Why are Firefox programmers making it a memory eater?

[Pengwuino]

My LORDY LORD, I'm running firefox right now with Gmail up, facebook, and a random website up. On facebook I am playing one of the stupid flash 10 games. I go to check my task manager and firefox.exe is taking up 600MB OF MEMORY! Seriously? I even check out process explorer and yes, 600MB.

Have all the idiotic programmers in the world seen that memory prices have gone down substantially over the last few years and decided that they must make sure their programs take up as much memory as humanly possible? This is unbelievable! I have actual PC games that take up less memory while in use! IMA BOUT TO SLAP A FOOL!

PENGWUINO EAT PROGRAMMERS![/size]

oh yah... uhm... I guess I don't really hvave a question... just venting...

Wait i have a question, where do I find where these programmers live?

 

[phyzmatix]

...a random website up...

Random hey? That what you call 'em?

Maybe it's watching movie clips in HD that does it

 

[Pengwuino]

Random hey? That what you call 'em?

Maybe it's watching movie clips in HD that does it

"No, baby, it's spyware, I didn't want to see that hotter younger version of you take her clothes off".

 

[martharon]

I got to agree firefox just eats the memory and causes lots of trouble. the current problem i am facing with firefox is it crashes very often.

 

[Pattonias]

What is your temporary stash set to? How many add-ons are installed?

 

[JasonRox]

I never used Firefox because even after the first time it was evident that it was no good.

People just started using them because of some trend and people want to be "different".

America founder of pseudo-individualism.

Anyways, are you still using it now?

 

[Pengwuino]

What is your temporary stash set to? How many add-ons are installed?

I have no idea, what is it and how can I control it? :)

I disabled all the add-ons that didnt seem crucial. I left stuff like AVG's part of it, java crap, flash crap, etc, but turned off all the nice little addons like download helpers and such. Anything that seemed necessary to actually run content I might normally run across was left on. I'm amazed that other people have this problem and i tisnt just some massive memory leak on my computer (read as : not amazed at all)

 

[turbo]

Try Google Chrome. Very low overhead, comes up fast, and unlike IE or FF, it doesn't keep booting me out of PF chat. It's pretty bare-bones, as browsers go.

 

[Saladsamurai]

I never used Firefox because even after the first time it was evident that it was no good.

People just started using them because of some trend and people want to be "different".

America founder of pseudo-individualism.

Anyways, are you still using it now?

I use it because I like it. To a non-computer geek, the choices are usually between the browsers we have heard of. This leaves IE or FF and to me, clearly FF is superior (at least in comparison too whatever edition of IE we have at work).


But now that you mention it, are lots of people using it? 'Cause if so, I need to switch to something less popular 'cause I'm like a non-conformist and stuff...

 

[Pattonias]

To check if it is a memory leak, you can restart the computer and then restart firefox. If firefox is not using the same amount of memory that it used doing the same things as before then it could possibly be a memory leak.

To check for spy-ware you can use spy-bot (http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html" ) it is free and very reliable. Once you download it let it scan your system. It will tell you what, if any, spy-ware you have and allow you to remove it.

If none of this works, let me know and I can tell you how to check your internet cache and see if that is the problem.

 

[mgb_phys]

Firefox by default caches the last 8 pages for each tab bar you have open, and it pretty much never releases memory that it has grabbed for this. Apparently this isn't a bug it's a 'feature'.

The argument is that most users aren't using the memory for anything else anyway, if your new home computer has 4Gb of Ram and you are only browsing the web - why not speed up the browsing by using as much ram as possible. when you start another program the Firefox cache will be swapped out to disk anyway.

