[FireFox] Is it just me?

[Phantom Helix]

Ive been noticing that when using FF 3.5.6 on my Mac (10.6.2) that after a while of having it open and browsing the web that it can some times take up

30% or more of my total system memory (4gb), even if I Close all tabs/windows with the app still running, when I shutdown the app i get my memory % back.

Safari doesn't seem to get half that high no matter what I do with it or for how long.

here are my installed extensions,plugins and themes

[Madoshi]

it is the same way on Windows XP

having lots of eBay pages open seems to make the problem worse, for me

[Phantom Helix]

it is the same way on Windows XP

having lots of eBay pages open seems to make the problem worse, for me

I don't see this behavior on my Win 7 box

[Eice]

The standard excuse is to blame extensions and plugins. If you want features in Firefox, you have no right whatsoever to complain when it misbehaves one way or another.

[Madoshi]

i have never used Windows 7 long enough to say what Firefox is like on it

but on XP on my machine it can eat a gig and a half of memory just sitting there, yes even with all but one tab closed.

i believe it is caused by the history mechanism, the one that caches the last 10 closed tabs and the last 3 closed windows (by default) as well as the last 6 steps back and forward for a given tab.

thats up to 180 loaded websites worth of cache, and as far as i can tell, at least some of it stays in memory at all times.

[Phantom Helix]

The standard excuse is to blame extensions and plugins. If you want features in Firefox, you have no right whatsoever to complain when it misbehaves one way or another.

Sorry, but that was rather rude :cry:

Have any constructive thoughts, like maybe a particular extension I have installed that might be to blame?

And btw, this didn't happen prior to 3.5.6, just asking if anyone else had seen a similar problem and found a solution.

That is sort of the whole idea of what the forums are for ya know :p

[emmx]

I used to use Firefox all the time on my Mac (when I first started using Macs, for the first several months). Then one day I was playing around and setting up HDD monitors/Memory monitors/CPU usage monitors/etc. When I had the memory monitor open is when I started noticing how much memory Firefox was using. I tried a few different browsers for a few days to see if it was just the "standard" amount of a browser and it's just what I had to expect, but it wasn't. Firefox did eat a lot of memory. I've been using Safari since that discovery. I don't know if Safari used the least amount of memory out of what I tested, and that's not necessarily what I based my decision on. I was mainly attracted to the "Top Sites" feature in Safari.

So basically, yeah Firefox was a memory hog for me too so I stopped using it.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Safari is a memory hog as well - having run with 10 open tabs for the past 5 hours it's consuming about 378 MB of RAM on my system.

I use it anyway because a) it is faster than Firefox, b) better integrated into the OS and c) I stopped worrying about browser RAM usage.

[Eice]

You're wrong, you're ALL wrooooong, and the review says so! Lalalalala~ :rolleyes:

http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory

[Buio]

You're wrong, you're ALL wrooooong, and the review says so! Lalalalala~ :rolleyes:

http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory

Thanks for that. This is the second recent FUD thread about Firefox and memory.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Of course it isn't a fair comparison, I have an extra tab open in Firefox, and a whole bunch of extensions in Firefox that I don't have in Safari.

[Phantom Helix]

Thanks for that. This is the second recent FUD thread about Firefox and memory.

Sorry but this is the Mac forum lol

And I have absolutely no Fear, Uncertainty, or Doubt about FF.

This is a change from the previous version, my browsing has not changed but this has.

It is simply an observation of system resource usage changes. and 30% of 4gb is 1.12gb which is huge

And the fact that when closing all tabs and all windows with the app still running why it does not release this memory.

I did make this post to cry and whine about it, Simply asking if it was normal or if something was going wrong because this behavior had only recently showed itself

Kindly gfto

Edited January 4, 2010 by Phantom Helix

[Buio]

I did make this post to cry and whine about it, Simply asking if it was normal or if something was going wrong because this behavior had only recently showed itself

Kindly gfto

No you didn't, so I'm fine with that. I guess when others do not have the same problem, you should look for it in your configuration, setup or if you cannot solve it accept to use another browser.

I admit I missed it was in the Mac forum, as this is a Windows-site and the activity list does not show forum I though it was another PC thread.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Buio

[Phantom Helix]

I did didn't make this post to cry and whine about it, Simply asking if it was normal or if something was going wrong because this behavior had only recently showed itself

typo :p

[Cupcakes]

I'm really sorry to thread jack--but what are you using to skin Firefox? I really love what you had shown from your screenshots so I'm just curious to know how to replicate it. /end thread jack ;)

[Phantom Helix]

I'm really sorry to thread jack--but what are you using to skin Firefox? I really love what you had shown from your screenshots so I'm just curious to know how to replicate it. /end thread jack ;)

NASA Nightlaunch skin

lol it was highlighted in the themes window in my first post

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4908

[Udedenkz]

Run Firefox in safe mode (no add-ons or plugins or themes). If problem is still there, then it is the site (loading those 100+ MB YouTube videos for example). If problem is not there - track down which of the extensions caused it (start with disabling only a half of your extensions - this will tell you which half of your extension has the problem....).