By separating web content and Firefox UI processes, when a webpage is consuming a large part of your computer’s processor and memory, your tabs, buttons, and menus (hopefully) won’t lock up. Just like other browser vendors have concluded, Mozilla believes using a separate rendering process lays the foundation for significant performance and security improvements in Firefox. To check if you’re in the Electrolysis group, type “about:support” into the URL bar and check to see if it says “1/1 (Enabled by default)” under the Multiprocess Windows line item. In Firefox 48, Mozilla is slowly enabling multi-process support, starting with 1 percent of users, and ramping up to nearly half of the Firefox Release channel. Firefox Nightly gained multi-process support in November 2014.
In fact, work to make the frontend and add-ons support multiple processes began in early 2013. Mozilla has been building multi-process Firefox support for years as part of the Electrolysis project, and now it’s finally starting to roll it out. The biggest highlight by far is the rollout of multi-process support. In other words, it’s a major platform that web developers target - even in a world increasingly dominated by mobile apps. Mozilla doesn’t break out the exact numbers for Firefox, though the company does say “half a billion people around the world” use the browser.
