Is AdBlock Plus killing the web? Massive memory usage is dragging Firefox down

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Petrovic

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As something of a browser butterfly, I like to keep an eye on what's happening with browsers other than the one I'm currently using fulltime. Like many tech journalists (and non-journalists for that matter), I gave up on Internet Explorer quite some time ago, opting for Firefox initially. I also dabbled with Opera and Waterfox, amongst others, but for a number of years it was Firefox that delivered web pages to me. Sadly, I noticed that things started to slow down. New versions were more bloated and sluggish, and in the search for better performance, I ended up with Chrome. I've been a Chrome user for years now, but I was recently spurred into trying out Firefox once again.

Quite where the impetus came from, I'm not sure -- just one of those "let’s see if anything's changed" moments, guess. Apart from little quirks like the refresh button being on the "wrong" side of the program window, Firefox seems pretty decent. I was impressed by the sharpness of the display for starters -- I had forgotten that Chrome handles high DPIs very poorly. As I'm using a Surface Pro running at 1920 x 1080, running at 150 percent DPI scaling is essential (I don’t have microscopes for eyes!) and Chrome makes everything looks slightly blurry... not enough to put me off -- I'm still using it, after all -- but Firefox was a revelation!

Performance-wise, I found there to be little difference between Chrome and Firefox. No exhaustive tests were performed, though from general usage everything "felt" about the same. So I stuck with Chrome. I'll put up with the blurriness for now -- although now it's at the forefront of my mind, it would be nice if Chrome dev pulled their thumbs out and got it sorted. It's been going on for years now, and it really shouldn’t be hard to fix. Other browsers cope with high resolution displays without problems. The point of all of this is that Firefox suddenly entered my life after years of absence, so what happened last night struck me as interesting.


Scanning through Twitter whilst nodding off in bed, I spotted a tweet from journalist Ed Bott:

Loading TechCrunch in Firefox uses 194 MiB of RAM. With AdBlock Plus, it uses 417 MiB. Jeez. https://t.co/oA19fQSsPw

— Ed Bott (@edbott) May 14, 2014

Having previously had concerns about Firefox and Chrome's memory usage, this piqued my interest. So this morning I fired up Firefox. One tab open -- BetaNews, of course -- finds memory usage sitting at around 184MB (Chrome, for comparison, eats up about 112MB for the same). OK, so let's get AdBlock Plus installed to check out these claims.

Instantly, memory usage for Firefox rocketed to 383MB -- so more than doubling -- although it did drop slightly to 350MB after a few minutes. It was a very different story in Chrome where installing the same extension seemed to have no effect on memory usage whatsoever. Weird.

Over on the Mozilla blog, the numbers are crunched. Just having AdBlock Plus installed in Firefox increasing memory usage by 60MB or more, and an extra 4MB per iFrame found on websites -- which can really mount up. The problem is being attributed to the fact that AdBlock Plus is loading a colossal stylesheet for each and every iFrame.

As reported by Martin Brinkmann on Ghacks, the problem can be partially alleviated by using a custom blocklist rather than one of the defaults, but the issue has still been logged as a bug on Bugzilla. Other options, of course, include not using an adblocker at all, or using one of the countless alternatives.

For many people this will be seen as another reason to avoid AdBlock Plus. While the add-on's website proclaims that its aim is "making the web a better place", it appears to be doing much the reverse. There has long been an argument that blocking advertisements hurts websites, curtailing valuable revenue streams and, ultimately, affect the viability, longevity and even content of sites. But it also seems that the add-on is hindering many people's online experience, and possibly Firefox's usage figures.

Computers may have more memory than ever before, but reliable memory management is still important. How many people will have installed Firefox, unquestioningly installed AdBlock Plus on a friend's recommendation, only to find that performance was so poor that they have returned to Internet Explorer, Chrome or wherever else they came from? How many people just labor on, putting up with poor performance assuming that's just the way things work?

What has your experience of AdBlock Plus been? Do you find it to be a memory hog in Firefox or other browsers?
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mmmory

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Nov 4, 2013
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Even though my main browser is Chrome, I'm using Adblock Edge on Firefox which is clearly lighter than Plus...
 
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XhenEd

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I'm using Chrome and I don't use Adblock or any name like that. I found it to be a memory and CPU hog. I experienced slowdowns while using it.

I now use Privdog because it's light on the browser.
 
I

illumination

I find it amusing that with today's machines typically from 4 gig on up of ram, that anyone complains of an extension or browser for that matter, using some.. What is the point of having a mass amount of Ram if you are not going to use it..

I use Adblock Plus, and yes, i do feel a slight difference between it being enabled and not, but not enough to complain.. It does it's job for me, and that, im satisfied with.
 

viktik

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Sep 17, 2013
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Yes memory usage goes up while using adblock plus. I have 4 GB RAM . So i don't see high memory usage as problem most of the time.

Is there any good alternative?
 
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Terry Ganzi

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I find it amusing that with today's machines typically from 4 gig on up of ram, that anyone complains of an extension or browser for that matter, using some.. What is the point of having a mass amount of Ram if you are not going to use it..

I use Adblock Plus, and yes, i do feel a slight difference between it being enabled and not, but not enough to complain.. It does it's job for me, and that, im satisfied with.

