firefox for mobiles

[michael]

yowza!

"Looks like our favorite Web browser is about to go mobile. Mozilla head
honcho, Mitchell Baker, told the folks at APC magazine that Mozilla is
working on a Firefox to go for your cellphone. It's a long-term project
(meaning it's not coming out any time soon), but the goal is to allow 
it to
work with all the add-ons and plug-ins that the full version works with.

link to short story with link to full story below

-- Forwarded message --
From: Craig Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: SVHMPC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [SVHMPC] Hot dang

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/firefox-to-go/mozilla-prepping-a-mobile-firefox-browser-259491.php

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[David Ford]

If it's anything like mozilla/firefox now, we're gonna need a hefty
battery, hugely more cpu, and about 1G of ram onboard.

I used to love FF, now it's just a cpu/ram hog that usually gets killed
by the kernel every 36-48 hours for taking about 2G of ram.

The mozilla team needs to figure out how to slim down in a huge way
before putting moz on a fone.  Minimo is a good idea but very very slow
and quickly eats up all the ram on a phone.

Great idea, very bad implementation, and for some reason I still prefer
it over other browsers.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> yowza!
>
> "Looks like our favorite Web browser is about to go mobile.
> Mozilla head
> honcho, Mitchell Baker, told the folks at APC magazine that
> Mozilla is
> working on a Firefox to go for your cellphone. It's a long-term
> project
> (meaning it's not coming out any time soon), but the goal is to
> allow it to
> work with all the add-ons and plug-ins that the full version works
> with.
>
> link to short story with link to full story below
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Craig Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: SVHMPC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [SVHMPC] Hot dang
>
> http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/firefox-to-go/mozilla-prepping-a-mobile-firefox-browser-259491.php
>
>
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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Ian Stirling]

David Ford wrote:

If it's anything like mozilla/firefox now, we're gonna need a hefty
battery, hugely more cpu, and about 1G of ram onboard.


Oddly.
It seems to behave OK on my laptop - 1.5 - which I was using for some 
time with 128M RAM.

Admittedly, it did need restarted every day or three.

The big problem is the lack of debug tools.

I write a new extension.
I then want to profile it, to find out how much CPU, and how much CPU it 
makes the core use.

I can't.
Worse, the same problem applies to most of the XUL/XBL/JS core.

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[David Ford]

It behaves far better on my laptop as well, I strongly suspect it has
something to do with the 64bit nature of my desktop vs 32 for all other
places I use it.  My 64bit firefox is currently taking 1.8G of ram after
having been started ~16 hours ago.

Several groups of people, myself included, have submitted valgrind
outputs that show massive memory hemorrhaging but the reports pretty
much get ignored. :(

More debug tools would go a long way towards letting the community find
and fix these issues and make FF something desirable on the neo.

I love the idea of the neo, but it's just too small in cpu/ram for some
other (really neat) ideas. I'm impatient :D

-david

Ian Stirling wrote:
> David Ford wrote:
>> If it's anything like mozilla/firefox now, we're gonna need a hefty
>> battery, hugely more cpu, and about 1G of ram onboard.
>
> Oddly.
> It seems to behave OK on my laptop - 1.5 - which I was using for some
> time with 128M RAM.
> Admittedly, it did need restarted every day or three.
>
> The big problem is the lack of debug tools.
>
> I write a new extension.
> I then want to profile it, to find out how much CPU, and how much CPU
> it makes the core use.
> I can't.
> Worse, the same problem applies to most of the XUL/XBL/JS core.
>

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Thomas Gstädtner]

As announced this is a long term project, so there will be no firefox mobile
in 2007 and maybe not in 2008.
Firefox doesnt only use a massive amount of RAM, it also needs a powerful
CPU.
Imho a browser based on KHTML/WebKit, especially S60WebKit would be the best
choise.
Whoever has used one of the new S60 3rd Edition will agree, because that
browser simply rocks (and is damn fast!).
S60WebKit is partly OpenSource, only the UI isn't.
http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/
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Re: firefox for mobiles

[kenneth marken]

here is a test of minimo 0.2:
http://ekstreme.com/thingsofsorts/fun-web/first-look-at-minimo

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Bradley Hook]

While FF does have a fairly large footprint, I've never had these kinds
of memory consumption problems. I generally leave my FF sessions open
for days or weeks at home, and I simultaneously load 3D games, OOo,
graphics apps, and other stuff without ever having trouble with memory
(granted I do have 2GB).