If you use your computer for real work just restart firefox to clear it's memory, or there are a bunch of complex tweaks you can do see http://www.thinktechno.com/2007/10/...on-how-to-reduce-the-memory-usage-in-firefox/

Or you could just use Opera like all us cool kids ;-)

 

[Santa1]

Opera for windows and firefox for linux. :)

 

[FredGarvin]

I think Firefox is great. Granted it is a memory hog, but then again, I am not of the ADD generation that has to have 15 tabs going with my 3D shooter game, i-tunes and movie player all going at the same time. Also, I can count the number of times FF has crashed on me on one hand and those were due to pages with heavy scripts written for IE. Once I restarted and opened them in an IE window in FF (a very cool add on by the way) there were no issues.

With all of the customizations and flexibility Firefox gives you, I'll take the memory suck up any day over using IE or the like. I still have to try Chrome or Opera though.

 

[Chi Meson]

What's this "crash" people talk about? do your computers fall over?

 

[DaveC426913]

Try Google Chrome. Very low overhead, comes up fast, and unlike IE or FF, it doesn't keep booting me out of PF chat. It's pretty bare-bones, as browsers go.

Yeah. So was [strike]Netsc[/strike] ... er ... Firefox when it first started. Until it realized that mere goodwill and warm fuzzies from its loyal following weren't going to keep it competitive...

 

[Dembadon]

... Or you could just use Opera like all us cool kids ;-)

I prefer Links.

 

[vociferous]

Firefox tends to keep a lot of memory cache, so the more tabs you have open and the more history of the current session, the more memory it eats. A couple of things that help are tweaking firefox's settings (pretty much their equivalent of the registry) or creating a new profile (I had to do that because on my old profile, which I have used for many years on many different re-installations of windows, the memory usage would often top 1GB, and even with tweaking, there was nothing I could do). Now Firefox uses less than 500MB most all the time.

 

[martharon]

What's this "crash" people talk about? do your computers fall over?

Crash means all of a sudden you will get an error report saying firefox has encountered an problem and needs to close. if you in the middle of some work you can even have time to bookmark it or you cannot proceed further unless you give ok for that crash report pop up and the firefox will close. we have to start another firefox browser to do our work.

does anyone else have encountered similar problem?
how did you rectify it?

 

[FredGarvin]

What's this "crash" people talk about? do your computers fall over?

Crash means all of a sudden you will get an error report saying firefox has encountered an problem and needs to close.

Main Entry: sar·casm
Pronunciation: \ˈsär-ˌka-zəm\
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French sarcasme, from Late Latin sarcasmos, from Greek sarkasmos, from sarkazein to tear flesh, bite the lips in rage, sneer, from sark-, sarx flesh; probably akin to Avestan thwarəs- to cut
Date: 1550

1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm

 

[Santa1]

I prefer Links.

Yes Lynx/Elinks uses very, (very, very) little memory. =)

 

[sganesh88]

@Saladsamurai
Lol.. :-D (I don't like the grin smiley in PF. Should i convey my grievance in the feedbackforum? )

 

[Chi Meson]

Main Entry: sar·casm
Pronunciation: \ˈsär-ˌka-zəm\
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French sarcasme, from Late Latin sarcasmos, from Greek sarkasmos, from sarkazein to tear flesh, bite the lips in rage, sneer, from sark-, sarx flesh; probably akin to Avestan thwarəs- to cut
Date: 1550

1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm

3: a knee-jerk reaction from Mac users when conversation drifts to topics of Windows problems.

 

[Pythagorean]

3: a knee-jerk reaction from Mac users when conversation drifts to topics of Windows problems.

 

[Mk]

Updating you about 10 years, Pythagorean:

 

[Dembadon]

Updating you about 10 years, Pythagorean:

This graphic doesn't always indicate a crash. I can count on one hand how many times a program has completely crashed in the past year of using Macs.

The following error is experienced by me and many co-workers on a (sometimes) weekly basis:

 

[Chi Meson]

Updating you about 10 years, Pythagorean:

"The Spinning pizza cutter of DEATH!"

OK, it happens. Now and then. Occasionally. With MS applications mostly, and that's a "freeze," anyway, isn't it?

 

[Chi Meson]

I almost miss that one. A crash was never so cute!

 

[Evo]

This graphic doesn't always indicate a crash. I can count on one hand how many times a program has completely crashed in the past year of using Macs.

