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Possible Duplicate:
“Task Manager” addon for Firefox?

Chrome has a built in task manager under "Tools" to look at the process within Chrome, extremely beneficial in locating a stuck page. What is the similar feature in firefox?

I need to identify what is causing it to run slowly, and the addons they suggested dont work for OSX or are outdated, and Chrome's about:memory isn't recognizing FF

How to get to Task Manager: where to access task manager

Task Manager: task manager for chrome

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chris Frisina
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    I don't know if there's a built-in task manager in Firefox, but anyway you might find this question useful: [**“Task Manager” addon for Firefox?**](http://superuser.com/q/71328/138020) – amiregelz Nov 21 '12 at 17:39
  • I need to identify what is causing it to run slowly, and the addons they suggested dont work for OSX or are outdated, and Chrome's about:memory isn't recognizing FF – chris Frisina Nov 21 '12 at 17:51
  • This is precisely the issue that finally persuaded me to give up on FF, after years of resisting the trend towards Chrome. – Isaac Rabinovitch Nov 21 '12 at 18:31
  • CLOSED!??? I SPECIFICALLY said for OSX, and the previous question provides answers for Windows and other addons are for older versions of FF, or do not answer the question. This is a specific question for OSX. – chris Frisina Nov 21 '12 at 22:21
  • @chrisFrisina, it was closed because the platform is irrelevant. The question is how to get a Task Manager for Firefox, and any extension that does this should work on all platforms because it would almost certainly be implemented with platform-independent JavaScript. – Synetech Nov 25 '12 at 04:12

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Short answer: FF doesn't have a task manager because it doesn't use tasks.

Chrome is unique among web browsers in that it each tab renders its web content using its own OS task. This approach relies on the fact that modern processors have a lot of extra capacity and don't get bogged down by the high overhead of spawning a lot of tasks. You can see this in action by using the OS's task manager to view all the Chrome tasks:

tasks spawned by Chrome on windows

Older browsers were designed when processors were less powerful. They tend to make less use of concurrency. And when they do use it, they rely on threads which have less overhead, but also make it harder to limit the effect of errors.

For more on the design of Chrome, see the Chrome Comic Book

Isaac Rabinovitch
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