However, even the large memory footprint that I do see has an
explanation, and can be tuned by tweaking about:config. By default, FF
caches every page loaded on every tab for that sessions. If you consider
a geek's multi-day surfing session, that is a lot of data to cache, and
the cache data also can't be compressed. Since the primary target of FF
is the "average" user -- which has several short surfing sessions and
usually closes the browser between sessions -- the default settings make
sense. If this is not your surfing style, then change your settings.

That said, the full blown browser would be an awfully hefty app to put
on a phone, and the minimo browser is currently targeting windows
portables. Why not go with something with a tiny footprint, time-tested
and proven lynx anyone?

~Bradley

David Ford wrote:
> It behaves far better on my laptop as well, I strongly suspect it has
> something to do with the 64bit nature of my desktop vs 32 for all other
> places I use it.  My 64bit firefox is currently taking 1.8G of ram after
> having been started ~16 hours ago.
> 
> Several groups of people, myself included, have submitted valgrind
> outputs that show massive memory hemorrhaging but the reports pretty
> much get ignored. :(
> 
> More debug tools would go a long way towards letting the community find
> and fix these issues and make FF something desirable on the neo.
> 
> I love the idea of the neo, but it's just too small in cpu/ram for some
> other (really neat) ideas. I'm impatient :D
> 
> -david
> 
> Ian Stirling wrote:
>> David Ford wrote:
>>> If it's anything like mozilla/firefox now, we're gonna need a hefty
>>> battery, hugely more cpu, and about 1G of ram onboard.
>> Oddly.
>> It seems to behave OK on my laptop - 1.5 - which I was using for some
>> time with 128M RAM.
>> Admittedly, it did need restarted every day or three.
>>
>> The big problem is the lack of debug tools.
>>
>> I write a new extension.
>> I then want to profile it, to find out how much CPU, and how much CPU
>> it makes the core use.
>> I can't.
>> Worse, the same problem applies to most of the XUL/XBL/JS core.
>>
> 
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> 


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Re: firefox for mobiles

[kenneth marken]

Bradley Hook wrote:

That said, the full blown browser would be an awfully hefty app to put
on a phone, and the minimo browser is currently targeting windows
portables. Why not go with something with a tiny footprint, time-tested
and proven lynx anyone?



i would prefer w3m or some other with image capability...
but then i have not used lynx in ages...

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[David Ford]

For the same reason I use open office instead of vi.  Lynx is far from
capable.

Even with tuning, FF is a dastard piggy.  I've tested things with FF. 
Start it with no history, no recovered session.  Load up digg.com and do
nothing.  Just let it sit there.  It will sit there and slowly grow and
grow and grow.  The caching isn't the problem, that's tunable.  The
problem is the memory leaks -- all the valgrind reports turned into moz
teams (and ignored).

Unless the current mozilla paradigm is changed, putting a moz product on
a cellphone is not just asking but demanding people reboot their phones
very often.  I put minimo on my cellphone and I know once I use minimo,
I can use my phone for about 12 hours or less before it gets so sluggish
that I have to pull the battery out to reboot it because it won't
respond to the power button any more.  If I manage to get to the task
list and kill minimo, it gets snappy again instantly.

Mozilla are a great group of people and ideas and I've been very
impressed with all the things that have been accomplished. 
Unfortunately pretty much everyone racing to eclipse them with browsers
that are far faster, more W3C compliant, and just overall better at
things.  Mozilla seem intent on stagnating.  Serious bugs (design flaws)
that have been around for years are dismissed as "there isn't a right
way to do it."  Like fixed position background images and page
scrolling.  Alpha blending - transparent images with a background. 
Turns powerhouse desktop browsing into a horridly choppy stalling
experience.

I just can't envision Mozilla building a useful product for smart phones
whether it's the Neo or any other phone.

