staggered on the flip side that serving a web page using something like XYZ CMS can use a staggering 50MB or more for one page load without caching. Bizarre when you consider that you could get a small encyclopedias worth of text on a floppy disk. Too many websites are drowning polar bears...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
VLM 12y ago
"The first thing people complain about with browsers is ..." They changed the browser UI, either the browser devs or the site devs via stupid javascript tricks (messing with scrolling, etc). I got driveby download powned and my CC info stolen and five spam toolbars in the UI I can't get rid of. There are too many spammy ads. They make is as hard as humanly possible to use bookmarks to encourage the use of a search engine every single time you go to a site thus monetizing ad views. Typosquatters. "Journalism" sites with one line of the article per page of spam. Spam "answer" websites. Memory is way, way down the list.
- Nursie 12y ago
  Definitely. In a browser-on-pc setting, who even cares about memory any more? We have loads of it.
  - nnethercote 12y ago
    And who would want to use a browser anywhere other than a PC, right?
    - Nursie 12y ago
      We appear to be talking about ABP on desktop firefox, no?
      - nnethercote 12y ago
        It's true; my comment wasn't fair. Returning to your original point: I've been working on Firefox's memory consumption for about three years now. There are quite a few people who take your viewpoint. But there are also plenty of people who care very deeply about memory usage. Some of this makes sense, e.g. from people who are on low-end machines. But some of it is less rational... there is a subset of people for which memory consumption is almost a moral issue, and excessive usage indicates the general decay of western civilization, or something like that.
      - gcp 12y ago
nnethercote 12y ago
Many people think of a browser as a tool for displaying text and pictures, with maybe a bit of JS code and some CSS effects on the side. That was true in the late 90s, but these days a browser is actually a fully-fledged programming environment that also happens to have some incredibly sophisticated multimedia capabilities: text, images, video, audio, animations, 3d graphics, etc. The most popular websites run quite amazing amounts of code, and JavaScript execution is usually the dominant consumer of memory. If you want a deeper understanding, visit about:memory in Firefox you'll get a detailed breakdown of how memory is used.
- bru 12y ago
  >and JavaScript execution is usually the dominant consumer of memory. That's forgetting the DOM, which is often the actual cause for slowness & memory consumption, but gets far less spotlight than JavaScript. This is also a reason why a framework like react.js is so interesting: it circumvents the real DOM when computing (on a virtual DOM), and only applies the end result.
  - nnethercote 12y ago
    In my experience, JS memory usage is nearly always much higher than DOM. For example, my current Firefox session has 16 tabs open and ABP enabled. JS memory usage is over 600 MiB, whereas DOM memory usage is only 120 MiB.
- nfoz 12y ago
  > That was true in the late 90s, but these days a browser is actually a fully-fledged programming environment that also happens to have some incredibly sophisticated multimedia capabilities: text, images, video, audio, animations, 3d graphics, etc. Maybe I just miss the 90s, but I would much rather have the simple content browser than a "full-fledged programming environment", especially since all of that content is coming from the random untrusted intarwebs. Anyone want to write a browser engine that skips all the modern BS and just does a good job delivering mostly-static webpages?
  - 12y ago
nextw33k 12y ago
I once read an explanation of memory usage. It boils down to images, if you think about it a PNG file is small but when you decompress that to a native bitmap for rendering to a screen, you've suddenly consumed a lot of space. A lot of applications render using the CPU and pass the data to the GPU to display. Now look at a typical page with images, flash (with images inside) all of the scroll and developers that don't optimise their images and then 100MB of data for a single page isn't really a lot. Plus memory usage is the wrong metric, I don't really care how much RAM my applications use, I care about how responsive they are. Firefox can use all my RAM if I get great page load times and my other applications don't suffer.
- Omniusaspirer 12y ago
  It's pretty rare that I want an application to use less ram these days, if anything I wish more programs would take full advantage of it.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Firefox can use all my RAM if I get great page load times and my other applications don't suffer. if anything I wish more programs would take full advantage of it. If every single application behaved like it owned all the memory on your machine, you would have a pretty horrible experience as they'll be basically fighting over what's available and likely hitting the swapfile. On the contrary, I do wish developers would care more about the memory footprint of their applications since they are sharing with all the others. Looking at it this way, optimising performance by using more memory aggressively (and thus reducing the amount of memory other applications can use) seems like a horribly greedy and antisocial way to behave, and thus it makes sense to use as little as feasible to give good performance. (I'm assuming that the use case here is a browser that you have open along with other applications; if you only have a browser running, then it doesn't matter as much.)
    - iopq 12y ago
      I have 16 gigs of RAM. I'd love to see every program use as much RAM usefully as possible. I don't want programs to write temp files to the drive. I want things to be done in RAM as much as possible to avoid wearing out the SSD. In fact, every application DOES behave like it owns all of the RAM on the machine. This is what virtual address space does, it's pretending that each program has access to any place in the memory.
twistedpair 12y ago
This the is most cogent breakdown of what really happens in a browser. http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