The following error is experienced by me and many co-workers on a (sometimes) weekly basis:

In the past 20 years using Windows, numbers of crashes...ZERO.

I'm absolutely serious. But I don't download questionable crap on my home computer that might not work right. At work, everything is made to run on Windows, so no problems. So, it's not Windows, it's the poorly written apps that cause problems with other apps.

 

[Dembadon]

In the past 20 years using Windows, numbers of crashes...ZERO.

I'm absolutely serious. But I don't download questionable crap on my home computer that might not work right. At work, everything is made to run on Windows, so no problems. So, it's not Windows, it's the poorly written apps that cause problems with other apps.

The error I posted happens when performing things as trivial as changing one's IP address or navigating 'Control Panel'.

I must say that I am quite envious of your Windows experience.

 

[turbo]

I have used CP/M, DOS (all kinds!) Apple, Mac, Windows, etc, etc, and have been the IT specialist in a large medical practice in which DOS and Windows had to coexist on a Novell network (no mean feat!). All hardware and OS combinations have their strengths and weaknesses, including costs, compatibilities, available applications, etc.

The sniping (usually Mac vs MS) reminds me of guys with pickup trucks who buy window decals featuring a urinating cartoon brat. The only difference is in which TM decals are at the receiving end of the insult (Chevy, Ford, Dodge...). Sad.

Disclaimer: I am running XP SP3 on a Dell that is pushing 5 years old. It is protected with AVAST, and I never see a BSOD. The biggest hassle I have (maybe a couple of times a month) is that I have to shut down Chrome because some bogus alert will come up when visiting a web-site telling me that I need to have my system scanned. The "alerts" are designed such that ANY response results in mal-ware trying to install itself. As a musician, I often seek out tablature, lyrics, etc, and it seems that music fan-sites are frequently contaminated with hijack-software.

 

[Evo]

The error I posted happens when performing things as trivial as changing one's IP address or navigating 'Control Panel'.

I must say that I am quite envious of your Windows experience.

Never, ever happened to me. There must be something you've downloaded that is causing problems. Or there is something wrong with your computer. Seriously. The stability of Windows is one of the main reasons why huge corporations use it.

They also don't allow employees to install poorly written software that could cause problems.

Let me guess, you have all kinds of crap downloaded, right?

 

[vociferous]

In the past 20 years using Windows, numbers of crashes...ZERO.

I'm absolutely serious. But I don't download questionable crap on my home computer that might not work right. At work, everything is made to run on Windows, so no problems. So, it's not Windows, it's the poorly written apps that cause problems with other apps.

Hardware problems were a major source of windows crashes, primarily badly-written drivers. Macs had less problems because they only supported a very small amount of hardware, most of which Apple wrote the driver's for. With newer windows versions, this is not as big of a problem because drivers have to be certified by Microsoft. When hardware fails though, whether you are on a mac or PC, the operating system is going to crash; the only difference is that the Mac's screen is not blue.

From my user experience, the old versions of the Mac OS (pre-OS-X) were the most crash-prone operating system I ever used, even more unstable than Windows 95.

Windows XP was pretty stable, and the 64 bit version of Vista I never had a crash that was not due to hardware failures.

 

[Dembadon]

Never, ever happened to me. There must be something you've downloaded that is causing problems. Or there is something wrong with your computer. Seriously. The stability of Windows is one of the main reasons why huge corporations use it.

They also don't allow employees to install poorly written software that could cause problems.

Let me guess, you have all kinds of crap downloaded, right?

Nope.

We are using company issued laptops and desktops. I have no need for anything on my machine other than what allows me to do my job; so no, I don't have much downloaded at all.

