Meet Firefox 4.0.1

[inactive]

that's what i mean by themortalkombat.com website eating more and more ram. it will keep going higher and higher to even if i close those sites.

only way to get it back to normal levels is to restart firefox 4 beta 8. (does same with Firefox v3.6)

[ambiance]

Any news on when this bug is going to be fixed?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Whenever Adobe get around to it. They have up until the final though, so there's no real reason for them to rush out a fix.

[bogas04]

haha! :p i faced it with new profile too

Steps :

Open new window

Close it

You see "save tabs , close tabs , cancel"

OR

Click Fb Share on a youtube video (after clicking share)

close the window that opens up (dialog window)

You see same thing

K found it !HTML5 Video and Interoperability has been causing that problem , moral : never trust microsoft addons for firefox (i knew something must be wrong! :| )

i don't think it's just him.

certain sites, namely 'www.themortalkombat.com' (the forums there etc) , seem to eat more and more ram the more you refresh the pages and it just keeps going higher and never seems to free any ram back up. that's one site i noticed there definitely seems to be a ram issue with.

other than that site... i seem to be fine for the most part although ram does seem to climb up if you got your browser open for a while as i am around 323MB as i type this with 10 tabs open. (i am sure my browser been running for roughly a 24hours off the top of my head with quite a few random site loads)

p.s.it even does it (i.e. the ram issues) with the stable Firefox v3.6.

strangely , after removing above addon , and testing firefox with HTML5 Bizzard , Santa's Workshop and a 720p youtube video , it doesnt go beyond 320mb , i agree the browser UI is lagging as hell right now , i am typing this while testing and its really laggy , but the video is playing smooth , and k now i am opening the mortal kombat site, its still under 400mb, i bet it is the addon . :|

[bogas04]

You can try disabling Hardware Acceleration in the Options and restart Firefox. Not sure if it will fix your problem since it only froze on a cold start for me but maybe it's worth a try.

There already is a bug that talks about Firefox freezing on cold start with Direct2D enabled so i hope it will be fixed soon.

freezing in a while may depend on many things

1) Sync updates

2) Addon/Search Engine updates

3) Hardware Acceleration conflicts

4) Dirty Profile , try fresh new

EDIT: sorry i quoted wrong person :/

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

DirectWrite is slowing things down due to how it initialises fonts, it'll effect any app using it (including IE9, although that has the benefit of being pre-loaded), so hopefully MS will fix it (along with the "crazy sub-pixel colours" issue)

[max2]

Firefox 4 looks like it is turning out to be really nice but for now I can wait a few more months! Hopefully by then it is fresh and polished! I keep wondering how many add-on developers are going to abandon their work ? Hopefully not to many. We all know the main add-ons that will never happen to thankfully. At least not currently.

[Auroka]

Hmm, I've been wanting to use Firefox 4 for awhile now.

Is b8 stable enough to ditch 3.6? :/

[PNWDweller]

It is becoming more stable, but it depends on what plugins you are wanting to use.

I use a greasemonkey script for example which fails in Beta 8, but works perfectly in 3.6 so I am staying with 3.6 until that resolves in a later build. But, otherwise, if you don't use plugins, I would suggest trying it out to see if it works stable enough for you. I used to really dig the fresh builds and fresh off the press betas, but for some reason anymore, I like to wait until it is a RC anymore.

[max2]

It is becoming more stable, but it depends on what plugins you are wanting to use.

I use a greasemonkey script for example which fails in Beta 8, but works perfectly in 3.6 so I am staying with 3.6 until that resolves in a later build. But, otherwise, if you don't use plugins, I would suggest trying it out to see if it works stable enough for you. I used to really dig the fresh builds and fresh off the press betas, but for some reason anymore, I like to wait until it is a RC anymore.

Same here. The problem isn't that greasemonkey doesn't work because it does quite well in Firefox 4 Beta but a lot of greasemonkey scripts on userscripts.org just refuse to work :( Hopefully that won't be forever for most of the scripts.

