Why I am Dumping Firefox

NoScript in conjunction with adblock+ I find to be the worse culprits for memory usage.

Without them Firefox tops out usually under 300mb, with them I'm typically seeing 600-700mb being used. And this usage seems to grow as time goes by and my exception list grows.

That being said Firefox, much like Windows 7, releases that memory when something else asks for it. If I open Photoshop up and get it using 3gb or so Firefox will slim down to around 100mb but it also slows down as well from it.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case too. I run NoScript and Adblock+ with 20 tabs. They leak badly. I can't imagine Adblock being written efficiently.

FF starts around 300M. I have gigs of spare memory but once FF gets above the 800M-1GB mark, it just gets very sluggish even though I'm way below 40% total usage across all programs. I do have lots of random flash and tabs open but FF needs a restart every few days to reset back to the base 300M usage, where it's snappy again.
 
i don't like ff memory usage either, although it eats up less than 400mb ram.

it seems when i open a lot of tabs, then shut down all but one of the tabs, the memory usage still stays at 400. I just restart the browser to clear the memory.

anyone know if the memory usage decreases automatically if you close your tabs ?
I've never waited long enough.
 
My work computer is a lowly P4 3.0GHz w/ 2GB of RAM so I have run into some browsing times where Firefox is super slow that can usually be solved by just restarting Firefox.

At home, I use my laptop mostly (i5-520m, 6GB DDR3) and while Firefox runs just fine, I find that "plugin-container.exe" really uses up my CPU cycles, heats up my CPU and my fan goes on high. I've been just ending the process (killing flash ads mostly) and all is fine.

While I use Firefox almost exclusively, I may switch over to Chrome on my dog slow work PC.
 
I still have some issues with webpages being poorly coded and not rendering well, or at all, on firefox.

but 90 percent of the time everything is fine and I only use FF.
 
I got 8GB or RAM at home and 12GB at work, I didn't put it in the machines so that it can't be used. For all all care the browser can take up all available memory if no other app needs it, that what the memory is there for after all. Some people's kids, jeez.
 
I got 8GB or RAM at home and 12GB at work, I didn't put it in the machines so that it can't be used. For all all care the browser can take up all available memory if no other app needs it, that what the memory is there for after all. Some people's kids, jeez.

Nobody's disputing that unused RAM is wasted RAM. The problem with Firefox (and some of the addons) is memory leak.
 
imagesqtbnand9gctfs6k56qji8qpa.jpg

:confused:

Just because your system sucks doesn't mean everyone else's does. I just restarted my PC just to make sure it wasn't cached and FF4 loaded up with three tabs in about one second, and that was before my PC loaded all of the startup apps.
 
I used to be able to go a week without restarting my browser in Firefox 3, but Firefox 4 is up to 2 GB every morning when I get into work. That's with a measly 4 tabs open. However, I blame extensions more than the browser itself.

Even with Firefox being the memory hog that it is, I prefer it over Chrome and IE9. I can't live without my extensions.


Dude, I have some 40 odd tabs open in Firefox at the moment and I don't have nearly that much memory usage.
 
:confused:

Just because your system sucks doesn't mean everyone else's does. I just restarted my PC just to make sure it wasn't cached and FF4 loaded up with three tabs in about one second, and that was before my PC loaded all of the startup apps.

^this.

also with the article. Does anyone else seriously question his testing methodology? What sites? What add ons? are said sites optimized for ie? Poor article IMO.

Oh, and 15ish extentions, 20+ tabs inc youtube and soundcloud. 260 meg of ram used in FF.
 
Actually the writer does not have 512 MB of RAM as some mentioned, but probably 2 GB. Which is even worse for his technical skills than having 512 MB:
He says that Firefox' 231 MB use up half of his system memory. Whether he got that from the "Physical Memory: 54%" of the screenshot or because he computed that all 21 processes displayed in the screenshot represent 525 MB, this is totally wrong: According to the size of the vertical scroll bar, the guy has about 20 more user processes, and 40 more system processes. So there's at least another 500 MB of process usage not displayed, which would put his total memory at 2 GB, at 54% of total usage, and Firefox at about 12% of his "system memory," not half of it as he pretends.

