One of the new trends in web browser development is to separate various modules of the web browser, like different tabs and the core engine, in different processes to increase the web browser’s stability and security. Currently only Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer support these techniques.
Lately though the guys behind the Mozilla Firefox web browser have shown interest in adding multi-process support to the Firefox browser as well. And with the latest nightlies of Firefox came that support. Even more interesting is that the Mozilla developers “borrowed” the code from the Google Chrome source code which is Open Source.
Firefox Nightlies are the latest developer versions of the web browser which are usually the first to come with new features.
Benjamin Smedbergs announced the recent addition to the web browser on his personal blog. According to his post the multi-process capabilities are turned off by default.
Currently only Windows and Linux support multi-process plugins: mac support requires additional work. To turn OOPP on, visit about:config, find the pref dom.ipc.plugins.enabled, set it to true, and restart your browser. Please report any crashes or instability in bugzilla: product “Core” component “Plug-Ins”.
There is one major known bug right now: any plugin which is installed in a path with spaces fails to load. On Windows, this affects almost everything except Flash. I hope to have this fixed in tomorrow’s nightly. There is a tracking bug for all the known issues which prevent us from turning on OOPP by default
It becomes clear from the description that this is an experimental feature that has been implemented at this time so that some developers and testers can test it extensively. It will be interesting to see how this evolves in the future and into which public version this feature will be integrated in first (if at all).
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
Multi-Process Plugins Enabled In Latest Firefox NightliesMulti-Touch support in Windows 7
Firefox 3.6 Support To end On April 24, 2012
Firefox 3.7 Nightlies Showcase Better UI Customizability
Mozilla Proposes Extended Support For Firefox