Mozilla outlines goals for multiprocess browsing implementation
Mozilla's Chris Blizzard has published a blog entry that outlines the goals of Mozilla's renewed effort to bring multiprocess browsing to the Firefox Web browser. The post highlights the key advantages that deeper process isolation will bring to Firefox and addresses some of the underlying requirements for Mozilla's implementation.
The shift towards multiprocess architecture is a major trend in Web browser design. Most of the mainstream Web browsers already isolate plugins like Flash in separate processes in order to mitigate the notorious security and stability problems that come from running third-party code in a browser. Chrome and Internet Explorer go a step further and support process isolation for tabs.
Mozilla first started to explore multiprocess browsing in 2009 when it launched the Electrolysis project. The breadth and complexity of the existing Firefox code has posed some challenges for the effort. The long-term goal of Electrolysis was to eventually deliver process isolation for tabs on the desktop, but it's still not there yet. So far, the project has enabled plug-in isolation on the desktop and tab isolation for the mobile version of Firefox.
