ID:182674
 
Firefox has long been criticized for its memory usage, so one of the major focuses for Firefox 3 development has been better memory management.

Here's an excellent article written about what was done, including explanations and benchmarks to illustrate all the awesome work that has gone into memory management for Firefox 3.

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

Firefox 3 is still in beta, but hopefully it will be released later in 2008. And the changes aren't all under the hood -- the interface has been streamlined and glitzed up. Whereas previous versions of Firefox went for the same look on every platform, the look is now customized per-platform in order to take advantage of the pretty themes we're seeing for Vista, OSX, and Linux.

Enjoy, Firefox users. :-)
I was told FireFox 3 isn't even official software.
Hooray. I was starting to get annoyed with FireFox 2's memory management.
I've never really had a problem with Firefox's memory usage, but I do have a problem with some of FF3's changes, such as the inline auto-complete URL bar with partial matching and the new Downloads box, but that's about all. Other than that, FF3 is a great improvement.
In response to Audeuro
Audeuro wrote:
I've never really had a problem with Firefox's memory usage, but I do have a problem with some of FF3's changes, such as the inline auto-complete URL bar with partial matching and the new Downloads box, but that's about all. Other than that, FF3 is a great improvement.

My only gripe about the new Downloads box was that it virus-checked everything after finishing the download. I'm not stupid; I know what I'm downloading. Luckily, the good ol' about:config had an option readily available to disable that.

I think the inline auto-complete URL bar can also be disabled, but I haven't had a large enough problem with it to care to look for an option for it.

Hiead
In response to Hiead
Hiead wrote:
I think the inline auto-complete URL bar can also be disabled, but I haven't had a large enough problem with it to care to look for an option for it.

For the record, you can do:

In about:config, set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to "true" and set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 1 or 0, the latter being completely off.
Gads, I'm stoked. I've been having to shutdown Firefox about once every 36 hours due to memory leaks and slowdowns, less time when work on the website has been particularly intense. This is absolutely fantastic news.

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
Do you not shut down your computer at all, or are you just constantly on it 24/7? :P
In response to Elation
I don't shutdown my PC. Last time I shut it off was about a month ago to install an update. I reboot from time to time, but I don't bother shutting down.

But with Firefox I make it a habit to close it before I go to bed.
I've been complaining about Firefox memory usage for such a long time. FF2 thought it'd be cute if they optimized viewing speeds by storing everything in memory. Stupid. Sorry to crack it to you, but I haven't noticed a great big difference between FF2 and FF3's memory usage. They both look like they hog the same amount of memory as each other. Firefox 1.5 is still the best in the Mozilla (modern) line in my opinion. Heck, IE8 and explorer combined take up less than FF3.
In response to Crashed
Crashed wrote:
FF2 thought it'd be cute if they optimized viewing speeds by storing everything in memory. Stupid. Sorry to crack it to you, but I haven't noticed a great big difference between FF2 and FF3's memory usage. They both look like they hog the same amount of memory as each other.

I'm afraid the numbers don't bear out here. Read the article I posted, which explains how memory is being managed differently. Further, it discusses in particular the concept of storing everything in memory for speed, the process of which has been significantly improved.

I submit that you have probably not tested Firefox 3 thoroughly enough to judge whether it is just as bad as Firefox 2 when it comes to memory management. However, the author of the article I linked to has done his research.
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Gads, I'm stoked. I've been having to shutdown Firefox about once every 36 hours due to memory leaks and slowdowns, less time when work on the website has been particularly intense. This is absolutely fantastic news.

Lummox JR

It is not a memory leak it is a feature that you can change IIRC.

George Gough
In response to PirateHead
All I need to know is that it's using up 53 megs of ram when I first boot it (mind you, no plugins installed) - and it's using up 115 megs with two tabs open (this and gmail) after approximately an hour and a half of surfing and no downloading.
In response to Crashed
That's pretty weird, I can leave Firefox running for a pretty long time without it ever breaking the 60MB memory usage mark. With tons of tabs and plugins installed too.
In response to Crashed
Do you have FF3 beta 4? I have several tabs open, and two add-ons installed (GreaseMonkey and AdBlock Plus, with quite a few GreaseMonkey scripts installed), and the firefox.exe process is just at 80,440 K. If I remember correctly, Firefox 2 was often around 133,000+ K, which shows a significant difference.

Hiead
In response to Nadrew
Nadrew wrote:
That's pretty weird, I can leave Firefox running for a pretty long time without it ever breaking the 60MB memory usage mark. With tons of tabs and plugins installed too.

I have my cache set very high so I usually have it at maximum of 100MB when I have surfed for 3+ hours.

George Gough
In response to Nadrew
If you are using Task Manager to view the RAM usage, make sure to enable the "Virtual Memory Size" as well. This will show you how much of it is being paged, between the virtual and real RAM, you get the real amount of RAM Firefox is using. "View>Select Columns...>Virtual Memory Size"
In response to Hiead
I am usually around 80 with just the single window open, and nothing added on. I can't believe it even uses that much. I hate it.
In response to DBZ.Omega
80 megs is my limit for any browser. Any time it exceeds that amount and I'm not watching a video, then I swiftly kick the process. FF2 exceeded that limit very easily. FF3, although apparently doing a better job at memory management, also seems to consume a nasty amount of ram. One of these days I'm just going to get rid of all my browsers and use Lynx permanently.
In response to Crashed
I really wish that someone would just come out with a nice, secure browser, that doesn't eat through the ram like a fat kid in a candy store.

Don't you hate it when you need 8GBs of ram just to browse the interwebs?
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