[ANSWERED] What are Firefox's 'non-e10s windows'?

[MrDuckGuy]

[ANSWERED BELOW IN REPLY]



Forum Question:

My most updated version of Firefox gives
the option of opening "non-e10s" windows.

What are they?

I found this article from a few years ago
that refers to them:

How to open non-e10s windows

What gives? Is one better than another?

Is there anyone on this site that uses them,
and if so, then why?

As always, thanks in advance, Kelikaku B'H.

[Burn_IT]

It would be a bit like forcing a multiprocessor CPU to stick to using just one processor for everything.

[MrDuckGuy]

... like forcing a multiprocessor CPU to
stick to using just one processor ...

Hello Burnie!
Thanks for your participation!!

By the way, was that a question
or was it meant to be an answer
of some sort?

- Kelikaku B'H.

[Burn_IT]

It was meant to be an answer.


It would be like forcing all the traffic wanting to cross a toll bridge to use just one toll booth.

[bigpup]

This is the basic difference and why.
From your posted article.

The main difference between a non-e10s window and the e10s window is that Firefox launches an e10s window in a new process (depending on how many processes are allowed in Firefox) while the non-e10s windows are launched using the existing Firefox process. As you can guess, if a non-e10s window crashes, it might also result in crashing the Firefox browser itself.

Example:
Starting and running Firefox is one process.
A tab in Firefox is a e10s window and a different separate process.
If that tab window crashes, only it crashes.
Firefox still stays unaffected and does not crash.

If the tab window is a non-e10s it is using the same process as Firefox.
If it crashes, it will probably crash also Firefox, because everything is in one process.


Why you would use a non-e10s window.

But as this is a new feature, some add-ons might not work readily with the e10s and would need an update. The updating of add-on depends entirely on the individual authors and could take months. In the meanwhile, if you want to use the e10s incompatible add-ons in Firefox, you may have to start a non-e10s window in which that add-on would work.