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Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)Posted May 26, 2008 17:43 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)Parent article: Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)
There's clearly plenty of stuff broken in Firefox 3, and the "fsync seemed cheap because my OS doesn't actually implement it /at all/" thing has beaten them up worse than they're admitting. Here's a trivial example from the beta 5 browser in front of me. I hit "Zoom in" and it blocks on a disk write. Hit "Zoom out" and it blocks again. In, out, in out, in, in, out out, each time the disk blocks. Somehow, this tiny change in visual state got such a priority inside Firefox that it needs not just to be written to permanent storage for future reference, but actively forced to disk as an urgent priority. The "cool feature" that's being used over and over to justify the need for yet another database inside the Mozilla engine is that when I type a partial URL, instead of completing the URL Firefox now needlessly searches my bookmarks, the titles of every page I've ever read, and any other data it can get its hands on, so that it can offer ridiculous suggestions, e.g. Previously typing L offered me various LWN URLs I'd recently visited, a Livejournal page, and a few other things beginning with L. But now, thanks to Firefox 3's new database, I'm offered "Garfield vs Garfield" and "JWZ Mixtape on Blogspot" because I've visited those more recently and they have an L in them somewhere. Yes, it is that stupid. About a dozen new hidden about:config options were introduced in the creation of this feature, not a single one of which restores the old, well loved functionality. I've yet to decide whether I should learn to put up with this (whereupon core Firefox devs will declare it's a "success" even though many of their users hate it) or add to the growing numbers who've installed a Firefox extensions solely to put it back how it was.... For most of the data the Firefox developers are offering a false dilemma. They suggest that the alternatives are using fsync() or giving up all data integrity. In fact this applies only because they wanted to use database structures. If you're willing to write a log structure instead of building a database, you lose nothing. If you write both, you lose nothing, avoid fsync() and can restore when, inevitably, the database corrupts itself without any help from the OS or the power company.
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Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 26, 2008 20:01 UTC (Mon) by sergey (guest, #31763) [Link] I happen to like this new address bar feature. I use Foxmarks, which motivates me to organize the bookmarks better, and the search through them is definitely quite useful for me.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 26, 2008 20:45 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Oh, but the feature is called `awesomebar', so it must actually *be* awesome, right? Right? (If it worked like it's supposed to, maybe it would be. But it doesn't, as you say, and it isn't.)
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 26, 2008 21:15 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] Heh, you're bitching about the new feature I love the most :D
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 26, 2008 23:40 UTC (Mon) by sb (subscriber, #191) [Link] I hope someone will write an extension to add support for regular expressions to the location bar. There is already one such extension for the find bar, but native support for both would be far more reliable.Speaking of which, I've often wondered why the search boxes that keep getting added to many Linux desktop apps don't grok REs when there is ubiquitous runtime support (glibc, libpcre). I guess we've reached the point where most users have never heard of grep, and the rest have learned to cope with the deficiencies of graphical apps. Even so, some sort of special syntax could be agreed on to trigger a RE search while keeping substring search the default. Time for a RE search freedesktop standard?
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 27, 2008 0:03 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] """ About a dozen new hidden about:config options were introduced in the creation of this feature, not a single one of which restores the old, well loved functionality. """ Have you tried the "apt-get install epiphany-browser" option? That restored my browser to exactly the way I want it. FF is developing a very bad case of second system syndrome.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 27, 2008 4:31 UTC (Tue) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] The only reason why I'm not using epiphany-webkit at the moment is that this new version of epiphany still doesn't support file downloading and it has some other clear problems due to its still experimental-like state.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 27, 2008 18:18 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] I'm using Epiphany 2.22.1.1 with Gecko rendering. It works great while avoiding much of the brain-deadness of FF3 itself. For example, changing font sizes does not block on a write, and it has a very nice and usable history system. Far superior bookmarking... without the relational database. It's what FF should be.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 28, 2008 18:45 UTC (Wed) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] Epiphany 2.22.1.1-3 in experimental has switched to webkit-only.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted Jun 3, 2008 17:35 UTC (Tue) by daenzer (✭ supporter ✭, #7050) [Link]
My
apt-cache policy epiphany-{gecko,webkit}
doesn't agree. You can install both variants and run whichever you feel like at will.
Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) Posted May 27, 2008 13:29 UTC (Tue) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link] Previously typing L offered me various LWN URLs I'd recently visited, a Livejournal page, and a few other things beginning with L. But now, thanks to Firefox 3's new database, I'm offered "Garfield vs Garfield" and "JWZ Mixtape on Blogspot" because I've visited those more recently and they have an L in them somewhere. Yes, it is that stupid. On the other hand, if you type "curveballs" because that's what you remember about this page, it now finds it for you. How much harder is it to type "lwn", and get all your LWN URLs? If you're willing to write a log structure instead of building a database, you lose nothing. Apart from the various new features Places enables. You may not like (some of) them but the general feedback has been very positive. Perhaps people will call me biased, but I love the awesomebar. It pretty much reads my mind. :-) Gerv
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