Finally. Not that I would ever use Firefox, but it's nice to know that there will be a multi-process version soon, as I consider this to be a very important feature.
Firefox 48.0b1 was available for download from the Firefox Beta download webpage as of yesterday - it is the current nightly development release with the multiprocess architecture for testing. -- Tom
FYI. Be aware that by default, only a select group of users are eligible. See details below: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Experiments#Beta_48
That in and of itself does not prevent anyone from downloading the Beta release from the Official Beta release webpage which in effect allows anyone to give it a go! -- Tom
While it's true that anyone can download it, there are parameters for Electrolysis to be enabled by default, so everyone will not see it:
I read about eligibility, but don't know what it means. If the feature is available in the UI then presumably anyone can turn it on? Are they saying the option will be hidden if the Firefox profile is not eligible, for instance if it includes incompatible extensions?
Victek, "eligible" == "currently supported". Sorta. Because the inbuilt accessibility components are not yet e10s compatible, e10s won't (can't) be enabled if those accessibility components are enabled. Similarly, xx% of legacy add-ons are incompatible with e10s. Maybe in the future there will be a compatibility whitelist, but at present there is no such thing (and no mechanism to check/test during upgrade) so e10s won't be enabled if any installed addons are detected.
Thanks for the additional info. I understand that e10s won't be enabled under these circumstances; my question is will the option be available in the v48 or v49 UI if the user wants to enable it at risk of "voiding the warranty"?
I am running Firefox 48.0b1 on my Linux platform while writing this message. Currently I have no add-ons included. Note: When the last tab is closed, the default behavior is to exit Firefox. Using about:config to toggle lasttab from True to False will prevent Firefox from exiting in this manner. Prior to launching this beta version of Firefox 48.0, I saved my normal .mozilla profile setup by renaming it in my $Home directory, and changed the /usr/bin/firefox symbolic link to point to the Firefox 48.0b1 directory I had setup in /usr/lib/firefox-48.0b1 which contains the new firefox 48.0b1 executable. That way, there is a brand new profile with no add-ons for testing the new version of Firefox with multiprocesses for UI, Content, and Tabs - and, it is possible to use the Firefox icon to launch the new executable. It been a while since I implemented a multiprocessing run-time system, but I now need to locate the test suite the Mozilla folks are using to test the new kid on the block, and get in the loop for reporting any results of consequence that occur. -- Tom