I did get some of them to work but not entirely. To much hassle. Prefer to have more of a selection of add-ons as well. Firefox 3.6 for the long term! Now that doesn't mean I won't play or try the latest Firefox 4 Beta though just not use it as my main browser yet. Anyway why would I even need Firefox 4 Final right now? My Firefox 3.6 already looks exactly like Firefox 4 with a add-on bar. (Only appears when I hover over it) Yes I can move buttons into the tab bar as well. I can't think of anything I am missing from Firefox 4.

[kilara1988]

You are missing the most important - the performance speed of FF4.I use beta 8 as my main browser as i did with beta 7.All my addons that i use work with FF4(Using Nightly GM and the script i use works) so no problem there.

[max2]

You are missing the most important - the performance speed of FF4.I use beta 8 as my main browser as i did with beta 7.All my addons that i use work with FF4(Using Nightly GM and the script i use works) so no problem there.

Maybe but I tried Firefox Beta 7 and Beta 8. I like it but I didn't see enough to move to it yet because a lot of add-ons still do not support FF4 beta 8 yet and some not even Firefox 4 yet. Every now and then one supports Firefox 4 but only up to Beta 1 to 5 or something. It is really frustrating.

What greasemonkey scripts do you use ? Mine work but not entirely. I ask myself what is more important features or speed ? I always go with features every time. Speed is nice but you can only be so fast. What is a millisecond hear or there going to do for me ? Whenever I click on a link it opens as a background tab. By the time I am done with my current tab at least the first part of the tab that was loading is ready for me if not the whole tab already. That is the whole point. It really doesn't matter with speed sense mostly you don't directly go to a link you click on all the time. Yes sometimes you do but that is not always the case.

[Auroka]

Maybe but I tried Firefox Beta 7 and Beta 8. I like it but I didn't see enough to move to it yet because a lot of add-ons still do not support FF4 beta 8 yet and some not even Firefox 4 yet. Every now and then one supports Firefox 4 but only up to Beta 1 to 5 or something. It is really frustrating.

What greasemonkey scripts do you use ? Mine work but not entirely. I ask myself what is more important features or speed ? I always go with features every time. Speed is nice but you can only be so fast. What is a millisecond hear or there going to do for me ? Whenever I click on a link it opens as a background tab. By the time I am done with my current tab at least the first part of the tab that was loading is ready for me if not the whole tab already. That is the whole point. It really doesn't matter with speed sense mostly you don't directly go to a link you click on all the time. Yes sometimes you do but that is not always the case.

I agree with "features over speed", but I'm sure all the add-ons & plugins I use work with FF4b8.

Plus I try not to go overboard with add-ons & scripts. (< 15 add-ons)

I'm more worried about the amount of memory it uses and its stability.

[bogas04]

give it some time , extension makers were waiting for Firefox 4 Addon engine to get stable , now its stable enough , so just wait for few (more) days

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Mozilla always tell addon authors to start updating their addons by the time the betas are "stable" (i.e. no more breaking changes to the core)

Addon authors always ignore Mozilla and wait until the final RCs/release to start updating their addons. Luckily there are a few addon authors who know better and update their addons along the way though.

Edit: I've seen addons recently that still don't work with 3.6, some authors are just really slow at updating.

[jwoodfin09]

i love the beta

[max2]

give it some time , extension makers were waiting for Firefox 4 Addon engine to get stable , now its stable enough , so just wait for few (more) days

Cool with me. I can wait a few more years if that is what it takes! I am very patient.

Mozilla recently released Beta 8 of Firefox 4 and the release schedule seems to be slipping again. originally scheduled for a Q4 2010 release Firefox 4 may now not be released until mid to late Q1 2011. The revised schedule planned the final beta of Firefox by the end of this year, but we know that Mozilla will release at least two more betas until the first release candidate is expected.

lol looks like I may get my wish.

