Firefox 5.0 Beta

[chrysalis]

well if they starting doing a new major version every 6 weeks I think its unreasonable to expect extension dev's to keep up with that very fast, they are after all mostly provided for free in people's own time.

 

[chrysalis]

here is a screenshot of some memory usage for FF4, 9 tabs loaded idle for a day and half. Also 2nd showing addons installed.

 

[stormy13]

9 tabs in that window, and if I'm seeing things right, 29 Firefox windows open at the same time as well. If that is what I am seeing, small wonder Firefox is using ~1.5 GB of memory.

 

[zigzag3143]

here is a screenshot of some memory usage for FF4, 9 tabs loaded idle for a day and half. Also 2nd showing addons installed.

I think you are expecting far too much from FF (or any other browser). If some people merely leave their browser open for a day and a half with one tab it eaither consumes memory like cookies and milk, or crashes.

The number of tabs and the length of time is more the problem and just to be thorough I tried the same number of tabs on FF 3.6, IE 8, and 9, and some version of Chrome, and after 2 days of wasted idle time the other broswers (especially 3.6.16) exebit the same problem.

 

[chrysalis]

9 tabs in that window, and if I'm seeing things right, 29 Firefox windows open at the same time as well. If that is what I am seeing, small wonder Firefox is using ~1.5 GB of memory.

no its the only firefox window.
the firefox icons on the taskbar are on this system, different firefox

you will see that task manager is inside the remote desktop.

on this system with all those windows and over 200 tabs and many days uptime ff3.6 is only using 624meg ram which is quite efficient although it is using the bartab addon.

 

[chrysalis]

here is a screenshot of some memory usage for FF4, 9 tabs loaded idle for a day and half. Also 2nd showing addons installed.

I think you are expecting far too much from FF (or any other browser). If some people merely leave their browser open for a day and a half with one tab it eaither consumes memory like cookies and milk, or crashes.

The number of tabs and the length of time is more the problem and just to be thorough I tried the same number of tabs on FF 3.6, IE 8, and 9, and some version of Chrome, and after 2 days of wasted idle time the other broswers (especially 3.6.16) exebit the same problem.

IE9 was left open for the same duration and is still open now not restarted, you can see the processes below the firefox one. one 250 meg + 2x 25 meg + 65 meg. for 17 tabs in 2 IE windows. I tuned IE to improve gdi handle resource usage but the tuning has little affect on ram usage, the tuning I did was to set tabprocgrowth to 1 so each session only has 1 process for all tabs (IE7 behaviour) still seperated process for gui tho so protected mode works. I also start each IE window with -nomerge so thats why 4 processes for 2 windows.

I agree all browsers leak memory but not to the extenct I am seeing with FF4. 9 tabs is nothing very low usage. None of them are multimedia either no flash stuff loaded.

 

[zigzag3143]

Adons are the primary source of both memory leaks and usage. I use a set of abt 15 and wouldnt trade them for anything.

In 3.6 with my usual tabs and duration FF 3.6.16 will grow to abt 600 Megs, when I launch 4.01, or for that matter 6.01a (since im testing it) they each use the same ad-dons are open the same duration and use below 400 Megs.

So I guess each individual system is different and frankly I dont care if FF uses 4 gigs. You couldnt force me to use IE, and without the skins and addons it would just be another browser.

 

[chrysalis]

my worst memory leak when it used over 2 gig in 12 hours uptime was without any addons on, its actually been more moderate since then. I am not trying to make you use IE or anything else just reporting the behaviour here I am seeing. That FF4 was installed clean, iniitally no addons, massive memory leak, since then installed the addons and had more memory leaks. The ff4 is mainly untuned with a few privacy options tuned for cookies and thats about it. So I havent tuned things that reduce ram usage, I may do some tuning on it and report back any improvements as by default I know firefox is tuned for high ram usage. However it really shouldnt be increasing ram usage whilst sitting idle. Also all those addons are on my ff3.6 install, the ff3.6 has more on top of that as well.

I agree on each system been different, which is what makes tracking down the source of bugs diffilcult.

 

[zigzag3143]

There is a tool for beta testers and developers to help track down leaks. Might want to check. I cant tell you where and what due to a non disclosure agreement.

 

[chrysalis]

why would they limit sharing of such a useful tool? seems counter productive.