Here is the list things I have installed:

-putty
-tftpd
-3CDaemon
-AVG
-MS Office
-ImgBurn (Disc creation software, mainly used for creating .iso images)
-Adobe Reader and Flash Player

That's it. This is a fresh install without all the preinstalled junk from the manufacturer (Lenovo). Also, I am in no way attempting to bash Windows users for their OS choice, I am simply saying that Macs have been more reliable in my experience; I have been using Windows since 3.1 (on an old 386) and still continue to use a PC at home. As turbo-1 said, each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses and my Mac experience has been quite favorable.

 

[turbo]

Never, ever happened to me. There must be something you've downloaded that is causing problems. Or there is something wrong with your computer. Seriously. The stability of Windows is one of the main reasons why huge corporations use it.

They also don't allow employees to install poorly written software that could cause problems.

Let me guess, you have all kinds of crap downloaded, right?

When I was network administrator at a large auction house, that was a MAJOR problem. People would ignore guidelines and rules and download all kinds of ill-behaved crap, then whine to me when their computers went belly-up. It was a private company loaded with relatives (rampant nepotism), and those "special" employees always seemed to think that downloading streaming music players, automatic wallpaper-changers, animated cursors, and other crap was harmless, after being specifically told NOT to do it.

And you're right. If the Windows installs are clean, with only minimal applications installed (the stuff you need to do your job), such a network can be extremely stable and easy to maintain. When you've got some rogues slipping "harmless" crap onto their machines, that's when the trouble starts. The people that downloaded media players, etc could have brought in personal music players and ear-buds, etc - the company had very open rules regarding that kind of thing. Instead, they'd download stuff that had not been cleared or approved. One young lady managed to contaminate our network with a virus that corrupted and ruined jpg files. Luckily, we found evidence of it and stopped it, reloaded our image files via backup tapes, etc. In the meantime, our photography department had to work overtime to re-create the images lost between infection and detection.

 

[Evo]

Nope.

We are using company issued laptops and desktops. I have no need for anything on my machine other than what allows me to do my job; so no, I don't have much downloaded at all.

Here is the list things I have installed:

-putty
-tftpd
-3CDaemon
-AVG
-MS Office
-ImgBurn (Disc creation software, mainly used for creating .iso images)
-Adobe Reader and Flash Player

That's it. This is a fresh install without all the preinstalled junk from the manufacturer (Lenovo). Also, I am in no way attempting to bash Windows users for their OS choice, I am simply saying that Macs have been more reliable in my experience; I have been using Windows since 3.1 (on an old 386) and still continue to use a PC at home. As turbo-1 said, each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses and my Mac experience has been quite favorable.

Have you removed the programs other than Adobe and MS Office to see which is causing the problem?

I'm not kidding when I say I have never had a problem...ever. And I'm older than dirt and probably used computers before you were born. I worked for AT&T in the 70's in data networks, so I used computers before Microsoft.

I know all of the security problems, been through all of the Microsoft issues, but never had a crash due to the OS.

 

[turbo]

As turbo-1 said, each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses and my Mac experience has been quite favorable.

I had never been a fan of Commodore, but a friend of mine who is a musician and graphics artist impressed the hell out of me with stuff he could make on his Amiga. Not too long after, a company in coastal Maine used banks of Amigas in parallel (an array called the Video Toaster) to create the eye-popping graphics used in Babylon 5. Every computing device has a use, and some of them are really great at what they do. My first "portable" PC was a suitcase with a tiny green CRT, running CP/M. It was pricey, but since I was writing and distributing accounting application software at the time, it was a necessary expense.

 

[Chi Meson]

From my user experience, the old versions of the Mac OS (pre-OS-X) were the most crash-prone operating system I ever used, even more unstable than Windows 95.

Virtual memory was the issue. If the pre-OSX Mac did not have the maximum possible RAM installed, then it had "issues."

I'm working on my brand-new 24" iMac. It's my fourth iMac since 1999. I'm biased. Sue me.

 

[Moonbear]

Are we talking about software crashing (i.e., program shutting down unexpectedly), computer freezes where it becomes unresponsive, or computer crashes (i.e., blue screen of death)? I've only gotten those blue screens of death on versions of windows older than XP and maybe once on XP. Freezes happen as soon as I open too many things at once on a PC. I haven't had freezes on my mac. Software crashes I get on both, though with less frequency on my mac than I did on the PC, and yeah, pretty much limited to the browsers and Flash intensive sites.

