why is firefox such a CPU hog?

[john]

Hey Scott,

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Scott Balneaves
<sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 04:57:31PM -0800, john wrote:

> Well, I think firefox will too.  Here's a test: get your 24 students to JUST
> browse around on a site that doesn't involve any Java, or flash.  Something
> like wikipedia.  I *know*, that they'll be able to do it just fine.  Because
> wikipedia pages load, and then they just sit there.  Sure, you scroll around,
> but all the processing's mainly done: now you're just scrolling around in a
> page.
>
> This is exactly the same as openoffice.  Once it's loaded, it's loaded.  You
> scroll around in the doc, but you're not doing anything computationally
> intense.

Sure, This makes such sense I don't know why I couldn't figure that
out for my self :-( . Thanks for pointing this out.


>
> Problem is *entirely* flash.  Because it just sits there and keeps chewing up
> cycles.  Web animations.  Ads.  Videos.  If there's 4 or five flash apps on a
> page (say, 3 flash ads, 1 menu application, and a video), each consuming a
> significant % of the cpu's cycles, *one page from one browser* can peg a
> machine.  Now multiply this by the other 23 terminals.
>

> We've surrendered our web viewing experience to a propriatary app that's
> inefficient.   And now we're paying for it.
>
> Scott

That's a pretty damning indictment. So is supporting gnash someway the
direction forward in your opinion? Or some other approach?

Thanks,

John