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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Activity Monitor/Web browser window breakdown

RobinS - Jul 12, 2006 - 1:29 pm

So Activity Monitor tells me what program is hogging the resources. I would like to know what window of my Opera and Firefox browsers are hogging my resources. I have noticed videos from CNN and Google and pretty much any web based video viewer uses lots of CPU resources. But even some websites do, as I notice that when I close a particular window (I always have multiple windows open), suddenly the CPU fan slows down and the Activity Monitor suddenly shows a lot less activity.

I don't even know how to describe this.

DeltaMac - Jul 12, 2006 - 3:37 pm

You have described what you see very well, and as you can see, video viewers (normally using plug-ins from your system) really can take a lot of resources. A web site that has animations, or audio playing, will use a lot of resources, (even if the animation/etc. is not actually in view). This could even be a page that has a complex layout, such as CNN, or others that have a large number of links to a variety of resources. Sometimes a page is just coded improperly, and will demand a lot of resources from your computer, Others, such as CNN, just have a huge amount of options, and a complex page, and your resources go into showing that page.
Typically, more web pages open, and your computer uses more resources.
Too bad the older Mac mini cannot be upgraded past 1 GB, as more memory would likely help. Two browsers with lots of web pages open will really load your system, and you see the result.
- Dale

RobinS - Jul 12, 2006 - 4:58 pm

Yes that is understood.

My question was: is it possible to see which window of the browser is using so many resources? If you don't know, please repool the question.

DeltaMac - Jul 12, 2006 - 5:45 pm

The answer to your question would be no, not in the case of determining which window provided by an app takes the most resources. The resources are all taken by the app (say, Opera), and each window contributes to that total, and not evenly.
I was just pointing out that there are a lot a variables here, and this might be a good situation for a Windows trait (which mostly I don't care for), and that is having an instance of FireFox (or whatever) for each window open. This is usually not possible on the Mac, but if you could see each instance in a utility, that would help you determine where the resources are going. On the Mac, only to the level of the app itself, (or each process, actually - some apps may have multiple processes, but with the browsers, all processes are shared to the windows that need them. And you can see that some web sites will consume much more resources than other web sites, and for a lot of reasons. If you monitor Activity Monitor as you open and close different sites, you will become familiar with the 'power-mad' sites.
Does that help you at all?
- Dale

RobinS - Jul 13, 2006 - 10:21 am

That was well thought out. I never thought of that......so silly and I use it Opera all the time. I always open the windows "within Opera" but I could open seperate windows, or have 2 Opera installs and isolate the offending window that way. Turning off Javascript seems to help tremendously. I'm thinking that it might be smart to have 2 versions of my favorite browser. One with everything loaded for maximum compatiblity and another streamlined for speed. Often, shutting down "features" helps in eliminating a lot of advertising. Especially those Smiley popup windows - man do they use a lot of resources. I don't use a pop up blocker as more and more sites use pop up windows. Its easier to check with
Command `
to see if one is there, then do a
Command W
to instantly extinguish that offending parasite.