I agree with "features over speed", but I'm sure all the add-ons & plugins I use work with FF4b8.

Plus I try not to go overboard with add-ons & scripts. (< 15 add-ons)

I'm more worried about the amount of memory it uses and its stability.

Rightfully so! How many greasemonkey scripts do you use?

I am worried about memory usage and stability as well and that is just about tied with features as my most important thing with a browser. To bad we can't have the best of both worlds. Maybe soon. All of this browser competition should make this happen very soon! I looking more forward to Firefox 4.1 than anything.

[Gerowen]

Just ran some tests on the latest build, it's looking rather nice. Bigger memory footprint but it finally feels a little snappy in Linux. Here's what I got on my tests.

Memory Usage (With just neowin.net loaded):

Firefox (Minefield) 4.0b9: ~90 MiB

Firefox 3.6.13: ~ 62 MiB

Epiphany 2.30.2: ~ 52 MiB

html5test.com Scores

Firefox (Minefield) 4.0b9: 207 and 9 bonus points

Firefox 3.6.13: 139 and 4 bonus points

Epiphany 2.30.2: 187 and 11 bonus points

When comparing the launch speed, I didn't have a digital stopwatch or anything but Firefox beta and Epiphany are both pretty much instant. Page rendering is really fast too. The current version of Firefox is just painful compared to the beta. These tests were ran using the 64 bit Linux version of the beta on Ubuntu Linux 10.10 64 bit.

[iwod]

that's what i mean by themortalkombat.com website eating more and more ram. it will keep going higher and higher to even if i close those sites.

only way to get it back to normal levels is to restart firefox 4 beta 8. (does same with Firefox v3.6)

Great, you just found an memory leak. May be someone will report it.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Well I had the problem of stuff missing on the board index due to Flash ads, stuff like the titlebars of the forum categories would disappear, and other CSS related stuff.. After disabling plugin-container.exe CPU usage now sits around 5% and I no longer have the flash ad issue with the board index?

Seems weird that it caused so high CPU usage and those problems, specifically with Flash.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, the issue with the board and Flash is a strange one, I haven't seen it on any other site.

[torrentthief]

firefox 4 beta 8 is working great for me, it uses only about 5% more ram than firefox 3.6.13 when using about 40 tabs, beta 7 used about 40% more ram. I've had flash videos embedded on web pages flicker slightly sometimes when you move the mouse over them, apart from that its very stable for me :)

Anyone know what beta 9 will do, just bug fixes or will new features be enabled which are currently disabled?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Bug fixes, new features aren't coming at this point in development.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Is anyone else thinking that perhaps Mozilla need to draw a more solid line under FF 4.0 development, and split fixes between "Must be done now", and "Can wait until 4.0.1"? At this rate, they're going to end up losing a portion of their userbase simply because they can't reach a point where it's not considered "Beta quality" anymore. I'm running 4.0b8 on ALL my machines at home and work now, and I don't have a problem with it on any of said systems.

With the current timescale, Firefox could end up ranking as the worst browser behind MSIE if IE9 beats it to release, and that's got the potential to put a big black mark on their credibility. From a sensationalist viewpoint, it almost looks familiar...

... Netscape faced increasing criticism for the bugs in its products; critics claimed that the company suffered from 'featuritis' ? putting a higher priority on adding new features than on making them work properly. This was particularly true with Netscape Navigator 2, which was only on the market for 5 months in early 1996 before being replaced by Netscape Navigator 3. The tide of public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's Goliath, steadily turned negative...

[bogas04]

firefox 4 beta 8 is working great for me, it uses only about 5% more ram than firefox 3.6.13 when using about 40 tabs, beta 7 used about 40% more ram. I've had flash videos embedded on web pages flicker slightly sometimes when you move the mouse over them, apart from that its very stable for me :)

Anyone know what beta 9 will do, just bug fixes or will new features be enabled which are currently disabled?

UI tweaks for beta 9 and 10 are mentioned here