The neo is far from being a powerhouse device and sadly the M$ browser
engine is far more capable and blindingly faster than minimo is.

Bradley Hook wrote:
> While FF does have a fairly large footprint, I've never had these kinds
> of memory consumption problems. I generally leave my FF sessions open
> for days or weeks at home, and I simultaneously load 3D games, OOo,
> graphics apps, and other stuff without ever having trouble with memory
> (granted I do have 2GB).
>
> However, even the large memory footprint that I do see has an
> explanation, and can be tuned by tweaking about:config. By default, FF
> caches every page loaded on every tab for that sessions. If you consider
> a geek's multi-day surfing session, that is a lot of data to cache, and
> the cache data also can't be compressed. Since the primary target of FF
> is the "average" user -- which has several short surfing sessions and
> usually closes the browser between sessions -- the default settings make
> sense. If this is not your surfing style, then change your settings.
>
> That said, the full blown browser would be an awfully hefty app to put
> on a phone, and the minimo browser is currently targeting windows
> portables. Why not go with something with a tiny footprint, time-tested
> and proven lynx anyone?
>
> ~Bradley


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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Myk Melez]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

yowza!

"Looks like our favorite Web browser is about to go mobile. 
Mozilla head honcho, Mitchell Baker, told the folks at APC magazine 
that Mozilla is working on a Firefox to go for your cellphone. It's a 
long-term project (meaning it's not coming out any time soon), but the 
goal is to allow it to work with all the add-ons and plug-ins that the 
full version works with.
FWIW, the Mozilla Corporation is *not* "working on a Firefox to go for 
your cellphone".  We are, however, working on a Java midlet and server 
that let you pass data from Firefox to your phone.  It's called Project 
Joey, and you can get more info on the Mozilla Labs featured projects 
list .


And we're also rearchitecting Gecko, the rendering engine inside 
Firefox, to improve embeddability in mobile phones, among other goals.  
Read more about that on the Mozilla 2 wiki page 
.


-myk

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Myk Melez]

David Ford wrote:

I used to love FF, now it's just a cpu/ram hog that usually gets killed
by the kernel every 36-48 hours for taking about 2G of ram.
  
Memory leaks in Firefox (as opposed to high memory consumption 
generally, which as Bradley notes is often caused by Firefox's agressive 
caching of tab history) can be caused by bugs in core code, but they 
often come from extensions and web pages.


The latter have become more common since the advent of web-based 
productivity applications like gmail and Zimbra that people leave open 
in tabs for hours, days, or weeks.


One way to check for extension leaks or certain core Firefox leaks is to 
install the Leak Monitor extension 
.  But that extension still 
won't catch memory leaks in web pages themselves, so it won't detect 
that f.e. gmail or digg uses more memory over time.


-myk

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Shawn Rutledge]

On 5/11/07, Ian Stirling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

The big problem is the lack of debug tools.

I write a new extension.
I then want to profile it, to find out how much CPU, and how much CPU it
makes the core use.
I can't.
Worse, the same problem applies to most of the XUL/XBL/JS core.


I was wondering if it would be possible to write an extension that
shows CPU and RAM usage in each tab of the browser, so you can profile
your pages.  Web developers could make good use of that, and maybe
we'd see fewer of the kind of pages on the web that are causing a lot
of the memory usage.  But apparently you can't do that?

For a graphical browser that isn't a pig, there is dillo, which has
its limitations, but at least it is small.

Or opera of course... it went fully open-source didn't it?

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Florent THIERY]

Hi


Or opera of course... it went fully open-source didn't it?


No it's not. It's just free.

I'm wondering why nobody seems to consider webkit as the viable alternative:
* it's open source
* it's been ported to qt recently, which may lead openmoko to use qt libs
* there is a registered google summer of code whose aim is to port
webkit for openmoko
http://code.google.com/soc/openmoko/appinfo.html?csaid=B5A2E96741FD60E4
* there is an ongoing effort to put webkit & gdk together
http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/browser/trunk/WebCore/platform/gdk
* so many firms use webkit in their own mobile products (ex: nokia
S60)... because it's maybe the fastest and lightest webengine

So Let's wait 'til the end of the summer :)

Regards

Florent

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Florent THIERY writes:
>
>I'm wondering why nobody seems to consider webkit as the viable
>alternative:

I'm sort of missing why you seem to feel webkit isn't a viable
alternative -- I've never worked with it at all, but you seem to be
giving a bunch of reasons why it's likely to be just that by the end
of summer.

