Only Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the Google Chrome web browser are multi-process web browsers. Multi-process meaning that they separate plugins, the web browser’s core and the different websites that are opened in processes which increases the web browser’s stability and security.
The Firefox developers have announced last year that they want to adapt the multi-process design of those two browsers. The first step towards the goal has been made with the latest Firefox nightlies. These developer releases will now separate plugins into different processes. This means that users will see a Firefox process and processes for the plugins currently used (like Flash) in a process manager.
This new feature is currently available only for Firefox for Linux or Microsoft Windows. It comes with a few issues that the developers are aware of including:
The plugin-crash UI is not finished. The current UI is just a non-localized dialog so that we can get crash reports from nightly testers. This will be changed soon!
On Windows, tearing/repainting issues when scrolling, bug 535295
On Linux, compiz effects and Flash don’t work together on some systems, bug 535612
On Windows, selecting “Print” option in Flash may lock up Firefox, bug 538918
On Windows, hulu won’t switch to full-screen mode, bug 539658
On Linux with GTK+-2.18 or later, GDK assertions and a fatal XError, bug 540197
Firefox-process crashes at NPObjWrapper_NewResolve with silverlight and sometimes Flash, bug 542263
Firefox users who want to test the new multi-process architecture are asked to submit any bugs that they find to Bugzilla so that the developers can analyse and remove them from the web browser.
The new feature can be disabled by setting the firefox preference dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false. (via Benjamin Smedbergs)
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Martin, i think there is a typo
These developer releases will not separate plugins into different processes
Do you mean
These developer releases will separate plugins into different processes
You are right, I meant to say Now not not. Corrected.
Funny thing is, Mozilla produces nightlies for all branches. Maybe you should say that this new functionality is available in the trunk-nightlies or mention the 3.7a1 branch.