I've had it with Firefox!

I'm moving on because of 'memory creep' which has plagued me since I started using using FF some 5 years ago and they have always denied that it did. Here's a screen pic of my taskman, it's gone from ~500MB yesterday and now up to 800MB as you can see with only the same 12 tabs open, I do have plenty of RAM(6GB) which is why I didn't change earlier, but this is just insane!

I'm going back to Maxthon or will try Chrome out, I've had enough!

BTW, this has been going on through 3 OS's but never this bad. I'm not a fickle person, but this is just too much!:confused

 

PaleMoon 5 open here for 9 hours on 44-55+ tabs, currently 47 for 713MB RAM.

Gotta be down to content in the tabs or a recent extension update? Give CleanMem a run.

 

Well, running that app got me down to 150MB which ballooned to 500MB in a few seconds and killing BBC and CNN. Now I killed all my tabs one by one and found that a big culprit was my TV generic guide site. Just look at my stats with just MG open, it's still increasing as I type this, upto 190MB now!.:confused Buh bye FF, I've spent way too much energy for you!

BTW, no extensions etc., just a basically default install. Upto 148 now with just MG from 120.

 

I'll go back to PaleMoon and see what happens there as they're basically clones. It's now at 157, unacceptable! Besides, why should I run a program to fix a longstanding issue with another program. BAH

 

FF is still my default browser, but updates have been hot and heavy as of late, the last for Mac machine issues, of which I am not a member. Running Version 4.0.1 on this rig, Like FF because of extensions, although QuickJava (1.7.5) is usually the only one I use. Lots of browser choices now, also like Opera, K-Meleon (Mozilla/gecko), or The WorldBrowser. Never cared much for Chrome or Safari, would rather use any version (6+) of IE than either of those. Just my OP. My FF mem use is 138 at the moment, only 2 tabs up. Explorer is next with 25, guess it is a hog, never thought about it much before.duck

 

Interesting. I don't really have a 'favorite' browser but keep FF, Chrome and IE9 shortcuts on the desktop at all times and use whichever takes my fancy or, if one has a problem with a site, either of the others, though Chrome has long been default.

Just tested all three with only MG open, and FF5 and Chrome12 are neck and neck at 102MB, but IE9 wins on memory usage by a country mile at 74MB. It is also the fastest, not by a bit but also by a mile. To be fair though, it also has the fewest addons, which must affect the results.

Both FF and Chrome are far slower on Win7 x64 here than they once were so I'm going to set IE9 as default for a while and see how it goes.

 

Apparently Mozilla is addressing memory leaks and therefore recognizes it. You'll have to wait until (stable) version 7 comes out. They're on a fast release - about 6 weeks for a new stable version) as you probably know, probably by the end of September or a bit later. From what I've read about the memory leaks is that Firefox *takes* memory according to the GB's a machine has available. Don't know how to explain it better though. As long as your machine is not crashing you should be fine. Mine with 2 tabs open takes abt 200.000 KB and since I have 2.5 GB it's not worrying me.

Here's a link in which it says that Mozilla is addressing the memory leakage in Fx 7 and how to fix the memory leaks although I think the fix may be only work temporarily. http://www.softwarecrew.com/2011/07...ox-to-v6-beta-v7-aurora-and-v8-nightly/#more-

This link is from Mozilla and their schedule: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases

 

Thanks for that oma but they've been spouting the same crap for 5 years! One would expect some improvement after these long years on this issue.rolleyes:confused

 

I don't see why this is a problem for you (using a few hundred MB if you have 6GB of RAM); does it have a negative impact on other applications?

Firefox is just using as much memory as it can to run efficiently. I have an old machine with 128MB RAM, and Firefox uses much less memory accordingly.

But it makes me wonder if there is a way to limit Firefox' memory usage.

 

How to limit memory use in Firefox. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak Article Was updated June 2011.

Another way is just to restart the browser according to what I've read.

 

Hi augie.

Found a couple of things that might be helpful:

Reduce Firefox Memory Consumption

This tweak seems to address that issue.

Reduce Firefox Memory Usage

 

I had the same problem with browsers taking up lots of resources. I have found one that uses less resources than firefox and opera.

Slimbrowser it uses system resources per each tab i had 10 tabs open and using 90,000k with slimbrowser just using 6,000k

Which currently is set as my default browser, well atleast for now unless something alot better comes along.

:-D

 

Typing was starting to get slowed along with posting/browsing getting slowed too. I was only up to %75 RAM use so that must mean FF itself was getting somehow bogged down, other stuff was not affected, that I could notice anyways.

Thanks for all the responses folks, I was really fed up yesterday but I'm feeling much better now.

 

I have been using Palemoon for a year or so and find it better than FF, i'ts faster and the memory creep is negligible.
Currently 197 with 12 tabs open.

 

Hmm, 7 tabs open ATM @ 190MB. I'll see what happens when I kill/restart FF.

EDIT: nOT MUCH CHANGE @ 172MB

 

Don't know if Memory Fox would be of any use to you or not.

 

Yeah, some websites seem to be memory and/or CPU hogs. I believe one cause can be heavy use of Flash. And, this can be true for various browsers, per my experience.

