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  3. These browsers that have a separate process for each tab

These browsers that have a separate process for each tab

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  • M Marc Clifton

    What freaks me out more is when you look at the command line for each tab in Chrome:

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --type=renderer --enable-features="*AutofillCreditCardSigninPromo

    D Offline
    D Offline
    dandy72
    wrote on last edited by
    #24

    "Command-line arguments are limited to 32,768 characters[*], and we're gonna use them all, dammit!!" -- Google, probably [*] Isn't that still the case? I haven't had a need to look in decades...

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    • R Rob Philpott

      I understand that modern browsers like to spawn multiple processes behind the scene, usually on a per-tab basis perhaps. Anyone know how this works, as what you seem to end up with is several processes all accessing the same window? Windows is funny about multiple threads accessing the same window, never mind processes. Perhaps the rendering is done in the main process and all the comms/javascript/layout calculation etc. in the child ones. I don't know, but I'd like to. Anyone shed some light?

      Regards, Rob Philpott.

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      Nish Nishant
      wrote on last edited by
      #25

      There is one main process, and each tab gets its own process. Chromium IPC is used to chat with each other. See Inter-process Communication (IPC) - The Chromium Projects[^] A simple way to repro this is to have one process create a container window, and then have child processes create windows that are children of that container HWND. That said, Chrome does not really use HWNDs for its tabs, it uses WebKit. So the example I gave should not be taken literally :-)

      Regards, Nish


      Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com

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      • L Lost User

        ff only runs 1 process, even with many extensions & tabs and/or windows open. chrome is just getting stupid (and fugly); sure bare bones is [supposedly] fastest, but just a few add-ons just starting up and rendering is way slower. (Of course you idiots, inter-process communications are slow - who was the braniac that decided separate processes was a good idea???) Without add-ons only has minimal standard settings (yep, jus like msof they think all users are stupid). Even on my main box (16G DDR3 RAM) it's slower then ff so I rarely use it and have already banished from the task bar it to the depths of the Accessories menu (it so does not deserve it's own menu). The mess of directories it creates are just way stupid too, caches mixed in with data files - how to set inclusive backups for that without backing up the crap?? Getting time to ditch chrome for edge as secondary browser, the edge is actually improving while chrome is for all it's updates is still stuck where it was 5 years ago (updates almost always security fixes - that really inspires confidence: NOT).

        Sin tack ear lol Pressing the "Any" key may be continuate

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        K Offline
        Kyle Moyer
        wrote on last edited by
        #26

        Lopatir wrote:

        who was the braniac that decided separate processes was a good idea???

        Citibank's online chat support feature loads via AJAX calls made on the main thread, instead of in the background. In firefox (one process) this locks up your entire browser until the POS loads (which must be in a colo on the Moon, considering how long it takes...) In Chrome however, only the tab for Citibank locks up, so you can do something else while the page pulls its head out its... Their online chat support is also on a different server, and uses cross-site scripting (BLOCKED!) to pass account information (REALLY!?) So unless you allow XSS, the support monkeys can't see any of your account information, and can't help you. Bravo. Bravo. So, multiple processes helps to shield the user from terrible (or even malicious) website design. Ever see one of those pages that has an alert() loop? With multiple processes you can kill that one tab without losing whatever else you have open. Obviously there are other features and improvements that could be made to mitigate all of these problems in a single process browser... But the more commonly used ones don't seem to offer this out of the box.

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        • R Rob Philpott

          I understand that modern browsers like to spawn multiple processes behind the scene, usually on a per-tab basis perhaps. Anyone know how this works, as what you seem to end up with is several processes all accessing the same window? Windows is funny about multiple threads accessing the same window, never mind processes. Perhaps the rendering is done in the main process and all the comms/javascript/layout calculation etc. in the child ones. I don't know, but I'd like to. Anyone shed some light?

          Regards, Rob Philpott.

          K Offline
          K Offline
          Kirill Illenseer
          wrote on last edited by
          #27

          Typically, the browser frame is hosted in a process and every tab is hosted in a process. The main process (browser frame) is what you're interacting with and it delegates to the tab processes.

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          • L Lost User

            ff only runs 1 process, even with many extensions & tabs and/or windows open. chrome is just getting stupid (and fugly); sure bare bones is [supposedly] fastest, but just a few add-ons just starting up and rendering is way slower. (Of course you idiots, inter-process communications are slow - who was the braniac that decided separate processes was a good idea???) Without add-ons only has minimal standard settings (yep, jus like msof they think all users are stupid). Even on my main box (16G DDR3 RAM) it's slower then ff so I rarely use it and have already banished from the task bar it to the depths of the Accessories menu (it so does not deserve it's own menu). The mess of directories it creates are just way stupid too, caches mixed in with data files - how to set inclusive backups for that without backing up the crap?? Getting time to ditch chrome for edge as secondary browser, the edge is actually improving while chrome is for all it's updates is still stuck where it was 5 years ago (updates almost always security fixes - that really inspires confidence: NOT).