Though, I'm not pleased with something in my current Mac...they've apparently monkeyed around with the video chips and something is not working right when running Snow Leopard and connecting to an external monitor for several of us who got new mac laptops around the same time. Our IT guy hasn't found a fix, and doesn't think there is one yet, but said he's found that a lot of people are having the same issues. It's the first time I've had a real problem with a Mac, but then, I also don't usually upgrade my OS so early after release for any computer. This time I did because it provided better functionality between Mail and our university mail servers so I could stop using Entourage, which I despise (that's supposed to be the Mac version of Outlook, but it's not and loses a lot of the functionality that Outlook offers).

I do suspect a lot of it really has to do with hardware too, and not necessarily Windows. I've seen some people with PC laptops that really don't have issues. The problem I have is I work for a university, which means I have to order computers from the places we have educational contracts, so basically, they force everyone to buy Dell P(O)Cs. The hardware is horridly unstable in those. If they actually let us buy quality hardware, the PCs would probably be comparable in cost to Macs, but for now, our choices are Dell or Mac, so of course it makes sense to go with Macs, which usually work better than Dells (one new video chip notwithstanding).

 

[Dembadon]

Have you removed the programs other than Adobe and MS Office to see which is causing the problem?

Out of that list, AVG is the only one that I could see being the program which is crashing Windows Explorer. I did not have any issues with AVG in XP (SP3). In Vista, though, there have been quite a few occasions where AVG would stop responding and require me to perform the 'Ctrl+Alt+Del' -> 'End Task' routine.

putty is the telnet/ssh client we used to access our infrastructure devices and does not run in the background. 3CDaemon and tftpd are both file transfer programs we use and also do not run in the background. ImgBurn has never crashed on me.

In other words, the error occurs when the programs I mentioned are not up and running and each of those programs (aside from AVG) do not have running processes which could fail.

I hate the thought of having to go back to Norton.

 

[Moonbear]

Virtual memory was the issue. If the pre-OSX Mac did not have the maximum possible RAM installed, then it had "issues."

Oh, I completely agree, Macs in the pre-OSX era were horrendous, and never came with enough RAM to run right. Of course, that was in the days of Windows 3.11 and 95-98. I never had problems with Windows 3.11, and that was back when there was only one shared computer for an entire lab of people, so if there was a chance of someone screwing up a computer, it was doomed to happen. I started having PC problems with Windows 95, and then Windows 98 came out and got even worse. That's around when Mac OSX came out (or was it Windows 2000 it came out with?...it was sometime near Y2K) and the balance for me tipped in favor of Macs. I think most of the issues I had with Win XP were hardware, not software related, but Macs were still consistently stable for me. I have never tried Vista...some seem to love it, some seem to hate it, and I got the impression it was highly dependent on what peripherals you were using with it. I've heard some positive comments from people installing Windows 7 though, while I'm now starting to have these issues with Snow Leopard that I hope get fixed soon. So, who knows?

I know which platform I LIKE using best, but in terms of performance, I do switch back and forth between Macs and PCs (since I have a functioning PC laptop, I didn't bother to take up space installing Windows on my Mac) and use each for the applications they are strongest for. For working with lots of photos and images, I prefer the Mac. For crunching data, I use the PC.

 

[turbo]

I hate the thought of having to go back to Norton.

Norton sucks, and AVG is not a lot better. Get AVAST and be happy. The development team will stream you new threat definitions and/or functionality daily or more often. They are right on top of things. Please try AVAST (and this goes for everybody reading this thread!). It is top-quality protection with real-time updates. It is free for personal use, and if you want to use it professionally, it will still cost you less than commercial AV programs that do less in terms of protecting you against new types of threats.