In my Windows 7 system, I keep the CPU Meter gadget displayed on my desktop. Interesting to see the meter fluctuate as different websites are opened or closed. CPU Meter is the first gadget mentioned in a article at http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista/tp/vistagadgetssu.htm

 

Yup, I've got the same CPU gadget but it's useless as my CPU is always at %100 due to my folding anyways. It's a good gadget man, along with the RAM one.

 

Have you tried the FireFox extension FlashBlock?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/

I had one sign-in webpage that had 6 flash ads and it was using so much CPU that it would take 5 seconds for every letter to appear as I was signing in. I tried using AdBlock+ and that worked at first but they would change the ad and I guess that changed the address so AB+ didn't block it then. FlashBlock fixed it.
You can permanently enable flash on any site you want like YouTube

"Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content."

 

I've been testing Chrome now for the last week and it's doing fine. Yes, it doesn't have the customization capabilities that FF does as oma pointed out to me here but then I don't think I need all that either. I've only ever had two FF addons/plugins, a spellchecker and downloadhelper for videos, that's it. Chrome has the spellchecker covered but I can't seem to find a downloader for videos. At any rate FF is still on my machine so that's covered too.

ATM, I have 15 tabs open and using 450MB, yesterday it was upto 600MB without missing a beat whereas FF would be useless by now. Chrome is simplistic but I like that too, FF just had too many settings for me to learn and the install was almost always all default.

I'm going to go back to Maxthon next week to see what has changed in there from 7 years ago. Hehehe, I can't even remember why I dumped it for FF in the first place.:-o I was pretty much a n00b back in those days.:-D

I'm just waiting for oma to come in here and lambaste Chrome again.:-D

 

Here you go: http://www.chromeextensions.org/category/music-videos-photos/

Nah, I won't take the bait.

 

I'm finding that the best browser is to have all three on my desktop - IE9, Chrome 12 and FF5. Chrome is my default, but I use the others as it suits. None of them is best at everything.

 

Interesting, I just read this thread and checked myself. I've got ~10 tabs open in FF5, and it's using 800MB RAM. However, I have 12GB, so I'm not overly concerned. I don't reboot the computer for days at a time, or log off (lock/switch user, yes, but don't log out), and I leave FF open ALL the time. I also have one tab that's mostly Flash, and a few of the tabs are Facebook with its chat and whatnot in it (honestly, I'm not sure if that's Flash, Java, or what... I could look in the page source code if I really cared enough).

The only times I experience performance issues are when my internet's being painfully slow due to the outrageous amount of people they have on the DSL connection in the area. Peak times = slow internet. It APPEARS as if it's the program bogging, but it's actually the internet speed.

I also have several extensions, including Adblock Plus, Greasemonkey, etc.

SR Iron is installed on my wife's netbook (the better "Chrome"), and it's installed on the desktop as well. It seems to run better on the netbook than FF does, as I believe it is lighter on system resources in general. If you're looking at using Chrome, I'd highly suggest SR Iron. It looks like Chrome, etc... just is better than Chrome overall. The official site has a FAQ with why it's better than Chrome.

 

Here's some info about SRWare Iron compared with Chrome: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

 

That would be the official site's FAQ I was referring to.:-D

There's more crap Chrome has that I don't like, but I don't remember where I read about it and don't care enough to find it. If people insist on using Chrome, then whatever. You just won't find ME using it. Ever.

 

Thank you for that.

Well said indeed

So, basically, you run FF the same way I did, on a good machine too, except for the 'lock/switch user' which I've never used.

It is indeed interesting as my FF would bog down not only in internet speed(I have a good 8Mbps connection which never slows during peak times) but would also severely lag when I'm typing up a post and the letters showing up on screen in bunches and that's not internet related. This has been going on for the last 5 years through 5 computer builds, from a Venice 3000+, an X2 3800, a Q6600 and the current builds that are in my sig along with three different OS's. I'm :confused to say the least.

Perhaps the default install is my nemesis and there's a setting that will make this work but after 5 years of trying to solve this issue I'm done even though I really like FF. I'll try the lock/switch user approach later, only thing left but still I have tons of memory left when it bogs down. Thanks for the input and SR Iron has been put on my to-do list.

 

I doubt locking/switching Windows user accounts has anything to do with the issue. I just mentioned that as when my wife gets on her Windows account, my FF isn't closed, and she opens a separate instance of it to use it. I literally never close Firefox... heh.

The only actual performance issue I have, which is more of a programming "bug" I think, is that the extension I use and like very much, MultiLinks (allows quick opening of several links at a time in multiple tabs by drawing a box around everything you want to open with the right mouse key) won't work until a page is completely loaded, even if I can see the links before the page is finished loading. It's annoying, but again likely just something in the extension coding.

My actual internet speed slows down significantly during peak usage times ever since a deployed unit returned to the post. Apparently, there's a LOT of online gamers in the crowd now, or something. It's not just FF that's slow. All of my browsers and other internet applications slow down significantly during these times. It sounds like you have separate issues.

I always do a default install, and change preferences in the options. I do have the settings such so that it appears with the "old" FF3 look, though I doubt the GUI alteration would affect performance.

A few of my specs to understand why the issue doesn't bother me in the least:

i7 980X
12GB DDR3-1600
Intel X-25M 120GB SSD system drive
Nvidia GTX 470
Windows 7 x64 SP1 (you DO have the service pack installed, I'm assuming?)