            Sin tack ear lol Pressing the "Any" key may be continuate

            P Offline
            P Offline
            piyush_singh
            wrote on last edited by
            #28

            Lopatir wrote:

            Getting time to ditch chrome for edge as secondary browser, the edge is actually improving while chrome is for all it's updates is still stuck where it was 5 years ago

            That's true. Even I have started using Edge as my secondary browser, ff being default. Edge has its issues but it's definitely improving while Chrome just seems too slow. One thing though, I still prefer Chrome developer tool over ff for web development and Edge, I strictly use for browsing only. :)

            Piyush K Singh

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            • M Marc Clifton

              What freaks me out more is when you look at the command line for each tab in Chrome:

              "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --type=renderer --enable-features="*AutofillCreditCardSigninPromo

              N Offline
              N Offline
              Nathan Minier
              wrote on last edited by
              #29

              If you ever wanted insight into the mind of a linux coder...

              "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli

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              • R Rob Philpott

                Well what I wanted to do, is to try and get two independent GUI threads working in the same window hierarchy, something I always thought was impossible. This would open the possibility of a process with lots of GUI threads (possible certainly, but not in the same window hierarchy as far as I knew). This does that, and I've done it in a single process by spawning a second thread and making it execute the message pump of a second form. Completely independent yes, but when you 'join' them together with SetParent(), although we now have two separate GUI threads, they block each other. ie. I created a replacement for calc.exe which was a form with a button with a Sleep(10000) behind it. Demo project works fine, but when you hit the button, the 'host' process is blocked as well - you can't drag it around or anything. This makes sense I guess as one will send a MoveWindow message or something like that to the other, which is blocked, won't respond so blocks the other. A small glimmer of opportunity, but its seems its not to be...

                Regards, Rob Philpott.

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                L Offline
                Lost User
                wrote on last edited by
                #30

                Rob Philpott wrote:

                I created a replacement for calc.exe which was a form with a button with a Sleep(10000) behind it. Demo project works fine, but when you hit the button, the 'host' process is blocked as well - you can't drag it around or anything.

                * Gives a stern look * Well, your button code should not be blocking the UI-thread, as that is working the message-pump and minding it's own stuff. If you want to do something, do it from a new thread. As soon as you block the other window too long, the process wil be reported by windows as being "unresponsive".

                Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)

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                • L Lost User

                  ff only runs 1 process, even with many extensions & tabs and/or windows open. chrome is just getting stupid (and fugly); sure bare bones is [supposedly] fastest, but just a few add-ons just starting up and rendering is way slower. (Of course you idiots, inter-process communications are slow - who was the braniac that decided separate processes was a good idea???) Without add-ons only has minimal standard settings (yep, jus like msof they think all users are stupid). Even on my main box (16G DDR3 RAM) it's slower then ff so I rarely use it and have already banished from the task bar it to the depths of the Accessories menu (it so does not deserve it's own menu). The mess of directories it creates are just way stupid too, caches mixed in with data files - how to set inclusive backups for that without backing up the crap?? Getting time to ditch chrome for edge as secondary browser, the edge is actually improving while chrome is for all it's updates is still stuck where it was 5 years ago (updates almost always security fixes - that really inspires confidence: NOT).

                  Sin tack ear lol Pressing the "Any" key may be continuate

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                  D Offline
                  Daniel Wilianto
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #31

                  Seconded that. Yesterday I tried Edge since MS advertised that it supports ABP now, and it turned out to be a pleasant experience. I am using it now. Google chrome has transformed from from a lightweight browser into a big mess of tangled processes. It spawns almost ten processes which is named chrome, and two processes which is named crash handler, even though I only opened three tabs. You would think that they did this to handle crash better, but no, when one tab is not responding, the entirely of chrome stopped responding. Also it hogs CPU and RAM. I can't understand why such a huge company makes such an amateur mistake. Maybe they don't have capable programmers to begin with, instead they have people who are good at marketing and advertising. Oh yeah, let's not forget their faulty Google Drive for Desktop.

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                  • D Daniel Wilianto

                    Seconded that. Yesterday I tried Edge since MS advertised that it supports ABP now, and it turned out to be a pleasant experience. I am using it now. Google chrome has transformed from from a lightweight browser into a big mess of tangled processes. It spawns almost ten processes which is named chrome, and two processes which is named crash handler, even though I only opened three tabs. You would think that they did this to handle crash better, but no, when one tab is not responding, the entirely of chrome stopped responding. Also it hogs CPU and RAM. I can't understand why such a huge company makes such an amateur mistake. Maybe they don't have capable programmers to begin with, instead they have people who are good at marketing and advertising. Oh yeah, let's not forget their faulty Google Drive for Desktop.

                    L Offline
                    L Offline
                    Lost User
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #32

                    Google self driving car also crashed recently. Google is the new ms: 1. rush incomplete and faulty crap to market, 2. skip fixing simple stuff, instead concentrate solely on adding more shiny bling bloat, 3. remove popular features that could allow people to have control or even worse adjust default settings, 4. open customer feedback portals and expert message boards, and ignore absolutely everything on them, 5. suggest people should always load upgrades to be relevant and enjoy the new [useless] bling .. force updates by removing options to ignore them - ref item 1 for schedule

                    Sin tack ear lol Pressing the "Any" key may be continuate

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                    • F Foothill

                      They still use command line arguments!? That's so 1970's! I thought Google would be more modern than that. :-\

                      if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016

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                      Daniel Wilianto
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #33

                      Hah hah. They used command line argument to send info to those child processes?

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