The writer also mentions the "quantity of the various addons for Firefox" and the "Web Developer Toolbar," so I assume his Firefox' 231 MB include several add-ons and may not be representative. At the very least, it's totally unclear if it's a naked install with no add-ons.

And if he complains about Firefox using as little as 231 MB for 20 tabs, what would he say about my 600+ MB with 20 tabs too (10 in the App Tab, 10 other temporary pages) and usually multiple histories and refreshes for each tab. That's with AdBlock+ and NoScript, and dozens of YouTube videos on one main tab and several temp tabs. I was also downloading a 1.1 GB file at the time, but Firefox does not release any memory after the downloads complete, so I assume that the download feature is well optimized.

While I wouldn't abandon these add-ons and I have 4 GB of RAM which is more than sufficient for browsing, I still think this kind of memory usage is not justified and is just bad programming, most likely from the add-ons, but it's hard to dissociate Firefox from them when they are the very reason why I chose Firefox.
 
By the way, I have totally disabled plugin-container.exe since version 3, using the about:config settings page, not sure if this plays a role in my memory usage. I never experienced Flash crashes, so I didn't see the point of this extra sand-boxing process.
 
I only use FF these days out of habit. Certainly not because I believe it is more secure or faster or superior to Chrome/IE. I prolly will not install it on my next build at all. I'll most likely just use IE for the PCs/Laptops and Opera Mobile on the phones.
 
Lawl, since I posted around 2 hours ago (1.7GB), FF4 is now using over 2.2GB of memory. Nothing was opened, no links visited, no back button, it's just been sitting there idle. I have no extensions at all and no plug-ins in use. That's lame and just plain unacceptable for 2011. Buh-bye FailFox!
 
My computer is very overpowered.
I still hate firefox for being a resource hog.
Chrome is the only way to go these days unless you're forced to use IE by work.
 
My Firefox 4.0.1 uses about 400 - 450 on average (don't forget extensions) and I wouldn't change it for the world. If it needs that much, go ahead, use more if it must. I have 12GB so I'm not worried. If I could allocate more RAM for more performance, I would.


;-)

The guy from the article is goofy. You have to pay to play.



Lawl, since I posted around 2 hours ago (1.7GB), FF4 is now using over 2.2GB of memory. Nothing was opened, no links visited, no back button, it's just been sitting there idle. I have no extensions at all and no plug-ins in use. That's lame and just plain unacceptable for 2011. Buh-bye FailFox!

LOL... mine never does that...lol
Have fun!
 
hmm, right now I have 12 tabs opened in FF and using 325MB of memory... at times I might have 50-100 tabs using around 500-650MB of ram where I do see some slow down. I have about 5 addon.

My laptop specs: i3 340, 4GB dd3 ram, amd 5650 w/ 1GB dedicated memory run on Win & HomePrem w/ lean programs installed. AKA: it can play Crisis nicely on high settings.

Can't remember what version had the leaky memory problem... ver 2?

Guy is bitching about a 250MB drain from FF when his PC has a quad core w/ 8GB of RAM (is that his system? he said FF using half of his RAM? WTF, does he know what he is talking about?)
 
Just as a sidenote, that article writer appears to be using a machine with 1GB of RAM, and yet is supposed to be taken seriously as a tech writer? And then he states "Hello Chromium" which is the development version of Chrome? Chromium is in perpetual beta and suffers from far more potential memory issues than Firefox could ever dream of.

So he's dumped a stable release browser for a development build that updates multiple times per day.

Ok, that's enough for me: the guy's a tard.

Anyone else agree? Anyone?

Don't know if anyone can defend him.

Nobody's disputing that unused RAM is wasted RAM. The problem with Firefox (and some of the addons) is memory leak.

You've had memory leaks without any addons?
 
"Joe" re-edited his blog post to eliminate all references to the 50% statement and the incriminating task manager image. Also he deleted the comment where he states that his machine has 8GB of memory and that a browser shouldn't take up 25-50% of the memory.

Just deleted stuff without strikeouts to show what was there, and when he "added" more benchmarks, he put them as "updates".

What a loser.
 
One thing to note about Chrome is that it's VERY aggressive in pushing data out of apparent RAM. If you observe its memory usage while minimizing it, you'll see it goes down quickly. Firefox does this too but not as aggressively.

