The mess that is 'default browser'

[rikona]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 05:06:31 +0800
Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/11/2021, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 19:21:58 +0000
> > Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >  
> >> On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 11:11:41AM -0800, rikona wrote:  
> >> > I do many different things in parallel, and usually have 100+
> >> > pages open at one time [around 200 open now :-) ] - way too many
> >> > for a single browser.  
> >>
> >> I must be imagining the 574 tabs I currently have open across 7
> >> windows in a single Firefox instance. :-)  
> >
> > Interesting. On my older box, with 8G mem, on which I set up my way
> > of working, I was never able to do anywhere near that number in FF.
> > I'll try that on my newer box. Thanks for the heads-up.
> >
> > I have different proxies, different rules, different fonts/screens,
> > vpns, and different addons set up in different browsers, so there's
> > quite a bit more customization done too. Since I use browser
> > bookmarks only a few % of the time, having a gazillion bookmarks is
> > of very little use to me. I've carried my gazillion FF BMs along
> > over many upgrades, and I probably use only 1 or 2 every week or
> > two. For sites I do revisit [stores, fin, etc] I use a password
> > manager, click, I'm in - works on multiple devices too. Much less
> > tracking ability as well so more privacy. Adds to the flexibility
> > with very few downsides. Even if I could get 2500 tabs in FF, I'd
> > probably still use multiple browsers. :-) We each find ways that
> > work well for us and this may be a bit different from what many
> > folks do. But, I'm always interested in ways to deal with lots of
> > stuff, so it's nice to hear how others do it. 
> 
> One thing that you might want to try, depending on your processing
> power and RAM capacity, is to have one web browser, eg firefox, with
> javascript enabled, and another web browser, eg seamonkey, with
> scripting disabled, using the former only for web sites for which you
> must have the scripting, eg, internet banking, or, if you use it,
> weather underground weather observations, or, something like
> https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/
> and the latter, for web sites that do not require scripting.

Very interesting - thanks! I suspected something like this but never
tested the idea well. I sometimes use an addon that supposedly turns js
on/off, but that doesn't always work well. Off in a browser is probably
much better.

More recently, js seems to be increasingly needed. On a couple of sites,
switching js off completely clears the page and it is replaced with a
new page offering to help you turn it on. :-) Sometimes I'm just stuck
with it.

> In minimising client side processing (client side processing being a
> demonstration of incompetent and malicious web developers), I have had
> around 140 seamonkey browser windows open, with many tabs in each
> window, with no scripting, and a few firefox windows open, on my i7
> computer with 32GB RAM, and, on my i5 computer with 16GB RAM, about
> half the equivalent respective browser windows open, each without any
> significant problems. Until the scripting starts crashing things, but,
> that is due to the scripting, as it happens regardless of how much is
> open.

Interesting - seems to help a lot. I used to have much crashing [lo
mem] and it became worse and worse as I added more pages. Seemed
to be worst on sites that have 10 videos that keep popping up
[yuck]. Sounds like the first thing to consider when problems hit.

Thanks for the info!

> The only problem with all that open, is when I try to run videos,
> which tend to fail after about the first six minutes, but, that has
> been happening in the versions  after 16.04, even if I have only the
> video player (currently, I believe the least resource demanding one,
> is celluloid) open.
> 
> After 16.04, the operating system has got increasingly slower and
> clogged up.
>