Firefox-Memory leaks? (1 Viewer)

[Chris Bardon]

I've been using Firefox and Thunderbird for about a month now, and am really liking the new features that they offer over IE/Outlook express, but I have run into one very major problem. Both of these apps seem to just keep eating memory like there's no tomorrow. I just had FF crash om me with 180 Mb used showing in the task manager (and about 30% CPU). I don't seem to remember IE being as resource-heavy as this.

I'm assuming that these concerns will be addressed in a future release? I let the feedback agent do its thing, every time the app crashes, but I have no idea whether this problem can be fixed (I'm pretty sure that the app is written in Java after all).

 

[Mark Dubbelboer]

you know i've never noticed that before but my ff has a huge memory usage too.
i've never heard of anyone even noticing this before

 

[Patrick_L]

mine on the average is 10k more than IE. that's with a few RSS feeds and the weather extension too. funny how it still loads faster and outperforms IE overall.

 

[Mike Fassler]

mozilla has always been like that(memory intensive more so than IE),and prolly always will be like that. but it doesnt hurt its performance much at all.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Sure, it doesn't hurt the performance of Firefox, but it certainly affects the rest of the system if you leave it running (which I tend to do).

 

[Mike Fassler]

well of course its gonna eat up your memory if you just leave it runnin all the time, its on a windohs pc

 

[Greg*go]

If you compare memory usage for Firefox to IE, IE will almost always have less since IE is integrated into the OS, other processess will also take some of the burdens.

That being said, the developers of Firefox know there are memory leaks where the memory doesn't dump off after closing a tab. There was talk about wether they should address all the leaks before the 1.0 final release (now expected on Nov. 9), but I don't think that will happen. It is annoying, and if you check out the Firefox Forums (they're pretty busy today because the RC2 is expected to come out today, so you might not be able to access it now) and do a search for memory leaks you'll see quite a few people have noticed it and complained accordingly. I've been using the first 1.0 Release Candidate and have noticed my extensions don't load about 10% of the time. Now THAT'S annoying!

 

[Chris Bardon]

Actually, it's eating up memory because it's written in java.

It's not the overall memory usage that bothers me-I don't really care if FF starts off with more memory usage than IE, but I do care if that memory usage continues to grow like it does now. It would make sense that the problem is with closing off tabs though, since I tend to use a LOT of tabs.

 

[Mike Fassler]

hehe me too, just upon start up FF opens about 9 tabs for me

 

[Chris Bardon]

The forums did offer one suggestion actually. It seems that if you minimize the FF window and re-maximize, it frees a bunch of memory. Seems to actually work.

 

[Max Leung]

Hmm. My laptop would hang for 10 minutes or so after waking up from Hibernation...and I think I narrowed it down to Firefox. if I close all Firefox windows before closing the lid to put the laptop into hibernation, it wakes up almost instantly.

 

[Joshua Clinard]

No wonder my browsing experience is so bad. I'm think I'm gonna have to switch back to IE, pop-ups be dammed until I can get XP running with the pop-up blocker.

 

[Patrick_L]

um, i wouldn't go blaming FF on your "bad browsing experience" before you have actually narrowed it down to it being the culprit.

i have absolutely no problems with FF on either my laptop (512mb) or my desktop which is also 512mb. i've always got winamp running, 3 RSS feeds going, trillian pro up, and leave Outlook open on both machines while surfing and it's smooth for me.

:shrugs:

 

[Max Leung]

Yeah it's pretty hard to pin down. I'm guessing that some ad on a website or a plugin is causing problems in firefox. It's pretty complicated.

IE is okay, but Firefox is much easier to deal with...I love Firefox's intelligent popup stopper, whereas the SP2 version of IE blocks everything and is a PITA on some sites.

 

[Joshua Clinard]

Wow, that's the first time I have seen a product being critisized because it does it's job too well.

That's like saying you shouldn't use Brand X Virus Blocker because it blocks all the virus, instead of just most of them like Brand Y.

 

[nolesrule]

Not all pop-ups need to be blocked. In fact, there are many pop-ups that should not be blocked because they are tied to website functionality. Blocking all pop-ups is overkill.

 

[Patrick_L]

considering the lack of common sense and/or knowledge pertaining to popups and the dangers there-in for your average shmuck, i don't think it's overkill at all.

if you're about to fill out a form or some other functional popup within a certain site, i'm sure you're smart enough to click "allow popups".

 

[Max Leung]

Actually, Firefox will block all popups - the first time! If I click on the link again, Firefox will allow it to pop up (I think - I could be thinking of Google's popup stopper). Pretty smart.

 

[Carlo_M]

Firefox does something really neat: it lets you know that it blocked a popup and gives you a bar where you can change that setting *for the site* specifically if it is one of those sites that requires pop-ups be allowed.

 

[Joshua Clinard]

um, I believe IE is the one that does that. I have never seen a similar bar in Firefox, but then again I might have missed it.