If you open Chrome clean with a dozen tabs saved, Chrome won't actually load all the pages into memory until you actually switch to the tabs at which point the process for that tab will balloon up.


With all that said, I have a half-dozen tabs open at all times and it uses less than 200mb RAM. Even when I open up another dozen or so tabs, it's still using less than 400mb.
 
FF4 is eating 750mb of ram right now, but no issues with it being sluggish. Nice thing about having a modern machine. Guess when you only had 256/512mb RAM, you would actually worry about free memory. Funny how you don't worry about that when you can get 8gb for $45 after rebate ;)
 
Memory usage? lol....

Buy some more RAM, it's cheap enough...
 
I like IE9 better than firefox or chrome.

I just tried Chrome for the first time ever because of this thread. Getting used to it. I used IE9 over FF, but the IE9 text rendering absolutely will not go back to IE8 style no matter how hard I try or what settings I change.

There is a lot to like in IE9.
 
So, I opened every bookmark I have (63) in new tabs to see what my memory usage was. It stopped climbing at 827MB.

I gotta say, I'm happy with that.
 
Don't know if anyone can defend him.



You've had memory leaks without any addons?

Not me, no. I'm just clarifying to the guy I quoted that we weren't discussing Firefox using RAM, but using an inappropriate amount of it.
 
my cusion was using google chorme, i kind of felt weird at first and took me 6 month before i tried it in my PC, i like it now, doesn't change much for me on either of platform but we'll see who has better future and my eyes will rock on their page.
 
So, we all agree the guy is an idiot. :D

He's changed his story and deleted what he originally said, as if it never existed (a shameful practice). He claims FF is a memory hog, using so much memory it slows his computer. Yet, FF reviews I've seen indicate that FF is one of the more memory efficient browsers. And, the memory usage he's reporting for his FF shouldn't be causing the lag he's complaining about (his FF is using less than 1/16 of his RAM, even less of his RAM is being used by FF if some of it is in a swap file).
 
I like IE9 better than firefox or chrome.

I just tried Chrome for the first time ever because of this thread. Getting used to it. I used IE9 over FF, but the IE9 text rendering absolutely will not go back to IE8 style no matter how hard I try or what settings I change.

There is a lot to like in IE9.

You see a lot of people around here say why would anyone use IE 9, I think a better question for most people would be why not? If you use need or want extensions of course FF and Chrome have much better support for those but beyond that there really isn't that much difference between FF 4, IE 9, and Chrome 152.6 or whatever version number it is at today. Personally I'm not a huge consumer of extensions and choose them sparingly as they can cause plenty of problems but they can be extremely useful. I'm just finding IE 9 to be faster and more stable than the other two on a vast array of hardware from the slowest device I use daily, an HP Slate 500 to the most powerful device I have my sig rig and a lot in between. From what I'm seeing Microsoft made a web great browser for Windows 6.x and tuned it for that platform while making it highly standards compliant, nothing more or less.

It's simply a back to the fundamentals approach for Microsoft and it was the right way to go. Let other people waste their time and resources creating cross platform browsers. Sure there's some money in web browsers but not that much and certainly it makes sense for Microsoft to create the best running browser they can for the latest Windows architecture.

At any rate it's good to have three solid browsers with different strengths and weaknesses, IE 9 is my bread and butter browser and just works but I have the latest versions of Opera, FF and Chrome installed on all of my Windows 7 devices as well if I ever need one of them.
 
People really need to realize that free/used memory really doesn't mean anything anymore. Modern operating systems assign and free memory as needed. Just because Firefox is taking up 200+MB now, doesn't mean it still will when an another application needs that memory.
 
You see a lot of people around here say why would anyone use IE 9, I think a better question for most people would be why not? If you use need or want extensions of course FF and Chrome have much better support for those but beyond that there really isn't that much difference between FF 4, IE 9, and Chrome 152.6 or whatever version number it is at today. Personally I'm not a huge consumer of extensions and choose them sparingly as they can cause plenty of problems but they can be extremely useful. I'm just finding IE 9 to be faster and more stable than the other two on a vast array of hardware from the slowest device I use daily, an HP Slate 500 to the most powerful device I have my sig rig and a lot in between. From what I'm seeing Microsoft made a web great browser for Windows 6.x and tuned it for that platform while making it highly standards compliant, nothing more or less.