nhebb 12y ago

I'm surprised AdBlock is so popular. I tried it a few years ago and noticed the sluggishness immediately. I know it's not a feasible alternative in everyone's opinion, but if you're running a low end machine and want to block the most pernicious ads (flash, multiple external javascript, etc.) then Firefox + NoScript is the way to go.

svantana 12y ago
The killer feature of ABP is: no Youtube ads. Is there any other way to achieve that?
- bru 12y ago
  `/etc/hosts`-blocking the ads works fine for youtube. See the list at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/
  - allyant 12y ago
    Doesn't block them here.
- Sevores 12y ago
  ClickToFlash: http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/ http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/
mhaymo 12y ago
Presumably if you have a slower internet connection the performance cost of injecting stylesheets is offset by the reduction in how many images/flash banners/etc. you have to download.
insky 12y ago
I used to run a 700MHZ powerbook, and the fan used to whir away. One day I realised that having Firebug running wasn't helping! But I foolishly hadn't even considered it, as I was so used to running the extension. Adblock Plus I pretty much always install too, so would just think it was normal. It still feels much better than running the adverts! I did try noscript for a while, but I got fed up having to turn it on for sites that just failed to work without JS, and got bored moaning about it.

alipang 12y ago

Anyone knows if this also affects Chrome? I have Chrome saying Adblock is using 126MB of memory, but if there are giant stylesheets injected elsewhere that might no be reported fully in the Chrome task manager.

hypron 12y ago
Check out chrome://memory-redirect/
gerbal 12y ago
As a chromebook user (with 2gb of ram) Adblock plus is routinely the chief culprit for slow downs. I've found it using 400mb of ram with sites like youtube and facebook open.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

graylights 12y ago

Some sites have tried gimmicks to block adblock users. I wonder now if they'll make thousands of empty iframes.

artursapek 12y ago
Heh, not sure slowing down your own site for a reason unknown to most visitors is going to help your bottom line.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  At the risk of stating the obvious, if your site is ad-funded then annoying users who don't see your ads so they go away and don't come back is a win. If they bitch about it to their friends who also wouldn't see your ads and those friends don't visit in the first place, it is an even bigger win.
  - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    I'm not so sure this is "obvious". It presumes that those people will never refer anyone who would watch your ads, and also that search engines won't down rank you in results based on the number of people bailing from your site instantly/avoiding clicking on it.
    - aranjedeath 12y ago
      If you've bought into the lexicon of marketing it is. They're stealing revenue from you. If you haven't, you're an asshole and you're fucking your users for no reason at all (ads are no reason).
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      I agree the position I suggested is only a plausible assumption rather than a self-evident truth. Even so, I think it's a reasonable premise. Most people aren't going to use an ad blocker and then immediately leave your site just because of some related message, so I don't see the search engine issue as much of a danger. You might lose a few people who might have clicked on your ads if someone hostile spreads the word around, but firstly I doubt many people are really going to do that either (do you leave a web site and then immediately post on your blog/Facebook page/Twitter feed that "Site X Sucks!!!11!", really?) and secondly even if they do then I suspect the odds of converting anyone they tell who acts on that information are very low.

