My Cat Taught Me Browser Task Manager

My cat walked on my keyboard, and this happened ,

She launched the Microsoft Edge Browser Task Manager that I didn't know existed. Modern Web Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge are of multiprocess architecture. The Chromium projects have a good introduction about the advantage of this design and that I quote,

"

It's nearly impossible to build a rendering engine that never crashes or hangs. It's also nearly impossible to build a rendering engine that is perfectly secure.

In some ways, the state of web browsers around 2006 was like that of the single-user, co-operatively multi-tasked operating systems of the past. As a misbehaving application in such an operating system could take down the entire system, so could a misbehaving web page in a web browser. All it took is one browser or plug-in bug to bring down the entire browser and all of the currently running tabs.

Modern operating systems are more robust because they put applications into separate processes that are walled off from one another. A crash in one application generally does not impair other applications or the integrity of the operating system, and each user's access to other users' data is restricted.

"

So when a browser runs, it creates multiple processes. However, old fashioned as I am, I wasn't aware that Microsoft Edge browser had a tool to show and to help users manage the processes -- the keyboard shortcut to open Microsoft Edge Browser Task Manager is SHIFT + ESC. The cat must have stepped on the two keys and taught me this.  You can also launch it from the menu as the following screen shot shows, i.e., click at "...", select "More tools", and then "Browser task manager".

Sure enough, FireFox and Chrome browsers have the similar. In FireFox, open the menu, click "More", and select "Task Manager".

In Chrome, open the menu, click "More tools", and then select "Task Manager".

Neat!