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Mozilla finds a way to reduce Firefox memory usage
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has found that by running garbage collection more frequently on its Firefox web browser, memory usage can be significantly reduced.
Mozilla has had to deal with Firefox's memory usage concerns for years and even though it released Firefox 4 and Firefox 5 in the past few months, doubts still remain over just how lean the browser is. Now it seems that the clever lads at Mozilla have identified an issue with the Javascript engine in Firefox and devised a fix that, judging by testers' results, seems to have significantly reduced its memory utilisation.
Apparently Firefox uses 1MB chunks to keep long living system objects alive. The memory bloat some users were reporting was significant, including one instance where there was a 80 per cent drop in Firefox memory commitment using increased frequency of garbage collection.
Given Mozilla's rapid release schedule, the changes are not expected to be incorporated into Firefox until Firefox 7, as Firefox 6 is nearing its entry into the beta channel, though judging by the results, Mozilla would do well to get it included as soon as possible.
Should Mozilla ship future versions of Firefox with such an impressive decrease in resource demands, it will certainly attract the interest of those who have moved to other web browsers. µ
Tags: Software
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Garbage collection is for lazy and stupid programers, who have no clue how to manage resources. Like Java.
If resources are freed as soon as they are used, that won't be a concern.
That tells a lot about the quality of Mozilla development staff.
I am getting used to Chrome, FF crashes on the third tab every time and they do not seem to care writing them about it.
I find that keeps things nice and snappy. I used to have to do it every 5 days or less with 3.6 and earlier versions, 4.0 is already definitely better.
I would rather it use more ram than take more CPU cycles.
Upgrade or die people.
Firefox has had this memory leak for so long, I've had it use over 1GB of RAM before, and it's quite "normal" for it to use 400-800MB. Forget all this hoo-hah about rapid major version increments, get this memory leak fix rolled out!
Until Mozilla implement their solution you can use the "Show my windows and tabs from last time" option. You do this with the ""When Firefox Starts" drop down menu in Tools/Options/Main (or Tools/Options/Main).
When your PC slows down because of FF you can simply close the browser, re-open it - you get the same tabs back but, and you can check this with CTRL - ALT - DEL, FF memory usage drops dramatically.
This is the process that actually forms the basis of their solution ie their solution is to perform the above steps regularly and automatically.
If you are pleased with my comment, please google "Toad Tryouts" and visit my blog (lots of helpful stuff).
Oh dear, how long has it been since I abandoned the IE camp in favor for Firefox? And now? Despite all sentiments, old habits and whatever - Mozilla team seemed to choose the IE way; meaning breeding a huge, ugly and unusable monster. Sorry Firefox for getting this fat, I'm leaving.
So I should wait until Firefox 8 came out, when those damn freezing problems might've been fixed...? Hot damn.
I fixed it myself. I switched to Chrome.
argued repeatedly on bugzilla since FF 1.0 that "there is no bloat of memory". ALL the users told them about the horrendous mem usage and the devs said
"we don't see it". Now, that they see the migration to Chrome, they start to feel the heat. About time I'd say - although the people who moved over to chrome are probably lost forever.
It's taken so long. I currently have 2 tabs open and the browser is using 320MB.
Ludicrous.
NOT a complex page either, mostly text with a couple of images, about like the Inq, then it'd crash out. Tried it several times, was able to stop loading and see 47M was gone.