dcc1 12y ago

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/

ElongatedTowel 12y ago
That doesn't hide the blocked elements though.
bru 12y ago
I switched from ABP to this hosts file a few months ago and I have zero regret. My browser's faster, lighter and ads are blocked just as well as with ABP. I actually even started splitting my hosts file: the layout is /etc/hosts ('compiled' version) /etc/hosts.d/ /etc/hosts.d/aaa-warning (warning reminding me to run `update-hosts` instead of modifying /etc/hosts. Appears atop the compiled file) /etc/hosts.d/adblock (that website's hosts file) /etc/hosts.d/base (original system hosts file) /etc/hosts.d/dolead (work-related file for development) And I have the following functions in my .bashrc file: function update-hosts() { cat /etc/hosts.d/* > /etc/hosts; } function update-adblock() { curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts -o /etc/hosts.d/adblock 2> /dev/null update-hosts } So if I want to update "adblock" (it is obviously an improper name) I simply do `sudo update-adblock` and if I change another file (mostly `/etc/hosts.d/dolead`) I'll just run `sudo update-hosts`. Works wonders.
- TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
  Have you been able to block stuff like Tynt, and other copy/paste triggered JS stuff?
  - bru 12y ago
    I was not aware of Tynt, but I believe it's well blocked. I just looked at the adblock-hosts file, and 'tynt' appears several times. One of those lines is commented with a link to an article about tynt[0]. I tried copy-pasting from The New Yorker and TechCrunch (who, as claimed by the author of the article, use tynt), and both times there was no crap appended. 0: http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks

bithush 12y ago

My primary computer is a laptop from 2008 with a 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo and other than a 1 second delay in startup I don't notice any performance degradation in general use compared to running without ABP. Currently this machine has been up for 3 days and 17 hours and Firefox has been running the whole time and it is using 303MB with 4 tabs open one of which is the Daily Mail (don't judge!) which is an extremely busy page. This is perfectly acceptable in my opinion. I only have 4GB RAM which by todays standards in not much either. Obviously reducing the memory footprint is great but I can't say it has ever been a problem I have ever noticed. On a side note the past few updates to Firefox have improved performance a lot. I am really impressed by how much quicker the browser is, especially with Chrome seeming to just get slower and slower with each update.

probably_wrong 12y ago
> I only have 4GB RAM I've also seen this in some other comment, so I think it's worth pointing out: if you have a desktop computer then yes, it's ok. However, there are also netbooks and notebooks around with a lot less memory than that. Tablets, while not currently one of Firefox markets, are also commonly seen with less than that. Lots of parents with second-hand computers, too, which haven't been touched in a while because it "just works". The overall attitude towards hardware is apparently "use it for two years, then throw away and get a new one", and yet underpowered computers surround me in a 5:1 ratio. I sometimes have to install plain old versions of software (Office '97 comes to mind) because the new ones provide 5% new features at the cost of half your memory. Maybe everyone else has techie friends that only care about the latest and shiniest, or maybe the rest of the world is rich enough to throw away perfectly good hardware just because they feel like it. But from my experience (as biased as it is), 4Gb is not an "only" situation.
- icebraining 12y ago
  In my experience, Firefox uses less memory on systems with less RAM. My laptop only has 2Gb, and Firefox runs fine, even if on my work laptop it can reach 2.5Gb. And I'm not shy about using tabs either, I often have many dozens open.

hbbio 12y ago

Very interesting. There might be an architecture problem here. Another solution is to use a proxy to block ads, like GlimmerBlocker for OSX. But I didn't investigate memory usage, though I tend to think it will be lower (plus have the added benefit of working simultaneously for all browsers).

andreasvc 12y ago
A proxy cannot dynamically interact with the DOM, so it cannot do everything a plugin can. I think the solution is to use better datastructures in the plugin and improve the integratation of the plugin with the browser.
- psykovsky 12y ago
  Cloudflare can, somehow...
  - andreasvc 12y ago
    Probably using Javascript, i.e., same mechanism as AdBlock Plus.

Donzo 12y ago

You guys: you've got to stop using this. You're missing important messages from sponsors.

bambax 12y ago

Wouldn't the solution involve allowing plugins to manipulate the content of a page before it is parsed by the browser? There used to be a proxy adblocker that did that, but I don't think it works anymore. The Kindle browser uses a proxy to pre-render pages on the server in order to lighten the load of the device. Could AaaS (Adblock as a service) be a viable business? I think I'd pay for it.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> Could AaaS (Adblock as a service) be a viable business? I think I'd pay for it. It probably could, however I'm sure it would be shut down quickly by advertisers and parties showing ads - after all, you're offering a service to remove their source of income. Unless you'd funnel part of your subscriber's income back to the advertisers, based on whose ads you block. But I'm sure it'd end up being too expensive for the consumer and too much of a hassle for the one offering the service. Not to mention you'd force your users to funnel all of their internet traffic through your servers, and it wouldn't work with encrypted pages (which large parts of the internet is moving towards)
- __david__ 12y ago
  > It probably could, however I'm sure it would be shut down quickly by advertisers and parties showing ads What legal leg would they have to stand on? There's no law that prevents me ripping out the ads of magazines that get delivered to me…
  - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
    The same one that allows them to sue people for scraping their website. Tech laws are absurd.
Eiwatah4 12y ago
You do have some information in the browser you can't get to from the outside. For example, the filter with the most hits for me is "@@||192.168.$xmlhttprequest", which whitelists XMLHttpRequests to 192.168.*. A proxy can't really tell the source of a HTTP request. But that kind of thing is sometimes the only indicator telling the difference between an ad and useful content.

