We should no longer do proxy-related IO on the main thread now that Patrick McManus landed bug 769764. Synchronous proxy code resulted in a miserable user experience for people using proxies, but it also affected normal users during proxy-detection. This was one of the top intermittent freezes that we’ve seen.
Tab switching should be much faster in Firefox 18 than before. Jared Wein got rid of an expensive regexp that was applied during a tab switch in bug 781588. Jeff Muizelaar landed bug 792199 which should make switching to a image-heavy sites much faster. Jared’s change is already on nightlies, Jeff’s change should show up tomorrow if everything goes well.
Matt Woodrow landed the huge change that is DLBI in bug 539356 (yet again). DLBI speeds up reflows, reduces repaints resulting in a more responsive browser. For more details see Robert O’Callahan’s announcement.
Startup Regression
After working on improving startup for the last couple of releases we seem to have regressed it during the 18 cycle. I filed bug 798130 on this. I just noticed the regression a few hours ago. If anyone has ideas on what might’ve caused it, please comment.
Profiler
Gecko profiler now lives on AMO.
Thanks i like these snappy updates! I have noticed the startup lag on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 ID:20121004030525
my startup times have gon from 1 second two about 5 second and that is on a cor i7 and a ssd 3 gig of ram. I know it’s not a long time but it’s noticeable. I wood think if it has had a 4 fold slow doun for me on a ssd sum one on a hdd wood be much werce off.
Tapper, can you reproduce this, but going to a firefox 17(aurora) build to get faster startup and back to 18 to get slower?
Are you measuring this with about:startup? I hope the answer is yet and I can send you some profiling instructions.
Taras, I can reproduce the long *warm* startup (about 5-7 seconds, wall-clock time) on my quad-core HP 2560p with SSD and 8GB of RAM. Do you want me to follow the profiling instructions you provided pd in the last post’s comments?
I should add that I am testing Nightly x64.
Manoj, is the same machine performing better on aurora and by how much?
Unfortunately, Aurora has the similar startup issues on this machine.
I will test on my Mac at home.
Hi i am sorry it’s bin solong i have bin busy. I carnt use about:startup cus i am blind and using jaws which wont read the out put from about:startup. i am using 32 bit windows. i will try with ff 17 and let you no how it feels.
ok using
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20121005042010
it seems a little faster i am sorry i carnt say by how much.
Adblock Plus 2.1.3a.3552
British English Dictionary 1.19.1
Cheevos 1.4
Default 17.0a2 [DISABLED]
Feedback 1.1.2
Google Update 1.2.183.23 [DISABLED]
Great Britain Flag 1341942981
HTTPS-Everywhere 3.0development.8
Nightly Tester Tools 3.3
NoScript 2.5.7rc5
Photo Gallery 16.4.3503.728 [DISABLED]
Shockwave Flash 11.5.500.80
WebVisum 0.9.1
Ok my bad i got the plugin now so here we go
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 ID:20121006030534
About Startup
table with 9 columns and 7 rows
main
start
startupCrashDetectionBegin
startupCrashDetectionEnd
firstPaint
sessionRestored
createTopLevelWindow
firstLoadURI
average
415.00
41.00
536.00
34037.00
3853.00
4027.00
2385.00
3716.00
18.0a1
20121006030534
415
41
536
34037
3853
4027
2385
3716
average
44.67
18.00
111.33
32748.00
2588.33
2736.33
1275.67
2455.67
18.0a1
20121005030609
44
18
110
32564
2407
2550
1170
2274
46
18
112
32697
2541
2683
1307
2408
44
18
112
32983
2817
2976
1350
2685
table end
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20121005042010
About Startup
table with 9 columns and 14 rows
main
start
startupCrashDetectionBegin
firstPaint
sessionRestored
createTopLevelWindow
firstLoadURI
startupCrashDetectionEnd
average
415.00
41.00
536.00
3853.00
4027.00
2385.00
3716.00
34037.00
18.0a1
20121006030534
415
41
536
3853
4027
2385
3716
34037
average
44.67
18.00
111.33
2588.33
2736.33
1275.67
2455.67
32748.00
18.0a1
20121005030609
44
18
110
2407
2550
1170
2274
32564
46
18
112
2541
2683
1307
2408
32697
44
18
112
2817
2976
1350
2685
32983
average
60.67
18.67
134.67
2092.17
2568.33
1004.33
2257.50
32372.50
17.0a2
20121005042010
42
17
106
2263
2366
1065
2063
32368
42
18
106
2310
2412
1121
2111
undefined
43
18
106
2263
2365
1068
2063
32377
42
18
106
2312
2416
1122
2112
42
17
107
2417
2607
1115
2217
153
24
277
988
3244
535
2979
table end
Taras, the slow startup was caused by Adblock Plus in my case. The slowdown was not limited to Windows 64, it affected Firefox (both Nightly and Aurora) on my Mac as well.
I will test start-up using Safe Mode on both platforms in both Nightly and Aurora later today.
Delay in testing due to Windows issues. With adblock plus disabled, I am unable to reproduce a noticeable startup difference between Aurora and Nightly on Win 7 x64.