Your points are irrelevant,people like you is the cause things won't change for the better,now pray tell why an add-on uses so much memory.Then here comes a self centered person,who is saying indirectly that because pc's can carry more memory the whole world should be up to scratch.:rolleyes: & an add-on using so much memory is acceptable.
 
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Mateotis

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Mar 28, 2014
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Even though anyone can prove that ABP hogs resources, until there isn't an alternative which is just as easy-to-use, hassle free and effective as ABP, the majority of the users won't care.
 
I

illumination

Your points are irrelevant,people like you is the cause things won't change for the better,now pray tell why an add-on uses so much memory.Then here comes a self centered person,who is saying indirectly that because pc's can carry more memory the whole world should be up to scratch.:rolleyes:

That is mighty nice of you to quote my post, put down "people like me" and not give me a valid reason as to why "MOST" people with 4 gig to 8 gig on up should worry about an extension using 100 to 200 MB of ram... Let me guess, it is because you have very little ram you feel the need to attack my post.. Most system's world wide are now running 64bit, 64bit machines need a minimum of 4 gig Ram to operate correctly, hence they come from the factory with at least that much installed..

If you personally do not have that much, and are concerned with that little bit of Ram usage, then by all means, find an alternative.. Attacking me for giving my opinion, did not solve anything.
 

kaljukass

Level 2
May 17, 2012
127
It's who the story is written, it must be indeed very stupid or very malicious person.
Besides, it is more than possible, full of errors.
I read the comments from the original source - the sacred sky...
Lord's zoo is so rich.
 

Rahadian Putra

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Jan 28, 2014
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Yes it's indeed memory goes up on my system, but I think I can live with that, unless there is any good alternative of course. But honestly in my opinion I don't like using Ad blocker or such a thing, not because memory comsumption, simply because I want to support good trusted sites, unfortunately...some ads even contain malwares or blocking your view on your browser with crazy crappy pop-ups these days :(.
 

MrXidus

Super Moderator (Leave of absence)
Apr 17, 2011
2,503
I had to stop using the 32-bit builds of Firefox as they would crash from constantly hitting the memory limit of 32-bit.

I then moved to the 64-bit build of Nightly which enabled me to use more than 4GB of memory in my browser.

SBnZ8m4.png

[The result of my average 20+ tabs, Youtube videos & other flash, hi-resolution images & galleries, image boards.]

I know quite a handful of you find this un-acceptable and shocking which is why I am currently test running the 64-bit Intel optimized version of Cyberfox mentioned in this thread by Littlebits.

If I wanted I could resort to blocking obtrusive annoying ads by using the old fashion way via hosts file to see if not using the Ad-Block Plus add-on would actually benefit me in cutting down on memory usage but I don't see the need being that I have 16GB of RAM installed, Until I actually feel and experience negative performance or stuttering of course.

Thanks.
 
I

illumination

I personally would not categorize this as an abusive amount of Ram usage..

0plXOwu.png
 

Petrovic

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AdBlock Plus Firefox plugin could be sucking up gigabytes of your RAM

AdBlock Plus - which purports to block the garish, distracting advertisements found on a vast multitude of websites today - has attracted quite a sizable following across the globe. Many of its users find that, on the whole, it lives up to its claims, making web browsing more enjoyable and faster, while reducing the amount of data used by hiding and disabling adverts on webpages.

However, although data consumption may well be lowered, Mozilla suggests that enabling the popular plugin could result in exceptionally large amounts of RAM being consumed by the program. They found that just enabling the plugin on a 64-bit system could result in a constant additional RAM usage of 60-70MB on top of which Mozilla normally uses.

adblock_plus_in_firefox_add-ons_page_story.jpg


This may not sound like much until you realize that this is just the overhead incurred by simply having the plugin enabled. Whilst browsing a website with a relatively generous helping of ads, such as TechCrunch, Mozilla found that RAM usage by Firefox increased by over 200MB with AdBlock Plus enabled (417MB of RAM usage with the plugin, versus 194MB without).

With some more intensive websites such as the VIM Color Scheme Test, the plugin ended up consuming nearly 2GB of RAM at 1960MB; without it, just 370MB was used.

The AdBlock Plus development team recently acknowledged the issue on their blog and commented that the exceptional RAM usage was caused by a number of known bugs. One issue is that the plug-in's method of blocking adverts - by injecting stylesheets into HTML iFrame containers - incurs a gradual build-up of 4MB per iFrame. The issue is exacerbated as Firefox ends up duplicating these stylesheets for each new page loaded, eventually resulting in the immense RAM usage noted by Mozilla.

Hints of a major update to AdBlock Plus were dropped as the team said it wants "to implement [its] own way to store data" as an alternative to using the memory-intensive JavaScript data structures currently implemented.

For users who have large amounts of RAM installed on their machines, such as 8GB or more, this memory consumption may not prove to be too significant. But those with devices that have far less RAM installed may see more significant slow-downs if AdBlock Plus's memory usage hits the levels that Mozilla saw in testing.

The issue has not been noted in the Internet Explorer or Google Chrome versions of AdBlock Plus.
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R

rocky

I haven't looked back since trying Adguard. It starts with the computer and I don't even think about it anymore. And it works no matter what browser I open. Without a doubt one of the best purchases I've made in awhile
 
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