 

[chrysalis]

ok zigzag I found some leak tools but they all look hard to use so havent loaded one yet. Since bartab isnt available for ff4 yet (probably best addon ever made) I enabled this option to a value of 0 "browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs"
This sort of provides part of what bartab does and doesnt load all the tabs into memory at startup, I then left it for some hours.
It started off using 192 meg ram. with 1 tab loaded. others in background not loaded.
After the hours of uptime (dont know exactly how long but I think about half a day or so) it was around 340meg ram usage. I then click on a different tab and bam down to 250 meg usage. Since I now installed ramback addon I clicked on clear cache and it went down to 195meg again. However where was this 60meg cache been used? because about:cache which I had already checked showed no ram cache been used, so either thats buggy and it was been used or there is a ram cache not shown in about:cache.

I have now started it again with all tabs loaded and when it gets above a gig ram usage I will hit the clear cache button and see if all the gig or so of usage is cache.

 

[Schroff87]

here is a screenshot of some memory usage for FF4, 9 tabs loaded idle for a day and half. Also 2nd showing addons installed.

Update Tab Mix Plus to the dev build .386
It helped make Firefox's memory consumption a lot more reasonable for me - highest ever was 800 odd MB instead of the 1.4GB which I had previously seen. Has something to do with the way TMP handles session management.

 

[chrysalis]

here is a screenshot of some memory usage for FF4, 9 tabs loaded idle for a day and half. Also 2nd showing addons installed.

Update Tab Mix Plus to the dev build .386
It helped make Firefox's memory consumption a lot more reasonable for me - highest ever was 800 odd MB instead of the 1.4GB which I had previously seen. Has something to do with the way TMP handles session management.

seems was no need, it just prompted me to update to 386 anyway as thats the now stable version of TMP.

so restarted on 386 TMP and will see what diff that makes.

Before the restart it was using 1 gig (with all tabs loaded in memory) I hit clear cache and it dropped to 740meg so it didnt recover it all. Prior to hitting clear cache, ram cache usage was just 29meg in about:cache so was a hidden 230meg of cache data somewhere in ram. This issue is compounded by the fact bartab doesnt work on ff4.

I am not confident of the TMP upgrade solving this as I had the memory leak with no extensions installed. But will report back on the effect.

Googling reveals dozens if not 100s of mem leak reports for ff4, so it looks conclusive from where I sit anyway.

 

[Schroff87]

I guess you've already tried the usual reset to defaults, new profile, update flash and stuff. I hope you find your problem, for me it was TMP, I didn't know a stable build was released as I've been using dev build from their site for 2 weeks now .. but try having a look at it. Helped me big time! It's decent for me - 21 add ons, 3 windows and around 30 tabs were 580 MB .. much better than when I had .385 (used to average 900mb easily).

Tab Mix Plus • View topic - Tab Mix Plus Dev-Build 0.3.8.X

 

[chrysalis]

its already running, start ram usage 240meg, current 700 meg.

In ff 3.6 (with more plugins) the ram usage and leaks is only a fraction.

 

[Schroff87]

Wow! Crazy RAM usage! Safe mode makes any difference? Are you using recent video drivers? FF felt sluggish with any driver prior to 260.99 for me. Worth a shot. If it's still a problem, I guess it's IE9 or Chrome then .. a browser isn't worth so much effort! Oh btw, you've not applied any reg tweaks, right?

 

[yowanvista]

FF5 Beta1 is scheduled to be launched on May 17, 2011
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases#Firefox_5

 

[chrysalis]

Ironically since this is a ff5 thread I think I am going to test ff5 and see if that has the same leaks, maybe its already fixed in ff5, because I think they wont fix a ff4 issue only ff5.

The system in question has next to no reg tweaks, the only thing I tweak on windows 7 systems usually is desktop heap and some mouse hover settings but I have not done that on the test pc as I dont run enough apps to saturate the default limit.

Before I try ff5 I may try to see behaviour with one site loaded at time but will be a slow process.

 

[chrysalis]

heh bug report filed to ff team, I left it for 3-4 days and when I went back to the machine I had a crash report on screen, FF when crashed was using 77% of system memory. (4 gig).

Will be trying ff5 now to see if this is fixed on that.

 

[Commodore Pet]

Found Beta 1 for those that want it.

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/5.0b1/