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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Greg Oliver]

On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 16:12 +0200, Thomas Gstädtner wrote:
> As announced this is a long term project, so there will be no firefox
> mobile in 2007 and maybe not in 2008.
> Firefox doesnt only use a massive amount of RAM, it also needs a
> powerful CPU.
> Imho a browser based on KHTML/WebKit, especially S60WebKit would be
> the best choise.
> Whoever has used one of the new S60 3rd Edition will agree, because
> that browser simply rocks (and is damn fast!).
> S60WebKit is partly OpenSource, only the UI isn't.

Runs on Symbian tho  :(


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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Thomas Gstädtner]

@Florent: I already mentioned s60webkit last friday, so you can't say nobody
considers. :)
@Greg: I'm not sure here, but I guess s60webkit running on symbian is not a
big problem, because Symbian got POSIX-compliant libraries (by nokia?).
Maybe one the reasons for this was to get s60webkit working and maybe its
fully POSIX-compliant? [1]
Altough the gui-part of Nokia's browser isn't free, that shouldn't be a
problem, because that should be the component which maybe is the hardest
part in a port.
As OpenMoko uses GTK mostly a GTK-gui for webkit/s60webkit could be the best
choise.

[1] http://developer.symbian.com/wiki/display/oe/P.I.P.S.+Home
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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Myk Melez]

David Ford wrote:
Even with tuning, FF is a dastard piggy.  I've tested things with FF. 
Start it with no history, no recovered session.  Load up digg.com and do

nothing.  Just let it sit there.  It will sit there and slowly grow and
grow and grow.  The caching isn't the problem, that's tunable.  The
problem is the memory leaks -- all the valgrind reports turned into moz
teams (and ignored).
  
I tried this over the weekend, creating a fresh profile for Firefox, 
starting it up, loading digg.com into it, and then letting it sit for a 
day.  Memory consumption stayed constant.


I'm using the latest nightly version of Firefox 2.0 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; 
U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4pre) Gecko/20070513 BonEcho/2.0.0.4pre) 
on Ubuntu Linux 6.10.


-myk


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Re: firefox for mobiles

[Bradley Hook]

Myk Melez wrote:
> David Ford wrote:
>> Even with tuning, FF is a dastard piggy.  I've tested things with FF.
>> Start it with no history, no recovered session.  Load up digg.com and do
>> nothing.  Just let it sit there.  It will sit there and slowly grow and
>> grow and grow.  The caching isn't the problem, that's tunable.  The
>> problem is the memory leaks -- all the valgrind reports turned into moz
>> teams (and ignored).
>>   
> I tried this over the weekend, creating a fresh profile for Firefox,
> starting it up, loading digg.com into it, and then letting it sit for a
> day.  Memory consumption stayed constant.
> 
> I'm using the latest nightly version of Firefox 2.0 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11;
> U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4pre) Gecko/20070513 BonEcho/2.0.0.4pre)
> on Ubuntu Linux 6.10.
> 
> -myk
> 
> 
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> 

I also tried doing this, but I got mixed results. Firefox 2.0.0.2, minus
all the extensions and themes, would have consistent memory use
sometimes, but not always. I did notice, however, that I could only get
the memory to start "leaking" when using certain sites, digg being the
primary one. The rate of the leak was quite substantial, and I imagine
that the site's scripting or embedded flash/media content may be at
least partially responsible. I had honestly never used digg before this
test, and all of the other sites I use (like google, slashdot,
wikipedia, and many others) have never caused me problems when leaving
them open for days.

However, this discussion is entirely off-topic at this point. The
mainstream x86 FF release is not in any way a suitable candidate for the
openmoko. The neo uses a different architecture. If a derivation or port
of FF/Mozilla code is used on the neo, then an existing memory leak is
of little concern - it's open source, submit a patch.

~Bradley

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