gorhill 12y ago

It's not just memory overhead, it is also CPU overhead. One approach is to write the filtering engine from scratch. It is what I did, without looking at ABP's code beforehand in order to ensure a clean slate mind. I didn't get it right the first time, I did spend quite a large amount of time benchmarking, measuring, prototyping, etc. Once I was satisfied I had finally had a solid code base, I went and benchmarked it against ABP to find out how it compared: https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Net-request-filtering:-overview#abp-filtering https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Net-request-... And for HTTPSB's numbers, keep in mind there were an extra over 50,000 rules in the matrix filtering engine (something not found in ABP). So I think this shows clearly ABP's code can be improved.

sspiff 12y ago
As far as I can tell, HTTPSB is not available for Firefox, please fix! I would love to use something better than ABP (in terms of performance, it does content filtering just fine), but I'm not so desperate to abandon the (warning: subjective content ahead) greatest browser of all times to lower the memory footprint of an ad blocker.
- idlewan 12y ago
  I'm betting this is not an easy task. It however would be really awesome for HTTPSB (which I just installed on chromium and fallen in love instantly with) to be ported to firefox. Seeing all the privacy-related features treated, by domain/site/everywhere rules, being able to block separately js/plugins/cookies (and by the way, the matrix is a great idea, a lot more useable than anything else out there)... in one extension only. Great work already, gorhill!
  - Justsignedup 12y ago
    Eh it has some default behavior quirks. Like being unable to log into arstechnica.com because it won't let that cookie get stored.
    - 12y ago

SixSigma 12y ago

I would recommend Privoxy rather than adblock. I chose it because it can be used with any browser rather than needing to be a plugin and have had great results with it. As a bonus I have it running on a virtual server and use an ssh tunnel on any system I end up using. This gets me round filters and installing things other than ssh. So if I am using my Android phone on free wifi, I know I'm not being dns hijacked or under HTTP MITM attack. http://www.privoxy.org/ http://www.privoxy.org/

mixedbit 12y ago
A drawback is that a proxy won't be able to filter HTTPS traffic.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  That depends on the proxy. Systems that effectively MITM your own network's traffic have been around for some years now. All you need for outbound connections is to install an additional certificate in your browser so the proxy can act a trusted partner for HTTPS. I don't know whether anyone has made such a proxy for use in the kind of situation we're talking about here, however.
  - ethana 12y ago
    Adguard does that. Been beta testing it. One adblock to rule them all kinda thing.
- rjaco31 12y ago
  uh? you can totally filter HTTPS with a proxy, especially with a local one. Either use the option to activate the dump of you keys on disk (a one-liner on every browser) and point the proxy to that file, or just break the SSL in 2 and rely on the proxy for the actual cert check.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    "privoxy" not "a proxy"

nly 12y ago

So is there any insight as to why? My guess, without looking at the code would be the regex engine allocating millions of NFA graphs.

nnethercote 12y ago
Nope. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c20 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c20 has a detailed breakdown of the style-sets memory usage.

maaaats 12y ago

> Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads. Well, for me the whole point of blocking ads is because they are often big flash things that hog cpu and memory. If ABP is no better, then most of the reason is gone. I'd actually like to view ads to support more sites.

nnethercote 12y ago
You do save some memory and CPU usage, but it appears that the cost is usually higher. You can disable ABP on particular sites. I was going to suggest doing that for sites you frequently visit that don't have ads... but I just did some quick testing and it doesn't seem to change the memory usage at all.
m_eiman 12y ago
Same here; I stopped using ad blockers a long time ago since click-to-plugin performs the essential function they were providing for me. Perhaps I'll reconsider when "HTML5" ads get more annoying/use more resources.
baby 12y ago
the point for me is the visual noise, not the memory that ads consume. Actually, normal users are used to the lag, they don't see it as much as we do. You can take a look at consoles that have run games at 30fps for decades and nobody complained.
- mschuster91 12y ago
  I don't care about the "visual noise" of normal/banner-type ads - the real problem are those fucking layer ads with confusing icons (the X is the left one, the maximize button the right one), so if you want to read the content, first find out which type of layer ad it is, try to spot the 2x2px hotzone for the close button and THEN read the content. People install adblockers because too many idiots became too fucking greedy and ruined ads for everyone else!
  - 12y ago

chrismorgan 12y ago

I would like to see a lighter blocking list—one that doesn’t try to be absolutely comprehensive, but just focuses on the 95% of ads that can be fixed at 10% of the cost (actually I think it’d be more like 99% at 0.1% of the cost).