 

[turbo]

Virtual memory was the issue. If the pre-OSX Mac did not have the maximum possible RAM installed, then it had "issues."

I'm working on my brand-new 24" iMac. It's my fourth iMac since 1999. I'm biased. Sue me.

Can we settle out of court? A class-action suit could bankrupt you.

 

[Dembadon]

Norton sucks, and AVG is not a lot better. Get AVAST and be happy. The development team will stream you new threat definitions and/or functionality daily or more often. They are right on top of things. Please try AVAST (and this goes for everybody reading this thread!). It is top-quality protection with real-time updates. It is free for personal use, and if you want to use it professionally, it will still cost you less than commercial AV programs that do less in terms of protecting you against new types of threats.

I'll take you up on the AVAST recommendation. Thanks for the info.

 

[turbo]

I'll take you up on the AVAST recommendation. Thanks for the info.

You won't regret it. The AVAST team is top-notch! They actually prevent intrusions and damage, as opposed to some folks that want you to pay for remediation and clean-up after the fact.

 

[Pythagorean]

I almost miss that one. A crash was never so cute!

Yeah, one of my fonder elementary school computer memories.

So did all schools move over to PC, or was it always mac for elementary and high school, PC's for college? Or is it completely up to each institution?

 

[Sorry!]

Yep no problems with Vista been running it on my laptop for over a year with 0 problems... sometimes things are annoying like the 'do you want to run this' after clicking yes already to basically the same question... ACTUALLY there was one problem I had. Occured about 6 months ago... I was changing my password to my laptop and I apparently made a typo... twice (once in the password and once in the re-type password) and I couldn't figure out what the typo was I tried everything. So I had to reinstall fresh windows vista :(

I like macs but windows in my opinion is a much better OS

 

[Pythagorean]

Yep no problems with Vista been running it on my laptop for over a year with 0 problems... sometimes things are annoying like the 'do you want to run this' after clicking yes already to basically the same question... ACTUALLY there was one problem I had. Occured about 6 months ago... I was changing my password to my laptop and I apparently made a typo... twice (once in the password and once in the re-type password) and I couldn't figure out what the typo was I tried everything. So I had to reinstall fresh windows vista :(

I like macs but windows in my opinion is a much better OS

Windows has the monopoly on the cool games for PC. Pretty much the only reason I stick to MS.

 

[martharon]

The firefox i am using is getting crashed if i open more than 5 tabs. if i see the memory usage in task manager its showing firefox is the one which is sucking too much of it.
i have fully removed firefox and using opera.

 

[Sorry!]

Well I checked out my own firefox memory usage... I have a few of those add-ons installed and I noticed that it's only about double what Internet Explorer uses but internet explorer has a lot of hard faults (page faults) and firefox had 0 over the time i was watching...

I'm running it on my laptop AMD64 X2 so 2 CPUs about 1.9GHz
and I have 4 gigs of ram
running on windows vista home just installed not to long ago I always have my email running, msn, office onenote, and AVG anti-virus.

I never have any problems with Firefox or Vista in anyway...

 

[Pattonias]

Yep no problems with Vista been running it on my laptop for over a year with 0 problems... sometimes things are annoying like the 'do you want to run this' after clicking yes already to basically the same question... ACTUALLY there was one problem I had. Occured about 6 months ago... I was changing my password to my laptop and I apparently made a typo... twice (once in the password and once in the re-type password) and I couldn't figure out what the typo was I tried everything. So I had to reinstall fresh windows vista :(

I like macs but windows in my opinion is a much better OS

I actually did the exact same thing a few years ago. Oddly enough an IT friend of mine was able to hack the admin account with a miniOS version of Linux designed for exactly that purpose. As excited as I was at his ability to get me back into my computer, I was a little unnerved at the ability of doing this existing and being so readily available. He said that he actually had to use this program all the time for different companies with people who had a habit of locking themselves out of there computer that had high level access (other IT people). He even had a small thumb drive that allowed him to simply plug it in and start it up through the bios. It was like watching a spy movie.