It's simply a back to the fundamentals approach for Microsoft and it was the right way to go. Let other people waste their time and resources creating cross platform browsers. Sure there's some money in web browsers but not that much and certainly it makes sense for Microsoft to create the best running browser they can for the latest Windows architecture.

At any rate it's good to have three solid browsers with different strengths and weaknesses, IE 9 is my bread and butter browser and just works but I have the latest versions of Opera, FF and Chrome installed on all of my Windows 7 devices as well if I ever need one of them.

Many may have a bad taste in their mouths from the security swiss cheese that was IE6, and are uncomfortable about giving anything IE another try.

It is my humble opinion that Microsoft - despite recent improvements - still just don't get security.
 
Currently I've got Firefox 4 open with 2 windows, about 20 tabs (including ones with flash), it has been running for about a week now, and it's holding steady at about ~650mb. A newly opened Chrome with 9 tabs in 1 window is at 350mb. No slowdowns in either (I've never had Firefox slow down on me tbh, and it has been much more stable than Chrome)

People really need to realize that free/used memory really doesn't mean anything anymore. Modern operating systems assign and free memory as needed. Just because Firefox is taking up 200+MB now, doesn't mean it still will when an another application needs that memory.

No, that isn't how it works at all. If firefox shows it is using 650mb, that is because it *ASKED* for 650mb, and the OS cannot free that. What the OS can do, of course, is unload less used pages to disk, but the OS cannot assign/free memory to applications. Applications are the ones who request/free memory. There also aren't any signals from the OS to applications to indicate they should free memory - there are no "low memory" warnings sent to apps on desktop OSes.

That actually hasn't changed for about 20 years now.

Oh, and people don't seem to fully grasp what a "memory leak" actually is. Just because memory usage grows over time does *NOT* mean that it is leaking memory. Your history is growing, too, as is the amount of data it is caching. A leak is if the app "forgets" it has allocated memory. If the app still knows about it then it is not a leak - even if it is letting memory usage grow unchecked.
 
People really need to realize that free/used memory really doesn't mean anything anymore. Modern operating systems assign and free memory as needed. Just because Firefox is taking up 200+MB now, doesn't mean it still will when an another application needs that memory.

The "free memory as it's needed" part only applies to the caches that are run by the operating system itself. SuperFetch would be an example of that.
 
Computing on Demand has an editorial posted today called "Why I am Dumping Firefox." I figured you guys would have an opinion on this one. ;)



Not quite sure if the problem is his machine or a borked Firefox install. Or he could just have a recockulous amount of windows and tabs open.

I tried to duplicate because he talked about sometimes having as many as 20 tabs open on a window.

I started up 8 Firefox windows. On 6 of them I had an average of 7 tabs open. On 2 of them I had 27 tabs open. Each tab was open to a different site. Some were video sites (flash, HTML5, Silverlight, etc). Some were image dumps. Etc, etc.

So, with roughly 100 tabs through 8 windows, I was rocking a MASSIVE 820K. It'd surge a bit opening a new tab/window and browsing. But the memory usage always came back down in very short order.

My system:

C2Q 2.5Ghz
8GB DDR2
Win7 64-bit.

Plus I have an MSSQL server in the background eating just over 4GB of RAM.
 
If Chrome is better or not, I don't care. I love how it handles just from a UI stand point. It fits me to a T.

At least it earns a 100/100 on the Acid 3 test. Does it really matter? No... but at least it supports random stuff... regardless if Mozilla or Microsoft care.

Firefox started going down hill in the 2.x days. 3.x was dreadful and I had to move.
 
:confused:

Just because your system sucks doesn't mean everyone else's does. I just restarted my PC just to make sure it wasn't cached and FF4 loaded up with three tabs in about one second, and that was before my PC loaded all of the startup apps.

Just because you have an i7 doesn't mean you take it up the ass. :p
Sorry, my comment wasn't pejoration of Firefox, as it is the main browser on my desktop. People kept saying FF4, so my initial thought was Final Fantasy IV. Which has no problems with loading speed as far as I'm concerned!
 
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