Groxx 12y ago
I've been using this on my Android phone (but have not audited it, I should really do that some time): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firew... ABP has a huge page-load slowdown on my phone, this is essentially unnoticeable, and still removes the vast majority that I encounter.

spain 12y ago

Another (related) popular extension that I've noticed negatively affecting Firefox's performance is HTTPS Everywhere.

gcp 12y ago
HTTPS Everywhere is mostly annoying because it stops random sites from working, and people generally forget to check that it's HTTPS Everywhere that's causing it.

Vanayad 12y ago

Same issue appears in chrome as well. Got the site they linked to ~ 2.4GB before the browser stopped responding.

ColbieBryan 12y ago

Editing hosts files, installing Privoxy or Glimmerblocker, using Ghostery, Bluhell Firewall - I've tried all of these suggestions and unfortunately ABP is the only way to go if blocking all unwanted pop-up's is a priority.

hokkos 12y ago

LastPass is victim of the same fate.

kijin 12y ago
LastPass is bearable if you disable all the DOM-modifying options, such as highlighting and adding pretty icons to input fields. Instead I use keyboard shortcuts to select the login info to use.

nclark 12y ago

i would rather have my browser crash and never open again for the rest of my life than not use adblock. take all the memory, CPU, fuck it GPU that you want, you fantastic addon.

axx 12y ago

It's 2014. My computer has 12 Gigabytes of RAM. I don't give a shit, as long as i don't have to view those terrible stupid Ads. Advertisers, fix your practises and i will view your Ads again.

davidgerard 12y ago
Firefox with ABP is why my laptop now has 8GB instead of 4GB.
frozenport 12y ago
Its about the latency silly! The vim example allocates 2 GB which takes a few seconds, which we know makes users leave our sites. Going through those GBs slows everything down!
raverbashing 12y ago
One of the best ad-blockers is actually called FlashBlock (not sure this is the name today) It will remove around 90% of obnoxiousness...
- VoxPelli 12y ago
  Or you just go to Tools > Addons > Plugins and chose to have Firefox ask you before it activates the Flash plugin for a page – same functionality I think?
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Good, looks like it's a new feature. Yeah, this would be more or less the same functionality (FlashBlock makes it per item, so you can, for example see a video but not activate the other elements)
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      I think the Firefox plugin option does this too (at least, it works that way in Chrome). You can activate a plugin (and only that plugin) by clicking on it.

sdfjkl 12y ago

On the other hand AdBlock (edge of course, not the co-opted plus), saves quite a bit of network traffic. Nice if you're on metered (or slow) internet.

ladzoppelin 12y ago

Use Bluhell Firewall and NoScript for Firefox instead of ABP. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/?src=ss https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firew...

column 12y ago
also don't forget to set noscript.firstRunRedirection to false after installing NoScript to prevent it from opening its homepage after every update.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

caiob 12y ago

I'd love to hear the side-effects of using Disconnect.

SudoNick 12y ago

I think this is the fourth or fifth time, in recent memory, that I've seen someone from Mozilla criticize Adblock Plus and call on its developers to make changes. ABP startup time and memory consumption were subjects I recall, and its general impact on page load times may have been as well. I can understand Mozilla taking some interest in how addons behave, and constructive feedback on extensions is a good thing. However, ABP is the type of extension that is likely to have issues in those areas because of what it does. Which is very important to users, especially those who rely upon it for its privacy and security enhancing capabilities. It is those users who should decide whether the performance and resource usage trade-offs are acceptable. Mozilla shouldn't make, or try to make, such decisions. The situation with ABP 2.6 (https://adblockplus.org/development-builds/faster-firefox-startup https://adblockplus.org/development-builds/faster-firefox-st..., https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22906 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22906) might not be a case of this, but that along with the wider pattern of platform developers being more controlling, does make me somewhat concerned about Mozilla taking too much interest in extensions. I hope my worries are for naught.

