Thanks but I guess there is no simple solution. More than half of the startup time is compilation + XUL overlay, so delaying our initialization would not help enough. It would also break exactly the users who most need fast startup: Firebug users who normally close Firefox. That must mean they open Firefox to check a specific site, and thus want Firebug active on that site at startup. Delaying initialization would cause this case to fail.
jjb On Apr 7, 1:16 am, David Schoonover <[email protected]> wrote: > It seems we're all in agreement that startup time is an arbitrary metric > largely irrelevant to our users. As such, the metric is the root cause of > our troubles, and we can address it directly: move everything into > setTimeout(setupFirebug, 0) -- the AMO optimization page even explicitly > (and surprisingly) encourages this. afaict, doing so would drop our startup > penalty to its minimum by their counting (whatever the cost to load our > files from disk and instantiate overlays if done in the manifest). While > this is still a non-trivial code change (having to protect anything that > makes synchronous setup assumptions with a flag is annoying) it's certainly > easier than any of the other options (refactoring the add-on to be > tab-relative, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing them, or waging a > marketing war for the hearts and minds of the average Firefox user). > > The obvious disadvantage is that it's a stopgap effort. If we decide we > actually care about startup time -- though all comments point toward NO -- > then effort would be wasted. Otherwise, the biggest issue I can see is that > AMO fails to be responsive in updating their list. Perhaps come May we'll > find the whole thing had no impact on installs. > > In any case, this is ultimately not an engineering issue; it is a marketing > issue. Our audience understands us, but Firefox users writ-large likely do > not; the blokes at AMO have, perhaps unintentionally or with heavy hearts, > acted to scapegoat Firebug in seeking advantage in the eternal browser wars. > Leaving AMO clearly hurts publicity more than it helps. If we're going be > judged on the cleanliness of our Potemkin Village, I vote we paint some > cardboard houses. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebug" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/firebug?hl=en.
