As I’ve said before, I’ve been a user of Firefox (albeit, by different names), since 0.2 (possibly 0.1). I’ve learned to love it. I love my core extensions, I love the tabs and the general feel. I have really enjoyed using Firefox.
As I’ve also detailed before, I have some problems with Firefox. In particular, a certain Firefox bug has pissed me off so much, not because of the bug, but rather, the fact that the Mozilla devs appear/appeared to be perfectly content with their decision, despite the arguments. I have blown off Firefox at home for the also-Gecko-based Camino. I am seriously considering blowing off Firefox at work for Opera.
But this is the real reason. It’s not just their XML arrogance. It’s this: Firefox is a mess when it comes to memory.
Click on the image for a full size view
Let’s break it down: Firefox allows developers to write extensions that utilize XUL, which means memory leaks could come from poorly written extensions. But as a user, my response is: I don’t care. If writing extensions can cause a WEB BROWSER to eat up over 1/2GB of memory, you’ve got a problem! Fix chrome! Fix XUL! Limit what the extensions can do! Otherwise, someone is going to release “Trusted Firefox,” or worse, offshoot Firefox to something simpler, something that is to Firefox what Firefox was to Seamonkey.
Camino, which doesn’t use XUL by the way, is much less featureful – sometimes annoyingly so, but guess what – it can runs for weeks without so much as a burp. This is Firefox after less than 24 hours with 6 tabs open, and the last 15 hours were of complete inactivity (overnight, while I was home).
I suspect this could be AJAX related (Gmail is always one tab). But since Firefox is my gateway to the web, it’s responsible for making sure the web plays nice through that window and correcting any behavior that makes it unhappy. And frankly, lately, it’s letting me down.
Personally, I close down firefox 1-2 times a day. I do that with all my browsers, just to refresh the system and their resource usage. For a homepage I use a custom-made local HTML portal, so opening the tabs I need is fast (middle-clicking on the links I need).
Maybe it is time to give the Opera browser a try?
This problem only happens on specific computers (like my laptop). The problem has nothing to do with XUL, or else it would happen immediately upon Firefox opening. My best guess is that it has something to do with plugins (not extensions). On my computer, IE7 and Windows Media Player do the same thing.
The real reason firefox appears to be faster than any other browser (not just that it is memory monster) is, it caches more of any page than the others thus giving you the appearance that it is quicker, but in reality, its not, it just takes up more space and more memory, its a gannet, mozilla know it and they should sort it out.
J Out