nnethercote 12y ago
I'm the author of the post. I was extremely careful to keep the tone of the post neutral. This paragraph sums it up: > So, it’s clear that ABP greatly increases Firefox’s memory usage. Now, this isn’t all bad. Many people (including me!) will be happy with this trade-off — they will gladly use extra memory in order to block ads. But if you’re using a low-end machine without much memory, you might have different priorities. If you think this post is unreasonable, I think your skin is too thin.
- SudoNick 12y ago
  I noticed that you said that, and expected others to notice as well. I don't really think your post unreasonable. I'm just a little concerned that, even in a case of pure intentions and desire for balance, extension developers may feel pressured to make changes and end up sacrificing features or effectiveness. Did you notice how some people here, and at your blog, proposed modifications what would trade coverage for memory consumption? Even if that would result in known filter hits being eliminated, and also without qualifying that if such an approach were adopted it should be preference based?

mwexler 12y ago

Ah, 3 words that always seem to show up together: firefox and memory and usage. I look forward to when I see that 4th word, "minimal", in there as well. Yes, I know original post is about an addin increasing memory usage, but I guess that doesn't surprise me anymore either, sadly, when thinking of firefox. Even with the memory pain, I still (mostly) love FF.

nnethercote 12y ago
It's much better than it used to be. For example, Firefox 15 made a class of very common leaks caused by add-ons impossible. Firefox 26 massively reduced the amount of memory used on image-heavy pages. And there have been many smaller improvements over the past three years, under the aegis of the MemShrink project (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink).

linux_devil 12y ago

I switched from Firefox to Safari , when I found out 900 Mb used by firefox on my machine , now I know the real reason behind that .

nnethercote 12y ago
That's a surprising story from a user named "linux_devil"! Maybe it's time to try switching back?

dbbolton 12y ago

If you are on a low-end machine and can't afford a larger memory footprint, you should probably be using a lighter browser in the first place, but if you really want to use Firefox and block ads, one option is to just block them through your hosts file, then the addon becomes largely unnecessary. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

mullingitover 12y ago

This is like a commercial for forking Firefox to build highly efficient ad blocking into the browser. It's sad that the most-demanded feature on every browser, as evidenced by plugin downloads, is ad blocking. However, all the major browsers are produced by companies with their hands in advertising, and this conflict of interest has resulted in this feature request going unfulfilled for a over a decade. Fork 'em.

DenisM 12y ago
I don't think we can block ads in mainstream browsers because ad providers will just work around the blocks. Plugins provide defense in numbers against suck workarounds, making ad blocks actually effective.
- __david__ 12y ago
  This doesn't make sense to me. Why can't ad providers work around the blocks in adblock? And why could they work around those same blocks if they happened to be integrated into the browser itself? Take popup blocking as an example. That's integrated into the browser and has almost completely eliminated the annoying popup ad.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    >Why can't ad providers work around the blocks in adblock? // It's not really a work around but some sites do block your [full] access and say to turn off your adblocker if you want access to the [additional] content. That said I don't think it makes much difference to the matter at hand.
  - DenisM 12y ago
    Defense in numbers - there can be more plugins than there can be browsers. Creating a new plugin is much easier than creating a new web browser. Besides, fewer people have installed the ad block than those who have browsers. This make for smaller incentive to develop workarounds, compared to situation where everyone has some sort of block.
12y ago

BorisMelnik 12y ago

I'm just gonna say this as a person who uses ABP and has not done any low level memory analysis: browsing using ABP saves me much more time and makes my browsing much quicker: -ads take so long to load and when ABP is not enabled bogs down my browser hard core -when watching videos I have to wait 3-20 seconds for them to load, with ABP enabled I do not have to wait at all It consistently saves me several minutes every day. If it adds a few extra milliseconds to load some style sheets I have never, ever noticed.

chrismcb 12y ago

Did I read that correctly? One website had 400 iframes? FOUR HUNDRED? Not 4, but 4 HUNDRED? Surely there is a better way.

demi_alucard 12y ago

For those who do not know, there is an EasyList without element hiding rules. https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist_noelemhide.txt https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist_noelemhi... With these rules firefox's memory usage only goes up from 290MB to 412MB, instead of 1.5GB for the website mentioned in the article for me. The downside is that this list has a more limited coverage than the full version of the list.

Shorel 12y ago

My browser is fast again! Thank you, really thank you.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vladtaltos 12y ago

if 19 million people use it, why hasn't it become a feature firefox offers itself ? doesn't this mean people want some option of blocking ads ? I'm guessing this a native-integrated version will require a lot less memory...